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Oct. 13, 2021 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:25:26

"I Don't Want to be a Mother Anymore!" Freedomain Call In

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	Hello. Oh, hey.
	How's it going? I'm doing okay.
	Well, well, well, well.
	Listen, I'm glad you reached out for help.
	This is a heck of a thing to be dealing with, and I really, really sympathize.
	So, thank you. Thank you for calling.
	I appreciate that. Do you want to tell me what's going on?
	Well, I've been having...
	These issues with my daughter.
	I'm a stay-at-home mom. I'm 38.
	Our family, my husband, my daughter, and I, we just moved from another state so we can buy a house.
	We moved here and just kind of didn't really have any other community.
	So it's been really difficult trying to find some other friends to connect with that are kind of like-minded and also have kids the same age.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt. I'm having a little trouble hearing you.
	I'm not sure if you're on a headset or a phone or something like that, but if you could just check.
	Under Skype settings, there is a way of making sure.
	It's not the end of the world if we have to continue, but I just like to be able to hear people as clearly as possible.
	So Skype settings.
	Should be able to choose a microphone or that.
	Can you hear me better?
	It hasn't changed.
	And it's not the end of the world. If you have some nice headset, that's fine.
	If you don't, we can continue. No big deal.
	Okay. Well, incidentally enough, my husband's a sound engineer.
	And I'm on his super groovy sound setup where he's got barefoot speakers.
	Wow. I'm just like, wait, where do I speak into?
	Right, right. Okay, we'll just keep going.
	We'll keep going. Okay.
	And your daughter is three and a half, is that right?
	She's three and a half.
	Right. So, yeah, we've moved, and so it's been kind of difficult meeting friends, but then just recently we've met some really great people that have great kids, and my daughter...
	Connects with them.
	They kind of live a little bit far away from us.
	Still, like, it's probably like, I mean, not too far.
	It's like 30 minutes to an hour, you know, with some of these people we've connected with.
	And just yesterday, I was with my daughter, and we're having a great day.
	And then It'll be around midday where I start feeling this anxiety where I have to get stuff done around the house.
	My husband is going to take over usually around 3 or so in the afternoon.
	I'm trying to make lunch and refuel and not get hangry.
	And my daughter is just she wants to help and I let her help and when she loses interest with helping me she'll just go around starting screaming and she'll hit me in the kitchen and I'll very calmly explain to her like what's going on but I understand she's a toddler so it's Kind of a lot to expect her to completely understand and be logical but I try my best to really engage with her and sit with her when she is being like this and but she'll stop for a little bit and then continue to like just climb on the furniture and being really unsafe and just screaming and the screaming is It's kind of been something that she's started doing more often,
	like over the past couple months, and it's been really bothering my husband and I. And I would really like to properly understand what that's from and what I can do.
	And I know it kind of always starts with the parenting.
	So anyway, Wait, sorry, do you mean your parenting or how you were parented?
	Both. Right, right, okay.
	And so I just get to a point where, okay, I've finished making lunch and finally I do something just awful where she's screaming and I have to...
	Like, lock her outside because I can't handle it and I can't finish what I'm doing.
	And I just never thought I would ever do anything like that because my mom used to do that to me.
	And my mom used to put me in my room.
	So you mean lock her outside, like in the backyard?
	In the backyard. And do you sort of pick her up and put her outside?
	I mean, she doesn't want to go at that point, right?
	Yeah, sometimes I'll pick her up and sometimes she'll just like...
	I'll open the door and she'll just run outside.
	But then she wants me to come out with her and I explain to her that I have to finish making lunch and I'm at this point where I'm like, you know, I just, I can't handle you right now while I'm trying to fix lunch and I'm getting to the point where I'm getting really hungry too.
	And She's outside and at this point my husband comes in to kind of take over you know and he'll come take over and lunch is ready and then she'll sit down but then she'll be like taking the food and kind of playing with it and just really like over the past couple months been really trying to activate like the anger I guess like within me because she kind of knows Some of my little triggers and even my husband too,
	since he's a sound engineer, he hates the yelling because it really hurts his ears.
	He's really sensitive.
	So we've been experiencing just like, God, we're like, I've never been so angry at someone in my whole entire life and it's my daughter and Well, it's traumatic, right?
	I mean, the screaming is like, that's what you hear in like, I don't know, if two buses collide and people have their legs melting, like this level of screaming.
	It's traumatic, right, for you?
	Yes, it's traumatic.
	No, no, you laugh a little, but it is.
	Being screamed at is very stressful.
	Being screamed at raises cortisol levels.
	It's bad for your health.
	I mean, it's bad for your sleep.
	And this isn't what you went through nine years.
	I'm sorry, nine years. This isn't what you went through nine months of labor for, right, is to have this kind of issue.
	So I really feel for you. This is a very tough situation to be in, and you're certainly not alone in this kind of stuff.
	I'm sure we can solve it, but I mean, I know you're not alone in that.
	Yeah, I know I'm not alone either, and I don't know what it is, like, too.
	Like, the night before, I got some...
	A little time off to myself and got to hang out with some really great people and so I should be feeling like re-energized and refreshed and ready to like kind of take on whatever the day has for me and for us and I'm just I got to this point where my husband took over and then he had to go back to work for a little bit and then somebody came over and dropped something off and we chatted a little bit and so I was kind of heated and I had to tell my friend that dropped something off like I'm sorry I just got kind of in a little struggle with my daughter so I'm like a little off guard and so from having to be From being kind of really angry to then somebody coming over and,
	like, wanting to chat. I'm like, it's, like, really hard for me to switch.
	I mean, I'm sure for anyone.
	Well, and also, it would be weird for your daughter to see you switch.
	Yes. You know, like, yelling at her or whatever's going on, and then, like, hi!
	You know, to whoever's coming over.
	It'd be like, whoa, which mom has spinned the wheel landing on today, right?
	Yes. And that's also something I would experience Growing up, too, is my mom would be, like, yelling at us, and then she'd, like, the phone would ring, and it'd be like, oh, hey, how's it going?
	I was just like, whoa, that's really strange.
	And I'm like, wow, she acts really nice to other people, but not so much to me.
	Oh, yeah. No, the strangers get the nice mom is something I'm a wee bit familiar with as well.
	I mean, unfortunately, of course, it shows to your kids that you can control your temper.
	You just don't in that particular circumstance, which we'll figure out, but that's what the kids experience, right?
	Yeah. And so after the friend dropped things off and she left, my daughter just...
	Then she, like, she was, like, actually did the same thing, too, which is kind of, like, a little scary, too, is she, like, when the friend was over, she was being, like, really nice and just, like, agreeable and, like, was listening.
	And then when she left, she just started climbing over all this...
	Like the furniture and started yelling again and I just got so angry like I like there was like this little basket on the ground and I just kicked it and I kicked it so hard I broke it and like there was like some of her toys were in it and then she like she'll say to me too like why did you break that like why I'm like because I'm so I'm like I'm so upset You know,
	I'm so upset and I know that it's wrong to I don't want to break things,
	but I just really felt like breaking something. It's like, oh, that's what it's like from the other side.
	Oh, that's, you know what I mean?
	Like, that's why she did what she did, right?
	Yeah, and that's funny that you said that because I was talking to my brother and I was saying, like, how I'm like, I'm finding, like, empathy for mom.
	And he was saying, like, God, me too.
	Like, you know, last time I talked to her, I was just, like, kind of like, let's...
	Like, he told himself just to let it go, you know?
	And I was just like, yeah, like...
	Things that don't help, 101.
	Let it go. Rise above it.
	Don't react. Yeah, things that don't help.
	And those are the things, too, like, when I'm trying to rise above, like, when my daughter's screaming at me by, like, not reacting or, like, acting like it's not affecting me, like, that's when...
	The pot starts boiling within me and it's kind of like the start of it and it's just so strange because I can feel like I've been able to maintain it,
	like manage it, like see my anger coming up and then like I said in my letter, I'm able to take a deep breath or like walk around or just like Sometimes I'll just pray too and it's like asking myself basically to I'm sorry,
	I don't mean to laugh, but I'm not sure where it puts you in Christian theology, or in particular your daughter, if you have to pray to Jesus and to God to save you from your daughter.
	Doesn't that put her in kind of the negative slash demonic side of things, if I understand that correctly?
	Right, right. Yeah.
	Lord, please save me from the temptations of my daughter, whose head is currently rotating.
	Okay. Wow.
	Yeah, I know.
	Get behind me.
	That's right. Get behind me, toddler.
	Right, right.
	But, yeah, like yesterday, it just kind of boiled over so hard, and I broke that basket, and my daughter, like, she picked it up part of the basket, and she ran to my husband's He's in the room where he's doing sound engineering, so he's got the headphones on.
	He can't hear anything.
	But she knocks on the door, and she's like, Mom broke the basket and brought him a piece of the basket.
	And I just started sobbing, crying.
	And I was just like, this is too hard, and I don't want to be a mom.
	Wait, did your daughter hear that?
	Yeah, she did.
	Oh, dear. Yeah.
	Yeah, things that you really don't want sitting in your kids' heads, right?
	Because what you mean is I don't want to be a mom to you, right?
	I mean, because you want her to be a mom, you just don't want to be a mom to her.
	And saying something like that is a direct bond threat?
	Like our bond is cracking kind of thing?
	Mm-hmm. Right, I'm sorry about that.
	Yeah, and she was trying to give me a hug and like show empathy to me and I wasn't at first ready to receive it but like then she just like kept trying to hug me and I just like sat down and just hugged her and I'm just like yeah I'm in a really bad place and I don't there are things that she can't possibly understand she can't understand it as an adult you know and what would you say to her if she could understand it?
	Give me the speech like I'm her and you just said I don't want to be your mom or that kind of stuff.
	Oh God, if she...
	or like if you could write a letter that she could open when she was a teenager or something basically saying that I'm really sorry and that I'm not able to manage my anger and that it's not her fault that I'm not able to manage that anger and
	And I'm really sorry.
	I don't know. I just get lost.
	I kind of lose the words to...
	Well, hang on.
	Hang on. Now, that's...
	I mean, it's very thoughtful and nice what you're saying.
	But I've got a call not true on this part of it, right?
	No, with all friendliness and affection.
	But when you say, I'm unable to, I can't control my temper.
	Mm-hmm. That's not true.
	I mean, you could. Obviously, if there was a policeman at the door or something like that, right?
	If there was in public places, at a mall, at your friend's places, the half hour to an hour away friends, you can control your temper.
	And we have to figure out why it's impossible to do so in this situation.
	Because if you say to her, I can't control my temper, but...
	But honey, I at 38 can't control my temper, but you at three and a half should really be able to control your temper.
	I mean, that's not going to be believable, right?
	Right. Her level of aggression is actually a tribute to you.
	She wants to be like mommy, right?
	She's praising you. I know it sounds weird, but she is.
	Yeah. Right now, I assume she's very affectionate with her father.
	She's very affectionate, but also my husband has said that over the past couple months, he's also had to use force Like, in a way where...
	I'm sorry, what now?
	Did you give me the have to there?
	Have to use force?
	Have to? Have to? Really?
	You're going to tell the peaceful parenting guy, well, we had to use force.
	She's three and a half. She's terrifying.
	She's like Godzilla. It's just self-defense.
	Well, he was saying that...
	What we were talking about today, he's like, oh, how do you reason with the...
	I mean, she's crazy.
	How do you reason with the crazy person?
	Like, it's...
	And... I'm sorry, which female was she talking about here?
	The big version or the little version here, right?
	Because you can't be reasoned with when you're in that kind of temper either, right?
	Yeah. Now, you understand, if she's affectionate towards her father, she's going to imitate you.
	Do you know why? Um...
	If she's affectionate to her dad, she's imitating me because, um...
	Is it to solicit his attention?
	No, you've got to think more biological.
	So, she imitates you because if she likes her father, her father chose you, so if she wants a man like her dad, she's going to have to be like you.
	Mm-hmm. See, she doesn't look at you and think, that's my mom and she's had her own history, her own childhood, and there's lots of other types of women out there.
	She looks at you and she says, this is femininity.
	This is what women do. And when women do this, they get a man who provides, who protects, who I love.
	And so when women lose their tempers and act out and get aggressive and push me outside and lock the door, when women are very aggressive, That's who the men choose, because that's who dad chose.
	And so it's like her genes are saying, be like mom, because she's the only person you know who has succeeded in passing along her genes to the next generation.
	You and your husband.
	So you just think the genetics.
	The genetics are like, oh, this is the most attractive and popular woman in the vicinity, so I should be like her in order to...
	Get a man like that, or just get a man at all, if that makes sense.
	Because he chose you, and therefore, if he chose you, you must be extraordinarily valuable, therefore I should do what mom does.
	I mean, I assume that her father knew, like your husband knew before you got married and had kids, that you had a temper, right?
	And you'd had a harsh upbringing.
	He knew I had a harsh upbringing.
	My temper didn't really...
	Like, it didn't really come to this level until after I had our daughter.
	I mean, I think, well, I've had, like, a temper, like, it's been, I guess, secretive.
	Like, if I've been working on a project and something, like, failed, I would, like, scream or something.
	Kind of sounds like my daughter now, but I would...
	But it was not nearly as, I guess, volatile until my daughter was two.
	I had a great pregnancy.
	I had a wonderful pregnancy, wonderful birth, and then it was after I had My daughter that I was starting to really notice kind of a lot of residual anger I have with my mom because she didn't really show up like to really help out that much and my mother-in-law she is like beyond above and beyond like will help like she's her And my father-in-law,
	like, they will, I mean, they'll rearrange their whole day to help with the granddaughter.
	And so I see that, and it was just interesting to feel myself be uncomfortable with that, because I wasn't raised that way.
	Like, my grandma didn't come and see me, you know, and now his parents...
	Wait, your grandmother or your mother?
	Oh, I was saying, like, me as a child, I didn't see that.
	Yeah, I didn't see that, so I didn't see my grandparents come and visit me.
	They just didn't, you know?
	It was very seldomly.
	And my husband's parents, they, like, go out of their way to come visit and spend time with the granddaughter, with my daughter.
	And... I was a little uncomfortable with it, like almost a little claustrophobic, but then I had to really just accept the help because I really needed it.
	My mom would come around every once in a while and when she would come, she would not be that helpful.
	She would always She wants to talk about politics or she wants to talk about stuff.
	Like, it's... Like, she wouldn't, like, really engage with what my needs were, what the baby's needs were.
	And... Yeah, it was very, like, far...
	Like, few and far between the visits, the very beginning.
	And there would be a lot of excuses from her saying, like, oh, I'm sorry I couldn't come visit because...
	You know, I work, and it's really far away, too.
	She lived about, like, 30 minutes away.
	And I'm like, that's not that far away.
	You know? Good thing there weren't too many speed bumps.
	I mean, she'd never visit.
	I know, right?
	And, yeah, another thing, too.
	My brother, he got married.
	Yeah. When my daughter was two months old and my mom was the one that was kind of organizing the wedding like the decorating and everything and she basically was being really demanding on me when I was just had a baby and it was something to do with She had an idea for these candles to be everywhere,
	and they had to be a certain color and everything, and it had to be this so-so.
	And she would be just overly picky on the shade of white they had to be.
	It's always horrible when shitty parents show you their perfectionist side.
	Yeah. Because it's like, could you not have taken any of that perfectionist stuff and studied how to be a parent without screaming and hitting any passive?
	No! No! Perfectionism is for flowers that don't matter, not children that I'm raising.
	And my brother is getting divorced right now, too, which is horrible.
	He's got kids, too, right?
	You said that you were both commiserating about parenting?
	Well, we were just talking about our mom, but thankfully, him and his ex-wife didn't have any children.
	Okay. But, I mean, it's like...
	Okay, so let's talk a little bit...
	Sorry to interrupt. Let's talk a little bit about...
	And, sorry, that's the royal we.
	Let us talk about your childhood.
	So, if you tell me, like, what was it like, sibling...
	Well, I guess you had a brother, and you're younger or older, and what was it like for you growing up?
	I actually have two brothers and two sisters.
	I have an older half-brother.
	He's a year and a half older than I am, and we have the same dad.
	And... Then I'm the oldest out of the four siblings.
	So it goes me.
	Then I have a sister that's a year younger than me.
	And then two years after that, my mom had twins.
	And that's my brother and my other younger sister.
	And so we had, my mom had four kids within five years.
	And it was pretty chaotic.
	I just remember it being kind of chaotic.
	And... Yeah, we were always kind of walking on the eggshell.
	My parents stayed together and we always knew that they would probably get divorced because my mom was...
	Pretty volatile at times.
	That doesn't speak well to your marriage, but we'll get back to that.
	My mom was so volatile, they ended up getting divorced.
	They waited until all of us were out of the house.
	It's funny. I wonder, was that...
	The best thing?
	Kind of, I guess.
	It would have been even more chaotic if we were bouncing between two homes.
	But... It also could have been they just couldn't afford it.
	Yeah. Possibly, yeah.
	I mean, two households, pretty expensive, right?
	Yeah. And my dad, he did not want to get divorced, too.
	He wanted to just try to stick it out.
	And my mom would, but then they...
	Came to an agreement, I guess, that they would just...
	My mom says, and this is just like, oh, great.
	You know, she sacrificed a lot of her happiness to, like, for us, you know.
	And I'm like, great.
	You didn't choose to be born.
	I know. And...
	If we went on a vacation as a family, it was only a matter of time until my mom had a complete meltdown of some kind.
	My dad would forget her birthday or forget their anniversary.
	It was just a big meltdown.
	I remember the first time my mom I left a glass of water in our bedroom and she came in storming saying like, who left this glass of water in your room?
	And I blamed my sister.
	What was the problem? Did it leave like a ring on some wood or something?
	I don't know because it was like laminate furniture and Like, I don't know.
	She just zeroed in on this glass of water being on a bookshelf.
	And I lied because I was terrified.
	And my sister and I, we were both like kind of, you know, we're always kind of like fighting a little bit, you know, and pointing the finger at each other.
	And I was like, oh, she did it.
	And then She got mad at her, but she didn't hit her, but then she found out that I lied about it, and she just came at me, like, and just started smacking me.
	And, like, saying, you lied, and, like, just start smacking me.
	Wow. Of course, your mom has no problem lying when saying, 30 minutes, you know, it's too far away.
	That's a total lie, right?
	So she's no problem with lying.
	That's not, like, a principle she has.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, my mom is also to add to it, she's like born again Christian, and she's always talking about the truth.
	I'm sorry, is she really?
	I thought you weren't supposed to lie.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Exactly. And she's always proselytizing about, like, oh, I tell people how it is.
	I always tell people the truth, and if they don't like it, then, like, tough.
	And that was kind of our childhood.
	She had a plaque in our kitchen that said, I'm the mommy, that's why.
	And there was never any...
	That's not very subtle. I guess that's pretty clear.
	Oh, yeah. Very clear.
	Like, my mom is pretty clear on who she is.
	But when she gets called out on it, she just...
	She can't hear it.
	And... She'll throw her own tantrum and I believe she just has lived in complete denial of it for so long that she just doesn't even believe it even happened.
	Like our childhood.
	Sorry, what negative effects is she experiencing because of what she did?
	Well, she doesn't have the best relationship with all of her kids.
	She's got two of them that won't even call.
	No, no. I mean, sorry. She's got...
	I mean, with regards to you, you invite her over.
	She doesn't even really want to come, right?
	Well, now...
	Okay. Now, fast forward.
	I moved...
	We moved out of state, and my mom moved to the same state.
	And... She lives about an hour away and now she's like, oh yeah, you can come over anytime.
	I mean, she'll come here if she can, but now it's still the excuses of why she can't come to us is because she's got too much work to do around the house.
	Does she live alone?
	I'm sorry? Does she live alone?
	She lives alone.
	So, how much bloody work does she have?
	I don't quite understand.
	Yeah, I think she's always just trying to keep herself busy.
	And maybe, she's always trying to keep herself busy.
	Okay, let's not, sorry, I don't want to theorize about her state of mind, I just want to sort of focus on.
	Yeah, yeah, sorry. No, it's fine, it's fine.
	So, she hit you, but did she hit you rarely or regularly, or how did that go?
	It happened where it would like build up to I mean it would be probably like once every six months there'd be like a blow-up of some kind and it would be one of us that would get the brunt of it and my sis me and my My sister that is the second born,
	we were the ones that got the physical brunt of it.
	And my brother and his twin sister, they were the ones that got like the emotional, verbal brunt of it.
	And they also watched us getting hit too.
	So that would happen like every six months.
	And there was a couple times where we even called the police.
	It would get to the point where the cops were like, do you want to press charges on your mom?
	And we just say no because we were just terrified of what...
	We didn't know what that was going to do.
	And also we thought that my mom would change, I guess.
	But she never apologized for anything.
	And one time even one of the police officers was...
	I played volleyball for a while.
	And he was one of the coaches...
	Like, he was also, like, one of the police officers that came and saw, like, was called to our house and knew that my mom was abusive.
	So that was always made, like, really awkward.
	Really awkward scenario.
	But, um, yeah.
	And it wasn't until, and I hear you talk about this too, when you get older, where you can fight back, and there was a point where she was really brutally smacking my sister around, and I just yelled at her, and I said, stop it.
	And then she started coming after me, and I just held my hands out and stopped her.
	I was like, oh no, you stop it.
	And like, And yelled at her, back at her, and she just stopped and she just like screamed and ran away.
	And that was the last time we ever got physical where we were living in our house because my sister and I, we moved out.
	My sister ran away a few times and I moved out as soon as I could.
	I'm sorry? At what age did your sister run away?
	She ran away when she was like a freshman in high school and she got really heavily into drugs.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah. So, I mean, because you say that she was violent maybe every couple of months, six months, whatever, but I mean it must have been intolerable for your sister, what, 15 or 16 years old to run away?
	To just, what, take her chances out in the world?
	Yeah, she actually, I think she got like The worst of it, because my sister is very strong-willed.
	She's very intelligent, too, and she's lots of energy, and she's very similar to my daughter.
	Yeah, I was going to mention.
	Yeah. And my mom just did not know.
	She wasn't able to give the proper attention, and...
	And patience to her.
	And she was always trying to push the line when we were younger.
	She was the sibling.
	If there was peace and harmony, my sister would hit my brother or cause some kind of ruckus.
	And so that was really difficult for my mom to manage.
	And she just managed it.
	Oh, my God. Okay, so this is the problem, right?
	The problem is that you're assigning negative agency to your sister and you're making your mom a victim.
	You know, oh, if there was peace, my sister would hit her brother and my mom couldn't handle it.
	Like, oh, your poor mother, right?
	Right.
	Oh, your poor mother.
	Right.
	Who's hitting her children, screaming at them, abusing them, driving one of her children out of the house.
	Now, I mean, that's a hugely serious thing.
	Like I think my daughter's going to be 13 a couple of months.
	Right.
	So in like two years, three years, she just wanders out into the world and takes her chances in the streets.
	That's how people get raped, killed, sold into sexual trafficking, you know.
	Right. Put, through her and your father, through their abusive environment, put your sister in truly mortal danger.
	Yeah, and...
	So, I'm sorry, I can't put your mom in the victim category there.
	Yeah, I guess when I'm...
	I know when I do say it was difficult to manage, that is a form of...
	Well, here's the thing, because you mentioned earlier about the sort of chaos, right?
	She had like four children in five years or something like that, right?
	Okay, so you can bully people in the army, but you can't bully people very well in a software company.
	It doesn't tend to work super well because you need people's motivation and energy and enthusiasm.
	The more complex the situation, the more destructive violence is.
	Or aggression, right?
	So you say, oh, she had all these kids, so it was really chaotic, and she reacted with this clampdown or bully or control mentality.
	That's the worst thing you should do when things are complex.
	When things are complex, you need to have as free and easy and gentle touch as possible.
	Like in a free market, you can't scream at people.
	Obviously, in totalitarian societies, you can.
	So the more complex things are, the more difficult they are, the more light touch is needed, right?
	So saying that somehow her temper was driven by the number of kids, first of all, stop having all the kids.
	I mean, even if it was the case that the kids led to the bad temper, she's still 100% responsible for it because she chose to have that many kids in half a decade, right?
	Yeah. I mean, she told us that she had...
	My sister and I... First, and then my dad and her were having issues, but the issues weren't enough to make them stop having sex, and so the twins were unexpected.
	No, they weren't. No, no, no, come on.
	18 different forms of birth control, not including abstinence.
	Right. There's no way that any...
	Person with an IQ of 85 is going to be able to claim that there was an accident, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And my brother and my sister know that, too.
	Yeah, that's not great, either.
	But then your daughter knows that you don't want to be a mom.
	Yeah. I mean, they tell the story like it's so funny.
	Okay, so if you can just give me a brief sketch of, you know, 18 to 38 for you.
	18 to 38 okay so I I moved out and actually started renting a room from a friend and at this point I was like really smoking a lot of weed and doing like like random drugs every now and then and I got a job like waitressing and I waitress Pretty much from,
	like, all through my 20s to my early 30s.
	Because it was like, you know, you get cash on hand.
	How pretty are you? I'm sorry?
	How pretty are you? I would say I'm like a solid 7 or 8.
	Right. I mean, that's one of the things that you get trapped in as a waiter or waitress is that if you're pretty, you're going to make a lot of tips, right?
	So it can kind of trap you there.
	Yeah. And I really liked it, too, because I was really into food.
	I love food and I love to cook.
	And also, it was really developing some really great people skills and, like, how to...
	skills like ordering and whatnot.
	It was like really great for me because it pushed me out of like a comfort zone.
	Well, okay.
	I mean, I'll push back.
	I was a waiter too, right?
	So it takes about a week to learn how to do it.
	I mean, a decade saying, well, it helped me build organizational skills.
	I think that's a cope.
	I think that's something you say as to why you did a pretty low-rent job for a decade.
	I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, but as far as it takes a decade of waitressing to learn how to bring food to a table and organize things, that's not true, right?
	Yeah, I agree.
	I've always also been...
	Really creative and can draw and paint.
	And I switched from waitressing into doing graphic design in my early 30s.
	And I just had wished...
	If I could do it all over again, I would have started that.
	Right. Yeah, that makes more sense to me.
	Yeah. Way earlier.
	Way earlier. So, I guess you could say I already had kind of like that facial recognition...
	Or an alternative explanation is, after you began to age out of getting extra tips, you decided to switch careers, right?
	Because you're getting into your 30s, right?
	Yeah, maybe. That's another way of putting it, for sure.
	I wouldn't be surprised if that was definitely a subconscious thing.
	Well, as the tips will diminish, right?
	I mean, as you get into your 30s.
	Because, I mean, I was in a cafe with my daughter the other day, and we were chatting about stuff.
	And one of the things that I've noticed is that if I'm goofy, my daughter used to really enjoy it, but now she's becoming a teenager.
	She gets mortified and embarrassed, right?
	Yeah. You'll get to look forward to that in about 10 years.
	And so it's kind of funny because it's like, oh yeah, so when you wouldn't sleep at night, we had to stay up.
	But now, oh, look how the power has shifted.
	All I have to do is do a little dance and you want to die from embarrassment.
	And it's like, aha, how the tables have turned, my dear.
	Anyway, so this woman was chatting with her and I asked her, it was important sort of for the story that we were exchanging.
	I asked her how old she was and there was this long pause and she said 32.
	With that kind of way, it's like, oh yeah, I shouldn't really be 30 and serving coffee.
	That's not really a good thing in life.
	That doesn't indicate a lot of progress or challenge.
	But without a doubt, a woman who's in her early 20s who's a waitress is a cool chick of the future.
	A woman who's in her early 30s who's a waitress is like, you missed the bus somewhere.
	You missed the boat somewhere. That's probably one of the reasons why it was easier to transition, so to speak.
	Yeah, I think I gave myself a lot of excuses to stick to it because I'm like, oh, I get to meet some great people and I was doing a lot of painting and I'm like, oh, I could sell paintings on the side.
	It teaches me organizational skills.
	Yeah, I'm so full of it.
	And so when did you meet your husband?
	I met him when I was 28.
	I actually, when I was 24, I got married to a chef, incidentally enough, and...
	Well, you know all chefs are insane, right?
	Yes, they are.
	I know every friend...
	Not as bad as drummers, but definitely, you know, on the less stable continuum.
	Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, that's like a whole other topic, is...
	Yeah, my previous marriage.
	Dysfunctional people who work in restaurants, volume 267,000.
	Oh gosh, yeah.
	And like you said, the dysfunction is just so boring.
	I'm like, gosh, that was just so...
	There were so many red flags that popped up that it took me four years to realize that It wasn't a healthy relationship.
	I like Gordon Ramsay. Run!
	Yeah. And we were together for four years.
	And we divorced.
	And then it was...
	I got married when I was 25.
	And we were...
	Married for a year.
	And then we got divorced.
	And then I was 28 when I met my husband now.
	And we had dated for two years.
	Almost two years.
	And he asked me to marry him.
	And I did different...
	It was also a different approach with him.
	I really kind of just...
	I... Kind of set the standard of what the guy has to at least, I mean, if I'm going to like go out with anybody, they have to show that they're like listening and it's kind of funny because it's,
	you're kind of priming someone or you're like, I'm subconsciously looking for someone that's going to deal with my crap, I guess.
	That hasn't worked out yet, but maybe I can be that person in our hour and a half that we have together.
	Right, right. I was 28 and he's 10 years older.
	He was 38.
	Then we got married when I was 31.
	I didn't have this big drive to have kids because Well, there's the feminism brainwashing, but I was terrified of becoming my mom.
	And when I was 30, I started listening to a lot of Jordan Peterson, and he kind of actually helped me kind of reflect and realize that I didn't have to become my mom.
	And, um, I actually got really excited about having, um, a kid.
	And my husband was also kind of the same.
	Like, he was like, I'm not, we'd always say, like, I'm not counting it out, but, um, I guess we weren't ready for it.
	And in the beginning...
	Well, you were 35, right?
	Or 34 when you...
	When you had your daughter?
	Yeah, I had... So you're 34.
	He's 44. I mean, if you're not ready by then, I don't know when you're going to be ready.
	You can age out of that too, right?
	I know. We were like... I'm like, okay, I'm ready and I would love to have a kid and he was for it too and we both were also agreed that if it didn't happen that we would deal with it like I mean,
	there's no way to even, like, to imagine those kind of emotions, you know, how you would even deal with it, but we accepted that if it didn't happen, it doesn't happen, but if it does, that would be really wonderful, and I had no problem conceiving.
	It was about two months later, after we decided we wanted to have a child and had a great pregnancy, great birth, and then All this other subconscious mom anger comes out.
	Even though I did have anger towards my mom, I was more able to laugh it off because my mom is pretty predictable now.
	But now I see it how I'm treating my daughter and even how I've treated my husband too and we've gone to a therapist and we're pretty active in reading and even like we talk a lot about about these things and I even heard you say,
	like, you don't want to, like, wear out your husband or your partner on talking about, like, your issues, and sometimes I feel like I do do that, but, and I check in with him to ask him,
	like, hey, like, I can't, I'm sorry if this is, I'm talking too much about, like, my mom and all that stuff, and he just, like, He's okay with it, but I think that maybe at this point he was kind of like, you know, maybe we just need to get some help.
	But we have gone to a therapist and it's been very effective because we do like to talk and we will take responsibility for the shit that we do too.
	I will get really, I will feel the relief of like a great therapy session or coming to a good realization and I don't kind of keep up on it which I feel like I do because I need to because it's something that keeps circling back and ultimately I just,
	I don't want to I don't want to get divorced, and I don't want to ruin my child.
	No, of course. Obviously, I won't reveal your last name, but it's obviously seriously in the Hispanic category.
	Is that your culture? Is that your husband's culture?
	Or did you just roll the dice and got that name?
	That's my culture.
	But as we were being raised, my dad...
	I mean, we liked...
	Mexican food, but he never was like, you know, we identify as being Mexican, you know?
	We just knew we were, you know?
	But we all relatively look like kind of like weto, you know?
	Like whitewashed Mexican, like everyone in our family does.
	What was the acronym? Weto? Yeah, weto or weta.
	What does that mean? That means kind of like whitewashed Mexican.
	Like more Spanish or...
	Yeah, more Spanish. Yeah, my dad is very much more Spanish than Mexican looking.
	And my grandmother, his mom was very fair too.
	And it was my grandfather that was, he looked more Mexican and Native American too.
	So it's mostly actually more Native American than Spanish.
	Okay, but it was not a big cultural influence, is that right?
	No, no. Yeah, and like, yeah, it was never, like, we never really strongly identified with that culture.
	My husband, he's half Irish and half Jewish.
	It's funny because, you know, half Irish, half Jewish, it's like, Ireland is a country, Judaism is, you know, like, it's not a country, but I know what you mean.
	Ashkenazi, yeah. Right, right, okay, got it.
	Right. And, yeah, he wasn't like really raised with the, like, he wasn't a practicing Jew, neither.
	His parents were both, his parents are both kind of like, I guess, atheist, you would say.
	Well, but you can be atheist and Jewish, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, they... And they kind of like poo-poo God, you know, or like any higher power, you know?
	I get that, but are you raising...
	I'm sorry, is Judaism a part of your family culture or practice?
	No. Okay, okay, got it, got it.
	And you're Christian?
	I would say I'm more...
	God, I'm like Christian-leaning, but I don't go to church, and I believe...
	In Jesus, I think that what He has shown us in His teachings are invaluable and are very valuable.
	But I don't go to church because I'm not...
	I just like...
	It's not me to, like, be worshipping Jesus, and I don't really think that's what he wanted.
	I think he just wanted us to listen to what he was teaching.
	No, but you would worship the personification of the values.
	You wouldn't worship some guy who just lived 2,000 years ago, but you would hold him as an ideal to elevate the values in your own mind, I think.
	Yes, that's a great way of saying it, the personification of the values.
	What would Jesus do is not, I'm a slave to Jesus, but it's a way of invoking the values in a real-time way.
	Yeah. Okay, anyway, so that's theology, so we can perhaps talk about that another time.
	Okay, so you had an easy pregnancy, and the birth, how was the sleep after the birth for you?
	The sleep was...
	It was challenging for sure.
	I would say the first time I saw a therapist is because of the sleep and my therapist would enlighten me too.
	He's like, your adrenals are shot because you just had a baby and you haven't been sleeping regularly and so you're acting kind of crazy.
	Um, but she, overall, she slept, she started sleeping through the night, like, around eight months old, you know, and, um...
	Now, was that on her own? Um...
	I mean, did you do the cry-it-out thing at all?
	Um, so, um, it was at eight months that we decided to, yeah, do the cry-it-out.
	We co-sleeped for those first eight months, and it was...
	Yeah, you've got to sleep. I mean, you can't drive.
	It's not safe. And we had to do the cry it out thing, too.
	It's brutal. But, I mean, you can't exist on very little sleep.
	It just doesn't work. Right.
	And I really felt that after we did do it, it was kind of like a relief.
	Like, I felt like my daughter was relieved, too, because she was sleeping.
	And, yeah, it really, like...
	It worked really well for us and it was really, really difficult.
	Then there's also little transitions as they get older.
	She would climb out of her crib and she didn't nap really consistently during the day.
	She had a very active mind.
	It was out to convince her or to try to lead her into a nap.
	It was really challenging.
	Yeah, the really intelligent kids, when they're very little, don't have really much capacity to self-stimulate.
	They can't read books.
	They can't look up things on the internet.
	So they need their parents for stimulation.
	And if they're high-stimulus kids, it's tough.
	Yeah. She is kind of like a little bit of the issue.
	I'm... I'm having difficulty adapting to how much she wants to be stimulated by either my husband or I. It's mostly me.
	She wants to be around me all the time, which I do love to be around her, but I need a little bit of a break to just get Some of the household things together.
	I stay at home and you're actually really responsible for having me choose to do that.
	It really opened my eyes actually to see how that affected children when the parents aren't around as much.
	We made it a point that I would stay home and my husband would work.
	It's worked really well for us.
	It's probably great for his career too because he's not got the split focus as much.
	Oh yeah. Having a kid, you don't know what your potential is until you have those things.
	Until you have things to really provide for, you know, and...
	Oh, it's the ultimate economic growing up thing, right?
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, his income is, like, almost double since we've, like, made that decision.
	Oh, yeah, that's typical, so...
	Yeah. Okay, so when did you first notice that you were getting into significant conflicts with your daughter?
	Gosh, um...
	When she...
	I would notice it like when I am tired and it's kind of like she's got an awareness of what things like how to solicit reactions from me and we also like We moved six months ago and so that's been like a really,
	I understand that's like a really big change in her worldview.
	And her feeling of stability and...
	I wouldn't put too much on the moving myself.
	I mean, I could be wrong.
	I just, you know, if she's with you, it's like, I don't care where we are as long as we're together, right?
	Unless she had sort of big friendships in the neighborhood or whatever it was.
	But I don't know that moving...
	You know, we evolved as a nomadic species, right?
	I don't know that moving is usually traumatic for kids.
	Okay, yeah.
	Yeah, I think it was...
	You know when we moved to a new house it was like a different space and she kept wanting to like sleep in our bed you know and it was like working with her to like come back to her bed and she would sometimes it would we would get to a point where she's almost asleep and then she'd wake up and like not want to go to sleep and It's,
	like, really hard to, like, feel that, like, oh, you're going to sleep, so I'm going to be able to go to bed, too, and then it doesn't happen, and it's just like, oh, gosh, like, this is super frustrating, and then I will lose sleep on that half end of it, too.
	And then we would be like in the cycle of like we're not getting enough sleep and she's also transitioned from like not from not taking a nap at all.
	So that's really challenging because she still does get kind of tired in the middle of the day and it's moving the schedule around to where she's not in the car in the middle of the day because she'll fall asleep.
	And if she takes a nap, then she's up until, like, 11.
	And we're, like, just...
	My husband and I are just, like, really, really tired at that point.
	And we're more able to snap, I guess.
	You know, and...
	Yeah, so...
	I think it's just this past couple months, the not having, like, the friends...
	And, like, a kind of consistent schedule, like, really kind of affects me and it affects her, too.
	And I think she's really seeing it affect me because I don't have any friends here.
	Like, I've managed to make some, but, like, not, like, really good connections like I had.
	No, it's, I mean, younger people don't really get it.
	Like, it's hard after you leave school.
	To make friends, right?
	Yeah. I remember after high school, I went to go and work in Thunder Bay for a while and I was working there and I'd go to nightclubs and meet people and it's like, but yeah, it's just, you know, everyone's got their circle of friends.
	You're just some guy who's around.
	Like, it's tough, tough to sort of break into existing social circles.
	And did you guys move for your husband's work?
	Is that... Well, he works at home, and he's a freelancer, so he can work wherever there's an internet connection, essentially.
	But where we were living, we'd always been renting, and we were just kind of waiting for the right time to buy a house.
	We lived in probably one of the most desirable areas in the world.
	We're just renting, and the housing market is just like, it was very common for a house to be like a million dollars, you know, around us.
	Okay, so yeah, I get it. So you moved together.
	Yeah, so we moved to a state where we could buy a house, and also we thought the state was also going in a better direction.
	Sorry to interrupt. Can you tell me, I don't know if you can do this without startling your daughter if she's around, but what does your daughter's scream sound like?
	It's like...
	Is it more panicked and frustrated and angry than that?
	Because that sounds like a ship whistle or something.
	Yeah, like it's like...
	Is it more like... Like that kind of stuff?
	Frustrated and angry or more shrieking?
	No, it is like a...
	No, it's like a scream to purposely like get your attention.
	Like it's...
	Like a...
	And like smiling and like laughing and...
	And it'll just be like a...
	So not quite a scream. Is it like a call?
	Like a call, I guess.
	But it's really loud.
	It's really shrill.
	And... It's over and over.
	You know? And with that...
	Well, no. It stops if you give her attention, right?
	Is that right? It...
	It will. I mean, if you pick her up and put her on your hip, she's not screaming in your ear, right?
	Oh, she'll keep screaming.
	Yeah. Oh, yeah.
	Okay, well, that you can't, because you actually get hearing damage from that.
	Like, you have to put the kid down and say, no, no, no, you cannot scream in my ear.
	Yeah. Right?
	That's not... You can't let that happen as a thing.
	That's like a kid running at you with a knife.
	Like, you know, even if they're just playing, it's like, no, no, can't scream in my ear.
	That's going to give me tinnitus, right?
	So, okay. Yeah, and that's actually how we...
	Remedy it for most of the time is like we will stop her and be like that screaming really hurts our ears.
	It's gonna damage my ears.
	My husband he has to wear like like earmuffs if he's gonna like deal with that situation because she'll just scream and he uses his ears for work so he has to keep them intact and and For me,
	I have to get some distance because I'm like, since you're screaming, I don't want to get too close to you because it really hurts my ears.
	I've even gone to the point where I'm just like, you can always say excuse me or you can come up to me and tap me gently and Wait for me to make eye contact with you if you want my attention.
	You know, just kind of breaking it down like what's a better way of getting my attention.
	Right. And I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to just ask you for shorter answers here because we're cooking well over an hour and I don't want to make sure we get to the heart of the issue.
	Okay. My fault, but if you could, yeah, just keep it more.
	I don't want to keep interrupting you. Sure.
	No worries. How many boyfriends did you have over the course of your life?
	Oh man. Boyfriends.
	I had like three boyfriends.
	I had one in high school and then I just dated until I met my first husband and then after we had divorced I dated a couple guys and then I met my husband two years after.
	So I guess my husband would be like my third boyfriend.
	And sexual problems? Eight.
	Got it, okay. Now, another thing that I just put it in your sort of bonnet to mull over is that, you know, this is kind of modern Karen phenomenon of like the angry, intense, middle-aged, often white women and call the manager and all that kind of stuff.
	One of the things to think about with regards to your mother is that, I don't know if you know this, but semen, I'm sorry to get so graphic, but, you know, it's kind of important maybe to understand your mother, that semen has antidepressant qualities.
	I mean, they've done studies with...
	Women whose partners use condoms and women whose partners don't use condoms and the women whose partners don't use condoms are happier and less prone to depression and anxiety and so on.
	I mean, it is just one of these...
	It's amazing stuff, semen.
	What can I tell you? It creates life and has a lot of mood stabilizers and elevators in it as well.
	So I always...
	When I'm thinking about women...
	Women who seem to be going kind of crazy.
	It's not the only place to look, obviously, and it may not even be the first place to look, but women who aren't having unprotected sex.
	I don't mean necessarily that they could get pregnant, but I mean in terms of non-condom sex.
	Women who aren't having vaginal sex, often it's something to think about in terms of like, okay, maybe your parents had no sex life or a bad sex life, in which case instability and aggression.
	On the part of the women, it has different effects for men, but on the part of the women, sometimes it can make them kind of crazy and aggressive.
	And you don't have to tell me, obviously, but if your sex life with your husband is good, that can have a lot to do with mood stabilization.
	If it's not good, but you can make it good, I think that can help a lot, at least according to the study's That I've read.
	So I just sort of leave that there as an awkward topic that there's no nice way to talk about, but it's just something to...
	I sort of think about this with regards to my own mother, that she couldn't hold on to a guy past 40, and it certainly didn't help her stability in any way, shape, or form.
	We're designed for intercourse, and it's a pair-bonding mechanism that lasts our life and all that.
	So without it, we tend to go a little nuts, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it's funny because I was actually kind of thinking about that, and I'm like, I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
	Sometimes I'm too tired to do it, but I want to, or I'm on my cycle or something, and I'll take care of my husband's needs, but then I was like, maybe I'm underestimating that I have Oh yeah, you need it.
	I'm sorry, your body needs it.
	Your moods need it. And yeah, I mean, that's generally a good thing.
	And as a whole, but I understand, of course, it's tricky with kids, right?
	Okay, so I just wanted to mention that.
	So I think we've cast the net wide enough, if you're willing to sort of hear a couple of theories.
	All right. So, you and your daughter are in what's called a battle of wills.
	Does this make any sense?
	Does this ring a bell?
	She wants to do something, you don't want her to do that thing, and you are squaring off like two Roman gladiators, if that makes sense.
	Now, the only way to win a battle of wills is with overwhelming violence.
	With a toddler. And I'm not kidding about that.
	And, of course, that's not winning, but, you know, the only way to conquer is, you know, overwhelming force, overwhelming use of force.
	I'm going to give you sort of really extreme examples from military history, right?
	So if you look at something like Japan, right, at the end of the Second World War, they firebombed it from end to end, and they dropped two nuclear bombs on the island, right?
	And then the Japanese surrendered, and it was all over, right?
	Whereas Afghanistan, they're in there for 20 years trying to do nation building, and they lose, right?
	So the only way – the victory is overwhelming force with a toddler.
	Now, obviously, as you know, that's not at all what I recommend.
	I consider that completely immoral.
	But I think because you are in the peaceful parenting abstraction, but your emotions are leading you somewhere else – You're ending up in this war of attrition.
	In other words, your daughter senses that you have values that oppose overwhelming force, so she spies an opening to get her way.
	As long as she's darkened and persistent and is willing to escalate, she will get her way, if that makes sense.
	So your emotions are leading you to dominance, but your philosophy is leading you to accommodation and sweet reason and so on.
	I think that contradiction is at the root of your conflict with your daughter.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. Are willful and disobedient and whatever.
	Then you're overwhelming force, but you're like holding back these horses.
	And somebody who's wrapped up in a massive inner battle, she's just like, well, I'll just keep screeching.
	I'll get what I want sooner or later because mom's not using overwhelming force and yet, you know, she's also not...
	But she has that impulse.
	And so she's probably spying the way to get what she wants through that contradiction in your mind.
	And sorry, that was the last thing I want to say.
	I want to hear sort of what you think about this as maybe a good place to start or we can try something else.
	I definitely resonate with that battle of the will and...
	Recognize that my emotions are bringing me to violence, but I have this moral standing that's saying just so strongly no.
	That's not the right thing to do.
	But I don't quite understand, I guess, how she's getting her way if I'm holding it back.
	In the situation itself, if she is wanting to climb on something, and though I will be physically blocking the area, if I get so angry...
	I don't know if I'm saying this right.
	Okay, so sorry. Parenting 101, and I'm sorry to say that's kind of insulting because I'm sure you're a better parent than me in some ways, but parenting 101 for kids, and it's true for just about anything in life, every behavior that persists is working.
	Every behavior for adults, for kids, every behavior that persists is working.
	So if you say your daughter...
	up on things and it's unsafe and this, that, and the other, right?
	And you say it keeps happening, right?
	Right.
	So if it keeps happening, it's because it's getting her something that she wants.
	It's giving her something that she wants.
	Okay.
	Right.
	I remember talking to a friend of mine, He's not really a friend anymore, unfortunately, but his daughter was very aggressive and so on.
	And she was about three or four and she had a big blow up and she demanded to speak only to me.
	And I, you know, so I agreed and we went to a place where we could talk.
	And I said, this is, you know, this can't be making you happy.
	Why do you do it? And she said, because it works.
	Wow. Right.
	So kids are amoral power seekers.
	Right. All they're trying to do is figure out how to get what they want.
	Now, if you're in a battle of wills with your daughter, she'll be damned if she'll lose.
	She cannot lose.
	Because if you're trying to dominate her and she's got to become like you, she cannot surrender to you, otherwise she won't get a man like her dad.
	Because if you have to dominate her, and to be dominant means to get a great husband, then she has to be dominant as well She has to fight you in order to get a great husband, because she has to be dominant, just like you, in order to get a great husband, because that's who great husbands choose, is dominant women. Does that make sense?
	Mm-hmm. So how do I decide on, like, kind of, like, what to, like, let go of and be a little bit more?
	So you're going straight to solutions here, are you?
	Right. And you've probably heard this a million times in these shows, right?
	Some blinding insight hits people like, okay, yeah, but what do I do about it?
	And I'm like, no, no, no.
	Come on. Come on.
	Don't restate the solutions. You're doing that to overcome the emotions, right?
	Because you had the same thing with your mom.
	When your mom would try and dominate you, excuse my French, but part of you would be like, fuck you.
	I'd be goddamn defiable.
	And it may have been more as a teenager, but, you know, the toddlerhood is the first teenage years, right?
	The terrible twos, as they call it, right?
	That's when the children individuate and can disagree with their parents.
	And don't, like, when your mother would try and dominate you, your father would try and dominate you, you would seethe, right?
	And you would push back, and you would be angry and upset, and you would be like, I'll be damned, especially when you get older, right?
	I'll be damned if I'll do what you tell me to.
	Right. So that's where she's at.
	Now, she's doing it probably a little bit earlier than you because you've got the peaceful parenting thing that's kind of at war with the dominance thing, right?
	Mm-hmm. Now, mm-hmm, so usually a sign that I'm off the wrong track or we're not connecting emotionally?
	Because mm-hmm is like the passive-aggressive yeah but, and that's fine if we are, but I just wanted to check in on that.
	Sorry, it's kind of like hitting me when I'm seeing kind of like visuals of the past.
	Yeah, yeah, go ahead, share. You know?
	Yeah. Of, like, when you said, like, I tell my mom, fuck you.
	And that was kind of the last, before I moved out, I told her, fuck you.
	And then my mom actually did the same thing to her mom, too, before she moved out.
	And then...
	I'm also thinking about when someone is telling you.
	We're the fourth generation of fuck you here, right?
	Oh gosh. I think we've got a show title.
	It's the fourth generation fuck you, right?
	So she's just following in the family footsteps.
	Why are you so upset? She's doing what you did.
	Yeah. Okay, so you have to, have to, have to give up on the idea of dominating your daughter.
	Okay. You have to.
	It's not going to work.
	Again, the only way you can dominate children is with overwhelming violence.
	Like I'm talking beating them with implements, like just destroying their personalities.
	And then you'll probably still get blowback and destruction later on, particularly mid-teens.
	But you're on a path that is, in a sense, the worst, which is half and half, right?
	pop.
	You know, a friend of mine many, many years ago when I was in my mid-teens, we were discussing military history, and he was telling me, I'm sorry to be using all these military analogies, but there's commonalities, right?
	And he was saying, like, he said, you go to war or you don't.
	And if you go to war, you use every trick, every weapon, every possibility, every substitution, every spine, you go to war with a full-on will to win, and you just go 150%, or you don't go to war.
	But you don't do toe in the water.
	You don't do little bit here. You don't do nation building.
	And it just really struck me.
	It really struck me that that's kind of true, right?
	So historically, in parenting, total violence, total domination was how children were dealt with.
	And this is why society never progressed and the children were Practically insane.
	I mean, I did whole speeches on the childhood of our Aborigines when I was in Australia.
	And so you have within you the historical beast that we all have within us, which is to crush your child's individuation and bring them right into the myths and cultures of the tribe, whatever that happens to be.
	And in your tribe, it is that the parents dominate and the children obey and so on, right?
	But your daughter doesn't want to do that.
	Children fight pretty ferociously to oppose that kind of stuff.
	And because you won't use overwhelming force, you're stuck in this no man's land of pendulum back and forth, seesawing, feeling trapped, feeling helpless.
	You're helpless. Because your instincts are saying use violence.
	And in violence, I also mean locking her out of the house, telling her you don't want to be her mother, breaking the bond.
	That's a form of emotional violence towards children, right?
	And in some ways, more violent to them than physical violence because they can survive physical violence, but they can't survive parental abandonment.
	It's the greatest threat that there is, right?
	So part of you is like you've got these – it's like you're going for a walk, right?
	And you've got these dogs that are just pulling, pulling, pulling, and leaping at everything, and you're barely able to control them.
	And you can't let go of the dogs, and yet you've got to get somewhere, and isn't it the case that your whole life is just consumed by managing these beasts?
	These beasts are just pulling, pulling on the leash.
	That's exhausting. And you feel, oh my god, if I let go of the anger, if I let go of the, I'll tear my daughter apart.
	But I also, I need to control her behavior, so how do I do that without letting go of the beasts?
	Yes, I mean, that's what I was feeling, just such an overwhelming exhaustion.
	Yes, it is exhausting.
	Yeah, and today I woke up with a really big headache.
	And you're not looking forward to the day.
	Yeah. And you don't know how to not fight with your daughter.
	Right. Yeah.
	No, I mean, it's like in couples, you know, I mean, I don't have ever had these kinds of relationships where it's like, we're going away for the weekend, and normally that would be, yay!
	And it's like, yeah, but sometimes we really fight, and it's even worse because we're supposed to be having fun, like the families who fight at Christmas.
	It's like it's even worse because it's...
	It's Christmas, right?
	And you're supposed to all be happy.
	And so, yeah.
	So, I mean, with your daughter, you have another day and it's almost like being locked in a jail cell with a rabid animal.
	It's like, I don't know. Can I get to pet it?
	Will it bite me? Will I be injured?
	I mean, it's really stressful.
	And that's why I'm really glad that you...
	Reached out and sort of why I made some time today because that is a desperately difficult and it's really unpleasant situation, right?
	I mean, and this isn't, you know, obviously this isn't anything close to what you wanted, right?
	What was your vision sort of of parenting?
	What was your thoughts about how your day was going to play out?
	Oh God, I envisioned us just laughing and playing and And having the time and patience and kindness to explain to her life difficulties and to help her to be with her when she's having a hard time and to...
	Yeah, making cakes and putting icing on each other's noses and stuff.
	Yeah. Here's what a frog is, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah. Right. Okay.
	All right, so that's the first thing.
	Sorry, go ahead. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry.
	I wish we do all that stuff, but then...
	And you will. You will. Trust me.
	You will. We'll solve it. We'll solve it.
	I guarantee you. All right.
	So second layer.
	Second layer here. So you're the eldest sibling, and the story of the glass of water in the bedroom that you blamed on your sister is really instructive.
	So as the eldest sibling, you had to work very hard to minimize violence and In your environment.
	And in this case, it worked and then it didn't, right?
	So it worked because your mother didn't beat your sister and because she didn't think it was you, didn't beat you.
	But then when she found out it was you, she beat you, right?
	Mm-hmm. So tell me what it was like for you when you're a kid and one of your younger siblings is doing something that you know is going to set your mom off.
	What do you do? Oh, I get pissed.
	Right. And then what would you do?
	I would ask her to stop because when my sister would be acting up, my mom would put the clamp down on everybody.
	Yeah, collective punishment is a great way to turn the siblings against each other, make sure they never unite against the common problem, but all right.
	Yeah. Yeah, I just get really angry and ask for the stop and that didn't work, you know?
	It just... My sister is very strong-willed like my daughter is and it would just make her do it more, you know?
	So do you understand that in your house is still your mother in your head?
	Mm-hmm. Yeah.
	And a way that you can look at your interactions with your daughter is you are trying desperately to prevent her from acting in a way that would cause your mother to beat her, as if she was one of the younger siblings that you had all those years ago.
	Yeah, I actually listened to your last call-in, and you were talking to the guy, the man, about how...
	His girlfriend is basically trying to protect him from her inner mother.
	And I just resonated with that a lot.
	I don't want her to make the inner mom come out.
	Well, but no, here's the thing.
	Because your inner mom is still active, you are protecting your daughter from her.
	The fight is really between your mother and your daughter.
	And you're just kind of a referee.
	You're just trying to manage it, right?
	Uh-huh. So the question is, why is your inner mother still so strong in your household?
	Why is your inner mother still so strong with regards to your daughter?
	Why is she still such a proximate danger?
	Well, you know, I think, too, when you were saying I was giving her empathy, it kind of like...
	When I started giving her some more empathy, it kind of almost rationalized it.
	Sorry, your daughter more empathy or your mother?
	Oh, giving my mother more empathy.
	Oh, you mean when you started to become a little bit more like her?
	Yeah. Okay, I don't want you to be giving your mother more empathy.
	That's the last thing that I think is healthy at the moment, in my humble opinion.
	So the question is why is your mother still so strong in your mind that you have to protect your daughter from her by being aggressive?
	I guess, is it like a reminder?
	like to No, I'm just going to have to tell you.
	And listen, there's nothing wrong.
	I mean, it's really hard to see ourselves, right?
	So I need help with this stuff too.
	Okay, so the reason that your inner mother is still so strong is that your mother is still a danger to you.
	So your inner mother is there to protect you from your mother.
	Now, if your mother is at a safe distance from you and clear boundaries have been established and she doesn't have the ability to come in and wreck your life or mess you up or whatever, then your inner mother relaxes and won't need to enforce your mother's standards on your daughter.
	Your inner mother is still active because your mother is still active in your life because you haven't got clear boundaries.
	So you've listened to this show for a while and what I was listening for earlier Was, oh yeah, no, I recognized my mother had been abusive, had been pretty destructive, had been violent, had driven my poor sister out into the streets when she was 15 years old to possibly a terrible end.
	And of course, as you say, your sister got into drugs pretty heavily and that's pretty terrible for her, right?
	So that's what kind of mother she is.
	So I sat down with her and I talked about all of these kinds of things and I asked for sort of understanding and I asked for apologies and tried to make sure that better standards could be Mm-hmm.
	But what I got from you was like, oh, yeah, I'd love my mother to come over, but she says it's too far.
	And that's why your inner mother is still so strong, because your mother is a dangerous force in your life.
	And as far as I understand it, you haven't had these conversations.
	She hasn't repented.
	She hasn't gained any understanding or wisdom.
	No.
	So she's still a very active presence in your life psychologically.
	And, you know, we don't put down the anti-bear spray until the bear is long gone, right?
	If the bear is still around, still rustling in the undergrowth, we don't put down the bear spray, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So you can't put down your inner mother and her aggression against your daughter.
	Sure.
	Because your mother is still an active psychological force in your life with no clear boundaries or distinctions or moral trench dug between you and her.
	Yeah, I am seeing the connection because the more I have gone to see my mom with my daughter, it's kind of, yeah, that inner mom has become stronger.
	And if you take your daughter to see your mother, your daughter will very quickly figure out who has the power in that relationship, who's dominant, who's in charge, who's the bigger and stronger one.
	Who runs the show. And children, all children are drawn towards power.
	And when your children see you in a situation where you're crushed, where you're silenced, where you're an appeaser, where you're nervous, they lose respect for you and they gain respect for whoever is putting you down.
	That's interesting you said that because she really likes going to my mom's house.
	Also, your mother is doubtless a thousand times better with your daughter than she was with you, which is also gaslighting and disorienting and weird.
	It's like, well, why couldn't you be like me?
	And it's basically another F you to you because your mother's like, hey, you see, I have the perfect capacity to be nice to children.
	I just wasn't with you because you were such a terrible child.
	It's like the ultimate F you.
	Oh yeah. On top of it, I was telling my husband yesterday the most hurtful thing is that my mom refuses to recognize any of the hitting or abuse at all.
	But why should she?
	Yeah. Why should she?
	As I said, every behavior that continues works.
	And if your mother, obviously she doesn't want to acknowledge her abuse.
	And this is terrible abuse, by the way, just so you know.
	Like anything that drives a girl out into the desperate, criminal-ridden, unfriendly, rapey streets is like that's about as monstrous as things can get.
	So it's really bad.
	Now, why would she acknowledge it?
	Why? I mean, she's not suffering any negative consequences for failing to acknowledge.
	Like, oh, my mother refuses to do this.
	Why should she? She doesn't need to if we're still hanging out with her.
	Yeah, she gets all the benefits, none of the costs.
	Now, this isn't your job.
	This is the funny thing, right? This is why, you know, if your husband wants to chat at some point, I'm certainly happy to.
	It's your husband's job.
	No, it's your husband's job. It's a husband's job to draw the line of protection around his family.
	Now, he knows that your mother was abusive, right?
	Oh, yeah, he knows.
	So why the fuck is he letting a child abuser around his daughter?
	Well, so...
	Yesterday, we just, like, had a really long chat about that, and he said that he was like, you know what?
	I'm thinking about calling your mom And asking her what the fuck happened.
	No, no, no.
	It's not his job to negotiate with your mother because he trusts and loves you.
	There's a woman who abused the woman he loved for many years.
	It's not complicated.
	I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not complicated.
	I mean, if you had a babysitter for your daughter who abused your daughter, who beat your daughter, and your husband is like, I think we should stay friends with her, what would you say?
	Hell no. Are you crazy?
	Yeah. This is called engaging, right?
	I mean, your husband trusts you to tell the truth about what happened in your childhood.
	And so calling out for confirmation would just be another insult to you.
	Well, let me check and see if you were really abused by checking in with your abuser.
	Yeah. No, it's like, yeah, you can't.
	Yeah, no, thanks. Can't come over.
	Why not? You abused my wife.
	I love her. I'm not your kid.
	I have no allegiance or loyalty to you.
	You abused my daughter.
	She's 38 years old.
	You've never apologized. Stay away.
	Done. Now, asking you to do that is asking a hell of a lot.
	That's a man's thing, right? Yeah.
	We're the boundary setters, right?
	We guard the borders, right?
	At least we used to when we were able to, right?
	So if you knew that your mother was never going to mess you up again, you would not need to protect your daughter from her, which means your inner mother could relax and enjoy your daughter's company.
	Do you know how tense I would be if I took my daughter when she was younger?
	I mean, even now, I suppose, right?
	If I took my daughter to see my mother, do you know how tense I would be?
	Do you know how diminished I would seem in my daughter's eyes?
	Do you know... How alarmed I would be that my outspoken daughter would trigger my mother.
	It would be awful.
	And for what? Why would I do that?
	Why would I put myself in a negative, difficult situation that would cost me some respect for my daughter?
	Now, when my daughter gets older, if my mother is still alive, if indeed she still is, I don't think I would have found out or heard about it if she had died.
	But, you know, if my daughter wants to go and see my mother at some point, I doubt that will ever happen.
	But, I mean, it's a free society.
	It's a free world. She can do it.
	But I wouldn't put myself in that situation.
	Where I'm going to subject myself to the attention of a child abuser.
	I assume that the lack of boundaries has something to do with your husband's childhood as well, but if someone had beaten your husband, let's say he had a friend when he was a kid who beat him up regularly and took his lunch money and put him in the hospital or drove him out of home or broke his arm, right? And that person was still unrepentantly lording it over your husband, what would you say?
	Like, why the hell are we hanging out with this guy?
	Or, like, I would be wondering why he wouldn't be saying anything about it.
	Or doing anything about it.
	And if he was helpless and paralyzed in that situation, for historical reasons, whatever, who knows, right?
	And he said, let's go and see violent Bobby.
	And let's bring her a daughter.
	What would you say? No.
	Absolutely not. He's an unrepentant abuser.
	Now, here's the thing, though.
	If there was a child who had abused your husband over the course of your husband's childhood, that child would have had the excuse of being a child.
	Yes. But you're saying to your three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, control your temper!
	But you're making no such demand for your mother who's got to be in her 60s or 70s by now.
	Mm-hmm. How on earth can you demand something of your daughter who's three that you won't demand of your mother?
	Come on. You can't.
	That's crazy. Yeah.
	It is. And you can't...
	You can't enforce the rules that you claim to be moral if you only apply them to the weakest among you.
	Because that's not morality, that's just power.
	You say, well, I'm afraid of my mother, so I don't have any standards for her.
	But boy, do I have control over you, my daughter, so you get these standards.
	Right. And your daughter, having seen you around your mother...
	I'm sure your mother has acted negatively in one time or another.
	Now, your daughter knows that if she did what your mother did, she'd get a real lecture, right?
	But your mother gets away with it.
	So your daughter is like, oh, these standards are bullshit.
	There's no standards. It's just she's got power.
	So if the only way you get things in life and you get to impose your will is to have power...
	Then I'll be damned if I'll give up my power.
	That's giving up my life.
	Because I've looked at Grandma.
	Grandma does things that I'd never be allowed to do.
	My mother doesn't say a thing.
	So my mother doesn't have any objective standards.
	It's just who has power. Grandma has power over mother so she can do whatever she wants.
	And therefore when my mother tells me I've got to obey these rules like they're some sort of abstract thing, I'm laughing at her.
	You don't believe that. You're just like, you're having power over me the way that your mom has power over you.
	But don't pretend to me that it's some abstract principle or rule or virtue.
	I mean, come on. And that's why she's fighting you so hard.
	Yeah, I didn't...
	I guess I didn't make that connection between us spending a little more time with my mom, like...
	How that would affect my daughter's behavior.
	Oh, it does. Oh.
	Oh, it does. But it makes so much sense.
	Yeah, because if you were to be honest with your daughter and you were to say, look, I feel really anxious when you do these things, so I want you to stop doing them to appease my anxiety.
	Just in the same way that I don't confront my mother because I'm scared of my mother.
	Then she would look at you like, that's not a thing.
	That's not parenting. I'm not here to manage your anxiety.
	I'm here to be myself. Yeah, if I ask her to, you know, if I say like, man, if you would just stop doing these things, it would be really helpful.
	She just laughs at me.
	Yeah, because helpful is not an argument.
	And here's the thing too, right?
	Oh man, are you ready?
	Yeah. Are you ready?
	Buckled up. Alright, so your rule is, well, you've got to change your behavior to be helpful to others, right?
	How helpful is your mother?
	She helping you out?
	Is she radically changing her behavior in order to be helpful and No.
	And thoughtful and empathetic and positive and useful and valuable, right?
	Is she doing that? No.
	No! In fact, you adjust your behavior to your mother because your mother is unhelpful, because she's scary, because she's abusive, because she's dangerous.
	Yeah. So you've got this rule like, well, you know, you've got to be helpful.
	Yeah. Well, except when I'm around your grandmother, then your grandmother rules because she's unhelpful.
	So, if you want to be in charge, be unhelpful.
	But you should be helpful.
	But if you want to have any power, be unhelpful.
	I have this rule called be helpful which completely reverses itself in the face of my mother.
	So, good luck navigating this maze.
	Consistency, consistency. You always hear this as parenting, right?
	Consistency. Mm-hmm.
	What standards of behavior can you rationally set as expectations for your daughter if your mother violates them every single time you're around her?
	I'm showing her there is no standard.
	Well, the standard is power.
	Yeah, to act out. You're demonstrating to her whoever has the power wins and gets what they want, but you should give up power to me.
	Oh, he's never going to believe you.
	she doesn't do things to be nice to me let's go see your grandmother who abused me.
	Yeah, that's, I could see too how that's really, it puts a lot of expectation on her, like a lot of pressure on her.
	On who? On my daughter to like absolve any kind of like pain by just, for me, just by being nice too.
	Yeah, I mean, I think you can look at it that way if you want, but children, particularly at the age of three, they're trying to map out the power structures in their environment.
	It's a little more simpler.
	Yeah, bullies win.
	Bullies win. My mother gives respect to her abusive mother while expecting me to be a good daughter.
	Right. My mother puts me in regular exposure to a child abuser who's unrepentant.
	My mother puts me in regular contact with a child abuser who's unrepentant and then tells me to be nice.
	It's like, well, her mother wasn't nice and her mother gets her way and her mother's in charge and her mother, you know, decides when she wants to come and see us or not.
	My mother is like, oh, it'd be nice if your grandmother came over.
	I can't believe your grandmother came up with these excuses, like, oh, it's too far, because it's...
	Right? Child abusers run the world in the world that you're setting up for your daughter.
	Abuse wins, right?
	And then you're saying, well, you've got to be nice, though.
	Being nice is like this big rule.
	And if you're not nice...
	That's terrible. And she's like, well, your mom's not nice to you, and your mom wins every time.
	What are you talking about? Yeah, I just am realizing, like, this, what I would, my husband and I will tell her, like, if you're nice, people, like, want to hang out with you.
	And I'm like, and then I've been, like, feeling like, that's such bullshit, because I'm like, my mom's not nice to me.
	Yeah, and she runs the show.
	Yeah, and I'm hanging out with her.
	I'm driving like an hour.
	Let's go see the woman who beat children so that you can learn how important niceness is.
	Now, let's say if you genuinely believe that being nice is a good thing, Being nice and positive and helpful is a good thing.
	And then you don't see your mother and your daughter says, well, how come?
	Or you sit down with your daughter and says, yeah, we're not seeing grandma anymore, right?
	Well, you know, I realize that she's...
	I'm asking you to be nice.
	She's not nice. I'm asking you to be honest.
	Grandma doesn't tell the truth. I'm asking you to take responsibility for the things that you do.
	Grandmother doesn't take responsibility for the things that she's done.
	So now, people who act badly...
	Have no power. Now you're talking about how to parent.
	See, you're trying to parent with willpower and aggression while completely contradicting every value you're trying to give to your daughter in your relationship with your mother.
	Don't even get me sided on your dad.
	I don't know what the story is there, but...
	Probably similar, right?
	See, parenting is not you staring at your daughter and lecturing.
	That's not parenting. That's just lecturing.
	Parenting is manifesting the values very clearly In your life.
	Parenting, I mean, your daughter's going through a language acquisition phase that's amazing.
	I miss that. I mean, my daughter's going through other phases, but that language acquisition phase is dizzying.
	It's like, where do you get these words from?
	I don't even know, right? Oh, yeah.
	Right? So parenting is not sitting down and reading through a dictionary with your daughter in terms of teaching her language, right?
	Parenting is just using language consistently with your daughter around.
	At explaining the odd word here or there or whatever, right?
	But parenting, in terms of teaching your kid language...
	It's not screaming dictionary definitions at them, right?
	It's just consistently using the language around them.
	Now, to be moral, to be thoughtful, to be considerate, to be helpful, to be nice, whatever it is that you're trying to teach your daughter, it's not about screaming at her to do these things or getting angry when she doesn't or frustrated, right?
	It's just you've got to be consistent in how you live these values in the world.
	And then your daughter will absorb them as surely and easily as she's absorbing the language you speak.
	But if there's massive contradictions between your words and your deeds, you're turning your daughter's brain into a pretzel and then complaining that it's not a straight line.
	Right. Yeah, I've had some, I mean, many amazing days where I've spent all day with my daughter.
	And everything is just so...
	It's a lot simpler and if we rise to a conflict, it's more we're able to negotiate and listen to each other.
	Right. And that probably is when your inner mother is not activated because you've not had an email or a phone call or a thought or a flyby or a visit or something like that, right?
	Mm-hmm. Okay, you ready for the last big one?
	Yes. Are you ready?
	Yes. Alright.
	So you view your daughter disagreeing with you as a negative, right?
	She's fighting you. No.
	She's not fighting you.
	She's trying to wake you up. Right.
	She's trying to help you.
	She's disagreeing with you.
	Why? Because you're wrong.
	Right. She's calling me out.
	She is trying to help you. Listen, you called me out to do what?
	To disagree with you.
	Right. Right? You did.
	Everybody who calls me up desperately needs me to disagree with them.
	Now, I do it in a nice way.
	I do it out of love and affection and care and concern.
	But people are calling me up not to agree with them because if they were already right, they wouldn't be in the mess, right?
	Now, I'm obviously not three and a half, so I can do it in a more articulate way or whatever, but your daughter's disagreement you view as a problem.
	I view it as a salvation.
	My daughter is disagreeing with me.
	She's opposing me. Dear God, maybe I'm wrong!
	Maybe she's trying to teach me something, maybe in her original, unharmed, unbrutalized state.
	She, with the lack of articulation common to three-and-a-half-year-olds, is opposing me, and she's right.
	A couple of times over the course of my parenting, my daughter has said, Ooh, I don't really like that person.
	Now, if for whatever reason that's mildly inconvenient to me or inconvenient to me, I'm like, oh, let's give it a try, right?
	Mm-hmm. Who's right?
	Yeah. She's right.
	She's been right every time.
	So now, if my daughter says, I don't really like that person, I'm like, okay.
	You've earned your credibility.
	We will not get any closer.
	Right? She's been right.
	See, your daughter is not harmed in the way that you and I are harmed.
	At least not yet, right?
	She won't be. I mean, I'm confident of that, right?
	So your daughter is trying to help you But helping you comes at the expense of your mother.
	Which is why your mother within you is fighting like hell against your daughter.
	Yeah. Oh, gosh.
	She is trying to help you and you're fighting her tooth and nail.
	Yeah. You're attacking her because her helping you will wake you up.
	To your unconscious hypocrisy regarding your mother.
	I'm not saying you're a hypocrite. I'm just saying you understand that if we frame it in these kinds of ways, you're living your values in opposition, right?
	You have one standard for your mother and another standard for your daughter, and they're opposing, right?
	So if your daughter wakes you up by opposing this hypocrisy, it exposes the hypocrisy which costs your mother.
	And when something costs your mother, when you were a child, if you acted against your mother, what happened?
	Oh, she put me in play.
	Yeah, you could get beaten.
	You could get verbally abused.
	You could get enormously harmed, ostracized.
	You could be sent to your room. Any number of things, right?
	Mm-hmm. So when your daughter says, I oppose you...
	Because I'm trying to help you and that opposition puts you at odds with your mother.
	You literally are like, shut up, you're going to get me beaten up.
	Now, she can't obviously articulate it in this kind of way, but she's got a good instinct to It seems she's very smart. Your husband and yourself are very smart.
	And so your daughter, I would imagine, is like, something's not right here.
	Something's not right here, instinctively.
	Now, what you need to be is curious about why she is opposing you.
	Because you're like, well, the opposition is terrible.
	You cannot oppose me. And that's because if this opposition leads to alienation from your mother or massive criticism of your mother or a confrontation with your mother, which you desperately don't want, then you're like, shut up, kid! You're going to get me beaten up.
	I could end up on the streets at the age of 15 to be preyed upon by some cartel, right?
	You are pushing me towards self-annihilation by pushing me into a confrontation with my mother.
	Now, your daughter loves you so much that she's not giving up on you.
	Now, if you're looking for a woman, you're looking for a woman.
	Now, what you said earlier was very powerful.
	We paused earlier in the conversation near the beginning, where you said, with regards to your daughter, I don't want to be a mother.
	Do you remember? Of course you remember, sorry.
	Of course you remember, right? So, where she's pushing you towards is a break with the maternal bond.
	And you think that's you to her.
	I know what it actually is.
	It's your mother to you. See, when you relax and absorb and are curious about people around you, particularly your children, they'll blow your minds, man. I can't even tell you.
	One day I'll do a whole show on this, but it'll be years from now.
	The things that my daughter is teaching me about the world is blowing my mind.
	Blowing. I mean, I think I'm a fairly wise guy.
	I got a few things going on in the old noggin.
	But she is light years ahead of me in some ways because she's got a clear and uncluttered perspective.
	She's unsentimental. I have a tendency towards over-sentimentality.
	She's very clear-eyed.
	And she understands power in a way that is truly amazing to me because she's never suffered from it so she can explore it intellectually very easily because she doesn't get punished for it or buy it, right?
	So my daughter is teaching me an enormous amount.
	Parenting... Good parenting to me is as much about learning, because if you're raised badly, as you were, and you parent well, your children have an incredible amount to teach you, because you're raising them well.
	And so they have a different experience, a more clear experience, a more honest experience, a less brutalized experience, right?
	Yeah. You know, somebody born in a war has a lot to learn from a civilian about how to relax, right?
	Mm-hmm. We sure do.
	So your daughter is like a civilian and you were like a combat soldier, right?
	Mm-hmm. And she's like, Mom, I really would like you not to be in the army, if that's all right.
	Can you quit the army? Is there conscientious objection?
	The war is over. Yeah, the war is over, right?
	Stop fighting. Stop fighting.
	And you have an enormous amount to gain from your daughter's opposition.
	But your mother has an enormous amount to lose.
	Yeah. And you are trained to appease your mother, and so you're in an impossible situation.
	You won't be violent towards your daughter, so she's going to keep opposing you.
	Your daughter's opposition leads you to questioning your bond with your mother, which is absolutely unacceptable and it's the equivalent of a death impulse from your childhood.
	Yeah, it most certainly has been.
	And that's those thoughts of like, I don't even like want to be here.
	Sorry, say again? I just wasn't sure who was speaking there.
	Oh, well, just the self-annihilation.
	I felt, like, even that really strongly, like, after I had, like, that fit.
	Right, right. Right.
	You don't want to be a mother.
	Right. And certainly your mother didn't seem to take much pleasure in parenting.
	Oh, but she always says, like, it was the best thing I ever did.
	Well, but she has to say that.
	Yeah, she has to say that so that you don't confront her about the abuse, right?
	Right. So curiosity, right?
	I mean, the three biggest words in an intimate relationship are not, I love you, but tell me more.
	Have you sat down with your daughter and said, in a time of calmness, not in a time of stress?
	Because you know the way it goes, right?
	When you're in a time of stress, you end up fighting.
	When you're not in a time of stress, you don't want to break up conflicts for fear it's going to turn into a time of stress.
	You never actually deal with the stressors, right?
	So, yeah, sit down and say, you know, when you scream, what do you want?
	What do you think? What's going on?
	You know, I don't want you to have to scream at me to get what you want.
	I want to provide what you want.
	I'm your mother. I want to provide what you want.
	I'd like for us to find a way to do it without you screaming.
	And that's my fault.
	It's my fault that you're screaming because I'm obviously not giving you what you need and what you want.
	And you're of an age where you get what you want, right?
	I mean, you don't say to babies, well, it's not time to breastfeed just yet, kid.
	You give them what they want, right?
	She's a toddler, right? But I think that...
	There's a lot of pauses, and getting children to self-reflect is challenging, for sure, because they've got instincts, but no articulation of those instincts.
	But I think she's going to have some pretty wild stuff to say, you can say to her.
	What do you think? How do you think?
	What do you think of Mommy when we're at Grandma's?
	Oh, man. I'd love to hear what she has to say.
	Yeah, and just, you know, one of those relaxed, you know, you're lying in bed, you're looking at the stars, you're just, you know...
	Half cuddling and just asking those questions.
	You know, I ask you to be nice, but my mom wasn't nice to me and we still go and see her.
	That doesn't seem to make much sense, does it?
	Or if you had a friend who hurt you and I kept wanting that friend to come over, that wouldn't be very nice, would it?
	And you've got to talk with your husband and figure out why he's not drawing this protection, this circle of protection around his family.
	Okay. Why he's letting it get to this point.
	Again, I'll have a chat with him.
	But something in him, like a lot of guys are like, well, my wife doesn't really want to talk about it.
	She gets kind of stressed. She gets kind of tense, so I won't.
	It's like, no, no, no, no.
	If something is causing your wife to not enjoy parenthood and to say in earshot of your daughter, I don't want to be a mother, then I don't care what your resistance is to these things.
	They have to be dealt with.
	Because the one person who's not there by choice is your daughter.
	The one person who needs the most protection is your daughter.
	And her father is not stepping up to protect his child and his wife from a known and unrepentant child abuser.
	So do you think that's why she's also doing the same behavior to him?
	And you said it started growing over the last couple of months, right?
	Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, he said, and we both agreed, and we're like, God, it's been over the past couple of months, and that's when we went to go visit my mom, you know, and we all went together.
	Right. Right, so you and your husband are giving the giant seal of approval to an unrepentant child abuser.
	Huh. And then you're saying to your daughter, well, you've got to be nice and be good.
	Oh, we've got to go see Grandma.
	She's a great person. It's going to be so much fun, right?
	So we stay friends with child abusers, but I have to be nice.
	What?
	No respect.
	Oh, yeah.
	Because, you see, if you're living consistently morally with, like, just real integrity and from the ground up...
	Then asking your child to be moral is not an exercise in power.
	But if you're inconsistent and if you bow to evildoers because you're afraid of them, then what you call morality is experienced by your daughter as humiliating subjugation.
	Because you experience with your mother humiliating subjugation.
	Because you're silenced, and you can't talk about the abuse, and you can't confront her, and you can't be honest with her, and you can't protect yourself from her, and you can't protect your children from her, and you can't protect your husband, and your husband can't protect his family.
	So the grandmother abuser wins everything.
	She wins everything. So when you say to your daughter, be nice, be considerate, be thoughtful...
	You're saying, loose and be subjugated.
	Like I am with my mom.
	Because I'm nice and thoughtful to my mom, but only because I'm scared of her.
	Only because I can't be honest and confront her.
	And you're trying to will a completely opposite reality to what your daughter is emotionally experiencing.
	Thank you.
	It's like you're screaming at her that she needs to fly by flapping her arms.
	And she's like, well, no, but everything around me screams that there's such a thing as gravity and I can't fly.
	Right? And morally, you're telling her to be nice, thoughtful, considerate.
	Right? And you are putting her in a situation where a child abuser who screamed at you is completely dominant and gets everything she wants.
	And I guarantee you that your daughter has figured out that your grandmother dominates through yelling.
	And I'm not saying she's seen your mother yell at you or anything like that, but kids are incredibly great at reading the room.
	Oh gosh. So she's sitting there going, well, grandmother wins by yelling.
	And then you're like, I can't believe my daughter screams.
	But you've taught her that. You've taught her that screaming gets you what you want.
	Screaming wins. Being a bully wins.
	Grandma rules. We go to see grandma.
	I want grandma to spend more time with us.
	I can't believe grandma's not spending more time with us.
	Grandma's great. You love grandma, don't you?
	You want to go see grandma, don't you?
	Oh, so screaming wins.
	And being nice means being crushed and humiliated and subjugated, because that's what mom does when she's around grandma.
	She won't tell the truth, she won't confront, she won't, right?
	You couldn't have trained her to yell more if you tried, if that makes sense.
	Uh-huh.
	And because your grandmother is still so present in your mind and in your family, your inner grandmother can't relax and must continually attack your daughter to keep her safe from your mother.
	And that's the price...
	And I say this again. Listen, I... I've spent a long time in my life not living my values, so I say this with complete humility with regards to this, but that is the price of not living your values, right?
	That is the price of being buddy-buddies with an unrepentant child abuser.
	Your daughter fundamentally is going to pay the price for that decision because you gain a benefit and an avoidance of anxiety by appeasing your mother, but she gains bad habits and an oppositional mother.
	Oh, gosh. I told you we were going to get you there.
	I was like, right? Come on.
	That's pretty good, right? Oh, I knew it.
	Yeah, I think you did. I think you did.
	Yeah, the unrepentant child abuse situation, it's the next generation that pays.
	Like not you, but the next generation.
	I mean, you pay, obviously, but it's the next generation is going to pay the most.
	Yeah, yeah I'm seeing it all around me even more in the new area that we've moved in that it's been so hard to meet other parents because every parent puts their kid in daycare right and um I talked to one of the moms and
	She's our neighbor and she works for CPS. And she tells me, she's like, I give you so much respect for staying home with your daughter because I can't do it.
	Because she's all busy saving other people's kids, right?
	Yeah, that can't be saved.
	Right. Yeah, no, it's really tragic.
	It's really tragic.
	Just how women have been talked out of the greatest glory of life, which is the raising of children.
	What's that old line from the Dora song?
	Trade in your hours for a handful of dimes.
	Oh, man. But this fits, right?
	This fits. And we've only talked about one person.
	We haven't talked about your dad, and we haven't talked about your husband's parents, or anything like that, right?
	Right. But this is the real bitch of philosophy.
	It's the real bitch of integrity. Is that, okay, so the harmful treatment of children is a moral evil.
	Child abuse is a moral evil.
	Now, we all do wrong, and we all make mistakes, and we can't be perfect.
	Post-Jesus, there's no perfection this side of heaven, right?
	So, it's not that your mother was brutal.
	It's that There has been no conversation about atonement and repentance.
	Now, she, as a Christian, should have brought this up with you many, many years ago.
	She should have said, I made terrible mistakes as a mother.
	I did wrong as a mother.
	I did evil as a mother. And what does Jesus say?
	Atonement And repentance.
	Now, if she had done that, you wouldn't have married the crazy chef.
	You would have not burned up your 20s as a waitress because you wouldn't be carrying this burden.
	My father, before he died, many years before he died, told me the story of his life.
	When I went to visit him when I was in my mid-teens, he barely spoke to me and he had me up on the roof sanding his garage roof and repainting it and I felt bad about that.
	But then he told me he was battling incredible depression and could barely function.
	It was literally like a weight off my shoulders.
	When parents take responsibility, it takes the weight off the children.
	Because, you know, we're kids.
	When we're kids, we blame ourselves for everything.
	It's the only way we can pretend we have any power in a chaotic and dangerous situation.
	So your mother should have...
	Being a Christian, or just being a good person, should have looked back and said, yeah, you know, I'm not sure I did those kids too right.
	I don't think that it really worked out for them in a lot of ways.
	But no, she's like, oh, my kids were so difficult to handle, they didn't listen, blah, blah, blah.
	Now, of course, you view a conflict with your daughter as your daughter's fault, just the same way that your mother views a conflict with you as your fault.
	And because she's not willing to take any responsibility, that's why she's particularly toxic, because she still carried that burden.
	And now it's passed.
	It's passing, though, not passed yet to your daughter.
	Yeah.
	She is a gift.
	Yeah. To liberate you.
	She's trying to chew through your chains and you're just lashing at her.
	And when you want to yell is when you deep down feel the most like crying.
	Yeah. There's desperate sadness at the bottom of yelling at kids, right?
	Desperate sadness. Mm-hmm.
	But because you're still seeing your mom, you can't acknowledge your pain.
	Because the moment you acknowledge your pain and how much damage your mom did to you, you won't want to see her, right?
	At least until she repents and takes ownership and all of that stuff, which is functionally probably pretty impossible at this point in her life.
	So you have to bat away your own pain in order to continue seeing your mother, but that just means that you can't experience the sadness and so you end up yelling.
	But it's very sad. It's very sad what happened to your family.
	It's very sad what happened to your siblings and to you and to your childhood.
	And it's also very sad that your mother seems to have not grown up at all since she was herself in her teens.
	Yeah, I go through, you know, being angry at my mom and then feeling really sad for her, too, because She's not aware, or she refuses to be aware of her actions.
	Right. But she also knows...
	She's not stopped abusing you, because by refusing to take responsibility for her actions, she knows that you're going to act out on your daughter.
	She knows that it's going to harm your relationship with your daughter.
	So you understand, it's not done...
	Like, the abuse is not in the past.
	The abuse is not when you were a child.
	It certainly was. But right now, the abuse is because she's not...
	Going to take any responsibility.
	She's still exercising power and control over you at the expense of your relationship with your daughter.
	The abuse has not stopped.
	This is why it's so desperate.
	This is why I carved off a couple of hours today to think about this and talk to you.
	You understand, it's still going on.
	She's still abusing a child, your daughter, through you.
	Because she's got you twisted up so badly that you're Yelling out in earshot of your daughter, I don't want to be a mother.
	Your mother is still abusing children, just using you as the proxy and targeting your daughter.
	It's all unconscious, but that makes it even more powerful.
	And this is what your husband needs to see and protect his family from.
	Because he's probably like, yeah, let's load up the car and see granny.
	He's actually very like, I'm willing to have a tough conversation.
	You know, and I'm like, okay, so that tells me that, I mean, he would love to talk to you.
	I just, but I don't think he really knows.
	He didn't see it in the direction of setting the boundary.
	It was more like confronting her to what she did.
	But, yeah, he didn't.
	I see what you're saying, though.
	He can confront her.
	I mean, again, it's a free world, at least bits of it are left that are free.
	I'm not going to say do or don't do.
	I mean, that's not what I do, right?
	But it's sort of like saying, when the house is burning down, I'm going to have a strong conversation with the guy who installed our furnace.
	Things are a little bit more immediate than that.
	His family is falling apart.
	And the thing that you have treasured the most and have the greatest joy in is turning into a dysfunctional shitstorm right in front of your eyes, right?
	So this is not a time for, I'm going to go confront your mother and begin the path of blah, blah, blah.
	This is like... This is like, no, no, no.
	We shield ourselves from abusive people and then we figure things out over time, but not like...
	And here's the other thing, too, is that...
	He's putting this forward.
	I could go and confront her.
	And of course, what are you going to say? No, don't do that.
	It's going to cause problems or it makes you anxious or this or that.
	So he's basically saying, I'm not going to do anything by putting something forward that you don't want him to do anyway.
	Or you feel a great deal of anxiety about him doing it.
	Well, I do believe that he would do it.
	I think...
	No, but you don't want him to do it in any imminent way because it's going to be destabilizing for everything, right?
	Like if he said, I'm going tonight...
	You would not feel particularly relaxed, right?
	No, I would feel relaxed.
	No, and you wouldn't be looking forward to the fallout and you wouldn't be looking forward to the phone call from your mother the next day and you wouldn't, right?
	No. So that's not a particularly good solution in a time when stressors are threatening to tear the family apart for him to go and poke the hornet's nest, right?
	Mm-hmm. No, the answer is, look, I'm the father of this wonderful little girl I must keep her safe.
	I cannot take her to the house of an unrepentant child abuser.
	I can't do it. It's not healthy.
	It's not good. Now, you're my wife.
	You're an adult. I will strongly advise you not to go.
	You are a free adult, a sovereign adult.
	You can go, obviously. You don't need my permission.
	You're a free and sovereign adult. But you can't take my daughter.
	You can make your decisions with regards to your mother, but you can't make the decision to put our daughter in the environment of an unrepentant child abuser.
	You can't do it. I mean, you understand that what your mother did had criminal elements to it, right?
	Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of what she did, and we don't have to get into details, would actually have been illegal.
	So in the same way that if you said, oh, I have this high school friend who's involved in organized crime and is a drug dealer, I'm going to take my daughter to hang out with him, I mean, what would the response be to that?
	Yeah, hell no.
	Right. What my mother did as a mother was criminal.
	She abandoned, she was violent, she failed to provide basic health care and And food and necessities and clothing, right?
	What she did was criminal. She was a criminal person.
	She's a criminal. And so the idea that I would take my daughter to go and see a criminal?
	I mean, what?
	Right? No.
	No. Right?
	So... That's what I'm talking about, the sort of moral clarity, right?
	And I say this because I am so desperately sorry about what happened to you.
	I'm so desperately sorry about what happened to you, and I'm even more sorry about what's happening to your daughter, because that's more vivid and in the moment.
	But I say this to you because you need somebody to stand between you and this criminal abuser, or what seems like a criminal abuser, right?
	I mean, you just need someone to say, no, no, this...
	I need to stand for the suffering that you experienced.
	I need to stand between you and somebody who harmed you and isn't even sorry about it and won't even acknowledge it.
	And it's still harming you.
	Well, especially now since you've illuminated me to seeing that connection, I can never not, I cannot unsee it.
	Right. And I know my husband would take it the same way, too.
	Yeah, like now I make it clear, he's like, oh my God, what were we thinking, right?
	And that's what philosophy does, and it does it to me every day.
	We're like, what the hell was I thinking, right?
	So that's as far as what you do.
	I mean, again, I mean, I certainly think that if being in the presence of an unrepentant...
	Now, the reason I keep talking about unrepentant is because she's...
	She's part of a religious belief system that says, self-ownership, do not bear false witness.
	If you've wronged someone, you make atonement, you repent, you apologize, you make it right.
	And she's not doing any of that.
	So she has responsibility because she believes in that.
	She has that moral responsibility.
	She's not going to do it. She's not going to do it.
	She's not going to do it because, well, my sister actually confronted her and told her what she did to her.
	And, like, even acted it out, because my mom was just, like, playing, like, dumb.
	Yeah. And the next phone call I get from my mom, it's not saying, you know, you told me this, and is it true?
	It was, like, nothing happened.
	Yeah, of course. And again, why shouldn't she?
	Because she doesn't ever suffer any negative consequences for the evils that she's done.
	Mm-hmm. Right?
	Why? I mean, in a subject that you hated, would you study for a test that you knew would never come?
	Right. You wouldn't, right?
	Mm-hmm. So if she's getting away with it, why would you change?
	And you understand that you also colluding with your mother to allow her to get away with this and pretend that nothing happened, it's also incredibly destructive to your mother.
	It's not giving her the honest feedback that could actually wake her up to any kind of change, right?
	Yeah, absolutely. And so people say, oh, but, you know, I care about my mother.
	It's like, you do. I do too.
	Which is why I won't pretend things that aren't true.
	I won't appease the worst side of her.
	I won't, right? No. If my mother, you know, is still alive, she'd call me tomorrow and say, you know, I've really been thinking about it.
	I've had, you know, a quarter century thinking about it.
	And, you know, thank you for not Feeding the beast within me.
	Thank you for not colluding with the worst part of me to have me avoid my responsibilities.
	You know, like when the alcoholic finally quits drinking for good, his friend who wouldn't go and buy him alcohol, he calls him up and says, thank you for not appeasing.
	Thank you for not enabling my alcoholism.
	Thank you for taking a stand against the wrongs that I was doing to myself and others.
	Thank you for not putting up with my bullshit.
	Right. The most loving thing I can do is not see my mother until she acts better or wakes up to something, which, you know, again, I don't think she's ever going to do, but at least my conscience is clear that I've acted in the most loving way possible.
	But going and pretending you've been ever abused, you understand that's feeding the beast within your mother and giving the beast power.
	It won't ever let go of her.
	You can't ever drive out the demon by appeasing him, right?
	It kind of, like, builds on to her fantasy.
	Like... Which further prevents her from being aware of the wrongs that she's done.
	Right. And then this demon of unreality will never loosen its grip.
	Why should it? There's no cost for any of it.
	In fact, nothing but rewards. She still gets to hang out with people.
	She still gets to see kids.
	She still gets to spread this dysfunction.
	There's no negative consequences.
	So why on earth would she change?
	You wouldn't and neither would I if we weren't enlightened, right?
	So what do you think? Got a good bit of clarity here?
	Yeah. How are you feeling?
	How are you feeling? I feel a lot more relaxed.
	Good. Good.
	Yeah. You keeping yourself safe is the best way to keep your daughter safe and happy.
	As everyone says right now, stay safe.
	I'm just talking about social distancing.
	That's all I'm talking about.
	A little bit of social distancing to prevent the spread of a virus of dysfunction.
	That's all I'm talking about. That's all I'm talking about.
	A little quarantining. Will you keep me posted about how things are going?
	Absolutely. Please do.
	I always want to check in.
	It was a useful conversation.
	I'm not trying to sound needy.
	I just always want to make sure that I think we got to the core, but that's obviously for you to decide.
	Absolutely. I'll ask my husband, too, if he wants to reach out.
	Of course. Yeah.
	I would be happy to talk to him and I really appreciate your time today and go have fun with your daughter.
	All right. Thank you so much.

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