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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:23:24
Peaceful Parenting: Negotiation, Bribery and Preparation
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Thank you.
All right.
Part the second.
We are ready to roll.
All right.
Patrick is next.
He wrote in and said, my wife and I would like some practical help on nonviolent parenting for our new son.
Some advice on preventing the passing down of the damage to our children and general tactics for dealing with some challenging situations.
We have a good understanding of the why for nonviolent parenting, but are drawing a fair amount of blanks on the hows.
Go ahead, Patrick.
When's he going to be born?
So we have a nine-month-old now.
At the time that was written, I guess he was eight.
And we have since found out we have another one on the way.
So it's even more important.
I actually have a 15-year-old daughter as well.
I'm 33 and had her when I, I think, we got pregnant with her when I was 17.
So that was a pretty rough situation.
I really, you know, it was children raising children at that point.
So, yeah, she's 15 now, and then we have, like I said, we have a nine-month-old son and another one on the way.
And I actually have my wife, Elena, here with me, so we're both here.
Hello, hello!
Hello, sir.
Congratulations.
Thank you, sir.
So how far along are you with the next one?
Three months.
All right.
So you can't feel anything yet, right?
Oh, no, just a whole lot of sickness and very tired.
It's the miracle of life!
Yeah, no, I remember it well.
It's beautiful in hindsight, I guess, but it seems kind of goopy in the moment.
But then I probably don't need to lecture you a lot about being pregnant.
So, what are the practical stuff that you see coming up that seems obscure, like how to do the piece of parenting thing?
Oh, wow.
Well, I guess back when I kind of initiated having this call with you, it was right after, originally you had said that you kind of solve a lot of problems with bribery.
And that made perfect sense and it answered a lot of my questions.
And then a few weeks later, I think you released a video where you mentioned that some new data you had seen pointed to bribery being wrong or bad.
And so then that kind of threw me for a loop, and then that's when I kind of asked for this call, because then I had no idea kind of how to negotiate these difficult times.
But then recently, like a week or two ago, I think I heard you put out another video where you said, well, you kind of rejected that.
And so I wanted to kind of maybe get you to clarify where you are on kind of bribery.
What's it worth to me?
Haha, just kidding.
Want milk and a late night?
I am... I get that... Understand, right?
This is just all opinion time and just experience time.
You don't want to be bribing your kids about everything.
Like, I get that.
I really do.
At the same time, there is bribery in life.
I mean, how many people love their jobs and would do it for free?
Maybe you two are in the lucky few, but most people don't, right?
Right.
You know, as is evidenced by the fact that they win the lottery and they do the funky chicken dance right out of there, right?
And so there is bribery in life.
And I mean, we do this sometimes even with ourselves, you know, like, oh, you know, I'll have a piece of cheesecake and I'll do an extra workout kind of thing.
So I think that there is bribery in life.
I think that I still use it on occasion with my daughter.
I think, obviously, constantly bribing your children is bad.
And certainly, I don't bribe my daughter for any negative behavior, because that basically just becomes being bullied.
Like, yes, I'll buy you a candy bar, but you can't have a tantrum.
Yeah, right.
You know, that we've never done.
The bribery is Honestly, I mean, thinking back, it was at the level of, uh, you know, if you, when she was a baby or a toddler, you know, if you use the toilet, you get a skittle, which was, um, yeah.
So yeah, positive things, but we certainly, I mean, my daughter's never had a tantrum and people, they don't believe that.
Um, but she's, um, she's not moody at all.
Like she's, she's not moody at all.
Um, I was just talking about this with her yesterday.
Because she met a girl who's a bit moody and she's like, well, that's different.
And I'm like, yeah, I mean, she's sort of sometimes she's happy.
Sometimes she's grumpy and we don't know why.
And, um, I said, you know, do you ever, am I ever sad or upset and you don't even know why?
And she's like, well, no.
And I said, does that ever happen with mom?
And she says, well, no.
And just said, did you ever feel that way?
She says, no, I'm, I'm happy.
Like, Almost all the time.
Like, unless I fall, you know, I cut myself or whatever, right?
I trip.
I'm happy all the time, and she is.
I mean, she's very even-keeled, and occasionally she can be a bit teeth-grittingly positive.
Right?
No, seriously.
She's like, literally, right, so I got one of the $1.50 donations the other day, and I was like, oh man, she's like, what?
She's like, some guy sent me $1.50, and she said, but that's better than a dollar, right?
At least it wasn't a dollar.
And she's like, she's so relentlessly positive, it's like, you know, you're right, it's better than a dollar.
You're correct.
I can't take it.
So that goes back to what you talked about to another parent recently, I think, where you were basically like, you have to, you have to really sort of control the people that are around them so that they don't imprint on people with bad habits like that.
Oh yeah.
I mean, uh, we, she, she met, um, just once, uh, she met a kid at a playground, oddly enough called Amina, who was Amina kind of kid, um, who, you know, when she was going down the circular slide, And the kid at the bottom would go, Boo!
And it would startle her, right?
And she said, Hey, please don't do that.
And then she went and did it.
The kid did it again.
And I wasn't there, but my wife handled it.
You know, we still talk about that.
I don't know what months and months ago, we still talk about that so that we can try and sort of puzzle and figure things out.
And I think she's met two children in the course of her life who were dysfunctional, like me, right?
And, and both of them were just like one time events at playground.
And yeah, we still talk about it, but that's it.
That's all she's got.
I mean, no one in her life has ever raised a voice, has ever threatened her, has ever punished her.
That just has never occurred.
But so occasionally, if I really wanted to do something positive, and she's really having some resistance, we'll try and talk about it.
And for the most part, if at all possible, I will just let it slide.
Right?
Right.
Okay.
But for stuff like reading, I still think reading is important.
And she can do it, and she's starting to do it on her own, and she's starting to get more enthusiastic about it.
But for a couple of months there, she didn't want to do it.
And so, yeah, I would bribe her.
Not with candy and stuff, because I don't want to get all that food stuff, but some positive reinforcement for a good job.
Now, I mean, obviously, I do Like I'm trying to sort of think, maybe six a year in total.
So it's not sort of the first thing in the holster, you know, ah, bribery!
She's not doing something either.
Here, a candy!
You know, I get that's bad, right?
Obviously, I understand that.
But I do think that in areas where she can't perceive the benefit as yet, but she will get it afterwards.
I think it's I think I still found it to be helpful.
So again, it's it's a very sparingly used device and But you know To me.
Okay, so no bribery.
Does that mean like no ribbons in sports?
Does that mean?
Everyone gets the same pay no matter how hard they work.
I mean, it seems kind of weirdly egalitarian to me Anyway, yeah, you'd have to really kind of define bribery, right?
Is bribery a reward for a job?
Is it a paycheck?
Is it?
I think it's all those things.
Bribery maybe isn't a negative in all circumstances.
Yeah, I mean, we all live with positive reinforcements.
I mean, I don't love working out, but I do it, right?
I mean, the positive reinforcement is to maintain good health and all that.
I mean, who the hell loves brushing their teeth?
But there's a positive reinforcement called, you know, not having cavities or whatever.
You know, incentives, you know, bribes is to me, a bribe typically means that you're getting someone to do something wrong.
Right?
I mean, so you bribe an official to look the other way, or you bribe someone to give you a contract when they wouldn't otherwise give you the contract.
So bribery is one of these words that, you know, it's like, you've lost the argument even with the word.
And it's sort of like the traditional definition of anarchy or something.
I'm an anarchist!
It's like, okay, well, you've lost already in some way, right?
So I think bribery is already bad.
On the other hand, I think incentives and rewards is not necessarily in the same category.
It's a part of life.
You know, it sort of strikes me that the people who have come up with these studies This is not an argument.
I'm just telling you sort of what I think.
But it's interesting to me that I don't know any free market entrepreneur who's come up with any of this stuff.
It generally tends to be academics with tenure.
And, you know, if you can't get fired and you're getting paid $150,000 to do something you love for three hours a week, yeah, I can understand how you might be somewhat beyond incentives.
Incentives matter quite a lot to those of us struggling out here in the free market to provide value without massive government subsidies and contracts and unions and shit like that.
Sorry, stuff like that.
You have an unborn.
Poop like that.
I don't think it's actually that fair to remove incentives from parenting.
Obviously, no negative incentives.
But I do think that on occasion an incentive or reward for doing something, the work of which is going to pay off later, I think is helpful and important.
So I have not scrubbed it from my vocabulary, though I do of course understand that if you're constantly providing incentives for your kids to do stuff, they don't develop a lot of self-actualized behavior.
And certainly if I still had to give my daughter a Skittle to go to the bathroom, right, then that would would not have worked, you know, but we needed it for a couple of weeks if memory serves me right.
And I don't, I can't think of any incentives that have really lasted for any particular period of time.
So my daughter loves stuffed cats.
And so, you know, if she wants a stuffed cat, I'll say, okay, well, let's make a deal.
And she's like, okay, fine.
I will do two weeks of extra reading, like with no complaints for this kitty.
It's like, okay, great.
Let's have the kitty.
To me, that's a win-win.
She gets the kitty and we get no complaints about doing, and literally the reading we do is like 15-20 minutes a day.
Can you give me a better idea of how your negotiations go?
Like I said, I have a 15-year-old daughter and I raised her completely opposite to this whole kind of idea, unfortunately.
Basically, I had her only a few years after I was spanked myself.
I had no possible comprehension of what I should be doing, but now it's critical to me that I, for once, be a good parent.
For twice, hopefully.
Yeah, for twice.
That means that I have to quickly learn how do you negotiate with a five-year-old, with a three-year-old?
How does that work?
How does that look?
Well, give me a situation that you think will come up.
Okay.
So, two months ago we were at a restaurant and there was this kid running laps in between the tables.
He went and got toy cars and was pushing them around in between the people.
The parents totally ignored them.
My response in the past would have been very disciplinarian.
And then I just kind of looked at my wife and I was like, well, what on earth are we going to do?
So is that a good example?
Sorry, did this restaurant have like hard plastic chairs and a play center?
No, no.
It was a nice restaurant?
Yeah.
And how old was the little boy?
6, 7, 5, 6, 7, something like that.
Right.
So, you can't solve that problem in the moment.
Right?
I tell you what, aggression almost always arises, and this is, I think, a generally true statement.
Aggression almost always arises out of a failure to prepare.
Okay.
In other words, aggression tends to be reactionary, and it tends to be way strong Because of a failure to prepare, right?
So why do people want the welfare state?
Because they have failed to prepare for adulthood, right?
Why do women want so many welfare programs if the husband is not around?
Because they failed to provide to prepare for being a good mom with a stable provider, right?
So when there's a failure of preparation, there's almost always an escalation and an aggression that occurs on the other side of it.
So the question is, for me, you say to yourself, I want to go to a nice restaurant next week, right?
Right.
Now, I mean, if you can go to a not nice restaurant, you know, or whatever, then that's fine because kids are around and that's all understood.
But let's say you want to go to a nice restaurant.
Okay.
Now, a six-year-old for sure can handle this, right?
So what you do is you sit your kid down and you say, listen, we want to go to a nice restaurant.
Now, a nice restaurant has fantastic food.
And it's not too loud and there's not a bunch of screaming kids, you know, all that kind of stuff.
So there's something that we want to do.
Maybe not the screaming kids thing, because that sounds kind of derogatory towards kids.
But now say, would you like to come to a really nice restaurant?
Now, if the kid desperately doesn't want to come, then get a babysitter, right?
Or find someone to take care of your kid, right?
And you talk it up, right?
Show them pictures of here's what it looks like.
Look, there are candles.
And at the end of the meal, you can blow them out.
You might even blow them out at the beginning and have them light them again or whatever.
It could be cool stuff.
But this is a big person thing.
Like we go to the restaurants with the clown chairs and the puffy seats and the trays and the food that's all in paper and stuff.
That's kids stuff.
This is a big person restaurant.
Now kids are pretty fascinated by what big people do, right?
And a lot of them want to emulate big people, right?
And so you say this is a big person restaurant.
Now, if you want to come, we'd love you to come, but if you want to come, then It has to be different than a kid restaurant, right?
Like you never see candles at a kid's restaurant, right?
They say, no.
I say, well, why not?
Because fire and little kids and stuff like that, right?
Now this has candles, which means it's for bigger and more mature people.
So if you want to come, which we would love, then there's some standards behavior, right?
You, you've got to sit nicely in your seat.
We engage in conversation.
We chat, right?
Um, you can bring a little iPod if that's whatever, however you handle that family stuff, if it's going to be a long dinner, but We're going to have chats and you got your napkin and we're going to dress up a little nice, but you can't be going down and running, you know, between and so on.
And you can't be, you know, you can have a few, maybe a few little toys in your area.
But, you know, so you just, you sort of go through the whole list of what is expected of a child in that environment.
Does that sort of make any sense?
It makes perfect sense.
And then, after you say that, you have to get the child's agreement to that.
This is key.
Once the child understands, and the child has agreed, then you have leverage.
Right.
Otherwise, you have to pile on with aggression after the fact, because it's a lack of preparation.
Sorry, you were going to ask something.
Go ahead.
No, I was just saying, I know no parents that actually sit down with their kids and prepare them for such, I guess, mundane kind of simple things, but I totally see how that would Be huge.
It would be absolutely huge.
How's the kids?
How's the kids supposed to know?
Imagine you go to Japan.
I mean, how the hell are you supposed to know what is the ritual for eating at a fine restaurant in Japan?
Or it's let's say you go into someone's house in Japan.
Yeah, you know, I'm sorry, I should have brought table legs.
I mean, like, I don't know, right?
What what they do in Japan for meals.
I mean, I watched Sayonara, but that's probably not quite enough.
So So when you're going to a new culture, you need some preparation.
So if I was going over to someone's house in Japan, I'd go read up a bunch on what is expected.
Do you bring a gift?
Like in some cultures, if you admire something in someone's house, they've got to give it to you, right?
Right.
Right.
Well, I mean, so don't go and say, I love your wife.
I will take her home in a bag.
Right?
So, um, So you would read up on it, right?
Well, going to a fancy restaurant is like, for a kid, it's like going to Japan.
It's a whole new environment.
So you've got to prepare them for it, right?
Otherwise, if, you know, a failure to prepare is preparing for failure, right?
Now, once you have a child's agreement, then you remind them every day, right?
You know, what are the five things?
Go to a fancy restaurant.
Remember, it's going to be cool.
What are the things?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Now, once the kids have agreed and they understand and they're ready for it, then you'll have no problems.
And if the problems do arise, you say, hey, wait, wait, wait.
Remember, we had a deal, right?
Right.
We had a deal.
And I have found, under all situations, we had a deal is enough.
So it's never gone past that?
The deal's never been broken?
No.
Well, occasionally she'll forget.
But I will tell you how powerful this is.
Okay.
So, as a father, and I'm sure this happens with moms too, I have a habit of attacking my daughter with tickle bombs.
Okay.
Occasionally I am tempted to do this in a fancy restaurant.
So my daughter and I were playing who can tickle who best when walking into a nice restaurant, right?
Okay.
Now she, and we're not allowed to do tickle bombs in a nice restaurant, right?
Obviously, right?
Right, right.
So she tickled me for the last time, right?
And then, when I was about to tickle her, she jumped through the doorway to the nice restaurant.
She planted herself in front of the maitre d', and she said, Dad, no tickling, it's a nice restaurant!
That's great.
That's great.
And she was four years old.
Wow.
I envy the connection you have with your daughter that I totally threw away with mine.
Well, no, no, listen, listen.
I mean, that's I think probably too harsh on yourself.
Look, I get and you can share if you want.
But I fully understand that if you had a kid at 17, you had a pretty rough as a kid yourself, right?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I guess.
And that doesn't I mean, that that doesn't come out of nowhere, right?
I mean, so you had a rough as a kid.
And as you say, you were still a kid.
I mean, you were still seven or eight years away from physical brain maturity and you had a kid, right?
Right.
But I just try not to make excuses for myself because, you know, it was still my choice and my responsibility and... No, no, no.
Fine, look, but I'm concerned about you making excuses for your parents, right?
Because the only person you talked about as being at fault there was you, right?
Sure.
Okay.
How would my parents be at fault for my decision to have a child?
Tell me a little bit about your childhood.
I grew up with my mom until I was eight or nine.
She married my stepfather, who turned out to be very abusive.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Was your biological dad?
Never met him.
Apparently, he split before my mother was able to tell him she was pregnant.
And how old was your mom when you were born?
How old?
She's 25.
How old was your mom?
25.
Right, so your mom was incredibly irresponsible with her sexuality, right?
It's so weird hearing someone else say this.
Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
I've just never heard, I've never thought those words before.
But, I mean, that's... But look, I mean, if a woman, unless she was raped, right?
I mean, a woman who voluntarily has sex and gets pregnant with a guy who then takes off, is about the most irresponsible life form on the planet.
Sure.
I mean, that's a human life.
You know, sex is a big person's game that makes real people.
Yeah.
And to have a child with a father who has not even stuck around is unbelievably irresponsible.
So you had a template of incredibly irresponsible sexuality, which was why you're here, right?
Right, yeah.
But anyway, so then when you were eight or nine, did your mom date when you were before that?
No.
She was very heavily involved in the church and I guess just one day kind of out of nowhere, I mean she may have dated and just kept it hidden from me, but I guess one day she just kind of brought someone home from the church and that was that.
I think they dated three months and then they got married three months after I probably first saw the guy.
And were you consulted about the marriage?
No, not at all.
I mean, I'm sure at one point she probably asked me if I liked him.
That's not consultation.
That's opinion polling.
Yeah, at the time I'm sure I liked him because he was into electronics and had lots of cool toys, but I really had no idea.
Well, but you understand what I'm saying, right?
You have as much if not more of a say of the men in your house that your mom does.
Because your mom, everything's there by her choice, right?
She chose to have sex with a guy who didn't stick around, right?
For which she owes you an enormous apology, in my opinion, right?
I mean, sorry that I ended up with such a crappy guy that didn't even stick around to raise you.
That's costly to you, right?
It's painful to you.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So everything in her life was there by choice.
She was 25, right?
But you're not there by choice.
You didn't have no dad by choice.
And the new guy is not in your life by choice, so she needs to consult you, right?
Yeah, I had no comprehension of what this father thing was.
I never had one, didn't know what to expect.
I just knew it was a guy that brought toys over.
I very clearly remember that mindset.
Right.
And then what was he like as a stepdad?
He was very verbally degrading.
He hit me with random implements around the house when I disobeyed or didn't do jobs, I guess, to the quality that he expected.
So it was pretty terrifying.
Then my mother, I guess, had a I had a son with him, so my brother, I guess about a year into the marriage.
Wait, wait, wait, hang on.
But how long into him living with you did he hit you with the implements?
Probably a year in, probably around the same time that they got pregnant with my brother.
And did your mom know that he was hitting you?
Basically beating you?
Did your mom know that he was beating you?
Yeah, absolutely, she knew.
And he was, you know, hitting her too.
Oh, so this wonderful specimen of femininity was like, hey, he's hitting my son, he's hitting me, you know what would be fucking great?
Let's have another baby!
God, my gut reaction is to be like, you're talking about my mom, man!
I'm so defensive just as a reaction.
That's hard.
But yeah, you're absolutely right.
I mean, tell me.
If I knowingly handed over my child to a babysitter that beat her, what would you call me?
Evil.
Evil.
Yeah, and then if I'm like, hey, let's have a baby and give that to the babysitter who beat my child.
Yeah.
I'm sorry if it's startling.
I'm really sorry that it's startling.
I've been listening to you for months.
I am one of these few people on the planet who have incredible respect for women.
And my incredible respect for women means treating them as equals.
It means that if they do unbelievably shitty things, particularly if those shitty things involve children and choice, I hold them completely accountable in exactly the same way that I would hold a man completely accountable.
This is my incredibly deep respect for women.
That I will not lower my standards around a woman.
I don't want the world to lower the standards around for my daughter.
I want her to be treated the same as a man.
I was always raised to treat women the same as men.
Naturally, in some circles, I'm now known as a woman hater because I treat women as equal to men.
But if women let their children be beaten by a man and then see fit to provide that man with an offspring, I think that's pretty shitty behavior.
I would think that would be shitty behavior on the part of a man, and I will not change the standards because philosophy, sadly or happily, is a universal discipline.
It's an objective discipline, which means that boobs don't block UPB.
It means there's no pussy-puss in philosophy.
No such thing, right?
Right.
So, I'm sorry that it's shocking, but that is terrible behavior.
That is incredibly terrible behavior.
Her first responsibility was to keep you safe.
You're absolutely right.
Her first responsibility was to keep you safe.
Now part of keeping you safe is having a child with a man who's going to stick around.
And if she doesn't do that, she's already failed.
She's already failed her motherly duties, which means she's already starting in a hole.
Not in a mountain, but in a hole.
Now if she then Mary's a guy who hits you and gives them another kid.
She's further endangering you, plus she's endangering a baby.
At least you were getting hit when you were nine or ten, which is terrible enough.
But she is knowingly placing the infant in the proximity of a child beater.
Right.
Right.
And I think my brother ended up A lot worse than I did because I think he was younger when he went through it.
I was already old enough to kind of recognize that something was dangerous, that something was wrong.
And you had nine years of not being beaten with implements.
So the formative years, zero to five are the really formative years.
This is what I mean.
If you give a baby to a child abuser, I mean giving an older child to a child abuser is bad enough.
You give a baby to a child abuser, you are then creating the kind of kid who's probably going to end up doing damage to society or himself or another generation.
Right, right.
Yeah, and it eventually took, I think their whole relationship was about five years, and we got to the point where it took one of my cousins coming in from out of state to stay with us, and he ended up, she was 16, 17, and she upset him somehow, and I think he basically bent her over his lap and just spanked the crap out of her.
And I think that was when my mom kind of saw The guy, or the demon that was in the house, and so we packed up our shit and split.
Wait, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you're kind of blowing past a lot of stories here.
I'm sorry.
Sorry.
Now look, I understand the urge to laugh, but I mean this stuff is like desperately not funny, right?
And I don't understand the urge to laugh.
I guess it's a stress relief.
No, you're trying to get me to view it as funny so that I don't expose the pain, right?
Okay.
Okay, so just deep breath time.
So you had a female cousin who came to stay who was 16 or 17 years old.
Yes.
Yep.
She was my, she was probably my best friend in the family.
So I was very close to her.
Okay.
And she did something to annoy your stepdad.
Yeah.
And I don't remember what that was.
Um, I think in fact I probably walked into the room, um, middle of the spanking.
So And it doesn't matter, because it doesn't matter.
Right.
Like, I don't know of any court in the world that says to a man who beats his wife, to the wife, well, what did you do to upset him?
Right.
Right?
Doesn't matter.
Right.
I mean, how comfortable does the society feel saying to rape victims, well, what did you do to provoke him?
Were you dressed provocatively?
Yeah, of course not.
Yeah.
Of course not.
So it doesn't matter.
She could have done anything.
She could have set fire to his car.
It doesn't matter.
He's an adult.
You don't.
Anyway, so basically he pulled this young woman over his lap and spanked her on her behind?
Yes, yeah.
Pants up or pants down?
Pants up, but he was a pretty enormous guy, so it wasn't like the hitting was light.
Oh, so he basically really hit her hard on her butt when she was 16 or 17 years old.
Yes.
That is some kinky shit, right?
You understand this is more of a fetish than it is any kind of discipline.
And that's terrifying to think about.
I haven't thought of that before.
No, but it is.
Spanking is, and spanking also does produce a lot of, can produce a lot of sexual dysfunction because it is, right?
The butt, there's a reason that it's covered with a bikini, right?
There's a reason why you have to cover it up because a butt is a sexual organ.
A butt is an erogenous zone, right?
Right.
And so there's a lot of sexually kinky shit that is happening when a man is beating a young woman on the behind.
Right.
Okay.
And so at this point, Your mother had a reaction?
I don't quite understand.
I don't follow that.
So I think at that point this triggered the rest of our family to kind of stage an intervention.
At which point?
No, why at this point?
He's already been hitting babies, he's already been hitting you.
How old were you at this point?
Ten, maybe?
Okay, so he's hitting you I guess the baby's just born.
Maybe he's not hitting the baby, right?
Right.
But why?
I mean, he's already been hitting you.
Oh, could it be because you're a disposable male?
Hmm.
Hmm.
But he hit a woman.
Oh, now we have to intervene.
That was just a little boy he was hitting.
Now he's hitting a young woman.
Oh my goodness.
That's terrible.
That's disgusting.
Yeah, it is disgusting and typical.
Right.
So the family intervenes.
But wait a second here.
Wasn't this five years into the relationship?
My math is going crazy here.
So your mom married when you were nine or ten?
My memory of the years is very foggy.
No, but we're five off here.
I think they were together five, six years.
But was this at the end of their relationship?
Then you'd be like 14 or 15, right?
No.
We're not at the end of the story.
Yeah.
No.
Oh, so this is early on, a year or two after he marries your mom that he hits this girl?
It's a few years in.
It's at least over halfway.
It's somewhere in there.
So maybe you're 11 or 12 or whatever, but you've been hit for a couple of years and everyone's like, yeah, that's fine.
But then this girl or this young woman gets hit once and everyone's like, oh, right.
Exactly, exactly.
All right.
So my mother sided with my stepdad and the family basically cut all ties.
So basically to this day, there's no contact because of that.
Yeah, it's terrible.
It was the wrong decision at pretty much every single point.
And it's my brother and I that kind of, when we get to spend time together and we think about this and we talk about it and we cry about it, it's like, we had no control, but it is what it is.
It is what it is.
That always annoys me when people say, it is what it is.
Okay.
Because that adds nothing.
That is just an emotional emptiness in that statement.
It resolves nothing.
It reveals nothing.
It connects with nothing.
It's as empty as it is tautological.
What does that mean when you say it is what it is?
I guess it describes the feeling that there's an emptiness.
There's a disconnection.
No, it justifies the feeling.
It doesn't describe the feeling.
Otherwise you'd say there's an emptiness rather than the pseudo-philosophical stuff of it is what it is.
I don't know what that means.
What is?
I don't know.
I guess the history, the things that happen can't be changed, so we have to deal with it, I guess is the thought.
I don't know what that means.
What does it mean to say things can't, of course things can't be changed in the past, but so what?
Does that mean what?
What does dealing with it mean?
You know, like a guy who's been killed, A guy who's been murdered can't be un-murdered, but still someone goes to jail, right?
Right.
So what does it mean you have to deal with it?
We have to continue.
We have to move on.
We have to live life, right?
We have to... Again, these are all platitudes.
I don't know what any of this means.
I guess we don't have... Let me ask you a more direct question.
Are you still in contact with your mother?
Yes, I am.
Of course you are!
Because you have platitudes, right?
Right.
Has your mother apologized for subjecting you to years of child abuse?
Yes, she has.
Multiple times.
Many times over the years since this all ended.
Oh, after it ended, she apologized?
Yes.
It's been more since he's been an adult that they've been able to finally talk about this stuff and she's realized she's made mistakes.
And she's apologized for them.
I don't know if she was really able to talk about it before that, though.
Made mistakes is already kind of an understatement in my opinion.
Okay.
You know, made mistakes are I sent the check to the wrong address by accident.
Right.
I mean, she didn't make mistakes, she did evil.
Yes.
The two are not, right?
She did evil.
Yes.
And does she get that?
I think so.
I don't know.
You think so?
I don't know.
My wife thinks so.
I don't know.
Yeah, you know, one of the ways that you'll know is she said I did evil.
I mean, she's definitely apologized, but I don't know if she gets the gravity.
But what do the apologies sound like?
Pretend you're her apologizing to you, to me.
What would she say?
I'm so sorry I brought him into our lives.
I'm so sorry for the things that I allowed him to do.
I never should have allowed any of that to happen.
And I'm sorry for the effect it's had on you and your brother.
Okay, that's good.
And then what?
That's about it.
But does she offer to pay for therapy?
No.
No.
She doesn't have a lot of money.
Okay.
Does she offer to pay for therapy?
She doesn't, right?
You're right.
That should make a difference.
You're right.
No.
Does she offer to go into therapy herself to figure out how this came about or how it happened?
No.
If she doesn't have the money for that, is she doing any self-work?
Is she reading any books on self-knowledge?
Is she reading any self-help books?
Is she reading any books on psychology?
Is she trying to figure out the pathology of how she ended up breeding with and handing over her son to a child abuser?
The Bible is all she needs.
Would probably be it, yeah.
Has she been praying for knowledge about why she did all these things?
She prays every morning.
Religiously, so to speak.
That's not what I asked.
I didn't ask, does she pray?
Oh, I don't know what the content of her prayers are.
I'm not around for that.
Well, I can assume that if she was, she said, she said, dear Jesus, dear God, you must give me knowledge about why I did such evil so that I can help my son avoid the same fate.
Please give me the knowledge.
Please give me the facts about how I ended up in this situation.
Yeah, I don't think so.
So that I can tell my son, so that Jesus, you can help my son break the cycle of dysfunction in this family.
Give me the knowledge, give me the facts that you denied to me while I was actually married.
You denied to me while it might have actually done some goddamn good.
Maybe Jesus, now you can give me the help that you denied me when it would have actually made a damn bit of difference.
Wow.
Yeah.
I don't think she's doing that.
that I think she's saying I'm sorry and then she's relying on the you must forgive commandments and honor their mother and their father commandments to release her from any further obligation for the wrongs that she did.
She has never guilted me into any sort of relationship with her.
I don't know.
I feel that she's fragile, and I feel that without my brother and I protecting her, that she wouldn't really make it in the world.
And I don't know if that's manipulation.
Oh, wait.
Protecting the fragile is a big value for you.
Yes.
Right.
You mean a fragile like a baby and a nine-year-old boy?
Ah, yes.
Exactly like that.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't think that I would hold someone who subjected children to that level of child abuse as somebody that has to be protected because they're fragile and protecting the fragile is such a great virtue.
What's a cause for a change of heart?
With the marriage?
No, with you!
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know that.
Sorry, I barked that like you should know.
I apologize for that.
Why did she change with you to getting rid of you?
I assume you didn't get to see your cousin again, you didn't get to see your extended family again, right?
Yeah, and she never really talked about that.
That never came up.
The only memory I have from that period of time basically is that A while after that, after the family evaporated, she came to me and basically said, so I think we should probably leave your father.
What do you think?
And I'm like, oh, hell yeah!
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Okay, again, we're back with the laughter.
I need you to try and drop that if you can.
It's dissociating for me and for the listeners.
So the family did not evaporate, right?
The family tried to intervene on behalf of the children and your mother drove them away.
Right.
Right.
It's not evaporating, right?
Right.
I'm surprised they didn't call the authorities or something.
I'm really surprised.
Oh, I'm not.
That's another story.
So how long after your mother drove the family, your support system, your friends away in order to hang on to the child abusing bastard, how long after that did the marriage end?
I apologize.
I'm really foggy.
I don't know if I've blocked it out.
Days, weeks, months, years?
A year, maybe, give or take six months.
And did she then attempt to repair relationships with the family knowing how important they were to you?
No.
She is very conflict-averse.
Conflict-averse?
I don't know what that means.
She had a guy in who hit her children.
That sounds like a whole bunch of fucking conflict to me.
I guess anytime someone is aggressive towards her, she immediately acquiesces.
No, no, no, no.
The family stood up and said, this is all wrong.
Right.
Did she comply with them?
I think she cut off ties with them.
Right, so she was strong, quote strong, with those people, right?
Yes.
Right, so she basically stuck with the abuser.
Is it because the abuser was more violent?
No, it's because of Christianity.
It's because a wife is supposed to support her husband, and she said that to me.
I remember that now.
Oh, so she's big on the Christian stuff.
Okay.
Now, if Jesus came back, would she cheer on her husband Beating the shit out of Jesus with a big stick.
No.
Would that not be part of her theology?
Can you say that again, please?
I'm sorry.
So let's say Jesus came back and showed up at her house.
Would she cheer on her husband beating Jesus Oh no, of course not.
With a rolling pin?
No, of course not.
But why not?
Jesus clearly says whatever you do to the little children also do you do unto me.
So if she's really big on Jesus and his commandments and she would not want her husband to beat Jesus with a stick and Jesus clearly says whatever you do to the children so do you also do unto me Then I don't know how she gets to claim biblical justification for anything she did.
You're right.
Even if it was something that you could claim as a defense, it's not valid.
Because of that, yeah.
I mean, you can find anything in the Bible if you want, right?
I mean, or just claim it's an interpretation, right?
But the people who say well I'm going to allow my husband to abuse my children because Jesus or God says stay with your husband well then they should be they should be cheering the crucifixion right?
Because the crucifixion was the torture of Jesus and child abuse is the torture of children and Jesus says whatever you do to the children so you do unto me so if you're a good and fine with the torture of children then you can't be a Christian because you must be good and fine with the torture of Jesus Well, if you spare the rod, you spoil the child.
I think that's another one of her... I feel like my whole life is competing against the Bible.
And I'm sorry for laughing again.
That's annoying.
I apologize.
Well, of course, the spare the rod, spoil the child, is a hideously evil statement.
Now some people say that the rod is supposed to be wise instruction.
Because, you know, who knows what the hell all this language mutation has gone through from the original to now.
And people say, well, it means if you spare wise instruction to your child, your child will be spoiled.
But of course nobody understands it that way.
It's like don't hit your children and your children will turn out spoiled, right?
Yep, that's how it's interpreted.
Does she murder a lot of witches?
Does she strangle a lot of gays?
No, no she doesn't.
Okay, okay, okay.
So she's willing to overlook biblical commandments that are not productive to her, right?
Because the Bible clearly says, I mean, you have to go and kill the unbelievers and the Heretics and the homosexuals and the sorcerers and the, right?
Unbelievers, right?
So she's certainly willing to overlook biblical verses that go against her self-interest in the moment, right?
Absolutely.
So she can't claim biblical justification for anything she does.
Anybody who doesn't follow the Bible 100% cannot claim that any part of the Bible they're willing to follow 100%.
You're right.
I think it all started after she met this guy, too, at the church, before my stepdad came into the picture.
I never got spanked.
It was very peaceful.
Oh, so she met a guy at the church before your stepdad who convinced her to hit the children?
No, the stepdad told her how it needed to be.
Was she broke?
Did he have money?
Like I'm trying to figure out what were the 30 pieces of silver upon which she was willing to offer up her children's bruises and backs.
I think she was lonely.
I think she was also driven by a need.
She wanted me to have a father.
She felt guilty about me not having one.
And so she was driven to find one.
At least that's what she told me.
And so did he talk about hitting you guys before you got married?
Before she got married to him?
Did she talk to me about it?
No.
No.
Did he ever mention it?
No.
Not that I remember.
So either your mother exposed you to a man that she had never asked about his child's rearing practices, which is basically like Going to a firing range, spinning around three times, pulling the trigger while blindfolded.
You either hit people or you don't, but it's completely accidental.
So she either got married to a man with no idea how he approached discipline for children, or she asked him, she got the answer and got married to him anyway.
Yeah, it's got to be number one.
And it's also, there's three months.
She dated for three months.
So how much can you really know about anyone in three months?
I don't know.
How do you discipline children?
Well, how long did that take?
Did that take less than three months?
Hang on, let me just check my clock here.
Well, I mean, you got to compare the difference.
Yeah, no, it took a whole lot less than three months to say, how do you discipline children?
Husband to be, man who asked me to marry you, who was going to be in charge of my children to some degree.
How do you think children should be raised?
How do you think children should be managed?
That really didn't take that long, did it?
I'm really upset by how many breaks I seem to have given my mother.
I seem like I just forgive her over and over for everything, just by default.
I don't even think about this stuff.
No, I get it.
Of course.
And to be honest, it's people like you who I'm terrified to send my daughter into the world with.
Because my daughter is then going to go out there and she's going to do stuff that's bad or mistaken or whatever.
And everyone's going to maybe rush around and explain it away.
And it's not your fault.
And it's okay.
Forgive, forget, move on.
And then she's going to be like, hey, I can get away with some serious shit on this planet. - Mm.
Yeah.
And then all my moral instructions, they're going to be eroded away and eroded away by these horrific and hypocritical double standards for women.
Excuse the egg makers!
That is the medley of the planet.
Egg maker, here's your pass!
Get out of jail free!
Excuse the egg makers!
Sperm donors, screw you.
You go into the trenches, we'll give you a helmet, maybe it'll stop a bullet.
Probably not.
Egg makers!
You know, they're held around like popes!
Yeah.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
So, don't do that.
Do you know if you've got a boy or girl coming?
Roger that.
No, we don't know yet.
We'll find out in a couple weeks.
Okay, you might have a girl, right?
Obviously.
Yep.
You've got a son, right?
You've had one 15-year-old who's got a son who's nine months, so egg eight when he's now nine months.
15-year-old daughter, nine-month son.
Yeah, no, listen, I mean, so if you have a son, you just have to, sorry, if you have a daughter, you just have to recognize that you can't create a parallel universe for the egg holders and do anything but harm their capacity to raise children well yeah you're right You're absolutely right.
I don't even remember what brought up my parents.
What were we?
No, because you were blaming yourself for having a daughter so young, and I said, well, maybe parents have something to do with it.
You're like, well, what would my parents have to do with it, right?
Is that how I sounded?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, I definitely work on this stuff.
Look, I'm, I'm glad your mom apologized.
I'm glad that you got a confession.
You know, a little bit of restitution might not be the end of the world, right?
Right.
Um, you know, as far as I understand it, you have to earn your way into heaven, right?
And you gotta earn your, you gotta earn your forgiveness if you want it.
And I'm, look, so to be, I mean, to give credit where credit is due, I'm glad that she has reversed it.
I sure wish she'd reversed it when it was somewhat useful to you.
I mean, how old were you when she first apologized?
Probably 16.
Right.
That's good.
That's good.
But, um, until she knows why she allowed all this evil to happen, um, to me, she would still be a pretty dangerous person to be around.
Particularly with kids.
That's my opinion, right?
I mean, that's just my personal perspective.
She's still religious, right?
Yes, very much so.
And you're not?
Definitely not religious, no.
And your wife?
Sorry, we're talking about you like you're not even here.
I go back and forth.
I have a scientific degree, so I've been kind of indoctrinated against religion I don't really care for it.
I don't think science is indoctrination.
Well, okay.
I feel like it was when I was going through college.
It was pretty harsh.
That's like saying, numbers are magic!
Well, it was pretty harsh when I was going through with the doctors that were teaching me.
They kind of really poked a lot of holes in my beliefs at that time.
So I'm not sure where I stand.
Well, if you want to call in, it's late now, if you want to call in and have a chat about religion, I'm absolutely more than happy to if I can help in any way, shape or form, because it probably will be helpful to have consistency in your beliefs.
But if the mom is still religious and you guys are not, then what's the deal going to be?
I mean, with your kids as they get older, is she going to be allowed to Tell them this stuff is true?
Is she going to be allowed to take them to church like it's real?
I mean, what's the deal?
Remember I was talking about preparation?
Preparation, preparation is the key to parenting.
No, you're absolutely right.
I honestly don't have an answer for you yet.
I think we just started processing where we stand on God a few months ago after we started listening to some of your podcasts.
I don't think we have those answers yet.
Okay, so as far as I understand it, and I'm in the same position as well as far as I won't give answers to my daughter, you can't teach this stuff like it's true if you can't prove it, right?
Absolutely.
Because then all you're doing is relying on size and the authority of parenting, right?
That's not fair, right?
Yeah, I think if I had to explain it to, like if my son was five years old now, I would probably not even talk about it because I'm at a place where I'm not solid in that area.
I don't have those answers yet.
You can say I don't have the answers, right?
I mean, I was walking past the church with my daughter today and I said, Hey, what's that?
And she says, I don't know.
I said, Hey, look, that's a church, right?
And we were going to go in, but it wasn't open.
And you know, we talked about it and see that big spire and the big thing looks like a lowercase T.
And we talked about it and you know, it's just a real feature and function of the world that we live in, right?
I mean, there's graffiti on the wall sometimes that doesn't mean she's going to go out with a paint spray.
I mean, there's, there's tattoos that doesn't mean she's going to get one.
But you know, I mean, this is an important, I mean, he's going to run into it probably sooner rather than later if he's got contact with other kids, you know, some over at someone's house and say, Grace, Grace, let's eat.
Right.
And, So there's nothing wrong with saying, I don't know.
I mean, I say that half the time with my daughter.
She asks me some obscure question about something or other.
I'm like, well, I don't know.
I don't know.
Let's look it up.
She's a bit big.
She's quite opposed to looking things up.
But yeah, I, I just figure I have at least a year and a half before I have to start talking about that stuff.
So, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm talking about your mom, your mom.
You got to start now.
Right.
So, If you're going to say, look, we're not teaching our kids that religion is true right now, which means you got to be on board with that, right?
Which means that relationship is mostly over.
No, no, no.
Listen, she owes you.
She brought a child abuser into your life.
It's time to pay up.
If you're really sorry, mom, then you'll keep this religious stuff away from my children.
You owe me.
No, what I'm saying is I would rather end that relationship than deal with the drama that that conversation would bring into my life.
That's what I'm saying.
then what you're telling me is she's not sorry at all.
Because sorry means I owe you, right?
And if I'm like, dude, I owe you so much.
And you're like, can you pick me up at the airport?
And I'm like, nah.
And you're like, are you busy?
No.
Do you have a car?
Oh, yeah.
You said you owe me.
You'd do anything for me.
Can you pick me up at the airport?
Nah.
Then don't give me bullshit about how much you owe me, right?
Maybe I misunderstand.
It sounds like you're saying that I should basically say, you owe me, so don't talk about God around my kid.
Yeah.
She said she's incredibly sorry for bringing a child abuser into your life and having him beat you up for six or seven years, right?
Right.
Right.
So she owes you for six or seven years of child abuse.
That's a pretty big debt, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, I don't think you can pay that one off.
You can pay that off, because I guarantee you there's no amount of money in the world that would make that worthwhile to you.
Right.
Go back to you when you're 10 and say, hey, listen, you got six or seven years of being beaten with implements by this asshole, but don't worry, we'll give you a million dollars when you're 30.
What would you say?
I'll take my chances.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Thanks.
No, I don't want the million dollars.
Just keep this asshole and his rolling pins off me, right?
Yep.
Okay.
So Patrick, your mom owes you big.
Now, when you say sorry to someone, For something as big as six or seven years of bringing voluntarily, without consulting with them, a child abuser into their life, getting rid of their extended family, she stripped you of your best friend with your cousin, she got you beaten, you got to see her getting beaten, she gave you terrible imprinting, and you ended up getting a girl pregnant when you were 16 or 17, right?
And, and, she got pregnant with such a dipshit he didn't even stick around!
So she's got some apologizing to do, right?
Yeah.
So it's like, oh, you owe me a huge amount for the dipshit, stupid-ass, violent, brutal, dumb decisions that you made.
Good.
You're sorry.
You owe me.
Now stop talking about religion with my kids.
That's your cross to bear, mama.
That's your deal.
That's what you owe me.
And if she's like, well, I can't hold Jesus away from the children!
It's like, then you're not sorry.
Because that's your Hail Mary.
It would break her.
And maybe I'm just, again, cutting her slack, but it would break her to hold that... Well, better her than your children!
Better her than your children!
Because she's an adult.
She made her choices.
Your children are babies, toddlers.
They can't make those choices.
If someone has to be broken, it's the adult, not the children.
Your mom made choices.
She made choices to get pregnant.
And 25, not 17 like you.
You were still legally a child.
So she made choices.
She chose to get pregnant.
She chose to get married.
She chose to keep the abuser in her life.
She chose to reject her entire family based on her need for that abuser.
Right?
Those are choices that people make.
Now when they get old they can play the, I'm so fragile and self-pitying and this and that.
Where the fuck was all that Fragility when you were actually fragile.
Where was all her concern about fragility when you were actually fragile?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
If she broke, if she gets broken, whatever that means, then she broke herself.
And if you have to choose between really upsetting your mom and having your mom inflict superstition on your kids?
Well, I don't even have to tell you what your responsibility as a parent is, right?
Yeah, that's why I said I would rather cut that relationship off than even deal with that drama.
That's your choice.
But then don't tell me she apologized.
Okay.
Because she didn't.
I see that there is a need for restitution.
You're right.
There is a need for restitution.
And if she's like, I'm sorry that I can't talk to your kids about Jesus, but I guess that's the price that I had to pay for not protecting you as a child.
I accept that.
Now, that doesn't make up for your child abuse, but at least it means she's taking her apology with a smidgen of seriousness.
She's putting some sort of action behind it, yeah.
Well, she's willing to suffer for having caused other people to suffer, right?
I do believe it's an eye for an eye, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you.
So that kind of leads into a big part of my question, where how do we prevent... One last, sorry, just before we get to that last bit, one last bit about this.
Go for it.
You have to break the pattern.
You have to break the pattern, Patrick, of sacrificing children for the comfort of adults.
Wasn't that what happened to you?
It was exactly what happened to me.
Right.
Now you're talking, and I know you're not seriously contemplating it, but now you're talking about sacrificing your children's reality for the comfort of your mom, which means more children get sacrificed for the comfort of your mom, which is exactly what happened to you.
That's the cycle you have to break.
Okay. - Okay.
Nothing comes above the security of the children.
Nothing comes above the integrity and safety of the children.
If your mom had lived by that principle, you'd be a whole lot better off.
She didn't, and I'm incredibly sorry for that.
You must.
And if it's that's at her expense, well, you make your bed, you lie in it in life, right?
If your mom's a smoker, she doesn't get to take one of your lungs, right?
Right.
But sorry, you had another question?
Yeah, so My wife has issues like these as well.
Aside from going to see a therapist or talking to someone, how can you prevent making carbon copies of all of your problems on your kids?
With my daughter, my whole life goal raising my 15-year-old was to teach her to be smarter than I was, to not have a kid before she was A grown-up, you know, to not duplicate my mistakes.
I felt guilty about my mistakes and I really tried to teach her everything I did.
I talked openly about the things I did wrong.
I talked openly and in depth her entire life about why I felt that I made the decisions I made and why that they ended up being wrong.
I don't think that was enough, is what I'm saying.
Right.
What's happened?
Well, nothing yet, but she's actually becoming a wonderful young lady.
But she's 15, so a lot can happen.
This is like crunch time for all the parenting that you've done for the lifetime of the child.
The high school years is kind of where everything goes wonderful or just goes to shit.
I'm just nervous constantly about that.
It's so important to me that I see the mistakes my mother made that she never really talked to me about.
So I made the decision to be really open and upfront with my mistakes with my daughter.
And I don't know if you have any other advice besides that for our kids to kind of help us not pass our shit down, so to speak.
Well, it's prevention, right?
I mean, it's prevention.
So if there are people around that you can't be honest with, then if they're around your kids, you are going to clearly signal to your kids that honesty is not the highest value.
If people are around your kids because they bully you, or because you're scared of them, then you're going to teach your children that bullies run the world.
And that they have to conform with those bullies.
If you have toxic people around your kids, then either they're around your kids because you don't even know that they're toxic, even though your kids will, in which case you're going to look like a complete idiot and dangerous and they're going to lose trust and respect for you.
Or you do know that they're toxic and you're letting them around your kids anyway, in which case the outcome is going to be even worse.
So it is around, to me, it's around controlling the environment.
Right?
So for me, people say, well, how do I be a good parent?
Well, it's like saying, how do you lose weight?
Or how do you eat healthy?
You control your intake, right?
You can't be in a house full of chain smokers and train to win a marathon, right?
You have to control your environment.
You have to be around the right things.
And if you're a recovering addict, sorry, if you're a recovering victim of child abuse, you have to not be around people who are continuing the abuse or who have maintained the abuse or who aren't correcting for the abuse.
Parenting is mostly around the environment.
If the environment is full of sane and healthy and rational and peaceful people, your job as a parent becomes infinitely easier.
Whereas if you're training for a marathon and you're smoking and eating cheesecake, it doesn't matter how much you train, you ain't gonna win.
Because your environment is all wrong.
And so parenting, everyone thinks it's just, well, parent a child, parent a child, parent a child.
No, no, no, no, no.
It's the whole clan, it's the whole tribe around you that conditions your parenting.
Because the people around your child are the people that your child views as society, as the world, and they will judge you by the company you keep.
They will not judge you by what you say.
You fundamentally won't even be judged by what you do with them.
You will be judged by the people around you, in the eyes of your children, right?
Right, yeah.
You thought your mom was okay, or pretty good, or not hitty, or whatever, until she got this asshole in her life, and then your respect for her went into the toilet, right?
Because you judged her by who she was surrounded by.
And then she got rid of the people who intervened, albeit too late.
But she got rid of the people and your respect for her probably went down even more, right?
Yeah.
I think I reacted wrong.
I think rather than my respect going down for her, I felt that she was helpless.
And so my need to protect her went up.
I didn't talk about the need to protect.
There's no greater contempt that we can have for a human being than to call them helpless.
I mean, that is to strip your mother of any moral agency or moral responsibility.
That is to treat her... You know who's helpless?
Infants.
Infants are helpless.
And so, you're saying to your mother, when you say, well, she's helpless, that may relieve you from anger.
It may relieve you of moral condemnation.
But it destroys any capacity for respect that you have for your mother because by saying that she's helpless you're saying that she is an adult infant and should not be allowed to drive and should not be able to live alone and should not be given any voting or any moral responsibility or any responsibility of any kind.
So you can assign to her the fantasy label of helpless but if you think that saves your respect for her you're incredibly wrong.
I guess I had to, I mean, obviously now I know better, but I guess back then I had to, it was either relieve her of her moral agency or, I don't know, run?
Because she's evil?
No, no, look, I understand why you did it then, of course.
I mean, what else could you do?
You had to view her as helpless because the idea that she was watching you get hit and not doing anything when she could would be too horrifying for words.
So I get why you did it then, but that was then, to give you a cliche back, that was then and this is now.
Yes, yes.
She was not helpless.
She was not at all helpless.
These were choices that she made.
And if she is helpless, then her behavior cannot be modified and therefore you will never have any control over how she treats your children.
So the helplessness, even if we accept it fully, does not mean that she's a suitable person to have around your kids.
Understood.
Understood.
Now, sorry, Biker, I'm just going to ask you to jump in for a sec because, I mean, you're the one who's seen, I think, probably the most the environmental arguments that, of the environment that I've sort of created, my wife and I have created for Izzy.
Seems fairly valid.
I mean, you don't, I mean, there's no mean people around her, right?
No, there's no mean people around her.
If anything happens that's even slightly concerning, she comes up to you and you talk about it.
And sometimes you talk about it for days.
Sometimes it comes up for a few weeks.
If it's anything that's out of the norm that she doesn't quite understand.
And I mean, certainly I've witnessed firsthand, once you have that bond, I mean, there's a level of protection there that, I mean, I certainly didn't have.
And I think every child absolutely deserves.
I mean, you don't have to worry about any, you know, the strange guy in a van stories or anything like that.
I mean, you know everything that happens with her, even if she goes to, like, a gymnastics camp or something of the sort.
Because she tells you everything.
Because you have that trust and you have that bond.
Yeah, so Patrick, I think it's, you know, prepare the nest.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Listen, if you, if you, I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead.
And I think our primary job for preparing the nest is to fix ourselves I think at this point.
I think I've done a good job over the past couple years and especially since I started listening to you about kind of clearing the bad people out of our lives and the drama out of our lives and it's been so much more peaceful.
And so that has kind of created an environment where maybe now we can start to work on ourselves.
I know my wife is an Iraq veteran.
She had some PTSD issues.
So we're also kind of working through that because I know it's going to be a, it could potentially have a pretty dangerous impact on the kid.
Yeah.
I'm very sorry about that.
That is obviously very, very hard stuff to live with.
I certainly commit, respect enormously both of your commitments to the peaceful parenting thing.
I am, I'm telling you that if it will pay off in ways that are, you know, Beyond imagining.
I mean, the peace and happiness that comes out of this approach to parenting is unimaginable.
It's literally infinitely greater than what I was expecting.
It doesn't mean we don't have conflicts.
It doesn't mean there's not transitions and all that.
I mean, that's sort of the point, right?
But it will pay off.
You know, life is always pay me now or pay me later.
You pay me now or you pay me later with interest, right?
Right.
You quit smoking now, which is uncomfortable, or you get lung cancer, which is really uncomfortable, right?
It's always pay me now or pay me later.
And so much of the evil in the world, and I'm not talking about you guys or even your families here, but so much of the evil in the world is maintained by pretending that there's no pay me later.
And with regards to your mom, She subjected you to years of child abuse.
She invited a child abuser into your home who beat you regularly for years.
I can tell you that only happens because people think that they can get away with it.
In other words, they can pull the guilt card, the I'll be broken, the manipulative card later and get away with it.
Right?
And if they know they can't get away with it, if people find out you can't get away with it, well...
Things will change, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
If people know that they're going to get a million dollars at the age of 60, how much money are they going to save for their retirement?
They're not!
Whatever you subsidize later, you encourage in the present.
And not holding people responsible for child abuse when they get older is a massive subsidy to child abusers in the present.
Because if the word gets out that people are being held to account by their adult children for the child abuse that they allowed or brought into their home or committed themselves, then you can't change the past.
But when you change the verdict, you change the present.
When you change the verdict for past deeds, when a new law comes into the land, people's behavior changes.
The law comes in and says, wear your seatbelt, people start wearing their seatbelts, right?
And so if there's a law in the land which says I don't care if it was 20 years ago, you're being held to account.
That doesn't mean that we don't see you anymore, but it just means you're being held to account.
You cannot manipulate or bullshit or play the weak card or play the I did the best I could with the knowledge I had card or play the forgive me card or play the move beyond it card.
If you can't play any of that bullshit with me, if that word gets out in society that the subsidies
for abusers later on in life are not going to be there people will change what they do now and that is the best way to change the world because we don't have time for multi multi multi-generational stuff we've got to move more quickly when the word gets out that if you abused your kids twenty years ago you will be held to account and all the usual bullshit that parents claim
As excuses, as ways of minimizing, as ways of saying, let's move past it, or let's move beyond it, or let's basically pretend it didn't happen.
If that shit doesn't work, that has a very powerful effect on parenting in the here and now.
Because parents now are going to be on notice that in 20 years they won't get to play the infinite, often estrogen-based excuse card.
Which means that they'll just have to improve in the here and now.
If you can't get away with it later, Then you'll have to fix it now.
And that's one of the things that I have been talking about in this show for many years.
It's not about punishing parents fundamentally for what happened 20 years ago.
It's about knowing that the excuses are drying up, which changes parents' behavior in the here and now.
It's about saving the kids now, not fundamentally about punishing the parents of the past, but the two are inextricably linked.
So hopefully you guys will give me I shout.
Parenting stuff is one of my favorite things to talk about.
And if and when you run into challenges, please call.
And I say this to parents out there as a whole.
I'm no oracle of parenting.
Yes, I have one daughter.
I don't have like six kids.
But I do have principles.
And I'm not saying I'm the only person with principles, but I have philosophical principles that I think are incredibly valuable with regards to parenting.
You know, open invitation, you know, call.
This is a topic I love to talk about.
So if you guys want to call back anytime, you're welcome.
Sorry, go ahead.
I will absolutely follow up with you.
I am so excited to experience developing this kind of connection that I can just feel listening to you talk to having with your daughter.
I really appreciate everything you do and I am waiting with bated breath for your parenting book.
Please don't delay!
We're on it!
It's being ground away.
I'm sorry about that.
Thank you.
So much, Patrick.
Elena, was it?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, okay.
Well, there's a military lady.
Yes, sir.
I may have a short haircut, but I have zero rank in the military.
Thanks so much, guys.
And rest up for your pregnancy.
Let us know when the kid pops and I'll pop a bubbly in your honor.
And congratulations so much on the work that you're doing.
I'm positive it's going to pay off fantastically.
Thank you very, very much.
I hope to talk to you soon.
Thank you, man.
Bye.
All right.
Well, I guess we are done for a fairly lengthy show, but thank you so much everyone who's called up.
Any other announcements we got going on, Mike?
Documentary, yeah, it's on the list.
Parenting book is on the list.
Parenting is getting in the way of the actual parenting book being written.
Yeah, yeah, I'm still doing research.
I feel like, you know, Kenneth Branagh wrote wrote the story of his life when he was 27.
It was his autobiography.
And I'm like, well, my child's five.
Let me put out my parenting book.
It's like, well, let's do one to five parenting kind of thing.
Now because it's mostly done by now.
Anyway, so sorry, people don't know that that's what is about.
So yeah, fdrurl.com slash donate.
Come on, people.
You know, it's a great Great conversation, helping hundreds of thousands of people around the world live better, more productive, more peaceful lives.
So please cough up if you're consuming.
We request respectfully, as my daughter says, I request, demand, command and respectfully request to get 50 cents a show.
It's hugely helpful for us.
It is one of the metrics by which we know we're having an effect and it's very uplifting to our spirits and also helpful to keep us in food.
So FDRURL.com slash donate.
Please, please do the right thing and act with responsible reciprocity to what I think is an incredibly generous conversation.
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