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July 8, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:51:31
3018 The Voices of the Voiceless - Call In Show - July 4th, 2015

Question 1: How honest should I be with my young kids when it comes to big issues like drugs - while trying to maintain their innocence? I'm afraid to lay the hammer of reality down on them too much or soon but at the same time don't want them to be ignorant of the world.Question 2: My young son can be temperamental and aggressive at times - how can I get him to calm down and listen when he gets upset?

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Good evening, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
Stefan Wallen from Freedom Main Radio.
A happy July the 4th to our ex-colonial listeners.
I hope that you're having a wonderful day masticating on the bones of the domestic animals, much as the masters know on our wallets.
And that may not be necessarily your toast for the evening, but you may want to think about it.
Hope you're having a great day.
Hope you had a wonderful time with friends and family.
Let's get on to the philosophy.
All right.
Well, up for us today is Serge.
He wrote in, and his question is, That's from Serge.
Well, welcome.
I'm sorry that you didn't work in Iraq, but how old are the kids that you're talking about?
They're nine and five.
So, you know, obviously a difference in approaches between the two.
Oh, absolutely.
And are there any particular topics that you find yourself skirting around?
Or not?
Are there any topics that you don't have to skirt around?
Well, there's a bunch.
The main one is probably drugs.
And there's obviously some things.
Obviously, my son goes to school.
He takes social studies.
He's always talking about government and stuff like that.
And I don't want to tell him too much of the truth about it.
The government he's in and how they're raping him, robbing him, etc.
Especially since you're sending him to a government school, which makes the conversation all the more challenging.
Hey, the evil institution, I signed you over.
Exactly.
It's like, hey, call your sister here.
She's in kindergarten.
Guess what I'm going to tell her now?
It's funny, especially in social sciences.
A friend of mine sent me some screenshots of his kids and their social science stuff.
And oh my god, it's such astounding propaganda.
Without the government, all would be anarchy.
Yes!
Or I was reading today about how Haircut.
You know, such an innocuous word that apparently there's going to be free haircuts in Greece.
And what that means is if you have an account with more than 8,000 euros in it, everything over the 8,000, I think, It's going to be, well, it might be taken 30% by the banks because, you know, the banks need the money.
And remember how when you need money and the banks have a lot of it, they're happy to give you free money?
It's just the same thing, but the other way around.
And in the article, there are fears that if this doesn't happen, there'll be anarchy, right?
Of course, with anarchy, even if it was the traditional nonsense that they talk about, with actual anarchy, you'd be able to defend yourself.
But when they suck your digital numbers up, Well, good luck with that.
I thought I had a kidney.
Apparently, it got downloaded and it's gone from my body.
No chance for defense.
The alternative to this, in fact, is anarchy.
Yes, the alternative to organized theft is voluntarism.
I will certainly grant them that.
But, of course, everyone thinks it means the opposite.
Yeah, so these kind of propaganda things are definitely cooking around the body and brain politic.
So why is your kid in school?
Why is he in school?
Because he has to, you know.
The government makes...
No.
Obviously, it's one of those situations where, honestly, I can't afford private school, or neither can we even afford to do homeschooling.
And actually, I've been starting to listen to you for probably the past five months, and I never got around thinking about the propaganda in public schools, and sure enough, there's a whole bunch.
I've been starting to do a lot of thinking.
I've been trying to do a lot of thinking over the summer.
As summer is going by, I'm working, thinking what can we do for possibly next year or even the year after that.
I've been trying to really think about what we can do.
Obviously, you know, me and my wife, we both work.
Thank God we have...
You've got a lot of obviously's.
Like, well, obviously the sun is going to rise tomorrow.
Obviously there's gravity.
Obviously my kid goes to government school.
Obviously my wife and I both work.
Obviously it's not, maybe obvious to you, but it's not obvious to me.
But yeah, so yeah, we're really trying to, at least I'm trying to think, and also the other thing would be...
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Why do both of you and your wife work if you have two kids?
I'm sorry, why we both work?
Why do you both work if you have two kids?
To support them, live in our house.
Why do you both have to work?
Well, for me, my wife, she's the type that loves to work, that needs to work.
However, she did quit her full-time job to become a freelancer so she could spend more time with the kids.
Obviously, they're, well, again, I said obviously, look at that.
All right.
Now, to be honest with you, Serge, this is probably completely unjust.
Sure.
But when I hear the word freelancer, do you know what I hear?
Tell me.
I hear the sound of lonely pennies falling down a well and it's called payment.
You know, I'm going to be a freelance editor.
In other words, I'm going to root through garbage like a raccoon looking for food.
So what's she making?
She makes, let's say, about $6,000 a month on freelancing.
Obviously, we're going to be double taxed at the end of the year, so we're trying to figure out what to do with the tax situation.
Wait, she's making $6,000 a month freelancing.
A, that shows me, right?
That shows me for being a prejudiced jerk.
But, holy crap, you can't live on $6,000 a month?
Plus, my income.
I know, but what if you stayed home?
I mean, can't you live on $6,000 a month?
That's $72,000 a year.
We would have...
Where we're living, it's...
But she's freelancing.
What does it matter where you live?
Yeah, no, I understand.
Actually, um...
I'm just shaking your tree a little bit.
You can do whatever you want.
You've got the stuff like physics, but it's not physics.
It's choice, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Everything is choice.
Can you live on $6,000 a month or do you have some ridiculous hookers and gambling habit that she's paying for?
No, not quite.
We bought our house.
We're living in a neighborhood that's great.
We live close to my parents, which they support us a lot and they actually help us a lot with the kids.
And I don't want to move Let's say, because if I have to move, I'll have to go further away from my folks, and that's going to cause, you know, obviously a little strain.
I definitely want my kids to grow up near my parents.
And actually, my in-laws aren't also not that far away either, so we're really trying to stay within the neighborhood.
And also, you know, we're very comfortable with the way, you know, our lifestyle.
We're very happy, very comfortable.
Things are going great.
Now the next thing is, now I want to figure out the school part.
And this is something I'm...
Well, hang on.
I mean, okay, so if you want to stay...
First of all, can your parents homeschool?
I don't know.
It's a possibility, right?
Absolutely.
You know, my mom is actually a saint, and she could probably...
She would do almost pretty much anything.
Also my dad.
Actually, if you're an atheist, don't send your children to a saint because she'll perform all these miracles and the kids will be like, whoa, magic.
She's a sorceress.
No, no.
It's a saint.
Sorceress is bad magic.
This is good magic.
This is God magic.
So that's very tough for them.
So they'll just maybe back off from that a little bit.
What's your mortgage a month?
My mortgage, it's about maybe $2,500.
Holy crap, you're living in a big place.
Or an expensive place, right?
Yeah, I would say more expensive.
What's that, $800,000, $900,000?
No, actually we got a decent deal, but then there's property taxes that come in.
No, no, I asked for your mortgage.
Oh, mortgage.
Well, the mortgage includes the property taxes.
So your mortgage is what, like $22,000?
It's about $22,000 plus, you know, then we have means because we live in a housing community.
So you're what, $600,000, $700,000?
I'm sorry?
What was that?
$600,000, $700,000, that's your place?
No, that's cheaper.
$500,000?
That was cheaper.
Do you put no money down?
Like, what the hell are you doing with your mortgage?
No, actually, I got a pretty good deal, low interest rates.
I did put money down.
It was about $425,000, I'd say.
This was in 2012.
Again, you know, I mean, within the mortgage itself, without property taxes, I want to say it's about $1,000.
Sorry, because when I'm calculating the mortgage, I always, because I get the bank statement and I see the, you know, because they include the property tax, you know, what's going to be included for the upcoming year, comes to $2,000.
So it's probably, I want to guess it's about $1,000, $1,000.
Wait, so we've gone from $2,500 to $1,000?
Right, right.
What are you doing?
No, no, no.
Let me start over.
Let me start over.
Oh my God.
At least don't waste my time like this.
It's precious.
It's valuable.
No, I know.
I'm mortal.
I know, I know.
It's $2,500 I pay towards the house.
There's maintenance fee, there's property taxes, and the mortgage.
Mortgage is about, I want to say about $1,200 plus, then there's property taxes, which is probably $900 or so.
Wait, hang on, hang on.
A month.
$900 a month property tax?
You're asking me to go into my bank statements now.
No, no, I'm just curious.
So it's about $900 a month?
That's more than $10,000 a year for a $435,000 place?
Where are you living?
Is it an apartment in the Vatican?
No, it's nothing cheap around here.
Wow.
Alright, and so then you're part of a homeowner's association, so you pay these rates.
Do you get like playgrounds and pools and stuff like that?
Yeah, pools, maintenance, you know, they mow the lawn, what have you.
Okay, and how much do you make in a month, just roughly?
Myself?
Yeah.
Minus...
Net about $5,000.
Obviously, without, you know, minus the taxes.
Wait, you said net minus the taxes.
I don't know what that means.
No, no.
I'm saying net.
I was just thinking out loud.
So your take-home is $5,000.
Yeah, take-home is $5,000.
And your wife's is $6,000 gross?
Yes.
What's that, $4,500 net?
Yeah, so we take out...
She's got deductions.
You can write off a bunch of stuff because she works from home, right?
Yeah, but it's been really rough of all these deductions.
Actually, we've got to talk to the accountant and figure out the whole new system.
Okay, so you're making some over six figures, right?
Yes.
I'm not saying it's all like money in your pocket, but that's sort of what's swirling around, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Absolutely.
Right.
And you can't afford any kind of private school, is that right?
They're really expensive.
I mean, it's like sending them to college down here.
Okay, so what are we talking?
Two grand a month?
Probably.
Right.
Right.
Do you get any deductions for sending kids to private school?
No, you don't.
You sound very certain of that.
You've looked into it?
I am more than positive because I've been trying to deduct taxes for their summer camps or even after-school care, and it's really nothing.
Right.
Okay.
So that's not something that's on the table like you would send your kids to some sort of private school?
It is.
Like I said, if we could really afford it and think that...
Without really hurting, I would say, our lifestyles and, you know, again, the kids are enjoying it.
Wait, wait, wait.
What do you mean without hurting your lifestyles?
And he said, like, I don't quite understand that.
I mean, if I can have additional expenses to the benefit of my children and shield them from government propaganda, I'd like to do that, but not if it means any change to my lifestyle.
No, that's fair.
I do want to lose weight, but I don't want to change my diet or exercise regime in any conceivable way.
It's like, well, then you don't want to lose weight, do you?
Um...
No, no.
And you're absolutely right.
And again, these are things I'm thinking through now.
This whole experience with realizing the government of schools is a really new thing to me.
Oh, yeah.
And again, I'm just shaking your tree.
I'm not saying do this or do that.
You understand, right?
I like it when people do that to me.
Like, have you thought of this?
And it's like, nope.
Let me just jump in for a second here, because you mentioned where you live, which I'll snip out in the final show, but in the general area where you live, there's a Montessori high school with a tuition for the entire year of $4,100.
$4,100.
So not two grand per month.
Actually, tell me which one that is.
I'll send you the link to it after that.
But if you send two kids there, they will break up one and sell them for parts.
So it's a challenge.
Actually, one of my kids started at Montessori, and...
Actually, it was a good experience, but that Montessori actually ended up being about $1,200 a month.
We started at $900, and they started jacking up the price of $1,200 a month, so I couldn't even send my daughter there.
Well, no, you could.
At that time, I couldn't.
We didn't make that much money.
You know, things have been good for us.
If you two kids run in sort of 8k a year, if this place is, right?
I mean, that's six weeks of your wife's income.
Well, that's not a problem at all.
Yeah, that's just, again, have a look and see.
And the reason I'm saying is that, you know, you want to plan for the future, right?
And you want to plan for the future insofar as, look, they're going to get government propaganda in Montessori school, right?
They're not going to get, you know, free-wheeling, you know, it's not going to be like, well, here's the experiments of Spanish anarchism in the 1930s.
Yeah, absolutely.
They're going to get man and society or person and bork or whatever the hell they call it these days.
They're going to get all that stuff.
But if you stick with these beliefs, right?
And they have a way of sticking to you, right?
They're like fucking burrs sometimes.
You can't get them out of your hair.
But if you stick with these beliefs and this is what you're going to tell your children is good and evil, right?
Because this is not aesthetics, right?
This isn't, well, you should like this style of art or this style of art or whatever.
I mean, what we're talking about here is good and evil.
Yes.
And when your kids get older, they're going to look at your beliefs and they're going to say, okay, so you knowingly sent us...
You know, like, imagine if I send my kid to Catholic school.
Uh-huh.
Right?
And Catholicism is not in the same moral category as statism.
I can live back to a Catholic, he can't take half my money at gunpoint, right?
Right.
So...
But if I send my child to a religious school to take the child to church and send them to Sunday school or whatever, right?
And then they find out that I'm a strong atheist who believes that religion is founded upon abusive lives towards children, I'm going to get some questions, right?
Sure.
And how are you going to answer those questions?
Like, Dad, you say the state is immoral, but you send us to a state institution to be educated.
Yep.
No, that's absolutely true.
And what you'll have to say is, I could have afforded it, but it would have meant adjusting my lifestyle.
And I'm, you know, I'm willing to take bullets for a cause, but man, I've got a lifestyle.
No, it's a living that, you know, everyone's enjoying, the kids are liking, and yes, and you're absolutely right, and this is why things have been turning, I would say, the past months.
You know, while I was listening to you, actually, I've been traveling quite a bit, unfortunately, and I've been listening to a lot of podcasts.
I'm like, man, gears are turning in my head.
I'm like, man, I really need to start rethinking a lot of things.
And so you're absolutely right.
I've been trying to figure this out.
How could we homeschool if we could?
I have no idea.
I just know the term homeschool.
I know very little about.
And I've been wanting to try and figure it out.
I know there are some associations, but I have no idea how it works.
I'd love to try and figure this out or either...
Again, most private schools that I know around, I went to a private school, and I know it wasn't easy on my parents either.
Wait a second here, wait a second.
Wait, wait, wait, sir, hang on.
Why am I stopping you here?
Huh?
Why am I stopping here?
Oh, that my parents sent me to private school.
It was a religious one.
That's not the point.
No, no, that's not the point.
And the biggest point for them to send me was for that reason.
Which reason?
Oh, for the religious part, for the Christian values.
So they had values that were going to be negatively affected by a government school.
But it took them some time to be able to afford it, especially at that time.
And I went there, I would say around fifth grade.
And that's what I'm looking to do to figure things out now so I could start sending my kids to either private school or to home school.
Again, years are turning.
Got to figure this all out and go forward with that.
Look, and the basic reality, as you know, is that courses don't advance without sacrifice.
Yeah.
Right?
They don't.
And I will argue that it is not a sacrifice to keep your kids away from government school.
In fact, I would argue it's quite the opposite.
That you may say, you're going to save some coin in the here and now, but when they get to be teenagers, you know, the most important coin any parent has is moral authority.
Yes.
Moral authority.
Oh, man, you lose that and...
The center cannot hold.
Things fall apart.
She's breaking up, Captain.
Moral authority is key.
To me, I'd rather live under a bridge and have moral authority than bathe in liquid gold and not.
With regards to my daughter and, of course, my relationships as a whole.
Now, moral authority doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong.
I mean, we want...
We want no government welfare state because it's immoral and destructive to the poor and so on.
But we certainly understand that it's a transition, let's say.
That people are going to have to make significant transitions to adjust to that.
Of course, will it take years?
No.
Will it take months?
No.
It probably would take, I don't know, a month or two.
It was like six months or 12 months and people would start to organize and sort things out and the community would spring back to life and people would get to know their neighbors and they'd support each other.
I mean, all that stuff would happen pretty quick.
Human beings are nothing if not adaptable, right?
And it struck me, you know, when I was mulling over quitting my software career, my executive career, my entrepreneurial career in the software industry, which, you know, Has some money attached to it, or had some money attached to it for me.
You know, I was offered a contract for $150,000 a year for like three days work.
A week.
And, you know, it's tempting stuff.
Wasn't quite that much money in podcasting.
And still isn't.
It sort of struck me that I was suggesting a society wherein people are going to have to make a lot of short-term sacrifices for the sake of a long-term advantage.
And could I really say, well, you see, the poor people should do without the welfare state.
But I can't possibly do without massive amounts of money flowing into my bank account.
Like, it just seemed very much, you know, excuse me, Mr.
Poor Person, your sad and tragic and starving visage is fogging up my monocle, so please remove yourself from my sight.
It just didn't seem quite right.
And so...
I wanted to have content within my own mind that sacrifices are worth it, that short-term losses for the sake of long-term gains, not in this case in terms of money, but in terms of helping the world doing right by the future and so on, paying it forward from the Enlightenment or from the Socratics onwards.
You know, I think I can say, yeah, make the sacrifice, people.
Now, I mean, because I did, took, you know, Monsters Paycut and all that stability and security and 15 years accumulated experience in an industry and all that and just, you know, set fire to it for the sake of seeing the glory of my logo reflected on low-lying clouds.
And, you know, you are, if you continue down this road, and I certainly hope that you will, But if you continue down this road, you are going to be in the position of saying to society as a whole, yeah, you guys are going to have to make some sacrifices.
Can you stand up in front of the pensioners in Greece and say, first of all, switch to Bitcoin.
Secondly, can you say, yeah, there's going to be a rough transition here.
That's what happens when you live beyond your means.
There's going to be a rough transition here.
And, you know, you can't say that from the hood of a Mercedes-Benz, right?
Right.
So, you know, you want society to make sacrifices for the sake of virtue.
And you, I think, are working on the premise that...
And it's not like government schools are evil and everyone's evil in it.
I'm not sort of talking anything like that.
I mean, that's a sort of complicated question.
But as far as shielding your children from immorality...
That's not that hard because children have a natural aversion to immorality.
They've done moral experiments on babies as young as three months old.
And like they do these experiments where there's like one puppet is trying to open a box and another puppet comes and tries to help them.
Helps the one puppet.
Like there's a bunny and then a frog comes along and helps the bunny open the box.
And children prefer playing with that toy as opposed to, you know, there's a bunny trying to open a box and a dog keeps jumping down on the box and closing it.
Like at three months old, they prefer playing with the helpful toy than with the mean toy.
And they actually have to be rewarded with eight graham crackers to begin to shift this, which is why democracy doesn't work.
But, you know, so children are naturally, instinctually aversive to destructive or negative behavior.
You know, we are tribal animals and we grew up in a society of significant, as you say, with your parents, right?
Cross-generational, vertical and horizontal altruism, helping each other out and so on.
Yes.
And so your kids are going to be fine being exposed to good and evil.
What they're going to have trouble with is the evil that is portrayed as the good.
And that's what government schools are all about.
And I think that's where the greatest chance of infection may lie.
Plus, of course, they're going to be with, well, they're going to be No, like that.
But I think there's a little bit more of the lower common denominator in government schools, which they're going to have to really kowtow to, if that makes sense.
No, absolutely.
No, and I completely agree with you.
I mean, I've I learned a lot actually this year.
My son just went through third grade.
I really started seeing things that I wasn't really happy about.
I even had a discussion with the principal, etc.
A lot of things started.
I started getting my eyes open towards holy crap, what are they learning there?
Even just the math itself.
Down here in Florida we have Common Core and I'm I am just shocked at how they just teach addition, multiplication, and, I mean, heck, I don't even know how to do half the crap that they're trying to teach the kids.
Yeah, I've heard about the Common Core, and I've heard there's a lot of rebellion against it.
Do you know what the purpose?
I think they're trying to teach things more conceptually, or, I mean, you've got more exposure to it, and I've only read a little bit on it.
What's the deal with the Common Core for you?
I think in the end it's all about money because that's what it's all about.
When I was approaching the principal...
What happens is...
Let me stick with Common Core because there's other issues that I had with the principal with the type of testing that they do, but that does follow Common Core, which is called here.
It was called Common Core, but they switched the name because no one liked Common Core, so they called it, hey, let's call it Flora Standard Assessment.
Pretty much, at least for the math part, you know, I'll give you an example.
If they say, okay, add 8 plus 6, you know, normally we add 8 plus 6 and we know the answer.
Here they're like, okay, 8 plus 6.
Now break down 8 into two 4s and 6, so add 6 plus 4 plus 4.
And I'm trying to show my kids, I'm like, you don't need to do this.
This 8 plus 6 is 14, you know?
I mean, do they not know that children have fingers?
I mean, doesn't match the point.
And there's just some things, you know, again, third grade, thank God, passed.
And unfortunately, I'm thinking about my daughter now entering also into first grade because she just went through kindergarten.
Thank God she actually had a really good teacher.
The funny thing is I was paying close attention, especially more towards the end of the year.
Again, once I started getting onto your podcast and your show, I started to like, you know, had the antennas up, started to look out for whatever little signs or anything.
Maybe I was a little bit too paranoid.
But Common Core, the idea is, yes, to conceptualize, but I think it's just a bunch of, you know, excuse the word, malarkey.
That's what we say down here.
In the end, it's really about money for the school districts, for the principals.
So they just created this thing called Common Core.
Again, I don't really understand it.
And if they don't teach the Common Core, then they don't get the money.
So to me, I don't even see...
I mean, if you have to kind of flash a dollar in front of the school, say, hey, take this and teach this and all they care is about the dollar, then I already am skeptical of what they are teaching if it takes a bribe.
Yeah.
And the thing with governments, too, is that you never hear, well, the way we've been doing it for the past 40 years was terrible.
people.
And so we need to reinvent this whole thing because It sucked before.
I mean, you never hear that.
It's all like, well, we're tweaking it, but there's never any admission of fault before.
And I assume that the educational industry just needs perpetual revolution to keep making money, because if the same shit works this year that worked last year, you don't get new consultancy fees.
Yeah.
Sorry, Mike, you picked something up on Common Core?
Yeah, I just found a top ten list from FreedomWorks about the problems with Common Core.
Yeah.
Go for it.
Just a couple little bullet points.
The ultimate goal of Common Core is to have every school district follow the same national standards, which means parents will not have a say in their child's education.
Teachers don't have much control over their classroom.
They have to just teach these standards and ultimately teach towards a test.
Common Core also has a hefty price tag, which will of course be paid by taxpayers in the state.
Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction estimates that the Common Core will cost the state $300 million.
California Department of Education estimates it will cost $759 million to implement these national standards that haven't been linked in any way, shape, or form to actual improved education for the children.
So we're spending a whole lot of money to teach towards a test that hasn't been demonstrated to actually improve actual education.
It's a one-size-fits-all education policy that assumes all students learn exactly the same way, which anyone should know.
Certainly not the case.
And then there's a lot of criticism about the whole teach-to-the-test phenomenon.
And that is, I'm sorry, that's absolutely true, and that was the issue I had with the principal.
They called some of the parents, like, hey, you know, look what we're going to, look at the new testing.
So we went there for one hour, and after 60-some PowerPoint slides, all they did was talk about The test.
And I asked the principal at the end, I'm like...
Because they said, oh, don't worry, we're not going to teach the test.
And I asked the principal at the end, I'm like, how can you tell me that?
After I spent one hour here in my life, 60 slides of the test, and you're telling me you're not going to teach my kid to the test.
And she looked at me like I had horns.
And she's like, yeah, but we have to assess them.
I'm like, are you serious?
I mean, this is how we're going to assess our kids?
Is...
Teaching them towards a test, just to pass a test so you could get pretty much more money.
Of course, she wasn't too happy with me.
But what happens, and this happened in Atlanta, like a whole bunch of teachers and administrators went to jail, or at least threatened with jail, recently because they basically would just Lying and fixing all of the students' test results, right?
Because Atlanta was supposed to be this economic miracle.
It's called an eraser, right?
And a pencil that you can put the right answers in.
It's an economic miracle.
The teachers can adjust.
So they got a whole bunch of money.
By doing very well on these, I don't know if they were common court tests or common tests or whatever.
And things got pretty savage.
Like, you know, people were really threatened who found out about this inside the teaching administration.
And significantly, it was dangerous times for anybody who wanted to speak up about this stuff.
And eventually this was sort of caught and found out.
And, yeah, some teachers got, like, years, and administrators got, like, years in jail for not just the cheating, but it's fraud, right?
When you cheat and there's money involved, it's fraudulent.
And because they got huge amounts of money for these tests that were good, and the tests weren't good, they just adjusted them, that was, of course, considered a fraud.
So, naturally, the taxpayers got all their money back.
No, wait, that's not...
The taxpayers now get to pay for the incarceration and the court time and the, I assume, millions of dollars in legal fees it was to pursue all this stuff.
And yeah, you know, strangely enough, when you pay people for good test results, they will often provide to you good test results.
Weird how that works.
But yeah, it's a brutal system.
And of course it's ridiculous because how on earth are you supposed to judge how good a school is when no one pays to go there?
How do you judge which is the number one box office hit movie in any given weekend?
Do you have essays handed in?
Which one made the most money?
Which one had the most attendance?
That's how it works.
What's a hit album?
An album that gets bought a whole bunch of times.
Of course, nobody buys albums anymore.
But you know what I mean, right?
So the market produces all of these tests of success, but in socialism, or in this communist school system, there's no standard, because nobody knows what's successful and what's not.
So you just have to have these...
Artificial standards and they're really dumbed down because basically you want as objective a test as possible, which means as retarded a test as possible, which means you've got like multiple choice crap, you've got, you know, fill in the blank with a number crap.
There's no essay questions because how the hell do you mark an essay question objectively, right?
I mean, you can always argue that stuff.
And so the conceptual thinking, communication, written, and oral argumentation skills that I would argue are very essential for success in the modern economy are completely bypassed because they need to grind through as many stupid numbers as possible because there's no objective measure called a price.
I mean, how do you know, how does society know whether the investment in education is worth it?
Nobody knows.
Because the way that you know whether an education investment is worth it is...
You know, like you see these matchbooks.
I don't know if they even have matchbooks anymore.
You can be a small engine repairman.
You can be a cartoonist.
You can be a dental technician assistant person head.
And people will pay a certain amount of money to go and learn these things because it will give them a certain amount of money when they graduate.
That's how you know whether it's worth the investment for each individual.
But the investment in school...
Or college?
Or arts degrees?
I mean, nobody knows.
It's all nonsense.
And this is why they're all so terrified of any kind of volunteerism thing, because then there's an objective metric called, can you get people to give you money for your services?
That's the way that it works.
So, as far as the reality...
Like, I was talking to my daughter about this, and I said, you know, when should kids learn about death?
She said, four.
And I said, well, why?
And she said, well, I kind of understand it then, right?
Because death is like, you know, for little kids, it's like sleep, right?
So then you wake up after a while, right?
No, my Buddhist three-year-old, right?
But...
So, you know, I think that she knows about war and she knows about...
There's some things she doesn't know about.
She doesn't know about torture and she doesn't know about sadism and really the dark triads of human personality structures and so on.
But yeah, she knows there are mean people in the world.
She knows that a lot of children get hit and yelled at and all of that.
And when we see a dysfunctional person or a dysfunctional child, well...
I talk about the things that may have produced that while, of course, retaining that the person still has a choice, right?
Influence and will is always a big challenge and it's a challenge that is continually being explored by science and by philosophy.
But saying that there's influences While also saying that people have a choice, right?
You know, so when it comes to drugs, we refer to it as, you know, alcohol is dizzy juice and drugs are dizzy powders.
And, you know, she's asked about it and I said, you know, because we had to talk about Rob Ford and it's a Canadian politician who has some self-control issues when it comes to food and dizzy powder.
So, you know, I said, well, you know, when people are growing up, if they're really frightened or hurt by their parents or preachers or teachers or whoever a lot, or their peers, their siblings, right?
50% of the sibling relationships are considered to be abusive even by mainstream definitions.
So, their brains get less good at being happy.
And they don't know that they're in constant pain until they take something that makes them feel normal.
And then what makes them feel normal makes their brains even less good at feeling happy, and so they get stuck in the cycle and all that.
But I said enough people know about bad childhoods and their effect on a person, and enough people know about that, that no one can say, well, you know, gosh, I had no idea that I had a bad childhood and that drug use had something to do with that.
And no one has, like, somebody doesn't sort of take heroin and say, well, I had no idea that it was bad for your health or addictive or would cause any problems in my life, you know.
Trainspotting!
Been out for a while.
And I'm sorry to interrupt you because this is actually probably the biggest issue because, you know, unfortunately my brother did die of an overdose.
When it comes to drugs, it's a lot harder for me to talk.
Your brother died of an overdose?
He died of an overdose.
Good God, Serge.
I'm so sorry.
No, it's okay.
It's not.
I appreciate.
I'm sorry.
It came up with my son, obviously since he's the eldest.
I haven't spoken to my daughter about this yet.
That's why this kind of question came up.
I did talk to him about it.
He sees a picture of a guy in our house.
He's like, who's that?
He was about He's nine now.
I'd say he was about five or six.
I was around the same age as my daughter right now.
I kind of explained to him what happened.
He obviously passed away.
How long ago did your brother die?
It was 13 years ago.
I know you brought the statistics of bad childhood.
I don't know, at least within our family, I actually never touched a drug in my life at all.
Believe it or not, I'm I'm in a rock band.
I'm a creative guy.
Never touched the drug at all.
You're the Brian May of the band, right?
I think I am Brian May.
Freddie would snort stuff that fell out of a lint dryer, but Brian May never apparently touched drugs.
Exactly.
If only I was as good as he was.
It was something that I grew up with, seeing the problems that caused the family.
Again, I would hate to say that it had anything to do with my parents.
I don't think so.
I don't know why he chose it, why he decided to start taking it.
I know it started out with glue in seventh grade.
I remember he told me that when he was in seventh grade.
He actually told me it started with glue and then went on from pot for many years.
And he went to the hard stuff.
I mean, the extreme hard stuff.
Then he got off it.
I think glue is pretty hard, isn't it?
I mean, in terms of its effect.
Yeah.
No, and I think that's where it started.
I think, you know, my mom would tell me that, you know, he was, especially growing up, you know, he was very, he was an introvert and, you know, very shy.
And I don't know if it was a peer pressure thing.
And sure enough, he started drugs and it was at a private school, another private school.
And, um, For many years, he abused lots of drugs.
I saw my parents struggle, do their best.
Got off of it.
My father's from Rome, and my mom's Swiss.
We were actually born in Switzerland.
He said, you know what, send me to Rome so I could get away from this lifestyle.
He went there.
For many years he started to clean up and unfortunately one day he relapsed and unfortunately he did pass.
And was it shortly after his relapse?
It was, yeah.
Because I think a lot of people who are clean for a while, they don't realize how susceptible they are to their old dosage when they haven't used for a while.
Yeah, and I think that's what happened.
I mean, if there was one any, let's say, silver lining is, because this happened right after my marriage to my wife, and he actually came down.
You know, we obviously had a little bit of falling apart.
You know, it was tough.
I mean, it was tough to...
Addiction, it's a devil in the house, right?
I mean, it's just brutal.
It's horrible.
And so, you know, we had a falling apart.
You know, I didn't talk to him for some years, or it was very, you know...
I was angry, I'll be honest.
I was just flat-out angry.
But sure enough, he came down for the wedding and we really talked it out and just said, listen, I love you.
We hugged.
I saw that he was getting clean.
He had plans in his life.
Everything was great.
He was there at the wedding.
We had a fantastic time.
Then he went back to Rome and unfortunately...
What was he doing in Rome, just out of curiosity?
Really, he was trying to get his life back together.
No, but what was, did he have a job?
No, no.
He, you know, and this is sometimes I disagree with my parents, and of course I didn't have kids at the time, and I'll be honest, I have no idea what I would do.
I really, and this is, this is the hard, this is the hard thing, you know, trying to teach my kids about this, because I do have a little bit of, I guess you'd say paranoia, that they would touch, you know, a substance that they really don't need to, you know, I mean, I never touched a drug, and, you know, mine is, That part of my life, you know, I had a...
Are you an older brother?
He was an older brother.
So you saw a little bit of...
I saw quite a bit.
When you might face the same crossroads, you saw the effects.
Right.
I'm not saying you obviously still had a choice.
I'm not saying it was causal, but...
Oh, I... You did see what I could do, right?
Yeah, and I knew I had a choice.
I mean, I would...
You know, when I was younger, sometimes I would hang out with him.
You know, he would...
Take out a joint.
He never offered.
In fact, he even told me, don't even do this crap.
And I didn't.
And I was never curious.
You know, I had friends that would, you know, smoke.
For me, I just never needed it.
I like, I don't know.
I looked at it.
I was like, eh, you know, again, seeing the destructiveness.
And also, I never had a curiosity for it.
I was like...
And do you know if anything difficult happened to your brother as a child?
That I don't know.
And again, you know, I just...
I had no idea if it was a peer pressure.
I mean, I could only base at least my childhood with my parents, because I remember you were talking about a lot of things come from parents' abuse, and it's really us in Miami, because the rest of the family lives in Europe.
They live in Switzerland and Italy.
So there's no other family members, and my experience with my parents has been great.
So I just don't know.
I'll be honest.
I really have no idea.
Every once in a while, I would like to talk to my mom about it, but I know it brings a lot of heartache.
So I try...
And it's something I think I should, and I really should talk to her about it and see what happened more for the sake of my son and my daughter.
To see what were the reasons, if they knew or...
For them, it was difficult, you know, coming to this country.
My father sometimes regretted ever moving here because of that.
Again, I wish I knew the answer.
I'm kind of just skating around.
He went to the same religious school, Catholic school?
No, no, he went to a different one.
I went to a Christian school considered Presbyterian.
He went to another private school.
He actually bounced around.
Wait, wait.
Sorry.
Why did you guys go to different schools?
Well, I was actually in public school first, and that was kind of like my point before.
Like, I was at a public school before.
Again, this was 1980s.
And my parents sent, actually, my brother first to the Christian school that I went to, and I think he got kicked out.
And was this before he had started using drugs?
Yes.
And why was he kicked out?
I don't know.
What was it before?
I'll be honest, right now, I don't want...
You know what?
But roughly.
I mean, he wasn't like five years into it, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
It was kind of new because he was going to public school and then my parents got the money, sent him...
So he had behavioral disorders.
And look, I'm not trying to say that getting kicked out of school means you're automatically crazy or anything like that.
But he had a challenge subjugating himself to the social standards around him.
I think so.
That's my gut instinct.
That's my feeling.
You know, just also...
Wait, wait.
Sorry.
I mean, this isn't someone you saw in a movie once you grew up with this guy.
No, no, no.
What was the age gap?
Five.
Five years.
Five years.
So five years older.
So did he...
What was his relationship like with your parents?
Well, obviously it was tough.
You know, my parents did everything they could.
Like I said, there were some things I disagreed with them, you know, that they would still provide, you know, again, at the time, you know, they would provide him a I'm no expert on it, but as far as I understand it, you don't want to be...
If you provide money, then you remove the benefits of sobriety, which is that you've got to get up and get a job and go to work.
And so, you've got stuff to lose.
And you also take structure out of people's lives.
You know, I didn't like having to have so many jobs and work so hard when I was a kid.
But it should give me a lot of discipline and a lot of structure that I wasn't getting at home or even particularly in school.
Like, you just...
You know, sorry, it's, you know, 6 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday, you've got to get up and do your paper route.
And it's, you know, you've got to go to the bookstore and you've got to do all the crap that needs to be done there.
And, you know, sorry, your friends are going out, but it's 8 o'clock at night, you've got to go clean all the doctor's offices in the mall because that's your job.
And it gives you a certain sense of discipline and structure.
That if, you know, people are just shuffling money at you, and that's a callous way of putting it, you know what I mean.
If they're giving you money without consequences, it doesn't signal trust in your capacity to get a life that's structured.
I honestly think my parents were lost, and they weren't sure what to do, and obviously the last thing they wanted him to be is this...
Hang on, hang on.
But dealing with addiction is not an unknown voodoo science.
I don't think that there's anyone who says it's a great idea to give addicts money.
When you say they were lost, it's not like this is...
Again, I'm no expert, but I've watched a couple of Dr.
Phil's, and this is not unknown stuff.
It's not completely obtuse about things that you can do when you're dealing with an addict.
No, I know.
Obviously, this is way before Dr.
Phil and I don't want to make excuses for my parents.
I don't know what went on in their heads.
I don't want to be like, oh, this is a complete guess.
It's not even fair for me to even discuss why they did what they did.
All I knew, at least for me, is I thought what they were doing was crazy.
And I didn't agree with it.
Did you have conversations with them about that at the time?
Yeah, I did.
And did you say this is not a good way to handle it?
This is going to end badly?
Yeah.
Even though I was a little kid, or a teenager, because obviously I grew up witnessing all this stuff, I just remember my mom just kind of looking in despair.
And that's one of the few memories that I try to block out, unfortunately, a lot of these memories, is that For her, she, you know, it was tough, you know, and I don't think she even really gave me a good answer, you know, thinking about it.
All I remember is like, you know, that they said we're doing our best and that's all, you know.
Well, I think for the sake of your kids, Serge, I think you've got to exhume these bodies.
I think you've got to figure this stuff out.
Sorry to interrupt.
This is, as you know, and I can only imagine, but this is about as bad a situation as could happen to a family where you have a decade or more of drug addiction and relapse and so on, and non-functioning, followed by...
Yes.
I mean, that's about as bad as it can be in a family, because it doesn't even have the dignity of an illness.
And, I mean, that's a lot of family history to unearth, and I think it would be well worth doing it.
I'm not trying to cause pain to anyone, but it seems important to me to try and figure some of this stuff out.
Because these are the people that get a big influence on your kids, right?
Yeah.
And I kind of see how they are with my kids.
It's...
How would you put it?
I mean, it's not a substitute, but you could just see both my parents...
I mean, I've seen them so loving.
I mean, they were great with me.
Don't get me wrong.
It's just I just see this...
It's a whole different level of love that I've never seen.
Perhaps it's the idea of the grandkids, but I also, I just have a sense that it has to do with the loss of my brother.
And kind of going back a little bit, is I promised my kids, you know, also to myself that, you know, I want them to be honest with me and I want them to be open with me.
Because I think a little bit could have been, you know, the old time schooling, you know, there's certain things you don't talk about, you know, maybe when things started with him.
I want my kids to be honest.
No matter what they're going through, I want them to come to me.
And I told them, listen, I'm not going to judge you.
If you're doing something bad, we'll talk about it, discuss it, and go from there.
But I want them to come to me.
And that's why I promised them that I would never get angry at them, ever, for doing something bad, so to speak.
Whether it's drugs or not.
And that's where I think the question came from, this idea of like, Now I have this family history.
How do I talk to them about this?
Well, first of all, it's a little difficult to promise your future emotional state.
I know.
Right?
I mean, you can't promise to never get angry.
I mean, that's an autonomous nervous system response, right?
But it's something I'm striving for.
You can promise that you'll handle it in a positive and constructive way.
But yeah, listen, I mean, I've talked to a lot of people about history, like I've been doing this show now for, I don't know, well, at least as far as sort of early writings and early podcasting go for almost 10 years.
And I've been doing these call-in shows for probably seven or eight or maybe more.
I can't remember.
And I've talked to a lot of people about their family history.
And, Serge, I'm telling you, I don't know a more foggy landscape than the one you've provided to me.
And that simply tells me that there's information that you need to have.
Yes.
And that people have.
And I know it's an incredibly painful thing to...
To go back to, I imagine, the worst times in your family life.
But it is a great mystery.
You're casting this net about peer pressure.
Peer pressure is a symptom of a lack of connection within the family, in my opinion.
Again, I'm certainly no expert in my opinion.
Why are we susceptible to peers?
Because we don't have a strong enough connection.
And exploring that, I think, is important.
Now, whether you're going to get facts or not, I don't know.
Whether it's just too painful for your parents to talk about at the moment, I don't know.
Whether they want to just leave it in the past and move on with their lives, I don't know.
But, I mean, it was your brother.
And things went haywire in a way that is...
It's unbelievably heartbreaking.
And it's a slow heartbreak, because it goes on and on, and then he dies, and that's not like the end of the chapter, right?
That just goes on and on and on, too.
I'm incredibly sorry for that experience for you.
I mean, this dominates your childhood, I can imagine.
Yeah, these are tough questions.
And right now, my concern is that because you don't have any real answers, you're doing this religious thing.
Like, I don't know where the universe came from.
God made it.
Well, I don't know what happened with my brother.
My parents did the best they could and everything they could.
It must have been peer pressure, right?
Sure.
You have to say, I don't know what happened.
Yeah.
But don't make up answers that you don't have evidence for.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
You're absolutely right.
And that's my concern, is that we have, particularly when we have these staggering heartbreaks in our life, we want to find a cause, we want to find a reason.
No, I've thought about this countless times with regards to my own family.
What happened if I could...
There was a magazine that used to be around called Omni, which was kind of cool, like it had 0321 or something like that on its side.
And it was a science fiction magazine.
And I remember one story about an ant farm that if anyone could ever find and send to me, I'd love to read again.
But another story was kind of prescient in a way in that there were these drones, these tiny little mosquito-like drones that you could buy and they would fly around and record everything.
And I remember at one point, one of them got stuck in a cupboard because someone forgot about it.
They closed the closet door and the drone got stuck in there for like three months and the footage was all sort of useless.
But you could get these tiny drones to follow you around and film everything.
And, man, I mean, first of all, I think if we could just get one of those for someone's entire life and then pore over it in great detail and see them from, like, conception onwards, it would be fascinating.
But I've thought about, you know, what is it that I can't see down the tunnel of time that is closed by the avoidance of others?
You know, what do I not see...
About my mother's childhood?
What do I not see about my father or my brother's childhood?
Or things that happened early?
And I wonder if all hostility would melt away if we knew enough history.
You know, if we understood enough about our origins and the origins of those who came before us.
Would everything make sense?
Would everything that people do make sense if only we knew enough of their history?
And there's so much history that is obscured to us.
It's not like a ministry of truth that is suppressing and shooting dissidents or anything like that.
I mean, maybe it is sometimes, but it is that either people don't remember or the remembering is so painful for them that it's exactly the same as not remembering.
But, you know, if I could follow my mother's, like if I had a little video drone that I could send back in time to get me footage of my mother's time during the war, would everything that happened afterwards make sense?
Right.
And, uh...
That's why I think exhuming a history is important.
My mother was violent and dangerous and so on, but I wonder if there were not incidents in her history that if I knew them, if I knew about them.
She's told me stories of the war that she suffered under.
A Russian commander driving through the village where she was being kept with other children and so on.
Her stepping out in front of the tank to tell him that they were peaceful and there were no soldiers and this is what she did.
Her Tiananmen Square moments.
And I don't disbelieve her at all.
I think that these things happened.
She's not that way inclined to just make these things up.
But I wonder what else happened.
She tells a story of having to leave Dresden because the bombers were finally coming, a thousand.
Plane bombing road over Dresden, which had been formerly spared because of art treasures and civilian population and so on.
You know, this Jupiter complex of thunder from the sky and this unbelievable rage that was still playing out across Europe.
A thousand plane bombing rate created a firestorm.
That sucked air into the city to feed the unbelievable fire.
And her mother was left behind.
I think she was working at some office and had to stay.
And when they went back to the house that my grandmother was staying in, the only thing that they could ever find was the clasp from her purse.
The clasp that closed her purse.
That's the only thing they could find.
And they never found her.
They never found anything else.
Just that one little clasp of her purse.
And so I know a number of the stories from my mother's childhood in the Second World War, but I don't think I know enough to explain what came afterwards.
And I think that if I did know enough, and this is part of my hunger to root around in people's histories and my hunger to bring light to the darkness from which choices seem to spring fully formed, which they're not.
There's an evolution to choice and consequence and possibility that I wonder if we could find out enough about the past if everything that people did would make sense.
Now, again, that's very causal and that's very deterministic.
Like, well, if I knew this...
Then my mother's decisions or other people's decisions who were, you know, challenging or difficult or abusive, then those people's decisions would make sense.
And I think a lot of us are on the trail of this unlocking the code of history that breaks the enigmas of the present.
And, you know, people who do brain scans are doing it, part of the gene war stuff.
I just recorded part two, which is going out on Monday.
And there is this desire to delve right down deep into the spinal fluid of history and say, well, you know, I need to see these dominoes.
And these dominoes don't mean that nobody had any choice, but it helps understand the forces that shape the choices that are made.
And, you know, it's almost perfectly clear to me That if someone like my mother had grown up in a...
Like my daughter, right?
You know, my daughter is like the negative of my mother, right?
I mean, I'm trying to give to my daughter the childhood my mother had the opposite of.
That's the only thing that I could learn from that kind of history is the capacity to provide the opposite, right?
If you see something that dismembers someone, then you...
Steer yourself in the opposite direction.
I have some sense of the childhood that my mother had and I am striving with all of my might to provide the opposite.
This is the only thing that you can learn from this sort of stuff.
Remember that guy who didn't buy health insurance?
He got really sick and lost his house.
I'm going to buy health insurance.
It's the only tribute you can pay to these disasters.
Is to march resolutely in the opposite direction, looking back only to make sure you're heading still directly away from it.
That's the best that you can do.
And I absolutely know for sure that if I were my mother's father in the environment in which I'm raising my daughter, my mother would not have turned out the way that she did.
Again, that doesn't mean there's no such thing as free will, but dear God, I mean, to say that there's no such thing...
That there are not things that we would rather people had to choose between, right?
Like that's Sophie's choice, which if one of your children do you want to die?
Well, she has free will, but her free will would be to never be in that situation where she had to make that choice.
And my daughter is my tribute to the deep knowledge that I have of my mother's history, even though I don't know probably the triggering events which she may not even know, that Produced who she was.
I can get enough of a sense of what she was broken by to make sure to shield my daughter from all such negative influences.
I hope that helps, and I hope that you can...
I think my sense is, and look, I don't want to say this may be my particular quest.
I don't want to sort of impose it upon you.
But I think this kind of family disaster is, you know...
I think that's the biggest question.
How do I go about taking something like this and talk to my kids about it?
What is the age appropriate?
Is it when they ask?
For example, they see the picture of my brother.
My son has already asked me about it.
I spoke to him about it, obviously, in terms I think that he understood.
Is there anything more I need to tell them?
Let's say I do talk to my mom.
I found out more information.
How much of that information do I pass or do I talk to them about?
Oh, I think proactive is best.
I think proactive is best because children sense everything.
Children sense everything.
And you want to be proactive because otherwise it looks like you're hiding something.
Right.
That's a good point, yeah.
Now, obviously you don't have to show them what a junkie's body looks like in an alley or anything.
I mean, I understand there's still appropriate levels of sharing.
Yes.
I would say that, you know, why is it important?
Well, it's important because you have concerns and fears, obviously, about the future with regards to your children.
I mean, the degree to which there may be a genetic susceptibility to particular types of addictions, I don't know.
I mean, that's still a question that's, as far as I understand, it's so very much up in the air.
But I share my family history with my daughter because it's interesting, because it's, you know, everybody's with us.
Even the dead.
Everyone is with us.
Everyone's in the same house.
All the way back.
My family came over with William the Conqueror in 1066.
Battle of Hastings.
Well, all of those dead knights are still with us because they created an aristocracy that my family was part of for more than a thousand years.
Less than a thousand years, to be fair.
So, the knights who fought in that battle, who were granted the land That my family managed for centuries, well, they're all with me because they created a particular environment that had me land where I am.
Nobody dies in any fundamental way in terms of their effects on the future.
Maybe kids raised by wolves that no one ever meets.
I don't know.
But your brother is still in the house.
Oh, he is absolutely.
I mean, he's in my thoughts on this every day.
And I don't doubt that.
I don't doubt that.
And so, your children should know everything about you in an age-appropriate context.
And in this situation, since your brother is part of you, they need to know about that.
And I think being proactive is important.
Okay.
He's there.
He's at the table anyway.
You might as well acknowledge his existence, right?
Oh, no.
Absolutely.
I mean, like, my thing is, you know, I'm looking at it, what you just said.
I think the proactive completely makes sense.
A lot of times, you know, I wanted them to be curious and ask, and I'll be honest, like, well, this is, you know, this is your uncle, you know, and tell them the story.
Obviously, trying to find the right words and the correct words to use for them, but I was really kind of waiting, you know, see if my daughter would ask one day, but I'm really kind of thinking like, all right, you know, maybe this is true.
Maybe it's time to be a little bit more proactive than...
It's honesty, right?
No, it is honesty.
It's absolutely honesty.
I would never hide anything from them.
They could ask me absolutely anything.
And I have no problem being flat out honest with them.
I mean, as much as I'm asking them to be honest with me, I want to be as, you know, I want to be extremely honest with them.
But the question is, you know, My original question was like, you know, do I bring it up or, you know, do I, you know, if they ask these questions, how hard do I hit them with, you know, you know, with the answers?
I mean, there's all these...
What answers do you have?
And what do you mean by the answers?
I mean, my experience, it's my experience, you know, and, you know...
But if you look, I'm telling you, Serge, if you tell them like you're telling me, they're just going to get more confused.
Okay.
Right, so the real honesty is, I don't know what happened.
Oh, why?
Right?
Right.
I don't know why it happened.
I don't know why my parents didn't listen to my advice.
I don't know why they say, well, we didn't know any better when I was 13 or 14 or 15 knew better.
Yeah.
I don't know why.
Sure.
I had, you know, I don't know why we as a family have never really sat down and gone through all of this.
Because, I mean, when your parents come to visit, they bring his body with them.
His death is part of their DNA. And the degree to which it is experienced, in other words, the degree to which your brother's descent into drug addiction may have been environmental and that there was something in the environment, is the degree to which it needs to be talked about because there may be echoes of that environment still around, right?
That's right.
That's number one.
Number two, the degree to which we say, okay, well, maybe it's genetic, right?
Well...
A genetic susceptibility, like if your kids had a genetic susceptibility to heart defects, wouldn't you get them checked out a lot?
Wouldn't this be a very important part of your conversation with your kids?
Yeah.
Right?
So either it's genetic or it's obviously probably some combination of the two, right?
But if there's any echoes of the environment that produced him around, that needs to be addressed.
And let's say it's zero and all genetic.
Well, your kids may be susceptible to that as well.
And that's something that they need to know.
yeah yeah Thank you.
Because the last thing your parents and you would ever want, and I'm not saying it would, would be for any repetition.
It probably won't be as extreme, but any kind of repetition.
No, absolutely.
You know, and...
No, this is...
I mean, like I said, this has been great.
Something I definitely want to talk to my parents about and really nip this in the butt.
I don't know if that's the right term, but...
Get really down to the heart of it and really talk to my kids about it.
And your nine-year-old is only a couple of years away from significant peer pressure, along with hormones, right?
Yeah.
So, listen, Serge, I hate to stop.
I gotta move on.
But listen, I really appreciate you calling in.
I appreciate your honesty and your openness.
I really appreciate the dedication you have to your kids and their welfare.
And I really appreciate the openness that you've had to this crazy-ass podcast conversation for the last couple of months.
And, you know, hopefully you can call back anytime and let us know how things are going.
No, absolutely.
And I really appreciate everything.
You know, thank you for taking this call.
My pleasure, man.
Take care.
Take care.
All right.
Thank you, Serge.
Let's try and call Chantel.
Chantel Elise got a pretty face.
Now dialing rotary phone.
Well, that's the other option.
We do have a landline.
Sending Mel Gibson on a mad sprint through Gallipoli to deliver your message.
Wait, I think my references are getting like Dennis Miller.
I was going to say, I have no idea what you're talking about.
You got it.
It's the movie Gallipoli.
You've never seen this movie with like a very young, like pre-fascistic Mel Gibson?
I haven't even heard of the movie, let alone seen it.
Sorry.
Oh, it's worth watching.
It's worth watching.
I'm a standing star.
I'm a standing star.
I smoke and run.
Anyway, you'll see it.
It's worth looking at.
World War I movies starring Bullets.
Oh, Chantelle, are you on now?
Yes, yes, I am.
Oh, okay.
Your audio sounds great.
All right.
Oh, yeah.
I'm doing it from my phone now.
All right.
That's your phone?
Yes, my phone.
Well, Skype on her phone.
Yes, Skype on her phone.
Oh, okay, okay.
Yes, yes, yes.
All right.
I was going to say, I will pay you a million dollars for that phone.
Actually, I was going to say, My phone sounds like...
Because, of course, you know, in Canada, sometimes other people...
Like, sometimes there's someone else using a cell phone in Canada.
And so, naturally, it's, you know, huge problems.
Like, we all have to schedule who gets online because Canada has a lot of government monopolies when it comes to telecommunications.
Yes, you're right.
You're right about that.
All right.
So, what's on your mind, Chantel?
I'll read the intro and you guys can go from there.
She's got a nice voice and a great phone.
Do you have your text, Chantel?
Go ahead, Chantel.
If you want to just jump right into it, read your questions.
That's cool.
Okay.
I'm not looking at my questions, actually.
My main question, ultimately, I'll just go with it because I know what I wanted to talk about.
It's my son, ultimately.
I I'm having...
And he's a good boy.
He's a really good boy.
But I have a lot of trouble disciplining him.
It seems like he has this temper.
When he gets really upset, when he's having a hard time accepting something, he kind of just...
He freaks out.
And I've tried so many different maneuvers on that.
And I always think that you give...
I'm kind of, I'm getting very, it's discouraging sometimes because I really put a lot of effort and I don't know, I'm not getting good results.
And that's a hard question to ask, right?
I mean, it tears at the heart to say where things are, right?
I mean, I say that like great, like really courageous, and like kudos on you.
I wish parents reached out for any help sometimes when they feel overwhelmed.
So I appreciate that.
That's very, very brave of you, and I just wanted to thank you for that.
Thank you.
That's the nicest thing I've heard all day, actually.
Excellent.
All right.
Thank you.
Can you give me an example of how this manifests?
Of how this temper shows up?
I don't know how...
I think his brain kind of works.
He gets into these zones.
So sometimes he's very great and enjoyable and loving.
Some other times he seems to...
Like nothing happened.
Let's say I pick him up from daycare.
And like sometimes with his father especially, you know, often times it goes so well and like he loves going in his dad's truck and all that.
A lot of times though, he'll go pick him up and he's just like, no, I don't want to go with you.
And you know, nothing happened to have any type of, and then if you'll just say like, oh, come on, it's fine.
Mama's busy or something like that in that example.
He'll just freak out.
It's like sometimes when he wants to have something going, like, I don't know, when he has an idea in his head and it goes another way, he gets very, like, screamish.
Wait, does he, sorry, he screams, like, at the daycare, or is that in the car, or at home?
Like, any type, like, sometimes his anger will be more...
Like, normal.
Like, he'll express himself more.
But I don't know if he's just having trouble expressing himself when he's...
But he tends to, like, just kind of like...
Just, like, continue in this little ongoing thing for, like, a while.
And sometimes it's very loud.
Where, like, you know, it's kind of like if there's people around.
Like, I don't seem to know how to quiet him down.
Like, he kind of...
It's hard for me to explain it.
He's not so much...
He's, I don't know.
And how old is he?
He's three, but he's about to be four, like soon, October.
Right.
And when did he first go into daycare?
He's been in daycare since about two and a half.
Two and a half years?
Yes.
And before that?
He's technically considered right now in like preschool, I guess.
Right.
And from zero to two and a half?
He was at home.
With you?
Yes.
And you were home full-time with him?
Yes.
And how did that go?
Well, he developed a little late, so I would have to say this would be more my observation from like 18 months forward.
You know, I mean, good, like very routine.
He'd be easy to put to bed.
A lot of stuff, you know, he was very good at.
But always when he gets upset is where I have trouble.
He's always had kind of this attitude, this temper.
Hard to...
I don't know.
You mean from being a baby, from a newborn?
Yes.
Like attitude, loving, smiling, like everything.
It's not like he's a...
But when he gets upset or when he doesn't want to hear no or...
Sometimes he can accept the no, but oftentimes he doesn't.
This is what I mean, just kind of tantrums, little tantrums.
Sorry to interrupt, but attitude is...
I was talking about when he was a baby, right?
Yes.
Attitude is a pretty strong word.
Attitude is one of these very, very volatile words that parents have.
Like, I don't need this attitude.
I'm not saying you would say that, right?
But attitude is a very loaded term to use with a kid, if that makes sense.
Because attitude is something that is chosen and is not reactive and is bratty.
Yes, yes, yes, you're right.
Okay, that's probably a bad choice of words.
No, I'm not saying it's a bad choice of words, because if that describes a little bit of how you felt or feel about him as a person...
Well, that's kind of because that's what I feel what he does.
I feel like he's giving me attitude, kind of.
Okay, let's unpack attitude then, right?
So what does that mean to say he's giving you attitude?
Like...
If I would describe it when I was a teenager, if I'd have a conflict with another girl, right?
Whatever.
Yeah, like this type of...
That's what I'm kind of considering in my head as attitude.
He kind of has it in like a baby form.
I don't know.
I don't know if that makes...
That's the energy.
So you basically gave birth to the cast of Mean Girls?
Is that the thesis that we're working with here?
Like some valley girl with an eye roll and a Prada bag came out of your hoo-hoo and just started setting up shop?
Not as dramatic.
Not as dramatic.
But it is someone like that because he has an older sister.
Like he does have an elite example to go by.
And of course like every kid has their day sometimes and you know, You're going to expect something, especially if they're tired or any type of situation that can cause that increase.
Yeah, so attitude, it's chosen, it's defiant, it's conscious, it's willed, it's oppositional without cause and it's not reactive, right?
Yes.
Right, so, I mean, I'm not saying you would ever do this, but, you know, you've probably seen those shows where they wake some poor slumbering guy with an air horn, and he's like, you jerks, right?
I mean, nobody would say he's just throwing random attitude at people, right?
Well, yeah, obviously, yes.
So, yeah, so attitude is something that gets unnecessary, it's bratty, it's chosen, and that's how you experienced his temper.
Now, he just has one sister, is that right?
Yes, exactly, just one sibling.
Wait, he hasn't wooed you into having another kid yet?
I don't...
Attitude trio.
You could add attitude in harmony.
You could add attitude choir going right there.
Now, what was your relationship with your husband like before and after?
Your son was born sort of more immediately.
Before and after.
Before I had him, we've had rocky situations.
Why does he throw attitude too?
I'm just trying to get a theme going here for no reason.
Sorry, go ahead.
We've had some complications and at one point we did separate for not a long time, just a brief period, maybe like two months.
About two months, yes.
Sorry, where was that separation in your son's existence?
He was about a year, I would say.
Aha.
He said meaningfully.
Aha.
Okay, and what was it that was going on with your husband and yourself that required or precipitated a separation at that time?
Well...
That's a variety of things.
It would take a very long time.
I've got time.
We don't need to read this digest version.
Not that anybody under 50 knows what that is.
Well, I would say ultimately we had kind of a different situation.
Family means a lot to me and I've always didn't really ever thought that if I would have a child with somebody, let's say not Due to marriage, but we've actually just, even just like serious commitment and have a child, that this would be the man that I would make all efforts for, right?
Because we have a child and ultimately I want them to be in a family.
So it was this type of attitude and he comes from a cultured background where even if he wouldn't have wanted to settle down, there would have been a lot of pressure to settle down and do the right thing and what not.
Wait, so are you saying that you weren't married when you had your daughter?
We're technically not married.
We're not legally married.
I call him my husband.
Yes.
Right.
But the commitment obviously is there.
Exactly.
This is the man that I have the children with.
So we were dating very briefly.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
So you said you were dating very briefly when you got pregnant?
Yes, exactly.
It wasn't a long relationship.
Just so I try and keep my fertility's bloaty head in my hat, how did this happen?
We met at a wedding, I guess.
Yes, I thought he was cute.
The woman that was...
And it's a good thing they never serve any drinks at wedding, too.
Yeah, this was actually a non-alcoholic wedding.
Oh, really?
Yeah, they weren't serving any drinks at the wedding.
So, but...
So, it didn't...
Nothing happened that night.
Wait, you didn't get pregnant at the wedding, did you?
No, no, no.
No, no, no, no.
That would be a pretty quick life cycle.
Very fast.
Say, boom, one time.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no.
So we just met at a wedding.
We didn't even talk at the wedding.
We met afterwards.
The girl who got married, I had just gotten out of a relationship, and she was like, this was the boy that I thought you'd be good for, and that you guys would like each other.
And she just kind of called them up and just threw me on the phone type of thing.
This is ultimately what happened.
So basically she was saying, I don't want to raise children alone.
You guys, you're both fertile.
No, I'm just kidding.
And so how long were you going out before you got pregnant?
Five months.
Right.
And what happened?
How did you end up there?
It was kind of a shocker.
I always was told that I would have a problem conceiving and stuff, so I really didn't expect this.
Why were you told that you would have endometriosis, premature arrhythmia, high FSH levels?
I've gotten operated many times on my cervix.
I have pretty much no cervix.
They told me that it's not so much that I would have problems conceiving, but that if I get pregnant, I'll most likely just keep miscarrying.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So you weren't on birth control?
I was not on birth control, no.
And it was like one time...
Wait, were you hoping that a miscarriage would be the solution?
No, no, no.
This is not what I'm saying.
I've never gotten pregnant previously before.
I'm like a basketball player with butter on his hands.
There's no way I can hang on to anything, so don't worry about it.
Just no trampolining for a while.
I mean, I don't understand.
You can get pregnant, but you'll be likely to miscarriage.
I don't know.
I've had sometimes sex without protection.
I've just never been pregnant.
No, I get it.
Lots of people play Russian roulette.
Lots of people play Russian roulette.
They're fine until they're not.
This is what it was.
Pretty much playing Russian roulette because it was one time.
It's not like we were just being dumb and all constantly.
It was one time, one night.
You end up showing up in an Alan Cumming biography.
And anyway, that's another story for another time.
Okay, so basically you were rolling the dice, right?
Yes, exactly.
I guess it would have to be that way.
There's no other way to put it.
So not a shocker.
Like a shocker is I was in solitary confinement and I got pregnant because, I don't know, some guy whacked off on a sperm.
He whacked his sperm off on an ant that then, you know, like, I mean, that would be a shocker.
Just, you know, unprotected sex, not exactly a shocker, right?
It wasn't them, exactly.
Got it.
So, what happened then?
I mean, so this pretty young relationship to, well, drop babyhood into the mix, right?
Yes, exactly.
It was a difficult situation on both sides.
It doesn't really matter the details of it, but Sorry to interrupt, but just out of curiosity, did you tell him right away?
Yes.
Did you think, well, miscarriage, you know, I'll just...
No, no, no.
I told him right away when I found out.
I was shocked.
Although, I mean, it sounds really crazy.
And even when we went, I didn't believe it, so I took an appointment at the doctors to really confirm.
And even he said, how did this happen?
And the doctors told them, like, do I really need to tell you about the births and the bees right now?
You know, it was...
Although, you know...
It was still very unexpected, I guess, on both sides.
It was just kind of like, wow, really?
Like, this is where we are right now?
And did your...
I don't know.
What's the new word?
Boy toy.
Did your boy toy know prior to you getting pregnant about your fertility issues?
Yes, we've talked about it.
I've told them I had some cancer that was down there and they removed it.
Was it actual cancer or abnormal cells?
It was precancerous cells that needed to be removed that were getting to a very bad stage.
So, if he wanted to date you, and I assume, you know, he's not a complete hedonist, right?
I mean, like, in the moment kind of guy.
So, if he wanted to continue dating you after knowing that you were not likely to be able to have children, does that mean that he was not that interested in having children?
I don't think so, because that any way to spin it, he would have been, he grew up in this kind of environment.
He came from a large family.
All his uncles.
Everybody has large families.
I would say, you know, his parents were still married.
It just naturally embedded to him to be a little bit more cultured, to have wanted to desire something like that, I would say.
So, he knew you had...
You basically were not on birth control because you thought it was so improbable you could ever get pregnant.
Yes.
And he wants a big family.
And he's got a problem.
Well, I don't think he really...
You know, I would say it more like he probably didn't think that...
You know, he didn't consider me as wife material for the future.
So he wanted a fling.
You know, at that moment, I would say yes.
Well, this five months is not exactly a moment, but...
Well, I would say in the beginning.
Well, from finding out.
I mean, this information all got told pretty often.
Like, soon.
And it is...
You're right.
right it's not a long a long time period but um we didn't know and the reason that i'm asking these i'm sorry to interrupt but the reason i'm asking these questions is i'm sort of trying to get a mental map of um conversations you may or may not have had prior to pregnancy and where you both were coming from in terms of that sounds bad where you both were coming from in terms of the relationship and and its future and its potential and all that kind of stuff Yes.
Okay, okay.
And did you want kids?
I did.
I always saw myself like I would have kids.
I always wanted them.
And I told that to him when we started dating.
I said, I just got out of a long relationship.
I'm now 27, about to be 28.
I'm not interested in wasting my time if I don't feel a connection.
It doesn't take that long to start to get to know somebody's character and to This is not really for me.
Or, wow, you know, I've hit the jackpot.
I found a great guy.
So...
Well, but...
So, hang on.
So, I'm trying to...
It seems like there's a bit of a mismatch.
At least, this may just be my attempting to sort of understand these connections.
But you were looking for someone to settle down with and having kids.
And he was looking for something less permanent?
I would say so at the time, yes.
But at the same time, I think that he did like me.
It's just he's from...
He's from a different background than me, and I think so.
And what's his name?
Lebanese.
Lebanese, okay.
So, I think he just kind of expected, like, he didn't want to take advantage of me, but maybe he was thinking in his head, but I do like her.
Like, he did think I was pretty and, you know, cool to hang out with and stuff.
Um, but maybe not really ready to make that decision and not thinking of it as he's doing a bad thing cause he's still getting to know me type of thing.
So still playing the field and I mean, you know, he's a man, I guess he was enjoying the benefits that reaped with it, you know?
Right.
Okay.
And, um, So, you got pregnant and obviously you stayed together and you lived together when your daughter was born.
And what's the age gap between your kids?
Two years and a half, about.
You showed those doctors, didn't you?
All right.
So, during the first two and a half years with your daughter, what was that like between yourself and your husband?
Yeah.
It wasn't the greatest.
It wasn't the greatest.
I would say that the beginning was the hardest part.
It was the important part.
The beginning of your daughter's life?
Yeah, the beginning of us being together and starting a family and stuff.
I would say we're a lot stronger now than we were then, definitely, for sure.
We weren't in a healthy place.
And what was unhealthy?
Well, I think we just both kind of felt like we wanted to do the right thing and we might as well give it a shot.
That's the healthy impulse or whatever you want to call it.
Exactly.
You're not answering what I asked, which is what was unhealthy or dysfunctional about your relationship with your...
There was some...
I mean, there's a lot of fighting.
And fighting like verbal, physical, what are we talking about?
Verbal.
Wait, there's a dot, dot, dot there.
I can hear it, but I'm not sure where it leads.
Verbal.
No, no, it's verbal.
Verbal, but, you know, I mean, it's gotten heating up, right?
Like, not all the time.
Like, I mean, if you're going to constitute every fight, some fights are milder, right?
But I don't know, I guess we kind of had the attitude like we were getting on each other's nerves and...
Hey, there's that word again.
Yeah.
Anyway.
And what would you fight about?
You said getting on each other's nerves.
I was often alone.
We started it off, you know, we didn't, you know, we're moving in together.
We didn't live together previously, right?
So we move in together and we have a baby and we're this instant family.
There's commitment and stuff, right?
And I don't know.
I was often alone.
I was...
What do you mean?
He was working?
Because, you know, guys are known to work pretty ferociously when they've got a kid, right?
Because that's just your instinct kicking in saying, bring me to tiny mouth, right?
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
He worked full-time and at that time I was at home with the baby.
I was on maternity leave.
And then he would come home and we would have dinner and then he would leave.
And sometimes he was working, sometimes it was work-related, sometimes it was friend-related, hanging out.
Oh, he'd go to work, he'd come home and then he'd go out with friends sometimes.
Yes.
Yeah, that's kind of douchey, isn't it?
No, I mean, listen, I mean, I've been a stay-at-home dad.
I mean, love my daughter, but man, you get pretty hungry for some adult time after a day with a baby, right?
Well, this is how I felt at the time, right?
How about I have words with more than one syllable, maybe even a couple of consonants?
That'd be lovely, right?
You know, it's not so much.
I'm...
I don't know.
I'm okay by myself.
You know, I didn't...
It's not that I... I needed him to be there or even wanted him to be there.
I'm okay.
You know, sometimes if I spend too much...
Wait, wait.
You didn't want the father of your child to be home with you and your child?
Sometimes when you're in a relationship, right?
You don't like the same shows.
You don't like the same...
So sometimes you kind of argue with it, you know, sometimes one person dominates the television.
No, no, no, no.
Don't you start, hang on, don't you start dragging my marriage into this thing.
Don't you start universalizing this, young lady.
No, I mean, I don't get tired of my life.
I'm not saying it in a bad way.
It almost sounds bad, but I think, like, a lot of married people would understand where I'm coming from here, right?
You know, I'm okay alone.
You know, if he's there, good too, right?
We have our good times.
But it's not so much being alone.
And let's say if he had a career where he's just working constant hours, I'm a strong woman.
I can deal with that.
I think it was more that he, you know, it's...
I'll give you all the freedom.
It's not like you'd ask me for something, I would say no.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Because I'm just getting tidal waves of justifications here, so I need to snorkel up for some air.
Because what you're not talking about is important.
And what you're not talking about, and I'm not saying it's not part of your thinking at all, but what you're not talking about is the degree to which your daughter...
Needed her father.
Because you're like, well, I could take a break.
It was okay for me.
Sometimes married couples, this and that.
Right?
But your daughter needs a father like babies need mother's milk and oxygen, right?
Yes.
Yes, you're right.
This is ultimately...
And your son.
For me, it doesn't matter so much.
But for the kids, it does a lot more.
Every parent's...
You know, loves their kids so much and you want the best for them, right?
And when kids are young, studies have repeatedly shown that they gravitate towards plays with fathers.
That if they're given the choice between the mother and the father, they will choose to play with the father.
And in particular, the management of aggression is associated with paternal influence, particularly on boys.
So, my question is, how much was the father around?
I don't know what to call him.
Boyfriend sounds ridiculous, and partner sounds like you're going to play fucking tennis or something, and so I'm just going to call him the father.
Okay.
But with your son, how much was the father involved?
Not just around, but, you know, on the ground, with him, rolling around, play fighting, whatever goes on.
He was...
He definitely, the daughter dominated more that one.
My daughter got a lot more from him than my son did.
So even though you were saying that your daughter, like your father, would go back to work or sometimes out with his friends after being away all day, you're saying that your son got less of that even than your daughter did.
Well, he would oftentimes...
At least, I would say, two to three times.
I mean, my daughter went to bed early, right?
So sometimes he would leave...
It would be more me that would be left behind because sometimes he would leave the house, let's say, around eight, around her bedtime.
So he came home and so he still spent time with her.
And he would do this thing where he would cut up food and eat it with her.
And it was like their time together.
And so he did that.
You know, there was...
He had these little things that he would do with her that was their thing to do.
And when he had some times like a week off of work, he actually took her.
He surprised me.
He took her the whole week and he would dress her in the morning.
He did her hair.
So they still had those bonding times together.
Okay.
Now with regards to your son, how did that play out?
So, you know, he's born and there's still another child to give attention to as well.
You can't just, okay, now I have a new kid, you in the corner.
So, maybe it's a little bit somehow favoritism.
I thought maybe a boy, like men, always seemed, even from back in the days, in movies, right?
It's always important to have the boy, right?
In Arabic culture, it's very important.
Sometimes the woman could have had four girls in a row and the husband will still put pressure because he wants a boy.
But he definitely...
I don't know.
There wasn't that...
They're now getting a better bond, a much, much stronger bond, but there definitely wasn't a bond in the beginning.
In the beginning, what do you mean?
How long?
Well, when he was a baby, I was breastfeeding him, and he breastfed a lot.
So for the first four months, I was...
Yeah, we like those.
It doesn't change a lot, but it starts early, stays there, pretty strong.
Okay.
Yeah, so he was always with me.
It was hard to get...
Because you know what it is for baby boys.
It's like, man, it's going to be a while until I get my hands on these again.
So, I'm hoarding.
I'm gathering.
I'm going to...
That's exactly how he seemed to be.
Just like, I'm just going to hog these as much as I can until the current place ends.
If you're not going to eat again for a long time, you have a good meal.
In a while, you get back with the girls.
Okay.
So...
But your relationship with the father was not doing super great during this time because you culminated after a year with a two-month separation, right?
And did your son have any of these sort of together time stuff that your daughter had with his father?
No, I can't recall.
He tries sometimes.
Sometimes it did happen.
But very...
Very rare.
Right.
And that's...
Sorry, just in case anyone can hear these sounds, it's just fireworks.
Right.
So that's a problem, right, in terms of the development and the bond.
You know, the early connection is important, right, between...
Well, any child.
Well, I would agree.
If you want a strong connection at an early age still with your children, you would have to do from the beginning.
I mean, maybe you can get, I believe, and always you can get a connection somehow.
If somebody really makes an effort, right?
Sometimes I'm sure a father that wasn't so close with his kids and now realized, you know, and makes, you know, really makes the effort, the child will come around, right?
And the connection can be done.
But if you want to A good strong one.
I mean, it's definitely important to do it from the beginning, I would say.
A lot of things that I guess maybe I think that he would have thought of as a chore or like the woman's job to do, maybe I would say.
Stuff like bathing the kids, you know, putting them in bed.
Little things like that.
The little parenting things that you do.
Applying the sunscreen.
I don't know.
It was me, ultimately.
What were his responsibilities?
I guess to provide.
And I don't know, that's a tough question.
I Take your time.
So literally, not what I expected, but what he actually provided.
I'm just trying to make sure of the question that you're asking.
Well, you're talking about, like you said, the woman's work, right?
Yes.
And what was the man's work with regards to parenting?
Not providing, but parenting.
I mean, a trust fund could provide, but we wouldn't call it a father, right?
I'm not saying the provision is unimportant, but it's not exactly parenting, right?
So, what he was providing, I would say, is the title of a father.
Hi, Baba's Home.
They know who their father is.
The one, especially with my daughter, when he plays with her, she gets happy, of course, right?
I'm not going to say, because it's hard to say from the beginning until now, because he's changed a lot as well now.
So what he was providing then, or what he's providing now?
What he's providing less now.
Is that fair?
So right now?
Yeah.
Okay.
For my son?
Towards my...
I'm just...
Sorry, the question is confusing me a little bit.
What he's providing for my son right now as a father.
Yeah, he was more involved with your daughter.
Well, right now, I mean, he picks them up.
Sometimes from school they get haircuts together.
You know, he plays with them.
He goes with them outside and plays with them.
He's good now.
He offers...
I mean, he works a lot.
But I have to say he's making a lot of effort now.
I can't...
It's different from then till now.
Right.
Okay.
And you said earlier that you're having trouble with discipline with your son.
Yes.
What does that mean?
It's also...
What I mean by that is when he gets mad and he gets into...
His character of being very upset, I would say a character that he puts on, because it's not every scenario that's a scenario that he should be that upset about.
So he's putting on this character, very upset and freaking out.
It's embarrassing now.
He's at an age where he should be able to accept no And if not, express himself.
I mean, his sister always talks, right?
She says through her unhappiness at the moment, let's say.
But he just kind of gets angry and hits.
He'll hit.
He hits me sometimes, you know.
He'll hit.
He just kind of spaces out.
Not spacing out, but he gets very upset.
Sometimes it's hitting.
And just, he's yelling.
I mean, he's not yelling actual stuff that can help me.
Like, if he was like, well, it's not fair because I really wanted, you know, it's like more shouting.
But didn't he see a lot of that with you and the father?
He has been shouting.
You had yelling matches, right?
Yes.
So, isn't he doing what he saw?
Isn't he showing the mirror up to what he experienced?
Yeah, I would say maybe so.
I mean, I don't want to, right?
I mean, it's very much...
We've discussed that as well, me and the father.
Like, we're being very cautious, a lot more cautious.
I won't say that it's never...
Happened again where we haven't argued in front of the kids, but I don't know.
Maybe it was resentment.
I don't know, but we wouldn't really, you know, I can't.
This is just as much like my fault.
We're both responsible for our actions, but I mean, they have witnessed arguing matches.
No, not arguing.
I mean, fighting matches, right?
I mean, raised voices, yelling.
Yes, exactly.
It's fighting.
Yeah, and he would have heard...
Language that he couldn't possibly understand, right?
If he was one or two or three years old, right?
Yes, definitely.
So what he's doing is he's speaking back in incoherent ways.
He's acting out his anger in incoherent ways, which is what he experienced from you and the father, right?
Which is that you guys acted out your anger in ways that were incoherent to him.
Aren't you asking him to, at the age of four, aren't you asking him to have a level of emotional skill that neither you nor the father regularly displayed in front of him?
Aren't you having higher standards for him than you are for you guys?
I don't quite understand this.
I definitely do.
I do want a lot more higher standards for both of my kids.
No, but he's four.
And you've modeled this behavior for him.
And so you seem frustrated that he's not verbalizing his feelings in a way that's productive and helps to resolve the conflicts and so on.
But if you and the father were capable of doing that, they wouldn't have seen you fighting in the way that you did.
That's true.
And he didn't want to see that, right?
So what he's saying is like, well, if you guys can't manage to have discussions in a civil and productive manner, then why would I? You can't have higher standards for me than you have for each other.
That's very true.
Where does he learn the hitting from?
How is he disciplined?
How has he seen hitting?
Well, how has he experienced hitting, do you think?
I have spanked him before, but it's not a method that I'm, let's say, implying as a method of discipline for the kids.
It has happened.
I don't know what that means, but you spanked him.
No, I don't spank them, but I have spanked them.
What?
You don't spank them, but you have spanked them.
Please, come on.
Select the caller from last night.
I don't know what that means.
Before, I thought that spanking was good.
And I no longer agree with it, so I don't do it anymore is what I'm saying.
And I think that's great.
It's a lot of the videos that I've watched from you, actually.
How often did you spank, though, and how many times?
My son, I'm having a hard time recalling because it's really, I don't know, Maybe.
Just roughly.
I've sometimes spanked him on the hands.
I would say that would be like the most often one, but it wasn't like, it's more like, you know, touching something and it's like, you know, a little spank on the hand, like not something that he would cry over, you know, more like don't touch.
But it's still enough to startle and frighten him, right?
To be aversive.
Yes.
So that I would say about like, I don't know, 10 times, maybe?
10-15 times?
That was more when he was a baby.
And spanking on the bum, I think, maybe three times.
I didn't spank him much.
I didn't know.
But my daughter, I spanked her more than that.
If I'm to be honest, my daughter, I spanked her more than that.
But my son, I didn't spank him very much.
I've only spanked him maybe three times.
And how often did you spank your daughter?
My daughter, I spanked her more.
I would say, not when she was small, but from about the age of three to four years old, I spanked her like...
I would say about 20 times.
20...
No, in a year.
And the benefits on the hand?
Like from four to five, you know?
On the hand, not often.
Not often.
Very little.
I never really used that method on her because she was good at listening.
If I'd say like, oh, don't touch that.
You know, she...
She wouldn't, you know, I only, like, touch, I would do the hand thing to teach them, like, no, no, you don't touch that.
But my daughter, she, like, I would tell her, and she wouldn't have touched that, so I didn't really spank her hands.
Right.
Now, what about your husband, what's his, I'm sorry, the father, what's his discipline approach?
He's never spanked the kids, like, on the bum, that was never something that he did.
Right.
He's spanked on the hands, but he's never spanked my daughter.
So he'll mainly talk loud, like affirmative, sometimes put them in a timeout, or say like, you're not getting, but he thinks we should do more.
His way of thinking, like he always says, he needs a beating.
He always says that about my son.
He thinks I'm too soft on him.
I get a lot of pressure because I'm trying to talk to him and he's not seeing results.
I'm not with him all day as well.
He's in preschool.
So your father thinks that the children should be beaten?
Not my daughter.
He'd never say that about my daughter.
But he says it about my son.
So he thinks your son should be beaten.
That would solve the discipline issues?
Yes.
And was he himself beaten as a child?
Yes.
And he's not done that to your son?
No.
But he thinks that it would be...
Do you know if your son has ever heard his father indicate a desire that he be beaten?
Yes.
So your son knows that his father thinks that being beaten would be a big step in the right direction for him?
Yes.
I don't know if he understands what beaten means.
I think he understands tone.
I think he understands gestures.
Yes, that's true.
Definitely.
From his body language, he definitely knows that his father's saying something needs to happen here.
Okay, if you could not laugh about this stuff, I'd really appreciate it.
It's very disconcerting.
Because I'm into serious stuff, right?
No, you're right.
Sorry.
So, is it Is it a massive shock that your son thinks that physical aggression is a valid way of solving problems?
I'm not.
I wouldn't say a huge shock.
Right.
The hitting comes from being hit.
Yes.
The hitting comes from maybe seeing your daughter being slapped on the hand or whatever, right?
And the hitting comes from the father saying you solve problems with hitting.
So, I mean, you guys are teaching him that the word for tree is tree, and then you seem surprised when he uses the word tree.
What is your son's view of reality in a sort of fundamental way?
And the reason I ask that is that when I was a kid, I had...
I mean, I was around a lot of kids when I was a kid.
I mean, I was in boarding school where there were like hundreds and hundreds of us all crammed into these.
I shouldn't say crammed.
It wasn't that Dickensian, but there were a lot of us.
And I used to actually remember for a year or two after I left boarding school, I could still remember, I still have this picture downstairs of the whole school with me sort of down in the front.
And, um, I could actually, for a year or two after I left that school, I could remember every kid's name.
Like, every one of the hundreds of kids there.
I remember all of their, I don't remember them.
I remember just a couple now, but I did, I knew all their names.
And, um, I was in a wide variety of different schools and lots of cousins and all that.
So I was a pretty social kid.
No problem.
Making friends and having playmates and all that kind of stuff.
Well, he's definitely social.
Right, right.
And...
What I have noticed just from sort of having, and of course I taught in a daycare and all that, so I've noticed some things around, you know, sort of having been around a lot sort of having been around a lot of kids.
Thank you.
And what I've really noticed is how much they do pick up from their environment and how much they mirror and repeat.
You know, we're a kind of monkey, so to speak, and there's a word for imitate.
Yeah, to ape something, right?
Is to imitate.
And apes will repeat what they see and show back what they see.
And if he's seen a lot of yelling and if he's seen a lot of acting out, then that's what he's going to do.
He is programmed to...
To imitate the father in particular.
And obviously I don't want...
Not really much point thinking of your four-year-old as a sexual being in any way.
But nature is preparing him to continue the line.
And the most sexually successful male that he knows is his father.
Because that's why he exists.
Right?
So his genes are going to teach him do what daddy does because daddy got mommy and you want to get a woman.
Right?
Because otherwise these genes don't last very long.
Right?
I've never had it put like that.
That's really cool.
But it's true, right?
I mean, the whole point of the genes is do what works sexually.
Because if it doesn't work sexually, then you're all flowers and no bees, right?
Yes, exactly.
You don't get very far, right?
And a question that I have, again, having been around a lot of kids, you know, some kids...
We're pretty skeptical and had a lot of what I would call common sense.
And other kids, they believed in ghosts and Loch Ness monsters and yetis and fairies and tooth fairies.
And they had a metaphysical view, which is sort of basic reality.
Some were like, you know, I don't trust it if I can't touch it, you know.
You know, I'm skeptical, make the case, and so on.
And other kids seem to sort of swallow whole this view of the universe that what we see is like a thin veneer over the vastness of complexity.
You know, that famous line from that Hamlet says, there are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than I dreamt of in your philosophy.
You know, that sense data and, you know, it's all just like a A tiny sliver of all of the immenseness and vastness that's out there.
And a lot of this stuff comes from religion, right?
I mean, this idea that this is a veil of tears and we get to paradise on the other side.
And what is your son's view of reality?
Does he believe that he lives in the universe?
Or does he believe that there are things outside the universe?
This sounds very abstract.
No, I understand what you mean.
I'm pretty sure...
I don't know if there's...
He's sometimes mentioned, like, after watching, let's say, the movie Monsters.
Oh, there's a monster in my...
But not saying it like he's scared.
Just more like...
Maybe repeating what he saw.
And then me telling him, oh, there's no monsters.
And he's like, I know there's no monsters.
But he doesn't, like, he never acts scared or believes in...
I would say he's very much in the reality.
But I'm not...
Maybe the Santa Claus confuses him a little bit.
But other than that, he's very much into the reality.
He's not...
But at the same time...
What does the father want your son to do that he thinks beating would achieve?
What conformity does he want that he thinks beating would achieve?
I don't know.
I think that he just thinks that it would make him more submissive, let's say.
So submissive means when I say jump, you say how high, that kind of stuff?
I would say so.
Or if he doesn't want to not, you know, react in such an overwhelmed way, just kind of more dealing with it.
Accepting it, let's say.
Just, I said, no, you have to accept it.
Like them accepting it very, very well.
And did you guys model a lot of acceptance in front of your son when he was growing up?
Acceptance of each other, acceptance of differences, not freaking out over little things, not getting into conflicts over, say, different tastes in television shows?
No, we wouldn't argue over television shows.
This was just like a little joke.
Well, I would say yes and no.
I mean, I'm I can be very accepting of a lot of things and I'll show acceptance towards certain things, certain things not.
Sometimes it got demonstrated in front of the kids so they saw that this little scenario didn't go so well but it's not so much you can't do this so I'm telling you no and the person it's more conversations that I don't know if That a child would even be able to comprehend its personal, I guess, issues between us when we've argued in front of the kids.
Right.
Now, of course, he wouldn't really have any comprehension, I would assume, about what you guys were arguing about, right?
I would say no.
Maybe comprehensions that were arguing and You know, this is the situation that we're in right now, but not so much understanding what the argument is about.
Definitely not.
But he'd know that there would be a lot of raised voices, maybe some name-calling or whatever.
And so if you guys are asking him to show more acceptance and not freak out, that's not what you would have modeled when he was growing up, right?
I'm not saying all the time.
No, I like the way you put it because I... Exactly.
I mean...
I wouldn't have even...
I don't even know why I wouldn't have thought of that, but I guess because I'm looking at it as the relationship with mother-child is different, I guess.
Husband-wife.
I don't know.
Maybe because maybe me, I categorized it differently when I was a kid, so...
So I guess that's why I never kind of put it together like that and...
Right.
So, now that you mention it, it's...
It's clear in hindsight, right?
Yes.
Because we do all this stuff in front of our kids and then we distance ourselves from its effects and we say, well, I wish the kid would just do X, right?
I wish the kid wouldn't get so upset about inconsequential things when he grew up seeing his parents argue and split and yell and, right?
Yes, exactly.
And so, you know, it's like, well, why the hell does he have to be so much like us?
That's one of these really...
And people are genuinely, as you are, genuinely baffled by this.
Like, well, why does he get so upset?
Why does he hit?
Why does he yell?
Why, you know?
Well, you guys hit and yell.
I guess we constantly looked at it like we're not disciplining good enough, we're not disciplining well enough, we're failing, but we are failing, but it's more...
What we're showing the kids.
And it would have to be a consistent thing.
You can't just be good for a period of time and then...
Oh, now it's going down.
Now we're going to fight.
And we're going to do this.
Oh, back consistent.
We're always good.
No, no.
See, no, no.
You can fight.
I mean, because, you know, saying we can't have conflicts, we can't have disagreements.
But that's...
That's not existing, right?
I mean, there are always going to be conflicts.
That's not where parents do the damage.
You can have conflicts.
That's not the harm that is done to the kids.
The harm that is done to the kids, my friend, is when it is not acknowledged as bad behavior and apologized for on the part of the parents.
Well, you know, that is...
I thought it was literally, because sometimes people tell me, you know, you can't argue in front of the kids.
And sometimes it's very hard.
I mean, we all live together.
And I was like, how are we not supposed to do that?
How are we supposed to, but to say it like that?
And when I argue with my kids, to be honest, and sometimes I feel like, oh, maybe I got upset too.
I was a little bit too hard and I apologize.
Sometimes I raise my voice and I didn't, I don't like the way I felt how I handled the situation.
And I actually apologize to my kids.
But me and my husband don't apologize to each other too much.
We do sometimes.
But sometimes it's probably when the kids are sleeping, right?
And we apologize later.
No, no.
And what I'm basically talking about is not you apologizing to your husband.
The father of your children, but, I mean, that's great, but if you have, like, if you yell in front of your kids...
To apologize to them.
To apologize, like, I'm sorry you saw that.
We were acting really badly.
This is bad behavior.
This is not what we want to do.
This is not, you know, because if we do it, how on earth are we going to tell you that it's wrong to do?
Because that's ridiculous, right?
Yes.
I mean, there's nothing that destroys parental authority more than implicit hypocrisy.
Yes.
Like, at least say, do as I say, not as I do.
That's like explicit hypocrisy.
The kids can at least respect that, right?
It's like, okay, there's two sets of rules, but at least they're acknowledged, right?
But if you guys are like...
I mean...
Well, I mean...
If you've changed your mind about...
Hang on.
If you've changed your mind about spanking, have you apologized to your kids about spanking?
Yes.
Yes, I have.
I have.
Good.
Good.
Okay, great.
And if you've changed your mind about raising your voices and yelling, have you apologized to your kids for that?
Is there a standard called, we don't yell at each other in this house?
And, you know, maybe there's deviations, but you have to...
You know, you're sailing a ship, you go off course, you check your compass, you go back on course again, if that's acknowledged, right?
Yes.
And so, is it like, you know, we gave you bad examples?
You know, I don't mean like you were terrible parents or whatever, but, you know, you say, we gave you bad examples.
We raised our voices, we called names, we fought over things that in hindsight, who gives a crap about?
We threatened the family bond by having the Father move out for two months?
That's got to be terrifying for kids.
And it is terrifying for children.
Because biologically...
That means really disastrous things for children.
When the resource provider leaves, this is one of the reasons why children of single parents end up sexually maturing and having hypersexuality because it's like, got to find a new provider because this provider is not going to stick around.
So, right, this is how nature biologically programs the kids to develop.
So, has that been acknowledged as...
We gave you guys really, really bad examples.
And we're going to work to undo the damage.
We've got to acknowledge that the damage has occurred.
That we gave you bad examples.
Because now what you're trying to do is you're getting upset at the symptoms of the examples you provided.
That's not fair.
So you gave them bad examples in conflict resolution.
You gave them bad examples in verbalizing feelings.
You gave them bad examples in escalation and temper.
And now you're upset because they're mirroring the bad examples that you gave them.
But you're not acknowledging that you gave them bad examples and that you did not meet the standards you're trying to impose on a four-year-old.
Do you get how crazy that is?
No.
No, I do.
I thought I was because I apologize.
I apologize.
Have you both apologized?
The father still wants to beat your son.
The father has not apologized.
Okay, well that's important.
So men don't apologize, seize the son.
Men don't back down.
Men don't admit that they're wrong.
Men double down on everything.
Couldn't be clearer.
He does have a little bit of that attitude.
No, no, that's not attitude.
Well, I mean, he does have that, I guess, perspective on manhood.
No, it's not his perspective on manhood.
It's what he's been explicitly and implicitly taught.
Yes, it is.
Exactly.
It is.
So, it's not like he has this.
It's embedded in him now.
Look, if I teach my child English, I don't say, well, my child has English.
Yeah.
My child has this perspective on language called, my child has this attitude called English.
I taught my child English.
Why has the father not apologized for the yelling, for the fighting, for the hitting, for the instability, for the separation?
Why has The father not apologized.
I don't know.
Sure you do.
Come on.
Don't give me that.
Don't fog out on me now, sister.
Of course you do.
I would just assume that this just falls into place with me.
I just always take care of things and I apologized.
So the apology is, I guess, on behalf of both of us.
I often time apologize.
No, that's not why he hasn't apologized.
And don't think for a moment that the kids think that you're apologizing on behalf of their dad.
Especially if you say, I'm sorry for hitting you, and your son hears your dad say he ought to be beaten.
Do you think that, and you apologize for the hitting?
Do you think that the son thinks that you're apologizing for the dad too?
No, definitely not in that situation.
It would not feel like I'm apologizing.
Why has the dad not apologized?
I guess he just doesn't think that...
He thinks that he's the man of the house, I guess, and he doesn't really need to apologize.
Why hasn't he apologized?
Because he doesn't feel he needs to apologize.
That's not adding anything new, right?
He'll apologize for certain things, like if he assumed that my daughter did something and then he's like, oh, she really didn't do that.
He'll apologize.
He'll apologize for certain things, but he has not apologized for spanking while he hasn't spanked my daughter or anything.
But anyways, for the big damage, for arguing.
Let's say if we argued in front of the kids, he wouldn't apologize for something like that.
Why not?
I know he's not apologizing.
Why is he not apologizing?
I don't know.
I guess he doesn't look at it as he did something wrong.
Right.
Right.
He's done nothing wrong.
Now, if he's done nothing wrong, then he is not at all causal in how your son behaves.
He has no responsibility for negative behavior on your son's part because the father has done nothing wrong.
And therefore, all negative behaviors on the part of your son are either your fault or your son's fault.
Can't be him.
Can't be him.
Yeah, it is.
It is, exactly.
All the burden of the male modeling falls on your son.
It's all his fault.
Because it can't be anything wrong.
That his father did that was wrong or dysfunctional or problematic can't be anything to do with him.
So it's got to be all the son's fault.
And that's why you gave me this story way back at the beginning of this conversation about your son's attitude.
Not, my son has been imprinted By a very aggressive man who thinks he should be beaten, who yells and doesn't apologize, and who thinks that he's master of the house and never has to admit fault.
I don't know why my son is not more obedient.
Yeah.
Isn't he just doing what he sees?
Thank you.
I guess definitely that is what he's doing.
It's...
It's exactly how you said it.
But you're looking at yourself and you're saying, I should change some things and I'm going to take responsibility and I'm going to apologize.
Right?
Yes.
But the dad...
Man of house, Stanley Kowalski.
There ought to be no apologies.
Apologies aside the weakness.
Shields are never down, Captain.
Right?
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
And so, you have a son who is...
And look, tell me, if I'm going astray, obviously, let me know.
But you have a son who doesn't, I assume, have a lot of self-criticism.
His behavior is not particularly modifiable because he doesn't really get or understand that he's doing anything wrong.
And you've got a father...
Who is really frustrated by another male in the house who doesn't admit fault and change his behavior.
I'm like, what?
I never understand how this is even remotely possible for parents to get frustrated at the behavior of their children that directly mirrors their own behavior.
Yeah, I guess.
So, forget the sun.
You're trying to move the shadow without moving the statue.
Forget...
Forget about your son and modifying his behavior.
You gotta work on the dad.
If the son sees that masculinity means admitting when you're wrong, making amends, learning, growing, being self-critical, surrendering to higher standards of behavior that everyone has to adhere to, well, guess what he's gonna start doing?
Well, you know, as in Working on the man, I think that I knew that inside myself, that it was kind of inevitable.
But some people are difficult to talk to, and it's...
Okay, you play the father, I'll play you, okay?
No!
I don't know if I can get that whole sultry Melissa Etheridge blues thing you got going on there.
I don't know if I'll be able to get that down.
But you be him, and I'll be you, and let's just see how it goes.
Do we really have to do this?
We don't have to do anything you don't want to, but I think it would be helpful.
Okay.
Do an accent.
I just don't have an accent.
Okay.
So, father of childs born of my loins.
I've really been thinking about her son, and I've really been thinking about how, you know, it's hard to change his behavior because he never really admits that he's done anything wrong.
He's very willful and he's pretty aggressive.
And I just, I worry the degree to which this may be coming.
You know, you're the most important influence in his life.
You're his father and he's going to do whatever you do.
Right?
I mean, that's...
Why he's a man and not a blob of protozoa that works on mitosis.
Why he's a man and has the dangly bits is because...
He's going to do whatever you do because you're the most sexually successful male in his environment.
You're the reason he's there.
Well, he would say, I told you a long time ago to handle this boy.
Now he's out of control.
Now you're going to say it's me.
It's because you were on that stupid show the other day and that guy, he's a nobody.
You know, I told you this is like, it's ultimately going to come down to me.
It'll be very hard for me to have a conversation.
No, I get that.
I get that.
Okay.
To be honest, like, I don't want, sorry, I'm not trying to call you a stupid guy or your show stupid.
No, no, that's fine.
No, be honest.
Be honest.
Okay.
But you'd say, look, do you think that...
I would just ask him.
I would say, do you think that how you are has a significant effect on how he is?
No, because he spends all his time with you mostly.
You're who he looks up to.
He's a mama's boy, is what I say.
And that's...
So are you saying that you, the male and the father in his life, what percentage of how he is do you think you have some quality?
This kid has all your genes.
If he was my son...
He would be listening.
Wait, wait.
Sorry.
Wouldn't he really say, like, it's all your genes?
Did you, like, phone him from a fingernail or something like that?
No.
He's half your genes and you're his father.
I would just ask.
I'd say, whoa, okay.
Do you think it's obviously not 100%.
100%.
He's not 100% from you, his character, his personality, right?
He's certainly 50% of the genes, right?
But what percentage would you say he is because of how you are as a person?
Because he looks up to you, you're his father, he wants to imitate you and so on.
So it has to be more than zero.
Zero is something he's never even met, right?
Well, I mean, you know that I work hard.
And if you were nicer to me and made me feel appreciated and respected, No, no, but that's not what I'm asking you.
Let's just try and stay on topic here for a second, right?
I mean, we can get to complaining about me in a bit and you can complain about me all you want.
I'm just asking you, what percentage...
Of how our son is, do you think, may be a reflection of how you are?
It's not zero and it's not a hundred.
I'm just asking you for...
Very little and you have a temper to...
So what?
Give me a number.
Give me a number.
Ten percent.
Twenty percent.
So twenty percent.
Okay.
All right.
Twenty percent.
Now, if we had a way of changing 20% of who he is that we haven't explored yet, we'd be interested in that, right?
I don't know how he would answer to that.
Well, he'd have to say yes, right?
I mean, unless he's going to start putting on a duck suit looking like a magpie.
Yeah, so he'd say yes.
Okay, so, you know, to some degree, the...
The son is the shadow cast by the father, right?
I mean, he's not growing up, as they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right?
In terms of like, right?
So what do we want from our son?
Well, we want him to be less volatile, less defensive, right?
Less resistant to input, right?
Yes.
Now, you know, when I'm trying to talk to you about this, you seem to be kind of reactive, right?
Kind of like don't want to talk about it, and you start insulting me and stuff like that.
Do you think that that behavior has any impact on our son at all?
Yeah, obviously, but it's just as much your fault that it is my fault.
No, I get that.
I get that.
I get that.
But this is a new part.
Like, we've been talking about my fault and I've been trying to work to improve as a parent and all that.
But we haven't really talked much about things that you could change that would cause your son to, because he looks up to you so much, to change his behavior based upon what you're changing, right?
Here, I think he would be okay.
We've discussed...
Sometimes we're in a safe place, I would say.
We're getting a lot better.
Sometimes we're in a safe place and we're talking and maybe it's the way the flow of information is going out.
He will accept something better.
Like, yeah, maybe I could do that and you could do this and we'll try that.
Even this whole...
I'm peaceful parenting thing like I tell him I don't want to hit the kids and I don't want to you know he's he's went with it he hasn't went and hit the kids or something you know he was he was four he says your son should be beaten but he's starting he's saying like basically if our son doesn't change by the time he's four then he now wants to change that method like we've done it my way it's still not working This is where he...
Oh, he wants to start hitting your son.
Thinking like, now maybe we should try this way and maybe he will actually listen.
So this is pretty imminent, right?
I mean, the challenge is here, right?
Because you said he's getting close to being four and as far as I understand it, you know, the beatings will commence at four until behavior improves.
It's something that he does.
I don't know if he's fully serious.
It's the thing.
I... I think he has.
You might want to check that.
I think he thinks that maybe, you know, I wouldn't say beat him, like tie him up with, but hitting him.
Yeah, yeah, I get it.
Maybe more specifically hitting him, you know, maybe like being just stern, like military style, like kind of attitude.
And he thinks that being hit himself as a child was beneficial to him, right?
Yes, yes.
It's very hard to, he thinks, and it's like, look, and we all love my dad, and you know, we're good, and I'm okay, and You know, that kind of attitude.
You think I would have done this to my dad?
And so it's hard to to unconvince because I understand the theory behind it.
I understand why, you know, sometimes you can look at this as a yeah, this maybe will work.
You know, what else do we have to lose?
I can see why some parents turn to that, especially if you've been through it yourself and you do still have love for your parents and you think that it whipped you into shape or it made you have respect or something you actually believe that then of course you're gonna think the same thing for your children but I think it would be the like worst thing especially for my son I tend to be I don't know I don't think that approach would
work at all at the same time when he says that I I don't really know what to say.
Sometimes he even has got me thinking, maybe he's right.
Like, I'm failing somehow.
You know?
Well, look, part of the problem is that your son is exposed to two very different parenting styles.
I mean, you're focusing on the peaceful parenting, for which I hugely applaud you, and I think that's brave and wonderful and courageous, and I can't kiss the hem of your garment enough to express my admiration for that.
But you got a kind of bit of a medievalist on your hands with regards to the dad, right?
Yes, he's kind of.
And it's like sometimes he thinks, he acts almost on board.
Like some days go very good and he gets, you know, and it's all right.
But then after, you know, not every day is great.
And what is he getting in daycare?
Do you know?
As far as...
Obviously they're not beating him.
No.
Yes.
Like the form of discipline at daycare is what you mean?
Yeah.
So they have like a green section and a yellow section and a red section on this board.
And the green is very good, excellent.
And you get privileges along with being in the green.
And then you have a yellow, which means you were kind of...
Steering off to the bad area, like towards the red area, like you were bad, but you're redirecting yourself.
So we'll put you in yellow and you still have an option to go back to green.
So if you're bad, you're not considered bad all day.
That's it.
There's no, it was just, you did a bad behavior, you know, that type of, and red is, you know, you don't have any of these special privileges.
You were bad.
And bad behavior would be consisting of not cleaning up after yourself.
No, no, I get it.
I get it.
But it's consequence-based.
It's still punishment and reward-based, which I don't, you know, that's how you train puppies.
I'm not sure that's great for people, but...
And what sort of reports do you get from the daycare workers about...
Well, he'd be often...
I would say when he first started, he was...
Generally, always in the green.
It was good.
He was a good boy.
I wouldn't get much.
But these days, he has some good weeks.
And then it seems like when he's in the red, let's say on a Monday or Tuesday, it tends to linger mostly for the rest of the week.
So this is exactly, and I had this exact same conversation, this part of it, with someone seven or eight years ago on one of these call-in shows.
But this is, you said about your partner, you said about the boy's father that he has his good days and he has his bad days, right?
Yes.
And what did you just say about your son?
He has his good days and his bad days.
Right.
Which means that The father has no external standards by which he will regulate his mood.
In other words, it's mood-dependent interactions, which is really, really destabilizing.
Yes, I agree.
Because you don't know.
The moodiness is really stressful, right?
Because there is no external standard by which you can say, Well, this behavior is not acceptable, and the person will say, oh, yeah, I'm so sorry, I'm being cranky, and here's what happened, and I don't mean to take it out on you, that's wrong, right?
That kind of stuff, right?
Yes.
He has his good days.
Hey, we're up, right?
He has his bad days.
Oh, we're down.
And this should not be a mystery if this is how you describe the father.
Yes.
Even me, I would say, I'm not going to say I don't have, I have good and bad days as well, right?
Well, everybody does.
Everybody does.
But it's the degree to which you can be called out on bad behavior.
And that you're willing to say, like, obviously, so in my household, I shouldn't say my household, in the house that I live in, in the house that I live in, we have rules.
And we have standards.
They're not, like, written down, right?
No need a constitution, don't need to salute the Molyneux flag every morning, but we have standards, right?
We don't snap at each other.
We don't yell at each other.
We don't sulk.
We don't walk out of conflicts.
We sit down and we can be angry with each other.
We can be upset.
We can be in bad moods.
That's all perfectly fine.
That's natural.
But there are standards of behavior.
That we all accept.
And if anybody deviates from those standards of behavior, you remind them.
You say, we don't do this here.
This is not how we're going to have it, right?
It's not how we're going to live.
Oh, yeah.
I'm sorry we don't do that.
That's great, actually.
I really like that.
That's the way it should be.
My daughter's actually very good for that.
Well, she's modeling herself more after you, and you obviously have more self-critical capacity than the father, I would guess.
So, it doesn't sound like with the family as a whole, there are these standards of behavior that everyone's on board with.
And deviations...
You know, like, I don't know, in cars, they have these, like, things, they'll read the lanes, like if you drift from the lane, beep, beep, beep, oh, get back in the lane.
Yes, yes, exactly.
But that's what we need for, like, what relationships need.
Yeah, well, you know, you're absolutely right, because it's not like, there's certain things, like, we don't hit, you know, where are you hitting your brother, you know, that's not fair.
And, you know, we talk about, like, there's certain things that we say, like, oh, we don't do this, we don't do that, we don't do this.
But we've never actually, and including like the father, me, like all of us as a family, like actually talk about it and then always steer each other to the right way, right?
And you have to, again, that's important, but a very key component of that is if we say we don't hit, then it needs to be acknowledged.
No, it needs to be acknowledged that hitting occurred in the past and The decision has been made that what the parents did was wrong, which is what you've talked about with regards to hitting with your kids, which is great.
But the father needs to do that too.
He needs to say, the hitting was wrong.
We don't hit.
I'm sorry that I ever did that.
It was wrong of me to do that.
Because without that acknowledgement, it won't stick.
Because you can't claim something is universal but just starts today.
Yes.
I understand.
And part of the way that we train ourselves away from bad behavior is the humiliation of having to apologize when we screw up.
Oh no!
I gotta go and bend a knee and whatever, right?
It's not always easy, I guess, to apologize.
No, it's not.
But it's one of these things that gets a lot easier once...
It's hard to apologize to people who use it against you.
Yes.
But it's easy to apologize to people who say, well, I appreciate that.
Thanks very much.
That's right.
You move past, right?
Gone.
Done and dusted, as they say, in England.
So, if you're going to say to your four-year-old, we don't hit, then the 35-year-old, who did it when he was 30 or 32 or whatever, has to say, I'm really sorry.
For hitting you, because I'm saying to you, at four, you should know better than to hit, but I at 32 didn't know better than to hit.
So I get what I'm asking for is going to seem really hypocritical.
It's going to seem really like crazy.
But this is something I've just recently learned, and it's a real shock to me, and that's why I'm apologizing, because I can't say to you, well, don't hit, when I hit when I was 30 years older than you.
And that's why the acknowledgement, the apology, and the explanation is so important.
Absolutely.
And if everyone can sit down, you know, everybody lives together for so many years, you know, and you don't get into a cell phone contract without 40,000 pages of Two-point squinto vision legalese, right?
Yes.
And yet we can't decide on seven or six or five basic rules for living together in a family structure, right?
Yeah.
And we have these conversations.
We sit down and we say, look, here's where things went a little bit awry today.
And, you know, here's how we can fix it.
And I said, remember, you know, We're three of us living together here, and it's not ending anytime soon.
I mean, we're face-to-face, stuck together for years and years and years.
And so we don't want to let things drift.
We don't want to let things get bad.
Everybody needs to get a voice.
Everybody needs to be heard.
I mean, I'm sure you do, but does the father ever sit down and say, what do you need from me?
How could I parent better?
How could I be a better parent for you?
I don't think he's ever asked them how he could do to be a better parent.
But he has asked them, you know, do you want something?
Do you need something from me?
He's tried to hold them accountable for, you know, for their...
He's not a bad talker.
You know, he's...
But he's a service provider.
He's providing a service called fatherhood.
You know, you've got to talk to your customers, right?
Yes, exactly.
But now that they're growing up, he's participating a lot more.
You know, definitely he's realizing.
And we're, you know, and we've realized together as well that, you know, we've made, you know, so many mistakes, right?
I mean, we don't like to say that, but I mean, we weren't, you know, the best.
And, you know, we always want to be better and be better at Parenting, be better lovers to each other, be better parents, all of it.
So he does talk with the kids.
I wouldn't say necessarily, though, asking what he can do to be better.
That would be a great thing to ask.
And I'll definitely mention it to him, because that's great.
I've asked them, but they change all the time.
Of course, customers change all the time.
You don't get one survey, and then that's it.
Exactly.
Well, you know, we did survey kids.
We did survey the restaurant customers four years ago.
I'm sure nothing's changed since then.
It does constantly change.
Because, of course, the kids are growing.
The kids are growing and changing so much.
My daughter wants more autonomy.
Perfectly sensible, but it's hard to...
A couple of practical suggestions.
I couldn't find it and I was just looking for it.
I'll send it to Mike when I find it.
I don't want to distract myself from the conversation too much and he'll forward it to you.
There was a parenting expert who gave advice to...
The daughter was acting out, was being mean and all that kind of stuff.
And the...
The parenting expert said, I don't want to hear about it, and he said, I want you to have, this is the only time they could fit it in, I want you to have three breakfasts.
The father, I can't remember why it was the father, I don't think it was because father, whatever, right?
But three breakfasts a week, that's my, right, just the two of you.
No rush.
Three breakfasts out, just the two of you.
And it was quite a radical transformation.
You know, our kids are so hungry for time with us.
Yes.
And to feel valued and to feel loved and to feel, you know, I mean, I tell my daughter like every single day just how incredibly thrilled I am that she's in my life and, you know, what a lucky father I am and that's all incredibly true.
Like she knows that she is, you know, she and my wife are like the best things that ever will happen to me.
And quality time is just one of these weird things.
I don't really know what to make of it.
But in terms of quality time between the father and the son, they need to do their things together.
I would.
Okay.
They definitely need some time alone together as father and son.
Right.
Right.
You never know when those deep conversations are going to happen.
That's true.
You don't, right?
Because it happened out of nowhere.
You can't plan them usually.
But just suddenly, the planets align and it's like, boom.
Suddenly, it's like crazy, wonderful depth.
And then it can be like a week or two until it happens again.
You never know.
You just got to be around.
Exactly.
Not make them happen.
But when they happen, they're incredibly important and it's almost like this weird spontaneous combustion that happens to our hearts and you just need to be around for that kind of stuff to happen and I think that that's necessary.
The fact is that we all can improve in terms of parenting.
You can talk to the father and see, would he be interested in getting an expert involved?
You want to solve this stuff now.
Yes, definitely.
We both agree with that.
Your son's only going to get bigger and stronger and you guys are only going to get older and weaker, right?
Yes.
The old get old and the young get stronger.
That is...
That is important.
So you've got to deal with it now.
Escalation of aggression is not going to work now, I think, because your son's personality is like 80%, 90% formed already.
Yeah.
And if...
You know, my virtually certain prediction, which simply means that I'm certain about it.
It's not a certainty, right?
But it's just...
Is that, you know, your son will match you escalation for escalation.
Because the escalation is going to come from his father.
So he's going to say, oh, so males escalate.
I'm a male.
I wonder what I'm going to do.
I'm going to escalate, right?
This is what men do.
This is what men do.
He's just going to mirror the behavior of his father.
And so if your dad, sorry, if his dad drives an escalation, he's just going to escalate because that's what men do.
Yes.
Copy the male.
That's what men do.
Copy the male.
Copy the male.
Because that's how you get...
Because the male got mom pregnant.
That's what I'm designed to do as a male.
So that's what I'm going to do.
Nice.
That behavior is important.
I don't think you can adjust...
I'm certain you cannot adjust your son's behavior without his father adjusting his behavior.
I think you're absolutely right.
This is going to be...
Yeah.
And get an expert involved.
I mean, he's right.
I'm just some idiot on the internet, so...
I'm not a scientist.
I have no degree.
I'm not a psychologist.
Just say, you know, let's go talk to an expert.
Let's go talk to somebody who's got some facts.
You know, you've got a weird lump on your back.
You don't go to the barber, right?
You go to the doctor because the doctor's trained, you know, and we've got parenting challenges because...
He's got to admit, he's not parenting the way he was parented, so you guys are doing something new.
Yeah, exactly.
We're both doing something very new.
Right, so you've got to get some expertise when you're doing something new.
That's true.
I guess I never look at it like that.
I mean, I don't need a dentist to help me brush my teeth.
I've been doing it for quite a while.
I've got it down.
I'm pretty good with that.
I don't often do it with my ear in the way.
I don't do the wrong end.
I don't use a vacuum cleaner or a mop.
I've got it down.
I'm okay with that.
Nothing new about brushing my teeth.
I'm down with that.
But when it comes to something I've not done before, yeah, I either outsource it, and you can't really outsource parenting, Or you go to an expert.
I mean, you have to be doing something new.
And if you're doing exactly what you did before, well, you get the same results you did before and all that.
But, you know, the thing that troubles me is this, when we were role-playing, you know, I did get a bit of a chilling sense of just this lack of self-criticism, that that is going to be a challenge.
And I think that, I mean, he can't think that everything he does is perfect.
Nobody can think that and be sane.
Right.
I know we naturally don't like to be criticized, but it is hard to speak to somebody who just really doesn't like it.
But he's taking it a lot better than how he used to be.
We're both making a lot of efforts, and he's changed a lot.
Because I don't want to make this sound like I'm here putting him down or something.
He's not a bad guy at all.
He is a good dad, but he is difficult to talk to.
It's hard to bring up soft topics because he does tend to get defensive thinking that this is an attack.
And then with him thinking it's an attack, he doesn't flee, but he fights right away and he'll either hit me right away with an attack and then When we're like that, this is how we used to be a lot before.
It doesn't get anywhere.
We're just ping-ponging and hurting each other, not solving any problems whatsoever.
But it's hard sometimes when you're just trying to talk and express and exchange information.
Let's say, I heard this.
Even if you don't agree with it, it doesn't have to be an argument, right?
But it is difficult to But hopefully, you know, I love everything that you said, and I'm hoping it's going to feel the same way.
Yeah, definitely.
I would say, yeah, get to an expert.
It's not that expensive relative to how much stress you worry, if this continues, you're going to be going through.
Yeah.
Look, I hugely appreciate the care and concern that you have for the future of your family.
I mean, they're lucky to have you in their corner, your kids.
Well, thank you.
Massive, massive props and respect for that.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, good work.
I mean, I wish I could get more eloquent.
Good job.
Good on you, mate.
That was, it's really great.
So, yeah, that would be my suggestions.
But, you know, if he's got skepticism about me, which, yeah, I get it.
I get it.
I have skepticism.
Tell him if it's any consolation.
I have skepticism about me as well, which is why I'm recently pointing people at experts.
But, yeah, get to a parenting expert who I'm sure will give you, you know, hopefully better advice or at least more actionable advice.
I don't really tell people what to do.
Well, your advice was great, though.
But yeah, will you let us know how it goes?
Yes, I will definitely.
I will definitely.
I will definitely let you know the progress.
I will say progress because that's what I'm expecting is progress.
Positive projections, let's say.
More like it, not expectations, but just trying to draw the path to that.
Great stuff.
Well, thanks so much, Chantelle.
I appreciate the call.
Thank you.
I appreciate you taking the time.
Thank you so much.
It's my pleasure.
Hey, it's what I do.
And also, if you go to a parenting expert and he says that or she says that I'm completely wrong, please call in and let myself pray.
I will definitely.
Yeah, yeah, no, tell me, tell me, because, you know, I'm just telling you my thoughts based upon some general principles, so if there's expertise out there that contradicts me, I'll definitely correct.
Well, I will definitely keep you posted.
Thank you so much, Stefan.
Yeah, thanks so much.
All the best.
All the best to you, too.
And thanks so much to everyone.
FreeDomainRadio.com slash donate to help us spread this kind of love, this kind of opportunity, this kind of possibility, this kind of change in our families and in parenting.
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Thank you so much, everyone, for listening.
Have yourselves a wonderful night.
Sorry to the third caller.
So sorry.
But we'll get to you I'm sure very soon and I guess we'll talk to you guys on Wednesday.
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