Aaron Stupple Raising Sovereign Children

(0:00 - 0:20) Coming up in this episode. The idea is that the modern rational parenting view is authoritative parenting. That's a bad idea. And the other alternative is total freedom. And that's a bad idea. The taking children seriously outlook rejects total authoritarianism, and it rejects total neglect, and it also rejects a combination of the two. (0:20 - 0:39) This view says just drop the question of allowing and disallowing, because that's not the relationship you have with another person. And instead, look at every problem that arises with your kids as a problem that can be solved. You are now listening to The Year for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. (0:42 - 0:54) What's up, everybody? Welcome to The Year for the Truth podcast. I'm Joel Rafiti, you got my co-host Yerasimos with me as always. And today, it's an absolute pleasure to be joined by Aaron Stupple, author of The Sovereign Child. (0:54 - 1:25) The ideas presented in this book and through different conversations he's had, which I've been privy to, have really impacted me on a deep level in terms of the way I think about not only myself, but particularly, which is the context of the work, like my relationship to my children. What is parenting? What is the right parenting philosophy? There's so much confusion around all of this and so many ideas, and no one really knows any of it. We're all just out in the wilderness. (1:26 - 1:55) And so, when I came across this work, and I was brought face-to-face with the first principles of these ideas, the foundational principles as to why this is important, that's when it really struck me. And at the foundation of it is my relationship with my children and the trust that my children have in me. And so, I really began to implement some of these ideas in my own home. (1:56 - 2:09) And I'm just very grateful that I did, and I'm very grateful I came across Aaron's work. And it's a process, which I'm still in and everyone is still in, that chooses to be a parent. And I think you're going to get a lot of value out of this conversation. (2:10 - 2:20) Some of it is going to be extreme to you. There's no doubt about it. But I think it's really necessary to move towards those edges and the confines of our comfort zones and see what might be on the other side. (2:21 - 2:47) One favor to ask, if you're down, wherever you're consuming this podcast right now, whether it's Spotify, whether it's Apple, if you can hit that Follow button, that would mean the world to us. If you want to go a step further and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this, that would just do a world of wonder for us in terms of continuing to grow and expand this platform. So all that being said, here is Aaron Stupple. (2:48 - 3:17) Aaron Stupple is a former teacher, current MD, writer, thinker, and father, whose recent work centers on reclaiming the natural sovereignty of children. In his groundbreaking book, The Sovereign Child, he challenges mainstream parenting and education paradigms, offering a radical yet grounded vision for raising free, self-directed human beings. Through his writing and philosophy, Aaron invites parents to move beyond control-based models and into deeper trust, connection, and collaboration with their children. (3:18 - 3:24) Aaron, thanks for being here for The Truth. Hey, thanks so much. Absolutely thrilled to talk with you guys. (3:25 - 3:38) Yeah, man, definitely likewise. Yeah, really impacted me a lot since first coming across your work, listening to that Tim Ferriss podcast with Naval a couple of months ago. And it sent me down a number of awesome kind of threads. (3:39 - 3:53) You know, my first introduction to Karl Popper, to David Deutsch, all these different threads, which I'm really enjoying pulling at this moment in time. So super, super glad for that. Before we get into the crux of it, one way we always like to kick off these podcasts is we want to dive into your personal hero's journey a little bit. (3:53 - 4:19) So if you can tell us a bit about yourself, some of the major rites of passage that you yourself had to kind of traverse, which I guess led you down this path and into these ideas and into writing this book. Yeah, all right. My path, I grew up in rural upstate New York and went off to college and I was on the kind of traditional, you know, pre-med, become a doctor track. (4:19 - 4:35) And I got, you know, an amateur interest in philosophy and kind of spiritual seeking a bit. And I decided that, you know what, life, you know, prestige isn't worth it. We're only on this planet for a short amount of time. (4:35 - 4:54) And the purpose is to live small and deep. And so I went back home in rural upstate New York and I was a teacher and, you know, meditating and reading a lot. And that was great, but it was not, I felt a lack in there. (4:54 - 5:14) And then I got into transhumanism and I got into Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey. And that's how I first read David Deutsch and decided that I needed to flip 180 degrees and like get in the game and that, you know, death was not necessarily inevitable. And this is our one shot at life. (5:14 - 5:30) And I should be a participant. I shouldn't just be, you know, teaching was great, but I felt I could have a bigger impact. And so I went to medical school and I was into transhumanism and life extension and all that fun stuff. (5:31 - 5:46) But then that kind of ran out of gas on me because it felt like life was a project. Like I was trying to, you know, well, achieve immortality and things like that and bring about the help, bring about the singularity. And I felt very empty. (5:47 - 6:07) And so then I was kind of lost for a little while. And then I got into affective altruism. I don't know if you know about this, but it was a nice blend of philosophy, about thinking about the long-term future, about living a philosophically deep life, but also being very connected or rooted into the here and now problems of the world. (6:08 - 6:24) And I was really happy with affective altruism for a while. And then kind of on a lark, I'd also read Deutsch's Beginning of Infinity a while back. And when I had read that the first time, I was like, wow, a lot of this is going over my head. (6:25 - 6:45) I'll get to the end of this book and then I'll come back and I'll reread it, you know, slowly and methodically and really put this together. But I never did. And so fast forwarding, once I was into my affective altruist world, a conversation with a friend kind of figured me to go back and reread the Beginning of Infinity. (6:46 - 7:05) And that's when it really hit me that this batch of ideas, and I'm kind of like, you know, every four years or so, I jump from one batch of ideas to another. And I'm, you know, oh, that last batch of ideas, that was cute and all, but no, that was my naive earlier self. And now this is the real deal. (7:05 - 7:22) And I kept on doing that. And here I was, again, jumping out of the affective altruism stuff and into Popper and Deutsch and critical rationalism. And my friends and family at this point are like, all right, you know, we've seen this before. (7:22 - 7:24) It's cute. Aaron's into this now. This is his new fad. (7:26 - 7:32) But that was 2018. And so I've broken the four-year cycle. 2025, now we're on seven years. (7:32 - 7:47) And we'll see what happens down the road. But that's how I got into my short trajectory there. Along the way, I became just a regular medical doctor. (7:47 - 7:55) So I'm what's known as a hospitalist, internal medicine. I do medicine for adults. But that's my day job. (7:55 - 8:19) And my passion, my real strong interest remains in this world of philosophy and the ideas of David Deutsch. And people accuse us of being cultists or enthralled to a cult of personality. But my friend Logan and a collaborator on this book, he said that it's not our fault that David Deutsch has all these great ideas. (8:21 - 8:29) And there you go. And of course, it's not just Deutsch, it's also Popper. And Popper has a depth to him and a breadth that is extraordinary and underappreciated. (8:29 - 8:49) So I don't think we're crazy internet nerds. I got you, man. Shouldn't this be, in my opinion, like an aspect of life where we should be allowed to just go deep into something and then take a complete 180 and learn and identify with something and be like, you know, I was wrong about that. (8:49 - 9:04) Let me integrate some new ideas and continue this process. I feel like until we leave this earth, in my opinion, I feel like that's what makes life so exciting, to continue to learn and challenge your own assumptions and beliefs about life and about things around you. Yeah, definitely. (9:04 - 9:19) I think one of the things that I've been cured of in this latest round is that ideas really don't depend on the person who's holding them. The ideas are independent. The sources of the ideas are irrelevant. (9:21 - 9:46) And what matters is, you know, is the idea right or wrong? Is it true or false? Is it closer to reality than its competing ideas? And all the previous schools of thought that I was into, I didn't abandon them completely. There's lots of vestiges, lots of good ideas that I carry forward. And I think it's more about being worried as a person who's taken seriously as, like, intellectual force. (9:47 - 10:01) Like, if I want my family to believe what I say based on, you know, my status, then it matters. Like, oh, well, you're jumping all over the place. But I would rather they believe what I say based on the merits of what I'm saying. (10:01 - 10:25) And, yeah, I think you're 100% right. It's good to keep on dropping bad ideas and picking up better ideas. And the one thing I've tried to do lately is, well, with the critical rationalism worldview, is argue for ideas based on their own merits and not based on the rightness of the tradition that they are established in. (10:27 - 11:03) Like, that was what was fun about this book, was to write a parenting book that didn't say, well, this is what the research says, or this is what this great thinker says, or this is what Montessori says, or any of that, and not to say this is what Deutsch says, or this is what Popper says, or not even saying, trying not even to say, like, this is what taking children seriously, the movement that a lot of this is grounded in, it's not even saying that taking children seriously says this. It's simply saying, why is it not terrible for a kid to eat Oreos? Yeah, cool. Cool, cool, cool. (11:03 - 11:27) Well, let's work our way there. So you brought up taking children seriously. Do you not kind of dive in how you first came across taking children seriously and how that kind of informed you? Was it like pre-fatherhood? Was it after fatherhood? And how did you kind of first come to this stark realization of, I want to do this thing completely differently, you know? Yeah, it was right at fatherhood. (11:27 - 11:54) Like, right when my daughter was born, that's when I really kind of rediscovered Deutsch. And then as I was reading about him online, I stumbled across this website. I don't know if it's there now, but there was like vestiges of a former kind of early Internet web forum and lots of articles and kind of bloggy type of thing that was very scattered and haphazard. (11:54 - 12:13) And I was like, wow, this is amazing stuff. And immediately, obviously, the relevance to raising a daughter was very stark. And it was, you know, it was just a very little bit of reading it to realize this was very, very different from everything else that was out there. (12:14 - 12:39) And, you know, I couldn't put that down. I was immediately drawn to it and needed to understand it and then immediately needed to decide whether or not to actually do it. And the epilogue of the book is actually really the origin story of deciding that I was definitely going down this road. (12:40 - 12:53) I can elaborate on that a bit if you want. Yeah, I'm familiar with it. It's a beautiful story of your daughter wanting to go outside and play in the kind of snow and dirt. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, you might want to sort of share it as a kind of lead in into where we're going anyway. So sure. (12:53 - 13:02) Sure. So it's kind of like a freedom maximizing philosophy. The idea is you don't put rules and limits on your kid. (13:02 - 13:12) And, you know, obviously, there's more to it than that. But she was just learning to walk and she wanted to go outside. And it was a cold, wet, ugly, rainy morning. (13:12 - 13:17) It was ugly. It was early spring. I did not want to go outside. (13:19 - 13:37) And she was slapping at the door. And I was just contemplating, like, am I really going to lock her in? She wants me to help her explore the world. And I felt like there's something. (13:37 - 13:48) As a teacher, there's this big lesson I learned because I was a big softie starting off with teaching. I was like, oh, kids, you know what? Let's have fun here. I'll be your partner and school sucks and I'm on your side. (13:48 - 13:58) And look, I'll help you get through this as painlessly as possible. And the tradeoff will be they don't give me a hard time and we'll have fun. We'll spend like half the class working on stuff. (13:58 - 14:15) And then the other half the time, you can do whatever you want. We'll do fun stuff in here. That was my attitude. And they ate me for lunch. And the rule that I took on board was that you have to be a hard ass first and then you can relax. You can't go the other way around. (14:15 - 14:25) You can't start off as this chill teacher and then clamp down and be a hard ass. Kids aren't going to go for it. They know that you're actually putting on a show. (14:26 - 14:31) So I was thinking that with my daughter. And that's how I approach kind of all kids. It's like I'll start off hard. (14:32 - 14:51) And then as I have absolute command of the situation, I will relax things and introduce some freedom, increasing freedom. And so having a baby is the ultimate like this is how we're starting life. This is how we're starting our relationship, you and me. (14:52 - 15:07) And I am sure I was terrified of starting off too relaxed and then playing catch up the whole rest of my life. Like I don't want to do anatomy when I was teaching. So that was a big thing in my mind on one hand. (15:07 - 15:24) On the other hand, here's this kid that wants to go outside. She's essentially in prison in the house. And am I, her father, going to liberate her and let her go outside or not? And that was and I opened the door and out she went. (15:24 - 15:27) And I had to figure it out on the fly. I was like, well, I don't have to. I can put on some shoes. (15:28 - 15:44) Oh, yeah, I try to put her shoes on and she didn't want to put boots on. Right. She she was one years old. She wanted to go outside. And so she went outside in her socks and, you know, was grabbing, grabbing the mud and putting stuff in her mouth. And I followed her around because I didn't want to limit her. (15:44 - 15:52) Right. And she toddled off down the sidewalk and was poking around in the neighbor's yards. And it just kind of dawned on me while I was out there. (15:52 - 15:56) I was like, you know, it's gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. It was like 6 o'clock in the morning. (15:58 - 16:04) I hadn't been outside in the early morning in a long time in the spring. You know, the birds are chirping. There's these smells. (16:05 - 16:29) And all of that was so much richer because I knew she was experiencing this for the first time. You know, the richness for her would be just probably 10x what it was for me. Yeah. And me participating with it with her was just amazing. And I'm like, is this really so bad? It really wasn't. And she got tired of it after about 10 minutes. (16:30 - 16:36) And then we went inside and I plopped her in the tub. I put her in the shower. There's a little base in the shower. (16:36 - 16:41) She loved playing in the shower. And so she got cleaned. And I sat there and I had my coffee. (16:41 - 16:51) And I was just thinking to myself, this was so much better. It was so much better going outside. And that's the idea. (16:51 - 17:01) It's that there's these win-win solutions that are more fun. The kid learns a whole lot more. I learned a whole lot more. (17:02 - 17:11) We enjoyed ourselves a whole lot more. Our relationship got stronger. She has more reason to trust me and rely on me. (17:11 - 17:17) I didn't abandon her. I didn't just open the door and say, all right, good luck. You're free to do whatever you want and let her splash around on her own outside. (17:18 - 17:29) I was there with her in case she went in the street or something. So it's not like I was neglecting her. And I remember drinking my coffee, sitting on the floor while she was in the shower. (17:29 - 18:02) And I was thinking like, wow, this could be all of life. All of life could be figuring out how to make whatever I'm worried about going wrong, error correcting that in the moment rather than trying to prevent it with rules and restrictions ahead of time. When was this? 2018. She was born in 2018. So it was the spring of 2019. And you've got five kids now, right? Yeah. (18:03 - 18:24) Wow, you've been busy. Yep. Awesome, man. All right, cool. Well, let's kind of, I guess, start dissecting and diving deep into what this is, what the philosophy is, what it matters. I'm sure we're going to blow some listeners' heads in a second in terms of some of the outlying stuff that comes into the picture. (18:25 - 18:47) But yeah, can you, I guess, maybe paint a picture of what your household looks like, your parenting philosophy, and why this is so important? Because I tend to align, and I'll jump in with my thoughts as they come through. And also, real quickly, if you could weave in potentially how it even contrasts from maybe how you were raised as well, or I'd be curious to hear that. Yeah, sure. (18:52 - 19:03) With the book, I jumped right in with just describing what it's like in my household. And I think that, I know it freaked a lot of people out. I still think it was, I'm happy with using that method. (19:03 - 19:16) I explained, I described what life is like, and then I introduced the philosophy afterward. Everyone, I've recommended your book to, I tell them to read Chapter 10 first, and then come back to it. Oh, wow, Chapter 10. (19:16 - 19:30) It's the philosophy chapter, right? Yep. Yeah, a lot of people have said that that chapter should go first. It's definitely, for the philosophically minded, I think most parents are not really philosophically minded. (19:30 - 19:50) They're more... Anyway, you can talk about this strategy. But for your audience now, I'll just describe it a little bit, and then I'll give it what a typical day is like. But the idea is that, you know, as I was raised, I think the rational parenting, the modern rational parenting view is this thing called authoritative parenting. (19:50 - 20:02) And the recognition is that total authoritarian, absolute control, like the good old days, children should be seen and not heard. That's a bad idea. That's widely recognized to be a bad idea. (20:02 - 20:25) And the other alternative is total freedom, total freedom being basically total permissiveness or total neglect. And that's a bad idea. And so the rational view is to say, well, we'll pick something in the middle, right? Moderates are always the most rational, not the extremists, right? We don't want to be extremists. (20:25 - 20:38) We want to be moderates, take a middle road here. And, you know, we have wide amounts of latitude and freedom, but we do have some firm boundaries. And that's how I was raised. (20:39 - 21:04) And that is what is rejected. You know, the taking children seriously outlook rejects total authoritarianism, and it rejects total neglect, and it also rejects a combination of the two. Because if you think about it, why would two irrational positions, when you mix them together, suddenly become rational? That's not how ideas work. (21:06 - 21:24) And so the alternate approach here, it looks like total permissiveness, right? And that's how it's framed in so many people's minds when they read this or hear about this. They hear that I'm advocating total permissiveness. And it's really not. (21:24 - 21:42) It's stepping away from that. The questionnaire there is what do you allow and what do you disallow as a parent? And this view says just drop that question altogether. Drop the question of allowing and disallowing, because that's not the relationship you have with another person, right? That's not the relationship I have with my wife. (21:42 - 21:56) I don't talk about what I allow and disallow. We live together as two rational people who sort out the questions of life. That's how you have a real relationship with your friends, your loved ones. (21:56 - 22:38) One person isn't allowing or disallowing things on behalf of the other person. So even if it's the most generous allowances, even if the things that are allowed are so rational and make so much sense, it's still wrong to say, well, I'm the rational one between me and my wife, and therefore I need to set these, you know, a few reasonable firm boundaries. So if you drop that question altogether and instead look at every problem that arises with your kids as a problem that can be solved, and it's problem solving instead of allowing and disallowing. (22:38 - 22:53) And so the kid wants to go outside instead of saying, well, do I allow my daughter to go outside in the morning or not? Just drop that question altogether and say, oh, my daughter wants to go outside. How can we make this happen? I don't want to go outside. It's cold. (22:54 - 24:02) What can we do? Can somebody else take her outside? Can I get a coat on and some good shoes? Would she go outside later? Right? You just start thinking of alternatives that work for both parties. That's really the heart of it, is to abandon the idea of allowing and disallowing and instead solve the problems that are inherent in the situation where you have a small, ignorant person with no skills and a larger, stronger, skilled, knowledgeable person. And how does this larger, knowledgeable person help the smaller, ignorant person navigate the world, learn about the world, discover, become independent and all that stuff in a safe and healthy way? What do you say your role is as a parent? How would you define your role in relation to your kids? Uh... Guide is the easiest word. (24:03 - 24:10) Yeah. Yeah. The thing is that guides don't really have much obligation to who they're guiding. (24:10 - 24:46) So it's a guide with a very intense obligation for how the guidee does and turns out. Yeah. Aaron, how do you approach, as you talk about these ideas in your philosophy, the amount of work a parent, an individual, has to do in order to put this into action? Does a parent have to have a certain baseline of psychological health and self-knowledge? You know what I mean? How does that play into it? No. (24:47 - 25:24) I think the easiest analogy or example is, imagine if your brother or sister got in a car accident and they were diminished cognitively, they were physically disabled, and they needed to move in with you. If you agreed to have them move in with you while they recover and recuperate, would you need skills in order to do that? Would you need some sort of baseline mental health or resilience or something in order to do that? Some philosophical training? No. You would simply take care of your sibling. (25:25 - 25:32) You'd provide for them. You'd provide food for them. If they didn't like that food and they threw it on the floor, you'd say, oh, man, they suffered a terrible injury. (25:32 - 25:45) They can't even eat together. I need to help them remember, relearn how to interact with others. You would be as generous as possible. (25:45 - 26:07) You would obviously go and get frustrated and be tempted to kind of lash out at them and tell them my way or the highway. You'd be tempted to threaten to kick them out of their house maybe, but I don't think a typical person would do that. I think you would rehabilitate your sibling. (26:09 - 26:25) And I think that's a lot of what, basically what having kids is. Just much more optimistic because the prognosis is so much better and there's just a lot more fun and joy along with it. They're very cute. (26:26 - 26:41) Yeah, totally. So as I understand it, your kids have total food freedom, total screen freedom, total sleep freedom to make all their choices in that regard, et cetera. And obviously this can sound extreme to a lot of people. (26:42 - 27:14) So can you dive into, I guess, what common pushbacks people have with this idea and kind of your kind of arguments to them? Now a short break from the episode. Hey guys, if you're enjoying this conversation, inside our membership community, Friends of the Truth, we are having regular conversations with our members on this topic, but also so many other topics. But considering this is the foundation of the episode here today, we have a specific unschooling, parenting thread. (27:15 - 27:54) We have two community calls a month where people are diving in and also jumping into breakout rooms, sharing their ideas, sharing their struggles, sharing what's going on in terms of their own parenting, in terms of homeschooling, unschooling, going to school, whatever it might be, we're absolutely here for all of it. Bottom line is, Friends of the Truth is just a community where our listeners come together and they can learn, they can grow, they can connect, they can expand, and there's so much of value available within that community, not to mention direct access to myself, to Eurasimos. We've got previous podcast guests that are also present within our community, Sophie Fletcher, Sarah DeHaven, etc. (27:54 - 28:14) And there's just a level of expertise and knowledge on a broad range of topics which you can have access to for very little cost. So if you're down, it's hereforthetruth.com forward slash F-O-T-T or just hit the link in the brief which will be there for you as well. Back to the episode. (28:15 - 28:22) I'll start with the food. We'll go right for the craziest part. The part that makes people the craziest is letting kids eat whatever they want. (28:24 - 28:52) And basically, I have the same relationship with my kids and food as I do with my wife and food, right? Like, you know, she eats what she wants. And, you know, how degrading to our relationship would it be if I was signaling to her my displeasure or my disapproval of what she eats? That's rude. That's widely accepted as rude. (28:52 - 29:27) And it is condescending, patronizing, right? It's a very fundamental way of rejecting another person's humanity is to say that you're not eating right. Even when it's obvious, even when someone's overweight, it's very dicey to come along and say, you know what, I know that what you're eating is wrong because what somebody eats is not just, it's really funny. What you eat is part of who you are and how you live your life. (29:27 - 30:01) Not just a small part. It's like a daily part. It's one of the most fundamental things to living your own life is eating, right? How does it fit in with your job? How does it fit in with your religious observances? How does it fit in with your personal image, your sense of health, your ethical obligations to animals and whatnot, your, you know, what you think about dyes and factory farm food, right? I mean, this is, you know, anybody who minimizes eating to simply what you put in your body is missing, is just off the mark. (30:02 - 30:15) And that mistake is made so commonly. I mean, as a doctor, right? I've been seeing lots of people who are unhealthy because of what they eat. But in medicine, it's just thought that, oh, just, you know, I counseled them on their diet. (30:15 - 30:29) Like, what a joke, right? Like, you don't just tell somebody how to live differently. How to, you know, how to make a small change that the rest of their life hinges on. So, eating is living. (30:30 - 30:44) Like, it is a fundamental part. And so, if I control how my kid eats, you know, just think of all the messages that I'm sending. Disaster, right? Like, that's, you know, I trust them around breathing. (30:45 - 31:14) And the next step is I trust them with eating, right? Like, if you are made to feel that you can't be trusted around food by your parents, well, I think that is a big part of why so many people have fraught relationships with food as adults. So, food is, I don't know, it is fundamental. And the pushback, so pushback, right? One of my kids eats a lot of Oreos. (31:15 - 31:32) The other kids really eat a pretty balanced diet. If you just knew what they ate on a given day, they don't really look terribly different from any other kid. But one of my kids does eat, I don't even think it's all that extreme, but he eats a lot of Oreos and a lot of ice cream. (31:33 - 32:17) And I just, I think about the alternative. Instead of thinking like, are Oreos healthy or not? Is it bad to eat a lot of Oreos? Is it bad to control, you know, is it bad to control your kids eating? Isn't micromanaging what they eat and introducing that stress every single day, multiple times a day, I think that whatever health risks come from eating a lot of Oreos are overshadowed by the risks of trying to control and introducing that anxiety and that stress. That's one just simple way to look at it, but go ahead. (32:18 - 32:25) Yeah, well, first of all, you brought up Oreos, so I have to share my Oreo story. Yeah, go ahead. Growing up, I own the largest bowl in my house. (32:25 - 32:44) I grew up with two Greek parents, the largest bowl, and I would take an entire package of Oreos, drop them in the bowl and just fill it with milk and I would eat it like I was eating cereal. I'd eat the whole bowl watching Saturday morning cartoons or whatever it was. And it's interesting though, because I feel like there was some balance there. (32:44 - 33:04) My parents, they didn't really tell me I shouldn't eat it, but they were like old school Greeks and like we had food and my mom cooked a lot too. So it was kind of like I just did it. So I didn't feel like I had noise around it until I started learning about health and becoming the food police and you know, in my 20s and being like, I can't believe your kids are eating this food or whatever the case may be. (33:04 - 33:10) But yeah, it was just interesting to think about that story. Like I did that all the time and I turned out okay. Right. (33:12 - 33:23) So if I can interject, so I was going to try to play devil's advocate and you know, try to jump into the mind of a potential listener. It's like, okay, but I know better than my kid. My kid doesn't know all the health implications. (33:23 - 33:42) My kid doesn't realize the amount of sugars, the amount of etc, etc. What's the kind of foundation I'm setting for my kid? Like is this going to foster an addiction to sugar, a reliance on sugar, etc, etc? Yeah. And how do you talk about it without allowing or disallowing? Maybe there's a way you communicate it that allows them to maybe make different decisions. (33:42 - 33:59) Anyways. Well, I mean, I mean, what is so bad about ice cream? So stepping back, it easily gets into a kind of nitty gritty about health and what is healthy food. And my views on healthy food are definitely different. (34:00 - 34:14) But try not to hinge on that because it's really not about the food. Instead, I think philosophically, it's waiting until a problem arises. Right. (34:14 - 34:32) It's not trying to control a kid to prevent a certain bad outcome or to prevent a certain problem. Instead, I'll wait until that problem shows up and then I'll deal with that problem when it shows up. And so, eating an Oreo cookie, you know, is not, you know, one Oreo cookie is not a problem. (34:32 - 34:39) I think everybody can agree. Not everybody can agree. But a lot of people can agree that, you know, one Oreo cookie is not a problem. (34:40 - 34:46) Two, three, four, five is not a problem. When did the Oreo cookies become a problem? Right. That's the question. (34:47 - 34:59) The answer is we really don't know. No one can sit here and say that I know how many Oreo cookies is too many Oreo cookies. You could eat Oreo cookies for an entire day. (34:59 - 35:10) Right. And one week later, one month later, a year later, it's not going to make any difference. You could be binging on Oreo cookies for a week. (35:11 - 35:16) Right. Maybe you gain some weight, but again, maybe you're not eating some other calories. Right. (35:16 - 35:27) So it's when do Oreo cookies become a problem? Right. If you're eating a slice of pizza once a week and Oreo cookies and some milk. Right. (35:27 - 35:34) What is so bad about the Oreo cookies? The frank answer is that nobody knows. Yeah. We know what being overweight is. (35:35 - 35:43) Yeah. We know what a vitamin deficiency is, what a nutrient mineral deficiency is. But Oreo cookies are not going to produce those. (35:44 - 36:08) You only need to eat a little of other foods to get enough nutrients. When I take my kid to the pediatrician, the pediatrician has no idea, can't look at his blood tests, can't see any negative markers of how many Oreo cookies he eats. So you could take that as just saying, we have this alarmism about food and about food for kids. (36:11 - 36:34) Go ahead. Well, no, I was going to say, then we get a deeper conversation on what is health and a materialistic viewpoint versus what is the state of consciousness of the individual that is even eating the material, the food, in the first place. Yeah, I mean, what is health is a big question, right? Different people, you know, not a lot of people have a consistent view on what health is. (36:34 - 37:01) Yeah. So as far as I've come to understand it, it's like the risk of the potential harm of the Oreo cookies does not measure in any capacity to the risk of interrupting with the child's learning process and their relationship to food in and of itself. You know, it's like have seven or eight Oreo cookies and like, see how you feel and like adjust from there on if you feel like crap, like we all do. (37:01 - 37:43) All adults, they shift their decision-making process based on experience, based on best guesses, conjecture, criticism, et cetera. But for some reason it's like we feel like we don't afford kids that level of awareness in that process and instead we interrupt and interject and what is the compounded cost of the continued interjection of that's not right for you, that's not good for you, you should only have this much of that, you shouldn't be doing that and I think the compounded cost of that is so much greater than having a packet of Oreo cookies and seeing what happens. So that's the basic argument of the book that I would say the simplest argument for the for the for the person new to this. (37:43 - 38:22) Yeah. But there are other we think about if we dive into the costs, the what you're doing when you get involved with something like food, you are disrupting what you just described, right? What we all do is we figure out how different foods fit into our lives, right? Are we vegetarian? Is meat just out altogether? Vegan, right? Are we my brother my brother loves a gourmet mood, meal, he'll travel to Europe to, you know, eat certain types of foods, right? I find that just I couldn't imagine, right? That repulses me. I like a good meal now and again, but not like that. (38:23 - 38:53) I eat as a function. I scarf food down in between this so I can do that. You know, to everybody and the thing is that these preferences for how we eat are our knowledge that we build up throughout our lives and each person is building up that knowledge that set of preferences, basically, around food, around sleep, around what you pay attention to with screens, around careers, jobs, etc. (38:53 - 39:50) Our whole life is a very, very rich branching tree of preferences, interacting preferences. Sometimes conflicting, sometimes reinforcing, and what you need to do as a person is to create that tree of preferences, constantly be adjusting them, constantly be error-correcting when they conflict. That is the project and you want your kids to begin that process from the beginning, to be building their own preferences and if you try to control that, what you're doing is you're introducing hang-ups, you're introducing shame, you're introducing confusion, and I think it's the way a lot of us think that sugar, um, are confused about sugar, basically, um, and, uh, you know, we think it's, it's, it's, a lot of people think it's poison, um, because we were told as kids that sugar is poison and we have this confusion about, you know, the role of sweets and sugars and things like that. (39:51 - 40:19) Um, anyway, it's about the preferences and if you get involved, you, you confuse the picture and I don't want to confuse a picture for my kids. So as an example, let's say your one child eats, you know, two bags of Oreos and seven slices of pizza and is like, Dad, I'm not, I don't feel well or I don't know what's going on. Like, how do you, then how do you come in there? I mean, I don't, that, that, there is its own lesson. (40:19 - 40:26) I don't do anything. I was, it's too bad. You know, maybe I'll prime and say maybe, you know, um, what, they had a bag of gummy bears. (40:26 - 40:36) My daughter had a bag of gummy bears. I'm like, Oh, she felt miserable. I was like, Ooh, I was just like, you know, I didn't want to smear the gummy bear. (40:36 - 40:44) I love gummy bears. So, um, it might have been the gummy bears, huh? She's like, I think it was like, all right. I mean, I'm going to say like, there you go. (40:45 - 40:54) Yeah. Well, that's what I mean. I was wondering if maybe there was some kind of like questioning, like not telling, but just like, Oh, maybe like opening up the curiosity, like, Oh, maybe it was the Oreos. (40:55 - 40:57) I don't know. And then they can come to their own. Oh yeah. (40:57 - 41:06) Maybe dad. Yeah. Like, do you think, do you think it could have been the Oreos? Like I know sometimes in the past and I've, you know, eaten loads of Oreos or whatever, like I haven't felt so good. (41:06 - 41:12) So it could be that, you know, I don't, I bet. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, it's so obvious that would even bother. (41:12 - 41:19) I bought a gumball. My daughter wanted a gumball machine. So I buy a little gumball machine and my son sat there and just ate all the gumballs. (41:20 - 41:26) He just like one after the other boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then he puked. Like he immediately was like, Oh, and that was it. (41:26 - 41:32) Like, I'm not gonna say what it was. Oh, I think it was the gumball. I'm pretty sure right when that happens, you know, it's the gumballs. (41:33 - 41:38) In fact, shut the fuck up. Sorry. I don't know if this is, this is a no, you can do it. (41:38 - 41:52) Say anything on this podcast. Um, I would shut up because I don't want him to think that he's got to be tough and show me that it wasn't the gumballs. Like, yeah, it more often. (41:52 - 42:19) I'd rather just completely stay out of it. I run more of a risk of messing it up and making them think that it's my, my thing that matters and not just the food itself. So like, what role does do you play in learning? What role does the parent play in learning? Like, period then, is it our job in any way to facilitate learning or is it just to like keep them safe and let them, let them learn in the, in the, you know, the field of trial and error that is life. (42:20 - 42:23) Um, the quick answer. Yeah. Keep them safe is, is 90% of it. (42:24 - 42:31) Keep the, keep the house warm, keep food on the table. Um, keep them safe. Be the thing that they come to me with questions all the time. (42:31 - 42:39) Yeah. Right. So, um, especially if you're a fun person who's never, um, you know, being a hard ass, uh, anything that comes up, they want to ask me about. (42:40 - 42:44) So leave a huge role. Just, I mean, kids ask questions like crazy. Yeah. (42:44 - 42:56) And, and that, but that they see you as a fun person because of this approach. Right. Because of you not constantly being a helicopter parent, not policing over them, not giving them a face. (42:56 - 43:10) If they're watching something or eating more of X, X, Y, Z. And so they're not on guard around you. Right. And so when, when, when you're guarded around the parents, like you're less inclined to turn to them to learn or ask advice or to seek help. (43:12 - 43:24) Yeah. Especially if it's something where you're the parent is imposing limits, right? Like if you're playing, if, if playing video games is a privilege and you only get to play for an hour, you know, a day or whatever it is. Right. (43:25 - 43:39) When something comes up with a video game, you're not going to be seeking mom or dad to come help you out with it. It's more like I'm, I'm, I'm hiding off in my room playing video games. I'm not supposed to not letting mom or dad have a clue that I'm playing video games, let alone seek out their help with this. (43:39 - 43:51) Yeah. And then, and let's take it to a more extreme, you know, say that, you know, they've got internet freedom and they reach some taboo corner of the internet or they're in a chat room eventually. And someone's saying some untoward things to them. (43:51 - 43:59) Like you want them to be able to turn towards you. You want them to be able to seek you out. So like we need to nurture and cultivate that more than anything else. (43:59 - 44:13) But you're right. If it's restricted, if, if they're living with a tyrant, which in many ways is the way that most parenting is done these ways these days, it's like when they come into these complicated situations, there's a reluctancy. There's a hesitancy. (44:14 - 44:19) Totally. Totally. As I talk about in the book, it's like this, this alternate persona. (44:19 - 44:23) Like I had it with my parents. Yep. I think most kids have it with their parents. (44:24 - 44:42) Um, they're, you know, every movie you watch about kids, right? They have their kid world and the parents like, Oh, what are you kids doing? And you're like, Oh, nothing. Right. It is part of the charm of the movie is that, Oh, the kids are hiding from the parents, what they're really actually interested in, which means they're trying to keep the parents in the dark. (44:43 - 45:06) I think, um, you know, when you get back to the Oreos and the health and, and things and the teaching, right? The superpower is trust. If your kid trusts you, right? And they're open with you, then when, when, when they're having a hard time with their body weight, right? They're more likely to seek you out when they're having a hard time with something or something dangerous is on the web or whatever it is. Yeah. (45:06 - 45:43) Um, what was, uh, my, my, my son with, um, washing his hair, right? I didn't, I didn't force him to wash his hair and, um, you know, it was a lot of like ugly pictures and stuff and family visits where, uh, he's looking a little ragged, but, uh, he didn't like getting his hair washed. And now, you know, I can say, you know, the first time he really agreed to, you know, I would put a washcloth over his eyes and I would put soap and shampoo in his hair and I cleaned his hair really nice. And I could authentically say to him like, wow, what do you think about your hair? And I'm like, oh wow, it does feel good. (45:43 - 45:51) There was no, um, friction between the two of us. I just thought to myself, it was so, it was so worth it. It was so worth it. (45:51 - 46:14) I put in all that time, did not force my preferences on him so that, um, he could just, he just has this trust over me, with me. Like if I, if I was to say, you know, you got a splinter in your foot and you know what we got to do? We got to like be tough here and let me use a tweezer and pull out this splinter. He's much more likely to let me do that. (46:15 - 46:33) Um, it's not the best examples, but I think, I think trust and relationship with your kid is a superpower for all the things that you're worried about. And it's an upfront investment, first five years of life to show them that, you know, you don't have to hide anything from me. I'm not going to try to take things away from you. (46:33 - 46:49) I'm not going to try to limit you in what you want to do. And now when things come up, the kid is, um, is amenable. In other words, you know, adults in your life, friends will listen to you when you, you know, who respect you will listen to you when you warn them about dangers. (46:51 - 47:03) Um, you know, they'll tell you about the dangers in their lives. Um, you know, what are you going to do if your kid's using drugs and hiding it from you? You're screwed. Even if there's no drugs allowed and you're, you're not going to know about what's hidden from you. (47:03 - 47:24) And, um, and there's, there's no, there's no way to, there's no, there's no guaranteed as the other part of this, there's no guaranteed way to parent in such a way that, you know, a kid won't hide stuff from you. Would you, but would you say that this is closer to that? I think it's, it's more likely. Yeah. (47:24 - 47:29) This, this way is more likely, um, to, to not have things hidden. Yeah. Yeah. (47:29 - 47:37) The idea is, you go ahead. No, you go, you go. Um, here's one really light bulb moment with this. (47:37 - 47:44) Um, my daughter, she was a first grade. She wasn't, she, she didn't want to go to first grade. And so we, you know, she did kindergarten. (47:44 - 47:56) She loved kindergarten, but first grade came along and something about it. And so, um, we're like, okay, you know, you don't have to go to first grade. And, and, but we, we didn't want to just, you know, totally, you know, ignore it. (47:56 - 48:09) Um, so we, I said, how about if we go visit, we'll go visit, we'll spend 20 minutes and then, and then we'll come home. And so we go to the classroom and everything seems nice. And there's a circle time and she, all her friends, right. (48:09 - 48:16) It's all our friends from kindergarten are there. And she's saying hi. And then they go on the recess and on the playground and she's playing with them in the playground and having a blast. (48:16 - 48:28) And I was like, wow, she's, um, she's definitely going to stay. And like, I think we broke through whatever fear of first grade. And anyway, recess is over and they're going to lunch and she comes up to me and she says, okay, I want to go home, daddy. (48:29 - 48:38) I said, okay, we'll go home. And all the teachers and everybody really wanted her to stay obviously. And they were all coming up to her saying, oh, you're going to go home. (48:38 - 48:46) Are you sure you could stay? And she's saying, no, I want to go. And she started to shrink and, um, you know, suck her thumb. And they said, okay, well, you're going to come back tomorrow. (48:47 - 48:57) Are you going to come back tomorrow with this very sing songy voice? And she shakes her head. Yes. And, uh, we go back inside and we have to go to the, the office and sign her out. (48:57 - 49:02) And everybody just, oh, it was so great to see you today. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow. (49:02 - 49:05) And she said, she said her head. Yes. A couple of times. (49:05 - 49:20) Then we go outside and she said, daddy, I said, yes, but I wanted to say no. And I said, you never have to tell me what you think you want here. It's like, you can, you can always say yes. (49:20 - 49:25) When you mean yes. And no one, you didn't mean no to me. Like it was just, it hit me so hard. (49:25 - 49:35) It was like, I am not going to be on the other side of this, um, this false persona. Yeah. Um, you know, you, you, you don't have to play games with me. (49:35 - 50:14) You can tell me what you think. And, um, you know, some people's parents say that to their kids. My parents said that to me when I was a kid, and, you know, you want it to be true as a parent, but if you are, um, if you're, if you, if you're their gatekeeper and you're their rule enforcer, things are going to, the moment, the moment that you become the gatekeeper, you facilitate the creation of the false persona more and more because it has to come into play for them to get by in the household where everything within me really wants to play the iPad, but there's this really weird, this rule that I can't play the iPad. (50:15 - 50:34) And so I got to play along with this game until I get the opportunity to kind of play the iPad. Like we're just, yeah, facilitating this, this kind of chasm in, in, in the personality as well in that sense. Also, I guess while we're on that note, let's kind of get onto, onto screens, man, because this is a huge trigger point for so many people as well. (50:34 - 50:42) Yep. It's tricky. So, yeah, I mean, well, what's give the people your view on screens. (50:42 - 50:52) I guess your kids love it. And, you know, I guess again, some of the common pushbacks you get and your answers to them. So I'll, I'll try to describe it differently than I, than, than usual. (50:52 - 51:10) So the, the example of my daughter, I'm trying to go out on the, on the, on the deck in the spring, right? The opening example, the example that's the epilogue, I really think it's, it's that over and over and over and all these different circumstances, right? So she wants a, she, she's interested in this screen. Why not? Right. Every, every, every baby's clutching an iPhone. (51:10 - 51:26) iPhone is interesting, right? It's a, it's fascinating. I'm wanting to say, no, this, this, this, this area of interesting things is no good for you. You know, why, why is it no good for you? It's obviously got lots of interesting stuff on it. (51:26 - 51:31) So that's really my approach. Phones are great. They're great for adults. (51:31 - 51:44) They're great for kids. They are, I think they're, they're the greatest thing for parenting since, since, uh, since indoor heating and electricity. I think, I think, I think the screens are incredible. (51:45 - 51:55) I think, um, like everything, there are ways that they can go bad. There's ways that food can go bad. There's ways that exercise can go bad. (51:55 - 52:10) I mean, anything you can have problems with anything. So screens are not unique in that regard. Um, how to put it, my kids, I bought them each their own iPad when they were 18 months old, more or less when they, um, just cause it was too annoying to have them have my phone all the time. (52:10 - 52:22) You know, one of my own phone. So, um, they have never had any restrictions in their screen use ever. They can use it all night long, all morning, all afternoon. (52:22 - 52:43) Um, they do use them quite a bit, many hours a day, but they are never, um, since my kids have never had any restrictions on their screens, they're, they're, they're very interested in adults. They're never like when my parents come, they don't ignore my parents and bury their heads in the screen. They're very easy to engage with. (52:44 - 52:53) they always have, I had to come back to later. So they're never clutching at it. Um, uh, that's the policy. (52:53 - 53:10) What do I, I mean, I can, yeah, I can just, I guess how many hours a day do you think your, your kid, your average kid might spend on the screen? Um, it, it, it varies so much on a given day. Some days they don't, they don't, almost every, they use it in the morning. Um, when they come down in the morning, I mean, I'm on my phone. (53:11 - 53:30) Um, they spend like an hour in the morning, almost, almost every morning, although not even that. Um, and you know, if we're out, if they're out doing something with their, um, the, their caretakers during the day, they don't bring their screens, not because they've been allowed to. They, we often, we, we, we travel with them. (53:30 - 53:38) They just don't always use them. Yeah. Um, they'll go, they'll usually spend several hours in the morning and early afternoon out doing something. (53:38 - 53:57) And then when they come back, they have like a wind down period. So they'll spend like an hour, um, you know, eating lunch and, and watching their screen. But it, it, it just, it varies very widely, but it, it wouldn't be outrageous for them to be on the screen, like six hours, six hours a day or more. (53:57 - 54:01) Sometimes, and sometimes they don't use them at all. Yeah. Yeah. (54:01 - 54:20) The, the technology alarmism is so interesting to me. Hey, um, and it's like, I just think like, what am I cultivating? If like, I'm telling my kid that you can't use the iPad and then she goes and watches me on my phone, like scrolling. that's, that's the best, right? Like we, we don't really eat Oreos. (54:21 - 54:29) So it's not like, Oh, I can eat the Oreos, but you can't, right? But you do have that with the phone. Like, Oh, I can use my phone, but you can't use yours. Um, that is a really good signal. (54:29 - 54:51) Um, the, the other thing is, uh, I don't know. I mean, what, what is so bad about it? Right? Like, um, it, it's just like the Oreos thing. Like what, what is so bad about eating Oreos? What is so bad about eating a lot of ice cream? I mean, um, you know, I, you, you could become overweight, but we can, we can deal with that when that starts to arise. (54:51 - 55:05) Um, with the screen, like what do you watch a lot of YouTube and develop your interests, right? Um, you, you know, and a screen is not just YouTube. It's, you know, drawing apps, it's games. It's, it's all these different things. (55:05 - 55:24) It's not just one thing. Ice cream is one thing, but yeah, iPad is thousands of things. So, and even, and even just like the, the mental learning processes that are happening while they're watching a movie or a TV series or whatever, whatever it might be to like put together like story plots, character motivations, like all these different things. (55:24 - 55:34) Like there's so much learning that happens in that engagement, but yeah. So like, I think the theory is what they're going to get addicted, right? Like ultimately. Okay. (55:34 - 55:41) So addiction, let's talk about addiction. Um, that is pure nonsense. Um, that is just fear mongering. (55:41 - 55:46) Um, it's just, it's just fear mongering. Um, addiction. Yeah. (55:47 - 55:55) What's your take on addiction? You can't get it. You, you can't get addicted to a, to a screen. Um, you can't get addicted to something. (55:58 - 56:26) Alcohol you can get addicted to because alcohol changes the receptors in your brain. Um, it, it, it, if you drink a lot of alcohol over a long period of time, your neurotransmitters in your brain are going to accommodate to that. And then if you withdraw the alcohol, you are going to go into alcoholic withdrawal delirium. (56:26 - 56:45) Um, and you know, it's, it's a, it's a very real physiological process. And people who are alcoholics need to keep on drinking to prevent that, um, withdrawal state from happening. But people who are watching screens are not developing a chemical dependence. (56:45 - 56:58) They're not ingesting a chemical, right? Alcoholics are ingesting a chemical and that chemical goes in the brain and does stuff. People who watch screens, there's no chemical. And so what people say is, oh, it's the dopamine, which is bullshit. (56:59 - 57:15) Um, this is the biggest load of BS going. The biggest piece of bullshit that smart people believe is that dopamine is this chemical that, um, does in your brain something similar to what alcohol does. That's completely wrong. (57:16 - 57:32) And the reason it's wrong is because dopamine is involved in every pleasurable experience. The most wholesome, pleasurable experience is a dopamine rush, right? The cheapest thrill is a dopamine rush. It's all, it's all the, the, the physiology of pleasure. (57:32 - 57:52) So you can't just say that, oh, dopamine is the bad guy when it's this kind of pleasure, but it's a good guy when it's this kind of pleasure. Well, what, what, what's the distinction? Um, I make fun of gardening in the book, right? It's, it's okay to have dopamine rushes from gardening, not okay from his, for super Mario brothers. That's crazy. (57:52 - 58:29) Hey, Aaron, what are your thoughts on people that are concerned about blue light exposure and how that impacts health? Do you think that's like bullshit as well? Yeah. Um, did you get told that, uh, reading, I, I was told that reading is the reason why my eyes, I, I, uh, I became nearsighted because of reading so much, right? Was there, was there a, um, big outcry and the danger of books and reading because it's making kids need glasses? Um, no. And, uh, I, I think that, I mean, I've looked into this a little bit. (58:29 - 58:53) I don't see any obvious indication that the blue light is doing any damage and um, and the technology companies can modify the blue light emanating from the screens and can adapt the brightness. So it's a solvable problem. Um, if it even is one at all, um, what, there's some crazy thing with, um, people in Cupertino, some study of kids in Cupertino. (58:53 - 59:31) It's so, it's so funny, right? It's like, uh, you know what I've found, you know, I found man, like in this process of like, like, I'll, I'll be honest with you when I heard that episode with Tim and Naval, it's like, it kind of felt like this was the parenting information, which I've been waiting for like my entire life, like something that, because the first principles just make so much sense to me, you know? And it's like, what I found as I've been implementing this, it's like a lot of the things that come up with me when I'm like, Oh, she's on the iPad too much. Oh, she just ate three chocolates in a row. It's like, it's my projection. (59:32 - 59:44) It's got nothing to do with the kid. It's, I think it's, what's coming up is my own thwarted relationship with freedom from my own childhood. I'm projecting onto the kid, like, Oh, you know, it's like, watch out, be careful there. (59:44 - 59:51) But it's like this fucking invisible boogeyman. It's this invisible boogeyman. You got it. (59:51 - 1:00:03) That's what, that's what the last chapter is about. The last chapter is about the, the, the fact that what we think about kids is a, is a, is a carryover of how we've been treated as kids. Yes. (1:00:03 - 1:00:08) Right. That's how these, that's how these norms are been so persistent. So persistent. (1:00:09 - 1:00:24) That's why, um, like child liberation, it's like a last bastion of human liberation, right? We've like successively figured out that, Oh, actually women, Oh, actually minorities. Oh, actually, right. And like, Oh no, people are fully human. (1:00:24 - 1:00:40) They deserve the full range of human dignities. And the last stage is to recognize this for kids. And the reason why kids are the last stage is because the way we were treated as kids informs how we see kids. (1:00:40 - 1:00:50) And so we are primed to see them if they're really enjoying themselves. Oh, maybe they're addicted, right? Oh, you know, they're really into Minecraft. Oh, maybe something's going on. (1:00:50 - 1:00:55) Oh, they're eating a lot of Oreos. Oh, the, you know, the, that's what it's like. That's what it's like. (1:00:55 - 1:01:12) It's like, don't, don't enjoy yourself too much when there's too much enjoyment, like red flags get raised red flags. Yeah, exactly. As I say in the book, like if you are, it's kind of hard to have a huge amount of fun while conforming to social norms. (1:01:13 - 1:01:19) Yeah. Right. It's, it's something new and different that is tends to be a ton of fun. (1:01:19 - 1:01:30) And that's what you want. Your kid to be doing is exploring and discovering and finding new and different things. and the knee jerk reaction for parents is, kids liking this. (1:01:30 - 1:01:45) There's something it's a, it's a, yeah. If the kid likes it too much, there must be something nefarious connected to it, you know, and then the addiction, we raised a bunch of adults that self police themselves, their, their entire lives. Yeah. (1:01:46 - 1:01:56) Yeah. Well, there's the whole idea that in adult world that, um, you know, immediate gratification is bad. Um, that, you know, getting what you want is bad. (1:01:57 - 1:02:01) Yeah. Um, that you need to suffer before you, right. What did they call it? Hustle porn. (1:02:01 - 1:02:18) Um, I don't want to, I don't want to name names, but I've just been noticing there's lots of people on Twitter that are on X that are saying, you know, this wisdom that you have to, you know, nothing worthwhile comes without pain. Yeah. Well, let's just slow down just a second, Like, just think about that for a second. (1:02:19 - 1:02:47) there, there are plenty of things that, yeah, or just good from the start. And there's nothing wrong with being good from the start. And there's plenty of things that are painful while you're doing them that you can mitigate the pain, right? If you're, if you're, if you're a mountain climber, right? Like I like hiking, climbing mountains and you know, the, the, the Arger of it is part of the fun, but I'm not going to like bang my knee on a rock on the way up the hill just to make it more painful. (1:02:47 - 1:02:53) So that's more satisfying when I get to the top. Yeah. And, and, and yeah. (1:02:53 - 1:03:15) So, and also like, like a big part of our, our research and what we do and what we kind of teach is this whole concept of self-esteem, which I think many, many people have, you know, skewed ideas of what self-esteem really is. But like how ultimately self-esteem is like feeling appropriate to life, feeling fit for life. It's the reputation that you acquire with yourself. (1:03:15 - 1:03:27) But like when you're constantly told that your desires are wrong, that your natural inclination is to want to do something more is wrong. When you wanting the candy is wrong. When you wanting to keep, to finish the game or to finish the video is wrong. (1:03:27 - 1:03:44) Like how appropriate do you think that person is going to feel for life? Like later down the road, like there's going to be this constant self-questioning, this constant self-criticism. It's like a, you become a walking contradiction. And I think that's what, that's what we've all been to some extent, but it doesn't need to be that way. (1:03:44 - 1:03:47) Amen, brother. Yeah. Yeah. (1:03:47 - 1:03:59) That's the, um, it's self-policing, right? Like you need your parents to police you when you're a kid so that you can police yourself when you grow up. Yeah. And so a lot of us are walking around self-policing. (1:03:59 - 1:04:21) That's what I think of being self-conscious, self-aware, you know, low self-esteem is that you're always watching out for yourself, getting out of hand. Um, and, and that's a huge amount of mental energy wasted doing that. A huge amount of, of, of stress and strain, a huge amount of shame around doing new things. (1:04:22 - 1:04:38) yeah. And, uh, yeah, just the act of, so back to the Oreos, right? Telling the kid that, uh, maybe you should eat something else is to say, is sending them the message that their own desires are a threat to themselves. Yes. (1:04:38 - 1:05:01) Um, that they are a danger to themselves. Um, that is, so that, that's the screen thing, right? The, the screen thing is to say that the things that you find interesting and here is a, an iPad is full of potentially interesting stuff, which is what the world is, is to navigate a world of interesting stuff. And that's how you build a life. (1:05:01 - 1:05:19) Um, you know, my hope is that that's how my kids build a life. I don't want them to build a life on, um, satisfying what others are expecting of them or doing what they think they need to do. Um, or, you know, simply conforming to get by. (1:05:19 - 1:05:35) I want to, I mean, this is what I think of a fun life is, is a, is a life of discovery and exploration of your, of, of whatever is interesting. The iPad is the highest density pool of interesting things you're going to find. Yeah. (1:05:36 - 1:05:48) And I'm not saying it's exclusive. I'm not saying you shouldn't go for walks in the wood woods, right? There's lots of great, interesting stuff out there. It's not all in the iPad, but dollar for dollar, that iPad is extraordinary. (1:05:49 - 1:06:00) Especially, especially as a default, which is how my kids use it. If it's not something more interesting going on in the world, they go for the iPad, which is how I use my phone. It's not something more interesting in the right, in the, in the, in the regular world. (1:06:00 - 1:06:25) I'm on my phone. I mean, the point is, I've built, I've built an entire career using the internet and phones and consuming the material and reaching out to people and networking and building courses and learning how to do a podcast and moving and then having the location freedom to move countries and to do work online. All of that because of technology and because of, of a free relationship with technology. (1:06:26 - 1:06:41) Like, did you get addicted at any point in there? Was all that interest an addiction or? He's just addicted to Spain and spending time with me, Aaron. That's it. That's the addiction, right? um, yeah, it's, it's, yeah. (1:06:41 - 1:07:09) Well, how do you, what's, what's your take on like the technology alarmism and like the, you know, we need to return to like only natural things and we need to like, you know, bubble wrap our kids and they only need to play with wooden toys and natural things. And you know, it's like, it's like this big fucking boogeyman. That is the screen or that is technology when really it's like the end product of human genius of human innovation of progress of so much. (1:07:09 - 1:07:15) And it's like, yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, there's so much to say about it. (1:07:15 - 1:07:43) What, what I usually do is I just respond to like the normal, um, critiques of screens and try to argue that the alarmism is unfounded. You know, talk about the addiction, talk about the dopamine. you know, if you, if you, if you think that natural things are better than we should get rid of electricity, we should get rid of vaccines, we should get rid of indoor heating, right? Like, um, you know, even wooden blocks. (1:07:43 - 1:07:51) I don't think that was terribly natural. That was an innovation at some point. Um, and, uh, I don't know. (1:07:51 - 1:08:24) I think, I think the, the bigger picture argument, I mean, you can make all those little arguments, which I think are all important to make. And I'm, I'm happy to make them. Um, in the, in the bigger picture, I think of it as, um, is what is your relationship with things that are interesting to you? And what is your relationship with the problems that you have in your life? Are the problems that happen? I mean, there's going to be like problems that are, are produced from the screens. (1:08:25 - 1:08:48) Are you the person who can solve them? Or does somebody else need to solve them for you? I think that that's another big part of this is that, um, we want our kids, this, there's this word gumption, which I've only discovered somewhat recently. Gumption is this can do attitude. This idea that, you know, something comes along, people talk about resilience a lot, right? Something comes along, some hardship or some challenge. (1:08:48 - 1:08:58) And some people are like, Ooh, I can do that. Right? They simply rise to the occasion. The idea, it's kind of thrilling to them to take on this, this challenge. (1:08:59 - 1:09:05) And I think that's just such an extraordinary quality. Yeah. And I definitely want my kids to have that. (1:09:05 - 1:09:31) Now, how are they going to have gumption? Um, if I'm there all the time saying, Oh, not this and not that, not this and not that, it means that, you know, they're, they're not the agent in their lives that they could be. and I think having them free reign with the, with the iPad is part of that. It's like you are, you are to be trusted with how you conduct your life. (1:09:31 - 1:09:40) You are to be trusted with what you find interesting, what you want to pay attention to. Um, you, you can figure all this stuff out. Yeah. (1:09:40 - 1:10:04) Yeah, totally, man. And it's like in every single scenario, when you obfuscate freedom, you're obfuscating truth as well. You know, so it's like, is there ever a scenario where force or coercion leads to better results? I threw out human history on every scale from the individual to the nation to the cosmos. (1:10:04 - 1:10:14) Like he does force or coercion ever lead to a better result. It simply doesn't. Well, people would say that, um, well, you need some boundaries. (1:10:14 - 1:10:28) You need some rules. Um, society has structure, and if you don't conform to the structure, then we're back to, you know, living in a state of anarchy, and, and that's all terrible. But, um, that's not coercion. (1:10:28 - 1:10:38) Structure is not coercion. Um, right? The rules of baseball is not coercion. Um, as long as you can freely opt out, it's not coercion. (1:10:38 - 1:11:05) And there's lots of structures, and this is what I try to say. Like, people make this point a lot, and I'm trying to say that I care about the norms and the structures of society so much that I don't want to corrupt them for my kids and make them think that, you know, math is something you learn in order to get good grades. That's the stupidest idea possible, right? Math is something you learn to, you know, to do whatever you're doing in the world, or if you just love math. (1:11:05 - 1:11:19) It's not something to impress Mr. Simmons in math class, or a way to get into college. That's a disaster. And so, you know, the norms of politeness, rules, the rules of the road, I mean, you name it. (1:11:19 - 1:11:37) There's all of these structures that are critical, that I want my kids to engage in on their own terms because they find the value in them and understand them. And the only way to do that is to allow them to opt out. Because if you don't allow them to opt out, that would be coercing them. (1:11:38 - 1:12:05) And if you're coercing them, then part of what they're doing is figuring out how to deal with your ass. It's like, how do I get this guy off my back? How do I appease this person? How do I make them happy? How do I placate them so that I can get to what I want to get to? And that corrupts every system of rules and system of structures that we value so much. If you value these things, you've got to let the kid say, you've got to take no for an answer. (1:12:06 - 1:12:26) Yeah, exactly. And like, do you want the kids to be saying please or thank you because he or she genuinely wants to? Or because dad's saying, if I don't say thank you or please at this point in time, then there's going to be an issue. Like you said, the truth there, right? What you want is the kid to understand gratitude. (1:12:26 - 1:12:36) You want them to master gratitude. And how do they master gratitude? You cannot force it. You can't force them to learn anything. (1:12:36 - 1:12:52) The only thing that force does is block certain things. Right? You don't force by forcing a kid to say thank you, they don't learn gratitude. They may learn gratitude in that process, but the forcing is not what taught them. (1:12:53 - 1:13:03) Making somebody do something repetitively does not teach them that thing. Right? It's like humans are not robots. We're not training dogs. (1:13:03 - 1:13:11) Get the dog to go through the same motion over and over and they start to connect. I do this and I get the biscuit. That's not how people work. (1:13:13 - 1:13:30) Gratitude is a very nuanced emotion that has very nuanced forms of expression. That's what I want my kids to learn. So I have to make sure that I don't introduce myself as the boogeyman and confuse gratitude. (1:13:30 - 1:13:40) I want them to be gracious from an understanding of it. Yeah, exactly. Aaron, I have a question. (1:13:40 - 1:14:02) How do you navigate being around people? Let's say your parents or other relatives don't look at things the same way, but are spending time with their children and are probably going to be, let's say, more coercive in the traditional sense. How do you navigate that whole situation? Let's say my wife and I have a child and my mother comes to live with us and, you know, she's more old school. She's going to approach things a different way. (1:14:03 - 1:14:51) What's that dance like? Yeah, that's a very difficult dance. It obviously depends on mother-in-law and it depends on, you know, how much interactions she's got with the kids and it depends on how old the kids are. It's another great reason why trust is so important, right? Like if a kid trusts you, a seven-year-old, she's at the point where I can explain to her, you know, someone's going to be here, they're going to have these expectations, one thing we can do is just play ball while she's here to make her happy because, you know, we love her and, you know, what do you think? And my daughter will get that kind of a thing and she'll be on board and she will, I mean, my extended family is great. (1:14:51 - 1:15:13) I don't have any issues with in-laws or parents or anything like that. But just in general, I think that, you know, as kids get older, it's much easier to kind of let them in on, you know, here's how we deal with the other people. But when they're young, real little kids, I, how do I deal with it? It's kind of case by case. (1:15:13 - 1:15:30) I don't explain or lecture to them, you know, our parenting philosophy because that's going to put them off. I just say things like, oh, we're kind of crazy here. You know, I kind of do some self-deprecating like, we're a little, we're a little crazy here. (1:15:30 - 1:15:46) We're, I call it an experiment. I say, we're, we're trying, we don't actually, we're trying not, you know, to not have a lot of those rules or a lot of times I'll just let it go. And I don't know. (1:15:47 - 1:15:54) I don't have that problem very often. My kids are not in school. The neighbors are really chill. (1:15:55 - 1:16:06) They get it. And I don't force my kid into, I mean, that's the big thing is I don't force my kids into situations where they would have to deal with a coercive person. Like I keep them out of it. (1:16:06 - 1:16:26) If we go visit somebody, I make, we make arrangements for our kids to have some privacy and, you know, be off in a room by themselves with their iPad if they want to and bring some more extra Oreo cookies and. Extra Oreos. Yeah. (1:16:26 - 1:16:37) Basically, I create an opportunity for my kids to opt out. That's really it. That is like the guiding principle is to always make give them an opportunity to opt out. (1:16:38 - 1:16:44) Yeah. So if someone's coming to visit, you can go up to your room. If we're going somewhere else, we'll find a room for you. (1:16:45 - 1:16:52) I'm not going to enroll you in dance class if you don't want to deal with the instructor. Yeah. We're not going to see grandma. (1:16:53 - 1:17:31) You can stay home. Well, there's also that's a risk, right? Is that, um, you just, um, that that would be the more, um, like permissive kind of neglect thing is that, uh, if grandma has certain hangups, how can we hang out with grandma and not have those hangups? Right? So, um, one example is like, let's go meet grandma at a park, right? We'll go visit grandma and we'll go to the park and she can come to us with come and start at the park and then we'll go have lunch together and then we'll be at grandma's house, right? So you can, you can modify things so that you don't step on her third rail issues. Yeah. (1:17:31 - 1:17:49) I mean, for me personally, it's like everyone knows where I stand about everything and everyone knows that they're not going to change my mind on anything. So it's like if you're, if you're hanging out with me, you understand like the terms, like, you know, it's like there's, you have to, you know, the freedom. It's a case by case basis. (1:17:50 - 1:18:14) Every family, every dynamic is different and, you know, you have to kind of again, dance with it as you go. And of course, for me, it's like just live, you live your life so authentically that you don't need to explain yourself to kind of anyone, you know, if people genuinely want to be in your company, then they're going to understand and value your company despite whatever, you know, other hangups they kind of have. But you did touch on something which I do want to get into, which I think is really important, which is like sibling conflicts. (1:18:15 - 1:18:32) Oh, yeah. So the kid, the kids are fighting, the kids are already like throwing punches, throwing hands, you know, what's going on? How do you deal with it? Yeah, this is one of the most revealing. There wasn't much on this in the taking children seriously literature, didn't, didn't talk much about siblings. (1:18:32 - 1:18:41) And I really had to figure out a lot of this. Well, I figured a lot of it on my own. But this was one of the has been one of the most rewarding and surprising elements of this. (1:18:41 - 1:19:07) I think I think how my kids interact, there is no greater joy than when my kids are playing together. Yeah, it is something very surprising just how, how satisfying and pleasing that is when just last night the kids were, it was like 1030 and we weren't even like thinking it was like, oh, maybe we should like, you know, we're going to we make sales about going to bed because we're tired. We want to go to bed. (1:19:08 - 1:19:18) And so, you know, we'll often we don't have bedtimes, but we'll often say like, I'm, I'm tired. I'm going to bed and the kids, everything will migrate upstairs. But last night they were, they were just jamming. (1:19:18 - 1:19:20) So funny. They were on the computer. I forget what they were doing. (1:19:21 - 1:19:32) It was something with the computer. Oh, they're picking out recipes on the computer together. And like, it was such a sweet moment and like, we're not going to, you know, we're not going to stop this one. (1:19:34 - 1:19:51) Anyway. And sometimes I think like, what is my role as a parent? One way I think is, is my role is to make sure my kids have no reason to hate each other. Like if my kids have good relationships with each other when I'm gone, then I succeeded. (1:19:51 - 1:20:09) That's almost like the the only metric, but in some, in some, sometimes I think about it, but so sibling conflict, when they're fighting, the thing is that they're fighting out of ignorance. They don't understand how to interact with another person, which is not an easy thing. Again, it's like gratitude. (1:20:10 - 1:20:38) These are very complex, very nuanced things. How do you deal with other people? How do you deal with the limited number of toys or the limited amount of parental attention or a limited amount of each other's attention, right? There's all these limitations and problems that, that show up even in, you know, a wealthy home with plenty of abundance like we have. And so with a parent and a child, one of you knows how to deal with other people, but with two children, they don't, neither of them know. (1:20:39 - 1:21:24) And so that's very hard. And, and what do you do as the parent? How do you help them figure out how to deal with other people without making it about you? Right? So if you come in heavy handed and say, there's no hitting, then it's like, well, you know, why are you giving me a hard time? I need to hit him because, you know, he deserves it, right? Like you don't want to, you, you want the, in all circumstances, I want my kids to be engaged with the problem itself and not divert their attention and be engaged with something about me or my expectations or my whatever it is. So on a practical level, my kids are fighting when this actually comes to blows, I get between them and I don't let the kids hurt each other. (1:21:25 - 1:21:44) That doesn't mean I always do that. When they're rough housing or when it's not really clear, I'll kind of let it go because I don't want to, you know, there are subtleties between what's, you know, fun, rough housing, what is, you know, physical abuse and aggression. But I get in between them and I never reprimand one of them. (1:21:45 - 1:22:03) I never start saying who's right and who is wrong. Even when someone's obviously right and someone's obviously wrong, they, they need to figure that stuff out themselves. And they need to be able to read each other's and read each other's cues. (1:22:04 - 1:22:21) They need to be able to form a guess of what's going on in the other person's mind, why they behave the way they did. What was it about what I did that made them upset? All that stuff is, you can't teach that stuff. I mean, you can't explain that stuff in words. (1:22:21 - 1:22:45) Maybe when they're older, you can start to say, you know, he gets really mad when he doesn't get his way. You know, one way to, um, I've been trying to counsel my daughter to, um, just to get the concept of being more understanding, right? It's like, give him some slack. Like, how does she understand what that means? Give him the benefit of the doubt. (1:22:45 - 1:23:04) You can't say that, right? How do you get across this point of like giving the other person some, like being generous? You know, I, I can't even think of, I've tried to explain it to them. It's, it's, um. Well, even like, like compromise is a tricky word for me, you know, like how do you, you know, like, yeah. (1:23:04 - 1:23:21) Right. I don't want them to compromise. I want them to, so basically they, they figured out, um, and I try to solve, um, you know, if they're fighting over the same toy, I try to get this, I can try to get two toys. (1:23:21 - 1:23:45) Um, you know, if they're whatever the, the hang up is, I try to, um, alleviate it by, uh, well, non-coercive means, um. Yeah. And it's something that happens over time as well, you know, like as the, as the, as you mentioned, like ignorance and then their, their reason grows, everything grows. (1:23:45 - 1:24:07) They have these bites multiple times over time, et cetera, but eventually like they, they get the picture and it's like the, the, the picture is only going to be really cohesively formed. I agree with you with as little intervention as possible from you because otherwise there's always diverting to you to solve the problem and like bobbing on their sibling, you know, it's like, yeah. Yeah. (1:24:07 - 1:24:34) Well, not only that, um, they learn what's fun, right? Like they like playing together and so they learn that, oh, in order to have fun, I got to make sure I don't make a mad, right? That's why you don't make somebody mad because you're having a good time and you're learning how to preserve the good time. And so when they're like really going crazy and I'm worried they're going to smash the coffee table or, you know, hurt themselves. I don't say, oh no, no, don't do this. (1:24:34 - 1:24:53) I like, oh, let me get that table out of the way. Like, oh, maybe this will fall, right? Like that's the more this is keeping safe. And so I work on the environment and try to keep this conducive and they're having fun and I can't tell them what fun is, but I want to make sure whenever they're having fun that, that, that I want to keep it going as much as possible. (1:24:54 - 1:25:38) And so I try to pull out the barriers and blocks um, and let them figure out, oh, I made her mad and that made the fun go away, right? Sometimes you just got to let the anger like, okay, they just had a big fight and let that be like how they learned that, uh, when I do that, suddenly the fun thing we're doing ends. Yeah. The other thing I discovered just by writing the book is that back to the Oreos, that the preferences, so the thing that happens with siblings is that you also learn how to communicate boundaries and you learn what other people's boundaries are, right? Like with horsing around, you learn what is like a playful shove and what is an aggressive shove, what is like a playful hit and what is, what is not. (1:25:39 - 1:25:52) You learn what the other person likes and doesn't like and will tolerate and won't tolerate. And how do you learn that? You can only learn that if the other person knows what their preferences are. And this was like the light bulb moment. (1:25:52 - 1:26:11) Like you have to know what you like in order to be able to signal and communicate your boundaries. And that's how you get along with other people, right? People that you can't tell what their boundaries are are impossible to deal with, um, and are playing games and stuff and don't really, you know, are self-conscious, right? Those people are very difficult to deal with. They're defensive. (1:26:12 - 1:26:30) They lead you into these traps. So what you want, I think, is the kids to be very authentic with each other, be very clear, to have clear ownership, um, to have no shame about what their boundaries are, and to signal them to each other. And that's how you get along with people. (1:26:30 - 1:26:49) And I think that's how you form really strong relationships. That you are open with each other about what you like and don't like. And so the only way to be open and kind of genuine, honest, and authentic with your likes and your dislikes is to be able to develop your own preferences without somebody else trying to manage them. (1:26:49 - 1:26:58) But you have to be you let the kid eat the Oreos because, because that's what you want. You want them to figure out what they like and don't like. Yeah, exactly. (1:26:58 - 1:27:10) All, like, the best relationships are built upon respecting the individual's preferences, the individual's boundaries, right? It's not, it's not, oh, yeah, it's a free for all. We're just sharing everything. I don't own anything. (1:27:10 - 1:27:20) There's no, like, that then leads to healthy community, period. And, like, the altruism, like, the kind of altruism you want is like, oh, you like this. Let me get that for you. (1:27:21 - 1:27:26) I actually don't even like it. I hate it. Right? When my wife, you know, gets me, um, I was eating donuts in the morning. (1:27:26 - 1:27:41) She finds donuts despicable, but she'll like buy me donuts and try to find a nice donut. And it's like, it's just so touching, right? And, and, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's supporting somebody else. And my kids do this all the time. (1:27:41 - 1:27:58) They'll, right. Well, they'll buy each other the candies that they know each other likes, and they'll buy each other, like when we're at the store and they'll get each other this and that. And, um, yeah, I think if, if I was shutting down food and candy and sweets, they would be deprived of that whole little world that they engage in. (1:27:59 - 1:28:02) Yeah. Yeah, man. I've got, I've got some questions. (1:28:02 - 1:28:14) Um, so there's this common phrase that, you know, parenting philosophies and, you know, more mainstream parenting teachers use, which is don't be your kid's friend. You don't want to be your kid's friend. What do you, what do you think about that? Yeah. (1:28:15 - 1:28:27) Yeah, I think, I think no, I think, um, you want to be your kid's friend. Um, you, you know, friends don't have obligations to each other that parents have to kids. So you don't want to forget that part. (1:28:27 - 1:28:47) You do have obligations that are, that are different. As long as you're preserving the obligations, you want a genuine, um, open trusting relationship. And that's what's unique about friends that you're not afraid to tell your friend about your, your deepest shames, your deepest fears. (1:28:48 - 1:29:19) Um, you know, you often can't talk to anybody else about the kind of stuff that you can talk with your friend about, which means, um, I think friendship is a great model for how to interact with your kids. I think there's no shame in being friends with your kids. You're not, you know, it depends on what you mean by friendship, right? Um, you're maybe you're not, um, I'm gonna say like too casual, but I'm very casual with my kids. (1:29:19 - 1:29:34) I think it's more of the obligations and the duties, but otherwise it's just a, um, was it a myth? It's a, it's a, uh, it's a holdover. It's, it's one of those things that, uh, we, uh, we feel guilty about. Yeah. (1:29:34 - 1:29:52) I think when people say, don't be your friend, they're looking at in this binary of like, you're not like, don't, don't be the parent, just be the friend. And it's like, no, like you said, there's obligations there. So I think when they're using that, that phrase, it's like, just let everything go, you know, don't come in, don't guide them to some degree, you know, I don't know. (1:29:52 - 1:29:59) Yeah. I mean, you're not, you're not, you are friends are equals. And I think that's the idea is that you're not supposed to be equal with your kid. (1:30:00 - 1:30:25) But, um, I think you are, I think the, the, what, what Deutsch shows us is that, you know, the specialty of, of personhood, what personhood is, and you either have personhood or you don't, you're either a full person or you're not. And the argument is that kids are full status people. And so how do you interact with a full status person, right? A friend, friends are equal status. (1:30:25 - 1:30:35) Spouses are equal status. Parents and children also are equal status people. That's the, that's the essential position. (1:30:35 - 1:30:46) Yeah. And then, you know, some people will say, oh, but the child doesn't have a fully formed prefrontal cortex or whatever it might be. They can't feel a reason until the age of seven when this thing magically turns on at the age of seven. (1:30:47 - 1:31:01) And, and even I will probably, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that one's hilarious. So, so reason it's, and again, it's what I love the philosophy of it, right? The epistemology clarifies this. So kids are fully rational. (1:31:02 - 1:31:11) It's not like some people are rational and some people are not. Kids are, kids are fully rational. What they are is ignorant, ignorant in the sense that they don't know much, obviously. (1:31:12 - 1:31:21) And they have lots of wrong ideas. But adults have lots of wrong ideas too. You, you can, you can be fully rational and still be full of wrong, false ideas. (1:31:21 - 1:31:27) In fact, all of our ideas are improvable. So they're all false in some regards. So kids are not unique in that way. (1:31:28 - 1:31:40) And what they have is they have a sense-making apparatus in their brains that works just like adults do. In fact, it works extremely well. In fact, it arguably works better than ours do. (1:31:41 - 1:32:04) And they, you know, which is corroborated by the fact they can learn a whole language without even ever having any instruction and they can learn, right, all the incredible stuff that kids learn. So that's their reasonable, rational faculties that's doing that. It's their ability to make guesses about how the world works and then test those guesses and refine them. (1:32:05 - 1:32:23) And they do, that process is what happens in our own adult, rational, fully formed prefrontal cortexes that we have. It's the same process. So, you know, this is another myth perpetrated by the psychologists that, you know, you have to wait for your prefrontal cortex. (1:32:23 - 1:32:59) And you can refute this so easily, right? Like, have you ever met somebody with, you know, their 30s and 40s who is, you know, an impulsive mess, right? A person who really can't think well at all and comes to all sorts of crazy conclusions and believes, you know, any number of, what, wacky, conspiratorial, right? That's very common. And it's also very common for young people to be very grounded, very discerning, very, you know, maybe not across the board. That's quite rare. (1:32:59 - 1:33:33) But they can be very rational in certain areas that they've developed expertise. Like I said in the book, like there's just sports examples, right? To be good at soccer is to not just go off and kick the ball every time you get near it, right? You have to be able to refrain from passing, refrain from shooting, know that you want to, you know, dribble into some space and, you know, their prefrontal cortexes are not fully formed. How are they doing that? They are being rational. (1:33:34 - 1:34:00) So, you know, yeah, I think that's a very handy myth to dismiss kids and elevate ourselves. Aaron, so the Taking Children philosophy has been around for what, a few decades? How long? Yeah, I guess 30 years. It formed in the early 90s. (1:34:00 - 1:34:33) So, have you connected with or are there, you know, YouTube videos of people that were raised from this that are now, you know, 20, 30 years old? And like, what are they, how are they talking about their childhood? What are they doing in the world currently? Like, have you met people that have been raised in this process that are adults now? Um, no. The only person I know of is Lily Tannett. She's, she's pretty prominent on X and close with David Deutch and she's Seraphus Claridge's daughter. (1:34:33 - 1:34:40) And she's open about, you know, being raised as a TCS kid. And she's a fan. She's a supporter. (1:34:41 - 1:34:58) Um, I haven't really talked to her all that much about her experiences and, um, what she thinks about it. Um, there is not, there's, there's not a lot of people. There's a, I would guess a very tiny handful. (1:34:58 - 1:35:09) I'm sure there are people I've never heard of who are doing this, but, um, it's not a lot. They're very scattered. There is, uh, yeah, there's not a lot to. (1:35:10 - 1:35:22) Where's the crossover with like unschooling with this? Like, or do you just take these philosophies and apply them to like an unschooling? If, uh, if parents are kind of following that model to some degree. Yeah. Unschooling, right. (1:35:22 - 1:35:43) Homeschooling is trying to teach math and reading and whatnot, just at home instead of in school. Unschooling is really saying, you know, my, my kids are going to learn according to their interests and develop their own kind of ideas about the world and what they want to do in terms of career and whatnot. Um, unschooling. (1:35:43 - 1:35:57) I mean, it's definitely the model that I would say TCS endorses. If taking children seriously endorses something, it would be unschooling, um, in the sense that, um, but, you know, it's not really true, you know, if a kid wanted to, some kids like school. Yeah. (1:35:58 - 1:36:30) Some kids, um, I know of some of these kids that, you know, have the option to not go to school, but elect to go to school. So, um, if a kid wanted to do that, it certainly let them do it. Um, but how does it overlap with unschooling? I would say basically the, um, there's people unschool for a lot of different reasons, but a common feature of this is, is to let kids follow their own interests and their own curiosity, and you don't want to corrupt them by, you know, the expectations of school and, you know, adulthood, et cetera. (1:36:30 - 1:37:18) And that definitely fits with the primacy of self-discovery and autonomy. Um, there's, um, I don't know if you've heard this, Peter Gray is a great, um, kind of parallel thinker and a lot of his ideas are very, um, concordant and what he describes about unschooling or self-directed learning or self-directed education is really great stuff. And, um, there's, um, I could, I could look up the links, they're escaping me at the moment, but there's like a, there's a center for self-directed learning and, um, has some kind of principles and, um, there's this structure where you, you set up like a, a center for self-directed learning. (1:37:18 - 1:37:32) So like a brick and mortar building where kids can go and, you know, it's warm and it's safe and there's food and there's some adult supervision, but the idea is to help you, you know, explore what you want to explore. Yeah. I don't know if you know Kerry McDonald. (1:37:33 - 1:37:38) We hosted Kerry McDonald once upon a time. Yeah. I think Dr. Peter Gray wrote her four words of that book actually. (1:37:39 - 1:37:41) Yeah. Great book. She's, she's terrific. (1:37:41 - 1:37:50) And, um, I was spending some time trying to build one of these myself, but, uh, I stepped back from that venture. Yeah. Yeah. (1:37:50 - 1:38:28) Um, I do want to mention one thing, just hearkening back to the prefrontal cortex thing, because this is big in like, you know, the Steiner and Waldorf philosophy, which many people use as an alternative, but in that like, well, what I find really like stunting about that is like, they purposely hold them back from reading and writing, even if they're interested in reading and writing because of this belief that it's not, um, you know, contingent to the, to the natural development of the human brain, et cetera. It's like, I just find that so insane to intentionally hold them back. And not only that, like they can't even, they're not even allowed to like be involved and learn about like fictional characters and stuff like that. (1:38:28 - 1:38:35) It's like really minimizing any, any input. Yeah. Which is just doesn't make sense to me in terms of natural human development. (1:38:35 - 1:38:44) Like if the kid is interested in reading, it's like, well, you're going to purposely stop that process from happening. Yeah. That, I know that that's quite something. (1:38:44 - 1:39:16) Um, I was, I had a strong, one of my previous phases was, uh, I was interested in, in development and stages of development and, um, it's a big, I get a lot of this, you know, what about their natural development and trying to, trying to interact with kids in a way that accords with whatever stage of development they're at. I think that's a mistake. Um, instead I think of like try to imagine in their brain somewhere and it's, it's a really interesting question. (1:39:16 - 1:39:40) You know, where, where is the creativity lobe in the brain? Clearly there's not a lobe of creativity, but somehow there's a mechanism in the human brain that does not exist in other non- human animals that can do creativity, that can be creative, that can make guesses, um, and can form an understanding. Yeah. And that's, that's what matters. (1:39:40 - 1:39:47) Um, that's, that's the beauty of this. You know, you, you either have that or you don't. Um, kids have that. (1:39:47 - 1:40:04) And then the other brain structures around it and the body, right, the body's developing, like things are changing around it. But the, the, the thing that matters is, I'm going to say the thing that matters. The, the source of what matters is, is, is the creative faculty. (1:40:05 - 1:40:17) And that creative faculty can't engage with anything. It can engage with reading, it can engage with, you know, any topic. There's no topic that it can't, um, at least begin to develop an understanding of. (1:40:17 - 1:40:31) Yeah. And so, um, you know, I think it would be a mistake to write off, in every case, I think it's a mistake. The essential mistake that's made with kids is we write off, that's why taking children seriously is such a great title. (1:40:32 - 1:40:47) Um, I guess Sarah Fitzglarish doesn't like, they didn't really like the name, they picked it out of, uh, necessity, not out of, uh, and they just, it's, it became what they were using. So they, they continued it. But, um, I think it's really, really good because, um. (1:40:47 - 1:40:50) It kind of says it all. Yeah. It says it all. (1:40:50 - 1:41:00) Yeah. And, and, and child development is often used to discount children or to not take them seriously or to dismiss them. Yeah. (1:41:01 - 1:41:13) And, um, and you, you have to, like any, any limitation that a person has. So here's another way of looking at it. Um, this is a powerful analogy, I think, or metaphor example. (1:41:14 - 1:41:55) It's intelligence, knowledge growth is like a stream and anything, you know, you could put a boulder in the stream, any boulder or rock or barrier that you put in the stream, the water can get around. And so development is like a way of looking at the different boulders that are in the stream, but even a baby, the stream is flowing even for a baby, meaning that, um, you know, you're going to be rearranging the rocks and the boulders as the kid gets older, but that doesn't mean that, you know, the whole project of life isn't running now at the beginning. Yeah. (1:41:55 - 1:41:57) Um. Yeah. It's really interesting. (1:41:57 - 1:42:13) I had, I was curious, I wanted to look it up. Supposedly Steiner viewed the loss of baby teeth as a symbolic sign that the child is ready for formal academics and that intellectual development should follow physical and emotional development. You know, again, this is just one thing I looked into. (1:42:13 - 1:42:16) I didn't know that at all. That's okay. Yeah. (1:42:16 - 1:42:29) Yeah. Interesting. Um, I'm not here to knock Steiner or anything, but I just think a lot of these things need questioning because people like people put these ideas on, on, on a pedestal. (1:42:29 - 1:42:46) They put individuals on a pedestal and like it's, it's, it's a way of evading our own thinking by just assuming that someone else that appears to have done all the research perfectly has it all correct. I think we evade our own thinking in that, you know, and because there's a lot of vulnerability in becoming a parent, like we want to do the best job possible. We want to do the right thing. (1:42:46 - 1:43:07) And so we try to seek out, you know, whoever has the best formed a system, you know, that kind of right suit suits all that. And really it's still an evasion of the responsibility, like even in the Steiner model, the emphasis before seven is that children learn best by imitation. And so they send them off to this Waldorf school where they believe these other teachers are better worthy of being imitated. (1:43:07 - 1:43:20) Then you are yourself as, as, as a parent, which again, it raises a lot of questions for me to do personally. Well, that's, um, that's what I was so impressed with. This is that it is, it is a philosophical endeavor. (1:43:20 - 1:43:32) That's what's so also very clarifying and very interesting. It's not, it's not how to take care of kids, how to be a parent, how to deal with children. It's not a question of the research. (1:43:33 - 1:43:53) Um, it's not a question of, um, utilitarianism, you know, cost benefit. What are the outcomes? Yeah. It's not a question of, um, brain development, right? These are all, um, parochial, um, frameworks for addressing learning. (1:43:54 - 1:44:04) But the, the most fundamental is a philosophical approach. Yeah. Um, it's a question of what is a person. (1:44:04 - 1:44:41) Um, and, and once it, and once you, that, that informs all the rest of it, um, and the kind of radical answer that, you know, so many people know intuitively that, you know, kids are people again, going back to these movies, right? Like appeal is a lot of, a lot of movies about kids is that the kids are being people and they're not being taken seriously. And that's kind of the, what sets up the irony or the humor or the charm. And, um, you know, really these seven year olds were acting like real people. (1:44:41 - 1:44:56) These kids out in the sand lot were acting like real people. It was a pickup game of, you know, it's, it's baseball, but it's, um, but it's authentic anyway. I think the, um, there's, there's a lot of red herrings. (1:44:57 - 1:45:22) There's a lot of, um, misdirections or confusions that are introduced by the development people or the Steiner people or whomever. Um, a lot of them get a lot of things right too, which is, which is great. I'm not saying it's, um, Chuck all this stuff and it's interesting, but, but I think at, at the bottom, it's a philosophical question. (1:45:22 - 1:45:41) Yeah. Like this, this is by far, like just feels the most humane, you know? And something that I've kind of observing, it's like, I feel like we all have this introjected tyrant that lives within us. And like the, the ripest way for this tyrant to come out is when we have kids, it's like finally something I can control. (1:45:41 - 1:46:12) Finally something, you know, we all want to play this petty tyrant game because of this millennium behind us of this system of domination, control and tyranny, which as you, as you've mentioned is starting to come to an end, you know, like, sure we gave, you know, we gave women equal status however, so long ago. And I think genuinely speaking, like kids are the next kind of bulwark in that kind of path, you know, where we aren't going to consider it that way. And like selfishly, when I came across this philosophy and read your book and got into it, it's like, I don't want to fucking be a tyrant. (1:46:13 - 1:46:21) I don't want to spend my, my, my kid's whole life as the police. They're going to have unrestricted freedom eventually. It's like, right. (1:46:22 - 1:46:32) Why, why is that not now? And like, what's, what's the current model that we, we withhold them in so many ways. And then all of a sudden they turn 18 or 21 or whatever. It's like, okay, now do your thing. (1:46:32 - 1:46:36) Haha. The jokes, the jokes over. I'm not the puppets here anymore. (1:46:36 - 1:47:00) Like, what's the, what's the point of that? Well, this related to what I brought up earlier in the episode about a level of inner work. Like you have to have some level of awareness to even be like, I don't want to be this or you recognize you have to interjected your own mom or interjected your own dad and how you were raised and like to be able to reflect like, okay, there's some good things or how I was raised. But also I don't want to behave in this way more, let's say more tyrannical if that was the case. (1:47:02 - 1:47:20) Yeah. Um, like this, it's a massive benefit to parents. This as well, you know, it's like, Oh my God, there's so much like, there's more effort in trying to control than there is in trying to like create a system create win-win solutions problem solved. (1:47:21 - 1:47:41) And it's way more fun this way because you get to build a connection with your child. You bet you get to build a relationship. You can't build a relationship when they're just bullshit arbitrary rules that you have to impose all the time, even like deep within you like fuck, I don't have to put this rule on my kid, you know, but we do it anyway all the time and we just damage the relationship and you're absolutely right. (1:47:41 - 1:47:53) The highest of value has to be the relationship with the child and everything else has to come after that. It just doesn't make sense any other way, you know, and it's like it's really actually simple when you contemplate it. I'm finding. (1:47:54 - 1:48:18) Yeah. I love it. It's like one thing that came to me because I get a lot of like, you know, what's the evidence that this works and it's like imagine if you interact with a 20 year old and you said all I care about is how you do in your 30s and everything that I do with you in your 20s only matters in terms of how things work out for you in your 30s. (1:48:18 - 1:48:47) You know, like what a disaster that would be, right? It'd be a lost decade and how are you going to really control this anyway? And you'd be this kind of like phony person that the, you know, the relationship partner would have to just deal with. Like, what a crazy way to be with somebody to say that what I, how I interact with you now only matters in terms of how things turn out decades down the road. And I think that is a lot of what you're talking about. (1:48:48 - 1:49:14) That is a, that is a disaster. You have your kid now like you can, you know, and then you so much grows out of an authentic relationship, right? All the stuff that you're talking about that you care about can still flourish, right? All the knowledge and discovery and all that can still happen and you could still be a partner and support all that as long as you're just not trying to control it. Yeah. (1:49:14 - 1:49:38) I mean, I just don't see like, like I mentioned before, any way in which forced restriction coercion is a path to truth, prosperity, abundance. Like it just, it's not. It was one, one thing that, um, another thing that I really noticed was before, even before having kids was, um, being around people who were making their kids eat certain things at the table. (1:49:38 - 1:49:55) And then it was like, you know, you need two more bites of broccoli. Um, and it would be this like brutal session that would happen. And it was unpleasant for the other people at the table as well to, you know, there's like your niece or nephew being, you know, forced through this trial. (1:49:56 - 1:50:05) Um, right. It's not, it's not a nice meal time environment where somebody is making another participant eat in a certain way. And then you just think about it. (1:50:05 - 1:50:21) Like what, what did those two extra bites of broccoli do? Right. What problem was forestalled? By those two bites of broccoli, it added 20 years to their life. It added 20 years, right? Even if it did have some marginal benefits somewhere, right? It's a gamble. (1:50:21 - 1:50:36) It's saying that the, the pain that we're going to, and I'm going to force both of us through now will pay off even more so in the future. That's like crazy calculus. Um, similar thing would happen with naps. (1:50:36 - 1:50:51) It would be like, okay, we're going to, I'm going to, I'm going to try to get the kid to nap now so that I can have some free time while the kid naps and then we'll do something, something else will happen later. Right. You try to like time the naps with your own schedule. (1:50:51 - 1:51:00) Right. And uh, what would happen so often is that, you know, the kid wouldn't go down for a nap and then they wouldn't nap later either. And I would lose both. (1:51:00 - 1:51:06) Right. I wouldn't get any free time. I'd spend my free time trying to get the kid to nap and then, and then I ruined the whole thing. (1:51:07 - 1:51:17) And that just happens so many times as like a metaphor for just the whole process. Like I'm going to, I'm going to try to gain the system now so that things will work out better in the future. Yeah. (1:51:17 - 1:51:40) Isn't that line of thought based on the idea that, oh, I don't like it when my kid's awake. That's like, if there's this, my kid naps for me to be having a good time, you know? Right. But where, when, when your kid can have free time when he's awake or she's awake, like you don't need to worry about them napping because there's not that tension of, oh, I need to monitor what you're doing. (1:51:40 - 1:51:44) I need to control what you're doing. You can't, you can't be on the iPad. You can't be doing this. (1:51:44 - 1:51:53) Like this time that you're awake has to be spent doing these certain things and taking these number of boxes. Of course, that's not enjoyable. No one, no one's going to enjoy that for anybody. (1:51:54 - 1:52:01) And what's the latest your children have stayed up till and like you stay up, I'm assuming they're young, so you have to stay up with them if they're like 4am. He goes to sleep. Oh no. (1:52:02 - 1:52:16) No, you got the iPad, man. I don't have to stay up with him on the iPad. I can just, I can fall asleep and they, um, no, the latest, um, one of my guys was up to like 1130 pretty commonly, but I would just fall asleep next to him. (1:52:16 - 1:52:21) I would just like lie down next to him. He's watching his iPad and I'm watching Netflix. Yeah. (1:52:22 - 1:52:43) On my phone. And, uh, and then I just fall asleep and he falls asleep and there is nothing more. I mean, it is, you know, there, it, it is disruptive having the kid awake late at night and there's lots of things that you can't do because the kid's up, but, um, it's so worth it because there is no tension. (1:52:44 - 1:52:54) I mean, I just hate tension and there's, it's just so nice to be with them. Even when it's up late, it's like just you, just him and me. Yeah. (1:52:55 - 1:53:03) I'll overhear him and my wife and they're like playing and goofing around. And it's just like, like magic. It's, it's worth, it's worth the price of it. (1:53:03 - 1:53:23) If that's, if that's what authenticity costs, I'm happy to pay it. And it was only, I mean, what is only a year and a half or two years? I mean, sounds like a lot, but yeah. Aaron, do you have any, like on the iPad, do you have any controls set up so they can't go to certain like websites? If they learn that obviously there's a lot of stuff on the internet. (1:53:23 - 1:53:41) So I'm curious like what your thoughts are in regards to that? Not yet. Um, I mean, I can imagine doing that, but my kids would have to be old enough to be interested in that stuff. They're just not like, um, my strategy is to flood the zone with anything that's possibly interesting. (1:53:41 - 1:53:50) So I got them obviously Netflix, Disney, Amazon, YouTube. YouTube is the best YouTube kids. Um, I bought them a Nintendo switch. (1:53:50 - 1:54:02) I'm like trying to get them into video. I'm actually trying to get them into video games. And that's kind of my thinking is like, why would you want free? It is like play a video game with your kid and not be like, oh, but we can't do too much of this. (1:54:02 - 1:54:18) Oh, like we can just enjoy the thing together and bond and build a relationship and be immersed in it together doing the thing. Like you're right, man, that that is magic. And all the fucking tension that we've created is what withholds the magic in every single instance. (1:54:20 - 1:54:24) You said it, man. Amen. It's yeah, man. (1:54:24 - 1:54:42) It's just, it's so, it's so, it's so liberating. And you know, you got, I think you go first, you go first. One, one part of it is, um, if you're enforcing rules, you have to be, you're not only the gatekeeper, but you are this surveillance person. (1:54:42 - 1:54:56) Right. Even when things are going well, even when everybody's in compliance with the rules and the expectations, there's still this tension because, um, certain things are off limits. Right. (1:54:56 - 1:55:19) And so when dad's around, oh, the, the, the, the range of things that we can do is narrowed. And so that represents a kind of tension that just is there even in the best of circumstances. And, and, um, when that tension is totally gone, the range of fun explodes. (1:55:19 - 1:55:49) The range of fun when you, when you're not self policing, then the mind is jumping to ideas and places and things to do that it just wouldn't be jumping because part of its energy is spent policing. Um, and so I think it's life is more fun, not only because it's in the absence of the stress and strain of the constant surveillance and judgment and the enforcement, right. And the gatekeeping, it's also so much more freeing. (1:55:49 - 1:55:54) There's, there's more opportunity. Yeah. It's not just the absence of those things. (1:55:55 - 1:56:16) I'm curious, how did this process, and I know we just have a few minutes left. How did this process like occur with your, with like your wife? Like was she, was she on the same page? Would she study the same philosophy? And then you guys like, right when you had kids, like how that kind of dynamic play out? I got, I got really, really, really, really lucky. Um, my wife is not into philosophy. (1:56:17 - 1:56:22) She doesn't read books. She's, I mean, she reads books, but she has, she's not, she's not like me in this way. Yeah. (1:56:23 - 1:56:40) Um, she, and she wasn't like bent on this. She was raised in a very free environment, but a very kind of mainstream environment. Her parents just weren't, I don't know, her parents just, things just went very well. (1:56:41 - 1:56:53) Um, and her parents didn't have hardly any real restrictions on her. Um, it's not like she and her sister were, um, were like, you know, wild kids or anything. They were just, um, I don't know. (1:56:53 - 1:57:12) I don't want to, I don't want to comment too much on that, but she, she had some strong feeling around food that you don't mess around with another person's food and also sleep. She just felt like those two things are fundamental for her. Like one person does not control another person's food or sleep. (1:57:12 - 1:57:19) Like you, you can't know what food somebody else needs. I mean, I don't even know. Right. (1:57:19 - 1:57:33) How many grams of protein and fat do I need today? Right. Like, so you, you can't know that for somebody else better than they know themselves. And you can't know their sleep for them better than they know themselves. (1:57:33 - 1:57:50) And she felt this on a, again, a philosophical, not that she would call it that, but, um, she had that intuition. But also like you override the body's wisdom in terms of what food it needs. You know, when you, when you, when you impose the food that it should be eating, it's like, but I feel like that for a reason. (1:57:50 - 1:58:02) Like we all have that physiology where our bodies are naturally inclined to want to eat the things that is, is necessary for it at that point in time, you know? Right. The body knows how to do it right. It knows how to build this up. (1:58:02 - 1:58:11) You're kind of there to like steer the ship a little bit like, Ooh, I would like this flavor. Although, you know, all sorts of things happen. You might become right. (1:58:11 - 1:58:22) An aesthetic, you might become a monk who wants to write or a sumo wrestler or who knows what. And so, um, but you, all of those things you have to figure out for yourself. Anyway, that was my wife's deep intuition. (1:58:22 - 1:58:44) And I was able to build off of that and say, you know, well, if we think about this, then how about that? And, and she also has a very strong intuition about managing other people. She hates it when somebody else is trying to manage her. She cannot stand that, you know, just, um, and, and, and has this deep her, her, I try to build this book. (1:58:44 - 1:59:08) She has this deep sense of like, you know, one of the things you learn or you discover as an adult is that you can't control other people. Like controlling other people is folly. And she, you know, who was it? Who could be more important not to try to control? Who could be more important not to commit that folly with than your own kids? Yeah. (1:59:09 - 1:59:32) Yeah. Well said, man. Um, one thing I do want to close with is I guess like a word of warning and people just transitioning to this like there is a period like there is a period that you go through where it's like, it's not all rainbows and butterflies, et cetera, et cetera, like even facing your own fears, your own limitations and kind of transitioning into more of this style. (1:59:32 - 1:59:56) Like there's growing pains that kind of kind of come along with that, which you have to grapple with, you know, so, um, anything you want to comment on that in terms of like people who have like to raise their kids, I guess maybe to a certain point to a certain age and they're like, Oh, hang on a second. Let me rethink some things. Yeah, I had, um, I have a chapter on this in the book is that, um, I don't recommend changing everything all at once. (1:59:56 - 2:00:30) Yeah. Um, it's definitely if one was going to change things, I would recommend gradual process and trying to pick this or that thing that are easier to change, um, trying to pick things that are reversible, um, you know, um, trying to go in chunks and, um, don't feel like, you know, you're a bad person if you don't adopt this philosophy in full immediately. I think of it more as, um, a, a kind of like a beacon. (2:00:31 - 2:01:03) Um, and one, one method of, of doing this is to just, um, factor in the concept of time. Like, you know, any kind of rule that you think is important for your kid, um, you just ask yourself, like, do we have to do it right now? Um, often, almost always, it doesn't have to happen right now. Um, and I think, I think one way of, um, just moving in this direction is this is to say that all the rules in our family, we've got 60 seconds to like, see if I can think of something else. (2:01:04 - 2:01:19) Yeah. And just giving yourself time to try to think of an alternative that is, um, welcoming to the kid is a great, a great process. Um, a lot of times it's going to fail, but every time you succeed, you, you take a step closer. (2:01:20 - 2:01:29) And I think, um, I mean, just marching closer is more important than like getting it all right. Yeah. Yeah, totally. (2:01:29 - 2:01:39) Ironman, thank you so much for your time. We, we really appreciate you guys. And I just really appreciate the time in which you've written the book and I'm so glad you put yourself out there and wrote this. (2:01:39 - 2:01:54) I think it was encouraged by Naval, right? To kind of get this out there as well. So shout out, shout out to Naval for sure. But like, for me, it just feels like we're moving into a period of time in the evolution of humanity or whatever it might be, but like this was just needed. (2:01:54 - 2:02:10) And it kind of feels in many ways, man, like you got tapped on the shoulder, can I put this out there? And I'm so glad to kind of facilitate that process as well. Like I mentioned, man, really like when I first came across this and heard it, it was like, this is kind of what I've been waiting to kind of hear. It really would have felt like to me. (2:02:10 - 2:02:25) So super grateful for everything. And I guess, how would you like to direct the audience's attention at this point in time to get the book or to whatever it might be? I got a shout out to Logan Chipkin. So he's almost a co-author on this. (2:02:26 - 2:02:56) He's the editor and really collaborator and he helps a lot with, he really understands the philosophy and was a huge, huge partner in this. And so Logan's on X. I'm on X. And we've got a website for the book. And then the book is a project within Conjecture Institute, which is this nonprofit that we founded to support the ideas of David Deutsch. (2:02:56 - 2:03:26) And there's a couple different topic areas that are kind of, I don't want to get into David Deutsch, but he has very interesting different ideas, obviously in physics and artificial general intelligence, but also things like the concepts of beauty and aesthetics and politics and morality. And so we actually have, we have Brett Hall from TopCast lined up coming on down the road. Oh, there you go. (2:03:27 - 2:03:29) DiveDefense, all that as well, which will be nice. There you go. Yeah. (2:03:30 - 2:03:32) Yeah. He's tremendous. He's tremendous. (2:03:33 - 2:03:35) Awesome, man. Okay. Shout out to Logan. (2:03:35 - 2:03:43) And the website is the sovereign, what's the website? Yeah. The sovereignchild.com. Cool. And the books on Amazon, right? Books on Amazon. (2:03:43 - 2:03:49) There's a free PDF on the website. Awesome, man. Thank you so much again, everyone. (2:03:49 - 2:03:55) I'm sure you got lots of value from this one. 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