All Episodes
Previous Next
March 12, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:05:43
2343 Philosophical Parenting: Teaching Toddlers to Think Rationally
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Stefan, you try very hard to focus on things that people can use in their own lives to improve their state of mind and relationships with others, especially their children.
Why is that?
Well, I think there's The idea that I have that we're all born philosophers.
Like, to me, philosophy is considered to be like this discipline, like this abstract or obtuse discipline that you have to study, and boy, if you don't know your ancient Aramaic, don't even set foot in the hallowed halls of deep thinking or whatever.
But the reality is, I think that we're all born that way.
I mean, what is philosophy other than subjecting your mental processes to the disciplines of reason and of evidence?
And what is childhood but subjecting yourself to the discipline of reason and of evidence?
So, I mean, my daughter wants to stay safe, so she figures out where she can jump from which couch to which couch, and she's really good at that.
She's actually better than I am because she knows what she can do, and she's very good at not getting hurt or injured or anything like that, so that's her empirical process at work, and Her desire to take her concepts into their most abstract and universal forms is essential to her whole cognitive process.
I mean, you know, she knows that the red chair in the kitchen is chair, and then she knows that the blue chair in the dining room is also a chair, and then she gets the things with four legs with the back a chair, and then she gets the things, even if they're on wheels, and go round and round, they're still chairs.
So she gets...
that she's universalizing and she knows that although you sometimes put a coffee cup on a chair it doesn't make it a table and so she's consistently conceptualizing and expanding these and why not just make that process why not just not interrupt that process you know it seems to me that most of human culture is just about forcibly interrupting a child's natural philosophical progress in the world and I think it's sort of clear the way.
Don't get in the way.
You know, give a few tips and tricks along the way.
And my daughter is very, very rational.
And that's sort of what I was expecting.
And I'm not going to bring irrational cultural pseudo-absolutes into the mix, you know, any more than I would, frankly, take a dump into a cream pie.
It would just not be a very nice thing to do.
So, if philosophy doesn't just pertain to whether or not the sound of trees falling in the forest makes a sound or not, is it simply the art of telling truth from falsehood?
Yeah, I mean, there's a certain art element to it, but, I mean, it's really just a logical discipline.
I mean, my daughter knows.
She knows when she's telling the truth and she knows when she's lying.
It's a game for her.
That's, I think, a useful thing to do.
Until there's nothing but virtuous people in the world, it's not bad to have in your back pocket the art of falsehood.
She's incredibly philosophical.
She wouldn't really describe it that way.
I want to teach her the reason and evidence thing.
That, I think, is relatively easy.
The tougher part is the self-knowledge thing.
At the moment, she just turned four, and at the moment we're working on the concept of ambivalence, which is, you know, I want to go outside, but I also don't want to go outside.
Daddy, I'm ambivalent, right?
The idea that we have a multiplicity of perspectives, you know, because there is this idea that we can chase down and capture something called An identity.
This is who I am.
I'm going to get down to who I really am.
I'm going to be who I am.
Like, it's one thing.
But asking a human being to have an identity is like asking a jungle to have one species.
I mean, a jungle is an ecosystem.
It's got competing influences.
It's got winners and losers.
And the same thing is true in the personality, right?
If the part of you that wants the cupcake wins, you get the cupcake.
And your tongue wins and your...
Belly fat loses, so to speak.
And if you put it down and pick up a carrot, then, you know, your tongue loses and your eyesight gains.
I think that's an old wives' tale.
But the idea that there's constant trade-offs, that we have more than one desire for things, that our desires can be self-contradictory, and that self-negotiation is as an essential skill, or is as essential a skill as negotiating with other people.
That's a little bit more tricky, but that's something that she's...
Really getting the hang-off, like I was explaining to her the other day, that frustration, because she's, you know, she's four, so she wants to do stuff.
She gets easily frustrated, which makes sense.
You know, that frustration can be very helpful if it's telling us we can't do something.
You know, it's really good.
If I said, you know, Isabella, jump to the top of that tree, what would you say?
No, I can't!
Right, right.
And if I kept saying it, get frustrated, because you say, Daddy, I can't, right?
So, frustration can be very helpful.
On the other hand, frustration can...
Keep you from doing something that you can do, rather than prevent you from wasting energy trying to do something you can't do.
And so it's, you know, well, how do you tell?
And blah, blah, blah.
I said, well, you know, you can rely on me.
I've got a pretty good judge of that.
But, you know, we just sort of went through different ways of doing it.
So she can recognize that frustration has a positive side to it and a I think the intellectual stuff just works on its own.
It works really well.
But I think the understanding of the complexity Of personality and what I call the me-cosystem.
Me is not a thing.
It's not an identity.
It's not a passport.
There is no essence to me.
There is a series of competing interests, biological, psychological, emotional, sexual, and...
Short-term and long-term positive requirements and so on.
So just trying to get a sense of the complexity of the personality I think is really important because when we try to grind the personality down to one thing, we tend to live in a very sort of black and white surreal universe of pretty significant repression.
So how can we help our children cultivate this discipline of self-negotiation?
Well, I think the first thing is to understand that when she wants sugar, Mr.
Tongue is happy.
Mr.
Belly and Mr.
Bum are not happy.
And if she has a Brussels sprout, Mr.
Tongue is not happy.
And just sort of getting a sense of the fact that even different body parts of hers want different things.
I mean, we've all had that thing where we're sitting on the couch, we've got a bag of Cheetos on our belly and we're watching...
Some TV, and you're like, oh, I should really get up and, you know, do some chores and sort of sit there.
Or I should get up and go do some exercise or go for a walk or something like that.
And, you know, we want to conserve energy, but we also want to stay fit.
I mean, these are two sort of basic things.
When we are faced with an excess of food, and I sort of explained this to, you know, that our bodies were designed a long time ago when food was really hard to get and sugar was almost impossible to get, so we, you know, our bodies...
We sort of, our bodies trained us to really want sugar by making it taste fantastic and all that.
And now it's everywhere and, you know, so it's not such, it's not what we're used to.
And when we have a lot of food, like we're at a buffet, we sort of think like a bear going into hibernation.
We think, man, I got to eat a lot because I don't know if there's going to be much food tomorrow, but I got to store up this food.
Of course, the body hasn't quite figured out yet that there's a huge conveyor belt of food constantly coming our way and there's no need to stock up.
We're not about to go and sleep for the winter and lose 40% of our body mass or our body fat.
So just helping her to understand that there is complexity in what we want.
And it's really hard to come up with the right answers because the right answers change so rapidly and under so many different circumstances and so on.
So I really want her to...
To be able to negotiate with the parts of ourselves.
I mean, I've had Dr.
Richard Schwartz on the program.
He's the originator of internal family systems therapy, which basically says that we have aspects or alter egos of ourselves which have come to us in a variety of ways, you know, from parents and teachers and other authority figures and peers and siblings and the inner voices of just about everyone we meet.
Personalities are unbelievably infectious.
In life, which is why it's really important to be careful with who you surround yourself with, because whoever you surround yourself with is going to become a part of you.
We don't have a defense system for personalities.
We have a photocopy system for personalities, a photocopy and internalized and often amplify system.
So I really try to make sure she's surrounded by quality people.
And I teach her, you know, if we have a conflict, our house sounds like a...
A game show.
Hey, let's make a deal.
Let's figure out how we can both get what we want.
I'm teaching her about win-win negotiations and all of that.
But win-win negotiations aren't always possible, and they're not always possible with ourselves.
If you go exercise, the part of you that wants to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos loses.
And if you sit on the couch and eat Cheetos, the part of you that wants to exercise loses.
And you can, of course, say, well, if we go exercise, we'll live longer to eat Cheetos longer of you.
Something like that, but that's all pretty abstract.
So I think just showing her negotiation with my wife, showing her negotiation with her, and helping her to negotiate with herself and to recognize all the different influences that go into making reasonably good decisions.
I mean, it's hard to explain what is a good decision.
Let's say you decide to go exercise and you're grunting and sweating and then A meteor hits your house.
It's like, well, I should have really spent that last hour eating Cheetos or making great love or something like that.
Who knows what the answer is, right?
I mean, all the sacrifices that you make to stay healthy and get hit by a bus, well, that was sort of, you know, should have gone out and had a lot of fun.
So, you know, with the limited knowledge that we're only ever available to have, just trying to help her to understand the complexity of making decisions and negotiation and all of that, I think that's the best that can be done because I think that is the empirical reality.
Of how the personality works.
And I don't want her to have an inner dictatorship of, we always go exercise, there is to be no sitting on the couch, no eating of Cheetos.
It's like, well, that's just having an inner Stalin.
That's not really the same as being free to negotiate with yourself.
So, how are situations where a win-win situation is not possible mediated?
Well, okay, so...
She wanted me to stay and read to her tonight, and I wanted to come down and do some exercising before this show.
I always like to sort of get my brain working and my blood working a little more fast than when I'm about to have a show.
A conversation.
Show is such a terrible word.
It sounds like we're strapping on disco shoes for a tap number or something.
So she really wanted to...
And so she basically just climbed on top of me and...
She wouldn't let me go because she wanted me to stay.
And her mom was there in the bed too.
But I mean, so the negotiation there was, you know, I had to explain to her.
I said, look, if I can't go and get ready for my show, then I can't come and read with you when I have a show to do.
Because if you won't let me go to go and get ready for my show, then I can't come and read for you next time.
And I sort of explained that to her.
And then I said, okay, well, I will read.
for ten more minutes but you have to go and cuddle with your mom and that way I didn't have to try and peel her off me or have her fall asleep on me which is tough to extricate yourself from.
So I explained to her what the constraints were and what the consequences were of her not letting me go and then we made a deal where I would stay for a little longer and she would have to go and cuddle with her mom and that worked out fine.
So this is the kind of creative thing that you can sort of come up with where you bend to her wishes for more time Together at the same time as still being able to get something that you want, right?
Because, I mean, the parents who obviously impose their will on the kids are not doing the kids any favors, but the parents who exceed to the child's wishes without respecting their own wishes are not doing the child any favors either because the negotiation is intimacy to me, right?
It's the overlap of needs and preferences and requirements that is intimacy.
If you just do what other people say, you're not close to them because you're not anywhere near them.
You're just...
You're like water in a vessel.
You don't have any sort of real identity.
And if you just bully other people and get them to do what you want, there's no intimacy.
Intimacy is in the negotiation, is in the desire to find and the finding of the win-win negotiation.
So I really want her to understand what intimacy is, and you can't have that if you conform to other people's desires or expect them to conform to yours without negotiation.
And of course underlying this whole philosophy is the idea that she understands the reasoning for why you choose to make other decisions which aren't in her, perhaps short-term, favourite preference.
Yes, of course.
I mean, you know, the sugar thing, I mean, we sort of thought about this for a while, you know, because you can always just not expose her to sugar, right?
I mean, that's sort of one possibility.
But, you know, that means you got to be the food Nazi wherever she goes.
And I mean, she sees other kids eating.
I mean, so I don't think that's particularly practical.
And sugar is a hugely enjoyable part of childhood.
I mean, my own childhood felt like sometimes a sort of dim, blind Lawrence of Arabia crossing of the desert of British food just to get my hands on some sweet stuff from time to time.
And it was a really enjoyable part of childhood.
So we wanted that.
But explain to her.
You know, I mean, you can find good videos on YouTube.
We watched some parts of a documentary called, I think, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, which has some really good animated stuff about antibodies and disease and fat and all that kind of stuff.
So we can talk about that and she can rattle off what diabetes is and how it affects you and the injections you might need every day and this is what happens if you have too much sugar sometimes and all of that and the big belly that can come from too much sugar or whatever.
So she can kind of understand that and You give them the understanding before you give them the rules.
You give them the understanding of what is there and then hopefully they can take that and make their own good decisions about that.
I was just going to say yes so that they can apply that same critical thinking to what situations they come into when they are more independent.
So what are the uses of teaching critical thinking to children?
And of course you believe that critical thinking is the default state, so what we really need to do is not untrain children from critical thinking.
But surely you'd do a lot to hone that, and what are the uses of it?
Well I think that the most important critical thinking I think that occurs for children is the universality of empathy.
I mean, I think as far as her being able to parse out a syllogism, I mean, she can, you know, rip those off like Yehudi Menuhin goes up and down a scale, so I don't have any particular problem, right?
So, I mean, trying to explain to her that people are animals is tough, right?
Because she's like, we're not animals.
Well, why aren't we animals?
Well, because we have, you know, we walk on two legs.
It's a very, very fine argument, right?
Everything that walks on two legs is not an animal.
And I said, well, we were at...
I park and we saw ostriches.
Let's remember the ostriches.
And she says, okay, well, then ostriches are people too, aren't they?
I mean, so that's a fine argument.
So she knew that it wasn't a good argument, but she sort of hung in there with the premise and the conclusion.
So she's fine with that.
I think what is more challenging is to help her to understand that other people have similar needs and preferences to her own.
And this, of course, coming out of infancy, infancy is not a time of negotiation for parents.
I mean, it is a time where you simply provide the child what the child wants.
I mean, if you're driving and your child needs to breastfeed and you have the necessary equipment, then you don't necessarily say, well, I'm sorry, we're on a highway and it's highways, it's tough to get off.
You get off the highway or you find a way to breastfeed as quickly as you can and you just give the baby what the baby needs.
There's no negotiation in that.
But then, of course, trying to—and then you don't just pull the plug on that one day.
All compliance, no!
Nothing but negotiation.
You have to kind of ease them out of the necessary and healthy narcissism of infancy into a more negotiated and other-aware kind of relationship.
And you do that by having your own feelings and expressing your own feelings to the child, even if those feelings aren't particularly convenient, right?
My daughter sometimes doesn't like her photograph taken because she doesn't like the flash and it just kind of became a thing and so I've cut back on my photos but I do like obviously to take photos from time to time and so I've been trying to explain to her that when she gets older she'll really like to have these photos and we don't want her to be like some paparazzi plagued princess of Wales or something and so I'm trying to explain that to her but even if she doesn't really get that I have a preference to have some photographs of her And
she has a preference to not be photographed.
So just trying to recognize that.
I can't just say, you know, if I was a baby and she didn't want to be photographed, I just wouldn't photograph her.
But now she's older.
We have to work on negotiating to say, I have a preference.
I think it'll be useful to you as well.
But I really want to take some photographs.
I want to have these memories in a more permanent way.
And it's helping her to understand that other people have their needs, right?
So, you know, I want to talk with your mom.
For 20 minutes.
So you're going to need to find something to do.
No, come play with me and so on.
It's like, well, no, I really want to talk to your mom.
And so having her understand that not only do I have preferences that don't involve her, sorry, that do involve her, like We need to go get some groceries.
You want to stay home and play kind of thing.
Not only do I have preferences that do involve her that we need to negotiate, but I have preferences that don't involve her.
In other words, I want to talk to her mom, so to speak, and that's something she can observe as a preference in action.
Rather than...
Or, you know, I want to go and do some exercising, whatever.
So, to me, the most important skill is, in a sense, the criticism of the necessary narcissism of infancy is something that's so essential to ease children out of.
And if you can do that, then you end up with a very peaceful existence with your children, right?
The terms I use interchangeably, peaceful...
Parenting and philosophical parenting because really they're two of the same things.
The philosophical thing is everyone has needs and they're universal and those needs don't always coincide.
In fact, they often don't coincide.
And That is a philosophical truth that is obvious and yet missed by so many people.
Now, if you can get the child to understand that philosophical truth by slowly and patiently reminding the child if your preference is working on negotiation and being firm to make sure that your needs are getting met and you're not just a slave to the child or the child is a slave to you, then you end up with a very peaceful household.
I have a conflict with my daughter.
I mean, I'm a full-time parent and I have a conflict with my daughter that's significant.
Maybe...
Maybe once a month.
Other than that, it's all very easy to negotiate.
It's a lot of work to get there, but once you get there, man, it's pretty smooth sailing.
So that would be your response to the parent who said, well, I can't teach my child to think critically.
They'll be a nightmare.
I won't be able to get them to do anything I want them to do.
They'll question everything.
Yes.
Yeah, I mean, it can get a little annoying.
So my daughter will ask why when she's perfectly capable of figuring out why.
Right?
So, you know, we drove to a mall and I thought, oh my goodness, I left my wallet in the mall.
And then I'd say, oof, I'm very glad I didn't leave my wallet in the mall.
And then she would say, why?
And in the past, of course, I patiently explained to it.
Now I actually get a little annoyed.
It's like, oh, you know why.
Why?
Oh, because then we'd have to drive back and then you'd have to find it and all that.
It's like, yeah, so just reminding her that she needs to answer her own questions and not just have a reflex called why.
You know, reminding her that the brain is a muscle and it needs to be used.
If you never walked, you'd just pour out a chair like a sack of meal and So, reminding her that she...
Because, you know, the kids, when they can't figure things out for themselves, which is most of early, like late infancy and early toddlerhood, all they're doing is saying, why, why, why, why, why?
And getting them out of the habit of saying why and into the habit of answering their own questions is, I think, a very important phase as well.
And you'll find that you really don't need to teach your children much about critical thinking.
At least so far, that hasn't been the case for me.
I have to, you know, remind her that she can answer her own questions.
I have to give her some examples of logic.
And she picks that up very easily.
But the universality of empathy.
I mean, empathy really is just an acceptance of the universality of feelings, needs, and desires.
And from there, it just becomes so much easier, and it's deeply shocking to realize just how incredibly advanced children can be.
I'm like, I'm complete, because I mean, I was treated like, as a kid, I mean, I grew up in England in the 70s, and I went to Boarding school where people who disobeyed the rules, even if they'd never heard of the rules, were caned.
I mean, it was just a wretched, wretched childhood.
And it was because society kind of held children like feral specimens of incipient revolt and Lord of the Flies impulsivity that needed to basically be beaten or whipped or punched or slapped or shaken into shape.
I mean, I think that's cooled down a little bit from there.
I think things are better now.
But it really is remarkable if you reason with your children just how amazingly rational they are.
Right.
You've spoken about needs and emotions and preferences and one thing I've really enjoyed about your content is that while philosophy is sometimes thought to be quite a cerebral discipline, your content on personal relationships really embraces emotions as an essential part of the human experience.
Can you speak a bit about what place you think emotions have in the relationship between And perhaps go on to say what you think you'd do in a situation where you think your child is reacting out of a very strong emotion and you try to reason with her, but it's not helping.
Or if someone else finds themselves in that position, what you might suggest they could do?
Right.
I mean, I think the one that all parents experience is Your child sees something that they want.
You know, for my daughter, it happens to be snakes.
She loves snakes.
And so, if she sees a snake anywhere, she just wants it.
She just desperately wants it.
Or, you know, when I was getting something at a hardware store, she saw, like, little rainbow-colored keys.
And she's like, I've got to have a rainbow key.
And you know, you know as a parent...
That your child is going to play with it for about 20 minutes or half an hour, and then it's going to go into the general pile of stuff that they don't play with anymore, and then if you were ever to say, well, why...
You know, let's donate this stuff to charity or let's give it a...
No, no!
They just want to hang on to stuff and they want stuff that you just know they're not going to need or use and it's just going to accumulate stuff in your house.
And what you need to do, I think, what I found most helpful to do is you need to establish credibility in this area.
So just saying no to your child, you just, you know, basically you're taking away.
And for the child, they're...
Their life happiness hinges on being able to get a hold of this plastic piece of crap that is somewhere in a store.
So you're just saying no.
But what you need to do is you say, I will get you the Rainbow Key.
And I think that you will not play with it for very long.
No, I will.
I will.
It's going to be my favorite toy forever.
I'll sleep with it.
I said, I think you will not play with it for very long.
And then...
You take them home and they play with it.
And then the next day, sort of mid-morning, you say, hey, where's your plastic key?
Or where's your rainbow key?
And they say, oh, it's in the car.
I said, well, do you remember yesterday?
And it's really tough because you don't want to get into I told you so.
But you're just building credibility in this area.
And then you're saying, do you remember how desperate you were to have it?
And now you don't even know where it is.
And not like, and that's bad or wrong.
It's simply pointing out an empirical fact.
And then the next time they want something, let them have it again.
But remind them of this is like the rainbow key.
Are you going to play with it?
Yes, I will.
And then you get them whatever it is.
And then they won't play with it after a day or half a day or whatever.
And sometimes they will.
Sometimes they're right and they'll play with it for weeks or months.
But most times they're not.
And you say, oh, you remember this thing that we bought?
You know, this little toy lizard that we bought.
You now don't know where it is.
And the same thing with the rainbow key and so on.
And you say, the reason I'm telling you this is because in the moment you really want something and you feel like you have to have it.
But as you can see, it doesn't really matter to you much later on.
Right?
This is just facts, right?
And in this way, when the child, like at some point, the child will say, I want this.
And you can say, okay, remember this, remember this, remember this, remember this.
And my daughter will say, oh yeah, you're right, I didn't really play with it that much, so okay.
It really does happen, but you have to slowly and patiently build the case.
So what you're doing is helping the child develop a mindfulness of when they really want something and when they just want something superficially, so they can reflect to themselves and say, hmm, you know, maybe you're right, I probably won't play with this tomorrow.
Or in another situation, they'll be able to tune in with themselves and realize when they really do want something.
Yes, and what I'm trying to do is to get them to think beyond the impulsivity of the moment.
And with all the humility of me saying, I will sometimes eat half a donut when I don't really want to.
Not that I don't really, I mean, of course I want to, but it's not really that good for me, right?
I mean, I'm not a big sugar fiend, but, you know, sometimes I'll, you know...
Instead of having a tea biscuit, I'll have a muffin or whatever it is.
So I sometimes, of course, will say, I want this and it's not really the best thing for me in the moment or whatever.
So with all humility and not to say, this is something I always say in my show with people who are struggling through issues, which is to say, I am not in any sense like on some mountaintop guru who's got all the answers and never has any, but I struggle with all these things myself.
So to say to my daughter...
You know, I remember I really, really wanted this thing and I could even point to it in the house or whatever and say and then I found out later I didn't really like it.
So this is, you know, this is something that we all, it happens to me, it happens to your mama, it happens to your friends, it happens to, you know, just go through the people she knows in her life.
And have conversations.
You know, I mean, make it part of the conversation, right?
At a dinner party with friends, say to their kids, do you buy stuff and then end up not really wanting it that much?
And say to the parents, you know, you got that spoiler on your car.
Did you really feel like, you know, yeah, I can't believe it.
The guy talked us into spending $4,000 on a spoiler and now it's just, who cares, right?
So we all do these things.
And just remind children that this is part of the human condition, that we want stuff in the moment, but to think beyond the range of the moment.
Because, of course, for a child, it's all immediate gratification, and that's how it should be.
Because deferring food for a child is a really bad idea, right?
Because they need calories.
They're growing.
Deferring food, for me, can sometimes be a really good idea.
So children are not into the deferral of gratification, right?
Right?
I mean, the baby doesn't say, hmm, maybe I do want to cuddle and milk, or maybe I don't.
It's like, no, just get the cuddle and milk.
Forget about 10 minutes from now.
Now is all that matters, and that's how they should be.
But you need to help them to extend.
And through that process, I mean, this is the amazing thing about teaching children, is it's such a mutual process.
Through helping her learn how to process beyond the impulses of the moment, it helps me to...
Process beyond the impulses of the moment.
I mean, I literally am learning as much as I'm teaching.
And in the process of teaching her to defer gratification, I happen to lose 20 pounds.
Yay!
You know, like, I mean, it is not my strength.
So, in having to teach these things to a very young person, you're engaging with rethinking all of these things as they pertain to you as a parent.
And as an individual.
Tell me what you mean?
Well, in the process of teaching your daughter to defer gratification, you then have to start reflecting upon how those principles are at play in your own life, in your own conduct.
Oh yes, yes.
No, that's very true.
And of course, when you really try to teach someone something, you find out whether you really know it, right?
You know, the old thing is the best way to find it.
And so what do I really know about the deferral of gratification and how can I explain it?
And if I make a really good case for her, it actually has an effect on me because, you know, Lord knows, I think like everyone, I have trouble deferring gratification sometimes when it's necessary.
Right.
So what are the places of emotions and the interactions in the family?
Or what is the ideal way so far as you've discovered so far to...
What are the places of our emotions in our family, those of our own, our spouse and our children?
Well, it's funny, you know, but that's an interesting way of putting it.
The place of emotions...
I mean, a family is emotion.
I mean, a family is passion.
A family is love.
It is intimacy.
It is desire.
It is humor.
It is frustration.
I mean, it is emotion.
I mean, so sort of saying, you know, what is the place of black in black?
You know, it is black.
But I think what I owe my daughter most is honesty.
I mean, this is something I've believed for many years and talked about for many years.
The very first virtue, of course, is honesty.
Because if you don't have honesty, you can't have any of the other virtues.
So I owe everyone in my life as much honesty as I'm capable of, including the honesty to be honest when I'm not capable of as much honesty as I'd like.
And so, if my daughter asks something that I don't want to talk about, I will say, I don't want to talk about it right now and I'm sorry and try to explain why or whatever.
But I owe my daughter honesty.
So if she does something that's really funny, I owe her my genuinely delighted response.
If she does something that annoys me, I owe her my genuinely annoyed response.
And I think this is true.
If we're not going to be honest with our feelings, we are being manipulative.
We are hiding.
We are playing a kind of intellectual chess game with other people.
And we are saying to our emotions, you are not...
Worthy here.
You do not have a place here.
But if our emotions don't have a place with the people we break bread with and share a roof with, I mean, where would they possibly have?
You know, it's like going to a dance hall and somebody says, hey, no dancing here.
It's like, wait a minute.
So I think emotions are incredibly important.
We can't be intelligent without emotions.
I mean, this is Pretty well-proven fact.
I mean, there have been some studies that show that the unconscious, which really is, I think in some ways, just the scar tissue of the lies.
And why do we have a conscious and an unconscious?
Because we were told so many things that weren't true so aggressively when we were children, so many of us.
But the unconscious has about 8,000 times the processing power of the conscious mind.
I mean, it's a mind-blowing process.
A cracker tower of insight and brilliance to be sitting on top of.
And, I mean, I'm walking back and forth here in my study, having a conversation with you, and about 99.9999% of what is occurring, I don't have any clue how it's working.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't just need the technology.
I don't know how my larynx does all this thing to produce the sound, the breathing, the walking, the gesturing.
I don't even know why I do it when nobody's watching me.
But these things are all occurring.
I don't even know where all these ideas are coming from that I'm discussing.
Some of them I've thought about before.
Some of them are new.
I don't know why some of them are new and some of them aren't.
So most of what's happening, I don't really know how it's happening or why it's happening, but I want to be open to all the parts of me that want self-expression.
So if I deny my child my emotions, then obviously I'm emotionally unavailable as that cliched phrase goes.
But I'm denying her the capacity to experience her own emotions because children live what they see, right?
And if I deny her the spontaneous experience of her own emotions, I am crippling her as a human being because emotions are that essential.
You know, we've all had this thing where someone just seems a little funny to us.
We don't know why.
We can't put a finger on it.
They just seem a bit off to us.
Well, that's really, really important information to have.
There are other people who have a charm despite everything we've heard or everything we know, and that's also important information to have.
Our instincts, our gut, I mean the gut is our second brain.
It has a whole complex nervous system all on its own.
The base of the brain, the medulla, the fight or flight mechanism, the amygdala, the hypothalamus, all the things that operate within our brain operate At an instinctual pre-verbal level, because they are built from, you know, the lizard up in our evolution.
And so the vast majority, and over 90% of communication is non-verbal.
And so I owe my child, I owe everyone in my life who I love, I owe my audience, I owe you, as much honesty as I'm capable of bringing.
And where I'm not able to bring honesty, I owe the honesty of my limitations in that area.
And so if...
If I say, well, I'm annoyed with my child, I mean, I can check in with myself and say, am I being irrational?
Well, but what's wrong with sharing that I'm being irrational?
As long as I don't act it out and just assume that she's, I mean, never would, but if I were to assume she's annoying because I'm annoyed, I mean, that's not logical.
Lots of things we feel don't end up being true.
But I can say to her, I feel annoyed at the moment, and I'm not sure why, and say it happened when this happened.
I can share with her that I'm annoyed, and then she gets to see someone talking about And then she will inevitably in turn talk about her feelings and she feels this and she doesn't know why it happened when this happened.
And that's fantastic.
I mean that's exactly what intimacy is.
I would never want to have that sort of Spock-like interaction with someone where there was no I don't think that's possible, and I think we would be interacting at such an arid and retarded level.
I mean, retarded in every level, if you don't have that 8,000 times multiplier of the unconscious, you're just not really interacting at any rich or deep level.
So to me, the emotions are incredibly philosophical, and there's reason and evidence to support that proposition.
Right, and of course, allowing all our emotions does not mean allowing all expressions of those emotions.
So just because you're angry doesn't mean that you would express that anger by shouting or doing some outrageous activity which you might later regret.
Yes, because that would not be honest.
I mean, that would be a big distraction.
From the emotion.
I mean, that kind of, I know what you mean, right?
So that kind of like, you know, you little shit, you know, that stuff that I think it's Kramer, right?
Epic battle between the father and the son.
It is a distraction.
You know, all the noise, the sound and fury, the static, the flares that get sent up with people's emotional hysteria and extravagance is all just a massive distraction.
From the honest expression of the emotion.
The honest expression of the emotion is, I'm angry.
Now, you either know I'm angry, in which case you don't need to act out, of course, right?
I'm angry because I stubbed my toe.
You know, I mean, okay, so, you know, you're angry because you stubbed your toe.
Or you don't know why you're angry.
In which case, you're close to really learning something important about yourself and the people around you.
You're close to illumination when you don't know why you feel what you feel.
And so the honest statement when you don't know why you feel what you feel is, I feel angry and I don't even know why.
I don't even know why.
What a fantastic opportunity.
Dear God, if we knew everything, life would be so boring, right?
But you've got these new feelings, these new emotions, new experiences, these new phases in life.
And they bring up emotions.
I mean, I don't know why sometimes.
Oh, I woke up sad this morning.
And sometimes it's you had a sad dream that you don't remember.
Who knows?
But to be honest statement.
And so people who yell and scream and throw things and act out.
I mean, all they're doing is avoiding the basic sentence, which is honest, which is I'm angry.
And they're creating an entire drama to cover up the fact that they do not know why they are doing what they are doing.
And that is a tragic, tragic state of mind to be in, where you don't even have the trust and faith in your relationships to say, I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing.
I mean, that's literally like driving blindfolded at high speeds.
And so, of course, people are going to freak out and panic and scream.
It's to cover up that they don't know what they're feeling.
And they're not in an environment where they...
I mean, what a terrifying, terrifying situation to be in.
Right.
So how can parents out there who are not as far along as you in this process of self-knowledge and understanding and honest expression, what can they do to help themselves better mediate their emotions when they want to react immediately rather than express themselves honestly?
And of course the other side of the coin of that question is how do they help when their children respond Are acting out, as you put it, or they have profound emotional experiences and they're not necessarily expressing those emotions in the most reasonable of ways?
Well, I mean, the first thing to recognize is that your children are almost certainly doing what you're doing.
I mean, that's the grim humbleness that parenthood brings, that your child is certainly doing what What you've done.
And so if your child is acting irrationally, I mean, it's a cliche, but it's true.
The first place to look is in the mirror, right?
So we misinform our children.
We mis-educate our children.
And then when they give the wrong answer, we think that they've done something wrong.
You know?
It's like if I teach my child the word for tree is bird, and then they point at a tree and say bird, and I say, well, that's ridiculous.
I mean, that's mad, right?
I mean, it's completely insane.
And so if children are having tantrums, my daughter, I mean, she's incredibly energetic.
I mean, she's a footprints on the ceiling kind of young lady.
But she's never had a tantrum.
She's never had a tantrum.
How could she?
That would be like her spontaneously speaking Japanese when she'd never been exposed to Japanese.
I mean, I don't have tantrums.
My wife doesn't have tantrums.
We have feelings, but we don't have tantrums because we have the pressure valve release mechanism called tell the truth about your emotional experience rather than act it out, right?
So once you can tell the truth, then you don't need to act it out because you're not panicking about driving blind.
So because that behavior has never been modeled to her, she's never had a temper tantrum.
And she's never...
She's never been a bully.
A friend of ours, you know, their dog died.
And it's a friend of a friend.
The dog died and my daughter heard this and went around the garden and picked up flowers and brought them to the lady and said, I'm so sorry that your dog died.
I mean...
How are you doing?
I mean, and this is when she just turned four.
Of course, because if she's upset, we'll try to make her feel happy.
We'll ask her how she's doing and all that kind of stuff.
There's a lady at the bank who gives her a lollipop and stickers every time she comes in.
We were getting some groceries.
She said, let's get some flowers for the lady at the bank.
So we got our flowers.
I mean, of course.
I mean, without wanting to say, we just program our kids.
I mean, She speaks English because we speak English, and your kids are speaking the language of emotions that you have taught them, or the people you've left your children with have taught them, the daycare workers or the mother-in-law or whoever.
They are simply doing what you have taught them.
I mean, if we raise a child as a Pentecostal Christian, we are not then surprised when they become Pentecostal Christians, right?
That's not, oh my god, I don't know where she got this from, right?
But what happens, of course, is that children reflect back to us the best and worst within us.
And we all love to pick and choose the best.
Absolutely.
Chip off the old block, right?
Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Look at that concentration.
Look at that stability, right?
But when the child reflects back to us negative or destructive behaviors, particularly emotional behaviors, well...
That's a little harder to stomach, and a lot of people then like to blame the child.
But, I mean, the first place to look is in the mirror.
If you want to change the child, for heaven's sakes, don't even imagine changing the child.
I mean, that's like pushing a shadow thinking you're going to move it.
No.
The child's behavior is the shadow cast by the monolithic emotional presence of the parents.
And so, if you want to change your child's behavior, don't even think about your child.
Think only of changing your own behavior and see what happens.
And how would you recommend that parents might start becoming more mindful in that way and going on the roads of more healthy emotional expression so that they can model that to their children?
Well, I think that...
I think really what we're talking about is...
I think...
I shouldn't say what we're talking about.
The way that I approach this is a question of ethics.
and I've argued before that ethics is fundamentally memory, that's all it is ethics is fundamentally just memory so my daughter was playing with some kids catching the ball and there was some boys like who were 8 or 10 and they were catching the ball all the time right and unfortunately they weren't raised in such a way to be inclusive of the younger kids because it was just win-win-win or whatever right and That's all it is.
So, you know, I sort of stepped in and made the game a little bit more egalitarian by, you know, making it more challenging for the boys and so on.
And then afterwards I said, you know, I said, you know, when I was a kid, you know, I was the youngest kid in the whole boarding school of like a thousand kids.
I was the very youngest kid.
I was only six.
And so I can really remember what it's like being kind of frustrated at being smaller.
I mean, when you're a kid, that's huge.
I mean, it would be like me playing basketball in the NBA. I mean, what the hell would I do but run into people's kneecaps?
It wouldn't be much fun at all.
And I really remember what that's like.
And just remembering your own childhood, which may take the aid of therapy or journaling or whatever, but if you remember your own childhood with sufficient accuracy, It seems hard to imagine that you could not be a vastly improved parent.
But of course, a lot of people, you know, the past is in the past.
We, you know, we have no rear view mirrors in this car, forward, onwards only.
And I think really work at remembering your own childhood and your own history, I think, is really important.
Now, of course, if people have had difficult childhoods, then, you know, trauma in childhood impairs the memory significantly.
And so maybe there's not much that can be remembered, in which case, you know, I think journaling or therapy, therapy in particular, I'm a huge fan of, is well worth it.
But if you remember your own childhood with sufficient clarity, I think that you can't really help but have necessary empathy for what your own children are going through.
And to recognize that the world that is familiar to you is extraordinarily unfamiliar to your children.
I think there are a couple of things that are really, if I'm going to give a few tips out.
The first, of course, is with infants to recognize that needs for them are identical to panic.
And they seem domineering or dominant or crying or yelling or whatever about For babies, I mean, imagine if you were dropped in the jungle and you're a diabetic and you don't have any insulin and there's a bunch of people around you, you don't speak their language, they're dressed in, you know, loincloths made out of bird feathers or whatever, and you need to get insulin, like, in the next hour or you're going to get seriously ill.
You would really be kind of panicking and freaking out because you wouldn't know how to get what you desperately needed, and so you'd get pretty upset pretty quickly if your needs weren't being met or if people didn't respond or whatever.
But that's what it's like for a baby.
I mean, babies, they need what they need, and they don't have a way of knowing when it's coming if it ain't coming now.
And it is life or death for them because they know deep down if they don't get food in a day or two, they're dead.
And so I think really recognizing where babies are coming from, I think, is really key.
And I'm sure we can conjure up a lot of scenarios in our own heads about how to identify with where a baby is.
I think that's really, really important.
And also to recognize that how your child is going to grow up It's so immensely dependent upon the culture that you take for granted, but which is utterly unfamiliar to the child.
I think that's really, really important.
I mean, I'm just thinking about religious instruction, though it could be any other kind of cultural instruction.
But with religious instruction, I mean, we all know the basic reality.
Born to a Hindu household, you'll become a Hindu.
Born to a Muslim household, you'll become a Muslim.
Christian household, atheist household.
I mean, so to recognize that the child...
is like water poured into the vessel called culture and if the child were born you know sometimes 20 miles away they'd be a completely different they'd have a completely different world outlook or if they were born one house over if you're in a multicultural neighborhood then they would have an entirely different mindset and recognizing the adaptability of children to their culture to their cultural surroundings And that it's unfamiliar.
And that it's kind of unjust and unfair to impose culture upon children.
Because it shapes their personality in such a fundamental way that they don't have any control over.
It's not empirical.
Right?
It's not facts.
It's not philosophy.
It's not truth.
You know, if something's factual, we call it science or geography or whatever it is, math.
Culture is the stuff that isn't true, but it's portrayed as true.
Right?
Religious instruction is cultural, but we have to present it to children as if it's factual.
And this confusion between culture and facts, which is really the only way that culture survives, rather than just being called falsehood, this confusion between culture and facts, I think, is one of the root causes of how children are harmed in society, even by some of the most well-meaning parents.
You simply cannot present your culture as a fact.
Right?
I'm still trying to figure out how to explain what a country is to my daughter.
You know, we go through these lines when we travel and go to speeches or whatever.
I can't say, well, this is America and this is Canada because that doesn't mean anything.
She's going to interpret that as a fact.
It's not a fact.
It's a narrative.
It's a story.
It's cultural.
It's political.
God help us.
Right?
To impose culture as a fact is incredibly harmful to children.
And what it does is it It undermines in a very powerful and destructive way.
It undermines your credibility as a parent.
Because if the child doesn't think that you know the difference between stories and facts, the child is not going to respect your cognitive abilities.
And that, I mean, that sounds like, oh, the child will not respect.
It sounds kind of abstract, but that's really important.
And it's really frightening for children, if we remember these things correctly, it's really frightening for children to believe that the adults who are driving their society don't know the difference between fact and fiction.
Right.
Now, you've just spoken about some of the ways that the critical faculties of children can be hampered by the imposition of culture or stories presented as facts.
I'd like to speak a bit about how we can help cultivate those faculties and help our children think more logically or be able to reason.
I saw one recently today in an article that made me laugh.
A father was told that Mary won't let me play with the car.
Why should she?
And he said, because she's a pig.
To which he responded, so Mary should give you the car because she's a pig.
And obviously what naturally follows is that all pigs should let Mary play.
Play with the car.
When we last spoke, we had another example where you were talking about Smog, the dragon from The Hobbit, with your daughter.
What came up was, why is Smog so bad?
I joked that smog is so bad because he's got all those teeth and cannot smile.
But of course, that would mean that any creature who had lots of teeth but couldn't smile would be bad.
And we could read a lot of storybooks and find ones that weren't.
So that would not be logically consistent.
You pulled me out on that and said that my explanation wasn't causal.
And can you talk a bit about causality and logic?
You said that you think children are quite logical, but you help cultivate that.
Speak more.
Yeah, I mean, the question of why is more mean?
It's a great question.
And my goodness, what more important information could you give to a child than the capacity to determine good from evil?
I mean, if you can't differentiate between good and evil, you're kind of hosed as a human being.
I mean, I hate to laugh because it's such a serious topic, but it is her curiosity as to why a villain is a villain is a fascinating thing.
So, I mean, what we've talked about, her and I, is I have pretended to be a smorg.
And so she, of course, asked smorg, why are you so mean?
And, you know, because I'm lonely, because I'm angry, because this, that, and the other, right?
Fortunately, since smorg is very close to a dinosaur, we know that a lot of dinosaurs abandoned their young.
In fact, the young would sometimes have to flee the mother dinosaur because the mother dinosaur would view them as an exceptionally tasty snack.
And so, you know, the small could talk about, and we've done the entire history of how he was born, and what his dad was like, and what his mom was like, and what his childhood was like as a baby dragon, and how scary it was, and nobody protect him, and he, you know, the people who gave birth to him were scary, and mom looked at him like licked her lips, and he was like, whoa, I don't like that hungry look in her eye, and he had to run away and had all these adventures.
So we've done all of these kinds of Of stories, and she really understands it, of course, that if you don't have, you know, love, protection, security, and all of that, that it's a lot harder to be nice.
But the other thing, too, is I also don't want to give her a deterministic worldview, right?
In other words, everyone who has a bad childhood likes Mork the Dragon.
I can't believe the sentences I say.
Everyone must then necessarily become a fire-breathing pony and dwarf-eating monster.
No, I mean, so I also have to give the choice, right?
In other words, that Smaug made a series of, he definitely started with, you know, a long way behind even the starting line, but he made a series of choices then, and after a certain number of those choices, he couldn't Go back, right?
And so I, you know, talk about it in terms of like, if you eat enough sugar and you get diabetes, you don't really get to get better, as far as I sort of understand it, right?
And so if you make enough bad decisions, you can't then make good decisions anymore.
And that's why each decision is really important.
So yeah, Smog had a bad childhood.
But he also made the decisions to go and eat a whole bunch of dwarves.
You can't really undo that.
There's no restitution for treating dwarves like cheese-colored popcorn.
So he made enough bad decisions and he howied enough people that then he just couldn't be nice anymore because his heart had gone out.
I can't remember how he put it.
So I definitely want to help to understand that the childhood has an influence, but it is not purely deterministic.
Right.
Very wise.
And can you think of other examples in which we might have the opportunity to teach causality or at least logical thinking?
So if this premise is true, then what follows from your conclusion is a whole bunch of other things that we need to check whether they're true or not before we can say that your argument is sound or valid.
Yeah, I haven't done a lot of that yet.
And I'm trying to think.
I think, you know, where her particular interest is, is at the moment, her particular interest is who can be saved, right?
So if there are mean people in the world, you know, can we make them better, right?
So if I'm mean smorg or some villain from some movie she's seen, then she will give me presents or sing me a song or invite me to come dancing until I feel better.
Right.
You know, here, have some sugar.
It makes me feel better when I'm sad or upset or whatever, right?
So, there is a question in the world, which is how, if we see people who are unhappy, how can we make them feel better?
If we see people who are mean or angry...
Now, I mean, you understand, she's not met a mean person in her entire life.
And the longer, you know, that she doesn't meet a mean person, the happier I am.
The best way to protect children from mean people is to just not...
Expose them to mean people, and that way they'll be really surprised when one comes along and they'll know that it's something quite different.
So she hasn't had that experience, but she is quite curious, since she has had exposure to some fictional villains, can they be made better?
Now, I would love to join her in the world, which says that...
All mean people can be made better with the correct application of sugar and or peppy dances.
I would love in that world.
I'd love to live there too.
But scientifically and factually, this is simply not true.
You know, as you're probably aware, like 1 in 25 people, 4% of the population are just out-and-out sociopaths who have no conscience whatsoever.
They can do whatever they want without a twinge of guilt or remorse.
And they're not, as far as I understand it, the brain damage that I think is environmental that occurs early enough, is irreversible.
And so I can't give her the world of you can make everyone better by being nice.
I think you can make a lot of people feel better by being nice, but not everyone.
And of course, since she doesn't know anyone within a million miles of that kind of personality structure...
It is a challenge, which is how to explain to her, and how will she know the difference in all these things?
These are all just things which we're chatting about.
And I mean, I'm open that I don't know the answers, and I certainly haven't introduced her to the biomechanics of sociopathy, but...
But I do need to give her, obviously, you know, not tons of mean people in the world, you gotta run away from them.
And also not, you know, the fluffy, Disney-esque, everyone can be made nice.
Because that, unfortunately, is not true.
And I owe her the age-appropriate truth.
Right.
And what do these people miss out by not having the capacity to be nice?
This in-depth intimacy which you share with your family and the wonder of being in a friendship when someone turns around to you after a conversation and tells you, wow, that really helped me, and you feel touched that they even shared themselves with you,
perhaps sharing what we might call Those who are unrecoverable, those bad people miss out on, is really the incentive that is reserved for those who get pleasure out of helping others and contributing to their well-being.
Yeah, I mean, this is the problem.
You know, the problem with...
I know that this sounds like all kinds of medieval language, but the problem with bad people is that The part of them that knows what they're missing is the part of them that's missing that makes them bad, which is why you don't see sociopaths or even narcissists, narcissists a little more, but certainly not sociopaths or psychopaths.
They don't go for therapy because they don't think there's anything wrong with them, right?
Because, I mean, the part of them, they would have to have self-empathy to know that something was wrong with them, but self-empathy and therefore empathy for others is the first thing to go in that kind of brain structure.
So, You know, it's like asking a broken bridge to hold itself up, you know?
Sorry, we're broken, right?
So they can't be recovered as far as I understand it from that standpoint.
Right.
Well, I would like to thank you for sharing so much of yourself, so much of your personal experience and all these anecdotes which really helped to impress upon us the practical applications of your thoughts.
I've really enjoyed this conversation.
I hope you've enjoyed it too.
Maybe we'll get a chance to speak again.
Yes, thank you very much.
I really wanted to thank you for your sensitivity to these topics, which I've certainly consumed in your work.
This is really essential stuff.
If parents don't use any kind of intimidation, you'd be really amazed.
They really will be amazed what comes up.
We used to have this We had a centralized command and control economy, like throughout the Middle Ages and all that, and man, we were starving, right?
I mean, it was just 5 to 10% of the European population would starve to death in any given region in any given year.
It was wretched.
And once we stopped using coercion, you know, we got iPads.
I mean, we got airplanes, we got spaceships, we got the most amazing stuff.
And the same flowering of human creativity and potential occurs within the family I mean, there's this unbelievable flowering of communication, of imagination, of possibilities, of intimacy.
It's hard to describe for people who haven't been there, but...
You know, if you kind of lay down your weapons, you'd just be amazed at what flourishes, of what rushes in to flourish and grow in the absence of the shadow of the sword of culture and of intimidation and of spanking and of aggression and of impatience and all.
You really would be amazed if you stop doing that stuff and trust in what will replace it.
I mean, what replaces it is really quite astounding and frankly about the most beautiful thing that can be conceived of.
I think the thing we take most from this dialogue is that if we want to cultivate our children to reach their full potential, the first place to start is by cultivating our own virtues so that we have as much good to model to them so they can learn by our example as possible.
Yeah, you can't teach children a language you don't speak.
I mean, I can't teach them Japanese.
I don't speak Japanese.
Right?
So you can't teach children a language you don't speak.
And so, you know, in terms of self-knowledge and virtue of philosophy and so on, sticking with facts rather than stories, that's the language you need to learn.
And if you don't know it and you are a parent, you can, of course, still learn it.
So, yeah, I hope that people will take that out of what I'm saying.
And also for my listeners who may hear this, if you wanted to give your vital statistics for them to find more of your work, I think that'd be great.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
The channel is youtube.com forward slash the progressive parent.
One word without underscores.
That's the progressive parent.
There is also the progressive parent group on Facebook where sometimes people have raised questions and there's quite a few experts there on progressive approaches to parenting and education who are Happy and thrilled at the opportunity to share their experience and experience with anyone.
And yeah, the vibe on that group is great.
We really love speaking to one another.
Fantastic.
Well, thanks again.
I appreciate your time and yeah, I hope we can chat again.
Yeah, me too.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
▲
Export Selection