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June 15, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:48:24
"HELP! Why Can't I Stop Screaming at My Kids?" Freedomain Call In
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Hi everybody, I'm here with Sean and we've got a parenting thing going on, right?
I mean, you've got an issue with temper with your kids?
Yeah, that's what my wife has been telling me and I think she's right.
You think she's right?
Okay, so hang on.
If your wife was on the call, what would she say about you?
She would say that the problem is I'm too quick to get angry with our kids, and I am too quick to do things like shout.
I'm too...
I'm a little too grouchy around the house.
Wait, too grouchy around the house or around the kids?
Kids.
Do you have an issue, do you think, with temper in general that includes your kids or is it mostly with the kids?
I think it's mostly with the kids.
It's, I've heard you talk about this before, and I get the mechanics of it.
It's the kind of thing where, like, you can't, if you're at work, you can't shout at your boss.
You can't shout at your customers.
You can't shout at your coworkers.
But if you're at home, you can shout at your kids.
And, you know, and it's not right, but, you know, it's where it's.
Okay.
Can you think of a, I'm sure you can, but can you think, Sean, of a situation that happened recently where you yelled at your kids?
Oh, yeah.
Give me a little thing of specifics.
The most, let's see.
The most recent thing I can think of would be just...
He was watching a video and...
And like on, you know, YouTube, I was in the room and I'm just, you know, walk by and I started listening a little bit and I'm like, and I was just, okay, you don't need to hear those words.
I'm going to turn that off.
And I don't, there were probably other things that were going on that I was, you know, frustrated with and I just reached over, turned it off and he got mad and, you know, He yelled at me and I started yelling back at him.
And how old is your son?
He's about to turn eight in just a couple of weeks.
Sorry, how many?
He's about to turn eight in just a couple of weeks.
Okay, so he's seven, right?
Oh, he's almost eight?
Yes.
Right, okay.
And can you give me a sense of, I know this is tough to talk about, but I appreciate this, can you give me a sense of how the convo went?
Like I said, I was walking by, I heard, he was watching a video game stream, and I heard, he was watching a video game stream, and I heard some language that I'd really rather he not pick up, Do you remember the words that you were most concerned about?
Probably the F word and a couple other things.
Yeah, that's not good.
Yeah, and so I I should have handled this part better, and like I said, I think there was probably something else going on that I was thinking about too, but I just like, no, you're not watching that, and I reached over and I just turned it off.
And he got mad about that, and you know, he turned, and he actually, he was sitting down, he actually kind of kicked at me, and he, I don't think he was trying to, but just where he was, and where I was like, it nearly hit me someplace that would have hurt a lot, even from a seven-year-old.
Well, that's inevitable fathering is taking shots of the nads.
It's just one of these things that I don't know why it is that kids are like, you're not having any more siblings for me.
But yeah, it's just one of these inevitable, no matter what you do is, I mean, you can, it's not, you don't end up with like gonad, castanet, piñata every day, but it seems to happen with Unnerving frequency when you're around kids.
I thought of wearing a cup for a while, but anyway.
Okay, so he kicked at you, and then what happened?
Without even thinking about it, his leg that he had kicked at me with, I just slapped him on that leg.
And he ran off and started crying.
Was it a bare leg?
Do you think it stung or what was that?
I don't think I hit that hard.
It's kind of weird because the way he reacts sometimes, it goes back and forth where Some things doesn't seem to sink in at all, and then a tiny little thing will set him off crying.
And so, I think it was just more the fact that I did that at all.
Right, right, right.
I hope I'm not making excuses.
Well, look, I mean, this stuff, Sean, as you know, is tough enough to talk about, so I don't mind a little bit of dodge and weave that's kind of inevitable.
I mean, I appreciate you bringing this topic up to begin with.
So, okay.
And then what happened?
He said he ran off crying and then what?
Let's see.
My wife was home and, you know, I explained to her what happened and she said, you know, You should have approached that a little more slowly and just said, OK, stop.
We're not listening to this.
We're not watching this.
I've got to remember not to use his name.
You've got to remember not to what?
Not to use his name in this conversation.
Yes, of course.
But, you know, you should have talked to him a little bit before.
And then if you had to turn it off, you were really abrupt.
And she said, just let him go and cool down.
You can't talk to him right now.
You've got to just let him cool down a little bit.
I couldn't bet my life on it, but I think I apologized to him a little bit later.
later.
I shouldn't have done that.
And that was how that went.
Right, okay.
Okay, so let's...
This is sort of my thoughts about this issue.
The issue is not what happens in the moment, the issue is everything that leads up to it.
So my very first and somewhat harsh question is what the hell is your seven-year-old doing with unfettered access to a tablet and the Internet?
That.
that well it's give me a second it's sort of like you give your kids fireworks to play with and then you're upset that they're playing with fireworks Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Because you sounded mad.
You're not listening.
You shouldn't be listening.
We're not listening.
But you give him unfettered access to the internet on a tablet I mean, do you check his history?
Do you know where he's ending up?
Do you know what he's looking for?
Do you know what he's viewing?
Right?
I don't think a seven-year-old, I mean, in my opinion, I don't think a seven-year-old should be anywhere close to unfettered access to the Internet.
Well, okay, for one, where he was getting this, do you know what Steam is, the game service?
I certainly do.
More than I probably should, but yes.
So he was playing a game on Steam, and then you can look up associated media?
Like, you can look up people talking about this, or people streaming?
No, no, listen, I'm not saying that you set him up to look for F-bombs on the internet, right?
What I am saying, though, is that he should not be having unfettered access to the internet.
Because there are, you know, There are these kinds of issues.
He could be on the Xbox.
He could be looking for associated content on a PS4.
I don't know, right?
But my question is, why is he having unfettered access to the Internet on a tablet?
Because you can't control where he's going to go, right?
Yeah.
Well, that comes back to our There's a whole bigger situation with that.
Oh, I get that, but I just, I really want to reinforce this.
Like, if I leave a knife out, and my five-year-old is playing with the knife, I feel that I have made a mistake.
Well, I have.
Like, I've left a knife out, right?
So, I've made a mistake.
So, I can't get mad at the five-year-old for a mistake that I've made, right?
Now, if your seven-year-old ends up consuming f-bombs on the internet, that's not his bad.
The... Yeah.
Okay, so... Part of it with that... Give me a second.
And I'm not... I'm not happy with this whole situation.
He was having problems in school, which... And... Without going into the whole thing, we decided that, like, the school we were at just wasn't working, and so we pulled him Out of school and we're homeschooling, kind of.
I'm with you till the kind of, but go on.
That's what I'm getting to.
Both of us work and we don't.
I wish one of us could be home.
His grandmother keeps an eye on him, keeps an eye on them while we're at work.
And she is not terribly mobile, so she can't like get out with them and she can't take them to do a lot of things or even supervise them outside much.
And so, you know, he's at home during the day, you know, and, you know, he's gotta do something.
And I... And so he plays way more video games than he should.
I don't know.
You have a not great situation going on for him, right?
Yeah.
So you have two kids, right?
Yes.
One is seven and the other is?
One and a half.
Seven and one and a half.
And you have a somewhat crippled elderly caregiver, right?
Yeah, yeah.
That would be about a good description.
Why are both you and your wife working?
Student loans?
No, no, you can't give me costs, right?
because you can also lower your expenses, right?
Well, the...
I mean, the main expense, you know, the biggest other expense would be, you know, housing and, you know... Well, let me ask you this.
What's your wife's student loan payment a month?
It varies because, like, she's on our, like, income dependent... we're on our, like, income dependent thing right now.
Um, I have two that are $100 each, abruptly, and I think hers is another $200.
Oh, come on, man.
You're saying that you can't... you can't have a wife stay home because she needs to make $200 a month?
Well, I mean, the other thing...
I mean, you can tell me how blunt you want me to be.
If this is too much medicine and not enough sugar, I'm happy to adjust, but if you want the straight goods, if you say, well, my wife's got to work because she owes $200 a month in student loans, you're telling me that you can't find any way to solve 200 bucks a month for the sake of the quality of your children and their childhood.
Honestly, she makes more than I do.
I assume she's not breastfeeding anymore, so why don't you stay home?
I mean, I assume she's not breastfeeding anymore, so why don't you stay home?
I haven't gone over the whole financial situation, but with both of us working and, like, we're – I don't know.
I don't know how much we would have to – I don't think we have – we're not living lavishly and we don't have a big expensive house.
And we're not in the – no, no, I get all of that.
But, dude, if you're keeping your kids home from school, it's your responsibility to provide them with a nurturing, playful, energetic, energized, stimulating, blah, blah, blah environment, right?
Thank you.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of the government schools, but at least they're having some interaction and they're able to play outside, right?
Yeah.
So if you're going to keep your kids home, then if you don't have a caregiver who can do anything active, then what is your son doing?
Especially if you're putting a tablet in his face all day, right?
What's best for him?
What does he want?
What does he need?
Because life is pretty simple if you just ask the right questions, right?
It doesn't mean it's easy, but it's simple, right?
What does your son need?
What does he deserve?
What's best for him?
Someone who can wrestle with him on the bed.
Not someone, who?
Me, my wife.
So if your wife's making more money and that's what you need, right, and she's post breastfeeding or whatever, then what's best for your son is for you to stay home, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's what you need to do, right?
I mean, I'm not saying it's easy, right?
Everyone who's a smoker, you say, well, what's best for you?
Smoking or not smoking?
They say not smoking.
You say, well, that's what you need to do.
I'm not saying it's easy, but you know what you need to do, right?
I would love to do it.
I just, I don't, and I, maybe I need to sit down with my wife and go over, okay, what are, what are we spending each month?
What can we cut out?
What can we do less of?
No, listen, because we have to figure out why you haven't done this, right?
Your son is seven years old.
What are the issues that he was having in school, Sean?
He... Give me a second.
He has mild autism.
It's not... If you were talking with him for like Half an hour.
You probably wouldn't notice it.
It takes... Like, you have to be watching it.
You have to be around him for a while to see, like, oddities.
It's not... It's not, like, the obvious... It's not obviously broken kind of thing, but... And so... He... Well, and also the thing was, the school we were at, it was a kindergarten.
And she had like 26 or 27 students, which, even if they're all fairly well-paid... Yeah, that's way too many, yeah.
And, yeah, and it's just like we were looking, and so.
And has he been formally diagnosed?
We sat down one time with a therapist, and they went through, like, a checklist of, like, behaviors.
And so I think, yes, it's.
Wait, you think?
Wait, you think yes?
It's been a, sorry, it's been a, A, it's been a couple years and B, um, she was, the person I was talking to, um, Like, I don't think she was a psychologist.
She was working at a place that handles these cases, but I think she was, like, a case worker?
Wait, so you had a checklist a couple of years ago from somebody who may not even be a psychologist?
Yeah.
And that's it?
He's autistic?
Well, okay, before that, the thing that started my wife worrying about was that he was not He was not speaking.
He had delayed speech.
And you can see other things that you can deal with.
Even at seven, he tends to mix up pronouns a lot, like he and she, and we're not taking him to a story hour with creepy, crazy people, so that's not why.
And sorry, just give me a sense of your son's earliest childhood.
I After he was born, how long did your wife stay home with him?
Probably a month or so.
A month?
I know.
I've been listening to your show.
It's not ideal.
No, and I don't want to throw you under the bus for that because we don't know before we know, right?
So that's what you're dealing with.
So your wife stayed home for a month and she went back to work then.
Did she breast pump or did your son get breast milk after that?
She did that for a little while and it was just...
It was not working for some reason or other.
And so, um, we, we went to, um, formula relatively soon.
Oh, that's right.
I think part of it was, uh, just a couple of days after, just a couple of days after he was born.
Um, we ended up going, uh, he had a fever or something.
We ended up going to the ER and, um, Part of it was he was dehydrated because he just wasn't getting enough.
And so I think that kind of scared her off of trying to handle it.
Oh yeah, now breastfeeding is one of these rather crazy complicated things that you think is just going to be easy peasy, but I remember a friend of mine's wife who was just like trying to breastfeed for like seven hours straight and just getting completely hysterical because it's like it's the only way the baby can feed and it's not working.
All right.
So, but why did your wife go back to work?
She used up all the time she had available and, you know, like I was working part-time and we have to pay for things.
And why were you working part-time if you have a child on the way?
Because although I am intelligent, I am terribly misapplied, and I've never, I've not really had many jobs that make good use of my abilities.
And I'm...
If I... If I had... If I had found kind of work I probably could be able to handle, I could probably, you know, Odds are I could be the main breadwinner and maybe she could even stay home entirely.
But I don't know how to get there from... I don't know how to get there when I'm closing in on 40.
Okay, so how much money do you make a year?
Let's see.
Me, probably 25 to 30.
Right.
And your wife?
I believe her salary is around $50,000.
Okay.
So if you're making $20,000 a year, just say, right?
$24,000.
So you're making $2,000 a month.
I guess you're not paying for child care, right?
Because you've got your grandmother?
Right.
And do you work full-time or part-time?
I'm currently working as an adjunct instructor with a community college.
Next semester it's going to be pretty full-time.
Last semester it was It was two classes and I had to find a part-time job to go along with it.
Basically, I work as many hours as I can get together.
And what do you do in your part-time job?
At the moment, I'm working at a bankruptcy law firm as a kind of a clerk, I guess you could call it.
I don't know.
Okay, got it.
Low-train paralegal.
Right, right.
Okay, got it.
Now, was there a specific incident that caused you to bring your child out of the school?
It wasn't any one thing.
I was the one who was bringing him to school in the mornings.
I was driving him and just The year before, he was at a different school, and it was not a thing, it was not a problem.
But at this school, after maybe a month, two months, it felt like I was taking him to prison in the mornings, just how much he hated it.
And I was telling my wife about this, and she was looking at the feedback that she was getting from the teachers, Just decided that, you know, we had to do something else.
Now, if your child has, is it verbal and social challenges?
Nothing major by what you're saying, like pronoun mix-ups and so on.
Would you say that's the majority of the issues that you see?
Another thing is, like, he's the, you know, Apart from his younger brother who hasn't gotten there yet, he's the only child I've had this much contact with, so he is normal to me, if you see what I'm saying.
So I don't know compared to other seven-year-olds.
He gets stuck on things sometimes in a way that I think, like, If this is what he wants to do, that's what he wants to do, and you're not persuading him otherwise.
So it sounds like he has good concentration and focus.
If we could direct it to something that builds his future, yes.
Builds his future?
Builds his future?
He's seven!
You're almost 40 and you still haven't built your future.
What are you talking about?
Fair enough.
No, I'm not trying to be mean.
I'm just like, it's important that you build your future.
The way that you get him to build your future, Sean, is you build your damn future.
Otherwise, you're instructing him in things that you haven't done, which is never going to take, right?
You don't want to be the fat parent lecturing your child not to overeat, right?
It's not going to take.
You lead by example, right?
They're not going to They're not always going to listen to what we say, but they'll always watch what we do.
Of course, of course, right?
So, it sounds like his concentration abilities, which is a bit of a male thing, right?
And nothing wrong with it, it's just that kind of level of focus is important to succeed, right?
Now you say, well, I don't know if he's pointed in a productive direction, he is still seven, right?
So... Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Now, when your wife went back to work, When your son was one month old, where did he go?
It's pretty much always been with me.
He's pretty much always been in my care, my wife's care, or his grandmother's.
Okay, so give me his day when your wife went back to work.
who took care of him when he was a month old?
If I wasn't working that day, I would be keeping an eye on him, and if I was working, then his grandmother.
What would happen to your son if he didn't have access to a tablet during the day?
Like, let's say, for whatever reason, I'm not suggesting you should, but if for whatever reason, his tablets, or his access to computers, to tablets, to phones, to whatever, was taken away, what would his day be like?
He has, by my opinion, at least far too many toys.
Oh, so you can afford the toys?
But you can't afford to stay home?
Yeah, I... I know.
Okay, so let's get back to he's got no tablet.
What's he doing with his day?
No computers. - Whew.
I don't know how he would occupy himself I don't know what he would do.
Have you ever checked, I don't know, most operating systems on tablets, Apple, iOS and Android, can track tablet usage during the day.
Have you ever done that with your son?
I have not.
My wife, Molly, has.
Yeah.
We have a computer he sometimes uses too, so that wouldn't be the whole picture.
And what's your estimate on how many hours a day he's interacting with a screen of some kind?
I mean, we might as well be frank at this point, right?
Right.
I know.
Five or six, maybe more.
I don't.
I don't know when I'm not there.
Well, that's because you've chosen not to know, because you haven't done the simple thing of checking the usage on his tablet, right?
Well, if you're counting TV... Sorry, were you about to give me another estimate?
No, I'm saying if you're counting TV and the other things, like if I were just looking at the thing, if I were just looking at the tablet.
That would be your baseline, right?
Yeah.
Honestly, I don't think he uses... I don't think he uses that... Well, no, he does sometimes.
I don't think that's the majority of screen time.
Okay, let's just say six hours a day, right?
Yeah.
Right.
That's insane.
I know.
Right?
Because, I mean, you're sitting there saying, well, he appears to have a mild form of autism.
I don't know.
I can't possibly diagnose any of this stuff.
I'm just some guy on the internet.
But my first thought would be, well, he's interacting with a dead-eyed computer screen six hours a day.
That may have some influence on his capacity for language, on his capacity for interaction, on his capacity for Correct pronoun usage, right?
He should be getting hours and hours of conversation a day, right?
Yeah.
And you're kind of dumping him down the digital canyon to make up for your mother's lack of mobility or your wife's mother's lack of mobility, right?
Yeah.
You're kind of draping him in pixels rather than dealing with what he needs, right?
Yeah.
So, and that's why I sort of look at the deep origins of these kinds of things, right?
Because it's not about that he heard an f-bomb on a live stream, right?
What it's about is you're not happy with how your family's going and one manifestation is his unmonitored use of the internet, right?
That's part of it, yeah.
Well, so you see him picking up f-bombs on the internet And you feel bad about abandoning him to tablets rather than giving him your time, attention, human interaction, spending the day with the child you brought into this world.
Because he didn't choose to be brought into the world, he didn't choose to be brought into your family.
You're the only one, really, who has a choice in this matter.
With regards to him, right?
So you see him sitting on a tablet consuming f-bombs and you feel bad.
And then you get mad at him because it's easier to get mad at him than to say, OK, something's really not right here.
Right.
He's got language issues.
He may have socialization issues.
And even if it were true that he is mildly autistic, again, I'm no diagnostician.
I'm just giving you my personal private amateur opinion.
But I got to think that if he has issues that way, the last thing that you should be doing is dumping him on a tablet for six hours a day.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, he needs practice with interaction.
He needs practice with language.
He needs practice with socialization.
He needs practice with give and take.
Because, you know, the problem with the tablet is it's an entirely structured environment that's inhuman.
He doesn't have to negotiate.
He doesn't deal with other people's needs.
He doesn't have to argue, debate.
You know, he doesn't have to figure out what the rules are and negotiate it with other children.
He doesn't have to do all the stuff that childhood play is supposed to do.
for you, right?
He just sits there and pushes pixels around on a screen with no language, no negotiation, and it's kind of a dead-eyed stare after a while, right?
Yeah.
And this is nothing that you don't already know or haven't already thought of, right?
I've been aware of it for a while.
I just have no idea You know, what to do.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Don't go rubber bones on me, man.
No, no, no, no.
Hey, if you want to know why you're having trouble finding what to do that's powerful in your life, it's because somehow you learned, Sean, that going rubber bones is some kind of answer.
It's total bullshit, man.
Father to father, you know exactly what to do to solve this problem.
Come on.
You may not want to do it.
It may be tough to do, but you know exactly what to do, right?
What is that?
Find a way for one of us to stay home with him.
Find a way for one of us to spend a lot more time with him and be interacting with him a lot more directly.
Of course.
Give him a normal human childhood.
I don't... That's your job!
That's the deal!
You become a parent, you have to do what's best for your kids, right?
I agree.
Give me a second.
I don't think we're living horribly wastefully, and that leaves, you know, well, like you said, cut expenses and that leaves, you know, well, like you said, cut expenses or the other option is increase And I don't know, I don't know what to do about that.
So rubber bones again, right?
You play helpless and then you wonder why you get angry at your son.
The two are completely related, right?
Because your son, when he's picking up F-bombs and may learn how to swear before he learns proper pronouns, he's doing that because you're not staying home with him, right?
Yeah.
And because his, quote, caregiver is willing to let him spend six hours a day on a tablet.
That's not a caregiver!
That's someone there to dial 911 if he falls down the stairs.
That's about it, right?
She can't play with him.
She's not saying, oh, for heaven's sake, put that tablet away.
Let's have a game of Monopoly, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I assume that she's spending a fair amount of time tending to the 18-month-olds, right?
At the moment, yeah, she'll be as much as she can chasing him around, so yeah, that too.
Right.
You know that you're not doing right by your son, right?
He should not be raised by a half-crippled elderly lady and a tablet, right?
Yeah.
So the question is, why haven't you acted in the best interest of your son?
And I don't mean this like a big nagging finger-whacking thing, oh blah blah blah, right?
I just mean this is a genuine question of curiosity Which is, what is the block for you for just saying, shaking your head and saying, good lord, you know, I've got four years till my son hits puberty.
Because you see, you know, Sean, when he hits puberty, if you don't have a bond with him, if you don't have a connection with him, if he's not empowered, if he's not confident, if he's not verbally skilled, if he's not socially fluent, his teenage years are going to be a complete freaking disaster.
Yeah.
So you don't have a lot of time.
That's probably why you're calling, right?
You don't have a lot.
You don't have a lot.
He's getting almost eight, right?
So maybe it's three years from now, right?
Puberty these days is kicking in at 10.
So you have like two years to figure some shit out before the teen storms hit him.
And then what?
Then he, you know, soon after that, he could just go out, he can walk out of the house while you're at work, he can go roam the neighborhood, he can go do stuff, he can go get involved with bad other kids, he can go do anything, right?
You'll have very little control over him at that point.
Especially if you're both working and I mean, I can't imagine the grandmother's health is super solid.
So what if she keels over tomorrow, right?
And then and then, you know, what's going to happen is is is.
I don't want, obviously, this to happen, but if it were to happen, right?
If the grandmother keels over tomorrow, or let's just say, says, you know, I'm too old for this shit, like Paul Z. Murtaugh, right?
Thing on it, right?
The Danny Glover thing.
It's like, too old for this shit, right?
I'm 400 years old.
I can't be running around at 18-month-old and trying to entertain an 8-year-old.
Like, I can't do it, right?
Or she gets arthritis, or she falls and slips, or she dies, or something like that, right?
Then what's going to happen is your tablet slash elderly relative stuff, the gaps, child care routine is going to come to an end.
And then you're going to sort out what's what needs to be done.
And maybe you'll stay home there.
Right.
And then you know what your son's going to say.
Your son's going to say deep down in his heart.
And I won't disagree with him.
Sean, he's going to say, wow.
So dad could have stayed home at any time.
But he didn't want to until grandma couldn't.
Then he leapt in to solve the problem.
And you know what that tells me?
That tells me that you do not enjoy the company of your son.
Because if you did, you'd find any way to be with him, right?
And your son probably very much knows that.
Amen.
If the parent's not home, the children interpret that as the parents not wanting to be home.
And that's a fact, right?
It's a fact.
If you wanted to be home, you'd be home.
So, if that's correct, and I'm not trying to tell you your life, I'm just telling you what I think, but if that's correct, Sean, is there a problem with your relationship with your son?
Do you enjoy his company?
Definitely sometimes.
When we are playing together, when we're rolling around, playing on the bed, wrestling on the bed, whatever,
and I don't feel like I understand him sometimes.
A lot of times.
Like what?
You mean his motives?
His thoughts?
Yeah, like what... What drives him?
Kind of.
Yeah.
No, sorry.
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
I'm... I'm finishing your sentence.
This was extraordinarily rude.
I do apologize.
Let me... Let me shut the hell up and have you tell me what the issues are.
No, that's... that's... I mean in the terms of like what...
What is it you want?
What's something we could do together that both of us would want to do?
And like you said, what are his motivations?
What does he want?
What's he interested in besides the mess that I've... besides the video games and TV watching that I've allowed... that I've condemned him to.
That you've what?
That I, by passivity, have condemned him to.
So do you not know how to initiate conversations with your son, find out his interests, share your thoughts, or anything like that?
I'm not saying that's easy, I'm just curious if that's the case.
A lot of times, no.
Like I said, he's very focused on what he wants to do, and what he wants to do right then, and something that Something that's been, that's a problem sometimes.
If I try to, you know, play with him, if I try and joke around with him, and that's not what he wants right then, he'll get mad about it.
Or at least, at least make it very clear, like, you know, Daddy just, no, no.
And it, after a few times of that, it kind of, you kind of back off a little bit.
Well, but can you read his mood before?
Do you know ahead of time whether he liked it or not?
I guess not.
Yeah.
You guess not?
Oh, here comes the rubber bones again.
Right, because if it keeps happening it means you can't tell ahead of time whether he's interested in roughhousing at that time or not.
Yeah.
And also if that's the way that you generally interact with him, Sean, then you're going to bring that to the table not because necessarily even you want to do it, but because that's what you do.
Like if you don't have 10 things you can do with your son, like if it's like, well, it's roughhousing or I don't know what, right?
Then you'll be like, okay, we have time together.
I guess we have to roughhouse because we don't have any other choices, right?
Yeah, there's not a lot of things I can think of that we do together.
Right.
And I don't know what else to get him involved in.
I don't know what Do you have any hobbies that you can share with him?
I like...
There's a few things, but I like reading.
I don't... Do you read fiction or non-fiction?
Both.
For entertainment, more fiction.
We have read to him sometimes, but again, if that's not what he wants to do right then, it's just not, like, it's not, hey, why don't you come sit down with me and we'll read this book you like.
It's just, no, I'm doing this.
No, I get that.
Now, the books that you read, though, can you tell him the stories of what you're reading, right?
I mean, I was reading Crime and Punishment because I did a show on it with Dr. Pesta, and so I spent a couple of days telling my daughter the story, obviously somewhat sanitized, but telling my daughter the story of Crime and Punishment, or it doesn't have to be something that kind of highbrow, it can be anything, right?
But do you have Conversations where you you tell your son about stuff that happened to you when you were a kid or Stories that you read as a kid that that may have influenced you or You know, do you do connect with him?
you know because if you're reading or you know doesn't have to be reading me anything right kids are usually kind of fascinated by what happened to their parents as kids because they it's an imagination challenge to think of your parents as children, right and also
helps deflate the magical authority gap between parents and child to remind your child that you were once a child and so on right and my daughter and I used to play games where she was herself and I was little Steph right like she was playing with me as if I was little and so you know you you were a child you were a little boy and you had experiences both good and bad right doesn't have to be sanitized I told my I've told my daughter about some of the bad experiences I've had as well if she's curious and wants to know
And so, when it comes to conversation with your son, is it something that is kind of like getting the last piece of toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube, or is it something that, I mean, I'm sure it does sometimes, but is it something that regularly flows, or is it kind of not flowing?
It's, yeah, not long conversations, nothing, not really, no.
So do you think it's possible that you're hiding out at work to stay away from the challenges of your son?
There could be some of that, yeah.
And how about your wife, and we just talked about your eldest, because of course your youngest is still pre-compensation for the most part, With your eldest, do you think that your wife has those kinds of conversations or that ease of interaction?
He definitely gets along better with her.
And she's said that when she's putting him to bed at night, he'll tell her about his day sometimes.
It's been a while since I've Since I've gotten to have those kind of talks for a while.
Since you've gotten to have those kind... Oh my gosh, man.
Since you're the father here, what do you mean since you've gotten to have those kinds of talks?
He has to participate too.
I can't make him tell me.
A couple of years ago, I remember when we were going to bed at night,
Like, I would take a flashlight, and I'd make a little shadow puppet on the wall, and I'd, you know, tell, and the shadow puppet would tell him about my day, and I'd have him, him, his shadow puppet talk about his, and he, and we did that for a while, and that was, that was cool, and then he's, he doesn't, I don't know how to, I don't know how to get him I ask.
I have asked.
Could you tell me about your day?
What did you do today?
What's something fun?
And it doesn't go anywhere.
And do you know why it doesn't go anywhere?
Because you don't want to hear about his day, Sean.
Do you know why you don't want to hear about his day?
Because I have a pretty good idea already and I'm responsible for it.
Because, yeah, his day sucks.
His day is being bored out of his gourd with a half non-ambulatory caregiver and screen time.
And if he tells you that, how are you going to react?
Do you want him to be honest with you?
Do you want him to be honest with you?
Was I 11?
Yeah.
I spent a summer when I was 11, as I've mentioned before, with a friend of mine who later died, a friend of mine's grandparents, and the woman was unwell, and I was completely bored out of my gourd.
I had no money, no car, no friends in the neighborhood.
I would go to the library.
They'd give me a buck or two a week.
I'd go to the library.
I'd spend five cents to photocopy something.
I would trace it.
I would color things in.
I would just sit there and read all day.
I was literally bored out of my gourd.
And this is before computers, before tablets, and I couldn't even watch television, though Lord knows there was nothing on back in the day, in the daytime anyway, in the three channels you could get.
And of course, you know, I don't remember talking to my family the whole summer.
My mom had gone back to Germany for something or other.
But of course, if they had called and said, how are you doing?
They didn't want to know that I'm stuck in a condo with some smelly old people I don't even know for months after months and I've got nothing to do and no money and nowhere to go and no friends to hang out with.
Right?
Do you want to know how his day is?
Or in the way that you're asking, is it pretty clear to him?
Because kids are very good at knowing if their parents really want to know stuff, right?
So when you communicate to him, you've got to look at the depths of it, right?
You don't want to know what his day is like.
Because if he said, I was so bored I spent five hours on my tablet.
Then I stared at the wall for a little bit.
And then I was so bored I tried to take a nap but I couldn't sleep.
I mean, do you want to hear about that?
I asked grandma to play and she said no because her hip's aching and the baby might wake up soon.
I think I could do once, but after about a week I would probably be about done hearing that.
Well, even once would be, right?
Kids don't want to cause their parents pain.
It'd be painful for you, right?
Yeah.
What does your wife think of his day?
I I I don't I don't know I don't think...
I don't think... Well, does she think he's getting a good education?
Does she think that things are progressing well for him?
Does she think that it's optimum for her son?
Probably not.
Have you not discussed this?
Not in these blunt of a terms, certainly. - Definitely.
Well, sorry.
Maybe I'm missing something here.
I mean, as parents, you are responsible for your children's welfare.
Does she think that your son is having a good childhood or is needs being met?
I'm, I guess she would say we're doing the best with what we've got.
And I don't think she'd... I don't think she'd be terribly happy with it, but I don't think she'd just... This is the situation we're in.
This is what... This is the options we have.
Oh, so you're both kind of rubber bones, right?
Maybe, yeah.
When you were a kid, Sean, did your parents play with you much?
Certainly not my dad as much as I'd like, I know.
I remember, I remember actually, you know, one time saying that to him that, you know, we didn't, you know, when I was probably mid-twenties, saying like, you know, We didn't do that much together.
I remember going with you one time... I remember racing with you one time to this or that.
That was kind of cool.
And I don't have a lot of those... I don't have a lot of those kind of memories playing with my dad.
Uh, I don't know.
I don't.
I've always been.
been...
Give me a second.
You know, when I was a kid, I would spend a lot of time reading, you know, just sitting and reading, you know, by myself.
I I know that.
And I'm an odd combination because I'm definitely an extrovert.
I like, you know, I need to be around people and at the same time I don't feel like I have very good, I don't have a whole lot of friends.
I don't have, there's not The things I'm interested in, it's hard for me to find other people, and it was kind of the same thing with my parents, that I don't think... Okay, this is all very intellectual, and I appreciate the explanation, but this isn't going to solve the problem, right?
You said you needed to take a moment there.
What were you feeling there?
I guess, you know, like I said about, you know, about, you know, about, I said a minute ago about us, I guess I would say, you know, my parents, you know, did the best they could.
and both of them had to work Dude, dude, what did I just ask you?
What was I feeling?
What are you giving me?
My parents did the best, but what were you feeling when you said I needed a moment?
You seemed emotional.
What were you feeling?
When I was asking you about your dad and whether your parents played with you.
I wish I wish I had more of that kind of thing.
And what was the feeling?
A wish is not a feeling.
Lonely.
Sad.
Sad.
Lonely.
Which is about where my son probably is now.
Probably.
Isn't this the same situation?
You don't want your son in 15 years to have the exact same fucking conversation with you that you had with your father, do you?
No.
And for him to be aimless and unable to achieve his potential, as you feel you have, pushing 40, right?
Yeah.
And listen, man, I am really, really sorry.
They weren't...
I mean, they weren't perfect, but they weren't bad.
They weren't perfect.
There's worse than bad, you know.
When it comes to parenting, do you know what's worse than bad?
bad?
Not there.
Uninvolved.
See, there's good parenting.
There's bad parenting, and then there's uninvolved or absent parenting.
And in my view, the uninvolved or absent parenting is the worst.
Because it doesn't leave you any big significant markers with which to judge the parenting.
Because they're kind of just around, they're in the vicinity, you sit down, you eat meals together, but they're kind of there, not there.
That's the worst!
In my view for kids.
I had a shitty childhood.
It was not hard to figure out that it was shitty.
It was not hard to figure out what needed to be changed.
It was not hard to figure out the evil that was done to me.
Right?
I had something tangible to work with, something tangible to fight back against.
But absent parenting, it kind of robs you of identity and focus and grounding.
And the subtle...
My mom was all over me, like in terms of just like aggressive and violent and insistent and verbal diarrhea and she was loquacious to a pathological degree.
So I had something to fight, which gave me a lot of the strengths that sustain me in my adulthood.
But parents who were just kind of there, not there, There's nothing to fight.
There's no real love.
There's no real intimacy.
You know, being raised by devils is far better than being surrounded by ghosts.
Your parents owe you interaction.
And negative interaction is better than no interaction to a large degree.
And if your parents aren't interacting with you, in my view, that's about the worst parenting that there can be.
You know, outside of child murder and rape.
I mean, just in the general bell curve.
Absence is worse than abuse.
Now that I think about it, there is a certain resemblance between our situation and, you know, My situation as a kid, because I was, I was, you know, until I got to school, you know, I was largely in the care of a woman we called her aunt, although I later found out she's not actually related.
It was just the, you know, adopted, we're, you know, fantastic family friends kind of aunt.
And so I was, I was, in her care while my parents were working.
And it's... I... Hang on, sorry.
So, I mean, there's a reason why people say aunt when she's not an aunt, because they like to think the family's raising.
But Sean, what did you think of your parents and their regard for you when you're being raised by someone else?
Did it make you think that they loved you or wanted to spend time with you or what?
I don't remember asking those questions.
No, no, but just in terms of feeling, in terms of feeling.
Do you know what it feels to be really wanted?
Oh, gosh.
For someone to just wake up and be desperate for your company and just really want to spend time with you.
You know, like when I just.
Just a tiny example, right?
So when I go down, I have a couple of weights and all that and a little bike machine in my basement, right?
So when I go down to exercise, My daughter drops whatever she's doing and comes down.
So we can chat, we can do our little Dungeons and Dragons role-playing, whatever it is we're going to do, right?
And I know what it is like for someone to just truly love and relish your company, my company, right?
You know, when my wife, if she's out, she comes home, we jump up, we run to the door, we hug some kisses, they're so happy you're home, we missed you, you know.
I never want anyone in my life that I love to not know how much, in fact, sometimes how desperately I love that person, right?
Because I know what it's like to not know that, right?
to not experience that foundational or fundamental someone really loves you, somebody really wants to spend time with you?
This is going to start off sounding like a tangential.
I'm not trying to.
It is connected.
I've got an older brother and older sister, seven and five years older than me.
I wasn't expected.
seven and five years older than me.
I wasn't expected.
I wasn't planned on.
And at the, not in the schizophrenic sense, but you know, the voices, the inner talk, I guess would be the way people, the The way you talk about the healthier version of this, but what I hear when I'm at low points is basically you're but what I hear when I'm at low points is basically you're
Basically, you're a mistake.
You weren't even supposed to be here.
Right.
And I... And I... I'm not gonna... My parents never said that in any way.
Like, that wasn't... No, no, no.
I get it.
I get it.
There's so much...
Whatever the parents do, the communication is very clear.
Right?
Whatever the parents are doing.
If the parents are going out to work, and you're not currently starving, right?
If your parents are going out to work, then your parents are communicating to you as a child, they'd rather be working than spending time with you.
Now, of course, there's all this bullshit that parents make up, well, you know, we had student loans, we had this, oh, come on.
That's all garbage.
It's all just ex post facto crap.
Because if your son, let's say your son woke up with a fever and was really ill, one of you would stay home from work, right?
Yeah.
Of course you would.
And the kid knows that.
The kid knows that you can stay home.
Right?
So your parents don't have to sit there and say, well, you were a mistake and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
It's how they act.
In fact, here's the thing.
If they say it, you're much better off.
If your parents wake you up in the morning and say, you know what?
You were a mistake.
I don't really connect with you.
I don't even really like you.
I don't hugely dislike you.
There's just no connection.
I prefer going to work because I find parenting really boring because I can't connect with kids.
If they say all of that, that's so incredibly healthy relative to acting on it but never talking about it.
Do you know what I mean?
Because then you've got to fucking Rubik's Cube that shit.
You've got to, like the Rosetta Stone, you've got to puzzle all this stuff out.
My mom was very frank.
My mom told, I've said this before, middle of the night, she screams at the top of the lungs, I effing hate these kids.
Okay.
It's not great, but I know where I stand.
There's not a lot of puzzling things out.
I don't have to learn ancient Aramaic and look for hidden patterns.
My childhood is not some hieroglyphic escape room I've got to puzzle my way out of, right?
It's like, okay, situation is, mom hates her kids, she's violent, and I got some stuff to deal with.
I have danger to deal with, but I don't have dissociation to deal with.
I don't have a lack of knowledge.
It's probably an excess of knowledge, and it isn't great knowledge, But it's not absence, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
So your parents, you, sorry, there were two things you said, that I was a mistake and?
Uh, you know, I'm, you know, I, you know, I'm a mistake.
I wasn't even supposed to be here.
And, you know, if I, If I disappeared tomorrow, no one would particularly miss me.
Oh man, I am so sorry.
What a terrible, terrible message.
Sorry?
It's not all the time, but... No, no, no.
Don't leave your statements in the lurch.
No, no.
I don't want to hear this.
I mean, of course I'm not saying all the time.
We understand that, but I'm looking at the core message you got from your childhood.
So when you tell me that... See, here's the interesting thing, just so you know what's going on in your head, right?
So you tell me this as little Sean, right?
As child Sean.
You tell me this and then your parental alter egos immediately want to come in and correct and say, well, no, not all the time, right?
And this is how split you are, right?
In my opinion, because you're telling me something honest of your childhood experience.
I start to give you sympathy and you immediately or rather your inner parents rush into correct the record and make sure that what the child accidentally said to someone who cares, that that is occluded, that that is obfuscated, that that is thrown into the fog of parental yes buts, right?
You told me something honest!
I don't know what else to... Listen, I mean I'm very clear.
My mother would have been much happier without children.
I mean, she's pretty clear about that, right?
So I can say that, and, I mean, my inner mother is my inner mother, right?
So I've kind of incorporated her, because my inner mother was not my enemy.
My inner mother was my friend, because she was there to protect me from the real enemy, which was my outer mother, right?
So, like, you internalize the bear so you don't get eaten by the bear, right?
You try and think like the bear so that you don't get eaten by the bear.
But you told me something honest and authentic about your childhood experience, and I started to express sympathy, and you immediately rushed in to correct the record, right?
Because it's painful for you, and it's certainly difficult for your inner parents.
Because if as a child you had said that to someone, your parents would have gotten pretty angry, right?
Like imagine this.
Imagine you say as a child to a friend of yours, I feel like I'm a mistake and I feel like I could just die tomorrow and nobody would really care.
And then your friend says that to his parents.
Oh man, do you know what Sean told me?
Sean told me that he feels like he was a mistake, that he's not really meant to be there and if he died tomorrow nobody would really care.
And then your parents are called by your friend's parents and your friend's parents say, you know what Little Markie said?
Little Markie said that your son said that He thought it was a mistake that he wasn't supposed to be there, and if he died tomorrow, nobody would really care.
What would your parents say?
They, you know, of course we care.
Of course we'd miss you.
I... You know, this is... I don't know.
That would... But it's hard to imagine, right?
Because it's hard to imagine even saying something like that, right?
That would be the start of it.
So my guess is your parents would be ashamed, they would be embarrassed, they'd be angry at you and the first thing they do is they would do to you what they just tried to do to me from within your head, right?
Which is that they would say, well of course not we love you and here's all the examples and we bought you this and we spent time with there and here we went to this park and there we went to that amusement park and we took you to Disneyland and of course blah blah blah.
They would just immediately try to erase your authentic experience in a wash of propaganda.
Yeah.
Which you've also repeatedly tried to do with me, without the same level of emphasis throughout the course of this conversation, right?
Because you, in your introduction, you'll listen back to this, right?
So in your introduction, one of the first things you told me was that your son was broken, right?
That he had issues in school and that he had mild autism, right?
Yeah.
Broken.
A mistake.
No.
No, he's not.
He's not.
He's not a mistake.
I absolutely agree with you, and I'm sorry I phrased that poorly.
I didn't mean to say that you had said that he was a mistake, but you gave me mistaken things about him, or that he was mistaken in his gender pronouns, he was, quote, mistaken in his social interactions due to autism and so on, right?
But you gave me the negatives or the brokenness about your son first and foremost, right?
And you also talked about keeping an eye on him.
You know, I'd be home, I'd keep an eye on him.
My wife would keep an eye on him, right?
Which is kind of a distant way to describe parenting, if that makes sense.
But enough of that.
Tell me sort of what you're feeling.
I just...
I don't...
I don't want him...
I don't want him to have the same kind of feelings that I have.
You know?
And I don't... I feel like I'm failing him.
And I don't know what I'm... I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
Sorry, that was a lot what you said there.
Can you just unpack that a little bit more slowly?
I'm just trying to follow.
Even in terms of just academic education, I feel like I'm failing him.
I feel like I'm failing to give him what he needs.
And I...
I don't know what...
I don't know how to change...
I don't know what I'm supposed to change.
I don't know what options.
I feel stuck.
I feel stuck in the kind of situation we have now.
Because I don't know how we could afford to live on just her income.
I don't know.
don't know.
And if we can't do that...
Wait, you don't know how you could afford to live on $50,000 a year?
Not in save...
Not in, you know, stay in a neighborhood where, you know, I feel like they're safe outside at least.
Are you saying there are no neighborhoods in the country where you can feel safe and live on?
Oh, I guess, yeah, it would have to be where your wife could work, right?
Yeah.
Right, right.
Okay.
And we're pretty glued to this area because, like I said, her mother is, well, and her mother is, well, and that's part of, her mother watches them, so there's only so far we could go away from them.
Well, no, not if you're home, right?
Yeah.
If you're home, you don't need the grandmother to watch them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, no.
Listen, I'm going to give you the due respect which you claimed, and which I agree with, that you're a smart person, right?
And that's the respect that I give to everyone who listens to this show and has these conversations.
You're a smart person, right?
Smart and dreadfully misapplied.
Well, I will tell you why It's tough for you to stay home because we had a conversation earlier about ways in which you could stay home and then you kind of went rubber bones on me again saying well I know I'm not serving my son academically but I don't know what to do, I don't know blah blah blah, problem problem problem, safe outside.
He doesn't go outside anyway!
What do you mean he's safe outside?
Right?
He's got a half crippled caregiver who doesn't play with him outside, right?
Yeah.
So this, you know, there's danger outside, it's like that would actually be a step up, right?
Because at least you'd be outside.
No, the reason why you won't go home is that your parents don't want you to.
Your parents, Sean, don't want you to be home with your son.
I'm not saying consciously, but that's the reality.
And the reason they don't want you home with your son If you have a genuinely close relationship with your son, they're not going to look so good.
You're going to realize what they did not provide.
If you provide to your son what he needs, you'll realize what your parents did not provide to you.
I mean, the pain that you are experiencing.
experiencing just in this conversation, which I genuinely sympathize with and empathize with.
I really do.
Because absence is a very hard hole to map and to navigate.
You know, when I was younger, oh, I used to say, I was raised without a father.
Well, you can't miss what you never had.
Bullshit.
You miss most what you never had.
If you have a father and he dies, there's an ache of leaving and you work with that physical presence of pain and grief and sorrow and anger.
You have something to work with.
If you never had a father, you have this weird foggy absence to navigate that can trip you up and control you and you can't even map the damn thing.
you miss most what you never had because the effects last the longest and the deepest and it's very hard to fix so i think if you were to go home if you were to say i need to be there for my son my sons plural right i I can't let a half crippled grandmother
And computers raise my son.
I can't.
I can't have my son in a decade and a half coming to me and having the same conversation.
Dad, you just weren't there.
You weren't really present.
We never talked.
You don't understand me.
Why did you even want to be a father?
He might say.
You never seem to really enjoy my company.
You never seem to understand me.
You never seem to know what made me tick.
And you seem to want to run away to basically minimum wage jobs rather than be a parent.
Why did you want to become a parent in the first place?
What was the point?
To have me and then spend 20 years running away from me?
Why would you?
What would the point of that be?
What was the entire purpose of it all?
Now, if you stay home and stop those conversations from ever manifesting, and if you are there solidly for your son, first of all, that's going to be tough because the example was not there for you of your parents being there solidly for you.
So there's going to be, you're going to realize there's a huge skills gap, right?
There's a big canyon that you have to cross that was carved by your parents and their parents and their parents before back to who knows, right?
Three cells coming out of a swamp.
But if you go back and you cross that canyon, the gap between parent and child, you'll realize just how big the gap was between your parents and you.
That's going to hurt like hell, man.
That's going to hurt like hell.
And your parents are not going to come out of that looking very good.
And they don't want that.
Because they don't want you.
Like when you really do get how much of a gap there was between you and your parents and how much there seems to be between you and your son, you're going to look at your parents differently and they don't want to see you look at them that way.
Thank you.
They want to have done what they did and get away with it.
Right?
They want to have not parented you solidly.
They want to have been selfish enough or inattentive enough or distracted enough or dissociated enough that you grew up feeling like a mistake that you could die and who would care?
They don't want to pay the bill for that decision.
They don't want to pay the bill for that decision.
And the best way for them to avoid paying the bill for that decision, Sean, is to keep you away from your own son.
So that you never figure out how big of a gap there Was and there is.
If they replicate that gap, then everything's just normal.
It's just parenting.
It's just family.
It's just the way it is.
But if you close that gap and you cross that gap, and you heal that canyon, well, even if you never mention it to them for as long as they live, they will see in your eyes, my friend, that the bill for what they did has come to you.
And they will not like that.
They really don't want that.
And the best way for them to avoid that bill ever coming due is to keep you chasing indifferent students or working as a sub-legal aid or a clerk in an office, right?
Away from your son.
But you're calling me, who is famously close to his child, because you want me to map that canyon and tell you how to get the hell across.
I think.
I don't... I don't want to blame them.
They... I don't... I don't know what else they were... What if blaming them is necessary for you to get close to your son?
Is it worth it then?
Because if they're not responsible for their parenting, you're not responsible for your parenting.
That's the price.
When you say you don't want to judge them, you're also relying on your son never judging you.
Which means you can faff around in the edges here and never make the decisions that are best for him.
Because if you let your parents get away with it, then, by God, you expect to get away with it too, right?
Judge.
And prepare to be judged, because it's going to happen.
They are responsible for their parenting, sure, and you are responsible for yours, and I am responsible for mine.
They don't want you to judge them, but your son desperately wants you to judge your parents, because if you judge them and find them wanting, as they are, in my opinion, if you judge them and find them wanting, then you can judge yourself, Find yourself wanting and close the damn gap.
Right?
But don't let another generation fall into this canyon.
Amen.
Thank you.
It's not your son's fault.
Right?
It wasn't your fault either.
But it's your responsibility as a parent now.
I don't think my wife is going to like it if and when she listens to this.
I think she might be kind of upset with me.
Okay, well let's assume that she's going to listen to this, so I will talk to her.
And I will say that your husband is heroic.
Your husband, Sean, is heroic.
Do you know how tough it is to have these kinds of conversations?
Hey, how do I stop snapping at my kids?
Dig, dig, dig, deep, deep, deep, excavate, excavate, excavate, and suddenly we're four miles underwater at the center of the Earth, where the fire is, where it's weightless.
So, first of all, it is heroic to have these kinds of conversations.
Secondly, you have also been in absentia.
If she wants to call in, I'm very happy to have that conversation too.
But you've also been in absentia.
Your husband doesn't even know what you think of how your son is being raised.
Which means he hasn't brought it up, but neither have you.
So you're kind of drifting along like a balloon somewhere up in an airplane hangar, bumping around the rafters, right?
So you kind of need to shake the cobwebs out of your mind and figure out what's best for your son.
And the environment, from what I can hear, based upon my obviously amateur opinion, is not the very best for your son.
So first of all, he's heroic.
Secondly, you need to step up and figure out what's best for your son.
Which is not where he's at.
That's number two.
Number three, if you think this is tough, if you think this kind of conversation is tough, how's it going to play out for your son if things don't change?
Hey listen man, sooner or later this grandmother is going to be unable to provide child care and then you guys are going to do what?
You're going to rush into action like water filling in a Hole at the bottom of the ocean.
You're going to rush into action, you're going to sort it out, and you're going to find one of you home or some caregiver who's better or whatever, right?
And then your son is going to get the message free and clear.
Oh, we could have solved this at any time!
But it really wasn't worth it to us.
We didn't care about you, our son, enough to get you into a better environment for your upbringing.
So you weren't being raised by the square, dead-eyed pixel gods of Google and Apple.
So we could have solved this at any time.
We just didn't really find any motive until grandma keeled over.
And if one of you comes home, then he's going to understand, in his tender eight-year-old brain, he's going to understand fully, oh, they could have come home at any time because they found a way to make it work.
If you find someone else to raise your son, then he's going to get the message, wow, my parents would do anything rather than spend time with me.
My parents would rather work minimum wage jobs.
They'd rather be yelled at by customers.
They'd rather be undermined by bosses.
They'd rather commute.
They'd rather be like, well, what's wrong with me?
Though my parents don't want to spend time with me.
So he's going to grow up, I think, with that feeling or that thought, as Sean did.
And if you look at Sean and how he feels that his potential is vastly under-realized, I would argue because of a lack of connection with his parents and obviously other choices and so on, but the root.
So do you want your son calling in when I'm 80 and he's close to 40 with the same story that Sean had?
I don't think you do.
It's time to break the cycle.
And whatever parental absence or neglect or whatever happened to you, my dear wife of Sean, that caused this kind of decision-making, that needs to change too.
It's hard to do things differently than how we were raised.
We're not designed for it.
We're not designed to break the matrix of tribal upbringing, which is why societies tended to be, for most of human history, ridiculous photocopies.
The same generation, the same thing, every time.
All the time.
Do you know who kept an eye on, who watched her until she went to school?
Who?
Her grandmother.
Well, color me unshocked.
Right?
But you need to change, right?
You need to change.
If you're listening to this kind of show, You know, it's funny because we like all of the breaks of tradition that benefit us, right, Sean?
Oh, you know, we didn't grow up with air conditioning, but we'll take that.
You know, we didn't grow up with the Internet, but we'll take that.
That's wonderful.
We didn't grow up with 4,000 channels on a cable TV, but we'll love all those changes.
We didn't grow up with heating in the winter, evolutionarily speaking, but all of those breaks from tradition are fantastic.
But then when it comes to, yeah, well, can we up the parenting?
No!
That's disrespectful!
It's no more respectful to our parents to replicate their parenting than it is respectful to their TV habits to buy a black and white 12-inch television and use one coat hanger as an aerial to get 60 snowy minutes once a week, right?
We're in an upgrade path now, societally, civilizationally, knowledge-based technology.
We're in an upgrade part now, and parenting, if it's not part of that, we're not going to do too well.
Sorry, you were going to say?
I said for the moment we're on an upgrade.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I get all of that, but sooner or later there'll be another upswing.
No, I mean, this is, if you just sit there in your son's shoes and say, okay, what's best for him, and just organize things that way, You'll break the cycle.
Because I don't think, Sean, it sounds like, and maybe it wasn't the case for your wife either, but it doesn't sound like either one of your parents ever said to you, or ever said about you, let's try and organize this family around what's best for Sean.
You know what immediately I want to say to that?
Sometimes they did!
They did the best they could!
Sure.
And it's the same thing I want to say about where we are, even though I know it's disastrous.
I know it's not good.
Like I've said, there's a dead weight of history.
I have a hundred generations going back who probably made similar decisions.
There's a dead weight of history that you've got to dislodge, right?
It's hard.
That's a lot of bodies for one man to lift.
It's a heavy burden.
Could I go a little more intellectual abstract for just a moment?
I promise I won't stick that.
Hey man, if you need to come up for air and intellectualize, that's fine with me.
You're familiar with G.K.
Chesterton?
Yes, yes.
There's a poem of his, You Should Look Up.
It's songs of education and the one section is for the creche.
It's an absolutely devastating satire from the point of view of a child on working moms to working parents.
I remember my mother that time that we met.
A thing I shall never entirely forget.
You might find it interesting to look that one up.
Yeah, yeah, I will.
Maybe I'll read it at the end of this, this combo.
But yeah, so I mean, that's, that's the major stuff.
Now, this is what I mean.
So this is how much the tip of the iceberg is, the snowflake at the top of the tip of the iceberg, is your son hearing some F-bombs On a video gaming stream, right?
And you get mad, and he kicks at you, and you hit his leg, and he cries, right?
So that's the surface, right?
And then, you know, I can either tell you how to manage the surface, which is, well, don't do that, right?
That's just teeth-gritting stuff.
Once you get to the root of things...
You don't have to teeth grit.
If all I was doing, I grew up with an angry mother and other dysfunctional people in the environment, and if all I was doing was gritting my teeth saying, don't yell at me, I mean eventually I'd have an aneurysm or it would all give way or my heart would explode or something like that, right?
But if you get to the root of things and deal with things at the root, you don't need any teeth gritting.
It's not an act of willpower for me not to yell at and hit my child.
It's never even tempting.
I've never been tempted.
It's never crossed my mind.
I've never had to bite back anything.
I mean, it's easy.
When you get to the root of things, it's easy.
Now, it's hard getting to the root of things, but once you do, it's really easy.
And I want that for you.
I want you to have that easy conversational fluidity with Your son.
I want you to robustly and deeply enjoy his company.
That's the only way he's going to feel treasured.
It's the only way he's going to feel loved is if you love his company.
Can't wait to see him.
Can't wait to chat with him.
And he's enthusiastic about sharing with you what's going on in his mind, right?
So you don't have to pull teeth.
You don't have to find tricks.
You don't have to force him, whatever that means, right?
But you have to work to really start to enjoy his company.
He's eight.
He's a smart kid, I'm sure.
You can sit down with him and say, you know what?
My dad didn't play with me.
My dad didn't play with me.
And I found it easier when we were younger to play with you.
But I feel like we're kind of at sixes and sevens.
It means that
I'm doing one thing you're doing another like we're going up to play a game and you bring a tennis racket and I bring a soccer ball that we can't play the same game like you know the times when I come into Rough House and you're like I don't want to do that and I'm like I don't even know what you want and what you don't want at the moment and I think that has something it's not your fault I think that has something to do with my dad not playing with me like there's this I don't I'm missing some language about how to do it some way that it's going to be easy
Now I'm really committed to solving and fixing that, because it's not your fault my dad didn't play with me, it's my dad's fault.
But I don't want that to be us.
You know, I had some good things with my dad, and I want to reproduce all of those good things, but the bad things or the missing things with my dad, I don't want that to come and be between us.
That would be a real shame.
That would be a real shame.
So I want to know What you want.
I want to navigate what we can do together in ways that are fun for both of us.
But it's a funny thing.
You know, most of what I want to do, because it's what we've done before and what I'm used to, most of what I want to do is like come in and roughhouse.
And sometimes you want to do that.
And obviously sometimes you don't.
And I completely understand that.
But I'm so used to just coming in and roughhousing.
And also I'm like, What do we do when we're not roughhousing?
It's a tough question sometimes.
And I want to have 20 things, you know, like we take a 20-sided dice from Dungeons and Dragons, we roll it, whatever, and we've got 20 things that we love to do together.
And that way we've got choices, we've got flexibility.
Because I'm sure, or maybe it's the case, that I come into the room and you're like, OK, Dad, what are we going to do?
I don't feel like roughhousing and you're just going to want to roughhouse.
So that's not fun for you either.
But I'm gonna find, I'm like, you know, there's these big glaciers up in the north of the planet and there is these ships that need to, they have these incredibly powerful motors at the back, they churn and they churn and they drive this front of the ship that's like this big giant axe or like this big giant steak knife and they're called icebreakers, right?
It doesn't even matter sometimes how thick the ice is.
They just grind, they find their way through to the ice because they're carving a passage in a new territory where ships, well, normal ships would just get crushed and broken, but these ships, so it's like that willpower.
They just drive their way through the ice.
I'm going to be kind of like that.
I'm telling you right now, I'm going to be kind of like that, solving this problem about knowing what we can do together and how we can have more fun together.
And because my dad didn't play with me much, I think that as you get older, I'm going to feel probably the same habit.
Because I didn't have a dad who played with me, it's a little harder to know how to play with you when you get older again.
That's not your fault.
And then I think there and I say, this is the most chilling thing, my dear boy, but I think sometimes it's like, wow, what if I'm a little lost about how to play with my son?
And maybe that's why.
I kind of avoid it.
We all like avoiding things that we're not good at, right?
Because we're not good at it.
We kind of want to do the things that we're good at, right?
I'm sure you like playing the video games that you're the best at.
But I'm like an icebreaker.
I'm going to break through this ice.
I'm going to get to the warm seas.
You know, if you want to help, that'd be great, but I'm going to get to these warm seas where we have an easy, fantastic, and fun time.
We can't wait to spend time with each other.
And maybe, just maybe, we can fix this whole situation, because you shouldn't be spending your life six hours a day on a tablet.
You shouldn't be spending your life waiting for somebody who can run outside to get home.
You shouldn't be spending your life Doing that because it's not really doing much at all.
And I've had trouble getting my life together.
I've had trouble getting my ambitions in a line.
And I think that's because when I was a kid, I didn't feel like people really wanted to play with me because they didn't, right?
All I could do was judge by what they did.
I don't have, you know, I'm not like a mosquito who can, I can't stick my brain proboscis through somebody's nose and suck out the contents of their brain.
So when I was a kid, people didn't really want to play with me.
I didn't really feel like I was loved or treasured or wanted, if that makes any sense.
And I'm kind of concerned that that's kind of happening again.
You know, I don't want you to feel like I don't want to spend time with you.
But the reality is I'm not spending as much time with you as I should.
That's the reality.
And because of that, Everything you do, sadly or happily, you get better at.
You play a lot of tennis, you get better at tennis.
You play a lot of piano, you get better at piano.
But you spend a lot of time not playing with your kids, you get better at not playing with your kids, like my dad was, and I don't want to do that again.
I don't want that to be your experience.
That's not how I want to be as a father.
I deserved better, but I can't get better from the past, but I can provide So I don't know exactly what you would say, that's just off the top of my head, but you tell me, your son's not going to be interested in a conversation like that.
Yeah.
He'll forget tablets existed.
Which also requires me following up, changing... Oh yeah, no, you never want to make that kind of commitment without following it up, because you'll never regain trust again, ever.
So yeah, do that when you're good and ready to follow through, right?
So what do you think?
I think I need to look at how we can rearrange our life, and I'm scared.
Well, technically your inner parents are scared.
You're very enthusiastic.
But I get it's complicated.
So, yeah, you've got some practical things.
Sit and figure out the finances, figure out your after-tax income, figure out your living expenses, figuring out, you know, anything that you can do.
Is there any way that you can work from home and make some money, right?
You said you're an adjunct teacher, well maybe you can teach on the internet and get donations.
There's so many options, right?
Once you have a goal, you can figure out how to get there.
But if you don't have a goal, you just tend to photocopy yesterday, right?
Yeah.
Is it a useful conval?
That depends if I actually make it happen. - Yeah.
Well, no, that's whether you Sorry, was it useful insofar as you have ideas, choices or ideas that you didn't have before that you think would be helpful?
Yeah, it's definitely a new way of looking at the situation.
And the other thing, it's not just my parents, it's our entire culture.
This is what you do, and you can't even say it to other people, because then other people get mad at you.
I've never noticed that, but I've heard that could be the case.
And the last thing I wanted to say, Sean, is you realize that this is not fundamentally about saving your son, right?
Okay.
Would you?
I'm not sure.
It's not fundamentally about your son.
It's about saving you.
This is not asking you to sacrifice yourself in order to provide some benefit to your son, because that's probably going to breed only resentment in the long run.
But this is a way of making sure that the second half of your life It's full of a hell of a lot more purpose and passion and dedication and success than the first half, right?
You say you're pushing 40 and you feel like you've really underachieved, right?
Yeah.
Right.
You commit to your son, you will succeed in your life.
This is not about saving your son fundamentally, because that would be self-sacrifice.
This is about saving you.
You sacrifice for your son, you save yourself.
You unleash your own potential.
What is it?
CS Lewis, if you put first things first, you often find the other things thrown in, but if you try and put second things first, you'll find out that you don't even have the first things.
Right.
This is about you commit to your son and your life We'll explode with potential.
whatever it is that you choose to do.
That sounds hopeful.
So...
Good.
Will you let me know how it goes?
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks for the call, man.
I really, really appreciate it.
It's fantastic work, in my humble opinion.
Yeah, it was good talking to you.
Take care, man.
Okay.
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