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July 14, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:35
Unexplainable Child Temper Tantrums - Explained!
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well. Question from Listenerville Time.
This is a question about a psychotic child.
And let's see what the parents have to say.
So, blah, blah, blah. Compliments.
Love your show. Thank you very much.
Our daughter, very intelligent, likes to read.
She's three and a half years old.
We've raised her with nothing but love and care.
She's the greatest thing in our lives.
We'd never feed her processed crap.
She doesn't eat sugar or excessive carbohydrates.
Always had a diet of simple meats, vegetables, and fruits from her earliest age.
I would hope that she threw some boob juice in there at the beginning, but that's just what the science says.
We've always tried to have a relatively structured life for her.
Awake, have breakfast, lunch, nap.
Then dinner and bed at the same time every day.
She sleeps well at night, gets plenty of overnight rest.
We do not hit and have never spanked her or been violent in our actions with her.
In fact, the only discipline we've ever used with her was some light timeouts, and when they were over, we hugged and kissed her and always addressed her actions, never her personally.
Timeouts are still aggressive.
I mean, you have to basically make the child stay in a particular spot.
And if the child gets up, you pick the child up using your size and strength.
You manhandle the child back into the spot.
It is a form of invisible imprisonment.
It is aggressive.
It's not abusive, but it is aggressive.
It's not in full conformity with at least what I would call peaceful parenting, which is never using your size or your strength or anything like that or your experience or your maturity or your wisdom or your age.
You never use any of that when it comes to interacting with your child.
You can't say, do it because I know better.
You have to make the case patiently and slowly and so on with bribes, which we'll get to in a second.
She's starting having these episodes, though, say these parents, when it comes to naps.
Her teachers say she naps at school no problem.
At home, she fights naps to the point where she's acting psychotic.
She laughs uncontrollably and jumps on her bed, chairs, everything.
She literally gets crazy when my wife and I try to sit down with her and be gentle and give her some nice, as she calls it, gentle tickles on her arms and back.
She will lay there for a few minutes, but is then laughing crazily again and kicking, yelling, throwing her blankets off the bed, and we just don't know what to do anymore.
We've tried letting her do what she wants and not take a nap, but then she's crazed with exhaustion by the time dinner arrives.
And it's even worse than at nap time.
We've tried being super nice and accommodating.
We've tried being mean and giving her time outs.
We've threatened to lock her door and actually have a couple of times.
See, again, that's not really in the peaceful parenting book of tools or tool bag to lock your child in her room.
Nothing works though and my wife and I are starting to feel psychotic ourselves.
We feel as if we're both going crazy and don't know how to handle ourselves because of this.
We both work from home or with her all day.
She only goes to school two days a week right now and we can't afford to put her in for five days yet.
I'm not sure that would be the solution.
I guess we're just not figuring out what we're doing wrong or what we should be doing that we're not and we're about at the end of our rope with this.
I know it's also her age and trying to figure out boundaries and such but I don't know how much longer we can take this.
It's not her age. My daughter is over five and has never had or done anything like this.
And I know that that's an annoying thing to hear, and I don't mean to be all holier than thou, but I'm just pointing out that it's not her age, you know?
You say, oh, she goes into puberty, she's 13 or 12 or whatever, that's her age.
Yeah, okay, agreed. But this kind of behavior is not age-based.
Because if it was age-based, it would be happening at school, right?
So you have an environment where it's not happening, which is school, and it has an environment where it is happening, which is at home.
So... I mean, acting out technically is when you don't have or use the words for how you feel, then you will act it out.
So if you can't say, I'm angry and the tension grows, bang!
You end up punching or hitting someone or throwing something or whatever.
This is the act of somebody who is crazed with desperation, with something that is out of control within her emotionally, which I would argue she can't express because she doesn't have the vocabulary or maybe those habits aren't in place in the family.
But... This is an act of desperation.
So what is she desperate about? The short answer is, I don't know, but here's some places to look that I think are important.
Two principles that you need to really, really understand when you're a parent.
Number one, you are very careful about environmental toxins.
Good for you! Environmental toxins are important to control.
Do you know the most dangerous environmental toxin that a child can be exposed to is a dysfunctional personality.
A dysfunctional personality, a dysfunctional way of interacting.
We imprint based upon the personalities of those around us, which is why both abuse and high functioning tends to replicate over generations.
So when you have a person around your child, Whatever that person's personality is will imprint itself on your child.
It cannot be controlled. It cannot be undermined.
It will imprint.
I've seen this with my daughter.
When she's around someone, it can be even for 10 minutes she begins to imprint upon that person and she begins to experiment with that person's way of being and way of interacting.
So that's number one. Number two, Whatever you expose your child to, your child will assume that you know of and approve of.
Let me say that again. Whatever you expose your child to, your child will assume that you both know of and approve of.
So, next question is, what kind of school is she in?
She's in school for two days a week.
Why is she in school for two days a week?
She's only three and a half.
And you both work from home.
So, why is she in school?
When she's in school, what kind of classroom is she in?
What kind of other children are in there?
You know, you're not spanking, but you know, 80 to 90%, if you're in the States, or England, or a lot of other countries, 80 to 90% of those other children have been spanked.
And, you know, 60% of those, 70% of those children will have been spanked as babies and toddlers.
Zero to two years old.
How are those children interacting with your daughter?
Under what conditions are conflicts resolved?
What is the wisdom of the teachers?
How are the children negotiating conflicts?
Of course they're three and a half. So they fundamentally cannot negotiate conflicts.
They can grab, they can push, they can pout, they can act out, they can have tantrums.
Do you know if any other child in her environment is having any kind of tantrum whatsoever?
Or has she ever been exposed to a child who is having a tantrum in any way, shape or form?
Particularly, of course, if it ends up being repetitive.
If that is the case, that is almost certainly where your daughter is getting the tantrum behavior from.
She's being exposed to it.
She's going to assume if she's exposed to a child having tantrums, particularly, of course, repeated tantrums, she's going to assume that you know of the tantrum behavior and you approve of the tantrum behavior.
Because if she, as a child, imagines for a moment that you don't even know the behaviors and people that she's being exposed to, that's terrifying for her.
And so she has to assume that you know.
Now, if she were to imagine that you know she's being exposed to dysfunctional behaviors and you approve Of her exposure to dysfunctional behaviors.
In other words, yes, these children could be mean, they could be acting out, they could be dissociated, they could be aggressive, they could be punitively ostracizing or withdrawly, they could be who knows what, right?
Then if she were to believe that you are knowingly exposing her repeatedly, right, eight days a month, to behavior that you consider dysfunctional and destructive, that would be even more terrifying to her.
She's going to assume that the food you feed her is healthy, and if she eats something unhealthy, she's going to assume that you wanted to feed it to her, because if you didn't even know enough to care or check or find out, that's even more terrifying for her.
So the place to do is to go to the teacher of the school, to go to her teacher, and sit down and say, this is the behavior she's having at home.
Has she been exposed to any form of tantrums here in any way, shape, or form?
And if this means putting a little recording device on your daughter when she goes to daycare or she goes to school, so be it.
Do that. You need to find out where this behavior is coming from.
I'm going to assume that you and your wife don't raise your voices at each other or to other people and she's not exposed to any kind of immaturity or tantrum behavior from you because that would be too obvious and you would never write in to us be my opinion on that.
So I'm just going to assume that. Are there any children that she plays with who express dysfunctional behavior?
I don't let my daughter play with children who have been spanked.
Of course not, because spanking produces dysfunctional behavior in children, which is a great tragedy.
And I will certainly talk to the parents where possible about spanking, but I will not allow my child to play with or to interact with dysfunctional families, dysfunctional children.
I don't have that right.
I don't have the right to expose her to environmental toxins and dysfunctional personalities are the greatest environmental toxins that a child can be exposed to outside of TNT, I guess I would assume.
So I think that's really important to understand.
What does she want to tell you that she's not able to tell you?
Have you asked her about her school experience?
Does she like going to school?
Does she have friends? Have you sat in for an entire school day and seen how the other children interact?
Have you talked to her teacher about where this behavior may be coming from?
Is she being exposed to any media or any games or anything where this kind of behavior may be imprinting upon her?
This is really, really important to understand because you don't have a lot of time before this behavior is going to start to wear grooves in her brain and in your response.
And, I mean, I was at a play center with Isabella the other day, and we met another parent who happened to have come from downtown Toronto.
And that other parent was saying that they're having a heck of a time because...
All of the children in her neighborhood have to be bussed an hour to another school in another section of town, actually a pretty rough section of town, because there just aren't enough places.
The government hasn't built enough places for the children who are downtown.
A lot of condos going up and so on, right?
And so she was going to put her kids in one of these buses and send them to one of these schools.
I said, are you crazy?
I mean, seriously? And first of all, you're going to have to get up an hour earlier and you get your kids back in hours.
There's two hours a day less that you pretty much get to spend time with your kids.
So that's no good. Secondly, they're stuck on a bus.
Bored out of their gourds with who knows what in the other kids around them.
You've got to evaluate the children around your child.
And the moment you release your child into the wilds of school or even daycare, public or private, you are now out of control of who is imprinting your child.
Would you let strangers feed her stuff that they found in their pockets?
Of course not! Yet, she may be having emotional dysfunction disgorged on her like vomit every day in these schools.
The vast likelihood is that that is what is happening because we know these statistics of hitting children, of not negotiating with children, of timeouts.
Almost all children experience timeouts or hitting or being muscled into rooms and having doors locked or being yelled at.
So, in terms of environmental toxins, yeah, I would look to the children she's exposed to.
And if you don't know with intimate detail, the other children...
In her class, then you are now out of control of who's imprinting her.
Have you had all the children over to your house with the parents or even without the parents?
Invite them all over to find out how the children are.
How are they behaving? What are they like?
How do they negotiate? How do they deal with conflicts?
Do they push? Do they shove?
Do they scream? Do they yell? Do they tug?
Do they share?
I mean, what kind of behaviors is your daughter being exposed to?
Because they're going to imprint.
They're going to imprint. And for the sake of saving one of you two days a week, I don't think it's a good bargain, my friends.
I don't think it's a good bargain.
Have your child... I mean, first I would do it.
If I were in your situation, pull her right out of daycare, bring her home.
Pull her right out of school, bring her home.
It's only two days a week. And you say, well, I don't have time.
Well, that's not true. Do you have time for all these fights?
Do you have time for all these fights going on into her teenage years?
Of course you don't. You know, parenting is like, pay me now or pay me later.
And the interest that goes on, pay me later, is staggering!
It's huge! It's unpayable!
So, again, if I were in your shoes, I would pull her out of school.
The woman I was talking to, bust out, you know, there's five and six-year-old children, and there's a teacher to student ratio of one teacher to 30 or 40 children.
That's what she was saying. Is it true?
I don't know. This is what she was saying, and she's pretty invested in it because she's got kids downtown.
Now, you know. You know for sure.
Well, virtual certainty.
You've got 40 kids. At least a few of them have been sexually abused.
Even at the age of five or six.
At least a few of them have been sexually abused.
Right? I mean, it's one in three...
Girls and one in five boys by the time they reach 18.
So when you get a pool of 40 kids or 30 kids, a couple of them have been sexually abused.
A couple of them are being beaten.
Most of them are being spanked.
And there's almost no time for adult to child interaction in that environment.
Because you've got one teacher and 30 or 40 kids.
Even if it's one teacher and 20 kids.
That's functionally impossible.
Children to develop, and historically there was a ratio of about four adults for every one child.
Children to develop need guidance from above.
They need guidance from adults.
They need to see adults modeling the behavior that you want in the children.
You know, my wife and I disagree and we work things out.
My daughter sees that. When I disagree with my daughter, we use the same template.
We work things out. Children need adult To child interaction to grow up healthy.
There's all this bullshit that you hear about socialization with peers.
First of all, three and a half year olds can't socialize horizontally, fundamentally.
They can barely even play together.
They can do a little parallel play, but they cannot negotiate.
They don't have the language. They don't have the intellectual sophistication.
They can't look for win-win and they can't defer much gratification.
And so when you are casting your child into school at three and a half, She is going to be imprinted with and bonding with her peers, not adults, not wise people who can model better behavior for her.
I mean, you wouldn't throw 33-year-olds or 4-year-olds together in a room with a couple of books and say, teach each other learning, teach each other how to read, teach each other math, teach each other geography.
You know that wouldn't work.
And what's more complicated?
Learning how to negotiate, learning how to express yourself, learning win-win, learning how to defer gratification, learning how to think of the happiness of others and not just yourself.
This is much more complicated than cat and two and two make four.
And we don't let our children teach each other reading or math or geography or science or any of those things because we know it would never happen.
So how could we possibly imagine That mostly traumatized children in a peer age group can ever teach our child anything positive.
The odds of that are staggeringly tiny.
Staggeringly tiny. I mean, you put a seatbelt on your child in the car, what are the odds of you having a car accident is going to harm your child if it doesn't have it?
It's tiny! The odds of destructive imprinting from peer relationships in a school is a virtual certainty.
It's a virtual certainty.
You are now out of control of who's imprinting your child, and your child is going to bond with her peer group, not with adults.
Again, you're home with her for five days a week.
Sorry, she's in school for two.
So, I'm not saying that you're not doing a great job for the most part.
I really want to be clear on that.
The fact that you're doing a great job and then the child is bonding in this Lord of the Flies, piggy off a cliff, state of nature crap that goes on in schools.
Listen, I worked in a daycare for years and we had 25 kids, 5 to 10.
Now, there were two of us, but even still, what generally happened was I would sit down with the kids and I would tell them stories.
That's how it would work for me.
And the kids would all sit and I would instruct them and tell them about why the stories were good.
I did the whole Silmarillion, God help them.
But when they all started interacting with each other, there was frustration, there was conflict, there was, I mean, imagine.
Imagine you and somebody else dropped into Japan trying to learn Japanese with no guide, no textbooks, just based on what you heard and what people were pointing at.
You would go insane with frustration.
But that's children at that age attempting to learn any kind of social interaction through peers.
Now, it doesn't mean don't expose them to peers, of course, but you've got to be there and you've got to help them negotiate the conflicts and you've got to help them look for win-win solutions and you've got to help them develop empathy.
Tossing them into a school is going to have them bond with the lowest common denominator, right?
So when you get a bunch of kids together, the lowest common denominator of maturity and aggression and so on will prevail.
It's the least mature, least peaceful, most aggressive kid who ends up holding sway.
In the same way, if you and 12 other people are dropped into a lion cage, it's kind of the lion who's going to determine how things go, and it's kind of the lion everyone's going to focus on.
We focus on the dangerous.
I guarantee you that in your kid's school, there is a couple of dangerous kids.
Not their fault. I have great sympathy, but the reality is I don't care if it's somebody's fault or not.
I don't care if it's not somebody's fault that they have a cold.
I still don't want them sneezing on me.
So when you put your children into another environment where you have not done significant research and you have not interviewed the kids, interviewed the teacher, sat in for a full day, at least one, then you're out of control and then what you deal is with the effects without knowing the cause.
It's very hard, very hard to deal with the effects without knowing the cause.
So I would talk to the teacher, I would talk to the daughter and try and find out if she's been exposed to tantrums of any kind.
I can almost guarantee you at that school there are some kids who are acting out.
And you then have the reality that knowing that your child is being exposed to destructive personality traits If you decide to continue to expose her to that, you will pay a price that in the future will absolutely not feel worth it.
Because you will deal with the consequences of your child knowing that you exposed her to destructive acting out behavior, did not take her out, did not protect her from that.
That is, I believe, it's all just my opinion, I'm no expert, I believe that is a bond-cracking interaction, like a bond with you, a trust with you as the parent.
She trusts you to keep herself.
She trusts you to expose her to the very best elements in the world, to the very best things in food, in entertainment, in games, and in companions.
Everybody she interacts with should be of the highest quality.
Adults, children, everything.
The food that you give her should be of the highest quality and the most nutritious.
Now, When it comes to, you know, there's this thing that's, it's bad to bribe kids.
I don't believe that at all. I don't believe, I mean, bribery is the foundation of the world.
I mean, how many people go to their work because they love it?
Like me, Brad Pitt, a couple of supermodels, I don't know, right?
How many people go to their work because they love it or they go to the work because they need the money, they want the money?
Right? Bribery is the foundation of the economy.
And how many people drive cabs because they just love to drive cabs, get snarled at, be badly tipped, and smell of castor oil, right?
So bribery to me is fine.
Bribery is just a way of saying to your child, you can't understand the long-term consequences.
You can't understand the long-term benefits.
You can't defer gratification, so I'm going to give you something more immediate.
Right? A guy called into my show the other day saying, oh, my daughter fights me every time.
I want to brush her teeth, so bribe her.
Then you'll get to peacefully brush your teeth, give her the reward, whatever it's going to be.
It doesn't have to be sugar, whatever it's going to be.
And then you keep explaining why she needs to brush her teeth.
And then over time, she will adjust to brushing her teeth because she understands why.
And she won't want the rewards anymore because the reward is going to be like not having a cavity and all that kind of stuff.
My daughter was being toilet trained.
We bribed her, gave her a Skittle.
When she did it, now she goes, doesn't need a Skittle.
Children can't see over the horizon of the now, so you give them something in the now that makes it worth their while, and then once they understand over the horizon, you don't need that bribe.
Bribe away. Do not feel guilty.
You don't want to bribe them to make you like them, to make them like you.
You don't want to bribe them to make them your friend or to buy their love.
I understand all of that, but it's not what we're talking about here.
I mean, we all do that with ourselves.
I mean, how many times you say, well, I'll do this difficult thing, and then, you know, I'll have half a cupcake, you know, reward myself.
I have a day at the spa to reward myself.
Yeah, we bribe all the time, there's nothing wrong with it at all, as long as it's not used to manipulate fundamental emotional states.
So, really think about the horizontal exposure to potential Personality environmental toxins that your daughter is being exposed to.
If I were in your shoes, I would cut whatever was necessary to cut in my expenditures, bring my child home, maintain control over her exposure.
When she gets older, she can be exposed to toxins in personalities.
When her brain is fully formed, right, she's still a long way away from, I think, 80 to 90 percent by the age of five, her brain is formed.
So you've still got a year and a half, significant development.
Keep her away from toxins.
By the time She's been exposed to five years of consistently virtuous, peaceful behavior.
I think she's going to develop more resistance, or at least she'll have the words to say, I saw this thing that was really alarming at school, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But I think that is where I would go.
That is the most important thing.
You may not think you have time for it now.
But I can guarantee you, you don't think you have time for it now.
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