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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:10:17
"My Baby Enrages Me!" Freedomain Call In
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Time Text
All right.
I'm here with Tracy.
Spill your guts, sister.
What's on your mind?
Thanks.
So, um, I had a baby about 11 months ago and she's healthy.
She's beautiful.
Um, and my husband and I have been married almost 10 years.
Our ninth anniversary is tomorrow.
Um, and we're glad she's in our lives.
Um, but I've been having some, Thoughts lately about my choice to be a stay-at-home mom.
I listened to many of your podcasts about the benefits of it.
When we first started talking about having a baby, that wasn't my jam.
I wanted to be back at work.
It took a lot of conversations and a lot of thinking and some of your podcasts too, of course, for me to arrive at the decision and I was fully gung-ho.
I really believe I believed that this was the right thing to do.
Both of our moms did it, my husband's mom and mine.
We're stay-at-home moms, that is.
So yeah, I thought, of course, this is going to be great.
This is the right decision.
I will not look back.
But I'm starting to look back and it's really, really hard to know that my career is kaput.
It's finished and it's me and this 11-month-old baby that screams at me all day and cries a lot and it's been a really, really difficult 10 to 11 months and real shift I guess in who I think I am and who I want to be and I'm worried that my daughter is seeing a side of me that isn't so favorable.
Should I go on?
Is that alright?
Some more details maybe?
Well, I... You ever, when you're a kid, there's this belief that if you put your ear to train tracks, you can hear the train coming from a long way away?
Yeah.
I can feel the emotions underneath the language.
Because this is probably the strongest thing you've felt about in your life.
I mean, that's a hell of a story arc, right?
From enthusiasm and optimism to...
where you are, so I guess I just want to make sure I sort of understand and connect with how you're feeling.
Yeah, I'll put some words to that.
Shame, I think, is a real present feeling for me right now because I have everything.
I have a husband who's dedicated to me staying home.
He has a good job.
We live in an excellent neighborhood, zip code.
My own mom is as supportive as can be.
Sometimes I think she loves my daughter more than I do.
It's remarkable.
It's beautiful to see her with my daughter.
When she leaves, I get very, very lonely.
That is when my mom leaves.
She left this morning.
So she was here for a visit yesterday and into today.
And again, shame because my daughter is with a woman who's You know, weak.
Weak, you say.
Weak yourself, right?
Yeah.
And in what way do you characterize yourself as weak?
In what standard?
In what standard, is that what you said?
Yeah, by what standard would you characterize yourself as weak?
Weak because, like I said, I have everything.
I have the... No, you don't.
You don't have everything.
You don't.
You don't have the one thing that you want the most, if I understand what you're saying correctly, which is a deep and positive bond with your daughter.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, that's the thing, right?
That's the one thing that makes it worthwhile, right?
Right.
Otherwise you're just with a red face, crying, pooping, whatever, right?
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So that's, that's the thing I think that's, and that's not weakness.
I mean, you don't will that.
It's not like working out or not eating cheesecake.
I mean, it's not a will-based thing, right?
You can't just will that kind of thing, right?
No, and I feel like I'm maybe sometimes over trying too hard and trying to will it.
Can I just ask you if you're moving around a little bit?
Yeah.
It's just a kind of shifting sound of a headset or something that's going to distract people.
I hate to say freeze like Madame Tussauds, but if you could try and hold still.
Okay, let's go back a little further if you don't mind.
So you're married for ten years, right?
About, so nine.
Nine years.
First question.
Why so long for kids?
Which is not a criticism, I'm just curious, right?
Right.
I don't have a great answer except I loved my job.
And what did you do?
I worked with kids.
I was a counselor for kids.
Do you mean like, because I think camp counselor, but do you mean sort of like therapist or something like that?
Yeah, school counselor, school-based counselor.
I was not expecting that.
You understand that makes your story additional Wrinkleville.
Right, and I think... I'm really great at connecting with kids with my job!
Yeah, I know.
Right, I mean that's...
Wow.
And again, it's not a criticism thing.
It's just one, I mean, I want to be honest with you about how I experienced the conversation, right?
So, okay.
So you worked as a counselor for kids, right?
And you did that, uh, was that, did you do that before you got married?
Yes.
Okay.
And what's your age range at the moment?
I'm 37.
37.
Okay.
Okay.
So you had 20 years basically from becoming an adult, well, 18 years from becoming an adult to having a kid, right?
Wait, you sound like I'm forcing you to admit something.
Well, yeah, the maturity spectrum wasn't that long for me.
I would say I wouldn't have considered myself an adult until maybe I was, you know, 25, maybe 30.
Really?
Oh, this is this Western adolescence forever, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
Yeah, I get it.
I mean, hey, I spent my time in that shallow trench too, so.
Okay, so you loved your work, but I mean, I assume, not to get overly graphic, but you know, you and your husband are making the beast with two backs and you're consciously not having children, right?
You're on the pill or IUD or birth control of some kind, right?
So you're sort of consciously making that decision to not have children, right?
And I guess, was that a topic that came up much?
Did you talk about Having kids with your husband before you got married or early on?
What was the decision around kids with your husband?
It was... Yeah, in the future.
It was something that was... I could have put it off even longer than I did.
But I always thought of myself as a mom.
Not really.
I mean, sorry, just biologically, not really.
You know, 37 is still kind of pushing it, right?
Yeah.
I know.
Yeah.
Yes.
- No.
No.
- Okay, so you got married in your late 20s, right?
- Yeah.
- Okay, and it was, was it like, I want kids, you both said, I want kids, but just later?
- Yes.
- Right, and did you ever have any sense of what later would actually mean?
- No, I don't think you did.
- See, like the purpose of marriage is kids, right?
And it doesn't mean everyone who gets married has to have kids.
I always get these sort of pushbacks.
But that's why the institution exists.
It's to provide a stable base wherein...
Children can be provided for, and grandchildren can be.
That's why, well, that's why there are men, that's why there are women, that's why we have sex, that's why there's marriage.
All of this revolves around kids.
And again, there are some people who don't want kids, some people who kind of have kids, and you know, that's fine.
That's fine.
But they're kind of like, the road is built for drivers and bicyclists can use it too.
Kind of thing.
But the road, like marriage, is built for kids.
And of course, I assume, given your affection for your job, Tracy, that you like, if not love, spending time around kids, right?
Yeah.
So it just wasn't really a topic.
So then how did you end up deciding to have a child?
Well, I mean, the clock was definitely ticking and we consciously started trying in summer of 2016.
I had a miscarriage that fall and that was pretty dark, pretty grim for me.
It's horribly common.
I just... I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
And it's one of these things that they really should prepare you for more.
Because, you know, what if you see these Hallmark baby burritos wrapped in glowing moms and so on.
But man, there's a line of tiny crates between people in the crib.
And it's something that really... It should be talked about more in society, I think, as a whole.
You know, we have this whole conversation about abortion, but...
Nature's abortions are much more common, and it's like a quarter or a third of pregnancies end up in miscarriages, and I'm so sorry.
That's a terrible thing to experience.
More so, obviously, for the woman than for the man.
I just want to extend human sympathy for all of that.
Thanks.
I haven't told anyone except my husband.
So that whole bit about needing to talk about it more, yeah.
I haven't been able to talk about it.
It's easier to move forward, I guess.
You mean without talking about it?
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's a death, right?
Yeah.
It's a death.
And...
It's a death.
And it's a death of something you never even get to experience in a way.
You know, like my dad left before I was conscious, really.
So for a long time, I was like, you know, miss my dad.
Well, you know, dad's gone.
Was he even here?
And it was a shallow and silly, but understandable way to deal with it.
I mean, you can certainly miss something you never held.
You can certainly, you know, I mean, something dies in your body.
And did you have to have a DNC?
Did it come out naturally or how did that work?
No, it was natural.
Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, listen, that's a horrible thing.
That's a ghastly, horrible thing to experience.
And it is, you know, I know people who have had a funeral for a miscarriage.
Now, I mean, I don't mean that they bought a plot, you know, and all of that, but, you know, they, they had a ceremony, right?
This is, this is a being that died in your family.
And I don't, I mean, obviously it's worse if it's a child and so on, but it's not like, well, you know, it's not nothing, right?
It's a very, it's a very painful and difficult thing to go through.
And I just, I really, I really sympathize.
I have, well I won't get into that, but yeah, so I sympathize.
That is a very big deal.
That happened, it was in the fall of 2016?
Yeah, right before, yeah.
How long was the baby alone?
Oh, probably not more than like six or seven weeks.
And then what happened?
And then I wanted to wait a little while to put some distance between that and the And it's funny because of course after you've had the miscarriage, the pregnancy is not the same.
tried again, and I became pregnant in probably November, or no, December, and then she was born in August.
Right, and it's funny because, of course, after you've had the miscarriage, the pregnancy is not the same.
I'm glad you said that because I don't have the same glowing, mirthful, "babies are a miracle, babies are a blessing" sentiment that a lot of people have.
Oh no, you're just looking down saying, please don't die, please don't die, please don't die.
Right.
Yeah, it's hard to have that glow after you've had that tiny flyby of the Grim Reaper, right?
Yeah, so I didn't want a baby shower and all of that, you know, pageantry or anything.
I just kind of wanted to have her and not be pregnant anymore.
I wanted to lose the baby weight, too, right away, but I was, yeah, I wasn't that smug, super glowy pregnant woman.
I don't know if smug is the right word, but, you know, that sounds almost a little hostile.
Yeah.
You know, like, they didn't suffer as I suffered, so to hell with them, right?
Yeah.
And how was the pregnancy in terms of morning sickness and sleep and so on?
Sleep was not too bad.
Till the end.
Morning sickness, none of it.
It was a relatively easy pregnancy.
And how was the birth?
That was fine too.
She was late, so past the due date induced and then I think I Had to push for like a half an hour and then she was there.
It's kind of a funny thing that they could just inject you with something and a baby comes out.
It's a wild thing.
It's like, I am a person of free will and independence and oh wait, they inject you.
Okay, baby's coming out.
You know, it's just, it's very, it's a wild thing.
Like you get one injection and out comes a human being.
I mean, it's just wild.
Right.
And no screaming, no crying, no pain.
It was, yeah, like you said, remarkable.
Good, good, all right.
And how was the breastfeeding?
Did she latch okay?
No, that went really, really south fast.
She wasn't latching.
We were up all night.
The nurses were trying to help.
The hospital I delivered at was very dedicated to helping women, you know, succeed in their breastfeeding goals.
I had a very hard time of it, so they offered donor milk, so donor breast milk.
which I had never heard of and I thought that's the creepiest thing ever, but if it will keep my baby alive and keep my breastfeeding goals intact, let's do it.
So they helped me feed her a bottle of donor breast milk, but still had me do it as much as possible to keep my milk supply going and to make sure she, you know, by the end she latched, she dropped weight during that time.
So they kept us an extra day.
They all drop weight, but she dropped more than the average.
So they kept us an extra day.
And sent us home with donor milk, and we don't live too far from the donor milk bank, so I was able to go for the first month of her life and pick up donor milk.
But I still persisted in breastfeeding as hard as it was, and my husband was such a help with it.
It took my mom, my sister, my husband, even your podcasts late, late at night pumping breast milk to make that happen.
I remember my wife sitting on the couch with my daughter.
My wife was breastfeeding and I was feeding my wife soup.
And I'm like, I'm part of the great chain of being here.
Yes, yes.
And even in the hospital, I would try to hand express colostrum just to get it in my baby's mouth and my husband would put it on a plastic spoon and put it in her mouth and we'd go back and forth.
It was like, I'm not giving up.
And did it begin to click more or was it still a struggle?
It was a struggle.
I used some apparatus just to try to protect myself because the way she was latching was really causing some injury.
It's almost like a cup for your nipple, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it's like what the hockey players play to protect their nuts.
You know, it's like, please don't chew my nipple off.
That would be an excellent day for mom.
Yeah.
No blood with this milk, please.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right.
And that, my husband, you know, at one point I was like, I can't do it.
I have to give up.
And he's like, why not try the nipple shield one more time?
And I did, and I just kept with it, and I stuck it out, and it got probably easier around five months.
It took that long for her to really sort of get her neck under control and just be able to do it herself.
It's funny, you know, and I remember that phase where you're just sitting there going, how on earth did we survive as a species?
You've got a third of the babies dropping out of the womb dead.
You've got kids who can't latch, don't sleep.
How on earth did we survive as a species?
And then we've got these babies that are like, hey, bear, tiger, lion, we're right here if you need us, and there's fresh meat for you.
Cry, cry, cry, predator, predator.
I don't know.
It's one of these things.
I can see why our ancestors built wall and stone huts.
Yeah.
No, that was an ordeal, to say the least.
I was, I was adamant that this is how I wanted.
If it, if it gives her any advantage health-wise in her youth or in her adult life, I'm going to do it.
Like that's, that's final.
So I don't care if I had to pump 24 hours a day, she was going to be breastfed.
Right.
And we do supplement with formula because it just wasn't enough when she wasn't latching.
But once we got the function down, we used much less formula.
And that was, you know, going forward, that's how 99.9% of the time she's breastfed.
Right.
Well, that's fantastic and good for you for sticking with it.
I mean, this is another one of these secret silent agonies of womankind on the planet.
You know, like a friend of mine's wife, she would spend six hours just trying to get her kid to take a meal.
Yeah.
It would be completely hysterical at the end because you just, you feel trapped.
You feel like this tiny little log is rolled on you and you can't get up.
And it's like, you know, please eat something if you don't mind.
It would be excellent if you ate something.
You know, this is how it's supposed to work.
I'm not trying to feed you from some robot arm from the space shuttle.
This is, you know, this is boob and nipple and milk.
It's exactly how nature intended.
If you like taking something and it really, because you're tired, right?
You're tired and you just desperately want this thing to happen that you can't control.
And that's the crazy thing about this kind of aspect of parenting is you just, it's like sleep.
You know, you just need some sleep, but you can't control it.
And you just need your baby to feed and you can't control it.
And it's, you know, when you've had a long time...
Being in control of your life, it's a pretty wild thing when babies come along and say, well, enough of that now.
You think you're in control?
Think again, punk.
Right.
And it is something that I wanted to, I guess, will into action.
I needed it to work and I needed it to, I needed that bond, I feel like, too.
Okay, there's another emotional trip wire for you.
What do you mean?
I didn't wanna sever a possible, by quitting breastfeeding, I didn't wanna sever a possible bond that we would have for the next, you know, year, year and a half.
So, you know, talking about the duration of breastfeeding, whatever, that is a way for a mother and a child to bond, and I wanted it to work.
So, God damn it, it was gonna work, if that makes sense.
God damn it, we're gonna have a bond, kid.
I think it's supposed to be more of a bond and less of a hostage taking, but I could be wrong.
Wait, who's the hostage, me or the baby?
Let's work on that as we continue the conversation.
I'm kidding.
But yeah, no, that was part of it too.
That was a big part of it.
Her health, of course, yeah, and the benefits of breastfeeding biologically, but the emotional bond that you're supposed to have with that.
was something that mattered a lot to me that I didn't want to miss out on.
So.
Well, let's get to that in a sec.
But how did it go with sleep?
Or how is it going with sleep?
Sleep is all I wanted to talk about for the first six months.
And until we did sleep training, sleep training was overdue.
I think we did it at six months.
I think we did it at five.
It was just becoming hazardous.
Like it was becoming dangerous to drive.
Right.
Yes.
Right.
Of course.
Yeah, and there's all this drama about SIDS, but you're doing them more of a disservice if you're putting them behind the wheel of a car and, you know, well, you behind the wheel of a car, sleep-deprived and out with your babies.
No, that's how they break personalities, right?
It's how they destroy a human being.
It's through sleep deprivation, right?
I remember when Noriega in Panama, they wanted to take him out and they just played really loud, harsh Hard rock music at top volume and with the speakers point at the hotel and it's like oh so that's how you destroy the hot mind and soul of a horrible dictator and That's got a lot to do with parenting as well.
It's just one of these terrible Coincidences or ways things have developed in particular Yeah, and with breastfeeding supposed to be so natural and supposed to be so yeah, just you expect it to be easy and And you hear that a baby sleeps, you know, upwards of 16 hours a day.
So you're like, well, of course I'm going to get some sleep then.
Yeah.
Yeah, I never found that to be the case.
Yeah.
I think in particular, this could just be my prejudice, but I think in particular with really bright kids from bright families, they have a tough time soothing the old developing brain, right?
Because, you know, when you're smart, it's hard to cool the brain.
And this is as an adult, like we start with a billion, billion, billion connections and they get pruned, right?
So the brain we have as an adult is a very small subset of the brain that we had as a baby.
And so I think if your baby is very smart, Then they live in a world of internal stimulation that you and I can't even imagine anymore because our brains have been whittled and pruned down from the original galactic clusterfrack of stimulation that it started with.
So I do think that The smarter babies don't sleep.
That's anecdotal.
I don't have any data on that.
That's just sort of something I've sort of thought or noticed.
And again, if you're listening to this show, you're smart and we know that intelligence or at least IQ is 80% genetic by late teens.
So there's probably that as well, which makes the baby stuff is tougher, but then the later stuff is way, way cooler.
Yeah.
And I'm looking forward to it.
And the kids that I worked with in my job were teenagers, so... Right, right.
So you were seeing a lot of the baked goods and not a lot of the recipe and burnt papers, right?
Yeah, right.
And some of the botched baked jobs too, so... informed a lot of, you know, what I came to learn as, you know, parenting and do's and don'ts, I guess.
And how did the sleep training go?
I reached out to someone on like care.com to see if they would come over.
We were at our melting point and I was thinking maybe we'd need like a night nanny.
I would have paid anything, but I texted with this woman and she's like, I don't think you really need me.
I think you just need to be firm and get rid of the pacifier and get rid of this and you know, just be a parent and put her to sleep and step out of the room and let her, let her work it out.
And let her learn some skills.
Learning how to self-soothe.
That you can cry and be really upset.
No one comforts you and you eventually know as a baby what's on the other side of being upset is you can self-soothe.
You can calm yourself.
Yeah.
And that went well and there have been some hiccups but with the sleep training I became very much obsessed I would say with a schedule for her because that was something that was part of it.
You needed to be consistent and you needed to do consistent naps during the day.
And so almost without exception, I've stuck to two naps a day around the same exact time within a half an hour window and when she doesn't nap or she won't calm herself down, I get so angry.
I get so upset because I'm supposed to be good at this.
I'm supposed to have done the training, gotten her to a certain place.
She's supposed to take over and be able to self-soothe and when she doesn't, I get, I'm so hard on myself about that because I'm like, this is my fault.
This is something I've done.
I fed her something or I've, sorry, let me just, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Let me just make sure I follow this.
And I, I, I mean, I, I'm sounding more skeptical.
I'm really just trying to understand.
So you're upset or you, you get very angry or mad at yourself when you're eight, nine, 10 month old baby doesn't follow a schedule you've set up.
Now, are you saying this like, uh, every now and then I have the urge to bite the head off a bat like Ozzy Osbourne, but I don't, obviously.
Or do you like, well, no, she should.
She should be on a schedule.
This is how it should work.
Um... I mean, there have been times where I've thrown the monitor on the ground, like, really angry.
Okay, give me that scenario.
So, is it like second nap or first nap?
You put her down at 11 or 3 or whatever it is, right?
And she just cries, doesn't want to go to bed?
Yeah, and she'll shift her body towards the side of the crib that's near the door.
Right.
And if she's pre-vocalizing or vocalizing like mama and she's reaching for you and that kind of stuff?
Right, usually crying and screaming.
Screaming, okay.
And then what?
And then I grit my teeth and my blood pressure goes up and I'm like, okay, just breathe.
She'll eventually fall asleep.
Give it, I look at the clock and I try to time it to see how long, cause I don't want her indefinitely screaming.
So, you know, if it's anything more than like five minutes, um, that's not true.
If it's, if it's more than like 10 minutes, I'll go up and try to, you know, just I'll pick her up and wait.
So you're trying to sleep trainer, but then you go back in.
Yeah, because part of the sleep training was you do this sort of graduated extinction where you go in after a set amount of time.
Really?
Yeah.
I thought it was just cried out.
That's one way.
But the way that we did it was graduated extinction, it's called.
How did that work?
Well, you said it worked except for occasionally with that, right?
Right.
But at first it worked beautifully with all sleeping arrangements.
Yeah.
And then you wean it off.
So you wait 10 minutes, go in after 10 minutes if she's still crying, and then the next day you might wait 15 minutes and then go in if she's still crying at that point.
And usually by then, after a day or two of that, they find a way to... And you don't pick them up.
That's actually against the rules.
You're not supposed to really pick them up out of the crib.
You're supposed to just pat them and say, it's okay, I'm here.
Yeah, because otherwise you're just training them to cry for 15 minutes to get what they want.
Yeah, right.
So I'm not like...
I go back and forth on the rigidity of the rules.
What do you mean?
That sounds like you're trying to confess to something, but not at the same time.
I go back and forth, you know.
Okay, listen, I don't like stealing cars.
I know it's illegal, but honestly, I go back and forth on those rules.
What do you mean?
So, I can explain.
Because it's infrequent that she has these...
I guess long intervals of crying and not sleeping.
I feel like this is a one-off, something's up.
And what's been really helpful about sleep training is that because she's on a schedule, if she's off, it's usually something I can trace back to.
So, if she doesn't follow the schedule, if she's crying for a longer amount of time, I trace back and I think, okay, what did I feed her?
Oh yeah, shouldn't have given her jalapenos and yeah, okay.
Shouldn't have let her, you know, reach into the dog's food bowl, maybe.
But it becomes this little mind game obsession thing.
And it's part of this stay-at-home mom issue, I think, as a small example of how I overthink these things, when maybe she's just, like you and I, not sleeping the same as she did yesterday.
Well, I mean, good heavens.
You know this, obviously.
Kids are changing, like, daily.
You know, like, what worked yesterday, you know, won't work tomorrow.
And what works tomorrow, won't work today.
Because they're changing all the time, right?
So she gets used to something, and then, boop, her brain grows by, like, 5% in a week, and then it's all reset, right?
Yeah, that's a good point too that I don't always keep in perspective.
Oh, yeah.
No, because I mean you get tired of stuff as a parent, right?
Like how many times do I have to stack these blocks, right?
And just when you're gonna completely go mental from boredom, your kid's like, I don't care about the blocks anymore.
It's like, oh, thank you, right?
It is, you know, it's one of the things you get to look forward to.
Okay, so she's crying and you're in the room.
She's not...
going down, she's screaming.
And how do you end up throwing the monitor down?
What's the step that leads to that?
Or steps?
Well, what comes to mind is like, I can't calm myself down.
I guess I think... So you need somebody to give you stress training or something like that.
I can't believe my daughter can't self-soothe!
Really?
No, that's not... Well, no, and of course, that's freaking her out, right?
Yeah.
Because she sees you lose control.
Well, I'm not throwing the monitor in her room.
But she can probably tell to some degree or another.
I mean, we read parents like we read the weather, like a sailor is out there reading the weather, right?
I know, and that's what I'm worried about, Steph, because as much as I try to be upbeat, energetic, happy, I think she knows there's an undertone.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, I don't doubt it.
And that's not, you know, what we owe our kids is honesty.
I know, I mean, you can't give her big long speeches when she's not even a year old, but I think it is important to be authentic with kids, to be honest with them.
Like if you feel like doing something else, just say, you know, pick her up, I want to do something else, or mommy wants to do something else.
I think that's kind of important because otherwise, you know, kids need other people's thoughts and feelings to have relationships with them.
And if you're just there to enable or to facilitate what the child wants to do, then the child grows up without a strong sense of someone else in the room, if that makes any sense.
Can you say that again, actually?
Yeah, sure.
You have to have, and it's age appropriate.
So, I mean, I would imagine it's sort of coming in around where your daughter's age is at the moment, but it's very important that you yourself have needs around your children and express your preferences.
Because if you don't, they don't get a strong sense that there's someone else in the room, right?
You want to have a bond, but for your child to have a bond, you can't be a pleasing robot.
You can't be, um, something that just facilitates what your child wants to do because then you're like you're like a car like you know you get into your car and you don't say you know hey car I'd really like to go grocery shopping what do you think you know do you want to go through the car wash would you like to go racing you know like what do you like we don't say that we just get into the car and the car is a tool that we use to get what we want satisfy our needs right our preferences
And so with parenting, and it's not something you do with the new baby, right?
But certainly you've got to transition into that.
You have to have your own needs and preferences because your child can't relate to you if you're not there.
In other words, if all you're doing is pursuing some agenda or trying to fulfill some schedule or trying to facilitate their preferences or pleasures, then I think That can raise children who don't have a sense of give and take, who don't have a sense that there are other people who have needs and you need to negotiate, you know, as you do with your boss, as you do with your husband, as you do with whoever, right?
You're buying a house, you do it with the lender or whatever.
So, I guess that's, when you were saying, you know, you try and put on a peppy face, why?
Do you not think that you're gonna be loved if you disagree with your daughter?
I think she can't love you if you don't disagree with her in the long run.
Right, I guess part of it is sometimes I just want to avoid listening to her cry or listening to her scream.
Okay, so the screaming, the screaming, was that from the beginning or did that grow or how did that play out?
I've always hated listening to her cry because I think I just, a baby's cry has always grated on my nerves.
Well, it's supposed to, right?
I mean, that's the reason that babies cry, is the babies who didn't cry didn't get their needs met and died.
Right.
I mean, it's supposed to be annoying.
The crying and the screaming, though, is different, right?
So, when you say screaming, are you talking like purple-faced, fist-clenched, barely human-looking face?
I mean, what are we talking about with the screaming?
That was more early on.
I think when we had difficulty feeding her.
Now it's more like screeching and whining and that insistent baby call of, I need it, I want it now.
Right.
And?
And sometimes I can't get things to her fast enough and she'll raise her voice just to high pitch screeches.
Now, just give me a sense of, Abby, you don't have to blow my ear out or wake the neighborhood, but just give me a sense of the sort of pitch and intensity.
You want me to, like, wail like she does?
Yeah, not full volume, but just give me a... Okay, like... Okay, so I get, yeah, I get an... I mean, I'm just telling you what I think, right?
But I get sort of entitlement and anger out of that, like, Mommy, how dare you deny...
Her Highness something.
Yeah.
Is that wrong or is that... That's right, because I think even in my email I said to you, I think I said I'm like a prisoner to her, like I didn't say slave, but... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so she's like the empress and you're like the servant, right?
That's how I feel, yeah.
Well, that sucks.
I mean, who could possibly enjoy that?
No, that's why, yeah, I'm glad we...
Oh yeah, no, no, that's... I mean, again, when they're very young, that's the gig, right?
But you've got to, you know, start to balance it out, right?
And where is she at developmentally?
Is she scooching?
Is she crawling?
Walking?
Language?
Where are we at?
Creeping and crawling, mostly like... I like how you say creeping.
It's almost sinister, you know?
Like in the movie It, see?
She comes with a clown mask at 3am.
Sorry, go on.
Yeah, and she kind of swims across the floor on her belly monthly.
So, we've got a scrolling, and does she have any words yet?
She says, like, mama and dada, but not directed at us.
I think just about her practicing.
Oh, yeah, the practice.
Okay.
All right.
Was there a time when her screeching didn't bother you as much, or her crying?
Was there a time when her crying didn't bother me as much?
Like when she was a newborn, I assume that the crying was not, oh, I'm a slave to an entitled whatever, right?
Because she was just newborn, right?
It's hard to take the newborn personally because, you know, they're just right out of the womb, right?
Right.
But was there a time that it transitioned where it became more annoying as things went forward?
Try and think.
Not a particular segment of time, but it became more annoying that I couldn't take her out into public without her getting scared of a stranger.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean, my daughter went through that phase as well.
Well, I'm glad to hear that because I'm starting to wonder if there's something personality-wise with her that's off.
Because just yesterday, so I wrote an email to you, we went to a party.
This was weeks ago.
And she, just the minute someone just made eye contact with her, she just shut down and started crying inconsolably almost.
So I had to leave and on the way home I was crying and I was actually like very upset with her in the car and I said, you really ruined this and I wanted to get some social interaction and I didn't and here I am driving you home because you couldn't contain yourself.
And she was how old at this point, 11 months?
10 months.
10 months.
Now, you understand that's a crazy conversation to be having with a 10 month old.
I know.
I mean, this is all sympathy.
Like we've all been there with this kind of stuff.
I mean, I remember when my daughter was, I wanted to do something in the water, the water was too cold for her.
And for some reason or another, which I can't even remember now, I couldn't do it.
And I was mad at her.
She was two and a half, right?
I mean, so, you know, I mean, that's not fair, but it does happen, right?
Right.
I haven't had a lot of social interaction since she's been born.
I haven't been away from her for more than a three hour segment since she's been born.
And you wonder why she might be alarmed at new people?
Yeah, that's a good point.
All right.
So listen, Tracy, my dear, you cannot exist without needs.
You cannot exist subjugated to a baby.
You can't do it.
It's unfair to her.
It's unfair to her because if you don't have needs and preferences, then there's no one else in the room.
It gives her a sense of entitlement, which is probably where the screeching is coming from.
Like, how dare you not bring me what I want when I want it, right?
So you can't be a parent and be running around after a baby.
You have to be in charge, which means that you have to, not bossy, but you have to have your own needs and preferences.
Because if you self-erase, which it seems like to me, again, correct me if I'm going astray here, but if you self-erase to appease your daughter, boy, are you going to resent her and is she going to resent you in the long run.
Well, you're going to resent her and she's going to lose respect for you, right?
I feel like it's already happening and I have no respect for myself because Yeah, I'm being bossed around by a 19 pound... I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh.
But you know, if you've been around babies a lot, you see Kim Jong-un from like North Korea, he's got that baby fan face.
I'm like, yeah, baby face dictator.
Yeah.
I know that experience a little bit.
All right.
So here's the question then.
I guess the question is, For you, what would the negative consequences be to having needs and preferences and say, sorry, little lady, if you don't like it, but you're not three months old anymore.
Well, yeah, I can answer that.
The negative consequences would be she cries, she stammers, she pouts.
I'm not connecting with her.
And I eventually have to be the one to soothe her.
Right.
Now, if you were in your job as a counselor, And a mom came in talking this way about her child, what would you say?
Well, I have to give my child what he wants.
My child gets really upset, gets really angry.
I have to just please my child, because if I don't, they'll be very upset.
Well, I know your example.
I worked with teenagers, though, so they have some verbal skills to leverage.
But the principle is the same.
Appeasement is appeasement.
So how do you know when to appease and when not?
When you get annoyed at the crying, that's when you stop appeasing.
Your instincts, like your baby has her instincts and you have your instincts as a mother.
And I guess my concern is you don't seem to be like, so if you're at the point where you're smashing the baby monitor, that's because you feel incredibly trapped, incredibly frustrated.
And that means that you're not trusting your instincts about when to stop appeasing your daughter.
So babies are incredibly smart.
The data is getting stronger and stronger about it.
They can do mathematical reasoning at 8 months.
My daughter was like 12, 13, 14 months when she started working on ethics.
We started negotiating when she was 18 months old.
So babies are very smart.
And babies, when they're first born, all they are is instinct and need and want, right?
Because they're just babies, right?
But very quickly, they start puzzling things out about how to get what they want.
And babies are amoral manipulators.
I mean, there's no ethics for babies.
It's just, I want, I need.
They don't know whether it's good or bad for them, right?
I mean, they don't sit there and say, well, I could have another M&Ms, but I do have to worry about cavities, right?
So babies just want and need, and then very quickly they learn how to manipulate to get what they want.
And that's why I asked you to imitate the crying.
And my daughter is like a genius at fake crying.
Like, you know, if we're at the mall or whatever and some kid's like, eh, eh, eh, right?
She's like, fake cry, fake cry, fake, who knows, right?
And so there's the crying that comes from genuine want or fear or pain or whatever it is, right?
And then there's the crying, which is, I'm not getting what I want.
Right now, you want to indulge everything about the first kind of crying and nothing about the second because crying should not be a weapon by which you get what you want.
Right?
Then you're going to become a socialist.
No, I mean, this is important because you don't want to facilitate your baby's You have to be free to say no to your daughter.
what she wants, right?
That's not good for either of you, right?
Because you're teaching her a bad lesson and you're manifesting a bad lesson.
And she'll end up, again, no respect, you'll end up resenting and that may be where things are to a small degree at the moment. - Mm-hmm, yeah. - You have to be free to say no to your daughter.
You have to be free because she needs you to model what being an adult looks like.
And I, oh, she's only 11 months It's like, yeah.
So, so, so now is the time you don't want to undo it later.
Right.
Right.
So she needs, Oh, adults can say no.
Adults can have their own preferences and their own needs.
Oh, good.
She needs to see that every child.
You know, if you've ever seen these nature shows where the octopus, octopi, they're reaching into the coral trying to feel for something like mollusk or whatever they eat, right?
And they're just drifting over and feeling into everything.
But that's babies trying to figure out what works in their world.
They can't meet their own needs because they're babies.
So they have to figure out how to control the big giant airship adults around them to satisfy their wants and needs, right?
And again, when they're newborns and I don't know, up to six, seven, eight months.
Yeah, fine.
You know, I mean, but, but you have to be aware of when you start to get annoyed at it because your instincts are then telling you that it is not a genuine, spontaneous, heartfelt cry of upset or pain or fear or hunger or whatever.
It's like, it's, they're frustrated that they're not getting what they want when they want it.
And so they're turning up the volume and it's a way of controlling you.
Right.
Yeah, definitely.
So now is the time in the conversation when we take the magic ride back to the dawn of you.
So your mother was a stay-at-home mom, right?
Yeah.
And do you know much about your infancy?
I was just watching, they had a Super 8 back then for video, and I saw some video of myself at my daughter's age, which was really cool to see.
I'm the youngest of three.
And yeah, I had my brother and sister around all the time.
Um, they were pretty harsh with me growing up.
Um, more when I got older, but as an infant, yeah, we were around.
My mom was home.
Um, my dad would, he worked as a teacher and then he would, I don't know, coach sports and stuff after.
So he wasn't around as much as my mom, of course, but school vacations, they were always with us summer.
They were always around.
Comparatively to other callers you've had, it's a pretty idyllic, you know, infancy.
And my mom loved being a stay-at-home mom.
She, and even before I started listening to you, she would always kind of talk down to daycare and we would you know we'd come home from middle school and say oh so and so you know dyed their hair blue and she'd say yeah I know I remember them and I remember their mom putting them in daycare when they were you know six weeks old and blah blah blah and you know people do that when they she'd kind of she'd be really kind of smug about it and talk about how kids who went to daycare would later have problems with identity and yeah
so your mom was pretty pretty key on on being home and and and being available and being present right yeah And what does your mom say about your relationship with your daughter?
For all she knows, we have a pretty good bond.
She likes to remind me how good I have it.
That this is my only job.
Because you only have one where she had three, is that right?
No, meaning I don't have to worry about going back to work or, you know... Well neither did she, did she?
Right.
So she's... I haven't been forthcoming with her as I am with you.
Why?
Because... I just, I think she would... I think she would laugh at me.
I think she would think of me as like a spoiled brat.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Who does that sound like?
So you fear that your mother might think of you the way that you might occasionally think of your daughter, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so why would your mother think of you as a spoiled brat?
Because I have this setup where I'm able to stay home and... No, so did she.
That's not the same.
I have this precious, healthy, lively, adorable baby, and here I am complaining.
She would see it, I think, as complaining.
Are you saying that your mother never complained?
Or never complains?
No, she's a baby boomer, so she complains.
She's a what?
She's a baby boomer, so she complains.
Don't hook into my prejudices.
I'm trying to be nice to everyone in this call.
Okay, so no.
I mean, did she complain?
Do you remember her complaining as a kid?
Did she complain as an adult?
I mean... Do you mean about us as her children?
No, just in... Okay, let me ask you this.
Be more blunt.
Does she complain about things that you think are ridiculous?
Yes.
Like what?
Like...
Well, traffic, or we haven't seen the sun in seven days.
I haven't been able to work on my gardens all summer.
Stuff like that.
Okay, so she complains about the weather.
She complains that she has a car to drive on the road with.
But you can't complain about social isolation, sleep deprivation, nervous tension, and having your nipples half-chewed off.
So those things I have told her about and she's been present for like the whole breastfeeding saga, she was there for.
I would say more in line of if I were to tell her that I'm having a hard time bonding or that I'm feeling like I regret my decision to stay home, that's where I feel she would consider me complaining.
Does that make sense?
Oh totally, totally, but there's something that I When I point it out to you, you'll kick yourself.
Because I know you're a self-critical person, and I'm always aware of that when I speak to self-critical people.
But here's the thing.
If your mother had a truly strong bond with you, you wouldn't have to tell her.
she would know.
Oh.
Yeah. - Yeah.
So this is what this is a family thing.
Right.
The moment you said my mother's around.
She said she was just over yesterday.
I think she spent the night.
He said she left this morning.
Right.
Yeah.
Your mother's around and she's not aware that you're having this issue.
Where's her bond with you.
Why wouldn't she know?
How could she not pick up on this?
It's a central agony of your life.
It's been going on off and on, right, for almost a year.
Yeah.
How could she not know?
Listen, I'm a father and I know.
I was helping my daughter.
We fly these airplanes, these little plastic polystyrene airplanes or whatever, right?
One went up in a tree.
She wanted to climb it.
I gave her a boost.
She fell on her butt and she jumped up and she said, I'm fine, I'm fine.
I said, no, you're not.
And then she burst into tears, right?
I knew she wasn't fine.
I knew she wasn't fine.
I know what my daughter's feeling from, like, across a football field.
She can hide nothing from me, and I can hide nothing from her.
You know, I walk out of the studio, I go upstairs, my daughter takes one glance at me and says, well, that was a heavy call, wasn't it?
Or, well, that was a fun call, wasn't it?
Just from how I'm climbing the stairs, it's weird.
It's like having psychic helmets floating around you.
You're like one of these glass frogs and people can see your innards, right?
Yeah.
Why doesn't she know?
How could she miss it?
If the bond is so strong, you shouldn't have to tell her.
And there's a reason you haven't.
Because if you're avoiding telling your central agony as a mother to your own mother, I don't see a bond.
And that's a strong way of putting it.
I'm not saying like there's no bond, you don't care about each other.
But as far as what I would consider a strong bond, I don't see it.
No, you're right.
And so if you didn't have a strong bond modeled by your mother to you, Tracy, how could you enact that with your daughter?
It'd be like me saying to you, OK, teach your daughter Japanese.
You're like, well, I never learned Japanese.
It doesn't matter.
Teach her Japanese anyway.
Right?
Yeah.
It also means that your mother does not know that she is lacking a strong bond with you.
Because here's the thing, listen.
If your mother was aware that there's not a strong bond, if there wasn't a strong bond when you first started out in your life with your mother, and then 36 years later when you have the baby, your mother would say, listen, I never quite connected with you in the way that I really felt I should.
And I really want to make sure that doesn't happen again.
Like, I'm aware of deficiencies in how I was raised, right?
And so I don't, I make sure I don't recreate any of that, right?
And so it means that your mother maybe doesn't have a strong bond with you and doesn't even know that.
Because when you say to me, my childhood was idyllic, and then you say to me, my mother's been around me and my baby for a year almost, and she doesn't have the first clue that there's any problems, I'm like, you can't have both, man.
You can't have both.
You can't have an idyllic childhood and a mother who hasn't even noticed the central agony of your adult life.
She should immediately walk in the room and say, what's wrong, Tracy?
What's happening?
What's going on?
What's the matter?
She should know you that well.
So either she knows it and is hiding her knowledge of it or she's completely oblivious to your emotional state.
Completely oblivious to your emotional state as a mother.
What the hell is that?
It's like a siren going off out front of your doorstep and you turn to me and say, that siren is deafening me.
And I say, siren?
What siren?
And because I think you've normalized things with your mom, like whatever we normalize, we become.
If I had, and please, I'm not putting you in this category, or your mom in this category, I'm just giving you my personal example, right?
If I had normalized how my mother treated me, I'd be yelling at and hitting my daughter.
Because that's what parents do, right?
And if you normalize your relationship with your mother, and it's idyllic, in other words, it's the ideal, Then you're going to recreate the lack of bond that it seems your mother has with you.
It doesn't happen.
Wow.
Yeah.
I don't want to do that.
No you don't.
No you don't.
Do your siblings have kids.
Yeah.
And how's all that going for them.
Good for them.
My sister has she Had her kids go to daycare right after, you know, within three months of them being born.
So wait, why are you saying good for them?
She, so when I was talking with my sister about my daughter afraid of strangers and crying at the sight of a stranger, she was like, yeah, well, you know, my kids went to daycare.
So they were around different people all the time.
And I think that that's, you know, they went through those phases.
But they weren't long-lasting and they weren't as, you know.
Turns out, you dump your kids in a daycare, they give up on the central bond and just bond with whoever's around.
Oh look, they've got social skills.
It's like, nope, they just lost their bond.
Yeah, and they're just always busy, always on the move.
Practice here, sports this, hockey that, guitar lesson, gotta go.
I think she's in the car, probably.
Ah, the busy work of the lack of bonding.
Now, have you talked about this with your brother and sister, or sister?
Oh no, you said, I was the only person to know about the miscarriage, but what about... See, you didn't tell your siblings about the miscarriage, right?
Yeah, I just don't want to burst into tears a lot of the time.
Why?
What's wrong with bursting into tears?
I just... I just... I don't know.
Oh...
Bursting into tears is bad, right?
And what does your daughter do?
Yeah, that's right.
You should keep your feelings inside, young lady, so as not to inconvenience people or trouble them.
Okay, so you don't want to be a burden.
You don't want to trouble people with your feelings, right?
Right.
Except me, which I'm very happy about.
I'm glad about.
I'm privileged.
I'm honored.
that you would talk about this stuff with me.
So you don't want to burden other people, is that right?
Right.
I don't want to be a burden.
It's a younger sibling syndrome, man.
Is it?
I think so.
I think so because, you see, you're born into a family with already existing power structures and hierarchies.
And if you don't form into those, if you don't sort of pour yourself into those like water into a container, then the family structure usually can't survive, right?
Whatever it is, right?
The youngest siblings generally have to conform to the existing family structure and they can't cause too many problems, right?
Yeah, my mom has said that even in so many words.
My husband asked her, you know, was Tracy an easy baby?
And she says she had to be.
She didn't have a choice.
Well, that's kind of telling.
Yeah.
She didn't have a choice.
That's a little... like she could have said, well, you know, she kind of had to because there was an already existing family structure, but... or, you know, ways of a hierarchy, a packing order, whatever.
But she... she had to.
Yeah.
It's almost like a personal thing.
She better have been, right?
Yeah.
What happened with discipline in your household?
No spanking.
My parents were both teachers.
They...
Kept, you know, I think after, you know, when I was in kindergarten, my mom went back to work part-time as the art teacher at my school.
So, Steph, I'm sorry.
I just dissociated for a second.
What was the question?
I'm sorry.
No, don't apologize.
That's probably quite important.
You just kind of beamed out of the planet when you were talking about your mom.
Right.
After you were in kindergarten, your mom went back to school as a teacher.
Was it part-time, you said?
Yeah, at my school.
At your school.
And then you spaced out.
Yeah.
Go on.
Why do you think that happened?
I don't know.
I think I forgot what you'd asked me.
Okay, so what was it like having your mom in your school as a teacher?
It was funny because I felt like the teacher side of her that was this, you know... Okay, we're moving that mic around a bit more.
Okay, go ahead.
The teacher in front of the classroom was not the warm fuzzy mom that I had at home.
So it's almost like she had a different persona as a teacher.
Wait, you're trying to sell me on the warm fuzzy mom at home again?
That's the wrong choice of words.
Yeah, I feel like I'm talking to you, but it's going through your mom, the propagandist.
Okay.
Well, okay Tracy, you're allowed to talk about me, but you must always refer to me as warm and fuzzy, even though there's direct evidence against it, in that I haven't even noticed you've been unhappy with your mothering for 11 months.
Okay, so let's try that again.
You saw her, I guess, you know, more brisk and more authoritarian at school, right?
Yes, thanks.
And did you have... You know, this is kind of the other curse of the youngest child, right?
which is, did you have much one-on-one time with your parents? - Not so much with my dad, but yes, one-on-one time with my mom.
And what would you do?
I remember she would... I think my earliest memories are probably in the kindergarten age range.
She would drive me home and make me grilled cheese.
I wanted to watch Gulliver's Travels every single day, over and over again.
So I would watch that, and she'd come and watch it with me, or do dishes, or make a phone call, be around and in the vicinity.
And we would, I'd go to my brother and sister's games with her, sports events, you know, after school.
Yeah, okay, but what about conversations, just the two of you?
In the car, usually.
About horses or about horseback riding or a trip that we were coming up on.
Or talk about other kids.
Now, when you disagreed with your mother about something, how did that go?
At that age?
Yeah, just throughout your childhood as a whole.
Um...
That would be those...
I can't think of a particular example, but I can remember how I felt.
I remember if we would be in an argument or a disagreement, a lot of times she doesn't hesitate to throw things in your face that she's done for you.
Little guilt trips.
Not little.
I shouldn't say that.
Guilt trips.
So here's the... So give me an example.
What would she drop?
So if I didn't... if she wouldn't buy me something or if she wouldn't... she wouldn't do something I wanted, she would say things like, well we don't have the money because I stayed home from work for a number of years so that I could be with you guys, with your kids and so we don't have the money for that right now.
That's not quite the same, unless I'm missing something.
It's not quite the same as throwing something in your face.
I mean, that is somewhat factual, right?
It is.
Okay, so, and I'm not disagreeing with you at all.
I just want to make sure I understand where you're coming from.
Yeah.
Is it the tone?
Is it like... Yeah, so if you wanted her to buy you something, was it a tone that she would use that would make it feel more like a... rather than a, well, sorry, but...
Yeah, it was more like, well, sorry, but this is our situation, and tough.
And shouldn't you be thanking me?
Oh, for being home with you?
For being home with you instead of pursuing my career.
I could be retired in 10 years, but no, I stayed home with you kids, so you'd have your mom.
And did she say that she thought you should thank her for that?
No, she never said it outright, but the message was there.
Do you think that your mom had regrets about staying home?
No, I don't, because she's even told me that I'm doing the right thing, and I won't regret this, and no one ever says, oh, I wish I had worked more when I had a baby.
So she's been in full support.
Of what I'm doing, in contrast to what my sister has done.
So she's not shy to tell me... Oh, your sister thinks that you should dump your kid in a daycare and go back to work?
No, she hasn't.
She hasn't said that outright.
I think she understands what I'm trying to do, but my mom will talk about my sister in a way, to me, that's not favorable.
So she'll say, well, you know, your sister just drops him off at daycare and off she goes.
Has your mom had that conversation with your sister?
I don't know.
Have you had that conversation with your sister?
No.
Why not?
Because I don't want to shame her.
Like, if she's chosen to go back to work... It's not about her, though.
Come on.
It's not about her.
It's about her kids.
I can tell you what I think she would say.
Okay.
What would she say?
I think she would say that daycare has done well for them, has given them some independence and social skills.
For three months of age?
Come on.
Babies don't need to be independent at three months of age.
What are they going to move to Cairo?
And I would also ask her, have you read the studies?
Have you... Do you know the data?
Do you know the facts?
Or is this just something you think?
Steph, I don't even know if I know the facts.
Or the data.
Oh, yeah, no, daycare's terrible.
Do you want me to look it up?
No, I believe you.
Yeah, you can just look up the Quebec studies.
Yeah, daycare, I mean, come on.
I mean, this is, it's so unnatural.
To take a child away from its mother at some weeks of age and put it in with strangers, with a whole bunch of other kids, without one-on-one time, without the eye contact, without the physical contact, without the skin-on-skin contact.
I mean, come on.
That's not how... Might as well have robots raise the babies.
That's not how babies are supposed to be raised, right?
But you see, there's so much...
There's so much social structure around that relies upon women dumping their kids in daycare and going to work.
Right.
So that's why I haven't had a conversation.
No, but that's why the data is there.
It's very clear.
But people don't want to talk about it because heaven forbid we have a conversation about facts that make women feel bad, right?
I know.
It's called mom shaming.
No, it's not mom shaming.
Because she's not momming when she's putting her kids in daycare.
It's non-mom shaming.
It's having kids and not raising them shaming.
It's not mom shaming.
Sorry.
That's what I said.
I feel quite strongly about this.
That I'm doing the right thing.
No, mom shaming would be great.
I don't mean it's great, but at least the mom would be there.
But it's putting your kids in daycare shaming.
That's not being a mother.
I mean, you're still biologically a mother and of course you spend time with your kids and all that.
8-10 hours a day.
You know, you got a 5 to 1 ratio with babies, right?
Usually 5 babies for every 4, babies for every 1.
But a baby needs a diaper change every hour, right?
So let's say you got 6 babies, just to make it easier, right?
6 babies and 1 caregiver.
Baby needs a diaper change at least once an hour.
Now, to do a proper diaper change, you know this, right?
Especially when you've got multiple kids, you can't be transferring fecal matter and germs and God knows what from one baby to another, right?
So you have to have, you've completely wiped down the surface.
You've got to take the baby, you've got to completely wash your hands, scrub them like surgical style.
You've got to take the baby, you've got to change the diaper.
You've got to dispose of the old diaper.
You've got to put the baby back.
The baby might be fussy and you've got to completely clean the area again, right?
That's 10 minutes right there.
Now, if you just have one caregiver, six babies, and a baby needs changing every hour, and it takes 10 minutes, that's your 60 minutes right there.
All that's happening is the babies are getting their diapers changed.
That's it.
And that's assuming they do a good job.
Otherwise, they're just transferring fecal matter from one baby to another, or God knows what, right?
So, and that's assuming the babies all have, they all poop and pee at just the right time, you know, all in a sequence like dominoes, right?
It's, no, it's not, it's not good.
Now, it may be better than abusive household, but it's interesting that you can't talk about this with your sister.
So you haven't talked about things with your mom, like, mom, have you not even noticed that I'm really upset and I'm not enjoying my motherhood as much as I'd like to?
You haven't been able to say that.
You haven't been able to be assertive with your daughter.
And you haven't been able to say to your sister, listen, I'm sorry if this upsets you, but here's like, do the research, right?
Here's the facts.
I think you may be making a mistake.
And you say, well, I don't want to upset her.
It's like, it's not about her.
It's about the kids.
Like once you become a parent, you know, this is not about you.
It's about your kids.
At least when they're young.
So here's where I see it, that you have trouble being assertive.
Because with your daughter, if you're angry at your daughter, you can say, listen, I'm not happy with you at the moment.
I do not like it when you yell at me.
If you're crying, if you're upset, I care.
I will do anything to make you feel better.
I don't like it when you yell at me.
Now, of course, is she going to understand what you're saying down to the last syllable?
No, but kids read tone like blind people read braille.
So you have to be free to be honest with your children.
Otherwise, you have a relationship based upon fakery, right?
What is the bond?
The bond, Tracy, is just honesty.
That's all it is.
And if you're putting on that tight female smile and pretending everything's fine and suppressing your preferences, it's going to blow up to the point where you're smashing a baby monitor, right?
The bond is just honesty.
The bond is founded upon the ability to displease people.
That's what a bond is.
The ability to displease people.
That's all a bond.
Honesty, right?
If everyone's getting along, you don't need a bond, right?
What do you need a bond for?
You need a bond for when you're not getting along.
When you disagree, fundamentally or foundationally.
That's what the bond is for.
That's why I asked, can you disagree with your mom?
Can you disagree with your daughter?
And so if you're not free to disagree with people, you can't have a bond with them.
The bond is, I'm going to be inconvenient and I trust you enough and I trust your love for me enough that you will be okay with me being inconvenient.
And you have to be willing to inconvenience your daughter.
In other words, not give her what she wants whenever she wants it.
Yeah.
Because that's no bond.
That's not trusting the bond.
You can disagree with your daughter.
In fact, you must.
disagree with your daughter, you can't let her bully you and manipulate you because that harms the bond.
That's saying, well, if I don't appease you, you won't love me.
But that's not having a bond.
That's just being scared.
You can't disagree with your sister.
Why?
I can tell you why.
I can tell you exactly why you can't disagree with your sister because you're afraid she's going to cut you out.
Right?
Yeah.
And I'm so already socially isolated.
I can't lose one more.
Right.
So, So if you disagree with someone and they will sever the relationship that's called not having a bond.
And you're afraid that if you disagree with your daughter that you'll lose your bond with her but the whole point of the bond is you have to be able to disagree.
You don't have a bond with your sister because you can't say to your sister what you know to be right and what you know to be beneficial.
Like let's say That you're right, or I'm right, or we're right about the daycare.
And if she waits too long, she'll never be able to have a proper bond with her kids, right?
So that means that their teenage years are going to be really, really tough, right?
And to be willing to not speak the truth that might help that family and help those kids means that you're just afraid she's going to say to hell with you.
Who are you to blah, blah, blah, right?
And then she's just going to throw things in your face, and she's going to snarl, and then she's just going to hang up forcefully and not return your calls for six months or whatever, right?
That's called not having a bond.
It's not a relationship if you can't speak your mind, if you can't be honest, if you are cowed into lying continually.
That's the real prison, is just not being able to tell the truth.
It's like there's political correctness out there.
Oh, you can't say this fact.
Oh, you can't say that.
I mean, you know, we all recognize that and it's, you know, it's just something we have to navigate.
It shouldn't be happening with family.
Yeah.
The bond is disagreement.
If you're not free to disagree, you have no bond.
and And disagree strongly.
And I don't want the lack of bond you have with your sister.
We haven't talked much about your brother, the lack of bond that you may have with your mother and that she doesn't even know that you're unhappy.
I don't want you to recreate that with your daughter.
And the way to break it is to disagree.
And that's going to make you terrified.
She's not going to love me if I disagree with her.
No.
She's not going to love you if all you do is agree and appease.
Because there's no you to love.
Do you disagree with your husband? - Good.
Yes.
Good.
That's the bond, right?
He's not going to leave you if you disagree with him, right?
In fact, if you just always complied with him, he'd be like, I don't even know who I'm coming out with, living with a ghost, right?
Right.
This scan of our relationships, who can I disagree with?
Who can I be honest with?
Who can I speak my mind to?
It's some chilling shit, man.
It really is.
When you realize that we live these lives of paranoid self-censorship, sometimes from birth to death, Without trust, without solidity, without challenging people or being challenged.
Just tiptoeing, tiptoeing, tiptoeing, right?
Right.
Yeah.
You do disagree with people.
I disagree with people.
People disagree with you.
They disagree with me.
We can either lie about that or we can be honest about that.
And knowing that the bond issue was central to you if you cast your mind back to the beginning of this conversation.
Yeah.
What was the first piece of major feedback I gave to you after you had talked for a few minutes?
I said about that.
You can't will it?
No, it was before that.
Do you remember the train track example?
Oh yeah, you think you can put your ear to the ground to hear it coming.
And what was I talking about?
I think you were talking about the Expectations and what you think is going to happen when you have a baby?
Oh.
No, but it's interesting that you forget that.
What I was talking about is you had a very strong undercurrent of emotions that you weren't talking about.
And when you listen back to this, you'll hear this, right?
And three times in the conversation, I've noticed you getting really emotional, and I paused you to talk about that.
Now, I don't imagine that's happening with your mom.
Because you're all clown smile on the surface, right?
Yeah.
Everything's hunky-dory, right?
Because if things aren't hunky-dory, if you're having trouble bonding with your daughter, there's a reason you can't talk about that with your mom, right?
There's a reason you're talking about that with me.
Because if you can't bond with your daughter, where does that lead to?
Where do those breadcrumbs lead?
To the same relationship I have with my mom?
Yeah, to her.
And this is why in your relationships it's very tough to let falsehoods pile up.
Sorry, say that one more time?
In your relationships, it's very tough when you let falsehoods pile up.
So the reason I'm saying that is for 11 months, and I give or take, right?
But for 11 months, you've been saying, oh, you've been lying to your mother about your experience as a mother, right?
Yeah.
I'm not saying 100%, but this stuff, right?
Which is very important.
Yeah.
So now if you tell your truth, If you tell the truth to your mother, one of the first things she's going to say is, why would you have kept this from me for 11 months?
Yeah, probably.
And then it becomes about that.
Rather than, why didn't you notice?
Mom, why didn't you notice I was not loving motherhood.
And then she says the same thing that everyone who doesn't have a strong bond says.
And that sentence is this.
Tracy, I'm not a mind reader.
You have to tell me.
I can't read your mind.
You have to tell me what's going on.
And then it becomes about you not being honest, rather about them having all the perceptiveness of your average dead cave fish.
I assume you don't bottle things up for 11 months with your husband.
No.
Good!
Okay, so you have that, right?
That comparison, right?
right?
There's sleep training and then there's disagreement training.
And you've done the sleep training. - Okay.
Now you have to do the disagreement training.
And it's going to be disagreeable, right?
But if you want to have a relationship with your daughter, you have to act on the premise that you can disagree with her and you still have a relationship.
Otherwise, it's not a relationship, it's a tyranny.
And I went through this whole phase 16, 17, 18 years ago.
And excuse my coarseness, I'm not sure how delicate your ears are.
But I said, fuck it, I'm just going to tell the truth.
Fuck it, I'm just going to tell the truth.
And there wasn't a lot left standing afterwards, but what was standing has stood the test of time.
I just, I couldn't spend the rest of my life just falsifying my existence.
And I'm concerned about that with you.
And I don't mean to be like a concern troll.
You can deal with this.
You can handle this.
You've got the example of your husband.
You've listened to philosophy.
You can deal with this.
Fine.
The reason I, I want you to have absolute certainty in your relationships.
Absolute certainty in your relationships.
Absolute certainty means I don't just love you because you disagree with me.
Sorry, I don't just love you despite you disagreeing with me.
I love you because you disagree with me.
Because that shows that you're independent, that we're two different people, and you respect our relationship enough to disagree with me.
And I don't mean manipulate or yell or call names.
I mean, I'm sure that's not in your repertoire anyway.
But It's not a relationship if you can't disagree, if you can't tell the truth.
You know there's a way of ghosting people while still being in the room.
You know how the kids like these days they ghost, they just stop returning.
There's a way of ghosting people.
Your mom was over and you said you felt lonely when she left, right?
Yeah.
Right.
And I think you may have felt lonely because she left and you still hadn't told the truth.
And there's another opportunity missed.
Another reinforcement of the bad habit of a murder, of self-imposed silence.
Everyone who loves you must love your disagreements with them.
Thank you.
Because no two people agree.
And also, you know how Sonar works, right?
You send out this sound and it bounces back from things.
And that's how you navigate when it's dark out.
In other words, we navigate because of resistance.
Because something bounces back from us.
And that's how you know there's some metallic object out there, right?
Yeah.
Without people's disagreements with us, we can't navigate.
Without disagreeing with people and having them disagree with us, we can't navigate.
And you can't navigate motherhood if you're complying with everyone.
It's like flying a plane at night with no sonar, with no radar.
Yeah.
Now if you think about Talking about this stuff with your mom, and I don't just mean the problems you have with your daughter, but the problems you have with your mother, what's the feeling that emerges in your heart if you think of calling her up right after we have this conversation?
I'm not saying you should or shouldn't, but if you think about calling her up right after this conversation and say, Mom, we have a problem.
You and I have a problem.
Me and my daughter have a problem.
I think they're related.
What is the feeling that comes in you at that thought?
Anxiety.
Go on.
I don't know that I'd be able to string some sentences together even.
Anxiety like one to ten.
What do you say?
Nine.
Nine.
Is it like terror?
Like, I just...
I feel like all my muscles getting tight right now just thinking about it.
Right.
Right.
And I think it would be, I almost feel like I'd have to script it first.
Right.
So it's a terrifying conversation, right?
Right, because it, where do I start?
Do I start with my present feelings or do I start with, you know, back when I was an infant and Going forward and I'd have to, I'd have to choreograph it for that.
Okay.
Let's, let's try this.
Okay.
You be your mom.
I'll be you.
All right.
This is how I would do it.
Because if you, if you overthink it, right, overthinking comes from.
A desire to control the consequences.
You can't control the consequences.
You can't control other people.
You can't control your daughter.
You can't control how your mother's going to react.
But what I would say is, Mom, I've been, and I'm exaggerating here, but not because I want to, I'll be more accurate.
Okay.
I would say, Mom, I've had significant problems as a mother, and you've been around for like 11 months.
You haven't noticed a thing.
That troubles me.
Really troubles me.
Haven't noticed what?
I don't feel like I have much of a bond with my daughter.
I get angry.
I smash things.
I raise my voice.
I feel out of control.
I feel isolated.
I miss work.
I'm really struggling here.
And you've been around a lot and there's nothing.
You've noticed nothing.
Do you not see?
Well, when I'm around, I see you looking happy and I see your daughter looking at you and looking for you.
She doesn't want to be held by me.
She wants to be with you.
Eventually she warms up to me, but she adores you and you seem like you adore her.
What are you talking about?
Well, I'm talking about that I think I've had to put on a front.
I'm terrified even now of bringing this up with you.
Something is wrong in that I feel like I can't confide in my own mother.
I feel scared to even talk to you about this now.
I think I'm really scared of disappointing you, of being rejected by you, and I feel really isolated because I can't talk about my challenges as a mother with you, who's been a mother.
Well, of course you can talk to me.
What do you mean?
You can talk to me whenever you want.
Do you think that my fear about talking to you is just crazy?
Like it's, I mean, and I'm not, I don't mean this antagonistically.
Like, I mean, so when I say like, I feel really scared to talk, do you think that's just totally made up on my point?
Like there's, there's, there could be no risk in this?
Well, what are you scared of?
What I'm going to say, what I'm going to do?
What are you scared of?
Why are you scared?
Of talking about this with you?
Yeah, why are you scared?
I don't understand the scared part.
I'm your mom, you can tell me anything.
I... I'm scared that...
The lack of bond I feel with my daughter might be reflective of the lack of bond I have with you.
Like, it's a great point.
Why on earth would I be scared about talking about something with my own mother?
But what if a lack of bond with my daughter reflects a lack of bond between us?
Which is why I'm scared to talk about it with you.
And what do you mean by lack of bond?
Well, is that a complicated word?
I'm not sure.
It's not Latin.
I mean, a lack of bond, a lack of security and comfort and safety and spontaneity and honesty in the relationship.
Like, I've been hiding something from you for 11 months, you haven't noticed.
Does that speak well to our bond?
Well, whenever I see you, you seem fine.
Right, so you don't even know when I'm unhappy.
How am I supposed to know if you don't tell me?
But that's the whole point of a bond.
It's just supposed to be able to know.
You understand?
That's why I'm frightened to bring this up, Mom.
Because you're supposed to know.
You're my mother.
But you don't.
And that's why I hide.
And that's why I'm having trouble connecting with my own daughter.
And I'm not saying it's your fault.
You had your mother.
I think it's related, and that's why I'm scared to bring it up.
How could you not know that I was unhappy?
Well, you're doing a good job of hiding it.
So it's all me!
You have no responsibility to know when your daughter's unhappy.
I'm such a fantastic actor, I should get the Oscar for 11 months, and there's nothing on you about any Owness of knowing your daughter.
Well, I know that breastfeeding was difficult for you.
I know that sleep was difficult for you until things started to get better.
I know that you have brought up missing work and missing your co-workers and that sort of thing.
So I know about that.
Well, you're talking about the things I've talked about.
Right.
That's not the issue.
The issue is not the things that I've talked about.
I already said that.
The issue is that I'm afraid to bring something up.
And part of the reason I'm afraid to bring something up is that because you haven't, you either, I mean, have you had any idea that I might be less happy than I appear?
No.
Not, not one single idea.
I just want to be clear.
I'm not trying to blame you.
In the 11 months since I became a mother, you've never once had the thought that I might not be as happy as I seem.
If I did, I would attribute that to you not getting enough sleep.
What do you mean, if you did?
Well, if the thought occurred to me that something was off, and I can't pull up an example right now,
If I were to have seen something that struck me as not characteristic or off or bad or something, if something had struck me in that sense, I would have attributed it to new motherhood, the new you know, operations of having a baby, the lack of sleep, the lack of control over your life like you had before you had a baby.
I'm getting to know a new you.
If there was something that seemed off, I probably wouldn't have picked up on it as a cue related to our bond.
I would have thought of it as something related to just the vagaries of being a new mom.
And you wouldn't have asked me about it if you'd thought about it?
No.
Because you're complaining about me not communicating to you, but if you have concerns about me and you don't communicate them to me, isn't that the same thing?
Yes.
And yes, I think you're right.
I don't... If I'm picking up on something and I don't bring it up to you, yes, that's on me.
But if you don't trust me enough to say, hey, I want to talk to you about something... Wait, wait, wait.
You just took ownership for something and then you immediately moved it back to me.
That's pretty characteristic.
I know.
Oh, I get it.
I'm getting a sense of your mom here.
So let's keep going.
So I'd say, listen, you took ownership for something, albeit somewhat theoretical, then you immediately turned it back to me.
Is that reasonable?
I mean, you're the mom here, right?
I mean, if I have a habit, most likely it came from you, right?
Because you're the mom.
I speak English because you spoke English, right?
I live in the country I live in because you had me there, right?
And so if I have a habit of non-communication, if you have that habit, it most likely came from you.
Is that fair to say?
Well, I don't know.
I guess so.
What are you trying to do to me?
What do you need me to say here?
Wait, what are you going rubberbones on me for?
I'm just asking you a logical question.
Well, I feel like you're kind of painting me into a corner.
I don't know what you're trying to get me to say.
I don't even know what that sentence means.
Let's just pretend that that didn't happen because I don't know how to parse that.
If you said that you wouldn't communicate to me if you thought that there was something amiss, right?
And so I'm saying maybe that's part of the problem.
If you have things that you keep hidden and secret within yourself, and I'm not saying it's 100% you.
I'm an adult.
I have my own responsibilities here.
If you keep things and don't communicate them to me, right?
If you have thoughts about, oh, maybe my daughter's upset, right?
And you don't communicate those things to me.
And then you say to me, all wide-eyed and wondrous, well, why wouldn't you communicate things to me?
It's like, well, you're already not communicating things to me, and maybe that's partly why I have trouble communicating with you, because sometimes you don't communicate with me some things that you're thinking that could be important, like maybe my daughter's not happy.
Tracy, I don't know.
I don't, I don't try to overthink things.
You're an adult.
I figure if you've got this, I mean, look at, look at all the things you have.
Wait, no, no, no, no.
That's not what I'm talking about.
And I don't appreciate the insult of overthinking things.
I'm trying to be honest about my thoughts and feelings here.
Now, if you don't want me to be honest about my thoughts and feelings, you can tell me that and we can stop this conversation.
Well, I am talking to you, mother.
Wait.
When I'm talking to you about my thoughts and feelings, I expect you, as my mother, as someone who loves me, to listen.
Now, if you don't want to listen to my thoughts and feelings, you can tell me that right now.
But don't start saying, well, I'm overthinking things.
That's rude.
You understand?
That's disrespectful to what I'm trying to do here.
Okay.
So now I'm rude?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I'm sure you don't want to continue talking to somebody who's rude, so why don't I head There we go.
Right.
And that's what you're afraid of, right?
Yeah.
Right.
So you... Because, I mean, I wasn't yelling at her, but I don't appreciate when I'm trying to talk, like as you, trying to talk about my thoughts and feelings with someone, and they start insulting me by saying I'm overthinking things.
Like, that's just rude, right?
That's a rude response, right?
And it would have happened so much sooner in the conversation, I feel like, with my mom.
So she doesn't want to know what you think and feel?
No, I don't think so.
If it's inconvenient to her, if it upsets her, right?
Well, there you go.
So there's no bond.
And, you know, that's a strong thing to say.
There's not a strong bond in the way that I would understand it.
No, I think you're... I think you're spot on.
Right.
So you're afraid that if you're authentic, you'll lose your mother.
And you're afraid if you're authentic, you'll lose your sister.
And you're afraid if you're authentic, you'll lose your daughter.
But they're lost anyway.
Anyone who can make you falsify your own existence, there's no relationship anyway.
Like you're holding on to something that's not there anyway.
I just think I've done this my whole life, like... Uh, yeah?
I don't want to inconvenience people with my... It's a bit of a, it's a bit of a chick thing.
Sorry, what's that?
It's a bit of a chick thing.
A chick thing?
If you don't mind me saying so.
Wait, to not want to inconvenience people?
Yeah, yeah, come on.
You've heard this a billion times.
Oh, sorry, you know, the woman won't.
Oh, sorry, right?
I mean, it's a bit more of a female thing than a male thing.
I mean, women have different strengths and men have different strengths.
But, you know, just so you understand, right, I mean, it took me a little while to get some of these male-female differences and not think we're just one blob of, you know, like Star Trek, Unileotard sameness.
Desire to please and this desire not to inconvenience is a little bit stronger on the woman's side, right?
And it has its strengths, but it definitely has its challenges, right?
Yeah.
Can I ask you a question, Steph?
When you said you, 16, 17 years ago, decided to just be honest, did you right away start feeling better about yourself and having more self-respect?
It's like saying to the guy, well, you're 400 pounds and that day when you first started feeling dieting, did you run a marathon?
It's like, sure I didn't.
It felt bad.
Yeah.
Yeah, it felt bad.
But you have a reason to do it, right?
See, if it's just you, like if you were just you and not a mom, then I'd say, hey, you know, you got the choice to continue this way of kind of not being.
That's fine.
Because it's just you, right?
Now, your husband may have something to say, but he's there by choice and all that, right?
But the good news is you don't have a choice in this.
You know, this is not a free will situation.
Because you have a daughter who needs you and needs the bond.
Right?
And so you don't have a choice as to whether to continue in this way of compliance, right?
You don't have a choice because it's not about you anymore, it's about your daughter and what she needs, right?
And what your daughter needs is for you to disagree with her, for you both to be in the room, for you to negotiate.
And, you know, I know she's 11 months, and there's people out there who are going to be, Steph, you're insane!
What are you talking about negotiating with an 11-month-old?
It's like, no, she's already negotiating with you, which is where this high-pitched crying comes from, this keening, this, like, nails on a blackboard to get you to do something, right?
And you can't give in, I don't want to say, don't negotiate with terrorists.
You can't give in to that stuff because you're just, you're feeding the beast within her, right?
You just, when you can't negotiate, you just, you just bully people or whatever it is, right?
You just, you can't, you can't, like, if it's just you, that's your choice, but it's your daughter and you're responsible for what's best for her, right?
And that's not compliance girl, right?
Right.
And you hate it anyway.
Which is why you're smashing up the monitor, right?
You don't want to pass through this life like so many people.
You know, there's this old saying.
I didn't really understand it when I was a kid or younger.
Most men live lives of quiet desperation.
You may have heard that phrase.
It's an old British phrase.
Yeah, most men live lives of quiet desperation.
Well, what does that mean?
It means that they Go from birth to grave, only being honest within their own minds, never manifesting honesty in the world.
Because it's scary.
Listen, when I was roleplaying you and it was your mom, I'm like, holy ice queen, Batman, that's terrifying.
Because all she was doing, and by the way, great job, good lord, like your voice changed and everything, I was like, holy crap.
No, because all she was doing was maneuvering.
All she was doing was maneuvering.
We could spend two hours just analyzing that little role play.
And, you know, people will do it in the comments.
But all she was doing was maneuvering, right?
How can I make my daughter wrong and me be in the right?
It was all a strategy.
She didn't have any interest in what you were feeling.
She just couldn't handle anything that could be considered critical of her.
Why?
Because she doesn't have a bond with herself, right?
So when I say you've got to have a bond, the bond is defined by our ability to disagree with each other.
You know, there's a reason I put out videos like why I was wrong about this, why I was wrong about nationalism, why I was wrong about...
Because I'm wrong sometimes, but I have a good relationship with myself, and so I don't have to be perfect.
But your mother, in the role play, she was like full alert at the very beginning, Maneuver, maneuver, maneuver.
You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong.
And then she did this great thing where she said, well, theoretically, if I had noticed something, right?
So then she can pull the theoretical rug and discharge that part of the conversation.
And then, well, yes, I could have maybe, but then you, right?
And that's why I stopped her and said, listen, you just immediately turned it back on me.
This is a woman who can't look inside and say, I could do something better.
I may have done something Not good.
I may have done something that could have been better.
I may have done something wrong.
We all do it, right?
We're all human.
We all make mistakes.
Even the brightest sunny day, the sun has sunspots.
It doesn't mean that it's the same as nighttime, but she's just full alert, immediate, immediate manipulation.
And then when she's proven wrong, she jumps out of the conversation.
So, I don't want to do that to my daughter ever if she comes up with a conversation like this.
Well, I don't want to have any reason to bring up this conversation with you, which is why we're spending this much time on this, right?
Right.
My daughter, and it drives my wife a little crazy sometimes, but we get into mock arguments all the time.
And we're really passionate about it, right?
Like, she's pretty ferocious and she's very good at figuring out where the logical floors are and all of that.
And, you know, I'm trying to explain, it's just our form of play fighting.
You know how, like, the dads wrestle with the kids on the floor and all that?
It's all it is.
It's not serious.
We're not, like, fighting with each other.
We're just wrestling.
Verbally, right?
About something.
And I love that because she knows that she can really strongly disagree with me.
And I love her all the more for it.
Right.
And because of that, things don't go astray.
So, you know, I'll say to her on a, you know, a couple of times a week, you know, How are things going?
Is there anything I can do better?
Is there anything that needs to change?
Is there anything that you would prefer?
Are we not doing something you like to do?
Are we doing too much of stuff you don't want to do?
Now, that doesn't mean she gets to then write the manifesto for the household, but I definitely want to know where she's at so we can negotiate from two real things, right?
Two real people with different needs, which is natural.
Right.
So, when my daughter If I have to go somewhere and she's upset in the car, just as an example, because this is something that's likely to happen, do I just speak to her from the driver's seat and say, I'm sorry, nope, we have to go here?
No, see, that's cold, right?
See, no, that's cold, because it's funny, and this is typical, and I don't mean to say you're a cliché or anything like that, but I remember this from my own beginning to work with assertiveness.
So we're either dismissive of our feelings, or we're dismissive of their feelings, right?
Right?
In other words, you either say, fine, I won't go, right?
And then you're dismissive of your own feelings, or you're like, hey, sorry, we gotta go.
Too bad, right?
And we're dismissive of our child's feelings.
Right.
But there's no reason we have to be dismissive of either person's feelings.
So if it's possible for you to not go, then say, you know what?
Let's goof off this afternoon.
I can do it later, right?
But if you do have to go, or you really want to go, and you don't feel like staying home, then you say, I am so sorry.
This is terrible.
You want to stay home.
I really want to go out.
I'm so sorry.
This is this is going to be really upsetting for you.
And I get it.
I mean I get you.
You really really really want to stay home.
And I really really really want to go out.
Now you could cheat a little and say I have to go out or need to go.
And those times is true.
You got a dentist appointment, doctor's appointment, whatever.
So you can be incredibly sympathetic to her feelings without giving in to them.
And that's all she'll need.
Right, so she's screaming because she feels that her feelings are being dismissed.
Because when you said earlier, it wasn't even a roleplay, you said, like, sorry, we gotta go, right?
Yeah.
Well, there's no reason why you can't be incredibly sympathetic to her feelings and take her anyway.
Oh, man, I know you would see how much would you give to stay home?
It would be the greatest thing ever and I'm so so sorry that we have to go it's Sometimes adult is just you gotta have to you have to do stuff and you know You'll get and she won't know all the words, but she'll get the tone, right?
You really get she's unhappy about going.
I'm so sorry.
That's terrible.
I It's terrible that you have to go to bed.
Oh man, we're having so much fun.
I'm so sorry that you have to go to bed.
It's terrible.
Now let's get up.
You know, like you don't have to dismiss either your feelings or her feelings.
You can be perfectly present in the in the conversation.
Both of your feelings can be perfectly present.
And you can have real sympathy for your daughter not getting her way.
Like, so she's yelling, you know, she's yelling at you.
She's like, I don't know.
Let's just take a silly.
She wants another cookie, right?
Right.
And she's yelling at you.
It's like, I'm so sorry.
Oh, man.
I want to cook you so bad.
Like I'm I'm drooling like a shark throwing up.
Right.
I love cookies so much.
They're so tasty.
And I even like licking the bits out between my teeth, like later.
That's how much I love cookies.
I love the raisin oatmeal.
I love the peanut butter.
I love the chocolate chip.
They're so good.
I would love to have another cookie.
But it's not good for me.
I'm so sorry.
You really, really, really want another cookie.
And I totally understand that.
I do too.
But, you know, you gotta say no to stuff.
I mean, that's just part of being a human.
We all want this stuff.
We gotta say no.
And again, will she get all the words?
No, but she's validated.
You understand her.
You can understand someone's feelings and preferences without budging.
And 99% of the time, that solves the conflict.
Because if your child feels that their emotions are being dismissed, then they feel the bond is threatened.
Because they feel like their Emotions are so inconvenient to you that you just have to shut them down and pretend that they don't exist.
That's not the actions of a strong person, right?
I mean, not that you're not a strong person, but in that moment, in that relational conflict, you can totally, oh man, You really, really want to watch that movie.
I get it, you know?
But I'm sorry it has scary things in it that's only for adults.
Oh man, I remember when I was a kid.
I remember when I was a kid I wanted to go watch a vampire movie and then I did and I was like, well that was a really terrible idea.
But how much I wanted to was crazy, right?
So you can completely sympathize with your daughter's preferences and still say no.
And you'll be amazed at how much that reduces the conflict.
Yeah, I can do more of that. .
More of that?
You mean you still have some times where you're going to dismiss your daughter's feelings?
No, meaning I need to... I need to do that.
Embrace those feelings!
There's nothing wrong with you and her having completely opposite emotions.
You can sympathize with her emotions.
You can sympathize with your own emotions.
I guess I... I just...
I throw away my own emotions when she's emotional.
Yeah, when she's emotional, you're like, fine, right?
You dismiss your own emotions.
And then they show up in some other way, right?
And just as in the role play, your mother dismissed your entire emotional apparatus in what was the most important conversation of your adult life with her.
She just, it was automatic.
She didn't even think about it.
There was no hesitation.
There was no doubt.
It was a glass wall to the sky.
Yeah.
So that's really scary stuff, man.
That is, you better please me or I'm breaking the bond.
Now, that's one thing if you're an adult.
That's painful enough when you're an adult and she might hang up on you.
When you're three or two or four, it's beyond terrifying.
Like, you understand, we are programmed as biological creatures.
We can't displease our parents too much or they're just going to leave us on an ice floe.
Like, in a world where there was never enough food to go around, we displease our parents, we die?
Yeah.
You know, when the bear's charging and you can only save two of the three kids, you don't want to be the least popular kid, right?
Right.
So, as a kid, if your mother threatened a withdrawal of the bond, or the pretend bond, if you didn't please her, You will please her and you will cease to have sensitivity to your own emotions.
You can't process her emotions because her emotions are kind of bullying and tyrannical.
And that's where you end up with your daughter and you want to break that cycle.
I mean that's why you're calling.
You really really want to break that cycle which I can't tell you how much I respect.
That is an incredibly courageous and powerful thing to do.
To fully embrace your daughter And listen, respect your daughter for trying to get her way.
So it's like she's whining and screaming.
It's like, man, you are committed.
You know, like you want that cookie like you'd reach through a wall to get it.
And it's so frustrating that I'm the one who has to get you the cookie.
You can't just fly with a jet pack and go and get the cookie.
Like, how annoying is that?
It's incredibly frustrating for a kid, right?
You want one thing and you've got to get this big, giant Michelin woman to go get it for you and she's just not doing it.
It's really frustrating.
And embrace that in your daughter.
You want to maintain that willpower in her.
You want to maintain that ferocity of drive and desire.
Not to bully people with it, right?
But to enroll people, to get people excited about supporting her or helping her or find other ways to get what she wants other than screaming, right?
But you've got to respect the screaming, man.
That's good for her, man.
She wants that cookie.
She wants to not go to bed.
You don't want to break that will, right?
Embrace it.
It's a beautiful thing.
You know, when she's screaming at you, she's saying, I want, I want, that's the fact, that's why we have houses, why we have the computers, it's why we're able to have this conversation.
It's a beautiful thing in humanity, that ferocious will to achieve, to get, to attain.
You know, treasure that in her.
It's a beautiful, I mean, don't let her bully you with it because you don't want to turn it rancid, but it's a beautiful thing.
It just was very threatening to your mom, but you're not your mom, right?
Right.
I just came to, like, a thought.
In the email I wrote about leaving that party because she was inconsolable, crying.
And I was really, I wrote that I was embarrassed.
Right.
This whole, like, non-reveal of emotions.
I wouldn't have been embarrassed if she had hidden how she felt, but obviously as a baby she's not going to hide how she feels.
So here she was feeling and emoting and I was embarrassed by it.
No, but here's the thing, man.
This is what, if you really want to get the respect for your daughter that I think she deserves, she was crying because you were embarrassed of her.
Because you bonded more with the people and you betrayed your loyalty to her.
Your loyalty is with your child.
If you're embarrassed of your child, that means your loyalty is with these strangers at the expense of your child.
So she read the room perfectly.
well, I guarantee you.
She read that room and she's like, my mom is ashamed of me.
My mom is embarrassed to have me here.
My mom is embarrassed to have me here.
My mom cares more for the feelings of these random strangers than her loyalty to me.
Now again, loyalty to your daughter doesn't mean that everything she does is fine and she can just do it.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Let's say you have a very high strung daughter.
Let's say you have a daughter who takes more time to warm up to people.
So fucking what?
You can't get embarrassed by that.
I mean, you can if you want, but you're just, you're shredding the bond, right?
No, I just thought that staying home and establishing a bond, which I'm learning isn't obviously intact.
It's not as strong as it could be, Ada.
I mean, you obviously care enormously about your daughter and you're having this call, so there's a bond, right?
It could use a bit of sprucing, I think.
But you see, then you have an expectation, right?
So you have an expectation that your daughter is going to be well-behaved in this social situation, right?
Yes, right.
And she wasn't.
And you have choices about that.
So when you have an expectation that isn't met, you can get angry or you can just say, you know what?
In life, sometimes your expectations aren't met, especially by someone who's 10 months old.
It happens.
It happens.
And your loyalty is with your daughter.
Because if she starts to get upset and then she sees you getting even more upset, what's that going to do with her?
Well, over time.
No, no.
Oh.
On the day.
I don't mean permanently due to her, but what I mean is, what association is she going to make?
That I'm ashamed of her or embarrassed by her.
Yeah.
And again, if that happens year after year, she's going to maternalize it.
And then what will happen is she will become a, quote, good baby.
And then you know what you'll be really frustrated at?
She doesn't have a lot of strong willpower.
She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life.
She's a nurse.
She's too compliant.
She lets people push her around.
She follows the crowd.
She bonds with the wrong people.
Right?
then you'll be really frustrated at that.
Especially, I mean, if you're listening to a show like this, you've got to preserve your kids' independence and fight because they're going to need it.
Thank you.
Yeah.
No, I've said, I've said this to my daughter.
I've said, listen, if we're ever, and this has happened a couple of times, I won't get into details, but if we're ever in a public space and there's a conflict involving you, I'm on your side.
You can absolutely try.
I'm on your side.
And I have fought like a hyena for the last bone of the giraffe with people who've got problems with my daughter in public.
I'm on your side.
I said, listen, this doesn't mean I won't.
I may disagree with you about something, but I'm not going to do that.
Like I'm on your side.
Well, if we have a conversation about it, it's going to be later.
But I'm, I'm, I'm in your corner.
I'm on your side.
150%.
I will never choose strangers against you.
I will never choose family against you.
I will never choose anyone against you.
And that's how it's been.
And she doesn't act up.
Maybe she had her in the sub shop tonight.
like, Oh, I'll take a little bit of lettuce, please.
And no cheese, thank you very much.
And if I could get just a little bit of onions and blah, blah, blah.
People are like, she's really, really polite.
It's like, yeah, well, I mean, she's perfectly secure.
Why wouldn't she be pleasant, right?
Once we were at a dinner and some kid was saying something that was just false, right?
Bye.
And now you could say that it was just a flight of fancy, but whatever, right?
And my daughter said, I don't believe you.
And her dad got angry.
She's just trying to be creative, right?
And I said, and this was years ago, and I said, but look, my daughter doesn't believe her.
And I don't believe her either.
I mean, that's fine.
I'm not going to police what she says, but she's saying something that's not true.
And my daughter said that she doesn't believe her.
What's wrong with that?
And the dad got really mad, really angry.
I'm not backing down.
I'm not going to say to my daughter, you should be quiet if you think people are lying because other people might get angry.
Now, was it lying?
Was it flight of fancy?
She didn't say you're lying.
She said, I don't believe you, which is a perfectly true statement.
And we just stood our ground and I stormed off and you know, what are you going to do?
But I'm with her.
The fact that some other dad's getting mad.
What do I, I mean, I'm, that's my daughter.
What do I care about this other dad?
That's my daughter.
It's flesh and blood, man.
She's, she's, she's there forever.
This party you were at with people will come and go.
But your daughter, man, that's it.
That's your loyalty, man.
man, that's where you're at.
And your loyalty to her better self means that you don't let the darker side of all of her nature take control and bully you, right?
Because you love her.
So you won't be bullied by her because you don't want to feed that part of her.
Any more than you'd want to feed her a steady diet of sugar, you don't want to feed her a steady diet of compliance, right?
There was another kid once Who was saying my daughter said oh, yeah, we went to the Angry Birds movie or whatever, right and And this guy, the kid was, Oh, I've seen that.
And it was, you knew it was kind of one-upmanship, right?
And my daughter said, uh, Oh really?
Which was your favorite part?
And the kid said this, this and this.
And my daughter said, those were all the parts that were in the trailer.
Can you think of a part that wasn't in the trailer that you liked?
Any part at all?
Right?
Now, of course, a lot of parents would be like, yeah, that's fair.
She thinks the other kid is making something up.
And she's cross-examining them at the age of seven, which is, you know, that's great, right?
No problem with that.
I'm not going to interfere with that process.
That's fair.
That's right.
I'm not going to punish the kid.
The kid said something that was kind of, you know, wasn't true and claimed to see a movie he hadn't really seen.
It's not some capital crime or anything.
But I'm not going to interfere with my daughter.
If the kid gets mad, Okay.
These are fair questions to ask.
You made a claim.
She's testing your claim.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
Loyalty is with your family.
And if you are intimidated by a 10 month old or 11 month old, You're teaching her that she's big and scary?
That's not going to give her a very good relationship in the long run with herself, right?
No.
Does that-- does this help?
I mean, that's most of what it is that I wanted to say, but because I've been chatterboxing away like a Pac-Man, swallowing syllables, has it been helpful for you?
Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah, it's been very helpful for me.
You're welcome.
Malcolm, is there anything else you wanted to add? - No, I mean. - That's either closure or exhaustion.
I'm not sure which, because, you know, talking to moms, like, you're so tired anyway, just shut up and let me sleep.
No, seriously, but it's been... I remember you saying something about how people say, oh, time goes by so fast.
And it does, but if you're home, the time doesn't really, that doesn't really apply.
No, it doesn't.
So much is like you're there.
You don't see these big, huge leaps in time, like people who, who drop their kids off somewhere or leave them with a nanny.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, it's watching a movie on fast forward.
It's like, wow, that movie went by fast.
It's like, and sometimes parenting seems pretty damn slow.
I tell you.
I feel like it'd be going on forever, and my daughter's only 10.
Right?
It's a long haul, man.
It's a long haul.
It's a marathon, not a sprint, so you better find a great way to enjoy it.
And listen, you can.
You absolutely can.
I have full confidence that you'll find this a lot easier than you think.
I mean, it's going to kick up some emotional stuff, but you've got your husband there who you can talk about this stuff with, and you'll be able to handle this, I'm sure.
And it's going to be a great experience.
I think you'll be amazed at how quickly things change with your daughter because she's early.
It's early days, right?
She's, you know, by the time they're five, it's kind of, you know, the concrete is kind of hardened like some antipen milkshake.
But at this stage, it's so malleable that you can change this course and it'll be great.
Good.
No, I'm, I needed this.
I had no, I have no way of knowing how this conversation was going to go.
Well, what was the most surprising part?
Don't just give me the stuff that was in the trailer either, I'll know.
Well, just the bond goes back a generation.
It's not just the bond with me and her.
Probably a lot.
A lot of generations.
And the, well, I should say lack of bond, even between my sister and my brother and I. The superficial is there for sure, but the The deep stuff.
It's, yeah, it's a little dusty.
All right.
Well, listen, will you keep me posted on how things are going?
I will.
I'll write back.
I really, really, everybody wants to know.
So let me know if I can take your name off and let people know because people always want to know what happens, especially with these involved calls.
But, you know, first, great job.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate the trust that you put in me.
This is a terrible, difficult thing to talk about.
It's not a terrible thing, it's a common thing, but it's a difficult thing to talk about.
And I just, I'm so incredibly honored by the trust and I can't tell you how much I work to deserve that trust on an ongoing basis.
So I really, really appreciate this and thank you so much and I can't wait to hear what comes next.
You've earned it for sure, Steph.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Take care.
Bye. Bye.
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