0:05 - Introduction to Gentle Parenting
19:34 - Kids and Emotional Regulation
23:08 - The Reporter’s Perspective
28:23 - The Jacket Dilemma
38:20 - Resolving Conflicts
41:33 - Concluding Thoughts on Parenting
In this episode, we delve into the intricacies of gentle parenting by analyzing an article written by Olga Kazan, which chronicles the challenges faced by Chelsea Haug-Zavaleta, a parenting coach. The narrative begins with a hectic afternoon as Chelsea picks up her children after a long day filled with school and gymnastics. While promoting a philosophy that values emotional connection over strict obedience, we explore whether this approach can withstand the chaos of a normal family routine. Chelsea's experiences raise significant questions about the nature of parenting in an overstimulating world, where children may be overwhelmed by a series of activities without the opportunity for genuine connection.
Chelsea's day starts early, and amidst the rush of managing her three children, we recognize a pattern of chaos that seemingly contradicts her methods of calmness and emotional validation. As we follow the aftermath of their busy day, the reality of their struggles surfaces. Discontent emerges in the form of a chaotic car ride home, suggesting that even the most well-intentioned efforts at gentle parenting can lead to frustration and exhaustion. By examining her reactions and interactions with her children, we identify the underlying issues of overstimulation and the effect this has on their emotional well-being.
As we dissect the unfolding drama in the minivan, the crux of the problem reveals itself: a disconnect between Chelsea’s parenting philosophy and the real-world application amid daily familial chaos. The difficulty of parenting in the fast-paced landscape of modern life raises the essential question of how parents can cultivate a meaningful and relaxed atmosphere when the demands of life often lead to rushed interactions. The tension in Chelsea’s family mirrors a broader societal trend—how do parents truly listen to their children’s needs when so much of daily life revolves around obligations that often leave little room for calmness and reflection?
The episode also challenges the naive assumption of gentle parenting as a panacea. Through Chelsea's experience, we question what it means to validate children's emotions in productive ways. Simply attributing feelings to hunger or fatigue, while ignoring deeper issues, presents a flawed perspective that fails to consider the child’s individual experience and emotional reality. As we explore the art of communication, the episode illustrates the inherent balance that must be struck between acknowledging a child's feelings and guiding them toward behavioral expectations.
Continuing through the discussion, I offer my perspective on the necessity of creating environments where children feel truly heard and valued. When parents prioritize emotional connections with their children over scheduling and efficiency, the relational dynamics may shift. The episode culminates in a reflection on the essential changes parents must make in their own lives to foster growth and understanding within their children, thereby ensuring that parenting remains an enriching and joyful experience rather than a burdensome obligation.
Ultimately, this episode serves as a critique of both gentle parenting philosophies and the overwhelming demands placed on modern families, encouraging listeners to consider how they can navigate these challenges with intention and empathy. It prompts a reevaluation of the methods we apply in parenting, advocating for a deeper connection with children—one that prioritizes understanding and fulfilling their emotional needs over mere compliance.
[0:00] Well, well, well, good morning, everybody. It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
[0:06] And I'm up a little early prior to the family. So I wanted to talk about this article by Olga Kazan from about a month ago. And this influencer says, you can't parent to Jenny. All right. So the article goes, the kids held it together pretty well until right after gymnastics. At the end of a long day that included school, a chaotic playdate, and a mostly ignored lunch of sandwiches, the parenting coach, Chelsea Haug-Zavaleta, picked up her twins from the tumbling gym around 5.30. The two eight-year-olds joined their six-year-old sister inside Chelsea's silver minivan, and, Chelsea, an energetic 41-year-old, promotes gentle parenting, a philosophy in which prioritizing a good relationship with your kid trumps getting them to obey you. I was tacking along with her family for a few days to see how her strategy, stay calm, name emotions, and don't punish kids for acting out, works in practice.
[1:22] So, it's not too hard to see the problem here, right? The end of a long day that included school, a chaotic play date, and a mostly ignored lunch of sandwiches, and a tumbling gym, or maybe the tumbling gym was the chaotic play date. But this is something my daughter taught me relatively early, which is the best time with your kids. I mean, look, sometimes I would take her, I remember taking her and her friends out to go and see, we went to a movie, we went to an arcade, and we went to dinner, and it was really fun. It was really fun. That stuff can get kind of pricey, to be honest with you, but it was really fun and memorable. But, you know, some of the, really, the greatest and best times are calm, You know, just sitting there on the couch and chatting or, you know, going for a nice long walk and, you know, kids...
[2:33] Kids are drawn to overstimulation in the absence of genuine connection, right? So if you are this sort of conveyor belt of, you know, really wild stimuli, why is that? Like, why do your kids need all of that, right? They've had school and a chaotic play date and so on. That does not seem ideal. Like if you've got this parenting coach, right? So let's see the day, right? So it's a weekday, right? Because it's school. So the parenting coach is waking up at probably six in the morning, 6.30 in the morning. She's doing stuff to get ready for the day. She's waking up her kids. She's got to hurry them to get them, get their teeth brushed and get them dressed and get them lunch packed and out to the school bus, or maybe she drops her kids off at school. So that's all just wild and chaotic. And then school is pretty wild and chaotic at that age. And then they go to a tumbling gym. And so she probably, you know, got them off to school at around, what, 7.38 in the morning. Depends how long some of the school buses can be pretty long, right?
[3:58] And she's then picking them up at about 5.30. So this is a parenting coach who's done almost no parenting until early evening. That's interesting, right? That's interesting. Why is there so much? Like, when do the kids calm down, right? Because kids, I mean, they respond to stimuli and they can get quite wild and excited about it. But when are they calm? When do they have that sort of calm, even.
[4:36] Chatty, let your mind wanderer connection with someone, right?
[4:45] Overstimulation is quite a big issue. And it's a big question as well, is where do you get this calm in your life? Now, some people get it with meditation and so on, but where do you get this calm in your life? Where do you have this time to unwind, to unfold, to relax? And, you know, power and calm go hand in hand, right? I've made this sort of joke for many years, not really a joke, but this observation that the king of the jungle is the lion, right? And why is it called a lion? Because it spends most of its time lying around, right? It doesn't run, it's not, right? Whereas the animals that are lower down on the food chain are always busy, right? Always kind of frantic. Chipmunks don't lie around. Lions will lie around, right? So when do they get the calm base of their personality, right? So this article continues. This is the reporter who's with the parenting coach. During the long, hot winding ride back home, things began to devolve. One of the girls didn't want any music. One wanted music and to sing along. One was turning the heater up too high, at least according to her sister who was overheating. She says, I agreed not to name the kids or to disclose which one behaved in which way. Chelsea pulled over to settle everyone down. In the soothing, melodic tone that she recommends parents use with their children, she assured the girls that having some dinner would make them feel better.
[6:12] Well, the children are upset.
[6:17] The children are upset. Now, the interesting question and the essential question is why? Well, she says, you're hungry. You're hangry, right? But that is utterly, completely, and totally denying the validity of your children's feelings.
[6:39] Right? If your children are upset, the important question is why? Maybe something bad happened at school. maybe something bad happened at the, what was it, the tumbling gym, right? Maybe something bad happened there. Maybe they haven't been getting any sleep. Maybe they feel overscheduled. Maybe one of them is coming down with something. Maybe they heard something upsetting at school, like someone's dog died, and they've been talking about it. Like, who knows? Who knows why the children are upset. I mean, how do you know why they're upset when you really haven't seen them, since yesterday? Because when you're managing kids and getting them teeth brushed and hair brushed and dressed and fed, right? I mean, you're just managing them. You're not like, there's just rush. Everything's rushed. And I remember seeing when I was younger, seeing family members who had those kinds of families. And I was like, I should not want anything like that. So, how do you know? You don't know why your children are upset.
[7:45] And to me, if the parent says, the only issue that you have is that you're hungry, right? Then what you're, you're kind of, in my view, I'm not saying that this woman is doing it. I'm saying that in my view, that's kind of dismissive and insulting towards the children. Well, you think you're upset about X, but actually you're just hungry, right? I mean, I've mentioned this before. I used to get this when I'd be upset about something and family members would say, oh, you've had a big day, or he's just overstimulated, or, you know, and it's like, well, no, I'm actually genuinely upset about something. But this sort of waving away kids' feelings, how is it respectful to the children to say, Well, you think you're upset about X, Y, and Z, but actually you're just hungry, right? So she says, oh, having some dinner will make you feel a lot better. No, it won't, one of the girls says. You're feeling like it won't, Chelsea said, validating her daughter's feelings, another one of her parenting tricks. Don't talk to me like I'm three years old. The girl shot back, okay. So what does that mean? How is it validating your daughter's feelings when you say you're not upset about what you're talking about or anything else, you're just hungry and don't even know it.
[9:14] Um, I find that, uh, right. I mean, I've seen these sort of memes where this woman is, you know, upset or angry about something and the man just keeps stuffing food into her mouth. Uh, that is, um, that means it's, it's, it's treating your children. I mean, in a way to me, at least like worse than pets, right? So how is it validating your daughter's feelings to say your feelings are not real. You're just hungry and you're not aware of it. You just, right. That is not validating feelings. Feelings are, you know, hey, everyone's upset, let's pull over, let's sit down, and let's talk about what happened with your day, and when did you first start to feel upset, and what's going on, and you take it very seriously. If children's feelings are taken seriously, they calm the heck down.
[10:10] And the big question is, So a good relationship with your kids. You know, she's barely seeing her kids at least. Of course, this is not an average day. I get that, right? But maybe this woman who's a, she's a bunch of parenting. She's a parenting expert, right? The parenting coach, right? So having a good relationship with your kids means spending a lot of time with your kids. And really, really listening to them. And so, stay calm, name emotions, don't punish kids for acting out. Well, staying calm is fine, although you want to be honest with your kids, right? So, if your kids have done something that upsets you, telling them that you're upset is being honest, right? I mean, I'm not saying yell at them or anything, but name emotions, you're angry, yeah? Don't punish kids for acting out. Well, how do you know they're acting out? How do you know they're acting out? Maybe the kids, do the kids have the life that they want, right? So again, I'm not saying this is a typical day, but it might be. If she's a parenting coach, she might be busy with other families and so on.
[11:20] Do the kids have the day that they wanted? Now, if the kids had the day that they wanted, like they wanted to get up early, they wanted to be rushed to brush teeth, brush hair, eat food, get dressed, get on the school bus, and then they wanted to go to, and the school buses are pretty manic, and then they go to school, which at that age is kind of chaotic and manic. And do they have the day that they want? Do they have the day that they like? Well, the problem is if they really haven't seen their mother all day, right? And they're finally seeing their mother at 5.30 in the afternoon after they're already kind of wired up and stressed out and so on. If that's the day they want, then that's not great, because it means that the day that they want does not involve seeing their mother at all really during the day. So that's not good. So do the children have the life that they want? Do the children have the life that they want? If the children do have the life that they want, then they want a life that doesn't really involve seeing their mother much during the day. I mean, during the weekdays, right?
[12:33] And if they don't have the life that they want, then maybe that's why they're upset. So if parents really do listen to their kids and the kids have the life, if the kids don't have the life that they want and the parents really listen to the kids, do you enjoy getting up this early? Do you enjoy the rush in the morning? Do you really like and enjoy school as opposed to spending time at home with your mother and father, right? If the kids don't have the life that they want.
[13:10] Then parents often won't really listen to their kids because the parents don't want to change. So, I mean, there was a time when for the sake of the show, and I do enjoy giving public speeches and so on, but for the sake of the show, I traveled a lot. I was traveling like sometimes a quarter of the year, a third of the year I was traveling. Now I was doing documentaries and speeches and meetups and so on. And my daughter didn't really enjoy it. She enjoyed it for a little while, and then she didn't enjoy it, so we changed. I don't want to travel as much. Okay. Then we won't. If you don't want to do it, then we won't, right? Anyway, so you're feeling like it won't. So validating her daughter's feelings, another one of her parenting trips. Well, validating feelings.
[14:02] What is it changing, right? To give a sort of obviously somewhat harsh example, let's say that a man on a date, it's a first date, and he wants to kiss the woman at the end of the date, and she says, I don't want you to kiss me. And he says, oh, you ate a little bit too much food, you're feeling a little bloated, and that's the only reason why you don't want me to kiss you. Right and then she says no no that's not it i i didn't really enjoy the date i i'm sorry i'm not particularly attracted to you i don't think we have the same values i i just don't want to kiss you and then he says oh you're feeling like you don't want to kiss me and then he continues, to try and kiss her she would be annoyed right.
[14:52] She would be more than annoyed. She'd be kind of outraged, right? If he said, well, the only reason you don't want to kiss me is you overate side paneer, right? Then that is saying, well, your feelings are not really your feelings. They're just based on something physical, which is like saying you think you're upset about X, Y, and Z, but actually you're just hungry. And then he continues to want to try and kiss her. He reaches in, he cups her cheeks, and she says, I don't want you to kiss me. And he says, you're feeling like you don't want to kiss me. And then he comes in to kiss her, like that would be a violation, right? That would be bad. And again, I'm not saying this woman is morally equivalent, but just saying, oh, the reason you feel the way you do is some physical thing. And then, um, naming the emotions and then continuing like it didn't matter. Right? So don't talk to me like I'm three years old. Well, that's interesting, right? By the time they arrived home, the two girls were in tears. There were fruitless demands for screen time and ice cream. Chelsea held one sobbing child while another chopped vegetables. The freshly prepared soup was ignored and the girls ate that ubiquitous kid comfort food pasta with shredded cheese. To an untrained eye, it might look like Chelsea's methods didn't work that night. So, I mean, I mean, I'm sorry, because I sort of want to say like maybe this is just ridiculous and foolish, but to me, if you just enjoy spending time with your kids.
[16:22] And they know that and you prioritize spending time with them because you enjoy spending time with them, that's pretty easy and positive. Like I have a show, it's before nine this morning, so I have a show at 11 and then my daughter and I have the afternoon, We have the afternoon this afternoon and, We do, we're planning on doing what we call, it's the roll around, right? We'll go someplace where there's cool walks and, you know, we'll just walk around and maybe we'll drop into a store or two if we want to and we'll just do the roll around.
[17:08] No plan. We enjoy the drive, the chatting, and then we'll just walk around. We'll see things. we'll, you know, I'll remember when this happened and we'll chat about stuff. And like, honestly, that's about a great a day. It's about as great a day as possible. Like we were talking last night in the car about the afterlife. And I was saying, like, I love the idea that I could spend eternity with, you know, you and mom and your, you know, your husband and your kids. And like, because I said, you know, for me, when you have a bunch of people around the dinner table and you're having great conversations and jokes and there's good food and good conversation and, you know, games of cards and, you know, maybe you play some charades or something, you know, get some goofy stuff. I said, you know, that's, that's about as good as things could get. And she said, well, yeah, but everybody's afterlife would be different because everybody loves each other in different ways. And that's a fantastic point. And we, we had a great conversation about that. I hadn't thought about it that way, which was really great to hear. And it's a great perspective. And like, it doesn't get better than that to me in life.
[18:22] And it's not about being busy. Okay. So let's see here. So I don't like having methods with people, right? I don't like having tricks or methods, that's distancing. And it's manipulative, fundamentally, right? Well, I'm going to say, some kid's angry. I see that you're angry. It's like, yeah, of course, that's anger is a display. I see that you're frustrated. I understand that you're frustrated. You're feeling frustrated, which is kind of annoying to the kid because it's like, I already know I'm feeling frustrated. The question is, are you curious as to the deep reason why, right?
[18:58] But if you really listen to your kids, how much of your life has to change, if you really listen to your kids and what they want how much of your life is going to have to change well a lot, So, she says, the article goes on to say, the evening seemed to substantiate the fears of parents and experts who think gentle parenting might be too gentle, turning kids into entitled monarchs and parents into their exhausted therapists. But Chelsea says her goal wasn't to get the kids to behave better, it was to maintain her loving connection to them. She blamed herself for placing too many demands on them throughout the day and for not preparing them for the presence of a reporter.
[19:34] They were super dysregulated, she told me later, they didn't have the capacity to cooperate.
[19:43] Um, okay. Again, I'm not, I appreciate what this woman's doing. I really do. I know the fact that she's trying to take this approach as opposed to, you know, yelling and hitting and so on is definitely a plus, right? So this is just sort of tweaks, right? Placing too many demands on them throughout the day. Well, and not preparing them for the presence of a reporter. So that's interesting if the kids were acting out this way despite having a reporter out it's almost like they want the reporter to talk about their distress they were super distracted they didn't have the capacity to cooperate yeah again i mean principles are universal right principles are universal.
[20:32] Right? If you're on a date with a woman and the woman wants to go home, but instead you drive her to a distant mall and she gets really upset, right? Then you're not doing what she wants to do. You're not listening to what she wants to do. You're not respecting what she wants to do. You're just doing your own thing and sort of dragging her along and she gets really upset.
[20:55] You know would you say well i blame myself for not preparing her for a date that just went on and on and on uh oh she was super dysregulated she didn't have the capacity to cooperate, it's like no you're just you're just not listening and listening is not just uh-huh uh-huh yeah i understand listening is listening and changing the purpose of communication it's funny because, maybe it's a male female thing but the purpose of communication is to change behavior for men, right? The purpose of communication is to change behavior. If you ask a woman out on a date as a man, you are attempting to get her to change her behavior, which is to have her go from not going on a date with you to going on a date with you, right? If you say to your teenage son, hey, could you really mow the lawn? It's getting too long. Then the purpose of that communication is to get him to change his behavior so he goes and mows the lawn. So the purpose of communication for men is to change behavior, right? Can you pass me the salt as to get someone to change behavior and then pass you the salt, right?
[22:03] The purpose of communication for a lot of women is to transmit emotion.
[22:09] So I think this is a miscommunication because the children are upset because they want something to change in their lives. Whereas for the woman, the purpose of the communication is to listen to and validate. The woman's upset, right? Right so if your if your teenage son is playing video games and you say hey would you mind going to chain to to to mow the lawn and he looks at you gives you a hug and says hey man i totally understand that you want me to go and mow the lawn i totally validate that and then he goes back to playing his video games wouldn't that just be kind of annoying and manipulative it's like i've got these magic words that means i never have to change called validation right but the devalination of feelings is the changing of behavior. When my daughter didn't want to travel as much, then we had to, I mean, we didn't have to, but we chose to not travel as much, right? She doesn't really enjoy it. And, you know, she's not just some piece of suitcase of luggage that we can drag along. So, hmm.
[23:08] Also, looking for a father. Looking for a father in the situation. All right.
[23:20] So the reporter says, I wouldn't have handled a post-gymnastics meltdown exactly the way Chelsea did, but I'm also not sure how I would have handled it at all. My son is six months old, so I have a little time before he starts complaining, a little time about my song choices. So I guess that's another question too, which is, if there's this reporter, why is she, like, who's taking care of her son who's six months old when she's off writing articles and shadowing other families for a couple of days. If you just listen to your kids, if you listen to your kids, they'll listen to you. If you don't listen to your kids, they won't listen to you, right? I mean, of course, kids mirror, right? I understand that you're not supposed to yell at your kids, but also that occasionally you're supposed to get them to do what you say, like briefly stop looking at a screen or eat some actual food. Sure. This is the essential conundrum that brings people to gentle parenting. By day, Chelsea runs a parent coaching business with her own mom, Robin Haig. I'm like a lot of the parents who turn to them for help, and like a lot of the millennials who are nervously having kids these days, schooled in the latest child psychology research in possession of disposable income and desperately trying to do better than my own parents. Many clients, Robin told me, are, quote, searching for something different than they had. Maybe that's something I thought is gentle parenting, and that's, you know, great, and I appreciate what they're doing in a lot of ways. Uh but.
[24:42] Um let's see here i found chelsea through tiktok she has some 300 000 followers almost as soon as the blue plus sign materialized in my pregnancy the app's algorithm magically took note and began serving me her videos my husband and i spurred this process along cramming, as we were for the midterm known as baby we bought books we downloaded name apps we fought sectarian wars over the relative correctness of rival infant fleece sleep strategies. Okay.
[25:11] Uh, she shows just how solicitous gentle parents should be towards their children, role-playing both the parent and the child. She demonstrated what not to do when your kid refuses to put her jacket on. Wearing a pink? Her blue helmet, Chelsea portrays a willful child screaming, I don't want to put my stupid jacket on. Pull it aside! Put your jacket on!
[25:34] Well, the jacket's still not on and everybody's mad. This kid needs help. When you tell a kid to put their jacket on and then they yell back at you, I don't want to put my jacket on. And then you yell back at them, you have matched their energy. You match a kid's energy who's distressed like this, you start to co-escalate. So you tell a kid to put the jacket on, the kid yells back, I don't want to. Then you yell back, I don't care, you have to put your jacket on. Then they yell back and start flinging the jacket around. And worse, in the actual video that somebody posted, like stop posting your kids to TikTok. But in the actual video that somebody posted, the kid hits himself on the side of the thing. So now we've got anger, frustration, and now it's not even about the jacket, and also the kid's not even wearing the jacket. Okay, so that's interesting, and, you know, of course. But the question is, why are you in a situation where the kid doesn't want to wear the jacket? Why doesn't the kid want to wear the jacket? Well, the kid feels that he's not going to get cold, so bring the jacket, and if the kid gets cold, like if you're going on a hike, right, My daughter doesn't want to bring her jacket. When she was younger, we go for a walk. She doesn't want to bring her jacket. Well, that's fine. You know, kids often little furnaces, right? Like just because you're cold, right? There was an old Canadian tire ad about winter. You know, press five for the answer as to why you have to wear a jacket just because your mother is cold.
[26:56] So the kid doesn't feel like she's going to be cold. Maybe the kid enjoys that sensation of cold and so on. It's vivid and interesting. So the question is, why does the kid have to wear the jacket? Right? Why? I mean, it's not going to get frostbite, lose a nose or something. Why does the kid need to wear a jacket? So these battles of will is, you're modeling the imposition of will. You have to wear the jacket, right? So if you model the imposition of will, then the kid is going to want to impose his or her will back on you.
[27:34] So don't force the kid to do things. Listen to the kid. And listen, if you go on a walk, let's say for whatever reason, your kid doesn't bring her jacket. You go on a walk. The kid gets cold. You just come back. I mean, if the kid's, oh, this is, sorry, this is too cold. So the kid learns from consequences, and then you're not imposing your will, right? But reality imposes its, quote, will, right? So I don't, again, maybe this is a male perspective. I don't see. It's like you must make your kid do what you want your kid to do. It's like, well, why? I mean, bring the jacket if the kid's cold, right? And the I told you so doesn't help, right? And I mean, I'll make jokes about it from time to time. Oh, apparently you're cold.
[28:23] You know, just kind of a joke like that. But, you know, you can get that point across pretty nicely. But...
[28:32] So I think this is more like, well, you have to wear your jacket because you're going on a school bus, and you're going to school, and you're going to lose, you know, if you don't, if you're not wearing your jacket, you're going to lose it. So this is all about sending your kids off to school, which is, you know, not ideal in many situations. All right. I want you to think about a teeter-totter. So if the kid is up here, I don't want to put the jacket on. And you match him with, you have to put the jacket on. It's not, it's cold. Boy, she really doesn't look like she did in the previous photo. There are twos on her arm. All right. Whatever. You're up here too. And that's not what a teeter-totter does. On a teeter-totter, one person's at the top and the other person's on the bottom. Get on the freaking teeter-totter. So if your kid's like, I don't want to put the jacket on, you've got to be down here. Right? So you can whisper. You can say, okay, I'll carry it. You can stuff it in the kid's backpack. You can just put it in the car and deal with it later after things have gotten calm. But before you do anything, before you have any hope of getting this kid to put the jacket on, you've got to get him into a place of regulation. Look, I know you're leaving for school and there's all kinds of stuff happening and you're probably going to be late. Okay, get him into a place of regulation. So this is just another way of getting the kid to do what you want to do. Okay, this is a pretty long video. But I'll link to it if you want to check it out. But yeah, is the kid happy with his life? Is the kid doing what he wants in his life?
[29:58] I mean, how do kids experience their mothers sending them off to daycare and sending them off to school? I mean, that's not how we evolved. We did not evolve this way. We did not evolve. We did not evolve with mothers sending babies and toddlers off to be raised by strangers for, you know, six to seven to eight hours a day. This is not how we evolved. So you're imposing something, not just unnatural, but anti-natural. How does a kid experience being sent off to daycare, being sent off to pre-K, to kindergarten, to school? How does the kid experience that? Well, the kid experiences it for what it is, that the mother would rather be doing something else than raising him, right? That's a fact. Now, of course, women say, well, but my husband goes to work and I don't, right? I don't view him as rejecting me. It's like, yes, but that's an adult situation. Well, the husband goes to work, the kids don't experience, the husband is rejecting. But.
[31:11] But we evolved with the husbands going to work and the women staying with the children. That's how we evolved. Now, just because we evolved that way, of course, doesn't mean that that's what has to happen. We evolved without cell phones. Doesn't mean we can't use cell phones. I get it. But we evolved to communicate and cell phones facilitate that. It's still part of this general continuum.
[31:31] But we evolved with mothers raising children and fathers working. And then when the children got a little older, the children would accompany the fathers on the work and would help out and the skills would transfer that way and so on. That's how it worked. And the women had a whole bunch of babies. And then by the time the first babies were grown and started to have their own babies, then the mothers would shift from raising their own children to raising grandchildren or helping their own children raise their children. So that's just how we evolved. So you can do something that's entirely anti-natural to the way that we evolved, but then expecting children to just comply and conform to that with no issues whatsoever is, I can't tell you how strange it is to me.
[32:20] You know, we evolved, like, let's say you got to wear your jacket because you're going to school, right? Right, because I think she mentioned like getting up, get him off to school or whatever, right? But okay, so we didn't evolve with jackets, and we didn't evolve with school buses, and we didn't evolve with school, and we didn't evolve with kids being away from their mothers, you know, babies, toddlers being away from their mothers for six to eight hours a day. And we certainly didn't evolve with these frantic mornings of getting everything hurried and everything stressful, and I write about this in my novel, The Present, which you should definitely check out at freedomain.com slash books. So we didn't evolve with any of this and so you're asking your kids to do something entirely anti-natural and children experience.
[33:05] Having their parents send them away as parental rejection.
[33:11] Either the mother wants to do something other than raise them, in which case they feel like, why am I here? Or things are so desperate in the household that the kids need to be sent away. Right? Like I sort of think about the London Blitz where the kids were sent to live out in the country because the cities were being bombed. Why is the mother unavailable to raise her children? Well, because the parents are slaves, are heavily in debt, or have to work like crazy, or have no freedom, or are serfs, or like, they experience this as a massive emergency as to why they can't be raised by their own parents. So it's very stressful for kids. And just, you know, instead of just trying to get kids to do what you want to do, maybe try to raise them in a more evolved and natural manner. It's just a possibility, right? All right, let's finish the article. Uh, right.
[34:05] Playing the child again, Chelsea grabs the jacket and thrashes it around the room. Then Chelsea breaks character to the rest of the whole audience, yelling over, blah, blah, blah. The parent should soften her demeanor. They could, for example, apologize. You know what, sweet pea, that was really tricky with the jacket. The parent should say, I'm so sorry, I'm going to work on using my inside voice. Then she could cook her kid's favorite dinner to make up for it. If your child doesn't respond when you apologize, that's fine. It's on you to repair the relationship. That was really tricky with the jacket. Okay. Okay, so you apologize for yelling. That's fair. That's right. Chelsea also explains how a parent should handle a child screaming about her jacket. Instead of yelling back, she says you should speak in a whisper and carry the jacket yourself and stuff it into their backpack. Frankly, she says, I would not force a kid to put a jacket on. Fantastic. That's exactly right. But then the question is, why is the kid so upset and angry, right? Watching the video, I tried to imagine my parents apologizing to me after I refused to do something they said.
[35:03] This was difficult because my parents have never apologized to me, and also until I was well into my 20s, I never refused to do anything they said. Russian parents like mine, who believe that children should always listen to their parents, and that getting a cold as a death sentence would have long ago hit unfollow. Indeed, when I recently told my cousin about gentle parenting, he scoffed. This is the road to prison, he said. All right, don't many parenting role models who aren't Russian, most American friends don't have kids, West Texas, gentle punishment, mental detention instead of a beating. So good. Um... That's interesting. Some pictures. Okay. Chelsea and her husband Samuel. Okay, that's good. Live in the girls in an airy house tucked into a redwood forest north of Santa Cruz, California. Their days consist of work-from-home sprints interrupted by taxiing their kids to school and activities, a lifestyle that's common in their area. Chelsea has a PhD in education, blah, blah, blah, parenting three children under three, also helping raise her teenage niece who had come from Mexico to stay with the family for a while. Oh, that's probably pretty bad, right?
[36:13] One morning, all three of the girls fought over the white purple spoon in a set of rainbow-colored spoons. Chelsea tried suggesting the yellow spoon or the red spoon or that they take turns with the purple spoon, no dice. It was like everybody all crying all the time. Right. So then why? Right. Why is everyone stressed and tense and crying all the time? So if you want to make sure that your children fight over things, then send them away from home during the day. So as I said before, when you send children away from home during the day, the children interpret that as we are in a very dangerous, scarce environment, right? This is an emergency environment. It's an emergency environment. Like why is mama unable to raise us? because things are so scarce in resource that she's got to go out picking food all day. Like we're so starved, we're so low on resources. And so if you send your kids away, they interpret that as we're in a desperately dangerous and problematic and scarce and famine and starvation and whatever. And so they're going to fight over everything because their systems interpret the lack of parenting as a desperately dangerous situation. and therefore they have to fight for every scrap, otherwise they're going to die, right? So that's not complicated, right?
[37:34] All right, how much further we got here? I don't want to do a 9,000-hour show. Okay, so we'll do a bit of a skim here. I think we've kind of got it.
[37:46] Let's see here. Noticing her struggle, her mom runs a school for children with behavioral problems. Parenting class she offered how to handle challenging children, okay? And Chelsea was skeptical, changed everything. She was speaking to her kids negatively much of the time. Stop hitting your sister. Why are kids hitting each other? It's not, I mean, I've got friends who've got, you know, three sons, and they're very supportive and helpful with each other. They teach each other chess. They help each other on the playgrounds, and there's not any fighting.
[38:20] Because when you invest in your kids heavily, then your kids grow up in an emotional regulation system that's primed for plenty rather than starvation, so they don't fight.
[38:39] Uh, the correct way to resolve the spoon fight, Chelsea says, was to validate each child's reality, saying something like, you really wanted the purple spoon, the orange spoon doesn't taste good, the child might still pout, but that's okay. Um, Chelsea and Robin both say, Chelsea and her brother were parented gently. So, okay, so this woman's mother never yelled. Okay, but then if this woman's mother never yelled, then why is she yelling? Right? That's very interesting to me. So if, right, so the woman who's being mirrored, being sort of followed here by the reporter. So Chelsea's mom never yelled at her, but she's yelling at her kids, right? Interesting, okay. Chelsea left her job at Stanford to help her mother teach a course called Guiding Cooperation. Together, they grew that course into a business. They charge a fee that starts at $5,000 per family for a 12-week parenting program that includes video lessons along with group and individual counseling. At any given time, the program includes about 40 to 50 families. Wow. Wow. Wow.
[39:55] Okay. Oh, so, um, that's, that's a lot of work, man. 40 to 50 families. That's, that's wild.
[40:10] All right. So, I mean, read it and I certainly appreciate what they're doing, but, you know, if you really listen to your kids, you have to change your life to something that's more natural, right? And when the kids feel truly wanted and you enjoy their company and you seek out their time and all of that is really, really important. So yeah, I agree that kids don't punish, right?
[40:43] And so we agree on that, right? So this is just a tweak, right? This is just a tweak. If you really listen to your kids, how much is your life going to change? And as dozens of people have already warned me, parenting is the hardest job you'll ever have. Absolutely not true. Absolutely not true. Philosophy can be tough. And working up north, dragging giant drills around in the snow with snowshoes, that was a tough job. But parenting is a blast. All right. So again, I appreciate this philosophy. I think it's interesting. A couple of tweaks. And I'm curious what you guys think, if you've had any experience with this. And I think we've had now, this is the third generation of this gentle parenting, and the kids are still fighting and having meltdowns and being upset and having tantrums and so on.
[41:34] So something's not quite going right. And I'm curious what you guys think. Thanks a mill. Bye.
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