Philosopher Stefan Molyneux tackles a sensitive question posed by a listener regarding the bonding experience with their 13-month-old child and the complexities of sleep training. The listener expresses concerns about the potential negative impact of sleep training on their relationship with their son, particularly highlighting the struggles of interrupted sleep due to frequent nighttime feedings. The discussion is situated around the delicate balancing act many parents face between maintaining a nurturing bond with their child and ensuring their own well-being through adequate rest.
Stefan draws on his personal experiences as a parent, recollecting the sleep challenges he faced with his daughter. Reflecting on the initial weeks after bringing her home, he recounts her peaceful first night contrasted with the ongoing challenges they encountered as she grew. His daughter was never one to embrace sleep easily, often resisting bedtime and craving constant attention and interaction. This narrative serves as an emotional backdrop as we explore the principles of sleep training and the common parental fears surrounding it, particularly around attachment and comfort.
Stefan discusses the research they undertook to navigate their daughter’s sleep issues, highlighting the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" that played a significant role in shaping their understanding of sleep patterns and the long-term implications of unresolved sleep challenges. He recounts the decision to hire a doula specializing in sleep training, a difficult but ultimately transformative experience for his family. The challenge of allowing a child to self-soothe, while inherently tough on a parent’s instincts, proved integral to establishing a healthier family dynamic and improved sleep patterns.
Through this experience, Stefan emphasizes that parenting should not be a form of torture, underscoring the necessity of rest for nurturing parent-child relationships. A parent’s exhaustion can diminish their capacity to engage fully and enjoy the parenting experience. Stefan further explores the critical concept of a child’s emotional development through overcoming challenges—sleep training included. He shares insights on how babies learn self-soothing and autonomy, which contributes to their emotional resilience and confidence throughout life.
Stefan talks about the connection between childhood experiences and adult confidence and considers the importance of allowing children to navigate frustrations and challenges. The summary intertwines anecdotal insights with broader parenting philosophies, illustrating how tough transitions can yield healthy outcomes for children. The ultimate takeaway advocates for a balanced approach to parenting, where both the child's and the parent's needs are acknowledged and addressed.
Listening to the joyful morning reunions with his daughter after successfully navigating her sleep challenges highlights the profound emotional bonds that develop through trust and positivity. Stefan encourages parents facing similar decisions to consider their own mental well-being, alongside their child's needs, and to understand that, over time, children can learn vital skills that promote independence and self-assurance.
0:05 - Bonding with Your 13-Month-Old
1:09 - Navigating Sleep Training Challenges
4:33 - Finding Solutions for Sleep Issues
14:33 - The Importance of Sleep for Parents
25:57 - Teaching Self-Soothing to Infants
34:00 - Building Confidence Through Sleep Training
[0:00] All right. Great question from a listener. How do I know if I have a strong
[0:04] bond with my 13-month-old son? What can me and my wife do about his sleeping schedule since he still wakes up three to four times per night to feed? My wife doesn't want to sleep. Train him because she fears the bond between her and him will be negatively impacted, but she hasn't had a full night's rest in six or more months. Thank you.
[0:21] Well, a difficult and sensitive topic. I will, as usual, ride rough short all over it. No, I'm going to do my best. This is a delicate and sensitive subject. And I myself received and took to heart a lot of criticism back in the day. My daughter is going to be 17 next month, but way back in the day, at the beginning of these things, the beginning of her life, she was not a sleeper. I remember in the hospital, I remember the first night she was with us, she slept beautifully. And we had all of the other babies crying.
[1:04] And she slept really nicely. And then that was it. That was all. And there was no more sleeping to be had after that. And she never liked going to bed. She never liked being alone. And she always wanted to be held, to be chatted with and to be read to and to be cuddled, and she was just, I mean, say ferociously bonded, but that's kind of an oxymoron. But my daughter was not a sleeper, and she's never been much of a sleeper as a whole.
[1:43] And my wife, of course, was breastfeeding, and so she would be up, as you say, a couple of times a night at least, and as she colloquially put it, throw a poop at her, so that my daughter would feed and go back to sleep, and all of that. Now, I did my best. I would obviously take care of my daughter during the day and give my wife the chance to nap and get her rest in. But it was, it was, it was not, I mean, obviously we were thrilled and overjoyed and happy to be parents, but it was not, it was not good as far as sleep went. But what we did, and I'm sure you've done the same thing too, but just for those of you who aren't parents, what we did was we, we read, When I have a challenge or a problem, I go to book. I go to the book. That is how I roll. So, going to book, for me, means cracking everything that I could possibly find with regards to sleep issues with babies. And one of the books that had a further profound influence on my family was called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, or something along those lines.
[3:07] And it said then, I remember this sort of very clearly, it said that if there are babies that have sleep issues and they don't resolve the sleep issues, they don't figure out the sleep issues, then those babies will end up in the last thing I think they studied them up to was like college age or something like that and the baby still had issues sleeping in college. They still had issues of getting a good and awful night's sleep. And we then hired a doula, which is a sort of baby sleep expert who guided us through how best to have our daughter learn to self-soothe, learn to sleep through the night. And, oh, it was, you know, it was beyond horrible. I mean, it's, you know, I've done some tough things in my life. And that was, that was one of the tougher. If not the toughest, because, you know, your every instinct is to go in and be with your child and comfort her and she's crying and she's helpless, right? I mean, that's a horrible thing. Of course, when you're a kid, you're a baby, you're helpless because, I mean, you can't get out of your own crib. I can't remember exactly how old my daughter was when we did the sleep training, but she was very, very young. So definitely, I think it was before eight months of age.
[4:34] So, it took a while, not savagely long or anything like that, and again, my wife would know all of the details, but it certainly was not more than a week or two before my daughter was sleeping much better, and we got sort of back on track into some sort of.
[4:56] Saner family existence. And some of the thoughts that I had about it was that, look, you have to enjoy parenting too. And if you're exhausted the whole time, you're not really there as much for your kids as if you're rested. Now, again, you understand that, and we all understand that it's going to be, tiring and odd for the first while. And that varies. I mean, some babies sleep very well. My daughter was just unusually active, I remember, even when she was crawling. When we would go, we would go to the library to sort of chat with other parents and to meet people. And there were bubbles and story time and so on. There was sort of a gathering together at the library.
[5:47] And I remember, I remember being tired to the point where I shouldn't laugh. It was a little funny. There was a little Arabic toddler there, and he was building up these towers of blocks and knocking them down. And I'm like, oh, your son really likes knocking those towers down. And of course, it being a sensitive subject, I got a look. And you know, what am I going to say? I mean, it was not the most delicate thing I've ever said in my life, but obviously I meant nothing by it. But my daughter, when we would go to these library afternoons, literally every single child, and you know, a lot of parents say, well, my kid was exceptional or unusual or different. But I'm telling you, like, I mean, we have video of it somewhere. But every single child was sitting, babies, toddlers, all the way up to about four or so, they were all sitting in.
[6:43] Very nicely in their mother's laps. There was an occasional dad there and listening to the story and maybe playing with their feet a little and, you know, that kind of stuff, yawning, a few of them sleeping, of course, but not my daughter. My lovely, charming daughter was doing none of that, had no interest in that whatsoever. She would crawl all over the library room. I remember she climbed up and she was playing with the taps in the sink and just, you know, She wanted more bubbles, and if there was a balloon around, she would play with the balloon. Almost no interest whatsoever in sitting with the other kids, the babies, the toddlers, and listening to a story. Now, she liked stories. I had a book of fairy tales that I read to her that she very much enjoyed. She loved the big bad wolf, Huff and I'll Puff and I'll Blow Your House Down. She loved my fee-fi-fo-fum, Jolly Green Giant. Oh, no, sorry, not Jolly Green Giant. My fee-fi-fo-fum, Jack of the Beanstalk, all that kind of stuff.
[7:49] And so she did enjoy stories, but just not those stories. And again, I shouldn't say again, but the woman who was reading the stories was, you know, she was fine at it. And, you know, she wasn't quite putting heart and soul into it in the way that I was. But my daughter just didn't have any interest. and she was just always active, always curious, always exploring and it is, very funny, and it is a source of almost endless delight to me, even up until now, that if I've said anything that remotely contradicts what I'm saying now, or if I've ever acted in a way that is not fully supportive of what I'm talking about now, she puts those two wires together in her brain. And I asked her this just the other day, like, does that just happen for you? And she's like, it just happens for me, that she puts this wiring together in her brain, and she can sniff hypocrisy from about 12.3 light years away. The only thing that travels faster than light is tachyons and my daughter's capacity to process hypocrisy and so on. It really was delightful. I mean, I've been having this debate and I've been talking to her about this debate of, are things true if you just accidentally say that they're true? And I was claiming something was true, when I had mistaken something, and she's like, ah, but your whole debate has been, you know, and she's totally right. It was very funny. It was very funny. So...
[9:17] She was a very active, very, very curious, didn't sleep, didn't like to go to bed. And I mean, I remember saying to my wife, like, that's a compliment to us, right? I mean, that she's enjoying time with us. You know, the last thing you want is for your kid to be like, I'm bored, I'm going to bed. You know, whatever. You want them to want to stay up with you and spend time with you and so on, right? But, you know, the downside of being an engaged and fun parent is your kid never wants to go to bed, never wants to go to sleep. And listen, I'm not going to complain about this because I can't complain about this. So there's two things I almost never experience in this life because, you know, let's make it about me. But there's two things that I almost never experience in this life. Number one, feeling full. I never experience feeling full from eating. I just have to say to myself, stop eating. And I don't know if it's because I grew up poor and hungry. I don't really know, but I just, I do not like, I'll, I'll experience physical fullness, but I never experienced like, like, you know, when you say, oh, I can't eat another bite. I mean, I rarely eat to that degree. We had some people over for dinner last night and I did actually eat a little bit too much, but.
[10:34] We had a woman over who's studying baking, and she made this amazing almond dessert, and I had two instead of one. I normally don't have any dessert, but I had two instead of one. Anyway, so I recognized, you know, sort of just based on physical, you know, ooh, I'm full, right? But it's only because I can feel the fullness, not because I feel satiated. I can always eat more. I can always eat more. And so I have to tell myself to stop eating, and it's, I wouldn't say it's a big challenge. I'm kind of used to it by now, but yeah, so I don't experience being full, and I almost never experience being tired and wanting to go to bed or needing to go to bed. Now, occasionally, I will feel nappy. I was watching something with my wife earlier tonight, and I dozed off for a few minutes because the couch was kind of warm and comfy, but I'm never like, oh, God, I've got to get to bed. I'm so tired, and then I close my eyes. My wife does that. She's like, oh, my God, I gotta go to bed. I'm so tired. She closes her eyes and falls asleep. Well, it's because she has a clean conscience because she's perfect. My angel. It's true. She is an angel.
[11:42] I don't experience that. I have to, I go up and, you know, when you get older too, like, eh, getting to bed, it just takes forever, right? Like, I have to brush my teeth. I have a little special toothbrush because I'm missing two teeth, so I've got to brush around the gums. And then I've got to clean my nightguards and bathe, and then I've got to, I sometimes shave at night, and I've got to moisturize. Oh, it just goes on and on. It's just like this endless, endless thing.
[12:10] But I don't experience being full and I don't experience being tired and even fall asleep what happens is at some point I'm like gee I have to get up in eight hours I should go to sleep and I you know I put on I have a wear a sort of headband with little speakers in it so I can sort of listen to some sort of calming audio book and then and you know I'll go to sleep you know, I'll sleep, but I don't feel tired and have to go to bed. So I don't experience being full. And I don't know if this, I mean, it's probably not that interesting to you, but you know, a little, little slicey tidbit of my non-podcasting life. I do not experience being full and I do not experience being tired. I just stop eating and I go to bed because, you know, I need my sleep and not because I'm feeling tired. So my daughter, uh, she does, uh, experience feeling full, but she doesn't, uh, doesn't generally get tired, you know, yawn and want to go to bed, right? That is not what she does. She doesn't experience it. She doesn't do it.
[13:17] And certainly that was the case when she was a baby. So putting all of this together, my sort of decision process was this regarding sleep training. And please understand, obviously, I don't need to say it, but I will. None of this is advice for you and your family. I'm just talking about my reasoning and my experience. Individual results may vary, blah, blah, blah, right? But my sort of thought process was something like this.
[13:43] It's dangerous to drive tired, right? it's tough to be as present and attentive and lively for your children, or in this case for our child, if we're exhausted. It's also bad for your health to be tired all the time. You need good sleep to restore brain function, to restore immune system function, to, you know, to keep you healthy. You need good sleep. Sleep deprivation, as you know, is a form of, and a pretty serious form of torture. So, parenting should not be torture. Now, again, I understand that doesn't mean that you don't expect your cozy seven or eight hours when you have a new baby, but.
[14:28] Month after month, like, you can't function very well. Your immune system gets compromised. your quality of life crashes and you're not happy and you're not as attentive or alert with regards to your children and all that kind of stuff, right? So it's not good. Now, I, and of course, my wife is, again, it's an angel, a perfect angel, so she never got resentful, and my wife functions better on less sleep than I do. She's amazingly even-tempered. Well, a mental health professional, you'd kind of hope so, right? So, my sort of case was, it's dangerous. You know, sleeping, driving while exhausted is a bad idea. Quality of life goes down. Enjoyment of your child goes down. Your child enjoyment of your life goes down because you're just tired all the time.
[15:25] And to my daughter, like she would not only not go to bed, that she would, we had a whole song. We are dancing, dancing with Isabella. And my wife would be carrying, my daughter didn't even like to be carried, like facing inward. She never did the baby sling. She just fought like a terrier to get out of that. She always wanted to be facing either our faces or outside and have things shown to her. And my wife would be like two o'clock in the morning, like dancing for an hour to try and soothe my daughter. We found that white noise helped a bit. I had an old computer that we would play white noise and that helped. And white noise is sort of like static or something like that. And that helped my daughter to soothe and sleep and so on. But she just woke up. Now, my daughter, in general, woke up in a happy, positive, good mood. You know, like when she was older and standing in her crib, I would go in in the morning when I'd heard her be up and I would, you know, she'd smile and, you know, big hugs and reach to come out and, you know, looking forward to her day. It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And a great treasure. Like the simple trusting heart of a child is one of the great gifts of the universe to the occasionally scurvy human existence we call life.
[16:47] So we, after doing research, after talking to experts, after hiring a doula, and getting feedback, we decide to sleep train. And it was at a time when my daughter could sleep through the night, right? You know, when they're young, they can't, they need their food. But again, we checked with the doctors, we checked with the experts, we got a doula and a doula and we just went through it and we just let her cry it out. And yeah, it was tough. It does go against your instincts, for sure, for sure. But it works. Now, I mean, you say, I understand, well, but the child is scared, she's angry, she's upset, she's crying. And it's not just tears of sadness, of also anger, like, where are you and all of that. And I, again, fully appreciate it, you know, tore my heart in two, like Velcro strips on a set of sneakers. But what happened was she quite quickly, and it was quite a rapid process, was able to sleep through the night. In other words, she learned how to self-soothe, right? So when babies are born, right, they don't really have the ability to self-soothe. They require their parents to soothe them. And at some point over the course of our life, we have to learn how to self-soothe, how to manage yourself, how to talk to ourself, how to talk ourself down from, stress or anxiety or anger or, you know, something that's helpful but not productive.
[18:16] And it really was a challenging transition, but it worked really well. I mean, just again, My family's experience may not be yours, but it worked really well. It was very tough, but my daughter very rapidly learned how to self-soothe and learned how to put herself back to sleep when she woke up and slept pretty well and has since that time, you know, 16 odd years ago, she has been a good sleeper.
[18:49] Occasionally, because I have to kind of judge how hungry I am without a particular cue of hunger, I don't even get particularly hungry. Like I was at last week, I didn't eat for like 24 hours and it was like, yeah, it was okay. You know, I don't, my body wasn't like, oh my God, we're going to eat, right? So it's just not a cue that I get in particular is hunger or social caution. But that's I do get social caution. I just have to sort of grip my teeth and tell the truth and do the right thing regardless of social caution. It's funny because, you know, British empiricism also comes with British, oh, no, I don't want to offend people or upset people, but the empiricism has to win. And that's just the way. So the people who are the most empirical also tend to be the most socially cautious, which is one of the reasons why empiricism has a tough time spreading, because people get mad at empiricism for obvious reasons, because they've got false beliefs. And so gritting my teeth and taking my sort of British empiricism and overcoming, you know, the natural British reticence to upset people and just saying, well, you know, like, I'm sorry that you're upset, but it's not my fault you will lie to. Like, you just have to reason your way through it. And like, I'm sorry that you're upset, but it's not my fault. These are the facts, right? And they're important.
[20:11] So how do you know if you still have a bond? Well, the way that you know, and 13 months, right? Again, it's different for every kid. Sorry to keep repeating the obvious, but I don't want people listening to this and having this some sort of blueprint for their own lives, right? This is just my experience. But the way that you know that you're bonded with your kids is they really want to spend time with you, right? If they're indifferent to you, not that this would happen to my lovely listeners. But if they're kind of indifferent to you, that's not great. So, you know, my mom, just yesterday, my daughter was like, hey, we should do a day in Toronto. And I'm like, yes, we should, right? Because she went to Toronto with some friends not too long ago and had a great time. And so I say, yes, let us go. So, you know, the fact that she wants to go and spend a day, beautiful, you know, I love it. It's like a treasure.
[21:05] And, you know, if I picked her up from somewhere and we're having a great conversation, she's like, hey, can we just drive around a bit? I'm like, I normally don't because, you know, oh, gas, expenses, but, you know, we'll do it, right, because we're having a great conversation, and sometimes, you know, sometimes the car, like, you break it, and you go in the house, and it's just not quite the same, so you just keep it going. So you know obviously that doesn't help if you're you know sleep training a kid at 10 months or whatever but in the morning right or you know you you make some concessions right so if the kid is sleep training uh you know we didn't give my daughter more than six hours i think uh in general because if she was up right then she's up and she's not hasn't needed a huge amount of sleep for a lot of her life. Unlike me, I need my sleep. But so in the morning, are your babies and toddlers, are they happy to see you? Is there the big smile? Is there the reach out? Is there the comfortable settling into the crook of your arm? Is there chatting and pleasantries and positivity and enthusiasm and happiness, right? That's where the bond is.
[22:14] And children, like when they're toddlers, they don't know, they don't know prior to doing something difficult, how good that feeling is of mastering something difficult. They just, they don't know how good that is. When they learn to master things, they feel good, they feel positive, and then they have that excitement and that concentration, and now I got this, I'm going to figure this out, but I'm going to do it. Or as I famously said, as a baby, leave me with what I'm doing.
[22:47] I was very focused on solving problems on my own, which, you know, has, I think, stood me in fairly good stead over the course of my life. So when babies are babies, they don't know how good it feels to figure things out on their own. So when babies are babies, then they don't know that they can put themselves back to sleep. They don't know that they are now old enough that they're not going to be injured or sick or die or starve if they don't see their parents for six hours. I mean, then babies are newborn, right? They need to be fed every couple of hours and them crying is like them trying to help you by reminding you of their need to feed so that they can stay alive and be healthy. So when babies are born, right, they follow those instincts and those are good instincts to follow and necessary and helpful for the parents. But they don't know when that process ends, when they can sleep for six hours or seven hours or whatever and be fine. They don't know that.
[23:51] So given that they don't know that they can do it, is it okay to let them learn that they can do it?
[24:00] You can't verbally explain to a kid who's pre-verbal by definition, right? Again, I'm sorry to be so obvious about this stuff, but you can't explain to a baby, oh, you don't need to be fed every couple of hours anymore. Like you're fine. You'll wake up, you're perfectly safe, and you don't need to eat or drink. You're in no danger. You can go back to sleep. But babies are so used being comforted and cuddled and fed by their mothers, obviously, particularly at night, that they don't know that they'll be fine without that. They don't know that. So they cry, of course, right? And then their parents don't come. And eventually, they go back to sleep, and they wake up, and they're fine. Now, it might take a couple of days, it might take a week or two, I don't know, it really varies, I suppose. But at some point, they're like, they wake up in the middle of the night, and their brain pattern recognition system has kicked in to the point where they say, unconsciously or non-verbally, they say, oh, well, we've done this a bunch of times before, and we've been fine, right? I am not in danger. I will be fine in the morning. My parents still love me. They're around, right? I'll be fine. And again, you can't explain that to a baby. Maybe you could explain that to a toddler.
[25:22] Baby can't have that communicated in any way that the baby's going to understand. So, maybe, in this case, the baby has to learn empirically. I'm really scared and upset when I wake up at night, but everything's fine. I will wake up. I'm not actually that hungry. I'm just used to eating at this time. And I am awake. I'm used to having someone there. I'm used to people coming when I cry. They're not coming, and I panic the first time that happens, and I'm upset.
[25:57] And then you just kind of grit your teeth, right? Because if you come in after 45 minutes, you're just training your baby to cry for 45 minutes, right? You really just have to lock in, double down, grit your teeth. Your baby wakes up, very upset, crying, dark. They're scared, anxious, nervous, whatever, right? And they cry. And then eventually, they go back to sleep. You can't cry all night, right? Go back to sleep. You wake up in the morning, and your parents are there. And everything's great. They love you. You have a great day. You're happy. You get your breakfast. You know, whatever, right? And you have your fun day.
[26:38] What happens to your baby's sense of, I can do it, if and when they go through this process, and they realize that they can put themselves back to sleep, they aren't in any danger, their parents still love them, they still have these wonderful days together with their parents, and their health is good, and their strength is good, and their parents love them, and it was fine. That is a real accomplishment. You know, is it Charles Murray? has a sort of thing with his kids. I don't think he's actually done it, but he sort of got this idea, you know, you should just go to a foreign country with like a thousand bucks in your pocket and just figure out how to make it work. You know, figure out how to get a job, you know, travel or, you know, do something useful or, you know, and just realize that you can handle things. And that's really important in life. Just sort of realize that you can, uh, you can handle things. That's, there's really, there's really not that much to be scared of in life. And how do you get that feeling? Well, you get that feeling by overcoming obstacles, right? And, you know, I don't mean to sort of bang the same drum, but hey, it has been 20 minutes. But why is it that kids are anxious and.
[27:52] Cure and so on. Well, I think it's because, and maybe it's a boy-girl thing. I don't know. I can only speak from the boy standpoint, although it's worked pretty well with my daughter too. But from the boy standpoint, how do you feel good about yourself? Well, you master difficult tasks. And the more you can do it on your own, the better. You master difficult tasks.
[28:13] Whereas for girls, a lot of what they do to feel better, you know, sort of traditional, tons of exceptions, but for girls, what they do to feel better as a whole is they enjoy being praised. Good job. Well done. That's a pretty picture. That's a beautiful painting. That's, you know, good, you know, well, well done. They experience praise and praise. And this is not to say either one is right or wrong, good or bad. It's nothing like that. But it is kind of a pattern that boys overcome caution or fear or anxiety by mastering difficult things, and girls overcome negative or anxious feelings by being supported in what they do, by being praised, by being supported. And again, no shade, nothing wrong. Both men and women are beautiful. We are complimentary, but this is a kind of a general pattern that I've noticed. And so, but you can go too far with the praise. The praise is for early childhood. The praise is for early childhood. It is not for later on. The praise is for you draw some lollipop little figure with a tie on and you're two and you're like, yeah, good job, right? But not when you're 22, right? And you don't say good job because you have to, at some point, get out there in the world and be around people who Aren't your parents right?
[29:43] The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, right? I only got one, I only got one Valentine's card, but it was with my mom's handwriting, so it doesn't count.
[29:53] So, I get that, you know, I said appraises from when you're very young, but I do think that allowing babies and toddlers to figure things out on their own, because, you know, your temptation as a parent is to do things for them, so that they don't get frustrated and upset and so on, right? But learning how to deal with frustration is really important. Learning how to deal with anger is really important. Learning how to deal with fear, with anxiety, with rejection is really important. And the more that you do and survive, the more you know you can survive what you do. The fewer disasters that end up manifesting, the more risks you can take, right? Because you get in this, oh my gosh, I've been here before. Oh my God, I thought this was going to be a disaster. I thought that was going to be a disaster, and so on. Ah, was it a disaster? No, it wasn't a disaster. It was fine.
[30:46] The more you take on risks and learn how to, you know, skate, you know, what speed skaters do. Well, they skate as fast as they possibly can without falling, right? So, it's easy to not fall as a skater, right? All you have to do to not fall as a skater is, you know, cling to the railing and don't skate much. You won't fall over. But of course, you have to skate. And it's like skiing, right? If you stay on the bunny hill, right? There's a really, really beginner hill. Well, you're very unlikely to fall down. I can do single diamonds. I think it's a bit risky for me at this point in my life in particular to do double black diamonds. I can do single diamond skiing, but double black diamonds. My daughter doesn't, but I don't. The cost-benefit is no longer effective. So, in life, right, you want to take on the maximum risk that you can without a catastrophe.
[31:54] You want to sell, if you're a manufacturing concern, you want to sell the maximum products before you can't fulfill the order. You can't get the raw materials the way you want to sell the maximum, right? So, the fact that I have done a lot of edge skating over the course of my career, like right to the edge, but not quite over, right? That's because I learned how to do this as a kid, with biking, with sports, with running, with skating, with skiing, all these kinds of things, right? I learned how to manage the edge. And the way that you learn to manage the edge is you have to go over sometimes so that you know when to pull back, right? And I've got pretty good instincts. I think, I think I've got pretty good instincts having spoken, you know, I think, I think more truth, particularly as a white male, having spoken more difficult and dangerous truths over the course of my career than just about anybody else.
[32:56] And, you know, still standing and still broadcasting. And yes, of course, it's to a smaller audience.
[33:04] And I took a big financial hit and so on. But I mean, honestly, there's nothing better than a good conscience. There's no amount of money that would have me not. Like, there's no amount of money that would make up for having a bad conscience. Like, walking around with a bunch of goodies in some giant mansion would not be good. Would not be a fun or positive thing for me. And I'm not saying that's true for everybody. I'm just saying that for me, having a good conscience is really, really important. And when you're given a lot of gifts, you do have to manage those gifts for the betterment of humanity because my body, your body, our brains are a collective endeavor. So I think that learning to overcome these particularly big challenging obstacles is really important.
[33:56] And if your children sleep well, fantastic, right? But if they are, you know, really sleeping badly and it's month after month and it doesn't seem to be changing and you got to drive and it's dangerous and you're tired and it's unhealthy and your exhaustion level is there and you can't really have much fun with your kids because you're too tired, like, at some point, it's like, okay, kid, I'm afraid you're going to have to learn how to self-soothe. And I know you can, right? I mean, nobody's talking about sleep training when the baby's a week old, that would be horrible, right? And dangerous. But, you know, if the kid can, if the baby can sleep through the night, again, I'm not talking like 12 hours, if the baby can do six or seven hours, let's just say six hours.
[34:42] Can do that, then the baby can learn. And it's, you know, again, check with your doctor, you know, check with your specialists and all that. But if the baby can do it, then if the baby does do it, the baby gains confidence. And my daughter has good confidence that is realistic, right? It's not overconfident, which it may be an improvement. It may be an improvement on me to some degree. I'm perfectly willing to take that possibility under advisement. But yeah, she's very confident and she does really cool stuff that blows my mind. And, you know, does that go back to sleep training? I don't think it's the opposite. I mean, obviously there's a lot else that's gone on since then, but I think it goes back to that. So I would say certainly look into it and, you know, check with your healthcare provider. But if your healthcare provider says your baby can now make it for six hours without food and you're exhausted and it doesn't seem to be getting better, I think it's certainly, a reasonable possibility and something that I think should be open to consideration if that helps at all. All right. Thanks, everyone. I hope this helps. And we'll talk to you soon. freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. Bye.
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