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May 3, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:03:21
2139 Philosophical Parenting - Death, Toddlers and Regret

A listener conversation with a parent dealing with toddler challenges, from Freedomain Radio.

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Time Text
Good afternoon.
Hey, how's it going?
Good.
How are you, man?
I'm very well, thanks.
It's funny why I've been waiting to talk to you all day, but I feel a little anxiety, like I'm going to go to an interview or something.
This is the day that after 2,000 podcasts, Steph is going to turn on a listener.
I've really got to cut back on the steroids, at least it's direct steroids to butt injections.
If I don't end up with a Jean-Claude Van Dam double walnut bubble butt, I'm just not doing it right.
So, thanks for taking the time.
My pleasure.
I had three things I wanted to talk about.
I think two of them are going to end up being kind of short, and one of them might be a bit more involved.
So the two things that I sent you the email about, one, the frustration she's having when we have difficulty understanding her.
Right.
Two, the new interpretation, and I know where this comes from now, so this part of the conversation will be short, but the recent beginning of interpreting laughter as being against her rather than with her.
Right, right.
But I figured out where that comes from, so I'll look forward to telling you that.
Yeah.
And then the third item is We have a dog who's pretty old, and he's starting to get sick.
He's starting to lose one of his legs.
And we're probably going to have to euthanize him sometime in the next...
We're hoping for a few more months, but it's going to be fairly soon.
I'm so sorry.
That's very hard.
Yeah.
We just went to the vet yesterday and it was originally my wife's dog.
She got him before she and I met.
And so she's taking it particularly hard.
But one of the things that we're both trying to figure out now is how are we going to present that to Meta.
And we don't know.
And what's really awkward is she's only in the last couple of weeks started to form any kind of real attachment to this particular dog.
We sort of kept them separate for a long time because he's so much bigger than she is.
He's 75 pounds and part pig.
Saddle up!
Yeah.
Oh, she could ride him if he would let her.
There's no doubt.
It's the right size comparison.
It's made hugely complicated too by the fact that my son at 10 months has in the past week or so really completely learned to crawl.
So now he's fully mobile and that means we can't have the Old, indigent, giant dog be on the same floor of the house as the newly mobile 10-month-old infant.
That is a recipe for disaster.
But anyway, we can get to that last.
So I kind of wanted to talk about some of these points in a specific order.
So the laughing thing If you remember from the email, both my wife and I sort of introspected about our own behavior and observed each other and we couldn't figure out where this was coming from because we knew that we didn't do that.
But I figured it out yesterday.
Occasionally, we take her to a daycare.
It's a daycare where my wife used to work and when she worked there, she got to know all the staff and their processes and everything.
And we'd take Meta there maybe once every two weeks for like half a day.
And she had friends in the classroom and everything, and she always looked forward to going.
And recently they moved her up a class, so she's now with older kids, and she stopped enjoying it.
And so I figured out yesterday, I took her there yesterday and she was kind of protesting, but then when we got inside she was alright.
But when we picked her up, she said she didn't have a good time, and I realized that that is because that's where she's picked up this behavior, that there's something going on in the peer relationships between the kids where laughter is being expressed as ridicule rather than shared happiness.
So we won't be doing that anymore.
If I sort of get where you're coming from, or at least get your meta-analysis, let's say, it's sort of like if you're exposed to older kids, there's a very dangerous pseudo-self-esteem trap that older kids get into, which is, I'm smarter because younger kids are dumber, so to speak.
I'm stronger because younger kids are.
I'm taller because younger kids are shorter and stuff like that.
It's really pathetic.
I mean, I can't tell you just how awful that is and what a terrible model it is.
And I can only assume that comes from parents who feel that they're smarter because their kids are less wise or whatever.
I mean, there must be some way that that, because, you know, if you, to feel stronger because somebody else is innately, through no fault of his or her own, younger and clumsier and has less trouble, has more trouble with words and so on, right?
Right.
To place any kind of self-esteem on being taller than a three-year-old is just so pathetic and harmful.
And that may be where, you know, if she says something that's funny, right?
All young kids mispronounce the word clock in ways that can be sort of horrifying.
And so if they're sort of laughing at that, then that's not pleasant, right?
right?
Because she obviously, they may be using jokes that are beyond her ability to understand or, but she does get the, I guess she gets the sense of, of what they're doing, right?
But something she did that she didn't mean to do that she doesn't understand is being mocked.
It's not obviously a pleasant, a pleasant sensation.
And I think that's pretty much in line with what took place.
So it was very, it was very, It's nice now to, once you spot that that's where it's coming from, to very easily go, okay, well, we just won't do that anymore.
She's not having a good time.
This is not something that we want to force on her.
When she was in the classroom with her friends, She looked forward to it.
She was excited to see them.
There would be hugs when she arrived.
And now it's just a bunch of strangers, so there's no point in subjecting her to it for the sake of our convenience.
I remember experiencing this.
I was, I think, about, if not the youngest kid in boarding school at six.
And I remember taking the train up to boarding school, which I took with my brother and other kids.
He was, I guess, eight or so.
And In the train, it said you couldn't drink the water from the toilet, like from the train's washroom, when the train was standing in the station.
And I was really thirsty, and the train had just been standing and standing and standing for a long time.
Of course, we had no money.
I don't even know if you could buy anything on trains back in the day, but the only place to get a drink was from there.
And I was old enough, I guess, to read that sign.
And I remember my brother and a whole bunch of other kids who were older went through this long explanation about Why that sign was ridiculous.
You know, why that didn't make any sense and they were just putting it there because of...
I can't even remember the whole explanation, but it was something like, this sign is meaningless, just have a drink, don't just follow the rules for no reason, right?
And then I had a drink, and then they mocked me, of course, for drinking poo water, right?
And that, of course, is...
I mean, it's just so sad and pitiful, right?
As opposed to, wow, here's a tiny little six-year-old kid who's hundreds of miles away from home going to a place that he doesn't understand or know for what feels like infinity because kids don't have much of a conception of time, rather than having some sort of graciousness or empathy or kindness to that kind of situation.
I mean, it was just a mindfuck, right?
Right.
And that's a terrible thing, of course, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm not saying she went through anything like that.
It probably wasn't anything that, you know, British kids have this delightful, sadistic sophistication that some of the colonies don't seem to experience quite as much.
But why did they move her up in grades?
I think it had more to do with capacity management than anything else.
Since she goes so rarely, they have a little trouble managing the expected capacity from room to room and kid group to kid group.
Right.
Also, I think my wife may have requested it because in the younger kids group they had a teacher that my wife is not very fond of, doesn't trust her very much.
So it was, you know, room with older kids but a teacher she trusts more or vice versa.
It was really interesting, though, because when I got there and I first dropped her off, I was already thinking, okay, we're going to have to stop doing this.
I know that you worked in one of these places, and as you said before, you do the best you can.
I observed this scenario when I was dropping her off.
The teacher came over to say hello to my daughter, and while she was there, another kid came up.
Another young boy came up and said, I don't remember the other kid's name, like, Charlie bit me.
For real.
And she said, well, are you bleeding?
And he said, no.
And she said, go back and tell Charlie I said to play nice.
And I know exactly why she did it.
You know, I get all the context and everything, but, you know, just sort of klaxons went off and it's like, okay, we're not going to keep doing this because...
Well, yeah, I mean, it's the teacher's not going to pull those threads, right?
Pull those threads and find out why the other kid is acting so aggressively.
Because that's going to lead straight to the aggression of the parents and how many teachers want to take on aggressive parents.
Yeah, when my wife was teaching there, she struggled with that on several occasions and taking issues all the way to the owner of the daycare and saying, look, somebody's got to talk to the parents.
And to her credit, the owner was actually, she was pretty good about that.
On occasions when kids simply remained aggressive and parents didn't change their behavior, she'd pull kids from the school entirely, which is, I thought, a really bold decision, especially in this economy, to give up revenue.
Obviously, if it comes to the other kids' safety or well-being, then it's a good choice.
It was just surprising.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, yeah, and it's tough.
When you really have empathy with your kids, one of the wounds that you open up is the world not treating your kids well.
I'm not saying other parents don't really care about it, but I think there's a lot of...
Tough it out kind of philosophy.
If you're not violent with your kids, how are they going to learn about violence?
And it's like, I don't want my children to learn about violence as an embodied thing.
She's obviously going to figure out that there's violence in the world at some point, and we'll talk about it, but not through me.
At some point, she'll learn the concept of rape when she's much older.
That doesn't mean that this has to be part of her family life, for heaven's sakes.
But there is a kind of, you know, well, you know, the world can be a tough place and kids have to learn how to fend for themselves.
And it's like, no, no, no, no.
The world is a tough place because kids have had this kind of aggression, have been exposed to this kind of aggression.
That's circular, right?
We need to expose kids to aggression because kids exposed to aggression become aggressive and you have to learn how to deal with aggression from kids who've been exposed to aggressions or let's expose them to aggression.
I think that may be a bit circular.
Tautology 101.
Anyway.
So that's one item that is solved since I sent you the email.
The other thing that was in the email was this emotional, this startling emotional reaction to when we're having a little trouble communicating.
Frustration, right?
When you can't figure out what she's saying?
Right, yeah.
So she'll say something and One of us might look at the other between my wife and I, or if it's just one of us there, we'll ask her to repeat it.
Basically, if you get to the third time and you still haven't understood it, the frustration kicks in.
I'm not surprised she's frustrated.
I understand completely why she's frustrated.
It's that the emotional reaction to the frustration is to cry, which is very surprising because historically she hasn't been a crier, but somewhere recently, since about her third birthday, we've crossed a threshold of some kind where she's taken to it more.
And I don't know if that's the way we're reacting to it.
Because both of us have actually been spending, I especially have been spending a lot more time with her lately than I had over the previous couple of years.
We've been doing a lot of changes in our personal life to accommodate it more.
So I would have expected it to go the other way.
Unless I'm doing something really wrong.
Right.
Well, does it become a bit self-fulfilling?
Like, you get tense that she's going to cry because you don't understand her, and so you strive even harder, and the tension mounts on both sides?
It could be.
But that doesn't explain what happened the first time.
It just may explain why it's going a little more.
And that's something I'll definitely take a closer look at.
I mean, I'll tell you, because we're going through the same thing, and you know, obviously, you know, but for people who aren't parents who may listen to this, this happens because their cognitive abilities vastly outstrip their Physical dexterity, right?
So, I mean, Isabella wants to skate.
She likes skating, but she can't skate.
So in her mind, and I remember this when I was a kid, I remember being in a daycare.
I must have been three or four years old, and I wanted to paint a picture of a boy on a sled with rosy cheeks flying down a hill with snow flying.
I wanted pine trees.
I wanted snow-kept mountains.
And what did I end up with?
You know, big black blobs and things like this.
You got these, you know, huge hunk and sweep up the front hallway, paintbrushes in the daycares.
And so what was going on in my mind's eye was vastly different from what I could actually achieve.
The same is true, of course, and probably even more true with language.
Right.
I can see Isabella, she does these starts, you know.
Okay, so, and it's, you know, and she's really trying to, it's in her head, but it's just getting it out and The lips, tongue, and mouth is really tough, so there is a frustration element there.
I must admit also, maybe you've been tempted by this.
Maybe you've resisted this temptation.
Do you have the temptation to just go, yeah, I see!
I just hope that it's believable and that we move on to something else.
No, I've given it that temptation for her.
No, it is a temptation.
It doesn't really work.
Now, repeat back to me, Danny, what I said.
Anyway, I find that repetition hasn't helped.
If I don't get it the first time, it's very rare that I would get it the next time.
What I've tried to do, and it's been quite successful, is to try and turn it into a game.
So if she says something that I don't understand, obviously I can usually get some of it, but there's usually a word or two that I can't.
You can say, is it in the room?
Is it upstairs?
Was it yesterday?
Is it in the car?
What color is it?
You know, you can sort of turn it into a 20 questions game to try and figure out what she's And I think that helps her to look for alternate paths, right?
So frustration happens when you don't have an alternate path, right?
So if you're in the car and you need to make a call and you pick up your cell phone and it's dead, then you turn to your wife and you say, can I use your cell phone?
Of course, you're not driving, but you can use your cell phone and then you make the call, right?
And you're not particularly frustrated because you've got an alternate path.
But if your cell phone's dead, you ask for your wife's cell phone and hers is dead and it's an important call, then you're frustrated because you're out of options, right?
And so if it's just, you know, keep going down this path where we get blocked, I think the frustration level is going to escalate.
But if you say to the child, let's find another way of saying the same thing.
Then she has alternatives for when one particular approach doesn't work.
And I find that the teaching of alternatives is really important because kids have a bit of a broken record thing.
Right.
You know, try it again, try it again, try it again, try it again.
And they don't necessarily think about it.
It's like stop and think, okay, what are my alternatives in this situation?
And so I think that can be...
Yes it does.
I can think of a case where I want to extend it and make sure I continue using the linguistic path because sometimes we'll just resort to, okay, show me.
I don't understand what you're saying here, but obviously you're referring to something that's upstairs, so let's go up to your room and you can show me.
And then, of course, we just run up there together and she digs out whatever it is and then I see it.
So what I'm going to try to do then is, even in that case, when there's a very clear, direct, concrete path to go look at the physical thing, try to get the linguistic approach first and then, you know, if we're still frustrated, then go down the other path.
Yeah, so she's trying to describe a boy.
She can say, you know, it's round, it's shiny, it's, you know, you can sort of, it can be like sort of a mental eye spy.
Right.
A mental eye spy.
Yeah, I mean, I think it could be.
Yeah, it's perfect.
It's perfect.
And we play eye spies, so.
Now, the other thing, too, that I've noticed as well is that Isabella doesn't sometimes differentiate between experiences she's had with my wife and experiences she's had with me.
And so it's like, you know, Dad, I remember that time and this and this and this and it's like, either I was drunk or something because I really was Daddy lying face down in a pile of beer bottles at the time.
And it turns out, you know, If my wife's there, she'd say, oh, that was yesterday when we went to the grocery store.
And so sometimes it's just not possible.
And so the other thing important to ask, was Daddy there?
You know, if she's talking about something that happened or some story or something that she saw, you know, was Daddy there?
I found that to be helpful.
Because otherwise, you know, I'm racking my—because she remembers more things than I do, right?
I mean, I have a few other things to remember than her life.
So I think that's important to establish, too.
Is it possible for you to even figure out what she's talking about?
Were you there?
Right.
To whatever she's describing.
And if she says no, then say, okay, well, tell me about it, but remember, I wasn't there, so be patient with me, as she's sort of explaining that kind of thing.
That reminds me, by the way, she has recently decided...
She's created a celebra name for Mommy and Daddy.
Because when she wants to just refer to us as a collective, she just says, Mahdi!
That's great.
Right, right.
I thought that was really clever.
Yeah, that's good.
Okay, so we'll try that out.
So then the last thing is...
It's the situation with the dog and obviously we're going to sort of put things, you know, you're going to euthanize a pet, you've got to wait as long as possible, as long as there's no danger.
So yesterday we went to the vet and we got pain relievers for the dog and we're hoping that's going to help him Be comfortable for a few more months before we have to get to the final stage.
But we've been thinking about how we want to approach this with Meta, and obviously it's a very great challenge.
It's obviously not going to be as traumatic as it would be if there was some...
if you get hit by a car or something like that.
We'll have the opportunity to sort of build up to it and that sort of thing.
And I put this on the board, by the way, and there was a good, coherent reply.
So there have been some ideas suggested by other members of the conversation.
But I'm just wondering what your own thoughts on that are.
I don't think you have any pets, do you?
No, no.
And we haven't done death yet.
I mean, obviously, she has bugs that she finds, and sometimes the bugs decide to take fairly long rests.
But we haven't done the death thing yet.
And how old is Matt again?
She's three and a half?
She's three.
I think she's like two or three months younger than Izzy.
Yeah, I don't...
Yeah, here's the thing I have concern about with death and kids.
Again, just judging from my own memories, I remember being, I think, five, five and a half when I first heard that the sun was going to go out in 10 billion years.
And I remember feeling just a wave of, well, what's the point of anything then?
It may as well have been 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.
So if the sun's going out in 10 billion years, I think it's actually five.
I think it's 10 billion in lifespan.
But anyway, so my sort of thought was basically, so no brushing my teeth tonight?
Is that, you know, am I supposed to stay up all night and, you know, play with my soldiers?
So because kids don't really have much of a sense of eternity, time, or whatever, right?
Right.
And so, and remember, of course, parents seem ancient to children, right?
And, you know, so Isabella asks me, are you old?
Right.
And I said, no, I'm sort of in the middle.
And she doesn't ask in the middle of what.
She's certainly been to see...
She's seen old people and interacted with them and so on.
So she knows that there's different stages of life.
She just doesn't know that the candle goes out.
She knows the candle starts tall, burns down, but she doesn't know that it goes out.
And I don't know if...
I personally think that three is probably a bit too young.
And this is, you know, this is just my opinion.
I'm no facts behind this at all.
This is just my gut sense.
It's probably a little bit too young to say...
You remember how you were born?
Well, there's another side to that bookend.
Because she's not going to have a sense of where she and others are in that arc, if that makes any sense.
Yes.
So it could be like, okay, so things die.
Everything that is alive is going to die.
And she's not going to have a sense of time.
I mean, Lord knows we all have that, right?
I mean, every now and then I'm like, really?
45?
I'm 45?
Okay, I can still double that and probably get away with it.
Okay, good.
I remember it was Dustin Hoffman who basically said once he hit up his late 50s, he's like, hmm, don't think I can double this anymore.
So we all have problem with where we are in the arc.
And of course, nobody fundamentally knows.
But, you know, that's pretty, pretty good indicators.
But I don't know...
I don't think she knows where that stone arc is or where everybody is in that and the fact that it is rare.
I also don't think that she will know or be able to grasp that the dog lived long before she did.
The dog will seem to have a short life, especially if she's just attaching to him now.
So she may get a sense of the brevity of life because I don't know that she can really figure out that, well, before daddy and mommy got drunk, before you were born, the dog had a long and productive life.
Kids are real good at prehistory.
Like I try to talk to Isabella about, you know, before, you know, when mommy and daddy got married or before she was born and then I came by.
But she doesn't really get it because I talk about, you know, if she sort of asks, you know, where did you grow up?
And I sort of say, well, I grew up in London.
She says, what was it like?
And I talk about some of the good and bad things.
I said, well, I fell off my bike.
Or she looks at a little scar I have on my leg.
I said, well, I got this accident.
And she says, and then I came by to help you.
I gave you a band-aid and a big hug and you were all better.
And so, you know, that's when I was a kid.
So, you know, there is, you know, the ABC alphabet of time is all mixed up for kids.
And so, you and I, you know, if we're at sort of M or N in the alphabet of life, we say, ah, X, Y, Z's a long way away.
But if it's all jumbled up, that would be much tougher for us.
So, personally, I'm not...
I'm very comfortable with the idea until she gets a stronger sense of time to talk with Isabella about life and death.
But again, I don't think there's any facts behind this.
It's just sort of my thoughts.
And what do you think?
I understand where you're coming from.
And I had been, as I had contemplated this, and the other reader on the forum, by the way, Was explicit in saying, you know, don't sugarcoat it, but talk about time and talk about, you know, where things are in a lifespan.
But I think he was thinking of kids who were slightly older.
Well, you can test that, right?
So, you know, you can ask her, you know, you can ask her questions around time.
Does she understand even tomorrow, yesterday, next week, last week, next year, last year?
Does she think her, you know, her next birthday party is four minutes from now?
You can gauge your sense of time.
If the sense of time is short, and I'm guessing that it is, no matter how much your kids are, they're just not going to, you know, their brains are still buffeted by the now.
Right.
So I don't think they're going to be able to have the up periscope and look over to the horizon.
But if the sense of time is very short, then I don't know.
Death, I think, is going to seem a lot closer than, or a lot more random, a lot closer, like it's just shuffled up in the deck.
And it's sort of like the random tarot card thing, rather than something where there is a mostly predictable arc.
That'll be a bit challenging then, because what would be the alternative?
I mean, she's going to notice the dog's gone.
Of course, yeah, absolutely.
I'm not saying you don't talk...
The dog has been transformed into another dog.
No, I'm not saying...
But you can...
He's gone to heaven.
All dogs go to heaven.
Yeah, I don't have a great answer for that, because, you know, solutions are not really my thing.
But...
My temptation would be something like this, that the big dog has gone to the hospital, and it could be a long time.
And you remember how he's walking around, he was slow, he was not well, so he's gone to the doctor.
And that's kind of true, right?
I mean, he's definitely been cured.
And then, I don't know if you guys are going to get another dog, but just get a sense, because it may just sort of pass by.
And of course, then when she gets older, you can talk about it.
Because kids understand, I think, going to the doctor or going to the hospital or whatever, and you can say, you know, she's got to go into the hospital, she's going to be there for a long time, don't know when she's coming back, and so on.
I think that gives a sense of closure, she gets a sense of goodbye, but I don't think that gives her a sense of finality that is probably going to be a bit overwhelming.
Okay.
I can understand that.
I think we'll have to try some ways to test along the way, since we think we have a few months, so we might have to try to test the waters on some of this.
Well, then you can try with bugs, right?
I mean, if a bug gets squished, right, then you can sort of explore that way.
Because, I mean, I don't like lying to kids.
I really don't.
Yeah, me neither.
I really don't.
But we do withhold information from children all the time, right?
Of course.
I mean, they don't know what sex is at three.
You can show them, but that would be kind of freaky and inappropriate, right?
You know, I don't want Isabella to know where her chicken comes from.
Because she likes chickens.
You know, we've got some friends who've got some chickens.
She plays with the chickens.
And so we actually refer to it as barbecue.
Because, you know, does she need to know where a hamburger comes from?
We could take her to a slaughterhouse and she could see the stun gun going through the poor animal's head and it getting hacked and sliced up and all that.
But that's withholding information from a child, which I think is appropriate.
And withholding information about death, it's not like you're never going to tell her and eventually she's going to figure out where a hamburger comes from.
But I think that withholding information is not the same as lying.
And withholding information that they're not emotionally able to process, I think is helpful.
I think it's useful, and it's not like you're going to mislead her forever, but I think that...
Giving her a sense that the dog isn't going to be around for an indefinite period of time.
Now, the interesting thing is that if she really does pick up and the time stretches on, she keeps asking where the dog is, then that's interesting because it indicates that she's able to process time.
If it's like out of sight, out of mind, which would be my guess, then I think it indicates that she's not able to process time yet and therefore it may not be as appropriate to talk about death.
Maybe one way to test the waters would be to go check him into a kennel for a week.
But then, given his condition, that's probably not very fair to him.
I'm sure he'd like time with the family, but I think that may be even more confusing because then you're giving her a time frame called a week he comes back, right?
Yeah, that's good.
And then when he goes away for his final exit to the great doggy beyond, then she's going to have a time frame of a week or whatever.
But I'm guessing that given where she is developmentally, it would probably be not nearly as big a problem as you think.
I mean, we have this problem if I go to travel, right?
If I travel for FDR, Do I sort of say, Daddy's going away for a few days and let's have a big goodbye and so on, right?
We've actually decided not to do that.
I just go.
And, you know, I'll call her and I'll, you know, talk to her and, you know, say I'll be back very soon.
And she's mostly okay with that.
I do believe, though, that if I were to say, Daddy's going on a big plane, he's going to fly away, he's going to talk to some people, he's going to make some bad jokes, and then he's going to come back, that that would be upsetting for her because she really wouldn't be able to process it.
If I'm just not there...
She'd be completely confused by that whole bad joke line.
Yeah, maybe not.
Maybe not.
But she's fine if I just go and then sort of stay in touch while I'm gone and I come back and tell her about my trip.
She definitely tells me not to do it again.
And next time she's going to come with me no matter what.
But she's fine with it.
But if I were to say, you know, I'm going to go on a plane, I'm going to fly away and I'll be right back.
Right back, back in a few days doesn't mean anything to her.
She doesn't know what that really means.
She's still working on yesterday, today and tomorrow.
And so we have found that Just going is the best way to handle it, at least that's our perception right now, because she's been fine with it.
So, I think being sensitive to the lack of time sensitivity.
So, yeah, the lack of time sense, I think is really important.
You may be surprised if you say, you know, dog may be gone and then she may ask where the dog is.
She may not.
Right.
She may not.
I mean, it may just be coming and going kind of thing.
And...
And if she asks and you can say, and if she doesn't ask, you know, obviously you can say when she gets older and so on, but I would say let her take the lead on whether she notices the absence and then manage with whatever deficiencies she is experiencing, but I wouldn't anticipate those deficiencies and try and manage them ahead of time because I think that would not be working with the empirical evidence of her level of distress.
That's fair.
Again, it's just thoughts.
I don't think there's any magic answer to this kind of stuff.
Yeah, I agree with you that we should wait for real empirical evidence of distress rather than just assuming that she's going to have the same degree of emotional attachment and distress that, say, my wife is.
So, yeah, no point in trying to solve a problem that doesn't actually exist yet.
Yeah, I mean, I really get that we all want to explain everything to our kids, but, you know, I mean, At some point, she's going to be able to bench press 50 pounds, but that time is not now.
Okay.
The concern that I have, the slight concern that I have, is I don't want to create And this is probably a further reason not to set it up too much.
I don't want to create the kind of inadvertent atmosphere that comes from divorce, where she feels like, oh, well, there might be something in the house that's an integral part of the family that could just be taken away at any time.
And that sort of perception of abandonment, that we abandon something else, you know what I mean?
Right, right, right.
No, and I assume, of course, that she has a stronger relationship with both her parents than she does with the dog.
Oh, yes.
And this may be, you know, not that I would ever cancel doing anything prematurely, but it may be an argument for not stretching out the dog's life if the dog is really uncomfortable, because that's more of a time to attach, so to speak.
Yeah, that's been in the back of my mind as well.
But, yeah, well, it's still a tough choice, but yeah, I agree.
Oh, it is a horrible choice, and she also, she may pick up that you and your wife are sad, and she may ask about that, and, you know, you can talk about that, of course, you know, we missed the doggy, he wasn't well, and he may be gone for a long time, and I'm not sure when he's coming back, and so on, and, you know, that may be the case, or you may be able to shield her from that as well, but...
Yeah, I don't know.
It's hard to say.
I mean, because one of the concerns that Christina and I had was, okay, so if I just go to Texas and don't tell her, then she'll have this idea that I could vanish at any time.
But what I've found is that the fact that I have a few times in her life vanished without preparing her has not given her any sort of fear that I'm going to vanish without preparing her.
Because it's sort of like saying there are sunspots on the sun and therefore there's no light.
The sunspots are insignificant relative to the light and the occasional deviations, deviations from consistent behavior seem to be not at all upsetting to Isabella because there's so much consistent behavior.
Right.
And so there is so much attachment and love and affection and concern and care within your family that, you know, if donkey goes walkabout, I don't think, my guess would be that I don't think that she's going to experience that as anything fundamentally shocking because there's so much behavior to the contrary that, you know, because I think kids get freaked out by divorce partly because of the years that lead up to the divorce.
I mean, things obviously aren't just great and then one parent vanishes, but there's a whole lot of mess that starts up, and that's not the case here, right?
Okay.
That makes sense to me, and we'll plan accordingly.
And, you know, if all else fails, just get a massive doggy suit.
And pretend to be the dog.
Pretend to be the dog.
That may take quite some time.
That may take quite some time.
It might get kind of hot in there, especially when you're out playing in the summer.
But, you know, suck it up.
You're dead.
That's what we do.
So, as long as I still have you, a completely different total topic change.
I wanted to share a story with you that I think you'll find amusing.
So, in the past couple of months, I've been promoting Ron Paul around the neighborhood.
I got a yard sign and all that kind of stuff.
And my mom has picked up on the fact that I'm a fan of the last great hope for America.
The only desperation move left available until we have to find a place to live in Latin America.
Ah, you people have already destroyed your currency.
That way I won't have to live through it.
That's right.
Excellent.
I love Doug Casey's argument.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
So, the last time she was visiting, she had voted.
She had gone and registered a Republican and voted in the Florida primary to vote for him.
And I knew she was going to do that, leading up to it and everything, but we had never really discussed it until she came up to visit.
And I had mentioned to her, well, I think it's funny that I've been eligible to vote for 20 years, never bothered, never thought there was any candidate worth even taking the time to walk into a ballot box for, until this election when I actually took the time.
And she said, well, this was my first time too.
Oh, is that right?
Oh, that's funny.
So I thought that was pretty funny and it just made me think of you.
That's good.
That means it is genetic and philosophy has no use, right?
It doesn't affect the outcome.
Actually, it's just an explanation so you'll understand that my mother is really cool.
Oh, yeah.
That does sound cool.
Obviously, you can buy it, honestly.
That's great.
That's fantastic.
That's good.
Let me ask you something, though.
You know, one thing I've sort of noticed with Isabella is that I feel very vulnerable with her sometimes.
If she says that is negative to me or about me, which does happen not often, but occasionally, I find that sometimes a little hard to...
You know, so we went through this thing where she, you know, in some movie, you should say...
Oh, yeah, in Shrek, the Shrek says to the donkey, stop singing, stop singing.
That kind of became a thing with her.
And so if I would sing, she would sort of say, stop singing, and what that kind of thing.
It started off as a joke, but it kind of became a thing.
It actually became kind of annoying to me after a while, and it hurt a little bit.
Do you go through any of that kind of stuff with your daughter, the stuff that she says?
I mean, there's a real vulnerability to parenting, which I think I can really appreciate now that I didn't quite appreciate before.
Yes, absolutely.
Actually, I think the thing that really freaked me out one time was we were looking at...
There was like a sticker book of some kind, and it had all these faces with different expressions on it.
And one of the expressions was angry, and she pointed to it and said, Daddy.
And I was like, whoa, where did that come from?
No, what you mean is, where the hell did that come from?
You little witch!
So that, I know exactly how you feel, and it was, you know, led to a lot of fearful introspection.
But it was a one-time thing.
It hasn't been a pattern, so I don't think I'm completely screwing up.
And there might have been some incident recently.
I don't know.
Maybe she was watching me read somebody's blog or something.
It could have been something else, right?
Like a beard or a mustache or, you know, jug ears or I don't know what your physical...
But it may have been something, not the anger thing, but it may have been something else that had occurred.
Bushy eyes or something.
So, and she has also done the don't sing thing.
If she's singing a song, like she'll sing the ABC song, and sometimes if my wife or I start singing along with her, she'll just go, no, I want to sing it myself.
I sing it all by myself.
Yeah.
Yeah, I get that too.
Yeah, that I don't mind so much, but, and the no thing also gets me.
I really, I have to sort of phrase questions these days so that I don't get a no, because if I say, would you like to do X, what does she say?
No.
I don't want to do it.
And that really does get to be kind of exhausting after a while.
I sort of feel like I'm swimming against this little willed current all day long.
And even if it's stuff I know she'll like, or even if it's, you know, try this food, I know she's going to like the food.
And it's still, no, no, no.
We went the other day, we went into town and she, you know, she didn't want to...
Sit at a cafe.
Then she didn't want to sit at the lunch counter to have a restaurant.
Then she didn't want to go for a walk.
And then she didn't want to go down to the river.
And then she didn't want to play in the mud.
And then she didn't, you know, I wanted to take a photograph of her muddy hands because I thought it would make Christina laugh.
No, I don't want you to take a picture of my hand.
And it's just like, oh, man, it's just to get kind of, you feel like you're leaning into a gusty wind the whole day sometimes.
So I've really been trying to work with that and trying to be honest about it.
Just after a while, I'm just like, oh, you know, I think I'm just going to go home and read because I'm just tired of the snow all the time.
And she does, you know, to her credit, I do find her really sensitive to that.
Like if she's doing something that is just kind of annoying.
Like she does these cat noises, which are eerily good.
I mean, they really do sound like a cat.
But, you know, after 10 minutes of it, it's like, I'd rather take out my own ears with an ice pick than hear more.
And I have found her sort of to be responsive to that kind of stuff.
But have you got a lot of the no thing?
Or I don't want to, you know, I don't want to do X, Y, and Z, whatever is suggested.
We do.
Yeah.
We get it with a fair amount of frequency.
I work really hard, and so does my wife, to, as you said, phrase things in a way or frame things in a way that make them much more appealing.
One example is, it's never bath time, it's bubble time.
We don't ask her if she wants to take a bath, we ask her if she wants some bubble time.
That's much more enthusiastic.
I think just finding positive ways to introduce things has been mostly successful for us.
I do get you on the food thing, trying to introduce her to some new food that you know she's going to like.
What gets really frustrating is she tries it, she says she likes it, but then she won't eat it.
So we did that the other day with a pear.
She really loves apples and she wanted to try the pear.
And I said, oh, great.
Do you remember how you were younger and you like mama's pear?
Just kidding.
So I sliced up a pear and I gave it to her and she tried it and she said, oh, it's really good.
And I said, great.
So, you know, here, eat the rest of the pear.
And she had...
I don't like that.
Yeah.
Ended up giving the whole thing to her brother and he loved it.
Or when she says that she doesn't like it but then continues to eat it.
That also gives you a bit of a facial tick after a while.
Sometimes on the no thing what I find too is if I propose something and she says no and I just drop it right away, that she does it anyway.
You know, that it was much more about saying no but doing it anyway once she decides that it was her idea and not my proposal.
Oh yeah, I mean Isabella is fierce about doing things on her own.
Like it's a full body on spasm if I try, like if I'm trying to help her with something or whatever.
She is incredibly fierce.
About doing things on her own.
It's a very strong point of pride for her.
And that, you know, if I know she can't do it, I just have to grip my teeth and wait.
And she will eventually ask for help.
And she's pretty good at managing her frustration.
But I think the no is, to some degree, I mean, obviously it's an exercise of, you know, she's experimenting with this new superpower called will.
And, you know, she's not always using it for the force of good.
But...
Yeah, that no thing, I don't know when that phase ends, but I'm kind of looking forward to it.
And I've also found if I just say, like, I'm going to, you know, if I say, would you like to read this book?
She will say no.
But if I say, I'm going to read this book, I'd like you to join me if you want, then she'll usually come.
Yeah, I could see that.
I'm trying to think if there's something along those lines that...
Well, I guess we probably do that...
I'll do that if I'm going to the store or something.
I'll tell her, even though the intent the entire time is for her to go with me, I'll tell her, I'm going to go to the store, do you want to join me?
And she'll go, yeah, yeah, and run and get her shoes and everything.
Whereas if you say, do you want to go to the store?
No, I don't want to.
Yeah.
And that's a tough position to be in, right?
Because if you say, would you like when she says no, you're kind of stuck, right?
Because you can't just say, well, too bad we're going anyway, because then it's like, your will means nothing to me.
It's just a formality.
I'm, in fact, the government.
Would you like to sign this social contract?
No.
Well, you've got to pay your taxes anyway, but thank you for asking.
Thank you for giving me your feedback.
It means nothing to me.
So that's tough.
So I definitely get stuck there and I've actually not been able to do stuff I need to do because I've asked her rather than said, I have to go to the store and, you know, would you like to come and so on, right?
I... I can't think of a go-to-the-store thing where we've had to actually pull the plug on it.
Well, no, that's not true, actually.
My wife has encountered that more than I have, where she's had a plan to do something like there's a soft playground at the mall, so she likes to take meta there to just run around and play with the other kids on all the soft toys that you can't bump your head or anything.
And sometimes she'll have a big plan.
Oh, I'm going to go to the mall.
I'm going to go take the kids to Softplay and maybe do a little shopping and blah, blah, blah.
And she'll ask Mehta, you know, I wanted to go to the mall.
Do you want to go?
And she goes, no.
Okay, well, pull the plug on that plan.
I think when it's something that actually has to happen, I can't think of an occasion where we've...
Well, no, we probably have done the, well, I was only asking you as a formality.
We really have to go.
I'm pretty sure I've said that.
Right.
I try to avoid that as much as possible.
Or I'll try and sort of find a way to win her over.
And I have resorted to outright bribes.
I'm not proud, but there it is.
But I really don't want to sort of ask her for her feedback and then overwrite it no matter what she says.
I'm really trying to avoid that.
You're right.
It will happen occasionally.
Please don't misunderstand me.
It's very rare.
I just know that it's happened.
I just want to be honest in this conversation.
Oh, yeah.
But that's, yeah, I find that sort of management, managing the questions so that I don't provoke a response that I can't fulfill, I have found that to be important.
And I have to keep reminding Christina about that, you know, don't ask.
If you have to do it, don't ask.
Find some other way.
If you ask, then you have to listen, you know.
But yeah, I think the vulnerability thing has been really interesting to me and the no phase and learning to navigate that has been a challenge.
And I also have to decouple, right?
It doesn't matter if she tries the new food fundamentally.
I mean, I really want to because I know she's going to try and go, hmm, but I have to remember that it doesn't matter.
You know, like it doesn't matter if she doesn't quite finish her meal right now.
She can eat more a little bit later.
It doesn't matter if, you know, I find that stuff can be hard to remember.
I sort of get a little fixated in the moment.
Must.
Eat.
Pear.
If pear is not eaten, child's head will explode in 12 minutes.
Must.
Eat.
Pear.
You know, and it sort of gets that level, and of course none of that's true, but I find in the moment there's an intensity that I have to decouple myself from and say, okay, big picture time, Steph, does it really matter if she eats the pear now or not?
I don't think so.
I don't know if you experienced that at all, but de-escalating the intensity that is completely insane on my part.
What the hell does it matter if she tries this food today or not?
I think that happens to my wife more than me.
And this may have to do with It may have to do with the intensity of the amount of time that you spend together because you're a stay-at-home dad.
My wife's a stay-at-home mom.
So maybe that's where it comes from in terms of the relationship.
But I know that Lisa will be in a situation where she'll say, well, I want you to try this and then get very frustrated and bank a lot on it.
Whereas I'm very much willing to just let things go.
We put something out there.
She says no.
I'm like, okay.
Didn't really matter anyway.
Do you want to go outside and fly the kite?
No.
Okay.
Sure.
No big deal.
It's actually the bigger struggle that I find is when we have to go the other way.
That when she wants, when Meta wants to do something and we can't do whatever that thing is right now.
That actually is the much harder management task these days.
Lisa bought her a little kite the other day, and of course she wants to go out and fly the kite.
We live in a particularly windy part of the country, and we live in a suburb with tall houses and hills, so there's not really a lot of wind.
We really need to go take the kite out to a field or maybe even to the beach in order to fly it effectively.
And of course, we can't just walk out the front yard and fly the kite.
Can you not attach fireworks to the kite?
I have found that...
We'll only be able to fly this once, but it's going to be spectacular.
Yeah, I'm not ready to introduce my daughter to explosives.
No, a couple of months.
Yes, a couple of months.
If she's not ready to learn about death, she's certainly not ready to learn about explosives.
Right, right.
So that's been an interesting thing.
When she wants to do daytime activities and nighttime, it's probably the biggest one.
We can't go out and do that because it's dark.
Right, right.
But I find that probably a bigger challenge than the no thing.
I don't know.
I wish I had a more firm answer.
No, I think it's just a phase.
It's been going on for quite a while now, so hopefully it's a phase.
From what I've read, it's a phase.
I took your advice on this exact topic probably four or five months ago.
In one of your podcasts, you mentioned that when originally confronted by this question, you started paying more attention to how often you said no to her.
Yes, and I've really turned that around, and it's had, I think, some effect.
But the effect that it's had is I can use it as an example.
I can use my saying yes as an example.
And that will help modify her behavior.
It hasn't actually imprinted her into saying yes a whole lot more.
But what it has done is it has allowed me to say, okay, so, and like I'll sort of go, if I get frustrated, I'll say, okay, so here are the no's that you've told me today.
And then I'll say, and do you remember when you said this and what did I say?
You said yes.
Do you remember when I said this and you wanted to do this and what did I say?
Yes.
And so I said, you know, so then I've said yes like 10 times today and you've said no like 20 times today.
Or whatever number it is, it usually doesn't have to go that high.
I said, so can you understand?
It'd be frustrating.
If you said, let's do, and I said, no, all the time, you would get frustrated.
So I found that it's been helpful not in modifying her behavior, but in giving me some leverage to explain why I get frustrated with the no, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, it does.
Because then I can at least point to my own behavior as different from that, you know, which I'm having a problem with, which is kind of important.
Kind of important, if not downright essential.
I'm wondering, do you negotiate activities?
I find it pretty effective if we're doing something and she proposes switching to something else to come back with a counter-proposal that involves something she would normally say no to.
I don't know, if we're playing with Play-Doh and she says, well, I want to paint.
Okay, we have to put all the Play-Doh away first and clean up the Play-Doh area.
Normally something that she would be resistant to.
But because it leads somewhere better?
Yeah.
Is that something that you do?
Yeah, I've definitely said, you know, we can't do X until This has been done.
And yeah, so if it's a means to get to an end, if she wants to turn on her music and dance, then we have to clean up the six million toys, that kind of thing.
Yeah, that's definitely been helpful.
I mean, she'll still negotiate to the grim death at times.
But that certainly has been helpful.
But I think it also has to do with the fact that she can spontaneously come up with her own games in the moment, but she can't come up with bigger plans.
You know, like, I would like to drive here and go there, or I would like to do this and then do that.
I don't think those are big plans.
And of course, a lot of the plans we have around adult kind of got to do things.
And that, of course, is not, you know, she would never say...
Let's go to the store and get some computer paper.
That's what I want to do.
I mean, if she did, I'd be pretty amazed.
That would be pretty advised.
Daddy, I've noticed that your printer is a little low on paper.
So I think that has something to do with it.
And, you know, I think it will pass.
But yeah, there is a little bit of...
I can't take any more notes today.
So I find roll into a ball, suck my thumb, burst into tears.
I found that to be obviously incredibly helpful in terms of making sure that her respect remains high.
Wonderful.
I mean, I reflect emotional responses back to her when they're real.
And that's something I've heard you say before, too.
Yes, yeah.
If she's making you frustrated, reflect that.
Yeah, I think that's important.
I want her to be honest.
There was something that happened the other day.
I can't remember what it was, but she accidentally did something that hurt me bad enough that I actually did cry out.
Oh yeah, I've had a few of those a week, yeah.
And they all seem to involve one part of the body.
Oh, yeah, no.
I mean, being a dad is just constant groin PTSD. I mean, that's just, I don't know what it is.
It's just the way it is, you know?
The number of times it runs full tilt into the nads.
It's just, oh, man.
I basically, I was actually seriously contemplating just wearing a cup for some time, but then I thought I would actually injure her.
So I decided not to.
Oh, yeah.
I knew that part going in, though.
I mean, that's just something I've experienced before.
I've actually explained to her now, since that happened, I've been able to explain to her that Because she knows that boys are different from girls because she's seen her brother.
So she knows there's a difference.
And I've explained to her that on daddy that part's really sensitive and it hurts a lot, even if you don't mean to.
And she's understood that.
I don't know that we've completely...
It's a difficult thing to gauge too because it's not like I'm keeping careful mental track of the difference between Groin shots from my daughter and groin shots from my son because now they come from both.
Oh god, I can't even imagine.
I just can't imagine.
But I have to send you some videos of the two of them interacting because You know, when I first told you that we had two kids, you said, well, that must be really difficult.
And I agree that it's really difficult.
But I think you would really appreciate some of the amazing interactions they have.
Oh, yeah.
She cares for him.
I mean, it's just...
It's overwhelming sometimes to watch her behave towards him because she can get frustrated.
He wants to come over and play with her dollhouse while she's playing with it and she doesn't want to share at that particular time.
But when she's feeling affectionate towards him or she wants to entertain him, It's just unbelievable.
I have a video where she was sitting in front of him while he was lying on the bed, and she kept pretending to sneeze.
And she would do this big, dramatic, achoo!
And she would pound the bed right in front of him when she did this big, dramatic sneeze.
And it was the first time I ever heard him do just a full-on belly laugh.
Oh, that's great.
And she just kept going because she loved hearing him laugh.
So...
And we've been pretty successful in, I don't know if you remember me talking about a little struggle explaining to her that she was hurting him accidentally when she wasn't being gentle.
Right.
We've had really good success in that regard.
That's good.
That's good.
That's very important.
And I think thus far we've managed to really avoid Well, I'll frame it in a story.
He has one of those walkers, one of those suspending walkers where you sit in the seat and the feet come out of the bottom and there's wheels on the bottom and you roll it around and it's to practice walking but the baby's not really walking.
Right.
So we have one of those and it's really great because you put him in it and he gets around but he's got a buffer zone around him where he can't run into the wrong thing or whatever.
The other day, we were all in the kitchen together and he's wheeling around on this thing and accidentally ran over her foot.
Of course, she cried and got very upset.
Baby brother ran over my foot.
It was important to me to make sure that she didn't hold him accountable for it, that she didn't blame him.
And fortunately, we've talked about things being accidental before, and so she understands when you say, well, something's an accident.
And I was very worried that she would get retaliatory with him, that there would be some type of resentment behavior later.
And so I watched him really closely for the next couple of hours to see if any of that came to light, and it didn't.
And I was really excited that That she didn't hold a grudge.
Yeah, I've noticed that with Izzy.
She gets hurt or whatever accidentally.
She's upset, but she's not at all retaliatory.
And I've seen, of course, enough of that to know that that's a real blessing.
Of course, I think it comes from her environment.
But yeah, I think that stuff is hugely helpful.
Because it automatically kills the escalation.
Right.
Yeah, and then of course we immediately tie that situation into a new practice at home.
So now if we're putting baby brother into the walker, she runs and gets her shoes and she puts her shoes on.
And so she has these little rubber crocs that she can put on herself and she runs and goes and gets them and puts them on and then she's got rubber armor on her feet and it doesn't matter if he runs into her feet.
Right, right.
Sorry, I've got another call coming up while she's down.
I'm trying to get true when necessary, but I really do appreciate that feedback.
It's been very helpful.
I certainly don't want to imagine that I have all the answers.
I think some of the approaches that you've taken have been hugely helpful to me, and I really want to thank you for sharing those.
And I think if anyone listens to this, to others as well.
Yes, yes.
Thank you again for your time.
And thanks for keeping me from going down a terribly unnecessary path on the whole dog question.
We'll try to work it out that way.
Yeah, listen, this is a pure experiment, and I'm glad, obviously, to be experimenting on your children rather than mine.
I know you always record your conversations.
I would very much like to get a copy of this when the opportunity arrives.
I'm sorry?
Absolutely.
Yes, I will do, and I'm certainly glad.
Let me know how it goes with With this, because it's a big question.
I mean, if she was younger, you wouldn't need to worry about it.
If she was older, you could explain it.
But I think this age is a real challenge, so do let me know how it goes.
Okay, I will.
Take care, man.
Thanks, Stephen.
All the best.
Bye.
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