All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 15, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
56:14
2259 How I Stopped Spanking My Kids: A Fathers' Roundtable
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello and welcome to Two Beers with Steve.
I am your host, Steve Patterson, and my co-host today is Chris Stefanik.
What's up, Chris?
I'm doing great, Steve.
Yourself?
Great.
In fact, I'm doing really great because we've got a great guest with us today.
It's the guy who needs almost no introduction whatsoever for us because we talk about him quite a bit and we've actually had him on two times before.
So I'm going to go ahead and reintroduce Stefan Molyneux.
How are you doing, Stefan?
Great.
Hello, Steve.
Hello, Chris.
For those that don't know Stefan, this guy is like the king of all content.
That's how I stumbled across Stefan Molyneux.
He's got videos.
He's got podcasts.
He's got e-books.
He's got books.
I think we even did a Christmas album with Linda Ronstadt in the early 80s.
Is that correct?
Yes, I in fact only played the bongos, or was it a bong?
Something like that.
It's kind of hazy, but I believe we had a lot of fun.
Yeah, a lot of content out there, and maybe you can brag for a second.
I'm working on a documentary.
I just wanted to mention that as well.
You know, I knew that.
Let's stop there for a second and talk about that for a second, because I'm really interested in that.
I know you're working on it.
What's the topic?
What's the subject matter?
And when are we going to be able to view this?
Well, it's modestly entitled, Truth!
A five-letter word.
And it's basically, it's diagnosing the moral ailments of society.
You know, we all understand that violence doesn't work on an individual level, but we somehow have this weird belief.
We go through this Mobius upper zebra's ass corkscrew of rejection of reality when we somehow institutionalize violence in the form of the state or in the forms of what we'll talk about today in terms of physical discipline with parenting.
We kind of get that violence doesn't work adult to adult, but then we create these other situations where we think violence does work, like state to citizen, or parent to child or whatever.
And so I'm just really making the case that if we don't get the degree to which we're violating the moral rules that we all accept in most contexts, Areas of our life.
If we don't get that, that's the source of our problems as a society.
That's the source of war, of debt, of inflation, of unemployment, of miseducation and all of that.
And if we don't get that, then we're just going to continually be tweaking things, you know, rearranging the The deck chairs on the Titanic, as the saying goes.
So I'm really, really making the case that the source of the problems that we're facing as societies, as a culture, as an entire civilization, can directly be traced back to violations of moral rules.
And that's really the basic thesis of the documentary.
I really wanted to be a massive, you know, four security guards hold you down and unplug you from the Matrix, whether you like it or not.
Yeah, well, that's quite a massive undertaking as well.
When can we expect to see that come out?
Well, we're grinding our way through it.
I've just hired a bunch of new animators, and we've got some staggeringly great name recognition musical talent involved in it.
And so I doubt we'll be done by Christmas, but hopefully early next year.
Okay, that sounds great.
Our topic today is going to be slightly different from our regular format.
Stefan, you may know my podcast.
You've been on here twice before, and we talked about the normal things that I hear you talk about quite a bit, and that is the world around us, politically, financially, economic-wise.
But this one's a little bit different.
You also tackled this subject as well, and that's why we brought you on here.
But for our program, this is a little bit of a stretch in a different direction.
But I think it's very important.
And our topic today is going to be philosophical parenting.
And the reason that this is important to me, the reason this is also important to Chris, is that we're both fathers.
And, you know, we are also infovores.
So we're constantly consuming information, you know, not herbivores, not omnivores, but infovores.
So consuming information, consuming content.
Sorry, I misheard you.
I thought you said infohores.
And that would make me have to get my fishnet stockings on and swing a purse by the lamppost.
But okay, I think I understand the clarification now.
Infovores.
Infowars, infohores.
But we're infovores.
We don't eat infohores or nothing like that.
But philosophical parenting is our topic.
We're fathers.
We're in constant pursuit of education and information, and so we both have been learning about how to become better fathers, and there's all these contradictions that are passed down from us.
You know, from generation to generation to generation on how to raise your children and from the information that we read, there's those sort of contradictions because we're getting, you know, more philosophical type points of view.
I mean, I'm talking about the Favor Moselich books of, you know, how to talk so your kids will listen, listen so your kids will talk.
So, I'll let you introduce this topic.
What is philosophical parenting and how does it differ from, you know, traditional parenting?
Philosophical parenting is exactly like regular parenting, but you wear a toga.
What's your next question?
No, sorry.
So philosophical parenting basically is a parenting based upon the first principles of ethics.
The non-initiation of force and a respect for property rights.
And of course, those two are really related since self-ownership is essential.
Any violations of self-ownership is a violation of physical property of self-ownership and property rights.
And so if you just you put those two things at the center of your interactions, which is really, I think, the libertarian slash voluntarist argument for society as a whole, let's just do these two things, which are kind of two sides of the same coin.
Let's not initiate force and let's respect property rights.
Well, how does this translate in terms of parenting?
Parenting is kind of a unique relationship because your children, you know, you choose your wife and you can divorce your wife, you know, should she ever contradict you.
No, should she prove unsuitable to your life requirements in some significant and negative manner.
And you can also take your wife for a test drive.
Right?
I mean, you meet, you date, you date for a long time, years sometimes, you get engaged, you can be engaged for a year or two, and then you get married.
Sometimes you live together.
So you really get a chance to test things out.
And you don't have to get married, of course.
You can live the life of, you know, free-floating bachelor seed spraying as long as you like.
And of course, women love it when you refer to it as test driving as well, the engagement period.
That's the preferred term.
Yes, absolutely.
And with seatbelts and all the Ralph Nader bags all over the place and so on, lots of opportunities for, you know, but parenting is incredibly different.
When you become a parent, of course, your child does not choose you as a parent.
Your child does not choose your family or your extended family, doesn't choose your culture, your whole environment.
And does not have the capacity to leave.
It is an unchosen and involuntary relationship.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
That just is the nature of the beast.
That's the way that it is.
But strangely enough, you may have noticed this sometimes.
Sometimes if you're around somebody who's not particularly nice in their personal relationships, sometimes I had a friend yell at his wife sometimes and got into terrible fights.
And yet, you know, every time you went to a restaurant, this guy would be super charming to the waiters.
And it's like, I just remember saying to him, dude, what are you doing?
Like why would you spend all of your social charm on people you don't know and will probably never meet again and who you're tipping anyway?
They don't need your charm and your tip.
I've been a waiter, I know.
Why would you spend all of your niceness on these inconsequential, transitory, unimportant relationships, and yet, at the same time with your wife, you'd behave like a complete schmuck sometimes?
And there's this weird thing that happens where when we're dealing with strangers, we can be super nice, but then sometimes when we're dealing with family members or whatever, we can be a heck of a lot more cranky.
And this sometimes really shows up in the parent-child relationship.
But my argument, of course, is that Where a relationship is involuntary, we need the greatest ethics.
We need the most commitment to peace and voluntarism and all that kind of stuff.
We should feel much more comfortable yelling at a waiter than we should be yelling at our children.
We should feel much more comfortable, you know, trying to spank a police officer who's pulling us over for misbehaving relative to the non-aggression principle than we should spanking our children.
But quite the opposite occurs.
In that where we have the most power and our children have the least choice, we tend as a whole to be a lot less peaceful.
I mean, the statistics are pretty chilling.
80% to 90% of parents still spank their children.
This is at a time where what was pretty commonplace in the 19th century or 18th century or going back, which was, you know, hitting your wife, this has become unacceptable.
It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, of course, but it has become unacceptable.
You simply don't do it and the law is against it and all that kind of stuff.
But the spanking thing still goes on.
Lots of places in Europe have banned it, but certainly in America and Canada, here you can legally spank from 2 to 12, you know, from the age of 2 to the age of 12.
40% of British mothers are still spanking their children prior to the age of 1, and there can't be any moral argument as to any kind of correction or discipline, because you're dealing with an infant who can't string 2 and 2 together and often can't even find their own nose with their hands.
And almost half of, in America, almost half of High school age and junior high school age children are still being hit by their parents.
So we have this bizarre thing where there's the greatest power disparity in any human relationship, parent and child, right?
Parent's much larger, has economic independence and chose to have a child and chose to be in a marriage and chose to be a parent.
Child comes in with no economic independence, with no capacity to choose the environment and so on.
And so my argument is if we're going to be parents, let's recognize that the first place of any of our relationships, the first and most important place that we need to bring the non-aggression principle to bear is with children.
So what does that mean?
Well, that means, of course, you don't get to hit them.
I would also argue, I've changed my position on this from the very beginning, but I tried to, not a timeout, but I put my daughter in my crib once when she wouldn't brush her teeth.
And I don't do that anymore.
I've recognized that even timeouts and things like that is a sort of form of mini-incarceration.
And so you don't punish.
You don't discipline.
We don't say, well, I have to scream at my wife to discipline her into doing the right thing.
So avoiding these kinds of aggressions against your children is very fundamental.
And the last point I'll make is we have this thing in place called You know, corporal punishment or discipline or timeouts or, you know, where there's this idea that children need to be fixed.
You know, they're born and they don't work.
They're selfish and they're whatever and they need to be fixed and we need to control them and discipline them in order to make them into decent human beings.
I mean, there's so much that's wrong with that.
We could do a whole show on that, but it's really not true.
Children are born skeptical of things like supernatural phenomenon.
They're born skeptical of hierarchies in society.
They're born skeptical of their parents.
They're always asking for rules.
They're always asking for the universals and so on.
They're very, very quick to note hypocrisy in their parents.
So if you have false beliefs, then you kind of need to aggress against your children to get them to conform to those false beliefs.
But if you have true beliefs, then you can openly and honestly discuss things with your children.
And once you make it, you know, in the marketplace or in the production of goods and services, we kind of recognize that you can weirdly get things done in a really tragic way through central planning.
You know, you don't get a Maserati, you get like a Yugo or whatever horrible, a Lada, whatever those horrible Soviet cars were that were produced.
You just get crap, but you can kind of muddle along.
But if you refuse to use coercion in economic relationships, you get an amazing outburst of creativity and productivity and modernization and upgrading and all that.
Think of the software industry, the cell phone industry, or places where government regulation tends to be the cheapest and where the barriers to entry for expertise tend to be the lowest.
You get all this amazing innovation.
Once you decide not to use aggression, then what opens up is a whole lot of innovation and creativity and possibilities.
And I've certainly found that to be the case, like having never yelled at or hit or raised my voice.
You end up with, as a parent, just trying to be really creative.
Yeah, but you're selling me on the theory of it.
And I agree with you.
I mean, I've seen it work in the free market, how having this sort of libertarian ideal of everybody to sort of respect each other's property rights.
So I can understand the theory being brought home to raising your own family.
But it's always the practice, right?
The theory is always easy to figure out, but the practice is much more difficult, much harder to do.
And you're a parent, and I think your daughter is maybe three, four years old.
Maybe what we can do is you guys could hurl the parenting challenges and we'll see how well the theory can.
What I'm saying is it's very difficult because I actually listen to a lot of your content and I follow it as well as other people that I listen to as well.
But it's so hard day to day.
It becomes very difficult.
And in fact, I get lost in the moment.
Like, what should I do?
I mean, what are my tools?
I'm all out of tools.
I don't go all the way to spanking.
But I want to know, like, this is challenging.
I mean, far more challenging than just spanking your child.
Because that is a tool.
It's a terrible tool.
But it's a tool that's been passed down to us from generation to generation.
Right.
Okay, so can you give me a situation where you feel that the toolbox gets a little light in your hand?
Okay.
Dinner time.
I think every parent can relate to this.
Dinner time.
We want a very organized structure, or even getting ready in the morning.
These are times of chaos.
The rest of it, I can let my kids play.
They play peacefully.
I can solve arguments between my children very easily, but I cannot I'm going to make my child pick up his spoon and put it in his mouth.
I don't really want to, but I do want to see him eat.
Maybe I'm getting away from the philosophical parenting.
No, no.
This is a great topic.
These are choices that he has to make.
Now, I've seen a lot of parents, including myself sometimes, tell them to eat their meal and then they'll be rewarded with dessert.
I want them to make the choice on their own, but ultimately, I want them to do what I want them to do.
Ultimately, I want them to be fed healthy food rather than just candy and snacks and desserts because that's easy to get in kids.
It's very difficult.
I'm a very healthy eater, so I want to see my child eat a healthy diet.
You know, nature has made us in such a way that we prefer sweets over vegetables.
Ah, nature.
But...
So this is a solution.
And I want to approach this philosophically like almost negotiate with my child, but a lot of times I end up frustrated.
And that's probably the term I think most parents can come away with is dinner times and mornings when there's a schedule to keep or there's nutrition to feed your child.
Those are when this philosophical parenting becomes very challenging and frustrating to me as a parent.
Right.
Well, I'll give you sort of the solution that I've come up with to the vegetables versus the candy, right?
And so the first thing, you know, this started, I guess, when my daughter was about two, two and a bit, to draw cartoons and help her to understand a little bit about how her body works.
And we have two characters in her body.
One is called the tongue and one is called the belly or the butt.
And The tongue wants all this sugar because the tongue gets really happy with sugar, but the belly doesn't like the sugar.
And, you know, the bum doesn't like the sugar because it turns the poo into little bricks.
And so kids really get – they gain their understanding through stories and through metaphors.
You know, they're not obviously at the empirical science stage.
They can't do math, but they can understand all of this kind of stuff, right?
So my daughter was really frustrated when she'd have a cold.
You know, my nose was running and all of that.
And we sort of explained that the antibodies are having a big fight and they're trying to throw all of the – Bugs that are giving you the cold and I throw them and then I make you sneeze into the boogers and so on.
So to get her to understand what's happening to her really helps.
And so we have these, when we do these role plays, like these characters, the tongue and the belly.
What does the tongue want?
Sugar, sugar, sugar.
What does the belly want?
Vegetables, vegetables.
Ooh, that would be lovely.
And so we have this kind of joke thing where we...
And we understand why, right?
And, you know, sugar's not bad.
We all need a little bit of sugar during the day and so on.
And, you know, what happens to her teeth?
We do little bugs on the teeth and they sort of bite the enamel if they're biting the sugar and stuff like that.
So I find that the understanding is the key.
And if I've taken the time to really work, not in the moment, I don't think you can ever solve a conflict in the moment.
To me, the conflicts always occur with a lack of Preparation.
I agree.
I agree.
Yes, you spend a lot of time explaining why the vegetables are important, why the sugar is not good for you.
And, you know, my daughter is currently going through a complete fascination with every disease known to mankind.
She wants to know all about them.
So, of course, one of the key ones we've introduced is diabetes.
You know, what happens if you have too much sugar and blah, blah, blah.
Get an injection every day.
And so we make sure that her little stuffed animals don't have diabetes or we give them injections.
So should we understand that, right?
And so, you know, if I'm eating half a cookie or whatever, she says, Daddy, don't finish that.
We don't want you to get diabetes.
Whatever, right?
I mean, so to give her a solid understanding of what's going on in her body and why her tongue wants, you know, I explained to her, you know, a long time ago, sugar was really hard to find, so we had to really go look for it.
And the way we did that was through taste.
Vegetables were everywhere.
Now it's the other way around and so on, right?
So for me, it's all about the explanation and The preparation.
And I've just started, I've been doing these conversations with Dana Martin and Lorette Lynn, really around even more voluntary styles of parenting, where I will let her have as much as she wants of some particular treat.
And I found that, like, she loved, we were doing some speech in the States.
We stayed at a hotel where they had Froot Loops, you know, those little cool boxes.
I loved those as a kid, too, like the mini boxes of cereal.
So she loved Froot Loops, and then for like six months, it was like she wanted Froot Loops, and then we'd have to sort of try, I'd try and manage that and control that and so on.
And, um, Then I just gritted my teeth and let her have all the fruit leaves she wanted, and she's never asked for them since.
It's just kind of weird that way.
If you get to satiation, then it's less problematic.
But for me, you know, if she says, I want candy, I say, well, is that your belly talking or is that Mr.
Tongue talking?
Is Mr.
Tongue talking?
Well, what does your belly say?
Oh, I don't know.
Maybe more vegetables.
So at least get her to understand that there's at least some duality between her taste buds and her digestive system.
And that she can't just listen to one at the expense of the other.
And that has really, I think, helped in terms of, it doesn't mean that everything is conflict-free, but it does mean that there's a narrative or a framework to appeal to when she's trying to make nutrition decisions.
I've had similar success.
I haven't used the stories like you had, and I think that's excellent, where you've got Mr.
Belly and Mr.
Tong, but I've made it very clear to my daughter The health reasons that we eat healthy foods.
It's okay to have some foods that aren't healthy as long as we don't have a lot of them.
She gets it.
In our house, we basically say, well, it's okay if you have one dessert a day.
If you're eating healthy foods the rest of the time, one dessert a day is fine.
Within that range of foods, you can have pretty much whatever you want.
We just keep healthy food around the house outside of we'll have some desserts.
She can pretty much pick what she wants and she's getting healthy food because we just keep healthy food around.
She can pick out her dessert when she wants it.
If she wants to have that early in the day, then she knows she's not going to have any more dessert the rest of the day.
And it's, you know, like Stefan said, does it eliminate all conflict?
No, but it eliminates pretty much all of it.
I mean, she really understands.
And she'll even like, you know, again, she'll watch me and be like, oh, you know, if you have that cookie, Dad, you're not going to be able to have anything tonight.
Oh yeah, God help us.
We put the rule in, which was no talking with your mouth full, and now at least 80 times a day.
Daddy, you're talking with your mouth full.
Oops.
Sorry, go ahead.
One more thing I was going to say is, Stephen, you were talking about how you sit down at the dinner table and you want the child to eat.
You want to see them eat.
My philosophy with that has always just been...
If you're not hungry, that's fine.
You don't have to eat now.
Your mother and I, we're going to eat now.
We would love it if you would stay with us because we enjoy your company.
But if you don't want to eat your food, we're not going to make food for you again.
So if you want the food we prepare, if you want warm food, now's the time to eat it.
Later on, you're just going to get whatever you can get yourself.
My daughter's seven, so she can go get a banana.
She can go get yogurt, whatever.
She doesn't I don't quite know how to work all the warming things up in the microwave.
But she understands that, okay, her options are limited later.
And it's really not been a problem.
Sometimes she'll just have a few bites and go away and then get something herself later.
And that's fine because it's not more work for me because she knows at that point it's her responsibility.
But most of the time, because she's very social, Me and her, her mother and I are her best friends and vice versa.
She loves to be with us.
And so when we say, oh, well, we'd like you to stay and socialize with us, she'll stay.
And then she'll just, usually, we'll just, you know, while I'm here, I might as well eat.
So that's just kind of how we've solved it.
My question to you, Stefan, is, you know, how do you feel about that sort of liberty to come and go to the kitchen table, you know, Rather than just having, you'll sit here, you'll stay here until all of us are done, and nobody leaves, nobody looks around, nobody messes, I don't want to hear any noises.
I mean, how do you feel about this sort of, like the liberty, it's your choice to come to the table, eat with us when the meal's hot, but your choice is later on, you can enjoy the same meal, I'm not going to cook something different, but how do you feel about that?
Well, I mean, just imagine yourself in that situation, right?
So you go to a restaurant and the maitre d' says, okay, I will be happy to seat you and I would be happy to bring you food, but you've got to choose from these three items on the menu and you have to finish your whole plate.
And by the way, I'm going to schedule you when you're going to come and eat.
If you don't finish your plate, you have to damn well sit there until you finish your plate and I want a nice tip at the end of it.
We would be shocked at a restaurant that would operate in that manner and it would go out of business in about 12 seconds.
So the restaurant of course works in that you go when you're hungry and you order and if you don't want to finish you can take it home or they can toss it out or whatever.
So I think that we want to introduce The maximum conceivable liberty to our children.
You know, for me, there's my wife, myself, my daughter, but there's this other thing called the image of a family.
You know, what is a family?
What does a family do?
What is good parenting?
These are the images that are in my head, and they're like a fourth party.
They're like the unwanted fairy at the table, you know, which is that a family should sit down and eat and talk together all at the same time, and so on.
But...
It's more stable for me.
My weight is stable and, you know, I've had 46 years to get used to how to eat or whatever.
My daughter's growing.
She goes through these phases where she's incredibly hungry all the time.
It's like backing up a grocery truck down a well.
You just...
Throw stuff down.
She keeps eating.
There are other times where she's not that hungry.
Her meal times change during the day.
I mean, she's going through massive growth at the moment.
And so I don't feel like I can impose the stability of an adult rhythm of consumption and elimination on somebody who's My biological schedule is constantly changing with growth spurts and then there's sort of lags and so on.
So, I mean, she likes it enough that she'll come and sit with us.
And I know how satisfying it is.
When your child has had a good meal, don't you just feel like a great parent, especially if they've eaten really good stuff?
And I want to make sure, of course, it's not about my emotional needs, but rather about what's useful to her.
And so if I, you know, if we make mealtimes as enjoyable and as sort of fun, chatty as possible, and try not to give her snacks before meals and so on.
But yeah, if she's not hungry, you know, I just, I can't see making her sit down and eat and finish her meal.
I mean, that would be, you know, if I wouldn't accept that at a restaurant, I don't know why I want to impose that at home.
Right.
One of the things I've found about parenting...
The best, for lack of a better word, the best tactics, the best strategies for parenting are ones that work well with anyone.
If it works well with your coworker, if it works well with your wife, that would work well with your child.
Again, you would never go to a restaurant that did the things that Stefan said.
Your wife would never accept that kind of treatment from you, so why would you do it to your child?
An interesting point you brought up, Stephen, with wanting to be quiet at the table.
There's different things that are considered good manners, which are cultural things.
There's nothing immoral about it.
Chewing with your mouth open.
It's not an immoral action.
But it is something that, be it just cultural bias or not, it's something we don't prefer.
We don't prefer to be around people that are chewing with their mouth open.
Maybe if we were from a different culture, we wouldn't care.
What I do with my daughter is I explain to her.
I say, look, in our culture, people don't chew with their mouth open.
There's nothing wrong with, you know, really with chewing with your mouth open other than it's just we don't really prefer that anymore.
So, you know, I mean, and I'll explain to her, I'm like, look, most people, if you do chew with your mouth open, are going to be uncomfortable and they're not going to like it.
And I'm like, think about when the things you prefer and when people don't respect your preferences are With manners, that's kind of how I talk to her about manners.
And I don't make her follow good manners, but I just explain to her that maybe it's my preference that you not do that.
And going hand-in-hand with that, when she expresses her preferences, in order for that to work, I have to respect her preferences.
So that's kind of...
That's how I handle things like manners and getting along well and getting towards that picture that Stefan was talking about, about how you want your family to look and what makes you feel good.
If you're very open with your child and are very respecting of each other's preferences and have great communication and you don't abuse your authority and don't allow your child to abuse their authority as well, a lot of parents Let their children shove them around, they throw a fit, and then the parent gives in.
That's actually the child abusing their authority.
You don't want that authority to be the basis of your relationship, of how you resolve conflicts, who's going to flex their muscle and win this battle.
You don't want it to be win-lose scenarios.
Sorry, I just would mention this, because the tantrum thing comes up quite a bit.
My daughter's not had a tantrum, certainly not so far, and she's almost four, so I don't think it's about to start.
I mean, I think when you say the children are abusing their authority, I think it's always really, really tough.
It's very much a last resort for me to go towards the moral judgment of the children because they are so much learning their environment.
You know, if the kid's been home with a parent until they're five and they don't know any of their letters, you don't call the kid dumb.
You call the kid not exposed to letters, right?
And so I think for, you know, a tantrum occurs when the child wants something and can't find a way to communicate it in a win-win way.
Now, to me, the only way to really educate my daughter is to relentlessly and consistently display the behavior that I want, explain the reasons for it, and never enforce it.
That's the magic trio.
Yeah, clearly when a child throws a tantrum to get their way, they learn that somewhere.
And who they learn that from.
I mean, you know, 95% or more of what they've learned, they learn from their parents.
So, you know, if your child's doing something you don't like, you probably need to look in the mirror and think about it for a bit.
And usually, you figure out where they learned it.
Yes, and of course, a lot of parenting is a...
A lot of parenting is, I'm bigger, stronger, and have more power, and therefore, you're going to do this.
And that, of course, is, I think, a very unsettling lesson to teach to the child.
It's not an appeal to ethics or universality or virtue or, you know, let us both conform to this, you know, objective standard.
It is, well, I'm bigger and you're just going to do this.
And that, of course, to me, is the root of tantrums because that is a parental tantrum.
It's just a more controlled version.
It's like slow burn rather than a quick burn.
And of course, the problem is that really boomerangs in the teenage years, because now the kid has independence and authority relative to the parent.
And if you've inculcated them, in a sense, the might is right argument, I think it really boomerangs back.
And this is why so many teenagers have so many conflicts, I think, with their parents, because they're really reflecting that lesson back at a time where they now have that kind of power and authority.
And we can take this in this direction, too, because I like this, because we are shaping these very liberty-minded children in our homes.
They have the ability to choose.
They have choice.
Yeah.
And we're trying to do this in the very best possible way, teach them to be philosophical and to have the ability to make their own choices at a very young age.
So then they go out into the world around them.
And fortunately for myself, I know for Chris, we don't have our kids in public school systems.
But a lot of kids don't have that choice.
And they go in there and they live in a world where there is a hierarchy.
Where there is the belief that might is right or it wins out.
One time you mentioned that the 12-year sentence and that public school was like a Lord of the Flies.
I heard that one time in Parenting Unplugged or Unplugged Parenting.
I heard you mention that and it kind of stuck with me because I remembered the Lord of the Flies high school situations for myself.
Is that might does win over that.
So then we got these very liberty-minded children Going into these sort of systems.
And the only advice I could give a kid like that is just wait it out.
And you're 18, you'll be all done with it.
So that's not a very good answer for a kid who's 16 years old, you know?
But you can't.
I mean, if you're liberty-minded or philosophically-minded, I mean, I just...
I don't think that you can put your kids into public school.
You have to explore every conceivable option, and there are so many options.
Downsize your living standards if you need to.
Find whatever way you can.
Move in with your parents if that relationship is good.
Whatever you can to keep your kids out of the public school system.
Because, of course, the fundamental problem is that you're putting them in a situation which you know is fundamentally destructive, dangerous, and immoral.
I mean, we take so much care of our children's bodies, you know.
Don't jump off that.
Wear a helmet.
Eat your vegetables.
But their minds, even more important.
And to put them in a public school environment where they are going to be subjected to the arbitrary rules of the state, there's no win-win negotiations in public school.
It's all do or be punished.
And you are, of course, removing adult influences from their life.
When you put them in public school, you are reshaping their social cues horizontally rather than vertically, right?
Because, I mean, we want our children to learn how to live the way that they learn language.
How do they learn language?
Well, they learn language because you consistently use the same word for things.
And you'll teach them a little bit, but mostly they just pick it up based upon the consistent language abilities and skills of the adults around them.
And that's how we want them to pick.
I don't enforce.
You better call this apple an apple or you're going to have a timeout.
You just use the same consistent behavior and they absorb it.
I think it's pretty much involuntary.
And of course, what are they going to absorb in public school?
They're going to absorb massive amounts of incredibly destructive propaganda.
They are going to be abandoned from adult influences because you've got one teacher and 20 or 30 or 40 kids.
And they're going to get this horizontal...
A situation where all of their social cures are going to come horizontally.
And when that happens, what happens is the worst rises to the top in that kind of hierarchy, right?
The most aggressive, the most abusive, the most gossipy, the most destructive, the people who have the greatest capacity to threaten others.
It is a prison environment, fundamentally.
Except in prison, they don't propagandize you quite as much.
And of course, in prison, you're already an adult rather than a developing mind.
So I think you just, if you're committed, right, you have to take whatever steps you can to keep your kids out of that environment.
You know, that doesn't mean private school if that's a big cost for you, but it does mean finding ways to homeschool or to unschool.
And again, Dana Martin, D-A-Y-N-A-M-A-R-T-I-N.com.
She's got great resources and ideas and thoughts about how you can achieve this kind of child raising even if you don't have a lot of money, even if you're a single parent, there's lots of people who can do it.
So, you know, I don't know how you can put your kids into a public school system and not have to be harmed because are you going to deprogram them every night?
Then you're asking them to create a dual personality, one where they have to go write the test and give the answers that the teachers want and they have to go and conform, all the while while you're telling them it's the wrong thing to do.
I just...
It's like saying, don't steal.
Here, go join this gang.
I mean, I think it's just so fundamentally confusing that you either have to hide all of your true and honest and valid beliefs from your kid and pretend that you're some, you know, status drone, or you have to tell them the truth about their environment, which is honest and creates intimacy and connection and so on.
And then telling them to conform to something that you say is wrong, I think is just too late-stage 1984 Winston Smith stuff.
I just think it's too confusing.
Agreed.
Go ahead, Chris.
I agree.
I'm very fortunate in that we have an excellent Montessori school nearby and my daughter goes there.
It's very much Liberty-minded, the philosophy of the school.
My daughter's education is very self-directed.
She picks out what she wants to study.
They will check periodically that she's on track to meet the state requirements for reading, writing, math, but as long as she's on track, They pretty well just let her pick out her own curriculum.
She's allowed to do these projects.
Whatever she wants to do, she can do a project.
She's been really into a foreign culture.
She did a project on India that was really great.
She got to present it to the class.
She came in and she had brought a traditional Indian dish that she had made at home and brought in and shared that with the class and had a poster and presented and just all these different projects.
She loves doing these projects she works on.
Of course, when you're allowed to pick what you want to do, You're then, you're into it, you're focused, and you do much better.
Say, hey, I feel like reading right now, so I'm going to read.
You're really into it.
Where in public school, okay, the bell rings.
I know you were just really into that reading, but now it's time to go to math.
You might not have any interest in math, but we're going to yank you out of that and put you over there.
Because you're not interested in it and you're maybe resentful, You're not going to be focused on it as much, and you're not going to be able to go as far.
So the advantages of that, of being able to, what she's working on, she wants to work on, we found that she's way ahead of all the state requirements.
She's like grades ahead of where she needs, where they would want her to be.
While she's getting to do what she wants.
Just as important is my daughter loves going to school.
I know, like you too, I viewed it like a 12-year sentence.
I hated school.
It's the last place I wanted to be.
My daughter on the weekends is Is Monday tomorrow?
Oh, good.
I can't wait to go to school.
And she'll be like, I wonder what my teacher's doing right now.
Do you think she's doing this?
My daughter very much cares about her teachers.
And the teachers generally, I mean, I have a good relationship with them.
They generally care about her.
And it's really comforting to know that my daughter loves going to school.
But the thing is, her school only goes—she's in second grade right now.
It only goes to sixth grade, so I'm looking around at other options, and right now I'm not finding anything that's nearly as good.
So I'm worried, but like you said, Stefan, you've got to explore every option.
You just can't take your child, your most precious object, I can't imagine doing that to her, especially with the relationship we've developed so far where we are so open with each other.
I explained to her the reason why it's important you eat your vegetables is because of your health.
How am I going to explain to her, well, the reason why it's important for you to go to the school where they're just indoctrination camps is...
What's that reason again?
Convenience for daddy.
It's a babysitter.
Well, yeah.
I think that we all know that in the government schools...
Everything the government touches turns to acidic crap.
In the government schools, of course...
All the values that spread horizontally from people who grew up.
You don't know the quality of the people that are surrounding, of the kids that are surrounding your child and influencing them much more than you will and the parents do.
I mean, in terms of just their time exposure during the week for most parents.
You don't know if they're, you know, beaten up at home or raped or—and bring all that dysfunction and trauma and all of that to—I mean, it's—you do not know.
I mean, my goodness, it's like going to Mexico and just saying, here, drink from this ditch water.
Let's cross our fingers and hope that it's fine.
I mean, that's not what you would do as a parent who wants to take care of that— I mean, all of the things that, it's the lowest common denominator in public schools.
So what matters?
What matters is athletic ability.
What matters is looks.
What matters is money.
Those are the three fundamental things.
Doesn't matter virtue, doesn't matter intelligence, intellectual curiosity.
I mean, you've got to hide that in school, you know, like you hide a shiv in prison.
You know, you really just have to hide all of that stuff.
And so, you know, this this freaks and geeks stuff, you can't have exposure.
You kind of give your child exposure to the exact opposite values that are important in life.
Athletic ability sucks.
I mean, it's so completely unimportant in terms of happiness in life.
Yeah, health is good.
Exercise is good.
Learning how to team play and all that's fine.
But as far as virtue goes, I mean, this is primitively derived quasi-war training for potential soldiers.
Who cares?
Looks, I mean, lord oh lord, do we really want our children to get obsessed with who's prettiest and who's got the best clothes and all that?
I mean, unless we're actually trying to turn them into, you know, future coke sniffing off the butts of hookers, Wall Street princes, then we really don't want to expose them to the exact opposite of the values and virtues that really make you into a good person.
Yeah, I would say there's no correlation between the speed of your fastball and your happiness.
After you get the basics of clothes, food, shelter, there's no correlation to money and happiness.
So what are you trying to raise?
Somebody that makes a lot of money or a child who's happy?
But there is a high correlation to virtue and happiness.
It's having good relationships and honest relationships and people that care about you and that you care about.
Those are the things that are… Yeah, and we are biochemically addicted to status just as a species.
I mean, we can see this going on in the apes all the time.
Monkeys that climb up the hierarchy get additional dopamine and happy joy juice in their brains.
So whatever is status in the environment that you introduce your child to, your child will become physically dependent on that status.
And so you have to be really careful about what is called status in your child's environment because it is a neurobiological programming system that helps us want to climb that status no matter how good or how bad it is.
Status is much more dangerous to your child's emotional happiness if it's wrong than candy or chocolate would be for their teeth and waistline.
We only got about 10 minutes left.
There's one more thing I want to ask you, Stefan, because I think this goes back to our idea of property rights and bringing that back into the household and as far as being parents is I've got two children.
I don't know, maybe someday I might have three, but I've got two children, two boys, in fact, and a limited amount of toys, okay?
And so sharing is property rights.
And I have heard this before about, like, if this child has possession of it, you know, or these toys, then those are his, and those are his toys.
And we learn in society to share.
And a lot of times, you know, I see the solution as a parent to...
To solve this problem is to actually share.
You have to share your toys.
And so I find that easier than proper rights because we have certain toys that are my oldest sons and we have certain toys that are my young sons.
But when they play with each other's toys...
We always want them to share, but that's just easier for me as a parent to do.
I've been trying to voluntarily get my children to share amongst each other, but that hasn't been that successful.
So how do you feel about, like, sharing?
How do you feel about property rights when it comes to, like, the things my children do own?
Right, right.
And how old are your kids?
I got a six and a four-year-old.
Yeah, look, I mean...
You've probably noticed this.
It's a real truism that there's no toy more attractive than the one that's in the other child's hands.
Like suddenly that is, it's got a golden nimbus.
There's like Mormon tabernacle choir, sunbeams coming down.
It is like pure crack for the kid's brain.
Whatever the other kid has is the toy you absolutely, completely, and totally want.
And that, of course, does create a huge number of conflicts.
Four is, I think, kind of early to work on Actually solving the sharing thing.
I mean, my daughter is obviously, she's not a big fan of sharing.
In fact, she will hide.
We've been talking about her birthday party.
She's saying, I will take all my toys and hide them in the trunk of the car.
So the other children won't play with them.
And so she is quite possessive about her toys.
And I mean, I'm doing all the preparation thing.
I will not make her share.
Now, if she's in an environment where another kid has a toy and she wants to play with it, I say, wait till the other kid is finished.
I don't sort of give a time limit.
And then say, well, it's been three minutes, now you have to share.
So she has to wait for the other kid.
Now, if she's playing with the toy, another kid comes along and says, no, no, no, you have to wait till she's finished.
And then, of course, you try and engage the other kid in something so they don't sit there and look at, you know, their future, their hopes, the treasures, the blood and heart of their soul go off into the sunset, which is what happens when a kid wants to play with a toy that another kid has.
It's very difficult.
But, you know, I'm just layering in the universals, right?
So...
If I share something of mine, I point out like, well, isn't it nice?
Don't you like that I've shared?
And then if she doesn't want to share something, I'll say, hmm.
So are we going to have a not sharing rule?
Is that like if we're just going to not share?
So the next time I have dessert, should I share or not?
And so, you know, she struggles with the universals, I think, as all kids do, that she wants universals that benefit her because she's, of course, a budding statist.
So you got to keep reminding about...
The universal.
So, of course, you know, you praise when they do share.
And, like, my daughter was playing with a toy.
Another kid wanted it.
And she just went up and did it.
And I think that's nice.
It's not required.
It's not necessary.
So, praise the sharing.
And consistently point out the universals involved in individual decisions.
Because I have found that kids, I mean, all they're doing is universalizing.
That's the whole point of language and concept formation.
Everything that's going on in those magic glowing...
Growing brains is all about universalization, and I found that universalization is the biggest tool that I have.
And it's a slow tool, you know, because you've got to keep combing over it and re-going over it.
But universalization is irresistible, right?
Like, if you keep your word to your kids, they're going to keep their word to you.
If you consistently share and point out that you're – like, you know, just do the action.
You always point out the principle.
So if I have something my daughter wants to play with and I will share with her, I say, I am now sharing with you.
Is that nice for you?
And that way you can then appeal to the principle of, hey, remember the last 20 times I shared with you and you liked it?
Well, maybe.
You know, whatever, right?
So to me, every time I do something as a parent that has any impact on ethics, I'm always explaining the principle behind it.
And that way the principle becomes irresistible to her when it's called upon, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, I understand because when you appraise them, and then also the reciprocal.
I mean, I share with you 20 times, and so then the other child would want to share with them.
And actually, I'm starting to see that sort of develop on its own.
This is my own personal story here, but I'm starting to see that develop on our own because I've sort of stuck to my guns a little bit on the sharing issue, and what I'm seeing is my eldest son sharing with the younger guy voluntarily.
So I think that's – but it's always been sort of a difficulty for me because it's difficult because of the frustration with the arguments that go on and the not wanting to share.
Well, the other thing, too, of course, you know, if I have repetitive issues, like, so my daughter is very bossy, right?
So you're coming.
If you're playing a structured game, you know, like Candylander or Hungry Hippos, if you're playing a structured game, she's fine.
But if you're playing a game like, hey, let's just go play with my frogs, and then I'll sit down and say, oh, Mr.
Frog is doing this.
And she's like, no, he doesn't want to do that.
So she's kind of bossy and doesn't let me bring much creativity sometimes to the free play that we have.
And I think what's important, I don't want to try and sort of deal with that in the moment, but I do want to say to her, not in the moment, you know, when I come and play with you, it's not a lot of fun for me.
In fact, it gets frustrating for me because blah, blah, blah.
Like, I need to be as honest about my experience of her as I want her to be of my experience with me, right?
So at the end of the day, I always say, how could your day have been better?
What could I have done different?
That kind of stuff.
So it probably is worthwhile, Steve, sitting down with your kids and saying, let's have a chat because I really don't like all the fights about toys.
You know, and do you like them?
I assume that they don't, right?
I mean, so we have a problem, which is that I love it when you guys play, and I love to play with you guys, but I don't want to spend the whole day trying to deal with conflicts or fights about toys.
So what can we do?
What can we do to make this more fun, right?
So this is what I say to my daughter, you know, how can I play with you?
Like, if you want me to come play with you and then tell me everything to do, that's not much fun for me and I don't want to do it.
And I am selfish because I want to fiercely guard the pleasure that I have playing with you.
So anything that interferes with my pleasure as a parent, I don't want, because I don't want bad feelings, but I also really want to make sure that I stay enthusiastic and want to play with you.
So I think if you sit your kids down...
And say, okay, what should the rules be?
How do you do it now?
And are there rules?
Are there any kind of rules we can put in place so we know what to do in these kinds of situations?
And try and get their input into how to solve these kinds of problems.
I think you'd be quite surprised at how creative and How much you can then refer to those.
You can write them down, you know, with images or pictures for the kids who can't read.
But I think really inviting them to try and help solve the problem and come up with some structure is the most useful thing.
Because, yeah, it is.
You know, it grinds you down having to deal with these conflicts all the time.
And be honest about that frustration.
You don't want that.
It's not fun for them.
It's not fun for you.
But it can be fun if we can find some structure.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
We're getting about out of time here.
I do have to run a little bit.
But before we go, Stefan, and this is total change-up, is I just want to say that the work that you do is so important to myself.
And I know that probably after I say something, Chris wants to say something as well, because when I discovered you, And your videos and your podcast and that sort of thing.
I didn't necessarily agree with things across the board with everything you said, but I continued at it because you were challenging me all along the way.
To think differently, to view it from this perspective, see things in someone else's light.
And I think the work that you do is important because you've actually helped to change the way that I say things.
I think two of the most influential people, and I consume a lot of information, two of the most influential people would be yourself, Stefan, and then I would have to say Russ Roberts, who's a libertarian and who hosts the show EconTalk.
Those are two of the most important people.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I like EconTalk.
Between you two, you've really challenged me.
You continue to challenge me.
I love to see that you're doing this documentary film because I know it's going to have an impact.
I do appreciate everything you do.
Thank you.
I really appreciate your kind words.
I was raised by very authoritarian parents and I was spanked.
I was spanked and I turned out all right.
I thought my parents were good parents.
They were better than many, certainly, but now that I've learned other ways, I realized that They certainly could have been much better parents.
When I first started off with my daughter, I was spanking my daughter because I thought that was the example I was given for effective parenting.
My daughter was probably two or three at the time when I first found out about Free Domain Radio.
Honestly, your show was what got me on the path, Stefan, of doing the research, going to NoSpank.com and really exploring it and exploring my own history.
I would sit there and I would spank my daughter and I would just feel awful about it.
I would feel absolutely awful, but I thought that's what you were supposed to do.
Your show challenged me.
To question my history, to break the cycle of how I was raised and look for a better way.
My life is so much improved now.
My relationship with my daughter is so much better, so much more.
Her life is obviously much happier now as well.
I just wanted to express my gratitude because you did get me on that path.
I'm incredibly moved by what you're saying.
That is the most satisfying aspect, I think, of what can be done philosophically in the world.
To me, we have a population, I think, that's so largely traumatized by a variety of factors that they can't reason very well, if at all.
It's like asking somebody with no arms to do push-up.
They can ride around a bit, but they can't do it.
And so, to me, I think we almost need to raise a generation peaceful enough that they can Encounter reason and evidence, even if they've never heard arguments for freedom before, they can encounter reason and evidence without it provoking prior trauma and all this fight or flight mechanism which we see so often happening in people.
So, I mean, I'm incredibly touched, moved and incredibly honored that you guys would put the trust in the material that I'm putting out to really change what it is that you're doing and I'm incredibly impressed and I, you know, you guys are, this is major moving and shaking in the freedom movement I think to Thank you for your feedback and thank you for your trust.
I'm happy to hear that it's working because it would suck if it didn't.
Yeah, we're done gushing over you.
We're done.
We're going to quit fawning over Stefan.
But, you know, we're also in one other time period where there are three dads across the globe getting together to talk about parenting.
I mean, this is highly unusual, but it's progress.
So, anyway, with that being said, thank you for being a guest on Two Beers with Steve, Stefan.
And thanks, of course, my website's freedomainradio.com.
For my listeners, would you like to mention, I mean, obviously your website, Two Beers with Steve.
Are there any other websites you'd like to mention?
Not necessarily.
No, just the two beers for Steve.
Just type in Google on the first link that comes up, and then from there you can get to all my other previous shows.
I think we're on like 125 shows now, so we've been at it for quite a while.
Fantastic.
Well, thanks again.
Great show.
Really enjoyed the conversation, and I'll talk to you guys again.
All right.
Talk to you later.
▲
Export Selection