https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=4-ezqg8BUp4
How can I best prepare my children to face the world and balance conservative views without them becoming demonized for having them? Well, it isn’t exactly obvious to me that children have views. You know what I mean? It’s rare enough to meet adults that have views. I think I would say I’m going to answer a slightly different question and that might be, well, what is the responsibility of a parent, which is the question in some sense that’s lurking underneath your question. And maybe, you know, once your children become adolescent and they start to formulate their explicit beliefs explicitly, then that problem becomes more relevant. But we might as well start with true children to begin with. And we can do that in a way that is related to the topic of the lecture that preceded this. So I made a case that sanity is something that’s an emergent consequence of a well-constituted social hierarchy. Now, that’s not all it is because we also made a foray into exploration of the utility of creative achievement. But we’ll stick with the first part to begin with. So then you might ask yourself, well, what’s the fundamental moral obligation of a parent? And the fundamental moral obligation of a parent is to encourage your children to be great partners in play. That’s a good way of thinking about it. So the primary sources of socialization for your children, if you do a good job with your children, won’t be you. They’ll be their peers. And so that means that their selection of peers is of crucial importance. It also means that their acceptability or desirability to peers is of crucial importance. You might say, and this is certainly possible, the more socially desirable your children, the higher quality of peer they will attract. And that quality of peer would be associated in turn with the social desirability of those peers. Because you can imagine that a very highly socially desirable child has a multitude of choices with regard to friendships, right? Whereas an unpopular child is going to have very few choices or none, and is therefore also likely in those situations to have their choices restricted to equally unpopular children. And you might say, well, popularity isn’t everything. It’s like, yeah, what’s your point? It’s not everything. You shouldn’t sacrifice your soul to transient popularity, but it’s bloody well not nothing. And there are few creatures more miserable than friendless children. And that’s a reflection of the fact that we’re deeply social. So what is it that you should be attending to in relationship to the development of your children? Well, we could refer to a different rule. This is from book one, and the rule was do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them. Okay, so let’s think that through for a minute. First of all, to understand that rule, you have to admit that you could dislike your children. And you might say, well, I know I love them so deeply. I could never dislike them. It’s like you’re a liar. So you dislike yourself. You dislike your wife. Like, dislike, man, that comes up a lot. And you know, with your children, not only do you dislike them, you should. And so why would I say that? Okay, so we already walked through the notion that there’s sort of a target of behavior, right? That if you were functionally optimally, you’d be a good partner in play. You’d have balanced chaos and order properly. You’d be able to find your place in the social hierarchy. You’d be open to social feedback. People would want to have you around, and you would develop optimally as a consequence of that. So imagine that’s a pathway. Imagine that to walk that pathway, you have to manifest a certain pattern of behavior. And that would be a pattern of behavior that would make you admirable and attractive to other people. And that admirable attractiveness is actually a marker of your prowess in walking that path. Okay, the same applies to children. Okay, so now imagine you have a mother and a father, and you take each of them in isolation, and you think, well, this woman, this mother, is pretty creepy. And you’re like, well, this woman, this mother, is pretty crazy. And you take the father and you think, this father is pretty crazy too, and that’s pretty much the state of affairs that obtains between any two people. But then you put them together and you think, well, their weaknesses don’t dovetail. So one way of thinking about what happens in an optimal marriage two fragmentary creatures produce one reasonably coherent unity. And that unity emerges from the interplay of their personalities. And so your partner has some weaknesses and you have some weaknesses and hopefully you buttress your partner’s weaknesses and she does or he does the same thing for you. And you do that mutually and you capitalize on your mutual strengths and together each of you is better than you would have been alone because why be married otherwise? And more importantly, the union of the two of you make something approximating one truly sane creature. And then you might say, well, if that creature is truly sane, then it’s a microcosm of what’s sane about culture. So you might think that what you’re trying to do as parents is to mirror the structure of the social world to your children. And why? Well, because they’re going to have to contend with the social world, right? They’re going to have to move beyond you as soon as they’re beyond basic infancy, especially by the time they hit about three years of age, because that’s when children become truly social. The primary world they’re going to inhabit is going to be the social world and it’s going to be primarily the world of their peers. And so they better be adapted to that world or it’s going to be, not only is it going to be rough on them and miserable because they’re going to be alienated and isolated and lonesome and have no one to play with. It’s worse than that because what peers do when they play is to push each other optimally in relationship to development. So imagine that you’re playing chess with someone and you want a partner to play with. What kind of partner do you want? And the answer is, well, you want a partner in play who’s slightly better at the game than you are. And you might say, well, why? Because if they’re slightly better than you, you’re going to lose disproportionate number of the times. Why don’t you just find someone utterly useless? They don’t even know how to play chess. He just stomped the hell out of them continually. It’s like, well, that’s no fun. Why not? Well, it’s because the fun is actually derived from the process of being optimally pushed by an opponent who’s worthy. And worthy would mean they’re not so much better than you that you just get ground into the dirt but they’re not so much worse than you that you can just stomp them without thought. You want someone who can contend with you. And interestingly enough, by the way, the Hebrew word for Eve, this help me, that’s the King James Version translation, means beneficial adversary. That’s such a good thing to know. Well, what do you want in a wife? Well, you want someone who pushes optimally against you. Why? So that you develop optimally. You want someone you can contend with. You don’t want a doormat. You don’t want a tyrant. You want a partner in play. That’s what children want. They want a partner in play. And they want that because optimized play optimizes their development. And so what does that mean in relationship to how you raise your children? And the answer is, well, you want your children to be optimal partners in play. And so if they are doing something that makes you dislike them, and let’s say jointly, right, because maybe when my son was young, he’d do something that would annoy me. And I would go tell Tammy, you know, that kid of yours, he’s annoying me. And she’d say, well, maybe you’re just hungry or maybe you’re just tired or maybe you’re crabby. And it’s like, well, okay, because it could be that he’s bothering me because I’m a tyrant. And I could go check with her and we’d go through the evidence that I was a tyrant. Or she’d say, you know, that kid’s really bugging me too. We’d think, ah, maybe we’re not insane tyrants. Maybe he’s a pain in the neck. And so, and then it was morally required of us to address that. And this was particularly interesting, I would say, in the case of Julian, because Julian was quite a pushy little kid, he’s quite disagreeable. And so he would definitely push the envelope. He was always right on the edge, like, can I get away with this? Can I get away with this? It’s really something to behold. He’s very, very good at that. And so now and then that would go a little too far. And we’d find that we were not liking him quite as much as we might want to. And so then we’d get together and think, it’s time to crack down on that kid. It’s like, okay, so for the next two weeks, we’d lock arms. It’s like, he’s not getting away with anything. Not one thing. If he deviates from the norm, from the optimal, let’s say, one iota, it’s like, we’ll get him. And so we would fortify ourselves and do that. And that was one of the things that was so absolutely startlingly remarkable about that was every time we did that, he liked us better. He loved us. Yeah, it was really something. Well, and the reason for that was obvious is we were actually paying attention to him, right? It’s like, kid, stop being a pain in the neck. Well, why? Because other people will hate you. And that’s not good for you, you know, and it’s really not good for you. And so the theory was something like this. Look, man, we love you and we can’t stand you. So what do you think the people who don’t love you are going to think about you? You know, and we tried to do this with a certain degree of light touch because the rule was as soon as we tried not to hold a grudge, it’s like as soon as we got, we tapped him back onto the straight and narrow, let’s say, so he was enjoyable to be around. Then we just let our irritation to the degree that we were capable of that, we just let our irritation go because the point was, you know, play fair here, kid, be a good sport. You know, when we used to put him on the steps when he was pushing the envelope, he had quite a temper and he’d sit there and mad, two years old, very mad. And the rule was you sit there until you feel like being a civilized human being. And when you feel like you could be a civilized human being again, you just come and tell us that and we’ll look at you and see if we like you. And generally, the liking would return with a suitable display of contrition. You know, he’d get his act together and then he’d come say, well, I’m sorry, I’d rather have a good day. And then it would be genuine. You think, oh, I really do like this kid. And then away we’d go. And it was funny because sometimes he’d be sitting on the steps just like enraged, because he had a pretty good temper. He’s a tough kid. And I’d go over and say, you ready to have a good day? And he’d go, not yet. You know, and you might think that’s mean. It’s like, well, you know, the kid needs to express his anger. It’s like, yeah, not if it makes everyone dislike him. Right? No, seriously. Like, you know, you see kids having temper tantrums in the supermarket. It’s like, that’s just not good for anybody. It’s not good for the kid because the kid, his developing integrated ego is then overwhelmed by the circuit of rage. That’s what happens. And because the temper tantrum is an outburst of rage. And it’s a defeat for the integrated ego of the child. It’s exhausting. It’s stressful because anger is a very stressful emotion. It’s really hard on the kid. It’s not freedom to let your kid have a temper tantrum. That’s not, there’s nothing about that that’s true. And I’m not, it’s not like I don’t know that anger is useful. And it certainly needs to be integrated. And some integrated aggression, man, that’s your best friend. But that has nothing to do with failing to help your child learn to regulate their possession by rage. And if they are tantrum prone, the probability that they’ll make friends is zero. Because what will happen is, you know, they’ll be playing a game with one of their friends and they’ll lose, which you’re going to do 50% of the time if you play fair, they’ll lose. Then they’ll have a tantrum. It’s like, well, who the hell wants to play with a child like that? And the answer is no one. And so what happens is tantrum prone four-year-olds become socially isolated and then they fall behind their peers. And then they’re in like child jail and that’s permanent. It’s really not good. There’s a very nicely laid out literature on exactly that pathway of development. And so, well, so what do you do with your children is you see when they deviate from the spirit of reciprocal play and you help tap them back into alignment. And you can do that in large part by playing with them, you know, and this is something for fathers to know particularly because fathers are particularly good at playing with their children. It’s one of the things that fathers bring to the table. And that’s especially true in relationship to rough and tumble physical play. And fathers are very good if they’re not afraid and if they’re not interfered with too much at taking their children and pushing them to the limits of their psychophysiological capacity, which is what you’re doing, by the way, when you’re rough and tumble playing with a child. Throwing them in the air, wrestling with them, you know, and children are so thrilled with that they just can hardly stand it. They get so excited that it’s almost unbearable. They’re so desperate to engage in that rough and tumble play. Like there’s almost nothing they like more than that and there’s very little they need more than that. And, you know, you help the child explore the contours of their body because if you’re rough and tumble playing, you show them the difference between acceptable and challenging discomfort and actual physical pain, right? Because one shades into the other. You know, imagine you’ve got your kid on the ground and you’re playing give up, right? Give up, kid. And maybe you’re twisting his arm. It’s like, give up, kid. No, I’m not giving up. It’s like, give up, kid. No, I’m not giving up. Oh, I’m giving up. I’m giving up. It’s like, well, you’re playing with that. It’s like you’re helping the child learn what’s tolerable and acceptable physical discomfort. And when exactly does that shade into pain? And unless they know that in a deeply embodied sense, they can’t understand it in anyone else, right? It’s really deep exploration and they’re going to do the same with you. Maybe you let them wrestle with you and you let them win, you know, because you should let the little rat win 30% of the time. You let them win. And, you know, you say, well, you can’t put your damn thumb in my eye and you can’t elbow me in the nose and you can’t grab my glasses. And you can’t be too whiny while we’re interacting. Like, there’s very tightly constrained rules. And you think, well, those are arbitrary. It’s like, they’re not arbitrary. Don’t be a dimwit. Have you ever played with a dog? You think that’s all socially constructed? There’s a difference between a dog that can play and one that can’t. You know, you get a dog often raised by psychologists that’s so dumb that it just bites you if you play with it. And, you know, it has no idea what to do. It’s such a clunk. It can’t play at all. It just bites or drools. It’s just a pain. And then you get another dog that’s well socialized and, man, that thing’s ready to go. And it can indicate to you in a fraction of a second that it wants to play. It does something like that. It’s universal mammalian play signal. It’s like, you want to go? It’s like, yeah, whack. You can whack the dog. And you whack the dog just exactly the right amount, right? And the dog acts like it’s been hit, but it knows it hasn’t. And it pretends to tear off your arm because it is a wolf, but it actually doesn’t. And it’s like, the dog knows how to do this. And it didn’t, it wasn’t socialized by, you know, it’s not socially constructed. That’s just insane. And a playful child is often very good at playing with dogs and other animals. And having a dog around is also a good way of helping your child learn to play. Because if your child can play properly, then the dog will be its friend. His dogs like to play. And so you’re trying to enable that spirit of play. And I would say, if you’re good at that, you don’t have to worry about whether or not, what people think of your children’s opinions because they’ll be so damn popular that they’ll listen to, other people will listen to your children. And, you know, it’s more complex once you hit the teenage years because you start having to contend with the issue of explicit philosophy. But with regards to children, you want to encourage them to be the sort of people that other people really want to have around, who are always invited to play, right? And if you do that, man, they’ll take care of themselves. And then you’ll have done your job properly. And so, and maybe they’ll have the kind of friends that you would want for your children and maybe they’ll have the kind of friends that you want to have in your house. And wouldn’t that be a good deal for everybody? So that’s a good thing to, that’s a good pathway to walk down, that pathway of play.