All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 26, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:17
2338 How Does A War Veteran Parent Peacefully?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Alright, we're on with Stefan Molyneux, the host of Free Domain Radio.
Listen, man, I'm not going to call it FDR because that acronym just kind of weirds me out, you know?
We're working to reclaim it.
Take back FDR. But, you know, so far I feel that the tide of history is still winning.
Yeah, unfortunately.
So you're the host of FreeDomainRadio.com and also you're producing a documentary called Truth.
Yes, honestly titled Truth.
That should be out probably six to eight weeks.
We're just doing some of the finishing touches on the video and the live musicians have already recorded the audio and so lots of great stuff is happening and I'm very pleased.
There's actually a preview out on YouTube at youtube.com forward slash free domain radio.
Just do a search for truth.
Why not, you know, use that philosophical term and I hope that people will like it.
Seems to be getting very positive feedback so far.
Yeah, yeah.
So I've been listening to you on a couple other different shows, and what I've been hearing is a lot of glowing intros.
So the best one I could think of, I think, is to refer to you as the philosopher.
I guess St.
Thomas called Aristotle the philosopher, so I'm going to throw that one at you if I could.
Yeah, I mean, that's – boy, I'll – I like it when the bar gets set high.
That allows me to reach for more.
But yeah, they did all throughout the Middle Ages.
They just referred to Aristotle as the philosopher.
There was no other one you would bother with.
So, well, let's hope I can come within a hair's breadth of seeing that one over the hill.
Um, so yeah, so I heard, I first heard of you on, uh, Adam versus the man.
I was, uh, I think I came across him for that whole Jefferson dance party incident.
And, uh, you know, he, the cops landed him and he took it like a pro and I was real impressed by that.
And, uh, You know, I don't quite listen to Adam all that much anymore.
I think I saw a video of him.
There's this lady who was holding up a Romney sign, and he went up to her and was asking her a bunch of questions.
And I just remember kind of being turned off a little bit by, you know, here you are, you're this jacked, you know, former Marine kind of guy, very, very informed.
You've got this lady who's like a total sheep.
She's up there campaigning for Romney who's just kind of exposing the fact that there's people out there like this.
I remember just putting myself in this lady's shoes thinking, this lady doesn't have a clue, but he was kind of going after her.
I was just thinking, oh man, that's kind of...
I don't know how I feel about that.
But I heard you on Adam vs.
the Man.
I was really interested in your message.
And actually, this is kind of funny.
I was actually trucking across the country and listening to a lot of your podcasts.
And I think if you can imagine somebody with a CDL riding down the road listening to Stefan Molyneux, that was me for a couple months.
Yeah.
But anyway, you took me from a secessionist libertarian Austrian to sort of a quasi-agnostic voluntarist Austrian.
So if you can picture that, that's kind of where I'm at now.
It's tough to fit that on a t-shirt, but I appreciate the feedback.
Yeah, yeah.
But no, that was a result of listening to your stuff.
And, you know, this is the Father Warrior Philosopher podcast.
And I call myself a philosopher in the sense that I love truth, but not in the credible sense.
And that is you.
So I'm happy that you came on the show.
Well, just to be clear, I don't know that I would have any more credibility in the realm of philosophy than you do.
I mean, I don't think anyone – it's like calling yourself a programmer.
If you program, you're a programmer.
And if you search for truth and you explore yourself and you take reason and evidence as your guide, you're a philosopher.
So, yeah, I mean, it's not like scientist or psychologist or doctor.
It's not an own term, but it is everybody who's in pursuit of that.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about this whole peaceful parenting thing.
You know, I'm kind of in your shoes in a sense that I've got a four-year-old daughter, but I also have a two-year-old daughter and a daughter that's three months.
And really just exploring all these parents.
You might want to be on the road a little bit more.
Right?
Yeah, that might be the way to go.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not exactly trucking anymore, you know, but listen, you know, I'm exploring all these parenting subjects, and I've listened a lot to what you have to say.
And what I want to know is...
What's the official definition of peaceful parenting?
You Google it and there's a lot of stuff out there and I think it's one of those terms that just kind of rolls off the tongue and a lot of people are using it, but people could co-opt it, just like Republicans co-opted the Tea Party.
I'm scared of getting into some of this literature and not knowing what I can trust, but what would you say the definition of peaceful parenting is?
Well, it's parenting in accordance with the non-aggression principle.
And that means, of course, not initiating force or fraud with your children, right?
So, you know, no spanking, no yelling, no hitting, no intimidation, no bullying.
But...
The parent-child relationship goes further than any other relationship in the species in that I don't owe you a meal.
Like, if you're hungry and you come to me, I'll give you a meal, right?
But I don't owe you a meal.
But I owe my children their meals.
And the involuntary nature of the child's relationship to us as fathers is very different from every other relationship in the world.
You know, if you turn into a jerk, your wife can just kick you to the curb and Head out on the highway and go her own way.
But children really don't have that option.
So there is an involuntary nature to the relationship, which means that the requirements for virtue are the very highest in the parent-child relationship.
I mean, tragically, it tends to be where people are the laziest.
It tends to be where people are the least virtuous and take things the most for granted.
Yeah, they can't leave.
So, you know, whatever.
They're not going to be on the highest of my priorities.
But the reality is because they can't leave, you actually have to be the most moral.
I mean, if you want your kids to love you, you have to overcome the involuntary, trapped nature of their relationship.
You know, like my daughter, if I have to go, if my wife's working, I have to go to the mall.
She has to come to the mall.
You know, it's not a date.
I'm not asking.
She has to come.
Sorry, we have to get groceries.
We have to, right?
In no other relationship is that the case.
And so the fact that she can't leave, the fact that she has no independence, she's really stuck with me, means that if I want to earn her love, I have to be the nicest with her and the most civil and the most cordial and the most respectful with her than with anybody else.
Far higher.
Because everyone else in my life It's with me by choice.
I mean, you listen to my show by choice.
You're having this podcast with me by choice.
If I start turning evil on you, you can just unplug the webcam.
It could go about your evening.
But my daughter is not with me.
Your daughter, your children are not with you by choice.
And so the argument, of course, is that when you think about how we would treat another adult, multiply that By about a million fold, right?
So you wouldn't go around hitting another adult for not listening to you or for talking back or for questioning your beliefs.
You wouldn't go around belting or screaming or yelling or withdrawing or punishing or withholding their food or any of that sort of shit, right?
You wouldn't be doing any of that.
So, the very least that we would do is achieve that standard with our children and that would be the bare minimum, the necessary but not sufficient requirement for the possibility of love.
But we would have to go much, much further than that in terms of being able to woo and win our children's love than we would with any adult.
Tragically, people have standards for their relationship with their kids that are way lower.
Way lower than they have with anyone else in their life.
And I mean, philosophically, the moral argument is like, holy crap, you crank that to the sky and you keep cranking.
Once you pass Alpha Centauri, then you're in the right neighborhood.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, my fear is that it's one of these terms that, you know, has been co-opted by people who...
I want to say that it's one thing or another, but not necessarily what you just described.
And so in looking for literature and looking for sources that I can trust in trying to bring on some of the – I guess what you said makes sense.
You want to take what we know – As libertarians or as anarchists or voluntarists or whatever and incorporate that in every aspect of your life.
It's the same as the whole sphere of influence argument.
You want to be effective starting from your inner circle and work outwards.
It's the same thing with your principles.
You want to bring that to the family and then work outwards.
But, you know, so I've done a lot of Googling.
I've, you know, come up with some different sites and I'm just thinking, you know, when these people are talking about peaceful parenting, are they saying the same thing as what you just described?
Do most people understand peaceful parenting?
I have no idea.
I mean, I certainly don't claim to own the term, philosophical parenting or peaceful parenting.
I don't.
I don't own any of that language.
And so it doesn't really matter.
I mean, I'm going to write a book after the documentary is done.
The next thing on the list, which is the plan for the next documentary, is to write a book about it.
But it's not something that...
We really need a lot of instruction on, I don't think.
I mean, maybe some of the sort of details about how to implement here and there, but it's not something we need a lot of instruction on because we accept as valuable and necessary voluntarism in all of our other relationships.
It's not like I'm teaching someone to speak Mandarin, right?
Like I'm just saying, hey, speak Mandarin.
You speak Mandarin to 99 people a day.
Speak Mandarin to the other two or three people.
Who are called your kids?
You know, our relationship is sort of like, it's either a guy, he's locked in our basement and we really want him to enjoy living with us.
Well, we kind of got to overcome the fact that he's locked in the basement and can't leave.
You know, if you want him to be your friend, recognize that he's locked in the basement and recognize that if you want him to be your friend, you've got to overcome that because children are kind of locked into the family.
I mean, it's just That's nature.
That's biology.
That's dependence.
Or you think if your wife was never legally allowed to leave you and was on some sort of electronic neck-zapping dog collar that if she ever wandered more than 10 feet away from you, she'd get zapped.
Do you love me yet?
You know, that's not, you know, we would all recognize that you'd need to bring home quite a few flowers to overcome the electronic wife-dog zapper to get her to really enjoy being married to you because she, you know, not there by choice and can't leave.
So if we sort of understand that, really process the basic biological fact of their involuntary relationship.
Then we recognize and what we'll do will then come naturally to us and recognize that, of course, the relationship doesn't remain involuntary.
If you want to get divorced from your wife, it's a big-ass, expensive, complicated, multi-year process.
If your kids don't want to come over for Thanksgiving dinner, They just don't come over for Thanksgiving dinner.
That's it.
I mean, there's no legal requirement.
I mean, I know in Japan, I think you're passing a law to force kids to call their parents or something.
Okay, so you can get them to call your parents, whatever, right?
But when your kids grow up, if they want to wander off your reservation, I mean, there's nothing really that you can do.
You can scream and bully or whatever, which is probably why they want to leave in the first place.
But they're going to have a whole lot of competing things in their life when they become adults relative to your aging and increasingly demanding ass.
So recognizing that It turns from the most involuntary relationship in the world when kids are kids to the most voluntary relationship You know, if you want to quit your job, you've got to give them two weeks notice.
You might have legal issues.
If you want to move, I mean, you've got paperwork coming out your ass, right?
If you want to get a divorce, I mean, it's just massive amounts of work.
If you want to start a business or close down a business or when you retire or when you move, there's huge amounts of paperwork.
Man, if your kids wake up one morning when they're adults and just say, you know, my parents were kind of jerks and I don't really want to spend that much time with them.
I mean, there's nothing there other than some social pressure.
come and see you.
And I think about that every day.
When I'm getting old and old and old, my daughter is going to be, I don't know, let's hope I make it to 80 or 90.
Most people in my family do.
So let's say I make it to 90.
Well, my daughter is going to be in her 30s and 40s, and I'm really going to need resources.
My wife will hopefully be around, but maybe she gets old and sick.
Maybe she dies before me.
Then the only person I have is my daughter from a family standpoint.
Yeah.
And will I, you know, what will make her want to come around and bring me chicken soup and, you know, wipe my nose?
That's, I mean, there's nothing that's going to make her do that.
She's no contract, no obligation, nothing like that.
There's some Old Testament stuff or New Testament stuff, but that doesn't really add up to whole much in an increasingly secular world.
So why will she owe me anything?
Well, she doesn't owe me anything.
Why would she want to spend time with me?
That's the question that parents have to ask themselves every day.
It goes back to that relationship.
And that's the peaceful part of it, just like you have with any adult.
And I think a lot of us who are listening to you get that, and it goes back to the empathy thing, putting yourself in your kid's shoes.
And again, the negotiation aspect of it that you talk about that really makes a lot of sense.
I mean, it's common sense.
This is the kind of stuff that if you sat down and you isolated yourself from the media and from all the craziness of the world, these ideas would present themselves to you.
If you had a heart and you sat down and you thought about this stuff, it's basic stuff.
Yeah, you know, I guess when I go to Google and I type in peaceful parenting, I'm looking for sources that may have influenced you in the whole process of researching, you know, how to be a parent.
I mean, a lot of the stuff is natural, but we do research and stuff like that.
I come across all different kind of stuff.
So if I said, if I was to refer somebody to other sources, you know, who are some of the authors that have influenced you on these topics?
Well, I mean, the Gordon books, Parent Effectiveness Training, I think are good books.
Alice Miller is someone who's fairly out there, at least as she's considered by mainstream psychology, but has wonderfully empathetic stuff towards kids.
I think that psychohistory.com has lots of historical perspectives on child raising.
I mean, I've read Jung and Freud and Brandon and so many different – I mean, John Bradshaw and – I mean, I really could bore you all with a list.
But I think the most important thing is simply to remember what it was like to be a child.
I mean, to remember – I mean – We expect to have empathy.
Let's say we're heterosexual.
Let's just go out on a limb and say that we're heterosexual.
We're supposed to have empathy for our wives.
Well, I've never been a woman.
But I'm supposed to have empathy for my wife.
But I have been a child.
So it should be far easier for us to have empathy for our children, even than it is for us to have empathy for someone who's from a different culture, a different country, a different language, somebody who is a different gender, somebody who's a different race.
I mean, if that's culturally important, it should be far easier for us to have empathy with children than any other particular group other than, you know, a clone that we grew up with, maybe a sibling, but...
But they're definitely in the top few groups of people that we should because we've all been through that phase.
Right.
Yeah, so to remember what it's like to be a kid I think is really important.
You know, what did we yearn for when we were children?
What did we really want from those around us?
What did we really need from our environment?
What would have made us happy and healthy and secure and content and loving?
And if we can remember that, then...
Good parenting is just remembering what your own childhood was like and the negative aspects working to correct, the positive aspects working to enhance.
One of the great challenges, of course, is that if people have gone through shitty childhoods, then the functional memory of their brain is impaired, right?
I mean, I think it's in the hippocampus and other areas where memories are stored.
Trauma harms that.
Now, there's ways, I think, that you can work in therapy to process the emotions that are still there.
But this is one of the reasons why People with bad childhoods tend to repeat is they can't remember their own childhoods, therefore they can't empathize with their own children, therefore they end up treating them in a callous, brutal, or abandoning fashion.
So, you know, working to remember your own childhood, which is not a lot of fun.
I mean, a lot of people have really shitty childhoods, and it may not have a lot to do with the family, but, I mean, government schools are big turd piles of incompetence and distraction and boredom.
You know, maybe you were dragged off to church every week and you were taught about, you know, if you grab your groin, your hands will burst into flames or grow hair and shit like that.
So, I mean, there's lots of things.
I mean, it may have been traumatic for you.
Like when I was a kid, there were all these movies out about nuclear war and the aftermath.
There was one called The Day After.
I mean, kids these days, what do you got, global warming?
I mean, give me a break.
I mean, global warming isn't going to turn you into a nuclear shadow in a heartbeat.
And so when I was a kid, I mean, even if you had a good school and even if you didn't go to church, you were scared by people in church, even if you had good parents, at least from people my age, and there was a lot of fear around nuclear war and the destruction literally of everything in a heartbeat. and there was a lot of fear around nuclear war And so there's a lot of scary stuff in society and in culture when you grow up.
And to process that is really tough for a lot of people.
I mean, I think you have to do it if you want to be a good parent.
So, you know, working on self-knowledge therapy, you know, reading books...
But basically, another thing that's really important is just discuss with your partner, with your wife, your husband before you get married.
81 kids, right?
Fifth of women who have kids don't even want them.
And how are we going to raise them?
You don't want to start figuring that out after you get married and have kids because then you're really snookered for the next 20 years if it's not going copacetic.
So figure out how you're going to raise kids.
And if she says, well, I believe in a strong hand and spanking and discipline, say...
No thanks.
I think I will keep my bad boys to myself and sit on my nutsack, cross my legs and shove some popsicles down there to keep you away or try and reason her into something better.
But I think that kind of stuff is all really important.
Like so many things in life, 90% of success is all in the preparation.
You don't just wander onto a Wimbledon tennis court, grab the racket, hope you're hoping it the right way and think you're going to win a cup.
I mean, it's all about the preparation.
You prepare by remembering your own childhood, by reading, and by just saying, "Look, I'm not going to give myself the out of bullying my kids." There's so much intimidation based on just being the parent, just being so much bigger, just having all that legal and economic and physical proximity authority that, I mean, you've got such a light touch when you have that much power.
You need such a light touch.
We don't know what we're doing.
We don't prepare, and then the first thing we do when we don't know what we're doing is we revert back to what was done to us, and then any of the problems just resurface.
I've heard you talk about that quite often, and it makes a lot of sense.
I fully believe in the non-aggression principle, and I'm trying to incorporate these beliefs into the fabric of my everyday life.
And you get into these situations, you know, like I heard you talk about, I think the other day you mentioned, you know, sometimes you want to go outside and you can't always get your daughter to go outside.
And so maybe you do, maybe you don't.
But then there's other times when you have to go to the store.
Right?
And she can't leave her at home by herself, so she's got to come with you.
So you get in these situations where you have to do something, you know, and, you know, it may not be...
What's the word?
Convenient in terms of time, you know, to make something happen that you have to do.
And so I get in this situation where I kind of feel like Darth Chaney when I'm about to use the force, you know, get my daughter to take a bath.
And it comes down to that sometimes.
And it's like, you know, maybe two days have gone by where I've said, okay, you don't have to take a bath, you know, because she said, I don't want to take a bath.
So I'm trying to honor her own wishes and her own wants.
And so, you know, day three rolls around, oh, I don't want to take a bath again, you know, and we've kind of worked that whole, you know, candy thing by this point.
And so, you know, I have to admit I've resulted to scooping her up and, you know, forcing her to take a bath and I hate that and I want to do the right thing.
And how do you handle these situations?
Yeah, I mean, those are very tough questions.
Just to clarify, it's not that I can't always get my daughter to go outside.
I can almost never get my daughter to go outside.
I mean, and that's because it's freaking cold and, you know, she was two and three and four and, you know, what the heck is she supposed to do outside other than go...
I'm freezing!
Right?
It's not a huge amount of fun for her.
So, as far as that goes, I mean, obviously, I can defer going outside.
I mean, I just feel like basically living in a space station for half the year.
So, you know, where it can be deferred, defer it.
But I think it's all the in-between, right?
It's all in the preparation.
It's never in the moment, right?
So, the moment you're like, oh, my God, she's got to take a bath.
If you haven't prepared that conversation, then you're really behind the eight ball, right?
Which just means, you know, you have to prepare it better next time, right?
And so, you have to have...
I mean, I would suggest sort of have a conversation, right, about...
Why don't you like bath time?
What's not fun?
Maybe you can put on some swim trunks and go in the bath with her and that would be more fun for her.
Maybe we get these little crayons that she can draw on the side of the bath.
Maybe more bubbles.
I don't know what.
Something that would be enjoyable for her.
Is the bath boring?
Oh, it's too hot.
Oh, it's too cold.
Well, you can fix that.
Is the bath boring?
Well, you can fix that.
Maybe she just doesn't have any clue why she needs to take a bath.
Maybe she doesn't know that Little bugs live on your skin and they make babies and they make you smelly and then they can make you sick.
And they're always looking for places to crawl inside you.
And trust me, we don't want to go into any details there, but it ain't good, right?
And you can get the little bugs and you can explain to her.
It's the same concept, you know, like you're getting ready to leave the playground, you give her a five-minute, four-minute, three-minute warning, that kind of a thing, and you're building up for the event, in other words.
Well, no, but you see, if you're starting to impose the playground stuff five minutes before the end, then that's not right.
So even before you go to the playground, you have to get the agreement.
Once kids agree to something, They will, at least I found, generally really stick with it.
So you have to extract the agreement beforehand, right?
So, yes, we can go to the park.
We can go to the park for 45 minutes, you know, and roughly that's how long it is, right?
Like two TV shows in a bit or whatever.
And then we have to come back because mommy's making dinner and I like my dinner hot and, you know, but that's why we all got to eat together or at least I'd like to.
So if you get the agreement ahead of time, Then you're not imposing your will on the child.
You are reminding them of their voluntary promise.
And that's really important, right?
I mean, because I will do almost anything to keep my promise to my daughter, when she makes a promise to me, she just knows she has to keep it.
Not because I say, you have to keep your promise, because I always do, right?
And once or twice, of course, you know, she's tried to renegotiate.
And, you know, hey, maybe you can call your wife, get an extra 10 minutes or whatever.
You can always try to renegotiate.
But if she tries to renegotiate in something that we can't renegotiate, right, then we just have to have the conversation and say, this is really not fair.
You know, we had a deal.
And I came out here with you because we had a deal.
You can't change it now.
I mean, you can ask, but if it's not possible, you can't change it.
We're only here because of the promise that you made.
And, you know, do I keep my promises to you?
Yes.
How would you feel if I said, you know, we're going to a play center and get you some toys?
And then I said, no, I just don't want it.
I mean, I'd be upset, I'd be sad, I'd be angry, whatever.
I'd say, yeah, so because I'm making a promise and I've got to keep my promise, otherwise, yeah, I can't trust me.
And whatever it is, you need to explain that.
But it's all of the conversations beforehand, right?
So if you can figure out why your daughter doesn't like her bath time, And if you can figure out how she can make it more fun, I mean, half the day I'm saying to my daughter, you know, hey, we've got to go to the grocery store.
What would make it fun for you?
I don't want to go to the grocery store.
I get it.
I don't want to go to the grocery store either.
Nobody really likes going to the grocery store, but we do like to eat, right?
It's nice having food in the house.
So I'm with you.
I'd rather go to the park, I'd rather go to the play center than I would go to the grocery store, but we do have to eat.
And, you know, nobody's going to bring the food to us and, you know, it's not fair.
Mom's working today so she can't go.
So we do have to go get some groceries and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that it's not going to be fun for you.
But let's try and find a way that we can make it as much fun for you as possible.
And that usually tends to, you know, it then puts her in the situation of trying to solve the problem with you rather than being opposed to To you.
Right?
So, yeah, we're both in the same boat.
I don't like doing chores any more than you like doing chores, but, you know, we'll get them done and then, you know, how can it be fun?
And then she's thinking about how she can make it fun rather than that you're imposing your will on her.
And that, I think, is a much better way, but it's all about...
And it can be hours and hours.
And sometimes even, you know, I guess my daughter's four now.
She knows tomorrow and the day after.
So sometimes it can be, you know, like we're going to the dentist in two days.
We're going to the dentist in one day.
Here's why we're going to the dentist.
Remember the bugs that live on your teeth?
They've got to be clean and checked and blah, blah, blah, right?
And, you know, I don't want to go to the dentist.
Hey, you know, welcome to the human race.
Nobody wants to go to the dentist.
But it's better than not going to the dentist because you get owie teeth.
They get a drill.
It's no good, right?
And then how can we make it fun?
For you if we go to the dentist, right?
So those kinds of things I think are really important.
It gets them into the idea that obviously there's things that we have to do that we don't want to do.
I mean, I always hesitate to add up how much of life is just shit you don't want to do that you've got to get done, right?
As soon as I'm just lurching from like, you know, taxes to technical crap to chores to cleaning shit to cutting my toenails to digging crap out of my ears with a Q-tip.
It just seems like the vast majority of life sometimes is just stuff that you don't want to do.
So she knows that there's stuff we don't want to do, but we try to make it as enjoyable as possible.
So it sounds like most of these parenting problems can really just be solved with an extra ounce of negotiation and putting that time in.
You know, to build it up.
You know, I want to talk about real quick.
I know we're kind of getting to the end of the time limit here, but real quick, my story in a nutshell was growing up as a little kid looking at my grandpa's medals up on the wall and just thinking, wow, that's amazing.
And then, of course, the sum of all the propaganda that we get and really just having that vision that, you know, just the marine commercial, the guy slaying the dragon with a sword and all that kind of stuff.
And so I went overseas twice.
It was my neck.
And basically, I was mortuary affairs, so I handled all the fallen servicemen over there and came back.
And it wasn't that experience that turned me off from the whole thing.
It was really just learning about all these issues.
Economics and freedom and all this kind of stuff is more of like an intellectual revolution for me.
But the whole point is, you know, I went off and joined the military with the idea that I could be a martyr for humanity in that way.
And my mistake was letting the government do the philosophy for me.
And that's really the theme of my podcast.
And so the reason why I'm talking about this is because, you know, I transitioned from somebody thinking about warriorship in the traditional fashion to now understanding humanity.
What that true function of being a warrior is, and that's a warrior for the family, because I agree with you and what you've said about the way that we change the world, and that is through parenting.
I'm just 31, and I've only seen a couple of election cycles, but I've seen enough to know we're not getting anywhere.
And even at this early stage of my life, I can see the way that things need to change.
All these problems are history, age-old problems, and we're inching along.
People get set in their ways.
Over the holidays, I had a four-hour long discussion with a brother-in-law.
Four hours.
It was a respectful conversation, but we didn't get anywhere.
A light bulb went in my head.
You can discuss for hours, but you can't necessarily change somebody.
And the only way that we can change the world is not even trying to change our kids, but to simply allow them to think for themselves and the truth will present itself.
Well, I think that's beautifully put.
And I just want to understand, so your job in the war zone was to sort of take care of and process the bodies of the soldiers who died?
That's right, yeah.
I'm sorry, that's...
Yeah, we would say an infantry unit took a hit, we would go behind them and we would recover the bodies and bring them back and prepare them for transport.
And then we would also, you know how it is that you have like an escort with the body and they travel back to the States with the body.
And, you know, it's not the guy who shows up and does the, you know, notification to the family, but these guys who would escort the body would interact with us throughout the course of doing our job.
So we kind of, we had a pretty intense part of it, you know.
That's a pretty grim conveyor belt to be part of, and I'm really sorry for that.
It is.
And I haven't really been through therapy yet, so I can't really put too many periods on the end of that sentence because I don't think I've really processed it all.
And to be honest, when I came back from overseas, I actually started a crime scene cleanup company.
I did that for five years, so I guess I didn't have enough of that whole crazy situation.
But in the thick of it, I really hadn't had a revolution in my mind in terms of these ideas.
I wasn't looking at this like, wow, this is changing my life because this is such a tragedy.
I was just thinking, hey, this is part of freeing people over here in Iraq.
And so I really haven't sat down and gone back to my experiences and said, wow, what a mess that was.
Because...
I guess part of PTSD is blocking stuff out, you know?
And that's kind of the way I've treated it.
But the whole thing's a mess.
But the reason I bring this up is because, you know, from somebody growing up with that dream, like, this is what we need to do.
We all need to be, you know, warriors for the state.
That's completely...
The wrong thing.
And everybody wants this instant gratification, like, I'm gonna go vote for somebody, or I'm gonna pick up a rifle and go do my thing.
It's like, no, what you need to do is spend 20 years raising an intelligent, thoughtful child if you're called to be a parent.
So I think that's the importance of peaceful parenting.
Yes, and I think so, and it is...
It's good that it has not been tried much hitherto because it means that we still have one arrow left in our quiver.
If we tried everything and this is where we were, we'd be fucked, frankly.
Given that you've been in the military, I assume that you're okay with the occasional F-bomb.
But we'd be fucked because we'd be like, okay, we're out of arrows and the dragon is getting closer and okay, I guess we'll just assume the fetal position and get eaten.
But we do have this one great Arrow left in the quiver of bringing down hierarchies, which is not Instilling hierarchies at home with our kids, not being authorities, not do it because I tell you to, not do it or I'll punish you.
That just prepares children for a life of chattel slavery.
That just prepares children to be citizens.
And I use that word like, you know, a bear just shattered my mouth.
And it prepares them for serfdom.
And so it's really great that there's not been this as a real cornerstone of the great revolution that's necessary, the peaceful revolution that's necessary.
Because, man, if we tried this and this failed, I have no idea.
I mean, I'd just go become a cop because, like, okay, we're just completely hosed.
We've got nothing left, and so I'm just going to slip over to the other side.
So I'm very relieved that we have this as an unexplored possibility or a little explored possibility because, wow, I think it's the Black Arrow that brings down the beast.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think that gives us a good blueprint, you know.
But I guess just before we wrap it up, I'm just curious, a couple of questions for you about parenting in general, just your tactics.
I mean, we all kind of know about the negotiation.
We all kind of know about the empathy, and those are really the cornerstones.
But I'm just curious because my wife's really into the attachment parenting thing.
And I think I am too from what I know of it.
And I'm just curious, do you do the whole co-sleeping thing at home?
No, no, it's not possible myself.
My daughter is much too acrobatic a sleeper.
I mean, she just, I mean, I don't know what the hell she's doing in her sleep, but it has something to do with trying to land a double axle and get a 10 from the Russian judge, I think.
We've had sleepovers with our friends, and they can't sleep at the same bed, so it's just not really possible.
We did it, of course, for a long time, and she was a baby as best as we could, but not anymore now.
And it's fine.
I mean, if she wants to get us at night, she can get us at night, and we'll go and take care of her, but no, it's not really feasible that she gets bigger and stronger.
Yeah, yeah.
But one thing I heard you say the other day when you were on with Dana Martin was you were talking about how one of the things that you do when you go out to the playground with your kid is that you're right there with them the whole time.
And you're supervising and you're kind of gauging the situation with other kids.
And that's one thing that I find myself doing too.
So I think we have these instincts as parents where we kind of know what to do.
You know, this wasn't anything I read out of a book.
This wasn't anything somebody told me to do.
It's just something that I want to do because I know there's other people out there who aren't parenting well, and that's rubbing off on their kids.
You can spot them from 10 miles away.
You just get a menace out there, and they're just going nuts.
And you want to be right there with your kid, or you have some other parent who's all of a sudden trying to correct your kid for doing nothing wrong, and this happens all the time.
But I just thought it was interesting that you said that's one thing that you did, too, because that's something that comes natural to me.
Well, and I assume it's something that your kids want, too.
Like, come play with me, right?
Don't sit there and play with your phone, or whatever it is that the other parents are doing.
Plus, I mean, if you get in there, you can get a game going.
And I mean, when the kids have some structure, I mean, especially when they're younger, they can't spontaneously start a game when they're four or whatever, right?
So if you get in there and you can get a game, a freeze tag or a hide-and-seek or whatever it is that you're going to play, the kids just have a ball.
I mean, they just love having that kind of structure.
So, you know, if you're not parenting, you're just assuming that your toddlers are going to somehow come up with the rules for three-dimensional chess or something like that.
It's not going to happen, right?
But if you go in there, of course, you can monitor.
And it's not sometimes bad parenting.
You know, maybe they're the kid there who's developmentally delayed or mentally handicapped or something, and you just need to have that extra layer of security around your kid.
So all of these things, yeah, it's what your kids want, so listen to them.
And, I mean, it's a lot more fun when you get in there and start having a real game with the kids.
I mean, I worked in a daycare for years when I was a teenager, so I'm pretty good at roping the kids into you.
Something fun.
But yeah, I think that's really important.
I mean, the attachment parenting thing, I'm certainly no expert.
I think that...
But it has to be a negotiation.
I don't think that you can prepare your children for adult negotiations if you surrender everything that you prefer to your child's preference.
And I'm not saying that's attachment parenting, but I think it's really important.
That's fine when they're infants, right?
You have to.
But when they get older, it's more about negotiation because that's what they're going to have to deal with.
You know, when they...
You've got to prepare your kids for when you're not around and there's nobody who's going to, you know, I don't know, maybe a stalker.
There's nobody who's going to, I guess it's not really wrapping, but there's nobody who's going to wrap their needs entirely around your kids when they get older.
So, you know, as they grow up sort of three or four, I think it's important to start negotiating and say, I don't really feel like doing that.
Whereas, of course, your baby wakes up at three o'clock in the morning, you go feed him or whatever, right?
There's no choice around that.
But when they get older, I think there's more choice and you need to start establishing that.
Right.
Right on.
Well, listen, I really appreciate your time.
This was good info, and I look forward to hearing more about all these issues, and keep on preaching.
Thanks, man.
Take care.
It was a great chat.
All right.
▲
Export Selection