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Oct. 20, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:34:11

A+ Parenting: IZZY SCHOOLS DADS!

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	Well, obviously I appreciate the invitation.
	I'm still in the middle.
	It's great to see so many people here.
	Thank you. Thank you so much.
	I mean, here I am talking like I'm running the meeting or something, which I'm not.
	But I just wanted to...
	Say hi. And we're here, of course, I'm here as a dad.
	I assume we've got lots of dads here too.
	I can't tell from the chest down whether we've got a lot of dad bots here, but let's just take off our shirts and find out.
	But yeah, if you guys have questions or comments about parenting, fatherhood, we could...
	Oh, there we go. Lance is showing it off.
	Lance is working it. All right.
	That's what it is. That's what it is.
	Yeah, I have long sleeves, so nobody can see my...
	We have a lot of guys here, so I did have a few questions beforehand that the guys submitted.
	Sounds good. We could run through them, and then we can go around and see if anybody has something they want to ask you.
	And again, man, I appreciate you coming on here.
	This is great. Yeah, it's really fun.
	Can you smidge in a little bit closer just to the mic here?
	I can just move this over a little bit as well.
	Okay, I will be...
	Yeah, just in case you want independent verification from the halfling set.
	Could you guys hear her okay?
	I'm a pretty loud talker, so I can't get on properly.
	Okay, sorry, Anthony, go ahead. No, that's okay.
	All right, so the first question was from Josh, and he said, what advice...
	He asked, what advice can you give to help someone change their parenting style?
	Oh, um... Is Josh on the call here?
	He is. Where are you, Josh?
	Which one of these handsome hunkasauruses is you?
	This is the main one right here.
	Oh, there you are. There you go.
	Okay, okay. So I guess my question is, what do you mean by parenting style, first and foremost?
	Well, you know, a lot of the guys...
	You know, we have conversations with other parents, and we're trying to go down the peaceful parent path, and we have a lot of other people in our lives, neighbors, friends that, you know, we see that, like, want some advice and kind of floundering in the steps that it takes to get from more authoritarian, more disciplined-first type style.
	It kind of, like, feels like letting go of power to them.
	Right. Right, like, how's the kid going to respect me if they're not...
	Right, the world has consequences.
	How do I have to give them consequences to prepare for the world?
	All that kind of mentality.
	Right, right. No, I mean, listen, I mean, we're all raised a particular way, and there is this kind of...
	Hyper macho, chest beating, you gotta be the man, you gotta have authority, you know, like it's such a major self-improvement for the boot camp called Childhood and all of that.
	And I guess to get Izzy involved in this, I mean...
	When it comes to something like, so what would it be for you if I came home and said, okay, I'm changing up my style here.
	We're now going to go with timeouts, groundings, taking away things that you like, and there's going to be a lot of punishment, and spanking might be on the table, and all that kind of stuff.
	I mean, what would that be like?
	I'd be like, how about no?
	I personally would not like that at all.
	I'm not sure who would.
	Well, I don't think anyone would like it if the boss came in and said, all right, I've had enough with races.
	I've had enough with any of this kind of stuff.
	It's going to be... You've got to get it if you can't.
	Yeah, I'm just going to backhand you across the face.
	Karate chops, backhands across the face if the PowerPoint isn't up to scratch.
	Take away your phones and offices if you don't do it correctly.
	Yeah, because, I mean, it's kind of funny, right?
	I mean, we aim to prepare our lives.
	We aim to prepare our children for lives where violence, coercion is usually not...
	The best way to go. Well, no, it doesn't really happen.
	I mean, there's obviously no physical violence in the workforce, unless you're in the military or whatever, right?
	But we aim to get our kids into a situation where hopefully they'll have good jobs.
	Now, good jobs usually means decent bosses or at least bosses that aren't like screaming at you.
	You know, like if you work in a restaurant, I don't know if anyone here has worked in a restaurant.
	I'm sure you have.
	But, you know, if you work in a restaurant, you get those veins and the pulsing cling on like people yelling and screaming and all of that.
	Like Gordon Ramsay style.
	You remember that blonde guy?
	He was on the fill your guts or spill your guts.
	Yeah, he's a real screamer and he can be.
	Oh, do you remember?
	So there's a meme, this guy.
	I've never watched an actual show, but there's a meme of the guy.
	You'll know the words, right?
	He's got two pieces of bread on either side of a woman's face.
	And he says, what are you?
	And she says, do you remember?
	I don't actually remember this one.
	So, what are you?
	An idiot sandwich. So that guy, he's mean.
	And that's one of the more funny ones.
	But we don't want our kids to sort of grow up and be in a situation where people are yelling at them, people are threatening them, they're screaming at them, they're humiliating them.
	We want that behavior to be kind of foreign.
	And we have this idea, like, you know how, mom, when you go and play in the dirt, and when you were younger, you'd eat some dirt, and I'd be like, cool.
	One day, I was just outside, and I'm like, you know, worms live in this.
	I'm sure they try and eat this at some point.
	What does it taste like? And I'm like, actually, that doesn't taste very good.
	Yeah, so for me, it's like, okay, so you want your immune system to be working, so if you completely bubble wrap the kids, then they get allergic to everything, and they've got to have weird barn villain hairless cats when they get older and creepy stuff like that, so you don't want any of that kind of stuff, right?
	So there's this weird belief that's out there, which is like, well, you're screaming at, yelling at, calling your kids names, maybe hitting them, that that's going to...
	Prepare them or inoculate them for that, right?
	Well, the thing is, it's like with adults, if you hit an adult, if one adult hits the other, they'd get fined, sued.
	If it's bad enough, they could go to jail.
	Or all three of them. But with kids, sometimes it's like, yeah, this is the way to go.
	You can hit your kid if they don't do something correct.
	But if you did that with adults, it would just be really wrong and things would go badly.
	You'd get sued, put in prison like what I listed before.
	And so I think that the moral of the story is, you know, like aim towards the peaceful stuff, the reasonable stuff, the negotiating stuff.
	So that's what they're used to. Now, I will give you an example about how this is taken, just from this week, from a game that you were in where someone, heaven help them, tried to tell you what to do.
	I will say the game actually.
	It's called Among Us.
	I think it's been around for like two years and just got popular now.
	And I ended up coming across this app and I decided to install it because you know I'm always looking for some multiplayer games.
	I like those. So I installed this app and there's like these little hats you can add onto your character.
	So I joined the server. And the leader said, put on a hat or we'll kick you.
	No, did he say that right away?
	No, he said, put on a party hat.
	Put on a party hat, right? Not a would you, could you, would you mind, but put on.
	He gave an order. And I said, I was being polite, and I said, actually, I like to be playing things, right?
	I don't like wearing any of this stuff.
	And then someone said, just put it on, right?
	That's taking it up, right?
	Taking it up a notch. Put on the hat.
	Just put it on. I will do things.
	Any of you, if you guys ever meet me and want me to do something, if you ask politely, I'll be like, yeah, sure.
	If you tell me, I will not budge.
	So what happened was is then he said, It went up another notch, right?
	I just said, no. I'm not putting anything on.
	And then a whole bunch of people just, how hard is it?
	And then someone, it got like a...
	Just wear the hat! So I got aggressive and he just said in all caps, just put on the hat.
	And I was like, absolutely no way.
	I don't want to be...
	And then he said, put it on or we'll ban you.
	And I said, I actually don't want to be in a game with loser bullies like you.
	And then I accidentally... So, you know, I think that Yeah, so, like, there's a kind of resistance that you get, like, with muscles and with your immune system where, you know, you get exposed to something that's kind of negative, whether it's muscle tension or germs or whatever, and you get stronger, right?
	But there's other things that just make you weaker, right?
	And I think that, you know, yelling at your kids and stuff like that, I don't think anyone here is doing that, but, you know, to sort of give you the carrot out of that way is that I had no involvement with this, is he was, you know, online and, you know, people were...
	I didn't really know about the game yet. So I don't really, if I get a game, I don't really tell you guys because most games I get, I have them for like a day and then I uninstall them.
	But I typically have them for a couple days and then I'll be like, hey, I got this game a few days ago.
	So yeah, she's facing like a dozen people all telling her to do something and not providing any, six people, sorry, half a dozen people all telling her to do something.
	How hard is it? Just do it and it's easy and all that.
	And it's like, no, no.
	If someone had just said, will you please put it on, and I said, I like it plain, and then they asked one more time politely, even more politely maybe, like, something like, well, maybe just for this one game, right?
	Right. Just because it's, like, someone's birthday or something, and we just really want everyone to wear a party hat, because since he can't really see any of his friends, I'd be like, okay, well, I'll wear it for this game, because you guys asked politely.
	Right. But when they start getting, like, aggressive, like, all caps yelling, I'd be like, there's absolutely no way I'm giving it now!
	Yeah. Right, because it would be like if somebody gives you an instruction in fluent Japanese and you don't speak Japanese, you'd be like, I'm sorry, I don't speak this language.
	So when they speak the language of aggression and non-negotiation, it's just like, nope, don't speak this language.
	I mean, they banned you permanently, right?
	Oh yeah, I can never play.
	You can never go back to these people.
	These poor people.
	That's good, right? I always want to play with them.
	I'm jealous. That's what you want, right?
	You want her to be... If there are bullies around, you want your kids to stand their ground and then not be pressured with fears of ostracism.
	And, of course, this is assuming we don't all get booted from the Zoom call before the end of it.
	But, yeah, so that behavior where you stand up for yourself, you push back, and if they threaten you with ostracism, you're like, you can't fire me, I quit!
	I don't want to be in with people like you, and I was about to quit, and then they're like, you've been banned from this server.
	Yeah. And this was not a traumatic...
	It wasn't traumatic or anything like that.
	No, I was actually kind of like half...
	I think that's the day I told you about it because I wanted to tell you about this funny experience.
	And I'm like... I actually had it with another one, too.
	I got banned before I even said, like, two sentences.
	That's right. No thanks, I said.
	And then he was like... I was about to say, anyways, I don't want to be in-game like you.
	And then I just posted that. I was about to post the last word because I didn't quite take it in the typing.
	And I was banned before I could even say it.
	So the moral of the story, of course, is...
	All Molyneux get banned all the time.
	That is clearly a family tradition.
	Where haven't the Molyneux been banned?
	Well, Zoom, so far.
	I've booked Discord. No, this is Zoom.
	Okay. Also, I actually remember the two hosts of these server's names, gamer names, so if they ever come into my server, I will say, and I'll put it in quotes too, wear the party hat or you're banned.
	Anyone remember this? And if he says, yes, I'm like, wear nothing or you're banned, and then I just ban him before he can say anything.
	Yeah, and... We did a...
	So, on the Discord server, we have a Minecraft server, which Izzy plays and introduced me to.
	Yeah. And I will get to another question.
	I just want to keep this real brief. But, you know, when you teach your kids something, having them just watch you do something is not very helpful.
	I mean, it's fine to demonstrate it or whatever.
	Like, you know, if you want to hammer a nail and, okay, here's how you do it.
	But the kid's got to pick up the hammer and hammer the nail, right?
	And so you want them to do what you are modeling.
	And if you're really authoritarian, then they'll see you being authoritarian.
	They'll see you being kind of, quote, bossy or being in charge or whatever it is, which, you know, may be helpful in certain situations.
	But they also have to have that capacity.
	And we did, I don't know if you guys know anything about Minecraft, but there's this thing because the Ender Dragon, Ender Dragon, sort of the end of the game, right?
	And there were like, I don't know, 12 or 13 people.
	Yeah, a whole bunch of people. It was really cool. Yeah, yeah, and we were all planning this.
	Now, Izzy had some experience, and Izzy, you know, do you remember you stood up on the...
	A lot of people were way more experienced than I was, but I remember...
	You had a plan. Yeah, I marked down a whole plan, and I took advice from the listeners, I think.
	No, but you spoke your plan, you asked for feedback, and you were in charge of that expedition, right?
	Yeah, and what we did, it worked out perfectly.
	I actually think I got the winning shot, because I was at, like, level 53 afterwards.
	But it was mainly everyone else who did it, but I think I just happened to be the last person who hacked it with the sword.
	It was actually really cool, and then I think I gave some of my items to other people, until I died.
	Yeah. So she's seen me do some leadership stuff and all of that.
	But the important thing is to have her do the leadership stuff.
	And if it's really authoritarian as a dad, you're not giving them the chance to, you know, hey, watch dad ride a bike.
	I'm sure you'll learn how to ride a bike.
	It's like, no, I really won't, you know?
	You were like helping my bike kind of holding on to the steering wheel so that I didn't follow the gravel and stuff like that.
	Yeah, for sure. And also when I was a – I do a bit of a drawing like on a computer and stuff now.
	A bit. Yeah. A lot. I mean, whenever I do draw, it's really on the computer now.
	But I remember teaching him how to do it, and it wasn't just like I show him and like, you do it.
	I was like, no, that's not.
	And then I kind of like helped by showing you, and then you kind of copied over the line, and then we just undid both, and then you did it.
	And we've done this sort of one, two, three thing in terms of like the knowledge transfer.
	So originally I was reading her stories, right?
	And then we did the story participation game called, we call it role playing.
	It's like Dungeons and Dragons, but you're just telling stories, right?
	And now you've graduated.
	We're still doing the Dungeons and Dragons stuff, but you've graduated to now creating and telling your own stories through animation, right?
	Yes, well, use an app.
	I'm not going to actually say anything because I'm going to post these when I become 13.
	I am going to use YouTube, unfortunately, just because it's basically...
	You know this! It's basically the most used video app, so that's why...
	Yeah, please tell me about how valuable YouTube is.
	It's great for me. Off you go.
	Okay, fine. I'm back. I'm good.
	I'm not going to mention any of the stories, Julie, because I want to be completely anonymous.
	And no spoilers. And no spoilers, of course, in case you do ever come across.
	But I use an app. It has a lot of downloads.
	And I'm making videos.
	Okay, the only one thing I'm going to say is...
	I'm sure there are other videos like this out there.
	But it's one about...
	Stopping any type of child abuse or peaceful parenting and the fact that kids are basically forced into prison for six hours a day.
	AKA schools, yeah.
	But it's about a group of teens who end up doing that.
	But I'm not going to say any more because you guys don't need to know because I'm staying anonymous.
	So yeah, just trying to transfer as much.
	And the more authoritarian you are, the more it's like watch daddy ride the bike rather than get on the bike and ride it.
	So you want them to manifest what it is that's going to help them succeed in the world, and that's the goal.
	So sorry, that was a long answer.
	I promise I'll be shorter on the next one.
	Sure you will. Will I keep my promise?
	He's very good at being short.
	He's very good. I'm actually just waiting for the fly to...
	You know, if I was the vice president, I'd have felt that fly.
	Yeah, all right, all right. Let's listen to Anthony.
	They've heard me for the last year and a half pretty much say all of that.
	So a lot of these guys are in tune with school parenting.
	So the next question we have is from Ken.
	And he asks, how do I motivate a 15-year-old son that sleeps all day, dropped out of school, and has no ambition?
	Is that Ken Kenneth?
	All right. How you doing, man?
	Doing alright. How you doing?
	Good, good. Can you give me a bit of history of your son?
	What's the story? Yeah, I can give you a little bit of history.
	I am one of those restaurant owners, just so you know.
	So, there is a little bit of authoritativeness at work.
	Now I feel really bad.
	Sorry, crap. Now I feel really bad for being late.
	Nothing like being late for a restaurant manager.
	Your shift started 38 seconds ago!
	That's alright. I docked your pay.
	So... I have three sons.
	He happens to be the middle son.
	They're very...
	All the children are very...
	How do I say? Much more stoic than I am.
	I'm much more passionate about things.
	Much more intense about things.
	And they're very calm about things.
	And not very excitable.
	And my middle son...
	You know, he grew up around his older brother.
	They're only two years apart.
	Mostly all his friends were his older brother's friends.
	And he sort of has some anxieties.
	And he just couldn't seem to enjoy school enough to the point of showing up.
	So we had problems getting him out of bed.
	I don't expect him to enjoy English for, you know, 50 minutes and math for 50 minutes, but going there as a social aspect, sometimes around other kids, I would think you would enjoy to even a small extent.
	But there didn't seem to be any motivation at all.
	So, long story short, he basically, we couldn't get him out of bed, and it became That's when the authoritativeness came out of me.
	Like, hey, bro, you can't just sleep in bed all day.
	You have to get up and go do this.
	Like, it's just part of what we do.
	You know, we get through these first, you know, 12 years, and then we go do what we need to do, do what we want to do, you know, but get some exposure, get some learnedness in.
	And, you know, it just got to the point I couldn't get him out of bed.
	Like, I have to go to work.
	I have to be on time for my job.
	So... You know, we decided to do online school.
	So we purchased the online school program.
	And he did that for a little while.
	He was doing okay. But then again, kind of fell off and just didn't go back and do it.
	Then the COVID-ness hit and his brother was out of, you know, everybody was, you know, out of school early.
	And he just didn't continue on.
	Luckily, his older brother went back to school.
	His younger brother went, you know, he's doing the school, but he just doesn't want to finish the school.
	Sorry to interrupt. Ken, did he go through any life circumstances that were different from his brothers that strike you?
	No. That's what I don't understand.
	I learned some things from my parents of things not to do.
	Like, I love my dad.
	My dad passed away a couple years ago.
	But I heard him tell me that he loved me once or twice.
	Three times maybe. But I knew he loved me.
	I just knew from his actions, I could understand that he did.
	But I always grew with these kids, telling them that I love them, hugging them, giving them that love and showing them and reassuring them that we love them.
	And I couldn't say that enough for their mom either.
	I mean, their mom is absolutely, if anything, a little too much.
	Hang on. Is there a star kid or star kids that you have that maybe he feels he can't approach or get to?
	I understand what you're saying, but I would have to say fortunately no and unfortunately no.
	There's no older brother that he's trying to aspire to be like.
	Also, there isn't that No, the tug is good if you can achieve it.
	If it's too far, you give up, right?
	Now, let me ask you this, though.
	Was he exposed in government schools to any of that?
	And Izzy may have an opinion or two about this.
	Was he exposed to any of that really apocalyptic spirit and soul and spine rotting propaganda about like end of the world, maybe white privilege, global warming, climate change?
	And like, was there anything you think that might have just gotten into like, nihilism, man, it's the only way forward because there's nothing over the horizon?
	Let me be 100% honest with you here because that's the only way things get done.
	I don't know a whole lot about your videos and how you preach.
	I know you through Anthony for years of him telling me to watch you.
	One of the reasons why I didn't really come over and start watching videos of yours was because I heard you were an atheist and I'm a Christian.
	And I just basically, not that I didn't want to expose myself to that, if I was, you know, looking for things as a Christian, I would always look towards other Christians.
	So the only type of ideology I would say that you might be thinking of that he was exposed to would be Christianity.
	No, listen, sorry, Kenneth.
	I mean, listen, I just want to be real clear, because I'm sure we have other Christians here as well.
	And I have apologized for earlier views that I've had about Christianity, early arguments that I made about Christianity.
	I can virtually guarantee you that 90 to 95% of her values would completely overlap.
	Like, they would be like a circle.
	I'm a little off, right? The teaching of Christian morals, Christian ethics, and the Christian worldview to be destructive, although I did make that argument in the past, many, many years ago.
	So I want to be real clear about that.
	I'm more thinking about some of that, the scientist kind of stuff that's coming out these days about, you know, end of the world and AOC. Yeah, global, like, 12 years until it's all irreversible and there's no point getting out of bed or whatever.
	Yeah, that was going to be my next thing.
	Like, I understand that that's not a toxic ideology.
	I think you're thinking more of the toxic ideologies that they're teaching in the schools.
	The funny thing is, he sees that.
	He was shown those things, and they don't believe it.
	You know, my two older boys, they're like, this is nonsense.
	I don't want to sit here and listen to their propaganda.
	They don't really use the word propaganda, but they don't want to listen to their crap that they talk about.
	And they kind of see through What are his musical tastes?
	Sorry, what are his musical tastes?
	Musical tastes?
	Well, he likes...
	They're actually all well-rounded.
	They listen to a lot of hip-hop, old hip-hop, you know, stuff that I grew up on.
	They listen to Johnny Cash.
	They listen to regular country music.
	They have a very well-rounded...
	They'll listen to rock.
	They're not very much into one genre.
	Or go towards one...
	When you look back through the tunnel of time, was there something...
	Has he always been maybe the more low-energy kid or something like that?
	Yeah. He was always the cool-headed, cool...
	You know, the only issue we ever had with him growing up was that he did a lot of talking back.
	And maybe...
	I guess it would be hard to say with someone like you, like, I wasn't taught these things at that point to where, okay, he should have that say to talk back, but not in a disrespectful manner.
	Open those lines of communications and have that conversation.
	But the only thing I can say is, at times, he was slightly disrespectful with talking back, but not Okay, so how did that play out when he would, as you say, talk back?
	Which is kind of just having his opinion or having his perspective, right?
	How would that play out in your conflicts?
	I was a jerk. Okay, but a little bit, if you could break out the I was a jerk into a few more syllables, that'd be great.
	I know your daughter's standing there, but I could say things worse.
	Listen, I came from an authoritative, you know, that's my job.
	At the restaurant, I take communication, but ultimately, my say is the way it is.
	In the household, my say is the way it is.
	I'll listen to you, but again, you need to get up for school.
	Let's go. It was that friction.
	I've had long conversations with Anthony about it privately, and it's just I always kid around with them, and I tell them, I said, my wife and I, we're both high-energy, get-things-done, motivated people.
	And I said, when our DNA mixed, something just like that atom split, something split.
	I don't know what happened, but they lost all sense of motivation.
	It would give you the nature versus nurture.
	Yeah, I mean, I can't do much.
	I don't have a crisper forehead here.
	I can't do much about the genetics, of course, not that I want to.
	Okay, so your son would backtalks, as you call it, and you would be like, hey, I'm willing to listen, but it's my decision finally, and, you know, maybe he just doesn't feel like he's got span for his own personality if it's...
	King Ken and his kingdom, so to speak, and he doesn't have a...
	All he can do is petition and ask.
	He can't actually...
	Like, he's bumping up against the ceiling.
	You know, when you play that game with the balloon, the helium balloon, and you let go of it, and the house you play, and it bumps up against the ceiling.
	Maybe sort of 14, 15 is where he's got...
	Like, he needs to become more of his own person, and maybe he doesn't feel like there's room for that.
	Yeah. I mean, even...
	He does have a slightly better relationship with his mom because his mom will sit there for an hour and listen to him as far as excuses and reasons of what he's doing and what he's not doing.
	But to me, I don't have that much time in my day Oh, no, no, no, no.
	With all due respect, Ken, that's a terrible answer because you absolutely got to make fatherhood your number one.
	Like you say, oh, man, I'm too busy.
	You know, if your son doesn't find a way to break free of this gravity well, man, that's going to consume a lot more time out of your life and a lot more worry, a lot more concern, maybe even a lot more finances out of your life.
	right now.
	So the, I mean, I listen, I know running a restaurant is a crazy business and all of that, but as far as what the priority is, finding out what's at the root of your son's failure to launch is more important than whatever you're doing at the restaurant.
	I mean, other than, you know, you've got to keep a roof over your head and all that stuff, right?
	But you, you sound to me and I, listen, I'm going like real fast here, so I could completely crash the car.
	So tell me if I go astray.
	But you strike me as really kind of impatient.
	Like, for heaven's sakes, just get up and do something like your dad does.
	Like, what's the problem? And that, I almost guarantee you, that's just going to make things worse, as it probably has, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	No, you're right on that.
	I mean, there's many days where I'm not that impatient.
	But I've...
	I've, you know, and it's been talking with Anthony about these things where I've become a lot more patient.
	You know, in the beginning, I wasn't.
	And now I'm definitely there.
	I definitely listen. I mean, one of the things I did was I let him know, like, listen, if you can't go back to school and you can't finish this, you can't do these, I said, at least try to come up with a business solution.
	You know, something you're interested in, something You know, you want to do so.
	He started doing, he was refinishing furniture and that lasted about, you know, a week and a half before he kind of lost all his oomph and then started sliding back into, you know, sleeping all day.
	Yeah, but Ken, so when you come in and you say, okay, here's how we're going to solve the problem, you've got to do this, or maybe we can do that, then what you're doing is you're still kind of elbowing aside his personality, and you're signaling to him that you don't trust that he's got some solution within him.
	Well, and I agree with that 100%.
	The problem is, part of that question that I asked should have been, how do I bring out his personality that he's not Like, give me something to run on, kid.
	No, no, listen, I'm absolutely...
	I totally want to.
	I totally want to. So, you've told me that with regards to your son, you were a jerk.
	Have you told that to your son?
	And what was the speech?
	Give us the speech that you gave to your son if you have said that.
	Or if you haven't, what would you like to say?
	I sat with the two of them.
	The older one and the middle one.
	And I had a... A long conversation with them, you know?
	And I said, I'd apologize if my attitude and my demeanor and my aggressiveness and my, you know, my personality is clashing with yours and the way I do things.
	I said, you guys don't come with instruction manuals.
	And I'm trying my hardest to make it work well.
	I said, but what do you guys need from me To help this relationship as a father and son move forward.
	And basically what they told me was just to lay off a little bit and to give them some space.
	So that's exactly what I did.
	And my older one, it took a little while, but my older one took to it.
	Ah, but Kenneth, I'm so sorry.
	I hate to keep interrupting.
	I really do, but I know we've got a lot of questions here.
	Okay. This is just my perspective.
	I'm just some guy on the internet, so, you know, take it for what it's worth.
	That's got to be one of the most terrible apologies I've ever heard in my life.
	With all due respect, like it really, because I'll tell you the way it comes across to me is something like this.
	And I could be wrong. I'm just telling you the way it lands for me, right?
	First of all, when someone says, I'm sorry if something I did bothered you, that's not an apology.
	Because you're not owning it.
	You're saying, well, what I did could be interpreted any bunch of different ways, but hey, if you interpreted what I did as something negative to you, well, I'm sorry that you had that crazy interpretation.
	You know what I mean? That's not an apology because it's like punching someone and then say, look, I'm sorry if you took that the wrong way.
	If there's an if, then it's not an apology.
	Now, then you said...
	If my personality clashes with yours, no, because you are the father, which means you are responsible for setting the tone of the relationship, right?
	So it's not just a matter of, you know, well, we play different styles of music, and I guess the band isn't going to work out, you know, because you're the father, so you're supposed to be the one who's saying, here's how things are going to go, and here's the framework for our relationship.
	So it's not just a matter of personalities clashing.
	Because personalities can clash and that can actually be very productive.
	I mean, a lot of great music comes out of band members yelling at each other to some degree, right?
	But they're all adults and they're in there voluntarily, right?
	And then the third thing that you did was you said you made an excuse for yourself, right?
	So you said you guys don't come with instruction manuals, which is basically a way of saying you can't get mad at me.
	And the reality is, Kenneth, kids do come with instruction manuals.
	They really do. I mean, there are whole sections in the bookstore.
	There's whole psychological studies.
	There is, you know, you guys probably watched sitcoms when you were growing up.
	And in those sitcoms, I bet you you never saw parents yelling at their kids, you know, like calling their kids names.
	You never saw spanking. We all grow up with hundreds or thousands of hours of education on peaceful parenting, you know, like full house.
	I don't know, like you guys are all a mix of age, usually younger than me.
	So, but whatever you were watching, There's tons and tons of the Brady Bunch, 8 is Enough, like Happy Days.
	It's all negotiating parents.
	It's like we have hundreds and hundreds of hours of direct interface instruction on how to be a peaceful parent, even if we've never cracked a book at all, right?
	And you decided to become a dad, and you got married, and you got your wife pregnant, and in ways that my daughter doesn't even remotely understand.
	But what happened was you had lots of time to prepare for this.
	Right? So, I mean, it's like me.
	I hijack a plane.
	I don't know how to fly. And I'm weaving all over the sky.
	And I say, well, these things don't come with an instruction manual.
	It's like, A, they do.
	And B, I should have, you know, got involved with that.
	So, if you did bypass some of the necessary education that you needed to get into to have a less, you know, authoritarian and maybe yelly, or as you pointed out, jerky relationship with your kids...
	You've got to own that, because your son's future is kind of hanging here, right?
	And if you're like, well, maybe you misinterpreted some of my personality, and there's just this weird clashing that goes on, and it's not my fault because kids don't come with instruction manuals, that's not going to work.
	You know, the absolute maximum seizing of ownership, I think, is the way forward.
	Uh-huh. No, I agree.
	I mean, I agree with you.
	Yeah. You know, I mean, a little bit of good came out of that conversation, probably not as much as could have.
	You know, obviously, if I had the right words for it, it probably would have worked a little bit better.
	But, you know, my oldest son got back on the better path and just still struggling with the middle son.
	I honestly try to give him the space and the respect Because that's what they deserve, first of all.
	And it just, it comes a time, like you said before, I'm an impatient person.
	I am, to a point, I've given, like, I continue to give this time and I feel like, you know, I feel like life is not going to give him this luxury in the future that I'm giving him To figure these things out.
	And I have no problem working with him to figure these things out, but I feel like he's not giving an ounce of effort.
	Right, right. Kenneth, your dad was this way with you, right?
	Authoritarian. Your dad was this way with you, like authoritarian and top-down and the super boss?
	Not at all. I actually asked my mother when we were going through some of the stuff with the kids, I said to my mother, I called her one night and I said, I have to ask you some questions because this was after my dad passed away.
	I said, why didn't dad get on my case about anything?
	She said, because of anything bad that you ever did, you did twice as much good to make up for it.
	She said, even if you went out late at night, hung out with your friends and did things that your daughter doesn't know about, you know, those things, that you woke up the next day Went to work, went to school, and did your stuff, and we didn't have to guide you.
	Which may be the problem here is that, to me, it's so, I don't know if the right word is intrinsic, it's just in my DNA, my nature, to if I'm going to play, I'm going to work hard also.
	And nobody necessarily even taught me that.
	It's just the way I was I was built.
	I don't, you know, both my parents had jobs.
	I get what you're saying. Here's the thing, though.
	If you're going to say there's genetic determinism to your personality, then you are helpless with regards to your son.
	If you don't have a choice at your age with your expertise and your maturity, your obvious intelligence, your success, your language skills, which are fantastic.
	If you're just like, hey, man, I am just the way I am and I can't really do much to change that.
	Then if you go from your age and middle age, you go to your son who's 15 and say, well, man, you got to change a lot.
	Now, listen to me.
	I can't change.
	I am just the way that I am.
	But you, 15-year-old child of mine, who has much less freedom than I do, much less independence, much less money, much less success, you have to change.
	It's genetics for me.
	But you've got these magical elves called free will in your head.
	That should totally change your path.
	But if you've modeled and if you've said, well, hey man, it's just my personality, like what you said about personality clashes like genetic nunchuck wars or something like that, right?
	But the more you say, I can change, the more you can begin to inspire change in other people.
	But the more you say, I am just Popeye, I am what I am.
	The more you say that, the more your son is going to be like, well, you know, dad's got his genetics, I've got mine.
	I mean... He's got his strong-willed genetics.
	I just, I don't.
	And there's not much you can negotiate.
	It's like saying to your kid, well, you know, the important thing, now that you're 17 years old, the really, really important thing is to be about three inches taller.
	Like, if you can just see your way clear to becoming about three, maybe three and a half inches taller, I mean, the kid's going to say, dude.
	I think I am what I am. You can't talk me into being taller.
	And if change for you is kind of genetics like height or trying to talk to someone and having different eye color or something, then it's the old thing.
	He's not going to be able to hear what you're saying over what you're doing.
	Because if you say to him, change, but hey, I am what I am, you're not modeling the kind of grapping on to change that I think could inspire him more.
	I definitely think that's part of it.
	I've definitely showed it.
	I don't want to take up the entire segment here, but I... All right, good.
	We'll cut you off. I definitely agree with you on that, but I can definitely say that in the past few years there's been a lot...
	Let's just do one thing before we get to the next.
	Okay, pretend I know this is a stretch.
	Pretend I'm 15. I'm not sure that's possible.
	It's not a stretch for my daughter.
	That's a stretch for you guys.
	I'm not sure that's possible. I'm giving her the full sibling experience as an only child.
	But in order to seriously pretend I'm 15 years old.
	Try that apology.
	Because, you know, listen, all parents.
	Do I apologize to you? Yes, you do.
	I certainly do, right? All parents.
	I'm a pretty good parent. All parents make mistakes.
	We say things. We do things or whatever, right?
	So... Give me the apology to your son.
	And it's not like, I'm sorry I ever was your dad.
	It's nothing, but the specific things that you've done that you feel bad about, what you said earlier, like I'm a jerk, right?
	Give me that apology without any caveats, without any excuses.
	Just pretend like I'm 15.
	You know, I'm staring in the bed.
	I've got that skeptical teenage dad sucks kind of face on, which, you know, never happened in our household.
	But no, just take that for a spin.
	I'm just curious what that would sound like compared to the earlier version.
	One thing right before you do that, when you talked to your other kids, as you said, and they said, well, back off a little bit, you should probably do that with your 15-year-old son.
	I think he has been, but it's, yeah.
	Okay, well, I just wanted to be sure about that.
	Yeah, no, definitely, definitely.
	I mean, if understanding what you're saying with no caveat, I guess it would have to be something sort of along the lines of Jeez.
	I don't know. This is a hard one.
	I gotta change all the verbiage.
	I guess it'd have to be, you know, Stephan, I'm sorry for being aggressive towards you.
	I... Honestly, I don't even know how...
	You've stumped me.
	I'm not usually one to be stumped for words, but I think you've stumped me without the caveats.
	Do you guys want me to give it a try, or should we move on to another question?
	Maybe if he uses his hands more when he talks, it might come out.
	I'm waiting for him to fly at this point. - Yeah, so like, look, real, real briefly, right?
	So apologies are, they're very strengthening.
	Apologies bring trust to a relationship because it's a sign that you know you've messed up, you've taken ownership for it, you're not blaming the other person, you're kind of committing to do better and you're holding yourself accountable and all of that.
	And we all mess up, right?
	So do you want to try like an apology?
	What would like a real nice genuine apology sound like?
	Oh, man. I'm not great at apologies.
	You do occasionally, though, right?
	I can occasionally. I'm still not great at them.
	No, but it's something like, you know, I've really been thinking about How you're stuck, like you're stuck in this bed, and you're frustrated, I'm frustrated, but it's my job.
	It's not like you don't have any free will or anything like that, but I'm the dad.
	I kind of set this whole situation up, and I've really been thinking about it.
	I've made some big mistakes, and I don't have any excuses for them because there were tons of books.
	I was raised with a more hands-off, freewheeling kind of dad, and I think what I did was I said, okay, well, How would I parent if my kids are kind of like me?
	But you're not. Every one of you is different.
	And you kind of need to be adaptable.
	And I got a little busy.
	I got a little lazy. Maybe a lot lazy.
	And I've really not done the right things to connect with you.
	I've really not done the right things to figure out what makes you tick.
	And that's because...
	I'm busy and I'm a little lazy.
	I'm a little selfish when it comes to this kind of stuff.
	And this is not fun or present or easy for me to say, but it's a very real thing that I have not done what you need as a dad to move forward in life.
	And that's not on you at all.
	This is 150% on me.
	I'm the adult. I've got the legal rights.
	I've got the money. I've got the independence.
	And it's all on me.
	And... I don't know, and it's on me that I don't know, but I don't know exactly what's missing.
	I have some ideas, like I was too authoritarian, and you, of all the kids, were the backtalker, and even calling it backtalker is kind of rude.
	You know, like this isn't the army, right?
	I mean, it's not like you got orders or you go to the brig or something like that, right?
	You did have every right.
	You know, you question me, you push back.
	I do that a lot. Yeah, and it's great, you know.
	Even when it comes to small things like eating a meal that I don't want to eat, I'm like, I ain't eating this.
	Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when you talked back to me, I just viewed that as a negative and as a sort of an affront to my authority and it was a bad thing and I had to sort of squish that.
	And frankly, you know, I think I squished way too much.
	You know, I squished way too much in order to maintain my authority.
	You know, it's like you put too much shade over a plant and it just doesn't grow, right?
	I mean, plants need a bit of shade.
	Yeah, a bit of shade. I know it's because I've grown plants.
	I think they've probably mentioned that in the video before, but I am growing plants and these ones aren't sprouting or aren't doing very well.
	And I'm like, oh yeah, maybe it's because the pot is too tall above the soil so it has way too much shade.
	Like, I mean, a bit of shade is necessary, otherwise it dries up.
	Let's not kill the metaphor too much, right?
	Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's things that I've done that I know that are wrong, and I feel terrible about it.
	And, you know, God, what I would do to go back in time and change it, which I can't do.
	But there's something that is not giving you the nutrition that you need in this family and me.
	And some of it I know.
	And I want to know what it was like for you growing up with me as a dad.
	And what was it like for you when I kept saying, no backtalk, no backtalk?
	Because that's you. Now, I didn't have that with the other kids, not because they're better or worse, they're just different.
	I just didn't adapt to you.
	And that's on me.
	And maybe we can build something from here, but that old way, I'm so sorry for, I'm so sorry for, it just did not work for you.
	And you're kind of on strike.
	Because it's not working for you, and we're not talking about it.
	That's a really good apology.
	Something like that? I mean, I'm just reaching here, but something like that.
	It's recorded! I mean, obviously I should have used my hands more.
	Yeah, yeah. Okay, so Anthony, let me know what happens.
	Kenneth, I hope that helps.
	Listen, I'm obviously just a complete flyby here.
	I hope that helps. Thanks for opening up, Ken.
	I know it's difficult. You have no idea.
	All right, Steph. The next question is from Jimmy G. Chew your food, Jim.
	As a divorced father with two daughters, what can I do to foster feminine qualities in my girls?
	To what? The feminine qualities?
	Forster. Oh, I thought she forced them to enforce the feminine qualities.
	He said foster, which means to sort of like nurture or help to grow.
	Okay. An Iron Maiden would be required otherwise.
	Okay. All right.
	So, um, are you on the line here?
	Yeah, Jimmy. Where?
	Yes, sir. Oh, hey, how you doing, man?
	Outstanding. That is an excellent Suzuki mustache and beard.
	Oh, I just wanted to say, for all those people who have dad bods, uh, scene...
	Wait, I'm actually not too sure how to pronounce that name, I apologize.
	Sean, is it? Sean, yeah.
	Sean, sorry about that. Uh, is showing off to us by going on a treadmill, so...
	Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's, like, I think he's trying to get away, but he's just not able to make a break.
	Yeah, he's like, good job, you did well.
	So, Jimmy, what's, uh, what's the story of the marriage and the divorce?
	Overall, it's actually pretty amicable, all things considered.
	It certainly could be worse, but we have two daughters who are currently 8 and 10.
	We've been divorced for two years.
	And we have joint custody, so it's 50-50 split, one week on, one week off.
	I'm so sorry. I asked you for the story, and I'm interrupting right away.
	I really, really apologize. That's okay.
	Help me understand the amicable divorce.
	Because to me, you know, it's the old question, you know, if you can get divorced amicably, why can't you just stay married amicably?
	I mean, what was the reason for the divorce?
	Or reasons? Officially, I was told that I didn't support my wife, I didn't care about her, I didn't love her, all those sorts of things.
	At one point though, I ended up finding out that there was another rooster in the henhouse Oh man, I'm sorry to hear about that.
	If you've seen him. So, your wife blamed you for not being supportive and not loving her enough when she was stepping out.
	How does that transition to amicable?
	Well, I mean, as far as the girls, I'm thinking more in terms of...
	The girls. I don't really talk to her unless I have to.
	And when we exchange, change the girls.
	So there's no sort of...
	So, sorry to interrupt. It's not amicable between you and your...
	And I'm not trying to cause tension or provoke problems here.
	I'm just trying to follow. No, I understand.
	Yep. Okay.
	Correct. I mean, we say what we need to say and that's about it.
	What do the girls...
	Like, if I were to ask them, what would they say why mommy and daddy got divorced?
	Uh, because we don't want to be married anymore, or something along those lines.
	That's kind of tautological, right?
	I mean, that's not really adding anything new.
	Why are you not together?
	Well, we don't want to be. Yeah, but, you know.
	So, but...
	They must have had questions.
	There must have been at least some kind of explanation.
	Otherwise, it's a completely incomprehensible event.
	Well, we love each other. We care about each other.
	We're great together, but we're separating.
	Yeah, so at this point, the way I've explained it to them, because the girls and I have had many conversations about it, but basically that there's, at least at this point, that there's differences between their mother and I, and as a result, that basically we ended up getting divorced.
	Yeah, now this is what sucks one thing about divorce that's really, really bad, right?
	Which is, you know, you got these kids.
	Now, I'm sure there were problems in the marriage.
	I'm sure, you know, I mean, there were issues and all of that.
	But the proximate cause was your wife had an affair, right?
	Correct. And this is what's really tough around divorce is how much you got to zip it, right?
	You got to zip it because your wife didn't, right?
	So... You can't say to the girls, yeah, mom's a, insert word here, right?
	I mean, whatever that's going to be, but you can't just be straight and say, well, yeah, there were problems in the marriage, but the reason we got divorced is mom was kissing another guy, right?
	I assume that your wife is not seen fit to share that little nugget with the kids?
	Nope. Although, they probably know something's up because she moved in with him when she moved out of the family home, and he has basically been in the girls' lives for the last two years from the jump.
	Did she move straight out of your home into his?
	Yes. Basically, not his house, but they got a house together.
	That's way too fast.
	Well, yeah, well, okay, so, I mean, it's not going to take long for them to...
	Figure it out.
	You know, it's like, you know, yes, you were born six months after the wedding.
	Huh. Wait a minute.
	Right? So the overlap, I mean, do you think a 10-year-old, like you last year, right?
	Yeah. Do you think you would have got that?
	I think pretty fast I would have been like, well, the chances that she'd just move into this random guy.
	Here I am. I've left my husband.
	I'm driving randomly down the street and, oops, I buy a house with a guy.
	Yeah, it's like I probably would have picked it up pretty fast that there was something else going on.
	I don't know if your kids know about like cheating and stuff like that.
	I'm sure they do because a lot of people pretty much know about that.
	But I'm pretty sure they could understand, maybe not the eight-year-old, possibly the eight-year-old, but I'm pretty sure that your 10-year-old daughter would have understood that she had a relationship with him while having a relationship with you.
	It's really tough as parents to have authority when your kids suspect you're not telling the truth.
	Because, you know, I mean, listen, I respect the weasel words.
	I know that sounds like an hard thing for a guy who does philosophy to say.
	But, you know, because you don't want to, you know, pull the pin on the wife grenade or ex-wife grenade by saying, oh, yeah, no, she had an affair with the guy and she left me, she left the family to go be with this guy, right?
	Because then, you know, the mushroom cloud, you know, the, here come the lawyers, right?
	Whatever happens, right?
	So that's really, really tough.
	Because your kids are probably starting to get at the age where they kind of have a clue, right?
	Yeah. I'm totally expecting that conversation.
	Any moment now?
	Yeah. Right.
	So, and of course, you say to your kids, what do you say to your kids all the time?
	It's really, really important you tell the truth.
	Yeah. I've heard that one before.
	I mean, tell the truth about unimportant things like whether you ate a little extra candy.
	Not about the important things like why mommy's not living with us anymore.
	That's really, really, really tough.
	And I think it's really important to be just conscious of how tough that is and how much of a time bomb that can be when they get older.
	Now, because it's one thing to say, okay, like I know I'm lying to my kids, but I'm doing it because my ex-wife's not ready to come clean and they're still kind of young.
	But you got to get yourself mentally prepared for that day where there's like, you know, there's a certain way that you know there's an incoming.
	Like, because you normally it's like, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad.
	That's all you hear, right?
	But every now and then it's like, dad.
	Yeah. And then it's like, I'm sorry, your father's not here at the moment.
	I'm a cunning clone.
	Please leave a message and I will never get back to you because...
	He's like, run away.
	Dad, I want to ask you something.
	And then it's just like, oh no.
	She's figured it out! The escape room of truth has finally been cracked.
	The code is open! Flee!
	Flee! So...
	Because here's the thing, right?
	So, as you know, your daughters are going to...
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	I know it's a tough question, and maybe it's more even, but is there, like, more of a bond with you and them, more of a bond with their and their mom?
	Is it different for each kid? Is it about the same?
	How does that play? That's a good question.
	I know over the last two years, especially, so I've been working to forge stronger bonds with the girls.
	And I'm still in the family home.
	Their room is theirs. You know, I refer to it as home.
	And I've been doing a lot to give them a sense of choice or power in a situation that they otherwise wouldn't.
	So maybe homework needs to get done, but the friend neighbors come over and they want to play.
	And, you know, then it becomes a negotiation.
	Well, you need to do your homework, but you can go over there now for a little bit, or you can get your homework done and come back later.
	And over time, that's expanded and there's been more things where we've been able to talk about the divorce.
	We were watching a show not that long ago and some woman was...
	The show doesn't matter, but basically there's a woman that was talking about how she had a...
	Hard childhood and parents die or whatever, similar to the divorce situation.
	But the girls both made a comment about how they kind of feel that way or can relate to this girl that was sharing that story.
	And so we spent 20 minutes talking about basically the divorce and how they were Feeling about that and some of the things around that.
	And, you know, so I've built the relationship up so much so that I know their mom will contact me and say, hey, you know, one of the girls seems to be having some issue or whatever, and I can either confirm or deny that it's a thing, or I can say, yeah, we've talked about it.
	Or she'll even ask me, can you talk to the girls?
	So I think there's...
	So let me try this.
	Let's just see how this unrolls, right?
	So pretend I'm the 10-year-old.
	Look at me, I'm getting younger.
	It's like Benjamin Button in a tiny little window.
	15, 15, 10.
	And the hair comes out.
	So, you're sitting down, maybe the eight-year-old's with your ex or whatever, she's playing upstairs, and you've got a little bit of time with your 10-year-old, and your 10-year-old's just like, Dad, why did you and Mom split up?
	Well, so...
	Oh, see, this is bad, because you know what the kid's saying?
	My father is assembling a lie.
	He is building a giant cathedral of falsehood.
	I know. Now listen. She knows this one.
	She's a kid. Go ahead.
	You don't...
	It's okay. She can't show you my face.
	It's okay. It's okay.
	She can't show you my face, but every now and then she'll catch me doing something I shouldn't be doing.
	And, you know, like I have a little piece of chocolate that I shouldn't write.
	I remember when I was like seven or eight and stuff like that, sometimes even nine.
	This is... I think I've also mentioned this in a couple shows.
	But I have this little candy shop.
	It's super tiny. It's propped up between two pillars or something.
	It's super tiny. It's on a little ledge.
	It's like a foot wide. And I have a little M&M dispenser that I got a few years ago in New York, I think.
	I go past it many times a day.
	In my excuse here.
	I'm not even going to give a good apology here.
	I'm going to completely reverse my earlier...
	Just listen. And then I make these little chocolates.
	They're actually really pretty. We should actually post a photo at some point.
	Very nice. I've made chocolate bowls.
	I find these molds. I sometimes use lids and stuff like that in containers.
	It's basically evil. No, but before I had this whole thing, we would sometimes buy little chocolates and he would eat them.
	And I remember he said, for this one talk, he's like, okay, Izzy, well, I finished my chocolate already, so I promised I won't eat any of yours unless you let me.
	So what happened was, at the night, we didn't have any chocolate.
	Get back here. I'm sorry.
	You're stuck. I'm holding you down.
	Okay. See, I have his arm.
	I have it. It's mine.
	Chopped. Thank you. Alright. No, but I... I just took it.
	I remember... You didn't take it.
	You had it. Because I remember at night you came to say goodnight and you had chocolate breast and I could see a little bit of...
	Rookie mistake, man. Rookie mistake.
	Terrible. It was a bit on your lips and like on your tongue.
	Probably up my face. No, but I remember saying, Dad, did you eat my chocolate?
	And you were like, um...
	I made the face that Jamie was making right there.
	That was the face. No, but you were like, um...
	And I'm like, actually, one second.
	So I actually got out of bed and ran downstairs.
	At this time, I'm not going onto a different floor.
	I was this close to tackling her on the stairs before I thought that actually could be fatal.
	But I was this close. I mean, even if it was facial...
	No, but that looked. The kids know, right?
	You know. I thought. I was like, hmm.
	And you were like, um...
	And I'm like, one second. I read down.
	I'm like, why is there only two pieces left?
	Well, and that's totally my conundrum, because I'd love to...
	Okay, so let's try that again.
	Let's try that again. All right.
	Dad. Why did you and mom get divorced?
	Your mom slept with another man.
	Okay. Well, that's it.
	Assuming she knows what that means.
	Sleepover. So, no, or it could be, you know, it's not my choice.
	It was not my choice to end the marriage.
	You know, as to why the marriage ended, you'd have to talk to your mom about that.
	But it was not my choice. So, you know, however, but, you know, at some point...
	Now, okay, so what happens then?
	I mean... Yeah, no.
	And I actually have, to your point, I have.
	I've said that. Even early on, there was a time where the girls were having a hard time, like weeks or months after...
	She moved out and we were separated.
	The divorce was still in progress, but there was a moment where they were both crying uncontrollably, and certainly understandably so.
	But basically, I told them exactly what you just said.
	It's like, this wasn't my choice.
	I'm in the same boat with you.
	It's like they were saying they didn't want us to be divorced, and Finally, I think that was the first moment I'd really said, look guys, I'm in the same boat with you.
	This wasn't my choice either.
	This wasn't my decision to make.
	And I'm sad just like you.
	I'm angry and I'm frustrated.
	And one of my girls, I forget which one, Happen to say, well, if you're sad, you're not crying.
	It's like, I'm not now, but I have.
	And that's come up a couple other times, not recently, but I've said that same thing.
	All right, let me ask you a supplementary challenging question.
	First time for everything.
	All right. What percentage of your ex-wife do you want your daughters to emulate?
	To become. I can't...
	Boy, that's a face. What do you think?
	I can't think of anything.
	Oh, are we at zero? But it's totally amicable, folks.
	Totally amicable.
	So, zero. Okay, but look, she was attractive to you at some point, right?
	Because the question is around femininity, right?
	So, if the kids, if your daughters are going to bond and emulate and be imprinted, you know, like the ducks with the orange balloon, if they're going to be imprinted by your ex-wife, and they're going to say, well, mom is femininity...
	You're going to have, well, not necessarily you, but maybe their future husbands or whatever, or boyfriends or whatever.
	It's going to have some challenges, right?
	Because if they're bonding with...
	Listen, I want them to bond with their mom.
	I get all of that, right? But you can bond with people who admit mistakes.
	In fact, it's really tough to bond with people who don't admit mistakes because they're not kind of human.
	They're like these robots of defense, right?
	But you are going to need to steer them away from the negative, manipulative, lying, untrustworthy, deceitful, whatever it is, elements.
	It's not your entire ex-wife's personality, right?
	Because we're all complex.
	But they're going to need to know those landmines.
	They're going to need to know where those rocks are in the water because, you know, I mean, when it comes to Izzy's just entering this phase, right?
	When it comes to the teenage years, you go fast, right?
	When you were younger, now it's just like, instead of rowing, you're on a jet ski.
	In terms of what? Tell me.
	So just in terms of the decisions you have to make, the speed at which peer pressure will try and get you to do things that aren't good for you and stuff, it really accelerates.
	Well, that's why for me, I'm a bit of a person.
	When someone... If there's a group of people who are all doing the same thing, I'm like, well, I don't want to be like these people.
	Even if they're good, I'd be like, I'm going to have to do something that's slightly different.
	And I've been like this for years.
	It's like I'm defining myself.
	Do you know what I mean? I do something slightly different.
	So if you laugh at a joke, I don't laugh as hard.
	No, that's true. That's true.
	I love this book, Isabella.
	Would you like to read it?
	Yeah, I love it! No, I don't like it at all.
	Or, oh, you know what's a really great song that you should hear?
	Run. Yeah, run away.
	No, but we just have a different taste of music.
	We do have some artists that we both like, but I'm more of the modern taste.
	He likes his generation.
	No, no, but you definitely push back and all of that.
	But so, yeah, so this is the challenge, right?
	So your daughters, your 10-year-old, 11-year-old, you know, is going to start to get the tween hormones and the teen storms are going to be upon you before you know it.
	And They're going to have to start making decisions because you mentioned homework and school and all of that.
	They're going to have to start making decisions really, really quickly.
	And the decisions are going to be based upon imprinting.
	And if they don't know the negative aspects of your personality and negative aspects of your wife's personality, then they're going to be making decisions without knowing the fail points, right, that they've imprinted with, if that makes any sense.
	So, let's say you say, Mom had an affair, right?
	Then it would be, long pause, Dad, why did Mom have an affair?
	Oh, yeah. It looks like he's passing a kidney stone through his belly button at this moment.
	I've never seen more FOE men stumped tonight.
	No, why? Why did mom have an affair?
	Why? Shouldn't you have just bought her flowers or something?
	I tried that.
	I think that your mother was looking for For something in our relationship.
	And I'm not sure what else to say.
	As a child...
	What was your perception of that little response there?
	Lie detection! Lie detection!
	That's why I appreciate you being here, Izzy.
	I'm almost 12, but I still, I guess, I'm closer to 10 than anyone here.
	Yeah, that's true. So, that's tough, right?
	It's tough because you want to tell the truth.
	But if you say, see, you said to me, like, you want 0% of your ex's personality in your kids, that's kind of tough because they're half her.
	I mean, I don't want to get back.
	If I start talking about genetics, our good friend from earlier is going to come back and strangle me.
	But there is that aspect of things, but also...
	If you say, I don't want you to be anything like your mom, that's going to be very confusing to them.
	Because you loved her enough to date, become boyfriend and girlfriend, get engaged, get married.
	How long were you guys together for, soup to nuts, before you broke up?
	20 years! Oh man, that's a long time.
	Wow, that's like...
	That's like 10 years older than a Democrat voter.
	That's a long time, man.
	That's a long time.
	All right. So 20 years, right?
	Now, when did it start to go bad?
	Please don't say year one.
	Year what? No.
	About... I suppose...
	So we dated for...
	Probably around 13 years.
	You dated for 13 years?
	No, no. We dated for about four or five years and then got married.
	So it was about... I want to say it was about...
	Trying to spool back here.
	Five or six years into the marriage.
	Why did you wait so long to get married?
	You said five or six years of dating, four or five years of dating?
	Yeah. Well, that's a good question.
	Fair question. I'm not sure.
	I think if I... There was...
	She went off to grad school.
	So there was some of that.
	And then we got married after she was done with that.
	I don't know if I was scared to get married or more generally speaking, Scared to get married to her?
	She's married generally.
	Okay, so here's the thing, right?
	The reason I'm asking all of this is your kids are going to look at your relationship, right?
	You said it was like five or so years into the marriage, things started to go bad?
	Okay, so you can be together for ten years.
	You can be together for ten years with someone.
	Say you love them, build a house together, get married, have children, think it's going to work out, and then, boom, right?
	And then you've got another 10 years, right, where things aren't working out, followed by an affair, followed by a divorce.
	So, I think, you know, I mean, the ideal thing is to sit there with your kids, both you and your wife, and say, listen...
	Let's go spelunking for all the mistakes that mom and dad made.
	Because, you know, you guys are here.
	So we're happy we made those mistakes and we love you very much.
	But man, we don't want you to go into love thinking it can last for 10 years and then blow up in your face in a slow 10-year face-melting explosion.
	Yeah. Right? It's like you don't want that.
	And so in terms of femininity...
	What does it mean to be a woman?
	Well, some of that's going to come from your ex, of course, their mom.
	A lot of that's going to come from them.
	But I think, more importantly, what does love mean to them?
	Like, how are they going to trust love if they saw...
	Because, like, the longer the relationship, when it breaks up, the worse, in a way, it is for the kids.
	I'm sorry, I don't want to make you feel bad or anything, because I know it wasn't your choice and all of that.
	But because that means the longer you can be fooled.
	Right, because if it's like, oh yeah, I dated this guy, I said this story to Izzy once, that I went on a date with a woman, and she was telling me all about her ex-boyfriend who dumped her with $17,000 in credit card debt.
	Oh yeah, I remember that. That's insane.
	And I'm like, yeah, that's great, man.
	I'm like, I'm real sorry about that.
	I'll buy the coffee, but I'm never calling you again.
	This is not going to happen because, you know, your choice in men is so bad.
	And she was all, like, angry at him like it was his fault.
	It's like, you chose him!
	You chose the guy, you know, like, you chose the guy.
	I mean, yes, he did something wrong, but you chose him.
	Yeah, so that's, you know, so I wasn't fooled in one day.
	Now, don't get me wrong, I've been fooled by women in the past, so I don't want to sound all kind of high and holy here, but the longer it takes from start to end, the more...
	The harder it is for your daughters to give themselves and fall in love.
	Because they're like, well, mom and dad did that.
	Ten years, man. Ten years!
	And then another ten, and then it just ended.
	And so, to be clear about the mistakes that were made, the errors that were made, whether it was a choice in the beginning that was bad, or whether it was a choice that was good in the beginning but went bad, or whatever it was, right? The greatest gift we can give our children is a catalog of our mistakes.
	And yet, it's kind of the last thing that we want to get.
	Because we've got to have authority.
	We've got to be in charge.
	We've got to be respected, right?
	That moves their arms when they talk.
	There you go. It's me being the...
	Because I was never in the army, so apparently it's just Popeye.
	Popeye is the army, so what can I tell you, right?
	What? No, no, but I mean, I've talked to you about mistakes I've made in my life and all of that, right?
	So if we give our kids our mistakes, we're saying, okay, here's where the landmines are.
	But the problem is if you're divorced...
	See, that's why I was asking about the amicable thing, right?
	Because if it was amicable, then you and your ex would sit down with each other saying, listen, we've got to prepare our kids.
	We've got to prepare our kids to not make the same mistakes that we made, which means we've got to talk about our mistakes.
	But if your ex doesn't want to talk about her mistakes...
	It's kind of tricky.
	Because you, as the dad, what do you want to do?
	You want to protect them, right? Right, you want to protect them.
	Now, women, it's a very broad thing, but moms are a little bit more about protecting kids in the present, and dads are a little bit more about protecting kids in the future.
	I'm with the dad part on that.
	Oh yeah, I'm like, yeah, jump over the garbage can, see if you make it.
	I'll film it in slow-mo. I remember that, and I was doing this thing.
	I remember in grade two, I did an eight-foot-long jump exactly.
	Exactly eight feet long.
	Very good. That's what they measured it. Grade two, so I was, what, seven then?
	Yeah, something like that. It was at the beginning of the year when track and field was going on.
	Yeah. Or whatever, but...
	Because I decided to join, but...
	I remember I did this jump, and...
	I remember mom was all nervous about me doing the jumping.
	It was sand and everything. It was very safe.
	A whole bunch of other kids have been doing it.
	But mom was all nervous and dad was like, I'm filming it.
	Oh yeah, Mom's like, when she's doing risky stuff, I can't watch, I can't watch!
	I'm like, go for it! I was jumping over this, it was like this flower bed type of thing, right?
	This was way more recently.
	It was really wide, and it was also probably two feet tall.
	Oh yeah. But it was like a foot and a half, maybe two feet wide.
	Kind of like a square.
	Maybe not two feet tall, but there was like flowers in it, so yeah, probably two feet tall.
	But only one foot of hard stuff.
	And I remember I was going to take a run from going down a hill, and then I went up a hill, and then I had to do the jump, because the little thing was at the top of the hill.
	And my mom was like, really like, oh my god, I can't.
	And you were like, hey Izzy, you should do like that again, except maybe try and jump like even closer.
	Car wheel! Like to the thicker part in the middle.
	And I was like, yeah, sure.
	And mom's like... She's young enough to do all the things I can't do anymore, so I lived through her.
	But no, so if you can sit down with your ex and say, listen, we gotta, like, they're getting...
	They're getting older. So we've got to start, not now, maybe not this year, but soon, we're going to have to sit down and step them through the mistakes we made.
	Because we didn't end up staying married, and it's not like we made it until when they were in college.
	We didn't even make it halfway through their childhoods, right?
	How long was it that you separated?
	We've been separated, well, now it's three years.
	Yeah, I'm sorry, man.
	I really am. That's just a really, really...
	So... So, I guess your youngest was, what, five?
	It was a month before her fifth birthday.
	Oh! Oh!
	Ow, man, ow.
	So, yeah, so, I mean, it's not like you guys didn't even get close to the finish line, right, as far as all of that goes, right?
	So, yeah, you've got to sit down and start to talk to them about it at some point.
	Now, If your children learn your limitations, they can gain and keep respect for you over the life, because they'll make mistakes, and we all make mistakes.
	If you pretend you haven't made mistakes, or they're just vague and ambiguous, or they're genetic, or kids don't come with instruction manuals and so on, you may keep a little bit of their respect, so to speak, in the moment, but over the course of their life, they'll look back and say, well, you just really won't tell them the truth then, were you, Dad?
	So it tends to fall away.
	And then, of course... If they can't get their femininity from...
	If they can't get the feminine desire for masculinity from you, because the dissolution of the marriage is incomprehensible to them, then I'm sure Hollywood and advertising and, you know, Lord knows what, is going to step right up and teach them what it's like to be feminine, and that's the...
	You don't want that. That's you do not want, right?
	Disney and Barbie. Those are the two main ones, and I hate both of them.
	I absolutely hate Disney.
	If there was one company I could close down, it'd be Disney.
	We're working on it. Google number two gives Disney number one.
	Right. So, you know, your wife is not going to want to talk about this for two reasons.
	Well, three reasons. One, she's the guilty party.
	Two, it's a little tougher for women, I think, than men on average.
	And... I can't remember the third one.
	Anyway, the third one was the most important one, but it's totally gone.
	That's okay. I'm sure you can figure it out.
	One, two, five.
	There we go. We have to skip two.
	Skip three and four.
	So if she is willing to do it, and you can sort of make the case for that and say, look, we got to...
	Because if we were together for 10 years before we started to mess up, we don't want them to sit there and say, well, on year 11, I'll start trusting.
	You know, because we also make...
	Like, the longer the relationship, the more you've got to tell what went wrong.
	And if she doesn't want to do it, you know, I mean, obviously, I have no idea what your legal situation is, what's going on and all that.
	But not too long down the road, I do think they have to know the age-appropriate truth, and there needs to be some fessing up mistakes.
	And the reason, of course, is A, to protect them from the mistakes you made so that they can actually trust, right?
	Because if it's like, you know, if the guy with the swastika tattoo on his forehead turned out to be a bad boyfriend, and you say, well, you know, one clue was the swastika tattoo on his boyfriend, the only worst boyfriend was the hammer and sickle guy, then at least they can say, okay, he doesn't have a hammer and sickle or a Nazi swastika on his forehead. he doesn't have a hammer and sickle or a Nazi At least we've passed that hurdle, right?
	So you've got to give them what to look out for so that they can make better decisions.
	That's really, really important to give them that.
	It'll help them with respect.
	It'll help them with trust and respect.
	It will mean that they won't replicate your relationship.
	I mean, hopefully get them to replicate all the good stuff and all of that.
	But I think as far as femininity goes, you know, it really comes down to something which is not gender specific, which is just, you know, owning your mistakes, teaching other people.
	I mean, on my show, I'm always talking about mistakes I've made and, you know, continue to make and all of that.
	And it's not like people say, oh, what a loser.
	Well, I saw some people do, but hopefully nobody in this call.
	So, that to me is sit down with your ex now.
	If she wants to do it or she's willing to see her way clear to do it, I think that's a loving thing.
	And the other thing is that, you know, how many times have you said to your kids, you know, if you've messed up, just tell me.
	I won't get mad. You know, if you've made a mistake, you know, if you've done something wrong, you know, don't hide it.
	You know, just tell me.
	You know, we'll work it out.
	And so if you say to your kids, hey, if you make a mistake, just be frank and tell me about it, be honest, but then you hide from your children the fundamental reason why the family cracked and fell apart, Krakatoa style...
	You got a contradiction then, right?
	Because you're saying to your kids, yeah, be honest with your mistakes.
	It's fine. We'll work it out.
	But when it comes to the most important mistake that was made, which was the dissolution of the marriage, and I'm not saying it was a mistake like your mistake.
	It sounds like a little bit more hers.
	And it's like, well, we can't tell the truth about that.
	Telling the truth about little things is important.
	Telling the truth about big, really important things.
	Now you don't want to be doing that.
	That's, you know, that's not what you want to be modeling, I think.
	Awesome. Thank you very much.
	Also, you sound like a really great dad, in terms of, like, the talking things out in conversations and stuff like that.
	Well, he's on this call, so...
	Anyone here is a good one.
	Gold star! Gold star.
	Alright, should we do one more? I've read on Truth and everything else.
	Yeah, if you have time stuff, we have more questions.
	We have two Lances.
	Let's watch them joust.
	Remember the guy on the horse?
	Lance Cantron, Lance Simpson.
	We've got next questions about homeschooling from Sean.
	Oh, hello! I'm here.
	I can't show my face, but I'm here.
	Do you want to show up right? No, I don't.
	Me neither. You want to ask a question, Sean?
	Go ahead. Sure.
	Thanks, Stefan, for being here.
	Condolences on your YouTube channel and your Twitter.
	Always a fan. Should I fully homeschool my kids, but risk them not being able to fully reintegrate them back into their school at their cognitive level?
	Did you say fully homeschool your kids?
	Correct. All right.
	How old are they? Six and eight.
	And what's their schooling history been so far?
	My son's gifted.
	He skipped second grade.
	He was about to take a test to skip fourth grade, but COVID hit, and so he was forced to be in fourth grade.
	So... Fourth grade is too easy for him.
	My daughter's in first grade.
	You know, they're still doing stuff they did in kindergarten.
	So I don't know what COVID did to the curriculum, but they're behind where they should be.
	So none of them are happy with their school, but they both tell me they want to be in person.
	And so I'm concerned that if I try to homeschool them, you know, the school is not going to be eager to say, oh, well, you all are so more advanced.
	You all can go to fifth or second or whatever that's appropriate for them.
	How long would you think of homeschooling them?
	Is this like a short-term thing or like until the post-COVID or what?
	I mean, yeah. I mean, originally they were supposed to open in August, but then the school board changed their mind.
	So, you know, they kind of have the Sword of Damocles over us saying, you know, we might open up if conditions are better kind of thing.
	So... Sword of Damocles.
	I can't imagine where they got their gifted nature from.
	It's actually pronounced Imocles.
	I'm just kidding. It's not pronounced that way at all.
	I have to say...
	Go for it. I think... I don't really know too much about the COVID situation, but say COVID magically gets better somehow, which is quite unlikely.
	But anyways, let's say that happens.
	I think you should maybe at least put the six-year-old in school for like a year.
	No, the six-year-old's in school.
	Is he still in school, right? He's still in school.
	They're both in school, but it's online Zoom, right?
	Actual getting up at like 6am type of thing going to school.
	Punish them and make them not want to go?
	Yes! Make them not want to go so that they actually know homeschooling is a good thing.
	Well, you don't want to be ambivalent about homeschooling, right?
	Yeah, you want to, because, I mean, possibly with my kids in the future, because I am planning to have kids, obviously, when I get older, but I'm going to put them into school for one year.
	I'd be like, do you want to go back or do you want to be homeschooled?
	And when they go back, and if they ever start turning on homeschooling, they're like, well, we could shove you back in school for a year.
	No, but if I understand this right, Sean, your kids are in school.
	They like it because it's in person when it gets back to being in person.
	Is that right? Correct.
	They both told me directly they prefer being in person.
	They want that connection. Well, you know what's very in person?
	Homeschooling with your parents.
	That's very in person.
	Would it be you who's teaching them?
	I purchased an online curriculum for them.
	So it's basically, you know, they do the online assignments, they read how to do it, they do the quiz, and I'll help them if they need it.
	I'm working at the same time. Are you married?
	I'm widowed. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear.
	How long? Since December.
	Oh, heart goes out, man.
	Was it an illness? Yeah, she had stage 4 breast cancer.
	Oh, how long did that take?
	A year and a half. Oh, man, I'm so sorry.
	Thank you. That makes sense why you're on a treadmill.
	Health must stay healthy!
	No, I totally get it.
	And my heart goes out.
	Yeah, I absolutely massively sympathize.
	Yeah, that's really horrible. Um...
	Would you, how much time would you have during the day?
	I don't sort of, I don't sit there and think of sitting down necessarily with the curriculum.
	We do go through the curriculum and all that.
	That's what I kind of do with my mom.
	We'll do the more curriculum work.
	Unfortunately, we've kind of moved on from English and now we're going to be studying math.
	I'm very sad. I dislike math.
	I mean, a lot of people say I'm good at it, but I personally just really dislike it.
	Yeah, yeah. I basically get all the history and kind of like social studies and politics and all that stuff, what you'd be getting from the book from this man right here.
	I'm not sure if you know who this is.
	No, I'm kidding, but him.
	And I get more of the curriculum, math stuff from, and like grammar and stuff from my mom.
	But overall, I think I have like a...
	We typically try to do an hour of formal, which is like the...
	What is the actual curriculum?
	A day and we end up doing about three or four hours of conversational skills and social stuff and history and politics.
	Yeah, like we were doing a debate with an antinatalist today.
	Oh yeah, so he was playing the antinatalist and I was playing the pronatalist and stuff like that.
	That's just one of the examples we did earlier in the morning.
	And then we did the problem with the commons just while we were driving out to get the technical issues sorted out and all that.
	The more you can work it into conversation, the better it is.
	Because that's kind of how we try to learn.
	If you want to learn philosophy, usually you'll listen to a podcast, watch a couple of videos.
	You don't necessarily sit down there with a logic tree and somebody glaring over your shoulder or whatever.
	Yeah, that happens. Yeah. So if you can work more, and I'm sure you can, obviously smart guy and very verbal, so if you can work stuff more into conversation, you can get a huge amount of information across and critical thinking and understanding of stuff.
	And obviously, sorry for interrupting, but don't forget like jokes because sometimes jokes and funny stories can really remember because I find my memory is kind of an odd way of working.
	It works for stuff I want to remember and stuff I don't want to remember.
	So the stuff I don't really want to remember like I remember that I have to do homework and stuff tomorrow or like I have to sing where I clean the house with my mom every two weeks.
	And stuff like that.
	Stuff I don't really want to remember because it's not too enjoyable.
	Kind of goes out the other year.
	And stuff that I look forward to.
	Like, I think we mentioned earlier in this call, Dungeons and Dragons.
	And fun debates like what we did this morning.
	I really remember and have them planned.
	Not exactly planned, but bookmarked in my head.
	Because I recognize them and remember them.
	And I can remember fun stuff like this show.
	In a couple months, probably.
	So that's why if you really want the conversations to stick with your kid, you should add in some jokes and funny stories or embarrassing stories that would probably make them remember.
	Yeah, so with regards to socializing, if your kids are so far ahead, it seems unlikely that they're going to find a lot of horizontal connections.
	So, Izzy, what's it like having conversations with most kids?
	Oh! Well, I remember a friend, I was probably six or seven, and they were the same age.
	Actually, six days older than me.
	It was a competition back then who was older than the other, and it was really annoying.
	She acted like a two-year-old, actually worse than a two-year-old, an infant, but in terms of her personality and intelligence.
	I tried to have a conversation with her, and most times we just kind of randomly talked about games and what we play, so not real conversations.
	I mean, stuff you can last, but you can't last with that for a friendship forever.
	So we were having... I tried to start a conversation with her.
	I was like, oh hey, um...
	What did you do yesterday after we played, right?
	And she was like, not much.
	And I'm like, okay, well, maybe she's just a bit unhappy right now.
	So when I started bringing up something she liked, I'm like, oh, is there any cool drawing that you can show me at some point?
	And I probably, if she had asked me that, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I did this drawing of a dragon because I was drawing dragons back then, even then.
	I just kind of like back then, whatever.
	Back then. And I was like, oh yeah, I did this dragon drawing.
	It's a dragon flying in the clouds and it's blah, blah, blah, whatever.
	And I explained the dragon, its name, whatever.
	But she was just like, yeah, I drew me and my friend.
	And I'll be like... Anything else?
	And she's like, no. It's like trying to play basketball with a ball of wool.
	And then later she just said, let's do something else.
	And I'm like, what is this?
	Yeah, and you timed it once.
	17 seconds? It was 46 seconds.
	46 seconds. And the other one with my other friend was 17 seconds.
	You got 17 seconds. Like, it didn't even get started.
	She said, like, two words. Yeah, 17-second conversation, 46-second conversation, and...
	I used to have conversations with you that went for, like, two hours, and that was, like, six or seven.
	Yeah. And here, like, we've got an hour and 40 minutes or whatever, right?
	Lots of people. Yeah, we can chat in a way and all that.
	So, you know, if your kids like it because of the play with other kids, well, you can get that stuff outside of school.
	There could be homeschooling groups which you can socialize with and so on.
	I'm sure those exist somewhere.
	Yeah, but as far as, you know, they're going to have great conversations with, you know, tablet itself, kids who have the attention span of squirrel!
	You know, that's not going to work out very well, right?
	I think. Yeah.
	So, if you think of it like, you know, some sort of form of homeschooling, you can certainly do that stuff, and we do some of that as well, but I think that most of the really good stuff comes across in conversations, which are great and fun to have, and where I think the real knowledge transfer not only goes, but sticks. You know, the formal stuff can kind of, you know, it's like a neon sign, like that scrolling text that just, like a billboard, just kind of goes from one sort of side of the head out to the other.
	But the conversations usually kind of really stick and all of that.
	So I would give it a try.
	You could run it in parallel, right?
	I'm sure you do have conversations with your kids, but try and just work more educational stuff in there and stuff you're passionate about that really you care about.
	And you can just see how much information and education you can get across that way.
	And they may compare that to what's going on in school and say, you know, this is more fun and more enjoyable and more enriching stuff going on at home.
	You're in competition, as you point out, right?
	You're in competition with the school, and you've got to win, I suppose, right?
	Yeah, I mean, just always remember the jokes, because that's what really happens.
	Like, we were chatting on the way up as we talked about the commons, and...
	We mentioned something that he told me three or four years ago.
	He barely remembered it.
	It was something to do with a conversation.
	I remember the base of the conversation.
	I did in the car, but right now the word has escaped me.
	It just poofed away. But I do remember the conversation.
	It was mainly because of that one joke.
	Those are really important in order for getting kids to remember and listen to stuff.
	Knowledge is a blast. Learning stuff is a blast.
	Schools, I'm pretty sure the teachers don't add in fun jokes or, like, fun games that they do.
	I bet you kids remember their lessons a lot more if they did that.
	Yeah. All right.
	Does that help? I'm not sure.
	We kind of did sort of swing wildly there.
	Hopefully we connected with something.
	No, no, that was good. No, I'll be brave, and you're right.
	I should not depend on school for socialization.
	And probably the homeschool kids are probably smarter anyway, so that sounds like a good map.
	I bet you they are. Yeah, you don't really want to train your kids to adapt to the average if you've got really smart kids.
	And also, preparing them from adulthood by lots of detailed conversations can be pretty good.
	Yeah, slumming it with the normies is like, let's move to a really bad neighborhood, so you learn how to fight and protect your lunch money.
	It's like, I don't think that you want that lesson to go across.
	All right, well listen, that's a long chat.
	It was really, really great to meet all of you guys.
	I'm sorry that we didn't get to everyone's question, but it would be great to do this again if you find this kind of stuff helpful and useful.
	Absolutely, Stefan. Thank you.
	It was really fun. Yeah, it was.
	Thanks a lot, guys. Do keep me posted.
	Update me through, Anthony, about how things are going.
	And once again, Sean, my massive sympathies.
	I'm so sorry for what's been going on or what happened.
	And there's really not much positive stuff that can come out of it.
	But my heart goes out to you.
	That's a terrible thing to have to go through for so long.
	Best of luck in the future. And yeah, thanks everyone so much for your time.
	And I'm looking for a graceful way to exit.
	Yeah, yeah, I need glasses.
	All right, what have we got here? Okay, thanks everyone.
	I wish I knew how to work a keyboard because I'd do it for you.
	- Take care guys.
	Bye. - Bye guys. - Bye Izzy. - 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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	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

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