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Sept. 26, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:28:34

NEGOTIATE WITH A TWO YEAR OLD? ARE YOU INSANE?

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	Good evening, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid.
	Hope you're doing well. By gosh, it really was.
	It really was. This week, it's just kind of a birthday week for me, a birthday month, and birthday quarter?
	Season. Season of birthday-ness.
	And I just put out a little video, and thanks everyone who responded so positively and friendly in such a friendly manner towards it.
	But yeah, 15 years, man.
	Holy crap. Free Domain Radio.
	Next year, it can drive. And in a couple of years it can vote.
	In Democrat states it could have voted some time back ago.
	But yeah, it really is kind of a time flash and I really do appreciate everyone's...
	Support in making these 15 years possible.
	So thank you everyone so much.
	For all of that, that having been said, let's get to the brains of the outfit.
	You, the glorious listeners of Free Domain, those who prop up philosophy.
	We have a caller tonight.
	James, do you want to introduce the topic as a whole?
	So the caller writes, our daughter is frequently wanting to be held and picked up.
	She just turned two.
	It's hurting my wife's back and she is perfectly capable of walking.
	I'm assuming that means his daughter.
	There are times when she refuses to sit at the small table we have for her to eat her meals.
	She ends up red-faced wailing and screaming to be held.
	We want to strike the right balance between being compassionate and letting her deal with her discomfort of not being held and carried.
	What should we expect with a two-year-old?
	Should we be carrying her much of the time?
	When she starts screaming and wailing, do we just tell her she's feeling frustrated and angry, that is to label her emotions?
	Any other ways to think of this?
	That's a great question and I certainly empathize.
	I really do.
	I have a cuddle bot as a kid and so I really sympathize.
	Do you want to tell me a little bit more about the backdrop before I start treating your toddler like a horse?
	Amy would treat a horse on Heartland.
	Do you want to give me a bit of backstory here?
	Yeah, sure. So she just turned two.
	My wife is a stay-at-home mom.
	And obviously, because of all the things that have gone on with the whole COVID lockdown, we haven't had a chance to...
	She used to go to, like, little playgroups and socialize a lot more.
	But we had kind of a rough spring with the weather being lousy, so she couldn't go out too much.
	And then she would just...
	Even in other settings, she tends to cling to her mom quite a bit.
	And sometimes, not all the time, but a lot of times when we go to, you know, put her down, she'll want to be held.
	And then she'll keep saying, up, up, up.
	Or if we have to walk somewhere, sometimes she'll want to be carried.
	And I guess it kind of goes to the bigger question about...
	How do you know if you're spoiling a two-year-old or how do you encourage them to be self-sufficient?
	What's a way of thinking about it where you want to be respectful but at the same time you don't want to stress them out too much or make them miserable?
	Right, right. And how's the relationship between everyone in the family?
	Great. Yeah, I love my wife.
	She's my best friend. And, you know, our daughter is great.
	She's a little challenging at times.
	But, yeah, I mean, we both love her and we both, you know, it's tough for my wife because there's no nanny.
	I work full-time from home because of all the COVID stuff.
	So my wife is really with my daughter, you know, pretty much.
	I give a good, you know, maybe 80-minute, 90-minute break.
	But beyond that, She's pretty much with her the full time.
	And she, you know, she'll take a nap, but a lot of times she'll just be awake, mumbling in her crib during her nap.
	So my wife is, you know, around her quite frequently, like pretty much the whole day.
	And were there any unusual circumstances around pregnancy, birth, shortly after birth?
	You know, the night that...
	So she was born in the afternoon.
	Maybe around 5 in the afternoon.
	That first night was definitely rough because there was some issues with feeding and nursing.
	There wasn't an immediate flow of milk.
	So that first night, I think, was a little rough.
	But since then, no, I'd say fairly normal.
	Fairly normal, all things considered.
	And was she breastfeeding alright after the first night?
	Yeah, so she was breastfed for the first year.
	Okay, and what was her socializing like?
	I know it's a tough word to use with babies, but what was her socializing like for the first year, 15 months?
	Yeah, so I would say if she was born in 2018...
	Yeah, I'd say the first probably, you know, 24 months were pretty normal.
	I mean, there would be sometimes people who would stop by and there would be times when, you know, she would go out with my wife to, you know, the grocery store or other places.
	It wasn't like there was a huge family.
	You know, she's our only daughter.
	It's not like we always have massive amounts of relatives dropping by.
	They do stop by from time to time, but there's not an abundance of, I would say, people coming to visit the house, especially because we live in the Northeast where the weather is pretty lousy from November to April.
	That doesn't always help.
	- Right, right.
	Now, what's her language like?
	- Her language?
	- Yeah, her language.
	- Yeah, it's tough because we, so she speaks, you know, some words here and there.
	She knows the basics.
	She knows how to ask for more food.
	She knows how to say when she wants to be carried.
	She knows how to say up.
	She recognizes things.
	If we point to things, she'll say them.
	So I would say it's average above average.
	Is she piecing together any words, like a couple of words?
	Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
	So, I mean, she's probably a little bit young to sort of ask, you know, why do you want to be held or why do you want to be carried?
	Yeah, I think so.
	Because when we ask her questions, yeah, she's, I think that kind of...
	Maybe overwhelms her. She doesn't know how to respond just yet.
	Yeah, you know, introspection is something that...
	I mean, my daughter is getting the hang of it now at about the age of 11.
	Like, why do you feel that way?
	What thought happened before this thought?
	You know, that kind of stuff, right? So, I mean, too, that's pretty optimistic and probably not going to happen.
	Was she this way from the very beginning?
	Yeah, I'd say she's been maybe, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, she's probably...
	Ten being super easy, one being impossible.
	She's probably about a four.
	So I'd say just a little bit harder than average in terms of maybe some temperament stuff.
	Okay, so what is it that...
	So it's interesting, easy and hard.
	It's a very interesting way to look at A child's personality.
	Not good or not bad.
	It's a very interesting way to look at it.
	So tell me what the spectrum is and why you play through the way you play through it.
	Sure. So I would say a 1 would be very disagreeable, always crying, always complaining.
	A 10 would be perfectly compliant or perfectly happy-go-lucky.
	And then a 5 would be Maybe a baby that has bad moods sometimes, but about what you would expect from a baby if they don't have necessarily the, you know, the coping skills where they don't know how to maybe ask for what they want or they don't know how to express what they want.
	And I would say in terms of difficulty, obviously a 1 would be more difficult than a 10.
	And so I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, it's probably about a 4.
	Does that help?
	Yeah. Well, it does help in a way, but it opens up a whole other can of worms, which may or may not be valid.
	I'll sort of just tell you what I think.
	So how long have you been listening to this show for?
	Oh boy, like five years plus, probably more.
	It's actually, I've listened to you probably since, yeah, probably like about eight years.
	Wow. I actually remember reading your articles on lewrockwell.com.
	Huh. And then and then and then literally years went by and then um I don't know how I came across your podcast I'm like Stefan Molyneux I remember him he wrote those articles and I even remember that little photo at the bottom of the article you had a nice suit on and I'm like wow this guy sounds so slick you know the name is the name itself is cool right I mean it's like you know French name and I remember you know you're in Canada and I'm like oh this guy really has it together it said you know software entrepreneur it had that little bio At the bottom of the Rockwell article.
	So yeah, I mean, I've been a fan for a while.
	Sorry to geek out there, but...
	No, it's great. I appreciate that. Thank you.
	So, quick question.
	Would you say that listening to philosophy show or a philosophy show like this has made you more compliant with society or less compliant with society?
	Well, I wouldn't...
	So, compliant with society, meaning when I hear that, I think of...
	Do I follow the rules?
	Do I drive the speed limit?
	Do I break the laws? I would say it hasn't changed the way I comply in terms of obeying rules.
	I would say, am I more skeptical of the narratives that are out there?
	Or if there's a new story, am I more skeptical?
	Yeah, I'm definitely more skeptical.
	And I'm definitely more willing to look at alternative viewpoints.
	Would you say that listening to this show has made you more pleasant to those in authority or less pleasant as a whole?
	Less pleasant to those in authority?
	Yeah, I don't know. Tough question.
	I generally... The way my life is, I don't really bump up against authority figures too much.
	I mean, other than at work.
	And I would say that... Okay, let me...
	I get it. It's a tough question.
	Let me rephrase. Sure, sure.
	Would you say that listening to this show...
	Has made you, well, you've already said, right?
	More skeptical of authority and propaganda and so on, right?
	So you've become less easygoing with regards to society as a whole, right?
	I'm not saying that you're out there like throwing Molotov cocktails or anything like that.
	I'm not talking about your actions, but rather your thoughts.
	Yeah, okay. Yeah, I would say that's true.
	Because it seemed to me like you had a, like on the 1 to 10 scale, 1 being a super difficult child and 10 being a super compliant child, that it was like, oh, it'd be great if my child was closer to 10, but you're not.
	And you don't, like, this show is not really aimed at having you become a 10 with regards to society, right?
	Right, yeah.
	So you're drawn to some, and I, you know, I don't, I mean, I'm not sure I'm a 1, When it comes to society as a whole, but it sure sounds like a 10, right?
	Well, I mean, I would say you pay all your taxes, you're very respectful of your neighbors.
	You wouldn't come across as someone who's...
	I mean, in certain ways, you're anti-authority, but in other ways, you're a perfectly considerate, kind person, right?
	You know, if I was sitting next to you on an airplane, it wouldn't be like, oh, this guy's a jerk.
	He's always looking to just pick fights.
	It's not confrontational.
	That's the impression that I get.
	I mean, I can be confrontational, but usually only in a sort of debate setting or something that's more formal.
	But yeah, no, I'm a great person to sit next to in the airplane for sure.
	I'd wear my mask. But my sort of point is that when it comes to philosophy, to the things that you're into, me and I'm sure there's lots of other people that you listen to, you whore.
	But no, I'm sure there's lots of people that you listen to, and I'm sure that a lot of them are pretty skeptical of authority.
	Now, when it comes to your family, of course, you don't charge your child taxes, and it's not like they...
	You throw them in jail if they don't obey your rules or anything like that.
	So yeah, I obey the rules in society because the consequences of not obeying those rules tends to be, well, pretty bad, right?
	And so you don't have that particular situation.
	I assume that you're not a spanker or anything like that, right?
	So you don't have that particular enforcement situation with your daughter.
	So I'm just wondering how your skepticism of authority is translating to your daughter, in that you seem to have compliance as a value, but you yourself, intellectually at least, are not super compliant with society.
	Yeah. So that was kind of a lot.
	So what's the direct kind of question?
	How do I think about my relationship?
	Why do you have a value that your daughter should be compliant when you're not?
	Well, I would say that in terms of the way I interact with my wife and my daughter, I will try and be compliant.
	And maybe not compliant, but I will try and be accommodating as possible.
	I'm just going by the word.
	You can change the 1 to 10 scale to be accommodating, but the word you used, and I'm not trying to catch you out, I'm just telling you the word that you used was compliant.
	When somebody says to me, I really value compliance in my children, and they're listening to my show, I know that there's a value contradiction there.
	That's basically what I'm getting at.
	Okay. Okay.
	Yeah, so I would say that...
	I would say it certainly makes life easier if they are compliant.
	And it certainly makes the job of a parent more...
	But you pursue a more difficult life by listening to philosophy.
	Right. Absolutely.
	Yeah. So, help me unravel this mystery.
	Well, I think I enjoy the stimulation that comes from being skeptical, from being non-compliant, from questioning things That, you know, other people might not want you to think about or hear.
	But as far as dealing with a screaming child, there's no, I don't consider that as fun or enjoyable.
	And it stings when you can't really comfort your child.
	And they, you know, they want If they want something, like they want to be held all the time and you don't know, okay, how long am I going to keep holding them?
	I mean, do I just do whatever they say as long as they say?
	That's why being skeptical in an intellectual sense is much easier than dealing with a toddler where you don't really know where the boundaries are.
	Right, right. Perfectly reasonable question.
	Under what circumstances does she scream?
	Is it when she doesn't get to be held?
	Yeah, I mean, she'll have other, you know, tantrums from time to time as well.
	And what is it that brings the tantrums on?
	It can depend.
	I mean, I would say probably the...
	I'd say being held is probably the biggest cause of frustration.
	Maybe the second biggest would be food, like sometimes if she wants to be fed something and...
	She wants more of it, and she doesn't get more.
	That could cause her to have, you know, a breakdown.
	Okay, so let's do a role play.
	I'll be the two-year-old. Okay.
	Obviously, I don't know your daughter in specifics, but I'll get there, right?
	And so, what's a food that she really likes that you can't feed her too much of?
	I mean, is your candy, chocolate, stuff like that, right?
	Yeah. Mm-hmm.
	Okay, so what was the last food that she freaked out over?
	It's not necessarily like a specific food.
	Sometimes if we offer her food that she's had before, she'll just kind of immediately go from to say no, no, and then she'll swat away the food, which is dangerous because she'll whip her whole arm instead of maybe just saying, you know, no.
	She'll get upset the first time the food is offered.
	Okay, but that's a different scenario than she wants more.
	Is that right? Obviously, yes, right?
	So there's this time when she wants more and you say no because it's too much sugar or something like that?
	Yeah. Okay, so I'll obviously be a bit more verbally sophisticated than your child, although I'll try not to get into too many polysyllables.
	But so if I say, Dad, you want more?
	More? What would you say?
	Well, we would just say, no, that's it, we're putting it away now.
	Or what we'll do is we'll say last one, and then we'll give her one final, you know, bite of something, and then we'll put it away.
	No! More! I want more, Dad!
	More! So then I would...
	Just roleplay it.
	Don't describe it. Just roleplay like I'm her.
	I would pick her up and try and soothe her.
	I don't know how to say it any other way.
	I wouldn't... I would try and...
	Pick her up and soothe her.
	Or I would try and reason with her.
	I would try and say, okay, we'll have more later.
	Maybe a different time, but it's done for now.
	Something like that. Yeah.
	All of those annoy me as your daughter, which is probably, I'm just telling you, all of those annoy me because there's kind of a crucial ingredient that's missing.
	Why can't she have more?
	Because we don't want her to have too much of something.
	So then the reason why she can't have more is just you're withholding things from her for reasons that she doesn't understand?
	Yeah. Okay, so why can't she have more?
	Well, because we don't want to give her too much of certain foods.
	We want to kind of give her like a spectrum of different foods.
	We don't want her to just have as much of one thing as she wants.
	No, but what is the food that you're denying to her?
	Is it dessert?
	No, to be honest, the food denying thing, it doesn't happen all that often, but I would say when it's happened in the past, sometimes we give her heavy whipping cream because she really likes the taste of that and she'll demand more.
	And we don't want to give her too much of that.
	It's probably not good to drink.
	Is that the stuff in the can?
	No, no. No.
	It's the kind you pour in coffee.
	Oh, is it like the 35% stuff or the 10% stuff?
	Yeah, it's like the really fatty stuff.
	Yeah, okay. It's like really rich.
	Yeah. All right. So why can't she have more?
	Well, she can, and she does, but, you know, there's a certain point where it's...
	Oh, my God, man! Please, just answer the question.
	Why can't she have more?
	You keep changing things.
	We're going to go round and round in circles here.
	Why can't she have more?
	Look, I'm sure there's good reasons why she can't have more, but what's the reason that you have?
	Well, we just don't want to give her an endless amount, so we have to cut it off.
	You're not going to give her an endless amount, right?
	At some point, she's going to throw up, right?
	Or get sick, or get sick of it, right?
	So why can't she have more?
	Because we don't want her to fill up on that.
	We'd rather have her have other things as well.
	It seems like if she's had, you know, three large, I mean, several gulps of it, it's like I wouldn't drink that amount myself, just straight cream.
	So I think it's good to dial it back.
	So everything that you're telling me, though, is just willpower.
	It's just you have a will that she not have more, but you haven't given any reasons other than this vague it's too much.
	Yeah. So when you deny something to a child, you know, like let's say that you had half a bowl of popcorn while watching a movie and you said to your wife, hey man, can you just get me a little more popcorn?
	And she would just say, no, you can't have any more.
	You'd be like, what now?
	Right. Why?
	It's too much. Why?
	Well, I wouldn't eat that much.
	Why? Well, I just think you should mix it up a little.
	Why? Just want a little more popcorn, for heaven's sakes, right?
	Right. So she, your daughter, views you denying her something as an act of aggression.
	Because she doesn't know why.
	Okay. Now, when it comes to breastfeeding, you feed till the child is full, right?
	Yeah. So you don't sit there and say, well, you got to mix it up a little, right?
	Because, you know, there's like one meal, right?
	The breast milk. Right, yeah.
	Right? You don't wake her up early, right?
	Wake her up early? No.
	Right. We pick her up when she's...
	She sleeps until she wakes up, right?
	Right. So she gets enough.
	So her experience has been, she gets, and you've got to remember, the experiences start being formed in the womb.
	Now, in the womb, there's not a little dad on the conveyor belt of the umbilical cord saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's enough of that.
	I'm going to pinch this off so that you don't get too used to this because, you know, you're going to have to have solid food.
	The food just flows in, right?
	Yeah, right, yeah. And the baby sleeps, the baby wakes up, the fetus, right?
	And after the baby is born, right?
	The baby just eats as much as the baby wants, the baby sleeps as long as the baby wants to.
	In fact, usually the parents want it to sleep longer and so on, right?
	So, the experience of your daughter has been, there's no such thing as too much.
	The first nine months in the womb, the first year, you said she was breastfed for a year, right?
	So, for the first year and nine months of her existence, I know early on it's pretty impossible to remember, but, you know, just grant me the general time frame.
	For the first 19 months of her experience, well, no, 9, 12, yeah.
	So, for the first 21 months of her experience, there's not been a thing that's too much or withholding or withdrawing or anything like that.
	And I'm sure you didn't start at the moment that she stopped breastfeeding, right?
	Like you gave her more food and you're happy when she eats that's not on the breast, right?
	Right, yeah.
	So there was no limitation for most of her life.
	There has been no limitation or imposition of variety or this is too much or anything like that, right?
	Yeah, that's fair, yeah.
	Okay. So now, you know, I must have asked you ten times, like, why she can't have more, and you won't give me an answer.
	You just won't give me an answer.
	Because, you see, you withhold food from your daughter, and you withhold answers from me.
	But the answer is, like, there may be a good reason, but your daughter doesn't know what it is.
	Right. Okay. And so, of course, it's going to feel like someone's just...
	Taking something away from you.
	Why? Why? Why?
	When for the most of her life, she's gotten everything that she wants to have, right?
	I don't mean like everything like she's spoiled or anything, but as far as food and all of that goes, and as far as being held too, right?
	I mean, you hold the baby to breastfeed, you hold the baby to sometimes have the baby fall asleep.
	So for most of her life, there has not been a withdrawal of what she wants.
	And now there is without explanation.
	Well, that's the thing. So we do tell her, you know, my wife will say, you know, mom's back is hurting.
	Mom needs to, you know, take the laundry out.
	No, we've got to stay on the food first, right?
	Because the food is, she could have more, right?
	I'm not saying she should.
	You may have really, really good reasons for not giving her more of what she wants to eat.
	I get all of that, right? But at two, she can start to know why.
	Okay. And if she doesn't know why...
	See, when you start withdrawing food from a child, it has to be because the child can understand why the food is being withdrawn.
	Okay. Right?
	So if she's old enough for you to say no to her, then she's old enough to understand why you're saying no to her.
	Okay. And if you take the food away without explaining why, she will perceive that as an act of aggression.
	Interesting. Okay. Okay.
	I mean, if you're a smoker and you want to quit smoking, you don't just say, well, I want to quit smoking because smoking is pleasurable and I want to deny myself pleasure, right?
	You have to have a reason as to why you want to quit smoking, which is, I don't want to die or something like that.
	I want to stink like cigarettes or whatever, right?
	So whenever we deny ourselves something, there has to be a reason.
	Otherwise, it's just masochistic, right?
	Right, yeah. Even if it's something that's kind of good for us, like a tiny example, right?
	So I've been doing more or less give or take the same kind of workout.
	I bulked up once when I played Macbeth because I figured he was a warrior fighter guy and had a shirtless scene.
	But for the most part, I've been doing pretty much the same workout since I was like 17 or 16 or 17 years old, right?
	Now, I've just lowered my weights Maybe 5%.
	Why? Because I'm getting older and it's getting a little twingier and, you know, I just turned 54.
	I'm not going to be able to do the same workout that I did 40 years ago almost, right?
	I mean, that's just not the way the human body works.
	So what I do is I say, okay, well, I'm going to deny myself because I'm kind of used to these weights and all that.
	So I'm going to deny myself these weights, right?
	That's... Kind of the reality, right?
	Now, I'm not just saying that, oh, I'm denying myself.
	I'm denying myself because I'm getting older, and you can't do the same hard workout at 54 that you did at 17.
	Like, it wouldn't make, it would be dangerous, right?
	Not dangerous, but it would hurt.
	So there's a reason why I am lightening my weights slightly, and I'm sure when I'm 60, 65, I have to take them down another 5%.
	You know, you kind of got to bring this in for a soft landing, right?
	Yeah. So whenever you say no to yourself, there's a reason.
	Yeah. But if you say no to your daughter, she's old enough to know that you're saying no to her and you're communicating that you're saying no to her through language, which means that she's old enough to know why you're saying no to her.
	You mean she'll understand what I'm telling her is the reason why?
	Well, that's the goal, right?
	That's your challenge as a parent is to find a way to explain it to her enough that she understands it at some level.
	It doesn't have to be like she knows all of the physiology and she knows carbohydrates versus protein.
	I'm not saying any of that, right?
	But there is a way to explain to a child why you're saying no.
	Okay. Otherwise, the child perceives it as an aggression in the same way that if you said to your wife, can you pour me another half cup of coffee?
	And she's like, no, you're cut off.
	No, you're done. No, you can't have another half cup of coffee.
	You've got to mix it up. I don't want you filling up on coffee.
	You'd be like, hello? What?
	Whereas if she said, oh, I don't know, I've read that more than one cup of coffee in the morning could give you a heart attack or whatever.
	Maybe she's wrong, I think, but at least there'd be some reason, right?
	But if someone just says no to you, without providing for you a reason, you will almost always experience that as an act of aggression.
	Got it. Okay. Okay.
	So, the question then becomes...
	How do you say no to a child in a way that the child understands?
	Now, the holding is a little more difficult, so we'll do that second, but the first is the food, right?
	Sure. So the first thing that you need to do as a parent is not to tell your daughter what to do, but to first do it yourself.
	Okay. So what you need to do...
	Look, what's your favorite dessert?
	Oh, ice cream.
	Love ice cream. What's your flavor?
	What flavor has your name on it?
	I love like coffee, chocolate ice cream, but I mean, I can't even bring it in the house because it'll be gone in like a day.
	I mean, I could literally like just demolish it.
	Right, right. So here's what you need to do.
	If you want your daughter to use the correct names for things, the first thing you need to do is use the correct names for things, right?
	Like if you keep pointing at a tree and calling it a coffee, then your kid's going to get confused, obviously, right?
	So the first thing, if you want your child to say no to something, because it's not good for you, let's say, then what you need to do is you need to show her you saying no to something.
	Okay. Right? So you bring a little of your favorite dessert in, you give some to her, and you give some to yourself, and then you say, oh, I could eat this whole thing.
	I literally could sit here and eat.
	If I could fit my head inside this ice cream bowl, I would do so, even if I came out looking like an exact replica of the ice cream.
	Right? Because this is what you feel.
	You really, really, really want to have more ice cream.
	And then you say, but you know what?
	I don't want to get fat. You know, puff up your cheeks or, you know, maybe you can show a picture of a fat person and say, that's what happens with too much ice cream.
	Your body is like, your tongue loves it, your body hates it, right?
	Because that's the reality, right?
	And you understand, right?
	I mean, this is how I explained it to my daughter, right?
	Like, tongue, yum, body, bleh!
	You know, and stuff your body loves, your tongue doesn't love.
	Like, your body loves broccoli and onions and carrots, right?
	But, you know, your tongue doesn't love them quite as much as it loves, say, coffee ice cream, right?
	So there's stuff your body loves and your tongue doesn't love, and there's stuff your tongue loves and your body doesn't love.
	And it's just part of the paradox of being human.
	And you can't explain, like, we love sweet things.
	Why do we love sweet things?
	Well, because... We needed fruit to live.
	We needed fruit to survive.
	Without fruit, you get sick a lot.
	And so fruit is sweet, generally.
	You think of mangoes, you think of strawberries and raspberries.
	It's sweet. It's got a lot of sugar in it, right?
	And so we want to go and eat the fruit and our bodies...
	Our tongues tell us to go eat the fruit, but there was no sugar back then, right?
	So our bodies would say, go eat the brightly colored things that are sweet, right?
	And now you can say, look at the grocery store, you say, look at this candy.
	Is it brightly colored? Well, yes.
	Is it sweet? Yes. So what are they doing?
	They're imitating fruit.
	But it's super fruit, right?
	Because it's super sweet and super bright, right?
	Right. And so you've got to model for her you saying no to something that you want because of...
	I love it, but it's bad for my teeth.
	It's bad for my energy.
	It's bad for my weight.
	It's, you know, it's nice as a little treat, but I've got to say no.
	Now, if you yourself model saying no to something you really want and why...
	It'll become a whole lot easier because she wants to be just like you.
	Now, it's interesting to me that she has trouble controlling her appetite for things she wants, and you say, well, I can't even have this ice cream in the house!
	Can you see? Yeah.
	So she's imitating Dad, right?
	Well, she's never seen me eat the ice cream because I always eat it after she's gone to bed.
	Oh, come on. Are you telling me that children aren't basically psychic and all they do is watch their parents and figure something out?
	I guarantee you she has seen you not say no to something.
	Oh, yeah. Okay.
	Yeah, just not the ice cream.
	Okay. Are you going to fight me on every literal thing here or are we going to try and get some momentum going?
	No, I'm sure she's seen, yeah, she's seen me.
	My daughter saw me, as I said many years ago.
	We went to go and see the original Beauty and the Beast, or she called it the Angry Tiger movie.
	And we had a bag of M&M's.
	This is back when I ate candy.
	We had a bag of M&M's.
	I don't know. She was like, I don't know, two, three, maybe three years old.
	And you know how it is.
	You're just kind of absently, absentmindedly just eating.
	Yeah, yeah. And you don't really sit there and think, oh, well, you know, this has been too...
	It's just, you know, the conveyor belt, hand to mouth, hand to mouth, hand to mouth, right?
	I remember a friend of mine and I, when we were little kids, there was a candy.
	It's still around. There's chocolate.
	It's called After Eights, if you have a...
	I've seen them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so they're really pretty good mints.
	There's this big kind of gooey, minty stuff in it.
	It kind of looks like the glue that the dumb kids eat in daycare, but it's actually pretty tasty.
	And then there's these sort of wrapped in chocolate wafers and all that.
	And they're inside each little paper wafer, right?
	So my friend and I were chatting away, and there was a box of this After Eights in the place.
	And... You just kind of reach in and you find one in its little individual, it looks like a little tiny envelope, and you pull it out and you eat it.
	And then you just, we thought, oh, we're so clever.
	We'll just put the little paper wrappers back in.
	And it's like we never took anything, right?
	Now, because of that, like if you're eating something like, I don't know, like a Turtles, the Turtles box, like the Turtles chocolate box, you take it and you can see them vanishing, right?
	Oh my gosh, I've eaten half the box.
	But if you just come back, but these, I remember as a kid, I must have been, I don't know, five or six, just eating the after eights, putting the wrappers back in, and then it was like, holy crap, dude, we ate almost all of them.
	And we didn't, you know, because you don't sit there noticing, you're just eating and chatting.
	It's the same thing when I was watching the movie with my daughter.
	And My daughter was the one who said, Dad, stop eating.
	And she was totally right.
	She was totally right. Now, the reason she said, Dad, stop eating, is because before, you know, when I wasn't being distracted by a big shiny movie screen, I'd be like, oh, that's enough.
	I should, you know, I should stop eating, blah, blah, blah, because I have a pretty big appetite and I need to...
	You know, watch my weight and all that, like most people do, right?
	So, my daughter had seen me saying no, and she was the one who reminded me to not to eat, right?
	So, without a doubt, your daughter has seen you conveyor belt eat, you know?
	And we all do it, right? So, conveyor belt eat, just unconsciously watching something or distracted by something and just eat, right?
	Or seen you eat too much.
	Right? Like, you know, for me, one of the big weaknesses is barbecues.
	You know, you got some people over back when you could, right?
	Got some people over, barbecues running, and there is something about like somebody who knows how to make a really good barbecue burger.
	I mean, it's a good thing I love my wife because I just marry that person because that is, you know, especially when you got the really fresh...
	Lettuce, and onions, and tomato, and a little bit of mayo, and some mustard, and some cheese on top, and it's all coming like thick off the...
	Oh, my mouth is gonna start watering.
	And that to me is like, that's a little slice of heaven.
	And I can only have one.
	I can only have one.
	Maybe I can do one and a half if I double up the bun, like have just one bun, half a bun for each of them.
	But if I have two, Even though it's super tasty.
	And, you know, there's always like a little bit of potato salad and, you know, a little bit of salad and all that.
	But anyway, if I have two, I'm like, oh, that was too much.
	You know, like your stomach is kind of like the size of your fist, right?
	So you eat too much and it's kind of uncomfortable for a while and it can even interfere with your sleep and all of that.
	And then, you know, on the occasion when I would eat two burgers, my daughter would be like, hey, let's do X, Y, and Z cartwheels.
	And I'd be like, oh, and I... Like, I'm sorry, but if I do a cartwheel, it's gonna be like firing a cannon at Jabba the Hutt against a Jell-O wall.
	Like, it's just gonna end badly for everyone involved.
	And so then she saw, of course, that I'd overeaten.
	And I mean, I had this when I was in...
	It was about a year ago now.
	When I was in Hong Kong, we would be out there for a day of shooting and I would just load up on food in the morning because I had this really nice all-you-can-eat buffet and I just load up on food in the morning so that I could shoot from like 10 o'clock in the morning until 7 o'clock at night.
	Just all I'd need is water and all of that, right?
	And that was overeating, but it was fine because I wasn't eating for like nine hours and then I'd have a little something to eat at night.
	In fact, I remember going to the...
	Well, I had a guide there and John, of course, on camera, we went to a restaurant and they served us a salad that was moving, like you would poke the leaves and they would curl and be like, holy crap, that's some lively dinner.
	Anyway, so if you model not...
	Eating too much or, you know, having a bigger appetite, you know, your eyes are bigger than your stomach kind of thing.
	If you model saying no and you explain why, and don't make it about her.
	You know, I would love to finish this ice cream so much, but I have to say no because it's not good for me.
	A little bit? Yeah, that's fine.
	But, you know, I like being able to fit into my pants.
	I like not having to pass out after dinner because I'm having a sugar crash or whatever.
	And however you explain it to her, then she sees that she wants to be an adult.
	She wants to be like you.
	She wants to be like your wife.
	That's what she wants to be. And that's why...
	I mean, she's in the phase now.
	Like, you're not sitting there teaching her words, but she's just, you know, soaking them up like crazy, right?
	Because she's in that big sponge phase, right?
	And so whatever behavior you want from her, you've got to model it first and explain why you're doing it.
	And don't make it about her. You know, don't say, well, I have to say no to this ice cream and you have to say no to that whipping cream later.
	Because then it'll just feel manipulated, right?
	Just explain to her.
	Yeah. And also you can say to her, I don't know.
	It's really, really good to get into the evolution stuff kind of early, right?
	I don't know exactly how you would explain it to your daughter, but, you know, you could say grocery stores are kind of new.
	We used to have to go into the woods and get food, and we always wanted to overeat.
	Because there really was no such thing as overeating because you didn't know where your next meal was coming from because you'd have to go and hunt for your food.
	And so you didn't know if you were going to get a meal tomorrow.
	And also you couldn't keep your food.
	There were no fridges back then.
	So, you know, if you bring down a deer, you're going to feast like hell on that deer and you're just going to eat as much as you possibly can.
	Because the deer tomorrow is going to be full of flies, you know, gross stuff that you can't eat it anymore, right?
	So we're used to overeating, but now that we have like grocery stores and you can go and get whatever food that you want, we're used to overeating because that made perfect sense in the past.
	You get as many calories as you can because you may not catch a deer tomorrow or the day after and you've got to have enough energy to do it.
	So we're used to, but now we have grocery stores and there's so much food everywhere.
	It's like you can get it delivered to your house.
	So we got a mismatch, like it doesn't work too well.
	And so, you know, just kind of explaining this stuff to her in conversation as part of just being an engaging father and so on.
	And you modeled this saying no to yourself.
	You modeled this. Gotta not do it, right?
	And my daughter's seen this like I will have a beer from time to time.
	I never have to. One beer, you know, hot day, it's nice.
	You know, especially if it's a light beer, it's refreshing and it's cool.
	I like the taste. Two beers, I start to get a little tipsy, right?
	And that to me is not nearly as much fun.
	So, you know, you order a beer in a restaurant, the waitress comes by, can I top that up for you?
	Because they make most of their money from alcohol.
	Basically, the food is just an excuse to get you drunk.
	And I always say the same thing.
	No, one's my limit. Thank you.
	I appreciate that, but no, right?
	Same thing at the aforementioned barbecue, right?
	No, I won't have a second burger.
	These are fantastic. I'd love to eat them all, but I can't.
	No, I won't have a second beer, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And I'm not perfect with this stuff and all that, but she's got to see you and your wife, more important with your wife than it is with you.
	So what's her relationship with eating and food?
	Well, she doesn't get a chance to eat a whole lot.
	She kind of has to eat on the fly because she's always with my daughter.
	So generally, she'll have pretty much a similar type of breakfast, I would say, most of the day.
	So, for example, Monday through Friday, when she'll be waking up with my daughter, she'll have...
	You know, she'll make like a waffle, egg and cheese, like a little sandwich type thing.
	And she'll eat that.
	A gnome. My wife makes that for herself, yeah.
	And so she'll eat one of those and that's it.
	So it's pretty much like routine.
	And you and your wife both have relatively healthy weights?
	Yes. Okay. Yeah, so I would say it needs to be explicit.
	With your daughter, because look, there's always times, like you with the ice cream, or I'm sure there are other things, right?
	We all have our kryptonite, right?
	For me, it's carrot cake. But, so if you're, I would like to eat more, but I won't because X, Y, and Z, and just make it kind of interesting and educational, then your daughter associates, well, you've got to say no to yourself.
	It's a very, very important thing to have in life, to be the ability to say no to yourself, right?
	So, If you model that behavior, then she will feel very grown up when she says no to something, as opposed to feeling humiliated and lessened and bullied, in a sense, when you just take stuff away from her.
	Okay, that's a cool way of thinking about it.
	So, let me ask you this.
	So, one of the things that she'll probably see me consuming a lot in the morning is coffee, because I'm working from home, and I'll come down sometimes, get a cup of coffee, and so...
	Is it... It's...
	You know, maybe...
	I mean, can we just roleplay this real quick?
	So, if you were me and I'm, you know, my daughter, and, you know, you had wanted to get some coffee this morning, and, you know, how would it kind of look?
	You'd fill up a coffee and say, I enjoy this cup of coffee, or...
	How would you... Oh, yeah, no, I mean, I've had this conversation with my daughter.
	So, I like coffee.
	I really do.
	And... What is it?
	The old thing? So yeah, so coffee is great.
	And I can't have more than two cups of coffee with caffeine a day.
	It becomes less pleasant for me.
	I get too jumpy, too wired, and I haven't done that for years.
	And... So, yeah, I might have a decaf during the day, like in the evening or whatever.
	It's kind of nice to have after dinner.
	But I say, you know, oh, man, I'd love to have another coffee, but I just can't because it'll make me...
	It'll make me too bouncing off the walls kind of stuff, right?
	And it's not a pleasant sensation.
	I just feel like, you know...
	Like you just walked off a roller coaster and it was like, whoa, that was kind of too intense, you know, kind of thing.
	So it's not pleasant for me.
	So, yeah, so I'll have a coffee in the morning and then I will have a coffee sort of mid-afternoon in 2, 2.30 and that's it.
	And, you know, if we're out for dinner with friends or whatever and they're like, hey, do you want coffee?
	I'd be like, yep, love to, but no, thanks.
	Maybe a decaf or whatever, right?
	So just... Just tell your children the limits that you place upon yourself and why.
	Okay. Got it.
	Okay. So in that example, you know, just have a conversation going, explain to her, hey, I'm having a cup of coffee.
	This is, you know, talk about coffee, you know, where it comes from, make it fun and interesting.
	And then You know, you can just talk about why you wouldn't have a second cup necessarily, something like that.
	Yeah, and ask her, ask her, sorry to interrupt, but ask her, like, what is it that you have the hardest time saying no to?
	What do you want so much, right?
	And she might say, the cream, right?
	And you go, oh yeah, man, that cream is good.
	So when my daughter was talking about sweet stuff, oh man, it's a story from another lifetime.
	So when I was about maybe eight, I went...
	Oh, it's the craziest thing.
	So there was something called the Royal Explorers.
	I'm pretty sure this sounds like something my late dad got me involved in.
	Build character, right?
	Something like that, right? And so I went on this two weeks in the Outer Hebrides.
	Now, the Outer Hebrides are Satan's frozen groin pit off the northwest of...
	The UK, like off the coast, I think it is of Scotland.
	I mean, it was just unbelievable.
	And it was the shittiest trip that you could conceivably imagine.
	I mean, the weather was absolutely abominable.
	We were supposed to go camping and explore the Outer Hebrides.
	There were like, I don't know, 12 kids and this really depressed guy I'll get into in a sec.
	But anyway, so we were supposed to do all these cool things, camp out there, see the stars, go to see the sea, and all these kind of cool things, right?
	Oh my God, it was hell.
	So... The weather was absolutely appalling, like non-stop.
	We did one time, we got to camp on a beach.
	The rest of the time, literally, we were all jammed up like a bunch of college kids in an old phone booth.
	We were jammed up. We would sleep in bus shelters, you know, with your face kind of pressed up against this cold, grimy glass.
	And it was just like, oh my God, this is like horrible.
	Now, the guy who ran it, and I remember this too.
	I remember walking along And, you know, some adults can be just complete jerks when it comes to, hey, guess what?
	You're bigger, taller, and stronger.
	Good for you! You have earned the impressive feat of being born before me.
	Well done. You really planned that well.
	Good job. And so this guy would be like, come on, kids, we're going to go for this 20-mile hike.
	And I was like eight years old or whatever, right?
	So you get tired. It's a long way to walk.
	Anyway, so I would be lagging behind, and we were going along the...
	Edge, like the shoreline.
	And it was heather up and down.
	So, you know, the up and down stuff.
	And I had this big, heavy backpack on.
	And anyway, I was sort of lagging behind.
	And anyway, so I turned back like, gosh, how far have we come kind of thing.
	And I see, oh man, disaster.
	And the disaster was that my backpack had opened up.
	I don't know if you've ever had this when you're hiking or like, and stuff had just fallen out.
	And I could see this trail, this trail of stuff heading back.
	And I'm like, oh man, I'm screwed.
	Because it wasn't like there was some big defined path.
	We were just sort of walking along. I guess you could follow the edge of the ocean and all that.
	But it was... And I'm like, I hollowed out, right?
	But, you know, this guy didn't care.
	He was way up ahead and all that, right?
	So none of that really did any good, right?
	So anyway, I ended up...
	Of course, I couldn't just keep... So I ended up turning back.
	I told the kid ahead of me, but I don't know if he cared or whatever, right?
	And I ended up having to go back and it felt like forever.
	I went back forever. And I ended up gathering everything.
	And of course, you don't know where the other thing was that may have fallen, so you had to go back until I went for a while and didn't find anything.
	And then I turned back, and long story short, I ended up making it to where they were setting up camp.
	And this was actually a nice sunny day, and I wanted to go and explore the tide pools.
	No! Because, you see, I had lagged behind too far.
	And so I was confined to my tent for the rest of the day because this guy, this depressed, jerky guy, and I was like, but I wasn't just being lazy, like I actually walked further than everyone else.
	But you know, this was back when I thought explaining something to people in authority would make a difference, you know, like sending emails to Twitter or YouTube or whatever, right?
	And so I was like, no, but my backpack opened up and I had to go back and get my stuff.
	And of course, you know what he said as well as I did, right?
	Well, you should have taken more care packing your backpack.
	It wasn't like I didn't take...
	It just happened to open. You know, I've been in the Boy Scouts for one year.
	I don't know how to tie these complicated knots and, you know, I'm a kid and, you know, all that, right?
	So I was confined...
	To my tent for the afternoon.
	And it's one thing to be confined to your tent on a beach, which was, you know, I grew up in a city, so it was pretty rare for me to get to a beach.
	And it was one of the rare, beautiful days that we had.
	So one of the only beautiful days, I think, that we had.
	So I'm like, finally, I don't have my face pressed up against the grimy, dirty glass of some Outer Hebrides bus shelter.
	But now I'm stuck in a tent while all the other kids are having a blast.
	Out there wading into the water and picking up anemones and looking for fish and all that kind of stuff, right?
	I love that stuff. Anyway, so I'm confined.
	Anyway, so then I hear an unholy scream from the guy.
	Step back! Get off!
	Get back! And the kids go completely silent, which is of course pretty rare for a dozen kids.
	So I poke my head out of the tent flap and I see not too far up the beach is a World War II sea mine.
	These little things, but not little things, it was pretty big, and they've got these antennae kind of sticking out, and they're supposed to go up against something and blow up.
	And there was a torpedo on the beach.
	Mine plus torpedo.
	And, of course, the kids were excited.
	We'd all learned about the war at this point, and they were jumping up and down on the mine.
	I was like, oh, my God, this is like the worst trip ever.
	I mean, could it get any worse?
	Like, exploding children would only add to the joy...
	Of this trip.
	And, oh man, it was brutal.
	And so it's one of the few times I was actually kind of glad to be confined in this kind of way.
	It's like, oh, did you keep me off the death beach of World War II explosions?
	Okay, I guess I'll just stay here.
	And the last thing I remember about that trip was...
	He was a writer, God help him.
	Right now, if you're a successful writer, I'm pretty sure Stephen King is not taking kids on like two-week tours to the Outer Hebrides.
	And he had this crazy, heavy manual typewriter.
	I mean, this thing must have weighed like 30 pounds.
	I don't know what the hell was in it. It certainly wasn't the weight of his creativity because I don't remember him using it.
	But like a writer, he's like, oh, I got to bring my typewriter in case inspiration strikes, right?
	Inspiration doesn't strike. You've got to go and chase it and hunt it down like a deer.
	But I remember this is when I learned something about useless social status, right?
	Because he created a point system.
	Now the point system was, you know, if you listen to him and do well, you get 5 points.
	If you go to bed when he tells you, you get 10 points.
	If you clean up after yourself at breakfast, you get 10 points.
	And if you carry his typewriter, you get 50 points.
	Because, you know, nothing says adulting like having an 8-year-old carry a 30-pound typewriter because you're waiting for inspiration to strike in a bus shelter in the rain in the Outer Hebrides at 2 o'clock in the morning!
	Anyway, so, even at the time, I'm like, points?
	Okay. Alright, I'm interested.
	You can tell me about the points.
	So he had this whole list of points, right?
	And then I said, and what do you get for the points?
	It's kind of an important question, right?
	Like, you ever play those arcade games where you play and then you get these tickets, right?
	Okay. I got 500 tickets!
	Yeah, you can't do anything with them.
	Oh. Right, so I'm like, well, what do you get for the points, right?
	And do you know what he said? Pride.
	Really? What? That's it?
	I'm supposed to be proud because I'm your...
	Borrow your, like, creative writing inspiration donkey carrying your stupid typewriter across the dunes in the Out of Hebrides?
	Are you kidding me? Pride for being a pack animal for your vanity and inconsequentiality?
	Oh, and by the way, you're a writer, are you?
	I can't help but respect you for your ability to not write but instead drag kids around and assign them useless points and have them half-blown-up in World War II minds!
	So anyway, but the one thing I do remember, sorry to wrap this story up.
	I've been waiting for, no, I was forever to do that story.
	But he had, believe it or not, this is the tie-in.
	This is how sad it is, right?
	Sorry, I went a bit of tension there.
	The tie-in is that he had a tin of evaporated milk.
	Now that's different from the stuff you're talking about.
	Have you ever tried this evaporated milk?
	Yeah, I've had it before. It's like super sweet.
	Oh, yeah. It's like maple syrup thickness.
	Are you kidding me? If evaporated milk could take maple syrup out and give fucking maple syrup diabetes, okay?
	It could beat the shit out of it with its sugar fists, okay?
	Because this stuff is like serious, concentrated, three chugs of that, and you're just spitting out soup-cold teeth, right?
	I mean, it's really, really sweet is what I'm saying, right?
	So sweet, it makes my wife look sour.
	But he had some tins of this and every now and then, you know, I remember sleeping not just in bus shelters, we slept in barns.
	Like straight up barns with, you know, like baby Jesus animals all around and the wind howling and hail and what the hell was going on, right?
	But he would give us some of the stuff and it was so good.
	And for a long time, I was like, I know what heaven is.
	Heaven is, I don't care where I am, I can be leaning up against the ass end of a flatulent cow, but as long as I get that evaporated milk, I'm just dancing up the stairway to heaven.
	But yeah, so I would always be trying to get that kind of stuff and just...
	Gotta say no. So tell your kids stories of stuff that you love and that you love to eat and tell kids the stories about when you overate and when you didn't feel well and blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I mean, first of all, kids are usually pretty fascinated to hear stories about their parents, especially before their parents were.
	Parents tell your daughter stories of when you were two years old and the stuff that you loved.
	Also, the last thing I'll say about that Outer Hebrides story was for about...
	I think it was... I was supposed to write up a report on this.
	This was supposed to be part of how you had to stay in this stupid club that I didn't want to be in.
	You had to write up... And this is the kind of thing that was hanging over me.
	You ever have those things when you're a kid?
	It's like they're just shitty things hanging over you.
	You're like, oh man, I knew I was the last one to have the scissors.
	I think I might have taken them to the woods.
	I don't know what the hell happened to those scissors, but I do know one thing.
	My mom, who can barely remember to leave me lunch money to take to school every morning, when she can't find those scissors, she's going to bead in like some RCMP space laser to my forehead of like, Aha!
	Steph! You were the last one with the scissors!
	Where are they? And just hanging over you, hanging over your stuff, right?
	Just things. Yeah, my friend of mine lost his braces, didn't tell his parents, pretended he just wore them at night.
	And I remember this thing, like my mom would be occasionally like, did you do that?
	When she was in a bad mood and wanted something to crab about.
	She's like, did you write that report for the Young Explorer Society yet?
	I'll be honest. Just one of these things hanging over you that you just really don't want to do, and eventually you hope it just kind of dissipates, blows away, and everyone forgets about, you know?
	Sure. So, yeah, tell your, you know, like, every kid has got the story, probably more than one.
	Okay, did you ever eat too much Halloween candy?
	No, not really.
	I mean, there's definitely been times when, yeah, I've overeaten, for sure.
	And I'm sure some of those times are when you were a kid, right?
	Yeah. I remember the first time my friend's mother, my friend Jamie, his mother took us to Ponderosa.
	Have you ever been to that restaurant?
	Yeah, Steakhouse, yeah.
	They got a whole all-you-can-eat thing going on there, haven't they?
	Why, yes, they do. And it's a bottomless vat of all the pop you can drink.
	And for some reason, I don't know why, for some reason, I absolutely, completely and totally fell in love with chickpeas at Ponderosa.
	Chickpeas with a little bit of Thousand Islander blue cheese dressing is like God's little nuggets of paradise, right?
	And so, you know, my whole childhood, I could never get enough to eat because we were always low on food, right?
	And going to Ponderosa, man, I mean, you could roll me out of there like a bowling ball, right?
	Because, you know, again, I'm like, I don't know when we're going to get deer again, but man, I got a face full of chickpeas and all's well with the world.
	And so, yeah, as a kid, I'm sure you overate.
	I'm sure, you know, we all did and still sometimes happen from time to time.
	So tell your daughter these stories so that she understands that it's kind of a...
	The more you can get human condition stuff ground into your kid, the better, right?
	Yeah, tablets are a lot of fun, but, you know, you kind of get out and see the people from time to time in the real world.
	And exercise can sometimes be a drag, but it's not great if you don't.
	We usually have to say no to ourselves before we're full.
	You know, just human condition stuff, right?
	All the paradoxes that involved us.
	Somebody sent me an email about the human condition question, like, what is the human condition?
	And most of it has to do with paradoxes, right?
	That we want things that are not often that great for us.
	We don't want things that are great for us.
	And, you know, just a sort of balancing act that we all have to do as human beings.
	So there's, you know, if your daughter's two, she can, remember, she can understand a lot more than she can say, right?
	Because it's like when you learn a foreign language.
	It's a lot easier to hear thoughts than it is to make your own thoughts, right?
	So don't judge her language skills by what she can say, because I bet you she's three or four times better in listening than she is in speaking, right?
	So she can probably get some pretty complex stuff.
	And I would just share with her What it is to be a human being, which is you got to say no to stuff.
	Because by the time your body says no, it's too late, right?
	You know what it is, right?
	It's like you're eating and you're like, oh, I just, you took a bite and you feel full and it's like, okay, my stomach's saying it's full, but there's still a burger and a half on its way down.
	So, you know, it's by the time your body says it's too much, it's way too much and you're just completely and totally doomed.
	Like the moment, and also the thing is too, you know, especially with drinking, like it erases your capacity to say no.
	So it's like by the time you're saying, oh man, I really shouldn't have another drink, it's way too late and alcohol is still pouring into your system from whatever you drank before and all that.
	So, yeah, just we all want stuff and we all want to eat more.
	And It's also not the end of the world.
	See, if you could put out the standard, you know, my daughter saying to me, I'm not saying this was planned because I just like M&Ms, particularly the peanut ones, but when I was in the movie and my daughter said to me, stop eating, and that's because I talked to her about this before, right?
	Now, she was a year older than your daughter, but we talked about it for a year before, whatever, right?
	So when your daughter says to you, stop eating, it's a beautiful thing because then you can forever say, Do you remember that time when you told me to stop eating?
	Well, it's my turn to tell you now because you're eating too much of this, whatever, whatever, right?
	So once you have both agreed on a standard, like a basic reality that you want to eat more than you should, it's important to say no.
	And sometimes you need to be reminded, once you're all on the same page as far as that stuff goes, it's usually not too much of a hassle to then say no to your daughter, if that makes sense.
	But if you just... So it's a whole bunch of prep, right?
	It's like flying a plane.
	You just get in and fly it in the crash, right?
	So if you want to say no to your daughter, which you have to.
	As a good parent, you have to say no to your daughter.
	You have to say no to yourself.
	One day it's theoretically possible.
	You might say no to your wife.
	It could be any number of things.
	It's not possible. Anyway, so to say no to your daughter is months of preparation and modeling and explanations.
	So that she gets it.
	Because what you want is for your daughter to learn how to say no to herself.
	Not to just have stuff taken from her by people who happen to be bigger.
	Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
	But if she's...
	So if we have food in the pantry and she grabs something...
	And it's, you know, not something that we want to give her for dinner.
	Like if it's these, you know, these like cracker-y things that are just like a snack.
	And she, you know, is able to reach for and grab that container.
	And then she asks for us to open it.
	Then the right thing to do is probably to, you know, explain why, you know, this is a snack food.
	It's not during snack time.
	I like to think that one of us was listening to me.
	Because now you're doing, I'm saying it's all about preparation, right?
	Yeah. Right? So then you're saying, okay, but what happens right in the moment?
	So I say, well, you've got to learn to fly a plane for months before you fly a plane.
	And you say, okay, yeah, but what if I'm in the middle of the plane ride and I don't know how to fly the plane?
	I'm like, no, but...
	Right? So the time to impose those restrictions is not in the moment.
	It's in the preparation.
	All, quote, disciplined conversations should never occur in the moment of conflict, or no disciplined conversation should occur in the moment of conflict.
	In other words, if she's reaching to eat something that you don't want her to eat, and that she shouldn't eat at that time, if you haven't done the preparation, you've got to let her have it.
	Because it's your fault that you haven't done the preparation so that she knows what no means and why.
	So she wins that because of your lack of preparation.
	Oh, interesting. Okay.
	That's your punishment for not preparing her.
	Now, if, of course, for the last couple of months you've been talking about You know, there's certain foods that fill you up, but they're not particularly good for you.
	Like your body is like a car.
	It needs fuel. You know, all this kind of stuff, right?
	And, you know, if you just pour wine into your car, like it'll kind of work, but not very well kind of thing.
	So it's all about having conversations prior to her grabbing the food she's not supposed to eat and wet.
	Right. Got it. Right.
	I hear what you're saying. But there is still in the moment things where that does happen.
	And then it sounds like in that case, it's better to let her have it than to try and explain your way out of it at that point.
	Well, by then, it's kind of too late, right?
	So to me, I wouldn't get into a big conflict about it.
	But I would say, okay, what she's telling me is she doesn't understand something.
	And so I need to explain it better.
	Okay. I mean, if you're trying to teach your kids spelling and they keep misspelling something, it's because you're not teaching it right or well, right?
	Yeah. So, you would be really, really surprised at how well the kids can reason this stuff out and how they want to be adults.
	They want to be like big people and...
	All of that. So the way that it works is you have to, and it sounds bad, but I don't mean it quite in the way that it comes out, but you have to extract a commitment from your child based upon a reasonable explanation outside the realm of conflict.
	Right? So once you go through the whole, your tongue loves this, your body doesn't love it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Right? And we, you know, we have to satisfy both.
	Right? I mean, because that's what we do as adults, right?
	As adults, we don't just eat all the stuff that's super good for us.
	We do occasionally, like, we'll have whatever, chips or chocolate, cookies, whatever it is going to be, right?
	We'll have those things from time to time.
	So we don't just live for everything that's great for our body.
	We do try and please our tongue as well, right?
	So we all live like that. Now, if you have explained it well, let's say this, you don't fill up on stuff that isn't good for you.
	Before you have healthy stuff, right?
	Which is why dessert comes after blah, blah, blah, right?
	And you can explain that to her, right?
	You know, like if you eat on the stuff that if you eat up the stuff that's bad for you, your tongue's happy, and your body's like, okay, fine, I'll just have this stuff and your stomach fills up with it.
	And then when you have the good food, there's no room left in your stomach, right?
	Now, you can do this any number of ways.
	Like, you can explain this. And the more tangible, the more vivid it is to the kid, generally the better it is.
	So what you can do is, you know, you can put a bunch of Legos in a cup, right?
	And then you can see how much water you can fill the cup up with, right?
	And then pour it out into another cup, so it's going to be half full, right?
	Then you leave the Legos out, And you pour the cup in and she learns a little bit about liquid and physics and so on.
	Then you pour it out. It's a full cup, right?
	So you say, oh, so you can get more water into a cup with no Lego.
	And it's the same thing with food.
	You can get more food into your stomach if it's already full of Lego, right?
	Now, if you want to drink water, having Lego in there is not very helpful to you if you're really thirsty, right?
	And in the same way, if you want to eat healthy food, having a bunch of crap in there is not very helpful to your body, right?
	And at some point, you know, she'll get it.
	She'll understand it. She'll be interested in it.
	And then, you know, you sit there and you say something like this.
	This is what I had. Okay, let's have a deal.
	So I don't want to overeat and I sometimes forget.
	So will you remind me if you think I'm overeating?
	I'm not going to do it too much.
	I'll try it. But, you know, every now and then I'll forget, right?
	Or if you see me going to get a handful of Cheetos before dinner, what are you going to say to me?
	Dad, no, right? Don't eat those, right?
	Maybe you have to do that. You say, okay, so you'll help me.
	Now, what should I do if I see you do something like that?
	And she's going to say, stop me, right?
	Or say something or whatever it is, right?
	So you have a deal in place, right?
	Like you have with Visa, like you have with your cell phone company or your landlord or your bank or whatever, right?
	That's a deal. You give me the money of the house and I'll...
	Well, you make up the money for me to buy the house and I'll pay you a mortgage for 20 years or whatever, right?
	Like you have a deal. People don't just show up at your house and demand money, at least I hope not.
	But you have a deal that you kind of know ahead of time and that way when you get a bill, it's like, okay, yeah, I can...
	It's the same thing with your kids.
	There has to be a deal ahead of time.
	You have to be reminding them of a deal, not imposing your will.
	Because that's how you want them as adults to negotiate with people, is don't just let other people impose their will on you, but have a deal.
	Right, yeah. And if you have the deal, and I've always said this to my daughter, I said, look, we can change the deal, we can revisit the deal, we can alter the deal, but you can't do it right in the moment.
	Do you see what I mean? Yeah.
	Right? So if my daughter says, well, no, I want dessert before dinner or whatever, right?
	But like, no, no, no, no, that wasn't our deal.
	I said, now, listen, we can sit down, we can start to renegotiate that deal, but you can't just pretend there was no deal.
	Any more than I can say, when I'm finished my work, we'll go to the park.
	And then I finish my work and I say, just kidding, we're not going to the park.
	I said, how would you feel?
	I finished my work and said, no, psych, sucker, we're not going to the park.
	She's like, I'd be really mad, right?
	Yeah. Because I'd be changing the deal after we made the deal.
	Now, I could say, oh, you know, I've got a real headache from doing my work.
	I'm going to need to just lie down for a few minutes before we go to the park.
	Like, whatever. But I can't pretend there was no deal or I can't just break the deal for no reason.
	you gotta gotta get the kids to the everything is about the deal everything is about the negotiations that you have with the people you love that's what love is love is a continual negotiation for hopefully win-win outcomes and all of that and you want your kid to get into the art of the deal so to speak as early as humanly possible right so get her to make deals and hold her to those deals and you got to be held to the deals yourself right if you You've got to keep your promises, as you know, right?
	You promise after work you'll take the kid to the park.
	I don't care if you're doubled over in pain with a migraine.
	I mean, obviously, that you wouldn't have to do, but take the kid to the park.
	If it's raining, take the kid to the park.
	Just keep your deal, because that's what gives you the authority to really insist that your child keep her deal.
	And if she wants to break the deal, say, oh, is that a rule now?
	Like, we can just break deals. So if I say we're going to the zoo tomorrow, I can just say, no, I woke up, I don't feel like it, we're not going to the zoo.
	And she'd be like, no, if you say we're going to the zoo, we got to go to the zoo.
	I'm like, yeah. And if you say, no sugar till after dinner, you got to keep that deal.
	Now, again, we can sit down, you can say, dad, I don't want to keep that deal anymore.
	And we can talk about that. But you can't just pretend there was no deal or just break it like you didn't make a deal and it doesn't matter.
	Because the deals are super important.
	That's how you trust me.
	That's how I trust you. And that's how we can predict.
	You can't love anyone whose behavior is unpredictable.
	Right, yeah. Sorry for this long speechifying, but it's a very important topic.
	Yeah, no. Sounds good.
	Do you think your wife will go for it too?
	Yeah, she's listening too.
	So yeah, we're both...
	How are you doing?
	I knew that you were of average, normal, healthy weight before I even asked the question.
	I'm just kidding. She missed that part of the call.
	That's fine. So what do you think of what I've been saying?
	Does it make sense? Do you think it'd be helpful?
	Or what are your thoughts? It is.
	It seems like it would be the bulk of my interactions with her, though, would be these preparation-type conversations.
	For a little while, for sure.
	For a little while, for sure.
	But it makes things so much efficient down the road.
	Where she's two years old, though, it's...
	I do feel like even if we start talking about food or we start talking about something that she likes that...
	I don't obviously want her to have perhaps in that moment.
	She'll hear the word, she'll hear the name of the snack or whatever, and she'll stop listening to just focus on that and want that in that moment.
	Sure. So redirecting, I guess.
	Yeah, and how long did it take to toilet train her?
	We haven't started that yet.
	Okay. It'll take a little while, right?
	And it may involve candy.
	At least it did in my household.
	So, absolutely.
	Look, it'll take a while.
	But there's two things I mentioned about that.
	Number one is it's kind of worth it if it reduces conflict over the long term.
	Like, for me, I'd rather have a month of setting up negotiations than 10 years of battling over food.
	Right? So, that's number one.
	And number two... You guys are both bigger than her now, so you can take stuff away, or you can impose stuff, like your husband was saying, just bat away food, like it can be kind of dangerous, right?
	Well, that's because you're bigger, and she's probably trapped in a high chair, right?
	Now, before you know it, I'm telling you, she's going to be huge, and you're going to be older, right?
	So, you've got to think about what's going to happen when she's 14 years old.
	If you've got a kind of...
	I'm not saying you guys are like total might makes right parents, obviously, right?
	You wouldn't be even talking to me if you were.
	But if you've got a kind of...
	If you're bigger, you just impose your will kind of thing.
	Well, she's going to get bigger and she's going to get more free.
	And so if you haven't layered in the negotiation stuff, when she hits her teen years...
	And the hormones kick in, and the peer pressure kicks in, and the social conformity stuff kicks in, which is all going to happen.
	It doesn't matter if your kid is peacefully parented or not.
	That stuff all kicks in.
	Everything you're doing right now is preparing you to retain some kind of authority in the teenage years when, frankly, she doesn't have to listen to you at all.
	And so it's worth it if you've got to spend even a month or two.
	And it'll be more fun than you think setting up these rules and trying to catch each other out and stuff like that.
	And it will save you a lot of conflict over time.
	And it'll be a huge payoff, a huge benefit, because you're not going to get on each other's nerves all the time because you'll have these rules and these deals.
	And again, you can adjust them and change them and so on.
	So it'll save you a lot of conflict over the next 10 or 12 years and because you're not imposing will upon her you will still have input and feedback and authority in the teenage years.
	Mm-hmm. Whereas if you just kind of short-circuit that process by imposing will now, I mean, it really does blow back down the road in pretty bad ways.
	And I'm not sort of trying to scare you, and I'm sure you guys are like at the top 0.1% of great parents in the world, but, you know, we can all improve for sure, and it's worth the investment for sure.
	What's tough, though, what I'll tell you guys is tough, is that I don't know how you guys are raised, and I'm certainly happy to hear, Lord knows I've talked enough, but...
	What's tough about it is when you set up these deals and you negotiate and you explain and you convince your child to negotiate rather than just willpower, imposition or whatever, it's painful because that's not how we were raised.
	Certainly not how I was raised.
	I'm sure kind of the same for you guys as well to varying degrees.
	So when you treat your children like You know, reasonable entities that you can negotiate with, it's kind of painful because you kind of realize all the stuff you didn't get as a child, which I think you should have.
	So again, I'm happy to hear how you guys were raised, but is this kind of approach a long way from how you guys were raised?
	Not me. I think my parents were both educators working with kids, so I think they knew the value of earning trust and respect with that Kind of method, I guess.
	But they always were cautionary in saying the rest of the world isn't going to treat you fairly.
	That's good. That's fair. Yeah, that's reasonable.
	They're not going to want to negotiate with you.
	You're going to get clear yeses, clear noes, lots of maybes, and lots of gray areas.
	So you're not going to get these cut-and-dry, very clear For lack of a better word, negotiations.
	Right. Now, do you know at what age they began to negotiate with you?
	I have older siblings, so...
	No, I don't really remember.
	Sorry, I don't have an answer.
	I'm going to guess it was older than two, though.
	Yeah, probably. Right, so that's probably why it's not kicking in for you at this time?
	Right, because I just don't trust that she really has the capacity to take in a kind of wordy negotiation session and apply it to a later event.
	Right, right, right.
	Now, you would have every rational reason to not trust that if you tried it for quite some time and it hadn't worked.
	But if you haven't really tried it, then you don't have the empirical evidence for that, if that makes sense.
	Okay, sure.
	No, I mean, you understand what I'm saying, right?
	If you say, well, I don't trust her to do that, but that's prevented you from even trying, then it'd be like saying, well, I don't trust her to ride a bike by the time she's 10, and you never buy her a bike or take her out on a bike.
	It's like, well, it's kind of become a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	Right. I guess my mind is more in the vein of...
	Limit her options so she isn't compelled by something that just she wants it, wants it, wants it to the point she can't hear a negotiation and she just breaks down into tears because she just doesn't have the capacity to really, she just knows she wants it.
	That's really it. Right.
	And for me to buckle down and try to discuss it with her and negotiate it with her, and I know that this is in the moment, which is not what you were talking about.
	It needs to take place before this occurs, but...
	I don't know where to start and I don't know how to break down negotiation language.
	Well, okay, so for how long have you been, and I know this sounds like really bad, like you're denying her things like, you know, food and medicine.
	I mean that, right? But what your husband was describing earlier about, you know, you eat this food and no, you can't have this or you can't have that.
	How long have...
	I'm not sure if you heard the bit about, you know, when you were breastfeeding her, you didn't deny it and say, no, that's enough breast for you.
	You know, that's enough. So for how long have you been saying no to her without context or negotiation?
	Since she could eat solids, probably since, you know...
	Six months, maybe nine months more or so when she was more aware of, you know, what we were eating.
	We keep some of our more tasty treats separate where she can't find them or see them.
	I read this tweet today that some guy is like, I'm in the closet.
	I'm eating cookies. My kids are circling like DEA agents, but I'm going to destroy all the evidence before they find me.
	Yeah. I think we've all had that.
	I remember my daughter was about...
	I don't know, maybe two and a half years old.
	And I had a piece of chocolate and I came in.
	I didn't say anything. I wasn't chewing.
	I kept it nice, melted in the corner of my mouth.
	It wasn't even that big a piece.
	And do you know what she said to me?
	I think you've said this before in one of your podcasts.
	What are you eating? Yeah.
	I'm like, what do you have, x-ray vision, you little freak?
	What are you doing? This is creepy.
	Stop it. I don't know if she can smell it on my breath or whatever.
	I'm very, very perceptive. It's two and a half, right?
	It's very perceptive. So if you have, and look, I know when I start to say, you know, negotiate with a 14-month-old, I mean, I get it.
	It starts to sound absurd. I really understand that.
	So limiting the choices is pretty good as long as she doesn't know that she has them yet.
	I mean, I knew, like you know, The moment you give your child chocolate, you've just crossed the Rubicon, right?
	Now it's going to be a challenge, but chocolate exists and you've got to figure out how to deal with it as a kid, as an adult as well.
	But if you have been not negotiating with her or modeling the behavior or having these conversations or whatever, then You've trained her, in a way, to just view these things as willpower.
	Like, who can make things more uncomfortable for the other person to get their way?
	Right, so in a role play with your husband earlier, I was being kind of insistent, and do you know what he said?
	Yeah. Okay, maybe just one, but no more.
	Oh, one more. One more, right?
	Yeah, one more. That's not good, because you're just training her to escalate, right?
	If escalation gets her what she wants, if bullying, yelling, tantrums, no, no, no, no.
	You can't give her what she wants because of that.
	That's just training her to do it, right?
	Here, if you have a tantrum, I will give you some candy.
	It's like, well, that's never going to stop it, right?
	So, yeah, no. Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I was just going to say, as far as, like, tantrums go, like, it's never where she'll be, it's very rare, and correct me if I'm wrong, where she'll be whining for something, and then we'll give in.
	I mean, if we say one more, and then she has one more, and then we take it away, and then she's still mad, we don't ever bring it back out.
	Right, right. You know what it's like?
	It's like, if you guys are Olympic athletes and I'm a coach, and you're saying, like, I'm a really good athlete, I'm like, yeah, that's why I'm coaching you, right?
	I mean, I think you guys are fantastic parents, to be honest, and so this is all just like little tweaks, if that makes sense.
	So I don't want you guys at all to come out of this conversation feeling criticized or anything like that in any way, shape, or form, because that's not my intention at all, right?
	So, good. I mean, that sounds good, but again...
	How do these differences get resolved?
	Because you're going to have differences of opinion with each other, differences of opinion with your daughter or other kids that you're going to have in the future, I hope, because I want my listeners to have lots of kids.
	So how do the conflicts get resolved, right?
	I mean, she wants something.
	You don't want her to have it.
	She doesn't want something. You do want her to have it.
	How does it get resolved at the moment?
	Well, I think one of the things that we do is...
	Your wife heard enough from you.
	I'm sure you've heard enough from me too, but she's the one home during the day, right, with this stuff.
	So go ahead. Well, today, for example...
	We had a little, excuse me, play date, and she was reaching in my bag for something, and I said, nope, we're not going to have one of your bars right now.
	And she kind of got antsy and started to whine, and I said, nope, it's mom's decision.
	And I just, like, moved her along to something else.
	But we were in a setting where I could redirect her easily.
	We weren't at a mealtime.
	So it was more like, nope, this is going to be my decision.
	And we moved on. Right.
	So from your daughter's perspective, what happened?
	From my daughter's perspective, she wanted something.
	She was reaching for it.
	She wasn't given any input.
	Well, she was just told, no, it's mom's decision, what goes in your body.
	Right? No understanding, no.
	Now, if she can understand the sentence, it's mom's decision, then you can negotiate with her.
	Right. But it's also, wasn't the bar in your purse?
	Yeah. So she was reaching into her, you know, private property.
	That's like we, I'll say that all the time.
	I'm sorry. Are you saying that she can understand sophisticated concepts of private property, but you can't negotiate with her?
	So in the moment, if she's reaching for something in one of my wife's side pockets, I'll say, no, that's mom's.
	We have to ask mom.
	I'll say stuff like that.
	And that's another way of...
	You know, trying to stop her if she's reaching for something where we don't want her to eat it.
	So if she's reaching for a bar that's in her pants pocket, I'll say, no, that's mom's.
	That's mom's. That's hers.
	You have to ask mom for permission.
	No, I get that.
	I get that. But I'm going to blow your minds here for just a moment here.
	Okay, so you want your daughter to respect property, right?
	Yeah. So her first property is her body.
	And in an odd way, you're not respecting that.
	Because you're saying this should go in your body, this can't go in your body.
	So if you want her to respect property, you have to give her some understanding and autonomy over her own property, which is her body.
	Now, again, I'm not saying she could just stuff her face with whatever she wants.
	I get that your parents, you've got to be responsible, and I'm with you 100% on that.
	This indulgence stuff doesn't work well at all.
	In fact, it's very counterproductive.
	But if you want her to respect boundaries, then you have to negotiate with her about her body and her stomach and what she eats and all of that, right?
	Because... If you want her to respect your personal space, then you can't just say, well, it's mom's decision about what you eat and that's it, right?
	because that's not respecting her personal space in a way.
	How is it not respecting her personal space?
	Because she wants to eat something and you're just saying to her, no, because you're bigger and stronger, not giving her a reason.
	And so you're not letting, you're not giving her control over her own body in a sense, because what she wants to do with her body is get the bar.
	I assume some sort of protein bar or something like that.
	So get the bar and put it in her body, right?
	Put it in her mouth. And if you're just saying no, Then it's like a kid who just takes a toy away from her and won't give it back.
	Now, the answer is not just to say yes, right?
	That's not teaching her anything either.
	In fact, that would be... Like, what you're doing is still better than just saying yes, eat whatever you want, whenever you want it.
	That's not particularly...
	We don't do that with ourselves, right?
	Otherwise, we'd all be eating your husband's lovely...
	I'm thinking about it even now, this lovely coffee, ice cream, whatever, right?
	Yeah. But if you have...
	If you have the situation where she understands that she has to be responsible for what she puts in her body or not, and that there's a reason why she's allowed or not allowed to have certain things, that's so much the better than you just saying, it's mom's decision, because there's no negotiation in that, right?
	Right. Now, I'm not saying that you negotiate and say, I'll give you three bucks to not eat the candy.
	I'm not saying anything like that.
	I'm saying that the negotiation has to happen ahead of time, right?
	So before you go on the play date, you say, okay, like, what are we going to do with food, right?
	What are we going to do if there's lots of candy there?
	What are we going to do if there's lots of chips there or cookies?
	Like, what are we going to do? What are the rules?
	Right? And if she understands what I was talking about, like...
	What your tongue loves, what your body loves.
	So it's all about the preparation, right?
	So if she says, well, is this a food play day?
	No. How long were you guys there for?
	An hour. An hour.
	Okay, so a kid doesn't need to eat for an hour.
	He might need some water or whatever, right?
	A kid doesn't need to eat. So you feed beforehand.
	Say, okay, this is not an eating play day, right?
	So get that agreement, right?
	And then so then if you get that agreement ahead of time, then if your daughter wants food, you say, well, remember, it's not an eating play date.
	Well, I mean, I don't know if she's old enough to know exactly what she's consenting to.
	If we say we're going for an hour, we're not going to be eating.
	Well, while we're there, we won't eat, right?
	Okay. I don't know if she'd be able to, do you think she'd be able to?
	I could probably put something together that she'd understand.
	Now that I think of it, I could probably put something together.
	The thing is, as soon as that kid pulls out, the kid that we're on the play date with, as soon as they pull out a snack...
	Again, her senses probably go into overdrive, and it's very hard to remember what we talked about 45 minutes ago.
	Well, no, but here's the thing, right?
	So then ahead of time, you say, okay, we're going to have a challenge, daughter of mine, which is, you say, okay, what's your favorite food, right?
	So what is her favorite food?
	Is it the cream? Cupcakes. Cupcakes, all right, okay.
	And you can make this funny, right?
	So you can say, okay, what if we go to this play date and the entire house is made out of cupcakes?
	What are we going to do? Like, are we going to eat the whole house?
	Because I want to. Like, I would eat a whole house made of cupcakes.
	I can't believe the sentences I say in this show, but we understand, right?
	Because we all like cupcakes, right?
	I mean, cupcakes are beautiful, right?
	And so, okay, so she'll laugh, and she'll say, okay, well, the whole house doesn't get me mad out of cupcakes, or I'd eat the whole house or something.
	Like, yeah, I'd want to as well, right?
	But no, seriously, like, what's going to happen?
	So we say, no eating while we're there.
	And I think that's a reasonable thing.
	Like, we've eaten before. We'll eat afterwards.
	We just don't need to eat while we're there.
	What if he pulls out a cupcake?
	Now, what? I don't know.
	What would she say to that? I think she'd say, I really want a cupcake right now.
	Yeah, yeah. And he'd say, you know what?
	Actually, this is true for me in the show too.
	I'm drooling about just thinking about that cupcake too.
	Right? So say, okay, what if he pulls out your favorite cupcake and offers you one?
	I mean, these are important questions to ask, right?
	Mm-hmm. Now, can you have a cupcake?
	I don't know, because I don't know what you guys' rules like.
	In my house, we don't do sugar Monday to Friday.
	It may be a little bit on the weekend, but we don't do sugar Monday to Friday.
	So if my daughter says, I want some sugar, I say, oh, it's a Wednesday or whatever, you don't want to do sugar, right?
	And occasionally, you can trade off on Saturday or some big social thing that we're doing or whatever, right?
	But what happens?
	And it's kind of a fun question, right?
	What happens? And then you say, here, have a cupcake.
	Eat the cupcake. Would you say yes?
	Would you say no? Whatever. Like, you know, have fun with it, right?
	But just discuss what might happen, right?
	And, of course, you'll discuss some scenarios and there'll be some other scenario that comes up that you haven't discussed or whatever.
	Just put it in the mix for next time, right?
	What do we have, right?
	Can you eat a cupcake? Well, if she wouldn't be able to eat a cupcake at home, and it's an interesting question, right?
	What do we do when we're at other people's houses?
	Are the rules the same?
	Or are the rules different?
	It's an interesting question.
	I mean, with dinner, when you're, quote, at another person's house, you say, I don't cook dinner.
	I mean, hopefully nobody invites you over and then expects you to cook for them, right?
	Right? So...
	There are things that change when you're at other people's houses.
	You know, we tend to be a little bit more polite, we tend to be a little bit more deferential, the kids or whatever, right?
	Like, I don't know how many times I've heard parents say, man, I wish that my kid treated me like they treated strangers.
	Familiarity brings a little contempt, it seems, sometimes.
	But no, these are interesting questions and your daughter's going to have thoughts about it.
	Do we break the rules?
	Because some rules we don't break.
	Like you don't go to someone else's house and you can suddenly fly and float, right?
	I mean, like the gravity is the same, right?
	It's not like you go to someone's house and cupcakes suddenly become good for you, right?
	So there's some things that don't change and what should we do?
	I don't know. Right?
	So that's the start of the negotiation, right?
	But if you just wait until she's grabbing something from your purse, you really don't have much option.
	you always want to avoid the options where it's you comply with her or she complies with you because those you can't win those situations right and they're not fun situations to be in it wasn't like you were really enjoying saying no it's mommy's decision put down the bar step back from the bar kid right yeah right so if it's a situation where she either gets the bar and you're unhappy or you get the bar or you keep the bar she doesn't get the bar and she's unhappy those situations where it's win-lose,
	Always for me, they just remind me of, okay, that's something I failed to negotiate for ahead of time.
	Yeah, I would say 90% of the time it is like that.
	It's that like... I'm going to win this one.
	Sometimes I'm more relaxed and I'm like, oh, it's no big deal.
	Lunch is still 30 minutes away.
	She can have a bar. No big deal.
	But then she doesn't know where the expectations are, right?
	So sometimes she can have the bar and sometimes she can't.
	It's like, hey, man, I'll gamble.
	I'll pull the slot machine wheel and see if a bar comes out, right?
	Right. And then she's always trying to pick that lock.
	Like, okay, I want the bar.
	Okay, last three times I got the bar.
	I mean, you know what it's like with kids, right?
	I mean, I make this joke with my daughter, like, okay, what are you plotting for now?
	It's like candy, role play, whatever it is we're doing, right, that she wants, right?
	So kids plot a lot.
	I mean, we all remember this from when we were kids, like, how do I get what I want, right?
	Like, you wouldn't believe how affectionate my daughter gets when it's bedtime.
	Yeah. I know the scam.
	I know the scam.
	So, yeah, but if she doesn't know the rules, so to speak, or she hasn't participated in the rules, right?
	We all have, you know, we didn't sit there and say, you know, it'd be great if I got taxed at 40% to pay for other people's irresponsibility.
	We all have these rules that are imposed on us by society.
	We didn't ever choose them or anything like that, but they just get imposed upon us.
	And the less we do that in our families, I think the better off it's going to be in the long run.
	And you can also, of course, explain to her, as I have, like part of my job is I have to deliver to you I have to deliver you to 18 healthy and happy.
	Now, happy I can't perfectly guarantee because who knows, right?
	But healthy I can, right?
	To a large degree, right? So, yeah, you've got to go to the dentist.
	Yeah, you've got to go for your checkup.
	Yeah, you've got to get your eyes checked.
	Yeah, you've got to go to all these things, right?
	I don't want to. It's like, yeah, I get it.
	Who sits there and says, yay, dentistry, right?
	But other than the dentists, but...
	But it's my job. I have to deliver to you.
	Now, your daughter's a bit young for this, but it won't be too long before you can say, you know, show her a picture of a fat kid and say, is that kid happy he's fat?
	Well, no. Okay, what are all the things that the fat kid can't do?
	Well, they can't. They can't do monkey bars.
	They can't, you know, they made fun of in the teeter-totter.
	They can't do, I don't know, whatever it is.
	They can't run for very long.
	They can't, whatever it is, right?
	They can't frisbee for very long.
	And they feel embarrassed if they take their shirt off.
	Like, it's lots of things. They feel embarrassed in the swimming pool, right?
	So you can go through all that list, right?
	And it is really tough, right? So the kid wanted a lot of candy.
	And the parents said, okay.
	Is the kid happy?
	The parents said, okay.
	Well, obviously not.
	And so it's not like you don't want to be fat.
	I don't want to be fat.
	Daddy, ice cream, half and half, right?
	But it's my job to make sure you stay healthy and healthy.
	Your teeth, you know, I was watching this documentary, the number of kids in England who were getting their teeth yanked for candy and sugar and blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's horrendous. It's expensive, too, for the healthcare system.
	So, you know, it's out of my hands.
	It's just a responsibility.
	Like, if you rent a car, you've got to return the car.
	In good condition. You don't have to change the oil, but you can't crash it.
	You have to return the car in good condition.
	Say, look, if a friend of yours borrows your favorite book and it comes back with half the pages torn out, that's not good.
	You're sad, you're angry, you're upset.
	You don't want to lend anything ever again.
	Well, we're kind of borrowing you from the future.
	We've got to deliver it to you.
	Like, the same way that your kid, your friend who borrowed your book, had to deliver the book back to you in good condition, we've got to deliver you to the future in good condition.
	That's the deal. That's what happens when you're parents.
	And when you have a child, you will have the same responsibility.
	And much, you know, it would be a lot easier for us to say yes to everything, but, you know, we don't want you to get fat.
	We don't want you to have teeth problems.
	We don't want you to...
	Get illness that you can get from bad diet and no exercise.
	We don't have the choice.
	It's not up to us. Any more than your friend has the choice to rip half the pages out of your book and say, hey man, I'm just...
	If it's his own book, he can do that.
	But if it's your book and you're just passing through here, you're going to go to adulthood, we've got to deliver you.
	To adulthood in good shape.
	And that means, you know, healthy, all your own teeth, reasonably good eyesight, so not tablets all day, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
	So once, you know, the kids understand that, we don't have, you know, I mean, I've been implementing this for like nine years or so, right?
	So... I'm not perfect at it, but I'm pretty good at it.
	And we really, you know, I mean, we homeschool, we quarantine now, it's been going on.
	Like, we used to travel all the time.
	We'd go to Australia for speaking tours, go to other places, right?
	And we've now been home for like eight months.
	You know, it's just three of us here, right?
	And we have almost no conflicts.
	Doesn't mean we don't have disagreements, we do, but almost no conflicts.
	And, you know, for three people without a lot of socializing, because, you know, there's all these rules out here as well, right?
	So it works.
	It works. Now, I know that that's just me saying it, and, you know, my daughter could be soaring under the ground like Wile E. Coyote for me, you know, for all you know, right?
	But I'm telling you that it does work.
	Now, it's a lot of investment up front to get these negotiations going, but, you know, it's kind of like, When you buy a house or whatever or buy a car, there's a lot of paperwork and you've got to read through it.
	You've got to understand it and make sure you know what you're signing up for.
	And that reduces conflict with the bank, right?
	Because then you have a problem with the bank or the car company or whatever and you just, oh, this is what's in the contract, so this is what we have to do, right?
	Negotiation and coming up with rules of engagement, so to speak, that's all about reducing conflict.
	And if you just kind of Playing it by the seat of your pants, it's easier in the moment.
	Like, it's easier to just buy a house by just shoving some money at people and not signing anything, right?
	It's like, yeah, but you're kind of risking things down the road, right?
	And if you work for these kind of negotiation things, yeah, it's time investment up front, but, whew, does it ever save you?
	It's like saying, well, you know, brushing my teeth, it costs me like five minutes a day.
	It's like, I could do other things with those.
	Yes, you could. But what's going to happen down the road if you save these five minutes a day?
	Well, it's going to cost you a lot more than it's going to save you.
	I think the same thing's true. And the last thing I guess I wanted to ask is if you've been taking this approach of, to some degree, just willpower, like mom's decision, have the conflicts gotten better or worse or stayed about the same?
	I think what I attribute...
	Keep using that term, I guess, is that it's consistent and it's something that she kind of knows I don't get beyond this point.
	So once I say it and I sort of say, nope, this is mom's decision, she knows that means she's, I guess, for lack of a better word, lost.
	And she just moves on to something else.
	So she's going to bide her time.
	She's going to bide her time until she has more authority and power, which she's going to have.
	In the teenage years, the power swings totally from you to her.
	Because she can hang out with friends.
	She could not come home. She can drink.
	I'm not saying she will. But she doesn't really have to follow your guys' rules at all.
	And you have very little recourse.
	So in a situation like today where I know I had this play date, it was planned, there's plenty of time for me to prep her to say, okay, it's going to be an hour.
	And in that hour, you're not going to have any snacks.
	We won't be eating anything.
	Well, no, no. So you're still imposing.
	Yeah. Right?
	You're saying, these are the rules.
	but that's not negotiation.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So you're saying, well, if I give her all of the rules ahead of, but all you're doing is, is you're basically saying it's mommy's decision ahead of time rather than during the time.
	And that still is not giving her any respect or, Or every time you impose your rules upon someone, you're saying to that person, you can't possibly understand and you just need to obey.
	And that's kind of humiliating for kids, right?
	She can understand some stuff.
	She can make some points.
	She can negotiate, right?
	I don't know, Steph.
	I'm sorry. I don't buy it yet.
	I apologize. I know you've given me so many great examples, reasons, anecdotes.
	I just can't... I don't have that same belief right now.
	No, I completely...
	Listen, I respect that.
	Listen, I don't want to impose my rules on you any more than I want you to impose your rules on your daughter.
	Yeah, I know. I know that's how you work, so...
	I gotta be honest and say, I just, I'm not...
	Be skeptical of everything I'm saying.
	Absolutely. Please, please, Lord above, be skeptical of everything I'm saying.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	You shouldn't let me tell you had a parent, of course, right?
	But what I'm saying is, Try taking it for a little bit of a spin.
	Something that's not too crucial, right?
	That's worth it for sure. I need to change something because it's not pleasant.
	I'm not enjoying it.
	So I've got to do something for me to make it better.
	And do I want a closer connection with her?
	Absolutely. And if this will help me get there, then of course it's worth a try.
	It's just I really do get flustered in those moments when I think I've prepared, I think I've done the right thing.
	And she just doubles down, and it's really hard to soothe her when she's not getting...
	She doubles down like you're doubling down with me right now?
	Is that what happens?
	Oh my gosh! I wonder what that's like.
	No, I'm kidding. It's kind of true though, right?
	Because she's got a strong will like you have a strong will, right?
	So you're saying no to me, which is perfectly fine, and she wants to say no to you.
	Now, if I'd said to you...
	I mean, let's just take a silly example, right?
	So if I said to you, listen...
	It's my decision. I'm the philosopher.
	I'm the expert. Just do what I say.
	How would you react? Yeah, I would say, well, you obviously don't really know my family.
	I know what would be floating through your head and it would probably be something that would not end up in a children's show, right?
	Because you'd be like, no, don't tell me what to do, right?
	Yeah. Well, how do you think your daughter feels?
	I think, yeah, I think she's She's going to find a workaround at some point, or she's going to match wits with me, I guess, for lack of a better word.
	Do you know what I mean? Like, this is a temporary fix?
	Yeah, you'll become someone to be worked around, someone to be avoided, something, whatever, right?
	Right. Right?
	Yeah. Because she won't respect the rules.
	She'll, in a sense, fear your power, so to speak.
	But she won't respect the rules because she didn't participate in creating them.
	And she will. I want to get to that point where we have a refined negotiation ability between the two of us, between the three of us, I should say.
	But, like, I don't...
	I don't know that now is that time.
	No, but it is. And I'll tell you why.
	It is. And I'll tell you why.
	And again, I really appreciate the pushback and I'll just tell you my thoughts here.
	Okay. So when she was three days old, was it possible for her to be naughty?
	No. No. When she was six months old, was it possible for her to be naughty?
	Yes. Six months.
	How was she naughty at six months?
	Um... I'm just trying to think of, like, what...
	So...
	She could crawl up to the dog and, like, pull on the dog's tail or act roughly with the dog, even though she was told not to, demonstrated how to touch the dog.
	So at six months, she has moral responsibility for not listening and disobeying and...
	I'm a little surprised.
	You could be right. I'm just six months pretty young.
	Yeah, I guess in those moments when I would have to correct her or redirect her or if she was doing something that she was told not to do, I would think to myself, why is she doing this again?
	Is this about attention?
	Is this her getting me to come over and to be in her space?
	Like, why would she do something that she was told she wasn't supposed to do?
	Because she's six months old.
	Right? Because she's six months old.
	If she could perfectly follow commandments and do sensible things, she'd be an adult.
	Well, she wouldn't even be most adults, right?
	Right? She's six months old.
	So she sees a dog.
	She's curious. And she just wants to get closer to the dog and figure something out, right?
	Okay. At three months, could she do something naughty?
	No. Okay. So somewhere for like five months, four months, somewhere between three months and six months, she gained moral responsibility.
	Is that right? What do you mean by moral responsibility?
	Well, that's why I say naughty, right?
	So if a, let's say you're house training a puppy, right?
	Or a cat or a kitten, right?
	It's not a moral fault if they poop in the hallway, right?
	Right. Right.
	It's not like you may say bad dog or whatever, but we don't sit there and say, it's a puppy, right?
	So, of course, it's going to take a while.
	It's going to take a while, right?
	And we don't generally ascribe moral responsibility to animals, right?
	Right. And at some point, though, children gain the capacity for what we think of as naughty.
	Like, they're disobeying, they're not listening, they're at fault for it in a way that we would never say to a dog, right?
	Like, if a dog doesn't come when we call the dog, we don't sit there and say, oh, that mean dog is willfully ignoring me and he's really bad.
	Like, we may get frustrated, but we don't really assign moral responsibility to the dog, if that makes sense.
	Sure. Oh, I see.
	Okay, right. Yeah. So, the moment that your daughter gains some sort of moral responsibility, that's when the negotiation has to start.
	Because otherwise, she has moral responsibility without any autonomy or authority whatsoever.
	And she can't have both.
	If she's just supposed to obey you, then she can't ever be naughty.
	Because she doesn't have her own moral choices.
	She's not part of her own...
	Not part of the rules that she's supposed to live under, right?
	Like if the government tomorrow passes a law that says...
	You have to slap your dog every day.
	That would just make up something, right?
	Well, the moral authority or the moral responsibility to a large degree passes to the government rather than like if some guy slaps his dog, he's a bad dog owner, right?
	This bad guy is hurting an animal.
	He's cruel, right?
	But if the government passes a law that nobody wants really that says you have to slap your dog every day, then, okay, some people will slap their dog.
	Some people will defy it and blah, blah, blah, right?
	But we don't sit there and say, well, that's exactly the same as some guy who voluntarily chooses to slap his dog.
	Because a rule has been imposed upon people that they did not participate in and don't want.
	So they're just reacting to that rule rather than making their own moral decisions.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.
	And so if your daughter wants the bar, it's because she doesn't understand that she shouldn't have it.
	And that, to me, is an opportunity to explain to your daughter why she shouldn't have the bar, why she shouldn't just go into other people's property, and to recognize that it's going to take a while for your daughter to really understand those rules, particularly now, since you've said since six months she's had this moral responsibility.
	So for 18 months, which is three quarters of her entire life, She's been morally responsible for rules she has no participation in.
	So it's going to take a bit of undoing, in my opinion.
	Again, if you want to do this, right?
	It's obviously completely up to you.
	But if you have moral...
	I don't know if you've ever had this in business or in a job, right?
	So whenever I was given...
	I say, oh, you're the team lead, right?
	Okay, can I fire people?
	No. Well, then I'm not really in charge.
	If I don't have responsibility, I'm not taking authority, right?
	Or rather, if I don't have authority, I'm not taking responsibility, right?
	You can't tell me to get the best work out of people if they know I can't fire them.
	Right? So I don't want...
	I would refuse to accept authority...
	A responsibility if it didn't come with authorities.
	They say, oh, well, you've got to get the team to produce this, whatever it is, in two weeks.
	It's like, okay, can I determine their salaries?
	Can I determine if they stay on their job?
	Can I replace them? Am I responsible for their performance reviews?
	No. Well, then give it to whoever is responsible for those things because that's their actual boss and they know that I have no authority over them, so whatever I'm going to say probably isn't going to mean very much, right?
	So you want to bring your daughter, if you've given her a year and a half of moral responsibility, but she doesn't really understand the rules, she doesn't know what they're for, and all she does is obey you.
	I'm not saying all she does, right?
	I know that there's more to it. I'm sort of boiling it down to where I think the most opportunity for growth is.
	But if all she does is obey you for rules that she doesn't agree with or understand or comprehend or know the purpose of, Then you are giving her moral responsibility for rules that you are creating and imposing on her without her understanding.
	I don't think that's super fair, if that makes sense.
	I think if a kid can't understand a rule, then I don't know how they could be responsible for following it because all that turns into is obedience, right?
	It's mom's decision. So then she's going to say, okay, well then if I can get away with stuff, I'll just get away with it because I don't agree with or understand these rules.
	In the same way, if you love your dog and the government says you have to hit your dog every day, you're going to be like, I'm not going to hit my dog because they're not going to catch me.
	You have no respect for the rules because you didn't participate in them.
	Is it so bad to have obedience?
	Well, it depends what you're looking for as a parent.
	Well, if my goal is...
	Do you as an adult, do you, and again, I know your daughter's not an adult, obviously, right?
	But do you as an adult like it when people negotiate with you or when they give you orders?
	I mean, it depends on the situation stuff, but if I don't have to do a lot of thinking, sometimes that's a relief to me.
	Can I be honest? In certain situations, yeah, I want to be part of the conversation.
	I want to negotiate. I want my...
	But you like being able to decide when that happens and when that doesn't, right?
	Which your daughter doesn't have the ability to do.
	Yeah. Right? So, as an adult, you wouldn't like it if the government told you who you had to marry.
	You wouldn't like it if the government told you what you had to do for a living or where you could go to school or what you had to take or anything like that.
	You wouldn't like that. You would like to have more choice, right?
	Now, for your daughter, here's the problem.
	If you train her in obedience at some point, you will have to train her to think for herself, to understand the rules and to negotiate, right?
	Because you don't want to deliver her up to adulthood with her just kind of dragging along saying, well, whatever people tell me to do, I'll do.
	And whatever people tell me not to do, I won't do.
	That would be pretty sad, right?
	So at some point, you're going to have to reverse course, right?
	Yeah, and I do think in those terms.
	I think, okay, well, once she has more language capacity, once there's more proof that I would be able to get through to her, I guess I think of these things happening at a later date.
	When? Because you've given her moral responsibility from the age of six months old, so when does it happen that you can negotiate with her?
	When's your plan? When she has more language skills, when she can speak in full sentences, when she can remember something that was spoken to her an hour ago, and then apply that to an hour later.
	But if she exists in such a flux, then you understand She's not morally responsible.
	Because if she can't remember things from one hour to the next, then you can't ever get frustrated with her for not remembering earlier instructions, right?
	But if you get frustrated with her for remembering earlier instructions or not remembering earlier instructions, then she's ready to negotiate.
	Because you already accept that she has that capacity, right?
	To listen, to understand rules, to agree to them, to obey them, and to remember the rules from one day to the next, right?
	So if she already has that in your mind, why can she not negotiate?
	I think because, well, I don't know.
	I don't have an answer to that. I guess maybe there's no good answer for that.
	Other than maybe you can give it a try.
	Right. And I intend to.
	I just don't know that I have the formula down.
	Sure you do. What are we doing right now?
	You and I are negotiating.
	What do you do with your husband all the time?
	You negotiate. What do you do with your friends?
	Where should we go tonight? What do you want to eat?
	Where do you want to see a movie? Whatever.
	Back when we could do those things, right?
	You negotiate all the time.
	You know exactly how to negotiate.
	I mean, you're doing a great job with me.
	I think I really respect and appreciate where you're coming from.
	And I hugely respect, you know, you standing for what you believe and being skeptical and fantastic, right?
	It's all a negotiation. You know exactly how to do this.
	It's like you saying to me, well, I don't know how to speak English after we just had our conversation in fluent English, right?
	I think what I mean is I don't know how to speak to her without imposing on her.
	I don't know how to... Do I just say, do you want to have snacks at this playdate?
	No, because that's a specific thing.
	A rule is not a specific thing.
	It's like saying...
	If you say to someone, there's a diet book that says, don't eat cheesecake tomorrow.
	Like, that's not a diet book, right?
	It's got to be some process. It's got to be something with references and rules.
	Like, you think of Weight Watchers, right?
	They have all these points. And you can have a certain amount of points, and exercise deducts the points.
	And, you know, there's rules for things.
	It's not like, just eat something tomorrow and then the day...
	Like, there's rules that you can...
	Work within. So with regards to food, there's a whole conversation because we all have a complicated relationship to food.
	I won't go over it in detail because I was talking about it with your husband earlier.
	So, look, we all want to eat stuff that's not good for us and we all want to avoid eating stuff that is good for us sometimes, right?
	And so be honest about that with your daughter.
	Like, yeah, you want a snack.
	You know, okay, so I asked your husband this, but what's your favorite food?
	Oh, me personally.
	Yeah. I have so many things.
	That's a lot, right? Cadbury chocolate?
	Yeah, like Cadbury chocolate.
	Oh, wait. Fruit and nut kind?
	Any brittle or just the plain straight stuff?
	Plain, straight, give it to me.
	Oh, man. Those are so good.
	I went to spend a summer in Newfoundland when I was in my mid-teens with a friend of my father's who was a marine biologist, and I used to go jogging with his collie dog every day, and then I'm doing all the health value of that jogging by picking up one of those Cadbury milk bars, like the seven pieces, the little tubes that look almost like little...
	Like shaved off at the top Toblerones or something like that.
	So good, man. They're so good.
	Or Laura Secord white chocolate.
	I could just drool with that in my cheek for an hour.
	Okay, so you would like to eat a lot of that, right?
	But you have to say no to yourself, right?
	Teeth and, you know, like there's this old comedian.
	The comedian would say... He's got a daughter, right?
	And he said, my daughter's capacity for joy vastly outstrips my own, because he said, my daughter, like, we're driving along, my daughter's just sitting there for 20 minutes smiling.
	And I say, what are you thinking about?
	She says, candy. Right?
	And he's like, I can't spend 20 minutes thinking about candy, because then I think candy.
	Oh, man, I haven't been to the dentist for a while.
	Oh, do I have a cavity? Oh, I think my waistline is getting bigger.
	Oh, man. You know, and he just can't enjoy thinking, I can't even do any minutes because all the adult consequences of that accrues to him, right?
	So, with regards to your daughter and food, you know, we can't eat everything we want to.
	I'd love to. It would be great if we could.
	But we can't. And here's why.
	And you go into sort of the explanation.
	And what I've said before is like, there's stuff your tongue loves and your body doesn't love.
	In fact, your body doesn't like it.
	Like your tongue loves sugar. Your body does not like sugar.
	Right? Your tongue doesn't like broccoli.
	Your body loves broccoli.
	Right? So there's this war between the tongue and the tummy.
	That's what I used to say with my daughter.
	The tongue and the tummy. And the tongue and the tummy are kind of at war.
	And if the tongue wins, you lose your teeth, you get fat, and you die.
	Well, you don't have to necessarily get into the mortality of it, right?
	And if your tummy wins, you kind of drag yourself through life not enjoying anything you eat.
	So it's not like you live forever.
	It just feels like forever, right?
	So we have to have this balance.
	So we have to have stuff that tastes good, So that we enjoy our life, but we also have to have stuff that's good for us, and it's complicated, and it's a balance, right?
	So again, you can sort of get into the tongue and the tummy is sort of the war, and you can do this with a diagram and all of that, right?
	And so getting her to understand that her desire for cream, her desire for sugar, her desire for the bar that was in your purse, everybody has it.
	You have it, your dad has it, I have it.
	We all want to eat things in the moment, but we can't.
	We can't. And it's our job to make sure you get to adulthood as a healthy person.
	We can't say yes.
	But if it's any consolation, you can say, I said this to my daughter, I say no to myself a lot more than I say no to you.
	Because I want to eat candy all day too, right?
	Yeah. So it's a human condition.
	We're all in this together.
	It's not like you're just imposing your nasty mom will on her because you're mean.
	It's like, this is a human condition.
	We all want to eat sugar and fat all day.
	But we can't. You know, it's annoying sometimes, but it's a human condition, right?
	Like, not many people want to go to exercise, but you kind of got to keep your bones strong and you don't get a crap, right?
	So, you know, you're a team.
	We're all in this together. I say this to my daughter, like, we're all in this together.
	She's like, oh, I don't want to get off the couch.
	It's like, come on, let's go and exercise.
	Let's go ride a bike or something.
	It's like, I don't really feel like it either, but, you know, let's just do it because it's good for us, right?
	I don't want to... Yeah, I grumble about it too because we all have that.
	We all grumble about the things that we can't eat and the things we have to eat and the exercise and the, you know, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, yeah, wait till you get older.
	You learn about taxes. It's a whole other pain point, right?
	So it's the...
	You're in this together.
	You're both a team because you both want to eat things that aren't good for you, as do I, as do your husband.
	It's not something that should divide you.
	It's something that you should empathize with each other.
	So when you're at the checkout counter and she looks at all that candy and she's like, oh, I want candy.
	It's like, man, I'd love to eat that whole row.
	You know what? This is what I'd like to do.
	I'd like to take all these vegetables, put them in a cannon, and fire them deep into the heart of Russia, and then stick my face in that Toblerone and never come up for air.
	Because who wouldn't, right?
	That would be great. I'm going to sit all day with Cheetos on my belly and write books.
	It'd be lovely, right? It just would not be good for me.
	I wouldn't last very long. These are things instead of like just an authority figure, no, you can't have this and just mommy's choice and all that, which doesn't teach her anything about the human condition and the challenges of self-control.
	Yeah. I want to eat that too.
	And you have these conversations before she's grabbing for something in your purse.
	Do the conversations apply across issues like she wants to be held probably 80% of the day?
	Yeah. And I have to, for safety reasons mostly, put her down sometimes and it's a lot of crying and yelling and up, up, up, up.
	Is it the same conversation I should be having with those kinds of things too where, you know, I know you want mom to hold you most of the day but Okay, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and take a wild stab at this, right? So I could be completely wrong and toss it aside if I am.
	Okay, so it's tough to remember two, but I'll tell you what two.
	I remember this very well.
	So this is what...
	Okay, so two, the world sucks for two-year-olds.
	Everything's too big. Everything's too high up.
	All you get to do is like when I took my daughter to a sort of summer theme park once and...
	You know, at the end of the day, she's like, man, that's a lot of butts.
	It's true. I think she was six or seven or five.
	So she's just at butt height, right?
	So what does she see? She eats bulk buckets, and it was in America, so it was big butts, right?
	And I said, no, no, no, the correct word is donkey, which is our synonym for ass.
	But anyway, so, yeah, it sucks.
	You see all the candies at eye level, and you can't buy it.
	All the stuff you want to eat, you're told you can't have.
	All the toys, you go to the mall and you see all these toys and you want to grab them all, and you can't.
	You get all of this temptation flying in your face all the time.
	And you're constantly told, no, no, no.
	And you want to reach stuff, but you can't get there.
	And you want to, yeah, you want to start a fire, but you're not allowed.
	And you want to cook, but you're not allowed.
	Like, it's just no, no, no.
	Everything's too big. Everything's too big all the time.
	So why does she want to be in your arms?
	Because when she's in your arms, the world is actually a correct proportion to her.
	If you can imagine, listen, go down.
	There's an old Paul Reiser comedy with Helen Hunt, Mad About You.
	Anyway, so the dog is lying with his face on the ground, right?
	And Paul Reiser, I can't remember, he's down there with his face on the ground, and he's like, wow, this is really low.
	How do you do this all day?
	Well, it's kind of true.
	Like, try going down to your daughter's height.
	I remember walking around like the tops of the doorways.
	They look like the top of a cathedral.
	Everything's so high. And you know there's all this cool stuff in the house that's fun to play with.
	Sparklers and fire and fun to eat.
	But you can't get there.
	So it's frustrating.
	And so when she's in your arms...
	The world is of a better proportion.
	She's gained some sort of artificial height.
	So I would try to understand what her frustrations are.
	And you might be surprised.
	Maybe it takes some drawing. Maybe it takes some storytelling.
	Maybe it takes some little puppets or whatever it is, right?
	But you might be surprised at how much she's able to communicate about all the limitations that she feels and the frustration that she has about a world that is designed for Everyone but her size, right?
	And even in terms of control over her own body, there's stuff that she wants to do.
	She wants to paint a really, really pretty picture, and out comes some lollipop human holding a balloon that looks like nothing, right?
	I mean, the translation between what goes on in her head and what she's able to achieve in the world.
	You know, all the kids think that they're Karen Caine, a ballerina, when they dance, and if you ever play it back to them, they look like wounded trees staggering across a drunken landscape, right?
	And we all have this, right?
	Like, you know, we all sit there and sing along to the radio, and then Bruno Mars comes on, and we're like, oh, man, that's why he gets paid a lot, and I'm in podcasting.
	Right? So there's probably some amount of frustration that's going on and there also may be, of course, that every time she says, like, she gets a hard no and it's mommy's decision and you just can't and no reason, she may feel that the bond is not as secure as it should be with you because, as I said to your husband, if you just...
	Get a no for no reason.
	It feels like aggression, like you're mad at her.
	And so she also may want to be in your arms because she's concerned that you're mad at her more than you are, right?
	So those two things has probably got something.
	My daughter was very much a lap cat as well, as far as all of that went.
	And that began to diminish when she was more mobile herself.
	So I knew it was around frustration of wanting to...
	She would fly me like a plane, right?
	So when she was a little baby...
	She'd be sitting in my lap. She'd reach for things and I'd pick her up and I'd take her over to whatever she wanted on the shelf and then she'd reach for something on the other side of the room and she'd want to go look at this picture.
	So she basically was expertly flying me like a tiny little pilot to get around, to get to see what she wanted to see and to do what she wanted to do, which was, once I understood that, of course, I just made airplane noises and enjoyed it.
	But... So, yeah, there's a lot of limitations in the world of a child.
	And again, she also with the no, no, no, because you have to kind of be harsh with that stuff to get her attention, to keep her reined in.
	But she may be experiencing that as a rejection or an anger that...
	It's not what you're feeling because you're being a good mom and all of that, which I completely understand where you're coming from.
	And so that may be another reason why, again, the best thing to do is, you know, just stay as much in conversation with her as humanly possible until you can figure out what's driving that.
	Look for patterns and all of that.
	Because, listen, as parents, we all have the same feeling, right?
	The same feeling is one of two things.
	Either if I give my child what she wants, she will become satisfied, like you feed your child and she gets full.
	Or, if I give my child what she wants, I'm creating a bottomless well of need that even the entire universe can't fill.
	Right? That's the two poles we face, right?
	And it's really like, is she a hamster like they eat till they're full or is she a goldfish they eat till they explode and die?
	Right? I mean, am I creating bottomless need or am I fulfilling legitimate requirements?
	And, you know, that's kind of tough.
	The more that you feel the need is bottomless, the more it probably has to do with frustration and insecurity.
	Right? And holding her probably isn't going to solve those problems.
	And yeah, I mean, I get it. I mean, I know the back thing too.
	I remember taking my daughter through parks and she wanted to be held all the time to the point where my arm hurt for a couple of months because it's hard.
	And she didn't even want to get into a stroller.
	So yeah, it was tough.
	And she grew out of it and I worked really hard to give her as much autonomy as possible to let her make her own decisions about it.
	Things and to have her understand the rules.
	And as she gained more autonomy, she didn't want to be carried as much.
	So again, this is another reason why I'm saying, you know, try and give her as much participation, negotiation, so that she's more in control of her own environment.
	Because in a sense, by just saying no to her or not giving her a sense of why the rules are there, you're kind of keeping her in a state of infancy, if that makes sense.
	And then she may be more...
	I'm liable to want to be carried as she was as an infant.
	In other words, if you're not allowing her, in a sense, to grow up and start negotiating, then the fact that she's staying in a state of infancy with regards to being held might not be totally unsurprising, if that makes sense.
	That's a really good point.
	Sorry, I just bummed out of the server, but I'm back.
	I'm back. You're back. At least it reconnects quickly.
	Can you still hear us?
	Yeah, I can hear you fine.
	I know we've had a good old chat.
	Is she in your lap right now?
	No, she's peacefully asleep.
	Well, you can be happy about that because my daughter never wanted to go to bed before 11.
	So it's always been a crazy night owl as far as that goes.
	But I can only look in the mirror to blame her for that.
	So I can't really get too mad at that.
	But is there anything else you wanted to ask?
	I mean, I know these are big topics.
	And again, I put all of this, it's all hypothesis.
	It's all conjecture because I don't know your daughter.
	And even if I did, I'd probably still be wrong.
	But these are just thoughts that I had based on the question as a whole.
	Yeah, no, it is time to start with this, obviously, yesterday.
	But you know the vagaries of a two-year-old.
	Like, the other day she argued with us because she had a pair of pajamas ready to go, and then she had them all on, and then she needed the other pair.
	Boy, did she need that other pair of pajamas.
	And if we were going to give them to her, we were going to have to pay for that.
	And we did. And we sat there and we said, no, these were the ones you chose.
	You chose these ones.
	We chose these pajamas, so we're going to keep these ones on.
	Ah, but you see, now I'm talking, that's not a negotiation quite as yet.
	So what I would say is, how do we handle things as a family if you change your mind?
	See, that's the bigger negotiation.
	Okay. Because this only deals with this situation.
	You want to get your rules as wide as humanly possible to deal with as many situations as humanly possible.
	What do we do?
	So you wanted something, now you've changed your mind.
	Okay. So what do we do as a family if someone changes their mind?
	Like if we say, oh, we're going to go to the park and then we change your mind, is that okay?
	Like what do I don't know? And you don't know the answer exactly to that as yet because she's part of the negotiation, right?
	So rather than have a conversation about the pajamas, have a conversation about what happens when people change their minds.
	Because the pajama thing will solve the pajamas that night, but it won't solve whatever she changes her mind about next, right?
	You've got to have as big a, as wide a set of rules as possible, right?
	And also, how many times were people allowed to change their minds?
	Like, what if you want to change your mind about pajamas 150 times?
	I know, right. That's a serious question, right?
	She's going to say that's too much, right?
	So that's getting her...
	It's 150 times too much?
	Well, yeah. Okay, is once allowed?
	You can change your mind once?
	Okay, but is there like, where do we say, no, you can't change your mind anymore?
	And you can say this to us too, right?
	Let's say we keep changing our mind about what we want to do.
	At some point, you're going to get annoyed with us and we've got to have some limit on how many times we can change people, like we can change our minds, right?
	So having conversations about that gives you something to refer to when she changes her mind about something else.
	Because now you're in a, oh, change your mind conversation rather than just a pajamas conversation, if that makes sense.
	Right, it does.
	So there are no times, do you think there are any times when your will has to prevail?
	And in the moment, you have to say, no, this is my decision?
	Well, here's the thing, right?
	Do you think that there are no places for that?
	Now, here's the thing about it. Now, what you're doing is you're giving, you're trying to get an escape hatch right into the negotiation in the beginning.
	Okay, so here's the thing.
	I have never said to myself that there's no situation upon which my will won't prevail, but I will consider it a big failure on my part if I have to resort to that, and so far I haven't had to.
	So, yeah, of course, listen, you know, the old, your kids running into traffic, you tackle them on the ground, whatever it is, what have you got to say to stop them, right?
	But... In general, you want to avoid those situations, prevent them as much as possible, right?
	So I've never said to myself, well, I am forbidden from imposing my will, right?
	Well, no, that's fine, right?
	It's possible, but if I think that it's okay, I'll go to that by default.
	And if I think to myself, okay, that's like a last-ditch five-alarm fire emergency pull-the-cord thing, right?
	I'll pull the fire emergency handle, right?
	So what you're saying to me is, okay, can I do this, right?
	Okay, but if I say yes, which you can, of course, you can do whatever you want, but if I say yes, then you were like, okay, good.
	Well, I'll do some negotiation, but basically I still have the option to impose my will.
	But that's going to affect your negotiation.
	So what I do is I parent like that's never going to happen.
	Now, of course, it could happen. I don't know.
	I can't imagine, but it could, right?
	So, but if you parent like that's not an option, then you will be Much more creative as a parent.
	Because if you say, okay, I'm not going to impose my will, so how am I going to get something done here without imposing my will?
	Well, that's going to make you a whole lot more creative, right?
	I'll give you a silly example.
	This is very much an exaggeration, but it's, I think, for effect, right?
	So, let's say you're some guy...
	Oh, no. I'm talking to the wife here, right?
	So, I'm sorry. I'm just referring to you without your names.
	So, let's say before you met your wonderful husband, father of your children, the love of your life, there was some cute guy that you wanted to either ask him out or...
	Were you going to ask out the guys or were you trying to get the guys to ask you out?
	No, I... They probably asked me out.
	I wouldn't have... Okay, so you're more of a Venus flytrap kind of girl, right?
	Okay. All sweet and a clam, right?
	No, that's fine. That's fine. That's good.
	Now, if you're like, I really want this guy to go on a date with me or whatever, right?
	And listen, I don't want to hold up chloroform to his face and throw him in the back of my car.
	I don't want to. Clearly, it's on the table, right?
	But I don't want to do that, right?
	Now, if it's not even remotely on the table that you're going to gas him and throw him in the back of your car, then you're going to have to put more makeup up and buy a push-up bra, you know, become even more charming and whatever, right?
	Like, you're going to have to find some way to attract him because you can't brute force him.
	Does that make sense? Right.
	So, you know, to take another unpleasant example, the man does not write a poem to the hooker.
	Because he's paying for it, right?
	So in a sense, he's kind of brute forcing her with money, and so he doesn't have to woo her.
	So the more you take brute force out of the equation, I don't mean violence here, I just mean brute force of will, the more you take that out of the equation, the more creative you are going to end up being in trying to solve these problems.
	So for me, it's like, I'm not going to punish my child.
	I'm not going to punish my child, because all that shows her is that I'm bigger and stronger, and so she already knows that.
	Who cares, right? And so for me, it's like, okay, man, I really wanted to do this, I really don't want to do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Okay, but if I don't have the brute force option, then I end up being much more creative in my problem solving.
	In the same way that if you're just going to get a check from a government, you don't have to be a very good employee, but if you need a job, then you have to be more creative and learn skills.
	And, like, the creativity opens up When the brute force option is off the table, right?
	I mean, I'm sure you don't, with your husband, if you want something, you don't just like, I'm going to chloroform you and throw you in the back of a truck.
	Try and find some way to get what you want without the brute force option, right?
	Now, with your daughter, if you say, okay, well, what if I don't have the option to punish her?
	What if I don't have the option to impose my will on her?
	What if I don't have the option to just be bigger and stronger?
	How am I going to get her to do what...
	I want. And how am I going to even know that that's the right thing?
	Right? Because if I get her to do what I want, but she doesn't internalize any of that.
	I mean, I don't know if you guys knew this.
	You always know these kinds of kids who go to college or whatever.
	Now, when I went to college, people were like really shocked because I'm like, no, I'm not going out drinking.
	No, I got an essay due in a month.
	I remember some girl asked me out and I'm like, I already kind of got an essay due in two weeks.
	And she thought I was totally blowing her off because she didn't know anyone who would start an essay two weeks ahead of time.
	I'm like... Man, I just spent 18 months in a cabin in a tent up north, freezing my ass off, gold panning and prospecting.
	I'm so happy to be here.
	I'm just going to get my money's worth, right?
	So I was really, really keen on doing all that kind of stuff.
	And that's because I've been paying my own bills since I was 15 years old.
	Now, that's not the right thing to do.
	It's a little bit young, but...
	It really had me appreciate all these kinds of wonderful things.
	But all the other kids whose parents had been hovering and helicoptering and telling them what to do and forbidding them to do this, the moment they went to college, they went insane.
	Because they'd never internalized any of these rules.
	And these are the people who got really drunk, who got into compromising situations, who got STDs, who gained the frosh 15 because it's like, wow, I get to finally eat whatever I want and mom's not telling me what to eat and they just gained weight.
	And they had not internalized any values.
	They had simply been conforming to teachers and parents and maybe priests or whatever.
	And so when they went to university and nobody was telling them what to do, they just went hog wild.
	Now again, most of them eventually would write themselves, but it was really a tough passage and some of them really didn't write themselves and it went pretty badly from there.
	The important thing is not to have your daughter, quote, do the right thing.
	The important thing is for her to internalize the values that will give her the golden cup of self-restraint going forward in her life as a whole.
	And so that's the big challenge.
	How do I get my daughter to do what I want her to do without the brute force option?
	And I would say just take the brute force option off the table.
	Now, of course, if she's running towards traffic, I may not have to tell you anything like that, right?
	But the whole point is, of course, if the brute force option is off the table, then you'll stay in a situation where she's not going to be around traffic she could run towards without knowing what's going on, right?
	Because if the brute force option is off the table, you've got to sit there with your kid and explain about traffic and cars and fatality and death and, you know, all that kind of stuff or maybe not death when they're too young or whatever, right?
	But if...
	If the brute force option is off the table, then you have a much more creative and enjoyable set of parenting skills to develop.
	In the same way that, you know, you don't pull out a knife with your husband when you want to buy something and he's hesitant about it, right?
	You let me buy this dress or I will cut you, right?
	I mean, that's just not how things work.
	So you try and find a way to negotiate and that's where you want to grow your child towards.
	And the brute force option tends to limit your commitment to creative solutions to it if it's on the table, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does.
	What if I couldn't force her at all?
	What if I couldn't force her and I couldn't punish her?
	How am I going to motivate her?
	How am I going to guide her?
	How am I going to mentor her if I can't force her to do anything?
	It's tricky, but man, is it great.
	It's sort of like, you know, I mean, again, another extreme example.
	It's the old thing like, well, if we free the slaves, who's going to pick the cotton?
	It turns out it's way better, you know?
	If we don't have the brute force option, we tend to get some very cool things in society.
	You know, when your elders don't choose who you get to get married to, well, okay, there's two arguments about that.
	But anyway. But yeah, so generally, the more in your relationships, in your personal relationships, you can take aggression off the table...
	I think the better those relationships will be in the long run for sure.
	Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.
	All right. Look at that.
	Thank you. Hey, you're welcome.
	And listen, thank you. I was very, very glad that you dropped into the conversation.
	And I'm sorry that we completely elbowed your husband aside.
	But given that you're the primary care...
	I know he works from home. But given that you're the primary caregiver, you're the person I needed to talk to most.
	So I hope that...
	Well, sounds like it was helpful.
	Yeah. And I think...
	Thank you for allowing all of your listeners and callers to challenge things that you say.
	Because I think that that's really the only way to...
	Because I'm sure there are people listening who will say, what?
	Negotiate with a two-year-old?
	No. You know what I mean?
	You would be one of them. Well, right?
	Because I think that... Right.
	Well, yeah.
	Without going over all of our conversation, but...
	But I'm open to anything. She deserves the best.
	I'm committed to giving it to her.
	She is incredibly lucky to have you.
	I really want to be clear about that.
	She is incredibly lucky to have you guys.
	It's incredibly moving to me.
	It's a beautiful thing that you guys are thinking along these lines, that you're interested, that you're curious.
	Massive, massive congratulations to you guys.
	It is... A beautiful thing that you're even considering this, because I don't want to leave you with any impression that I think that you're anything other than amazing parents.
	This is a tweak in the right direction.
	What you guys are doing already and what you're committed to already is so amazing that I feel deeply honored that you would even consider these ideas, and I really, really do appreciate the conversation.
	Likewise. All right.
	All right. Thank you so much. Well, I know we talked about a little crypto thing, but we won't.
	We won't. We'll set that up, perhaps, for next week.
	But, yeah, thanks, everyone, so much for listening and for being involved in this conversation.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from FreeDomain, freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	Hugely, massively, deeply appreciated in these troubled times.
	Your support is absolutely wonderful.
	And gratefully accepted.
	So thanks everyone so much.
	Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful week.
	Lots of love from me.
	I will talk to you soon.
	Bye.
	Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
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