#197 Michaeleen Doucleff: The 4 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make

What ancient wisdom and modern science reveal about raising exceptional children. Through years of anthropological research and scientific inquiry, NPR correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff uncovers the counterintuitive principles that shape human development across cultures. This isn't about quick fixes or parenting hacks—it's a deep examination of how successful cultures have developed emotionally intelligent, capable humans for generations. Essential insights for leaders who understand that raising children, like building great organizations, requires sophisticated systems thinking and proven frameworks. Newsletter The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Upgrade If you want to hear my thoughts and reflections at the end of the episode, join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/membership/⁠⁠ and get your own private feed. Follow Me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/ Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (04:12) How (and why) we've lost our way as parents (08:02) The rise of the nuclear family (13:46) TEAM Parenting: T (17:20) TEAM Parenting: E (23:01) Why you don't need to praise your child (26:12) TEAM Parenting: A (36:42) TEAM Parenting: M (38:34) "Kids do not need to be entertained" (39:12) Technology, parenting, and transmitting values (1:02:59) Resources parents can use to educate kids about technology (1:04:50) How you can use the environment to give kids autonomy (1:09:56) Success and parenting Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I spent 12 years at NPR covering mostly viruses and they would send me around the world. What was really surprising to me and why I went on this journey to like, learn this other way of parenting was when I came back to San Francisco and I tried some of these techniques and methods, they worked like amazing on my little girl.

• 0:17Shane Parrish?

  So what are some of these tips? I mean, you summed it up with an acronym of TEAM.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 0:21Shane Parrish?

  What is TEAM and like, let's make them practical for people?

• 0:24Speaker 00

  So the first thing, T is like this idea of like, a lot of the Western relationship, parent-child relationship is based on control. But E is a different way. E is-

• 0:35Shane Parrish?

  And the next one is autonomy.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, this one's huge. If you could just change like one thing in your child's life, that would be-

• 0:42Shane Parrish?

  M, I guess. We've sort of talked about this a little bit.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:45Shane Parrish?

  In a circle.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  It kind of puts it all together. The M is like, so praising is a really interesting topic. It's very unique in Western society. In my entire travels, I've never seen a parent praise a child. Like, it's not necessary.

• 0:57Shane Parrish?

  Okay, we do video games. It's like seven, eight.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Every day.

• 1:00Shane Parrish?

  If you have your homework done.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  I would cut out every day.

• 1:03Shane Parrish?

  Oh, I can't. Yeah.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  But they don't need it.

• 1:06Shane Parrish?

  I don't, I don't, well, you know, if parents are listening to this and they have a 16-year-old addicted to their phone.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13Shane Parrish?

  What are the tangible things they can do in the next one month to sort of like, help?

• 1:17Speaker 00

  So here's how it works.

• 1:35Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to The Knowledge Project, a bi-weekly podcast exploring the powerful ideas, practical insights, and mental models of others. In a world where knowledge is power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best what other people have already figured out. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. Before we dive in, I have a quick favor to ask. If you're enjoying the show and listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or another platform, please take a moment and hit the follow button. The more followers we have, the better guests we can bring on to share their knowledge with you. If you want to take your learning to the next level, consider joining the membership program at fs.blog/membership. As a member, you'll get my personal reflections at the end of every episode, early access

• 2:16Shane Parrish?

  to episodes, no ads, exclusive content, hand-edited transcripts, and so much more. Check out the show notes for a link. Today, my guest is Michaeleen Doucleff, author of Hunt, Gather, Parent, and a global explorer of parenting practices. Her work takes us on a journey across cultures, revealing profound insights that challenge our modern assumptions, I guess, about raising children. At the heart of her discoveries lies the acronym TEAM: Together, Encourage, Autonomy, and Minimal Intervention. These four principles draw from the wisdom of indigenous communities around the world, offering a roadmap for fostering resilience, independence, and emotional well-being in our children. She shares her observations on how different cultures approach parenting and how their practices can help alleviate

• 3:00Shane Parrish?

  the burdens we place on ourself and our children. We also explore the role of technology in modern parenting and its impact on our children's development. She offers practical strategies for navigating this digital landscape and fostering meaningful connections within our families. It's surprising how often we give our kids orders: do this, don't do that. And in this conversation, you'll learn a better approach that encourages critical thinking, empathy, and problem-solving skills that works on toddlers and teens. I tried to make this episode as practical as possible so while we learn insights from other cultures, how we put them into practice in our culture. Michaeleen shares insights on how we can create an environment that allows our children to take appropriate risks, learn from their mistakes, and grow into confident,

• 3:44Shane Parrish?

  capable individuals in a world that sometimes pushes back. Listening to this episode will give you another perspective on parenting that draws from the collective wisdom of cultures around the world. As with anything, take what works and ignore the rest. It's time to listen and learn.

• 4:12Shane Parrish?

  I want to start with our parenting. Have we collectively lost our way as parents?

• 4:17Speaker 00

  Western society has kind of veered off the path, you know, and kind of gone into this valley of strange parenting valley where we've kind of, yeah, we've kind of lost sight of like what kids actually need. What the parent-child relationship actually needs to really function.

• 4:34Shane Parrish?

  What's different?

• 4:35Speaker 00

  So there's so many things that are different. One anthropologist said that there's about forty to fifty things that we do as parents that you can't really find anywhere else, except in places that have westernized. And then there's like four or five things that we are really missing that are really key to raising a child that you enjoy being with, raising a child that's helpful and respectful and confident. I mean, that's really, if you look at our data, right? In Western society, we have this epidemic of children who are anxious, who have kind of lost confidence. And then for sure, we have children that like, we struggle to get them to help, right? And be helpful around the house and kind of work together as a team. And, and

• 5:20Speaker 00

  so there's a couple of things that we're not doing that really support that.

• 5:24Shane Parrish?

  How did we get here?

• 5:25Speaker 00

  It's a, it's a big question, but it dates back to like, probably the fifteen hundreds in Europe. Um, it actually, one scientist thinks and has this whole theory and book about how it dates back to the Catholic Church. Um, we could talk about that. But in general, what's happened is we've, we've lost the parenting teachers. That's, I think, a really key aspect of it, that traditionally, you have a child, often very young, you know, in your twenties, and your parents or aunt or neighbor would teach you how to raise that baby. And then by the time you have your second or third baby, you kind of know, right? But now, like, me, when I had

• 6:06Speaker 00

  my daughter, basically handed me this baby, sent me home, and it was like, me by myself.

• 6:13Shane Parrish?

  Good luck.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  Good luck. Exactly. They, they, you know, my husband always says, like, we took all these birthing classes, but he was like, why didn't we take all these parenting classes? Like, now what do we do? Now that it's, you know, um, so that, I think, around seventeen hundreds is the one that really started to get going, losing this kind of, the teachers, and then...

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Parents started turning to the medical industry and parenting experts. And you can see the progression of like, what do we do? We don't really know what to do. And so we're hu- parents are hungry for these pam- they were pamphlets, basically, from orphanages that doctors had made just to like, say, how do you raise like forty kids, right? And they turned into these like parenting manuals and books that were very popular because parents stopped really knowing what to do. Parenting books today, you can trace all the way back to those pamphlets. It's really incredible. And of course, they weren't the way you raise children in a home, you know, in a family. They were for these institutions, basically.

• 7:12Shane Parrish?

  I think I remember listening to one of your interviews and you mentioned like the number one sleep book is by some dude in the eighteen hundreds who didn't even have kids.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was like a sports writer and he wrote about golf, I think. And he was also super into guns and he actually like blew his hand off and stuff. And he like, I think he saw like, there was like this market for parenting advice. And he wrote, yeah, like, he was one of the first ones to really write about sleep training, which is totally crazy, like around the world, like leaving a baby to cry. And it's a very unique style. And he was kind of one of the first people to suggest it and recommend it.

• 7:50Shane Parrish?

  Can we come back to like the Catholic Church and, and sort of like, we're not taught how to be parents anymore? Is that a byproduct of like, all of us working more and living in a busier society? Or is it?

• 8:02Speaker 00

  The theory is, and it's, it's really fascinating, was that before the fifteen hundreds, people in Europe lived like people everywhere in the world in these big kind of clans or groups of like family, like big, and not like all one house, but kind of in the same neighborhood. And it was, um, you know, we, it was like communal living, right? And this is, this is how. Children were raised for hundreds, thousands of years in these kind of big groups. And there's a lot of data to support that. And that's how Europeans were doing it. And then the Catholic Church came along about the 1500s and started having these laws to prevent close cousins from marrying and having children, which is totally legitimate.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Like biologically, you don't want to marry your first cousin and have a child. But over time, they started extending it out to like second, third, fourth, fifth, six cousins. I mean, you and I are six cousins, right? But we're not related at all. And it's, it, whether this was intentional or not, what it did was it broke up this like big, uh, family living, right? Because you couldn't marry anymore into these groups. And it really like took intergenerational living and squashed it down slowly and slowly to what we now think of as like the nuclear family. So you go from living in an environment where, you know, as a mom, I would have clearly an older sibling, I'd have an aunt and uncle, I'd have a cousin, I'd have this, all these people that are like helping me.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  And I would be watching as I grew up, other children being raised, right? That's a big element too, right? Like by the time I was 16, I probably had seen like five children get raised from somebody in this big group, right? And so that's, I mean, if you look around the world, that's how people learned to parent. That's how this skill, the craft is like passed down through watching. And then when you have your own teaching. But if you live, if you squash down the family into like mother and father only, and you're right, one parent is out of the home a lot, or two parents are out of the home, then you've no longer have, you never lo, you no longer watch people being raised. Maybe you get one kid, one sibling, right? And then you don't have any helpers.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  And this professor at Harvard has like tracked down the, the rise of the nuclear family correlates with how long ago the Catholic Church was, uh, uh, brought into a society. And so Europe is the longest and you, you see this very strong nuclear family. And then other parts of the world, you know, it's been introduced more recently and you still see, you know, intergenerational living and these big family units, but it's not the only. Factor, I think. Lots of other things have come about to kind of support the creation of the nuclear family and the reduction of the people in our lives raising children.

• 10:54Shane Parrish?

  And we have this saying, right? Like, it takes a village to raise kids, but it sounds like we don't actually create the village anymore.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  That's right. And it's funny, because I always say, like, it doesn't take a village. It takes like five extra people. Like, you know, because if you look in some societies, so they're called allo-parents. This is what scientists call them. They're people in children's lives that are just as close to the child and just as important to the child as the mother and the father. They're other parents, basically. And if you look, in most societies, children have like four or five of these. Very close. In some societies, they have like 12 or 15, but they're not very close. But there's amazing studies in some societies where like a baby, they'll track like how many times a baby is passed around to a different person in like an hour or two hours. And it's like something like 10 or 11 people

• 11:45Speaker 00

  in like an hour, like just regularly. Think about that. Like when you had your kids, like if you had 10 people, like constantly helping you hold the baby, feed the baby, like how much different your life would have been.

• 11:57Shane Parrish?

  I'd have a lot more kids.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  You'd, you, right, you'd have a lot more kids and you'd have a lot like less stress, right? You know?

• 12:05Speaker 02

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• 12:09Speaker 02

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• 12:59Speaker 00

  When I was traveling with Rosie, my little girl, we were in Tanzania and we were with these women raising, they had the little ones, the babies and the toddlers, because the other ones were at school. And they were, it was a group of like six women and they would spend all day long together helping each other with the baby, the toddlers and the babies, like all day long. I'm talking like 10, 12 hours a day. It was amazing, right? From the standpoint of like social support, right? And then I got back home and it was just me, like in this condo with a kid and it was, it was, the difference was so stark.

• 13:39Shane Parrish?

  So before we sort of cover how we undo all of this, like what did you learn? You traveled around the world. You found four different tribes that all taught in a sort of different way. What are the key lessons that came out of that? Why is that important?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  I'm a reporter and I spent 13, 12 years at NPR covering mostly viruses and they would send me around the world. And I started to notice while I was traveling that parents didn't seem to have the same struggles as we did. You know, there were clearly struggles. There's struggles everywhere. I don't want to romanticize it. But what was really surprising to me and why I went on this journey to like learn this other way of parenting was when I came back to San Francisco and I tried some of these techniques and methods, because that's really what they are. They worked like amazing on my little girl in urban San Francisco. Like it surprised, it really surprised me how quickly

• 14:36Speaker 00

  our relationship improved. She was like two at the time when I really started to try this.

• 14:41Shane Parrish?

  So what are some of these tips? I mean, you summed it up with an acronym of TEAM.

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:46Shane Parrish?

  Uh, but let's make them, what is TEAM and like, let's make them practical for people?

• 14:50Speaker 00

  So the first thing, T is like this idea of like together, that humans, Homo sapiens are these incredibly social creatures. We, that's what separates us from like other homo species is that we are social. And not only that we want to be with people, we want to help people. And children are born wanting to help. Everyone knows this in our society. And so the first thing is really is let your children help you, even when they can't do it, right? So we have this, there's, there's studies that show this, like, American parents are asked this question of like, you're doing the laundry and your little two year old comes over and starts throwing the clothes like all over the place. Like, what do you do? And the, the American mom says something, the European American mom says something like,

• 15:35Speaker 00

  I get mad because she's making a mess and I tell her to go play. Right? Or I tell her to go watch cartoons. Right? And then they asked the same question to a Maya mom. And the Maya mom says something like, I get kind of mad because she's making a mess. Right? Starts off kind of similar. And then she says, but I'm really excited that she wants to help with the laundry. And so the Maya mom sees the little toddler's mess as this like sign of interest in helping. Right? It's a very different view of the child. Right? It's a very pro-social view. And then she says, so I start teaching her how to do the laundry. And one of the moms even says that, that the little girl's like, like sometimes balls up the laundry. And she said, I can see she's trying to fold it. Right? Whereas where I would just say she's balling up the laundry and making a ball.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Right? This, you know, the, the other view is that she wants to help. That we are these social creatures and we, we have this huge desire to help, starting off just really from day one. In many, many parts of the world, parents immediately say, yes, come help and keep the child there and have the child at least watch or give the child a very small task to do. And so that's really the T. Never turn down a child's request to help. Like when I was getting ready for this podcast, like Rosie wanted to do my hair. She wanted to do my makeup and it was like, yes. My job as a parent I see is to find a way that she can actually help. And the Maya families have some saying about it.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Like it's your job to find the purpose in the child's life, to find the opportunities for the child to have purpose. Don't push them away because if you keep pushing them away, by the time they're seven or eight and they actually can start kind of helping, they're not stupid. They're like, that's not my job.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  You know, like you've pushed me away for six years. Why would I help you now?

• 17:26Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  You know, and they and there's data that show that that's kind of what happens that kids. They learn their place in the home is my place. Playing and watching video game or playing video games, watching TV or is my place like helping with dinner, helping with the laundry, helping.

• 17:42Shane Parrish?

  And unlearning that is hard.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  I I I don't think it's as hard as we think it is. But again, I think you have to change your view of the child. Right? You have to instead of just saying, oh, he doesn't want to help. He never helps. He's never gonna help. Don't ask, right? Can you imagine, right? If somebody said that at work? Don't ask him. He's never. He's no good at this. Like how bad that would make you feel, right? So it's like actually starting to see. There's a little flame inside the child that actually really does want to help. I think you can turn it around.

• 18:13Shane Parrish?

  Oh, well, let's uh E for.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Oh, E.

• 18:15Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  So E is this idea that like. A lot of the Western relationship, parent-child relationship is based on control. That the parent tells the child what to do and they're supposed to listen because they're the child.

• 18:28Shane Parrish?

  And you're the authority.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  And you're the authority, right? And that's kind of just set. But E is a different way. E is. We're gonna encourage children. To do the right thing and and really we're gonna get them to figure out what the right thing is themselves. And every time you try to control a child, you create conflict, you risk creating conflict. Because either the child's gonna get mad because they don't want to be told what to do. Or you're gonna get mad because they're not doing it, right? And so another way of doing it is like, okay. I'm gonna guide you. I'm gonna encourage you to do the right thing. And you know what? It's okay if like nine, sometimes you don't. Because this is the long game. But I'm gonna use all these tools I have in my toolbox to get you.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  To learn to figure out what the right thing is, to learn to to think. When I went traveling, I I knew there were like tools that cultures use to get children to figure things out. And instead of just telling them what to do. Uh, but I I had no clue how many there were. There's so many. It's amazing. And they're very subtle, but they can really change like the whole dynamic between the parent and the child. What the E does, the encouragement, is it gets the child to feel like I'm making decisions for myself. I'm in charge of my life. You know, my mom has confidence that I can do it. And so there's this this ease that starts to happen with with the parent and the child.

• 19:50Shane Parrish?

  So what are those tools?

• 19:52Speaker 00

  So one of the the amazing tools with smaller children is stories. Like we are, there's good evidence that humans are really made to learn through story. And when we were actually with the Hadzabe, this hunter gatherer community in Tanzania, they were using stories to teach me the rules. So when we got to the camp, they didn't just list off, you know, very like American, be like, here are the rules. And like, you know, like this is what you can do and you can't do. No, around the fire, they would tell these stories. And um, some of them were about where you went to the bathroom. And they would say things like, this isn't about you, though. Like this is, you know, it's clearly about me. You know, are they they sing songs that had stories in them for children?

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Um, and so this is a way of like putting the ideas into the child's mind in a way that, one, they can really understand. Cause they don't, like, young children don't understand logic. But also like a way of like, again, they're gonna figure it out through these stories. So that's a huge one for younger children. As a, even for younger children, there's all these ways of like asking questions. Telling them consequences, kind of these little puzzles that you set up for them. Another big one is the environment, like just setting up the environment. So they can't get themselves in trouble or they're less likely to. Right? The, I mean, the list goes on and on. I mean, there's some beautiful examples, like when we were up in the Arctic. Rosie was kind of like throwing these rocks up in the air like this.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  And the little nine year old, Rosie was three at the time, and the little nine year old comes over and says, you're gonna hurt somebody with those rocks. And Rosie kind of sat there and like looked and then dropped the rocks.

• 21:27Shane Parrish?

  And the nine year old walked away, like it wasn't a.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  No, it's and that's what the parents do. It's like, I mean, I think if Rosie was throwing rocks at kids like then like it would be different. But it's like, if you really stop and look at most of the situations, you don't need.

• 21:41Shane Parrish?

  And one of the stories that would probably resonate with people you told in the book is how Rosie was keeping the fridge door open.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  Yes. So when I, when I first traveled up to the Arctic, the moms would tell me these stories, like to get kids to wear their hats. In the winter, because they would get frostbite on their ears and they would tell them that like if they didn't like that their heads would get chopped off and they the the northern lights would use their heads as soccer balls, all these very kind of scary stories. And I was like, no, I'm never doing that. And so that's one of the things readers write into me about, like one of the things are like, I could never do this, you know? And then when I got back, Rosie had the refrigerator door open and I was sitting there, close the refrigerator door, close, you know, just kind of nagging her, which is the big tool we use, right? Over and over again. And then I was like trying logic, you know, the electricity, da, da, da, da. And I was very frustrated with her.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  And then I turned to her and I said, there's a monster in that refrigerator. And he, when he warms up, he's coming, oh my gosh, he's coming out. And I kind of made it very dramatic and kind of fun. And like, these stories are often kind of a wink in the eye, like the kid kind of knows it's a story. And she like slammed the refrigerator door and was like, looked at me and she was like, tell me more, mama, tell me more about this monster. And it, she was, I think, three and three and a half at the time, three. And um, it like changed our whole relationship. We just started using stories for everything. Cause the way we could communicate like with her, like we weren't communicating with her otherwise. Oh, we had, we had so many stories and like when she's, now she's eight and like

• 23:15Speaker 00

  around six or seven, she kind of knew the stories were, were fake and she kind of didn't want to hear them for a while. And then she wanted to again, like it was like, because even as an adult, you like stories.

• 23:26Shane Parrish?

  I mean, we still use stories as a society, right?

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 23:29Shane Parrish?

  We use them as warnings, we use them as fairy tales, we use them as.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  I mean, we use them as entertainment, right? Like one of the scientists I talked to, because again, parents are very. Like I was like, this is too scary, you know? Um, but then one of the scientists I was talking to said, yeah, but look at a Disney movie. Like it's way scarier like, you know, than, you know, cause also I'm, I'm there, I can see. The point is not to scare her to death, it's to communicate. Parenting is about transmitting values.

• 23:57Shane Parrish?

  Is there a difference between encouraging and sort of praising? Cause we seem really good at praising kids.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 24:05Shane Parrish?

  Oh, wow, you picked the green pen. Like, you're amazing, my child's a genius, you know?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  So praising is a really interesting topic that's very unique in Western society. You don't, in my entire travels, I've never seen a parent praise a child. Like, it's not necessary.

• 24:21Shane Parrish?

  Is it more subtle or they just don't do it at all?

• 24:24Speaker 00

  I think that there is some that's more subtle. Like you think the parent's not doing anything, but then you look and there is like these subtle signals that are happening, which also speaks to the fact that we could be a lot more subtle with children, you know?

• 24:36Shane Parrish?

  Like a smile?

• 24:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, or like a, a pat on the shoulder or when, one of the moms said I would, I would hug the child, you know, to thank them. But praise really just came about in the last like 30 years. Like I'm 47 and like my mom was really into praise and my dad wasn't. So I'm kind of right at the generation where the praise kind of, and there's this whole backstory to it about why it happened. Um, but praise is a tricky beast. Praise can motivate children, but it can also demotivate. It's like, depends on how it's done, what context it is, the, the child, does the praise actually kind of fit with what you're doing? And I mean, it's, we have this sense that all praise is good and it's not. I tell parents, like, you can just stop.

• 25:20Shane Parrish?

  Before we get to autonomy, let's double click on that. What, what's the difference between good praise and bad praise?

• 25:25Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't think psychologists know, and I think that's one of the problems. I think this over the top praise that you're talking about, I don't think kids know it's fake. And in some ways it's manipulative. But I think the problem is we don't know, we don't know how much praise helps kids because it's an experiment. It's brand new.

• 25:43Shane Parrish?

  How, how do we get in this experiment?

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Maybe it was the eighties, there was this whole push from the California government. There was this idea that like. The reason why kids started to use drugs and misbehave is because they had poor self-esteem. And that the way to help kids was to have, was to praise them, that's what gives them good self-esteem. But there was, the data don't support it at all. There was no data. It's just, again, like these myths that kind of bubble up. But you don't, you don't need to do it. I mean, I think, I come from a privileged position in the sense that like I've seen many, many families not praise children and like, the kids are like amazing and have enormous amounts of confidence and self-esteem. So it's like, it's just not required.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  I think what's more important and what motivates kids, and there's a lot of data to support this. What motivates kids is having them actually contribute to your life. You know, having them be part of your life and contribute in it. I mean, you know, as a person who works, that you feel good and motivated when you help and you do something and you accomplish something and that, I mean, there's tons of data in psychology to support. That's what motivates kids, not when somebody goes on and on about, oh my God, amazing.

• 27:05Shane Parrish?

  So just to orient us where we are, you have the acronym TEAM, togetherness, and we've talked about encouraging. And the next one is autonomy.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, this one's huge. If you could just change like one thing in your child's life, that would be to give them two hours, an hour a week of autonomy. If you look at hunter-gatherer communities around the world, so you know, humans spent 200,000 years as hunter-gatherers. That's where our brains evolved, that's where we evolved, right, in this context? And so looking at hunter-gatherer communities around the world offers some clues kind of to how the conditions in which we evolved in, it doesn't say it exactly, but kind of gives you some clues. And if you look in lots of different continents, children have enormous amounts of autonomy in these communities, which implies that's how the, the child evolved, right? The child's brain evolved.

• 27:58Shane Parrish?

  We used to have a lot of autonomy. I mean, I was walking to school at seven. I was walking like two kilometers almost.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Exactly. Like it wasn't that long ago in Western society that we had it. The evolutionary standpoint kind of says that like we need it. You know, and then there's this data that shows that kids that don't have it are more anxious, more prone to depression. Like, so and there's just tons of data that's like, we need autonomy, children need autonomy. But I think parents don't know what it looks like.

• 28:24Shane Parrish?

  So what does autonomy look like?

• 28:26Speaker 00

  The best way to figure it out is to put your stopwatch on where you're, when you're with, with a child in the morning, at, at the grocery store, just somewhere and give no commands to the child, no verbal instruction to the child for 20 minutes.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  And see if you can do it. I mean, because scientists have done this analysis. I did this analysis, like in different communities and like in places where children have autonomy, parents give children like two to three verbal inputs in an hour. And I've done it on myself. I've done it with parents in San Francisco and we were talking about like a hundred and twenty verbal inputs per hour, just a constant stream.

• 29:05Shane Parrish?

  Do this, do that.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  Don't do this, say this, say thank you. Like, I mean, you can just, you can see it. Like, it's just a constant praise, because it is a form of like, kind of manipulating their behavior, right?

• 29:17Shane Parrish?

  Which creates a power struggle in some ways?

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Oh, can create for some, some children are fine. Some children appear fine with it, right? They just kind of go, I call them like turtles. They kind of go down into a little shell and kind of, okay, you know, and some children, it's horrible. When, when I was writing the book and Rosie and I's relationship was really changing, if we were in a hard time and we were arguing a lot, I would do this. I put my stopwatch on and my phone and I would say, okay, I'm gonna be quiet. I'm not gonna, I can give her physical, physical input, right? Like you're talking about more subtle, like some eye movement, some, I can move her, you know, if she's doing something bad, I can take something, right? I can do physical things, but I can, no talking to her. And it was amazing, Shane, like how quickly that improves.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Our relationship.

• 30:06Shane Parrish?

  What can I do? I have two teenagers for to encourage autonomy. Like, what does that look like?

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Well, it depends on where they're at, how much they're already doing on their own.

• 30:15Shane Parrish?

  Well, I used to like send them to grocery stores on their own when they were like seven and eight. And, you know, I got a lot of pushback for that from society.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 30:25Shane Parrish?

  I used to let them walk to school and I get a lot of pushback from society. One, aside from this, it's so cute. My youngest came home one day and I had asked him to get a red pepper and he got a green pepper. And I was like, we'll go back to the store. And he was like, I think eight or nine at the time. And he goes back to the store and then he comes home and I was like, well, what was the difference in price? And he's like, huh? And I was like, what did you do? He's like, I put the green pepper on the shelf and I took that red pepper.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  Because why would it be any different?

• 30:56Shane Parrish?

  He's like, I paid for it the first time.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Just a pepper.

• 30:58Shane Parrish?

  Exactly. It's a funny story. It seems like society, I guess, is, has, maybe it's just my feeling. It's pushback on those things.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Oh, it's not just your feeling. There's huge data on this and one, David Lancy, one of the anthropologists that I cite a lot in the book, calls it like the shrink, shrink wrapping of kid children. Where we're just so afraid of their safety.

• 31:23Shane Parrish?

  I'm not afraid of their safety as much as afraid of other parents. The police showing up at my door and like taking away my kids.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  No, it's absolute.

• 31:31Shane Parrish?

  I sent them on an errand, you know, like.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Society as a whole is afraid of their safety. And there are parents that are like, I think we're kind of probably in the minority right now, but like, so Rosie's eight, she started going to the store. We live in that right now, a 6,000 person town. You know, America, I don't know about Canada, but I bet it's the same as the safest it's ever been, like then when we were kids. And she got, she's gotten pulled over by the cops twice. One time they brought her home in the back of the car. So, I mean, we've gotten pushed, there's absolutely a huge pushback. I've had to just be like, this is what we value. You know, my husband and I have sat down, we like, what do we do? You know, we, we've thought about going to the police. So we dealt with the police and we told them like, And the police actually admitted like it's she's fine.

• 32:16Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  You know.

• 32:17Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Um.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  It's the neighbors that we're calling, you know.

• 32:22Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  And so we've also made her look better, like the optics of it. We've like, she's on the bike now and you know, she looks less. She looks more like she's in charge. We also, there's a great society, there's a great organization called Let Grow. I don't know if you know about it. But it's, it's all about empowering parents and children to give their, to have more autonomy. And they have these little licenses that you can print out that say like, I'm Rosie Doucleff and my parents allow me to go to these places.

• 32:50Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  And I'm allowed to talk to strangers. I'm talking to you right now. And like, so we printed that out for her and, but it's hard, but it's worth it.

• 33:00Shane Parrish?

  Well, I don't know. Like, what can I do?

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Like, so, okay, so they're thirteen.

• 33:04Shane Parrish?

  One's thirteen, one's fourteen.

• 33:06Speaker 00

  I mean, autonomy is also like, what does the child want to do that they can't? Because they feel afraid or they feel like they, you know, they can't do it because of parents or society or whatever. And then helping them kind of achieve those goals.

• 33:19Shane Parrish?

  So I guess like maybe an example, like what comes to mind with, uh, with my kids would be like, do I give complete autonomy, which is they come home, you know, this is dinner time, you help out with chores.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:32Shane Parrish?

  And you're, you contribute to the household, but I don't talk to them about homework. I don't talk to them about schoolwork. Or do I provide like a structure around this where it's like, let's go over what's due tomorrow. And I don't tell them what to do, you know, like, how, how do you think about that between structure and autonomy?

• 33:49Speaker 00

  I think at thirteen and fourteen, I would not help them structure their time. But if they, if they don't have the ability, do you, do you see what I'm saying?

• 33:57Shane Parrish?

  If they're capable of doing it, let them do it. And if they're not, give the structure, but not the instructions.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Give the encouragement.

• 34:03Shane Parrish?

  Oh.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Right? Like go back to the E.

• 34:07Shane Parrish?

  So what would that look like? I'm happy exposing all my pork.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm just, it's, it's really fascinating, right? Because like, we have this sense in our, this is another weird thing we do. Is that like, we think, okay, they're at this age, they need to do this.

• 34:20Shane Parrish?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  You know, and I would ask parents like, well, what, what age can they use a knife? And the parent would just be like, it depends on the child.

• 34:27Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  You know, and so I, that's why I'm like, kind of like, well, where are they with it? Right? Because one of the, one of the publishers said to me, well, I, my, my child's eleven and I opened up the back door and said, you're free now.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  You have autonomy now and she just stood there. Yes, exactly. I'm telling you like chickens will just stand there too if they've been inside a cage. You know, and she was like, but she didn't want autonomy. And I was like, well, she she's eleven. She's never had that. So she can't just like.

• 34:55Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  You can't just tell her to go run and play outside after eleven years of not, right? So that's why I'm asking you like, where are they? But I think the idea is like, don't do things for them.

• 35:04Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  Like ever. Like ever, you don't need to, especially thirteen, fourteen. It's like.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Like if they can't manage their time or they can't figure out, okay, what's next? Because that's that's a skill. There's actually a study looking at this in Guadalajara. It's a fascinating study. It looks at parents that are more westernized who manage the child's time. Okay, now you're doing dinner. Now you're doing chores. Now you're doing this. Now you're doing that. And then more, a little more like team parenting, like my book, like where the the children manage their own time. And the in the study, they these are like nine, ten year olds.

• 35:41Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 35:42Speaker 00

  In the study, they show that the kids that are in that kind of more flexible environment take initiation. They start their homework themselves. They like, but it takes time. That's a that's a skill. I mean, that's one of the things that I tell parents like.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  It when you're managing your child, when you're kind of their personal assistant and you're managing their time, like block hour by hour. You're kind of doing them a disservice because you're they're not able to learn this skill of like, what do I do next?

• 36:10Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  And you know, like at your job, like my job, I sit down in the morning. It's like, well, what do I do? That's a big part of the job is like, okay, I gotta interview this person. I gotta send this email. I gotta read this part. I gotta write this part, right? And that's a skill that takes time. So I would start if I if I don't know, I'm not trying to say your child doesn't have that. But if if if I felt like my child didn't have that, I would start trying to teach like, teach them that. You know, like, what do you what do you have on your plate tonight?

• 36:36Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  You know, what would you do next?

• 36:37Shane Parrish?

  Questions.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Questions, exactly. Like, you know.

• 36:40Shane Parrish?

  That was one of my favorite part, questions on command.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  So we actually now have a little school. And so I love that because I get to say, I've tried these things on lots of kids. You know, like as time has gone on, I've gotten more confident because I've tried them on all these kids at this little school we have. And like the questions work with every kid.

• 36:57Shane Parrish?

  And the questions are designed to get them to think about the next step instead of you giving the instruction.

• 37:03Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 37:04Shane Parrish?

  Telling them what to do.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  That's right. We have one little boy who he's 11. He's very smart, great reader, great math. But he cannot do anything that I don't tell him kind of the next step. Like we were just making Valentine's Day cards and then hanging them on a tree for the teacher. And he was literally standing there with the two pieces of yarn and was like, what do I do next? And I was like, what do you think you do next? And it took about five minutes for him to figure out that he needs to tie it and put it on the tree.

• 37:32Shane Parrish?

  And you just let him sort of.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Struggle with it.

• 37:34Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:36Shane Parrish?

  That's really interesting. And the M, I guess, we've sort of talked about this a little bit.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. It kind of puts it all together. The M is like minimal interference. That's kind of a little bit what we're getting at. It's like, we think that good parenting, I thought that good parenting was maximal interference. Like I was always trying to figure out, okay, what do I tell Rosie next? Okay, I'm always looking out for like the next thing to say. And like one parent even told me, I forgot who it was, but she told me, sometimes I have to really hold myself back. From interfering to see if they can do it. You know, that there's this like magic moment where you want to jump in and that's when they were like, but if they need your help, you jump in.

• 38:14Shane Parrish?

  How do we learn that as parents? Cause you're, you're, you've done it for so long and then the temptation is obviously.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  I tell parents, and this is kind of how I started it, was I would take Rosie to the beach. I would take her to an environment where she had a lot of autonomy. I know the beach doesn't sound like that to a lot of parents, but like, I had taught her like not to go into the water. And then I would just sit there like hours and I would read and work and just let her live.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  And that was how I practiced it. You get the confidence that like, oh, the kid, I don't need to interfere so much. And when I don't interfere, she does, she's so happy and she's, you know, I can work and I can do my life and like, I think you just have to try it.

• 38:54Shane Parrish?

  And she didn't want to play with you and or did you say no?

• 38:58Speaker 00

  She didn't want to play with me. I mean, especially if there was like. Not other kids around or something. I would just say, no, I'm reading right now.

• 39:06Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  You know? I mean, that's another thing is like most society's parents don't play with children.

• 39:11Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Like at all. Babies a little bit, but.

• 39:14Shane Parrish?

  Otherwise, sort of like figure it out, use your imagination, be bored.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, or there's other kids, a lot of times there's other kids around.

• 39:20Shane Parrish?

  And now we're in a nonstop, I feel like I have to entertain you.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  So that is another huge one.

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• 40:20Speaker 00

  Huge, huge difference in our, this is one, I think the most stressful things is like this feeling of what do you do with your time with your kids?

• 40:28Shane Parrish?

  Hmm.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Kids do not need to be entertained. They have not been entertained for like hundred thousands of years, two hundred thousand years. They do not need it. Like I say, like you can welcome them into your world and teach them how to be in your world.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  But when they're in their world, you can be there to eat for together, but you don't have to do anything.

• 40:51Shane Parrish?

  There's a lot of differences between the worlds of these tribes and our world.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:58Shane Parrish?

  All right, some, some of those differences are food.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 41:02Shane Parrish?

  Technology.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Well, both of those are changing.

• 41:05Shane Parrish?

  Culture.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Culture.

• 41:07Shane Parrish?

  Uh, in terms of women's roles and whether they work or not and how they contribute. How do you think that affected how they're raising kids? Is that specific to that environment? How does it affect our environment? What's the same? What's different?

• 41:23Speaker 00

  In the Maya community, in the Inuit community, which is, you know, just north of us right now in Canada. There was lots of technology.

• 41:31Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  And lots of processed foods.

• 41:34Shane Parrish?

  Interesting.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the Maya community less, but.

• 41:36Shane Parrish?

  Like they're eating Fruit Loops for breakfast sort of thing?

• 41:39Speaker 00

  The Inuit, yes, a lot of them, yes, a lot of them. But I mean, the Maya, the more, there were more traditional foods kind of made every day and eaten every day. But they had, you know, the hadzabe, it was no technology.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Very little westernized processed food. So it was very different. So I think the, the food is an interesting question because like these really control children and control us kind of in ways.

• 42:04Shane Parrish?

  What do you, what do you mean by that?

• 42:06Speaker 00

  Like, I think both, I think technology is probably easier to talk about. I mean, it's designed to make the child use it. Right? So it's not a secret, right? To shape the child's behavior and their activities. And so it's, it's hard to be as a parent to just let that go.

• 42:23Shane Parrish?

  So how is it impacting these kids though? Like kids today, I mean, my kids are maybe an exception, but most kids long before they hit thirteen, fourteen have iPhones or.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:34Shane Parrish?

  iPads and.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Right, so the Maya is very fascinating. The Maya, many of the parents told me that they don't get a phone until they can pay for it.

• 42:43Shane Parrish?

  But you can do that when everybody's in that.

• 42:45Speaker 00

  When it's collective.

• 42:46Shane Parrish?

  When you're the only great, you know, when my grade seven.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  So how did you do it?

• 42:50Shane Parrish?

  You know, well, I just did what my parents did. I was like, I don't care about Johnny down the street.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 42:56Shane Parrish?

  I care about you, but like I feel that pressure and in grade seven, you know, that he was the, there's two kids in his class who didn't have a phone. In grade eight, he was the only one who didn't have a phone. And he feels it because he feels sort of like left out.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 43:10Shane Parrish?

  These guys or these, you know, my classmates are doing something and I'm not, I can't be a part of it. The way that we've talked about this inside our house is like, okay, going into grade nine, you can have a phone, but you can't take your phone to school with you. And you have to wait at least a year before you have to show me that you can be responsible with it. Before you can have other apps on your phone that aren't sort of like games, right? Like so before you can have Instagram, my whole path with this is like, I'm hoping schools ban phones.

• 43:41Speaker 00

  By the time that like.

• 43:42Shane Parrish?

  By the time.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  And they probably, they probably will.

• 43:44Shane Parrish?

  Well, Ontario came out yesterday and said they banned phones in, in all schools up until the end of grade 12, which I think is a great idea personally. And I'm hoping we get to this place with sort of like Snapchat and social media.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:58Shane Parrish?

  And some of that stuff before he gets there. So I'm like all about delaying, right?

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, yeah, I think that is the, the word.

• 44:05Shane Parrish?

  Also like they're growing up in a world where they have to coexist with technology and we know how addictive it is. So, you know, all of a sudden you're 18 and giving them a phone is also probably not the best strategy.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  It's interesting because the, all the data show that when they get the phone, it makes them more lonely.

• 44:20Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  It makes them more isolated.

• 44:22Shane Parrish?

  My conversation with Jonathan that actually totally, I was like adamant, no phone. I don't care what the pushback is. Like I'm, I'm going to slow roll this as long as I can. And he told me every year you can delay it. It makes a huge difference.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Cause they have like a prefrontal cortex, right? The, anyway, were really interesting because they have tons of video games, tons of TV. Like the, the grandmother we were with was like, she spent like a, a week out in the land hunting caribou. And then she comes back, she's like, I got so much CSI to catch up on. Like there's this like very like the technology and never like completely squeezed out the other life.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Right?

• 45:02Shane Parrish?

  How is that possible? Because it's designed, and I say this as, you know, it's designed to make it addictive.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  It's designed to squeeze it out. There's no doubt.

• 45:11Shane Parrish?

  If you have a sixteen year old boy or girl and they're on technology, like, how do you limit? How do they limit that as parents?

• 45:19Speaker 00

  I mean, I think some of it is like, and I'm not saying that anybody know how to do this at all, because I don't want to give that impression. But I think delay is absolutely the right word for many reasons. But also, it's about making sure that it is like you're talking about. Like, it is not, the way it works in the brain is, is it narrows your desires and wants to this, to this one thing. That's, that's what happens over time. I mean, you see it with kids, right? It's like, all they do is be, or is on their phone, right? They do nothing else. And I think that, to me, is like, the key, and it's what you're talking about. It's like, having these spaces and time and valuing of other things.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  And, and, I mean, we could talk about this for like, an hour. We could like, go on and on about this. Um, and I feel like we've kind of gone on a tangent, but.

• 46:12Shane Parrish?

  No, let's double click on this for a second. Like, what are sort of the big points here? Because this is something, when I talk to other parents, it's a hot topic to talk about.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:20Shane Parrish?

  When I talk to schools, it's a hot topic.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:23Shane Parrish?

  People want to know, uh, more about it. They also want to know, sort of like, where, where they can take strides, right? So if, if parents are listening to this and they have a sixteen year old addicted to their phone.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:36Shane Parrish?

  What are the tangible things they can do in the next one month? Or, you know, today, the next month, the next three months, to sort of like, help?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Okay, so here's how it works. And this is what I'm just writing about right now. Our brains are these little prediction devices, right? And when I walk into an environment, my brain does this quick calculation of where am I going to get my rewards in this environment? I'm going to maximize the rewards. And kids are even more this way, because their brains are, the prefrontal cortex is less evolved, or less developed. If a child walks into the living room, and every time they've walked into that living room for the last, like, five years of their life, they've played on the video game, they've looked at their phone, their brain is just lighting up like, firecrackers. They're going to use the phone. It's gonna, it's gonna exclude out everything else. They're never gonna pick up a book, because the phone is designed to do that.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  So the only way you can bring back these other things into their life is to create environments where their brain knows they can't have it. You have to.

• 47:39Shane Parrish?

  So does that mean like a technology free weekend? Does it mean like?

• 47:42Speaker 00

  Flip it around. So that's like the kind of the the zygotes or like the way we talk about now like Sabbaths and hours where we're not is the other way around. Life is without it and these are the times we have it.

• 47:54Shane Parrish?

  Oh, interesting. Okay.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Because then your brain relaxes. I can't because again, your brain is just it's just it's a prediction device. It just is predicting where do I get these things? And if it knows like I never get it.

• 48:06Shane Parrish?

  If it's variable reinforcement, then you're.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Oh, there's there's variable reinforcement. It's just the tip of the iceberg of the of the the tools they use to create this.

• 48:16Shane Parrish?

  No, but I mean, like, if you're like, oh, I can get video games some days at four, I can get it at some days at six.

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Oh, if you move it around.

• 48:23Shane Parrish?

  Around as a parent, you create this sort of like.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  I I don't know. It's interesting because you could think of the moving that that's a very interesting question to me. I've read both in these books, like you should do it at the same time. So if you do it at the same time, the brain will know, the brain will know. And if you don't do it at that time, you'll get like.

• 48:40Shane Parrish?

  So this is what we currently do and and like, give me the best practices here because I'm making this shit up as I go. But it's like, okay, we do video games. It's like seven, eight.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  Every day.

• 48:50Shane Parrish?

  Have your homework done.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  I would cut out every day.

• 48:53Shane Parrish?

  Oh, I can't. Yeah.

• 48:56Shane Parrish?

  They learn a lot from video. I mean, I would argue they actually learn a lot from video games.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, that's another thing. It's like, screens are not screens, right? It depends on what they're actually playing, right? But they don't need it.

• 49:07Shane Parrish?

  I don't, I don't. Well, you know, there's, there's an element of you're right, they don't need it. There's an element of all their friends are doing it.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Playing those video games.

• 49:18Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  But I mean, they don't need every day.

• 49:21Shane Parrish?

  Oh, God, I think, you know, if you were to survey parents, the fact that I give them like eight hours of screen time a week is probably on the extremely low end.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Is eight hours of screen time gonna like hurt them in the long run?

• 49:34Shane Parrish?

  Probably. This is what I worry about.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  I mean, I think, again, it depends on what they're doing. Depends on the kid, depends on their reward center. There's all these genetics involved in like, I have this incredibly addictive personality. Like I can get, I'm basically addicted to Gmail. Right? Like me and Tristan Harris are like, I, I can get like, we'll play Hey Man. And I'll be like, play it again, you know? Like, so like for me, an hour a day playing videos wouldn't be good.

• 50:00Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  You know, I think for some kids, it wouldn't be good.

• 50:02Shane Parrish?

  Well, I do change what they play. So if they're mean to each other after.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, there you go.

• 50:07Shane Parrish?

  Consistently. So we've talked about this, right? Like we, we took away a certain video game a while ago because I was like, hey, and I warned them, right? I'm like, I noticed how you guys interact after you play this. I don't like it.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 50:19Shane Parrish?

  That's not what we do and that's not how we treat anybody, let alone our family. And then it kept going and I was like, okay, you just can't play this video game anymore.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  So I think.

• 50:26Shane Parrish?

  And then it came back two years later.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  The game?

• 50:29Shane Parrish?

  Yeah. It was like, do you want to try again? Like, you know, they're like, we want to play it. And I'm like, okay, but you know why we lost it, right? Like, so if it has the same impact, we're going to have the same results.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  So I think you said like the key thing here, we always talk about time, hours of whatever screen. But it's like that, like I think we need new recommendations from AAP, from all the societies. Because an hour of screen time today can be so different, first of all, what, what you're doing.

• 50:55Shane Parrish?

  Oh, totally. Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  And then it's so different than like an hour of screen time when I was a kid.

• 50:59Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Right? It's just not the same. So I think you have to like, do exactly what you're saying. You have to like, what happens during that hour of screen time? How is the kid behave? What is they, what do they behave like afterwards, right? Like, how does it make them feel? Like, why do we need to do things? Why do kids need to do things where they feel worse afterwards?

• 51:16Shane Parrish?

  Tell me more about this feeling worse. Is that like when I, I try to end it and they won't let me end it? Is it how they treat people? Like, what does it mean to feel worse?

• 51:26Speaker 00

  I think it's a, it's a lot. I mean, I think you're, you're doing exactly what I'm saying. It's, it's like assessing like.

• 51:31Shane Parrish?

  I'm really just making this stuff up. Like this is, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just trying to think like, okay, maybe let's figure this out.

• 51:40Speaker 00

  One thing is that just because a child wants it, doesn't mean it's actually like pleasurable.

• 51:45Shane Parrish?

  Of course.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Right? And so I think a lot of parents think that they, oh, they want it so much. That they they like it, right? And and that's just wrong. That's based off like fifty year old neuroscience.

• 51:57Shane Parrish?

  So I'm gonna push back on this slightly because when when I intuitively hear that, I think in a different way, which is probably completely wrong. But I think ah, something they care about, a currency that I can use to manipulate at worst behavior.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. And I think lots of parents feel that.

• 52:18Shane Parrish?

  Positively reward behavior at best, maybe. And so it's like the one thing in their lives where I'm like, okay, I have something that I know they want.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Yes, I think that's the common. That's a very common. And I think I felt that way too about it at first. But then I was like, is it worth it?

• 52:33Shane Parrish?

  Go deeper on that.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  Like, okay, so we had like Rosie, maybe like when she was six, it was like, starting like with, you know, Netflix, right?

• 52:43Shane Parrish?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Which is insane, right? And if you you watch it, like, it it makes me feel insane to watch some some of it. It's like so fast and it's so like psychedelic and it's just like, ah. And we would, every night she would get some time and it would, like you say, it was like this currency, right? This like, oh, reward, this like manipulative device. But then at the end of it, she'd be so crazy. And every night would be like a struggle and a fight. And like, she'd be like a different child. And it was just like, I don't think this is worth it. I don't need this. I can, I don't, first of all, I can motivate her in other ways, ways that don't make her scream at me and ways that don't feel like this struggle and don't make her hyper and don't. And it just feels like a waste of her time.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  I think I come at it more from the perspective of it's not hurting her, but actually she's gonna feel better and have.

• 53:33Shane Parrish?

  If she does something else.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it like lifelong better, you know? Because what you're doing is you're building habits.

• 53:40Shane Parrish?

  Oh, totally.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Right? Like when I'm, when I'm bored, when I, when I wanna relax, and I would even question whether it's relaxing for kids a lot, especially video games, I do this.

• 53:49Shane Parrish?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Right? I could build that habit. I could build a habit in Rosie like that. But maybe, maybe, maybe better in her life would be like, when I'm bored, I play, I play them a piano.

• 54:01Shane Parrish?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  I read a book. And she's never gonna pick those things if she knows the other is available.

• 54:06Shane Parrish?

  I have one kid who probably reads too much.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  So

• 54:10Shane Parrish?

  If that's even possible.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  I think most kids are not like that.

• 54:13Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I take away books as like a consequence.

• 54:18Shane Parrish?

  He's like, you know.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  Books, like paper books?

• 54:21Shane Parrish?

  And Kindle, like he's on the Kindle all the time. It's attached to my account. So A, I get these crazy Amazon recommendations. It's like based on your reading. I'm like, man, you don't know me. I'm not worried about AI taking over at all. Right? Then I open the Kindle and I'm like, oh, now I know where I get it from. But like it's, it's a currency coming back to technology. It's like, I know something that motivates him. I know that, hey, I'm gonna, you know, this is a consequence, a natural consequence to your behavior. And then he's like, oh, you're the dad that takes away reading from his child.

• 54:50Speaker 00

  But that currency to me is more valuable than like watching Netflix.

• 54:55Shane Parrish?

  Does it matter if they're, if it's sort of like the same thing? If they're reading a book about the same show they'd be watching, do you think?

• 55:01Speaker 00

  I, I mean, I think it just, again, it depends on what you value. What do you think? Like for a while, Rosie was kind of addicted to audiobooks.

• 55:09Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  Like hours and hours and hours, like six, seven hours on the weekends, you know, of just listening. And to some parents, that would be like amazing. And I mean, I, I think that's better than watching cartoons in the sense that like, she learned narrative structure. She learned incredible vocabulary, right? Like, like, so that's what I'm saying. Like I had to like figure out. But then it was, I could see it was like squeezing out other things and it was like creating conflict, right? Like, so it's like, what do I value?

• 55:34Shane Parrish?

  Takes over. So this value thing is super interesting because it's, it makes me wonder if a lot of our parenting is driven by like, we're trying to succeed through our children instead of putting our children in a position where they can succeed.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  I think that we don't.

• 55:50Shane Parrish?

  Oh, you get into Yale. That's my success as much as your success.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  And you're transmitting the value of that. Right? I don't think we stop and think enough about like, how our actions and what we say and what we, the currency we use with children. Transmits values. So for instance, like I'm sitting there talking to one of my friends about Jonathan's book about literally about this topic and have with with the mom of two children and the thirteen year old comes over and shows us look mom, look at this video of this gerbil like while we're talking about this topic and what does the mom do?

• 56:27Shane Parrish?

  Stops looks at the video.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  Stops our face to face conversation to look at this like TikTok video. And like engage with it. And I just left there and I was like, what is that transmitting to the children in the room?

• 56:41Shane Parrish?

  That they're the the VIP, right? You're the.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  And this TikTok video is more important.

• 56:47Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Than a face to face conversation with a friend.

• 56:50Shane Parrish?

  And it's not something you're actively communicating, but it's something they're receiving through.

• 56:54Speaker 00

  Oh, I think it is active. I mean, yes, in the sense that like.

• 56:57Shane Parrish?

  Like not directive.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  I'm not saying, oh, the TikTok video is more, but that's not how kids learn. Kids don't learn from what you say is important. Kids learn through practice and modeling. That is how kids learn. Everything.

• 57:10Shane Parrish?

  What would be an alternative way to handle that situation?

• 57:12Speaker 00

  I would say I'm I'm I'm I'm talking, I'm talking to, this is important. I'm having a conversation with Mike Lean right now. You know, let's discuss this later. And then I would tell the child later. You know, number one, that's really rude. To to, you know, it's a thirteen year old kid like they should know at that point. That's rude to, you know, interrupt in the middle of a conversation like I would tell Rosie that nicely, not maybe not as mean as I just said it.

• 57:38Shane Parrish?

  You do that after, not in the moment.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  I wouldn't do it in the moment. You would embarrass the child. You'd make a big scene. In the moment, it's more of a performative parenting device.

• 57:47Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 57:48Speaker 00

  Which is they get, what do you value?

• 57:49Shane Parrish?

  They're less likely.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Me looking good as a parent.

• 57:52Shane Parrish?

  They're less likely to learn, but you feel better.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  That's right. You're basically shaming them and right. But I would tell them in the moment, like I'm I'm this conversation is important and. There, I'm transmitting the value of I value a face to face interaction more than some gerbil video on TikTok.

• 58:08Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  But if you look around you and you will see this everywhere. You will see parents actively valuing and modeling the love of technology. The reward system is really a value system.

• 58:20Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  The the reward system in the brain is made in animals so to, you know, make sure they get food, it's sex, water, safety, right? But in humans, it's can be it can be hooked up to anything that seems valuable.

• 58:33Shane Parrish?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:34Speaker 00

  And that's what children are learning. They're learning that the screen, these videos, this video game, this is what our society, this is what my family values.

• 58:44Shane Parrish?

  It's so hard. Look, I I I leave my phone in a different room when we eat dinner.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, we we have it. We have one phone and it's in a drawer.

• 58:55Shane Parrish?

  And I feel it, right?

• 58:56Speaker 00

  You want to go over there?

• 58:57Shane Parrish?

  I do. I I I definitely feel a pull towards it, right?

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, they call it motivational magnet.

• 59:03Shane Parrish?

  Well, it's like, where's my phone? You know, like, you don't have this thing on you. But it's interesting because a couple of weeks ago, my youngest came up to me and he's like, I like that you never have your phone at dinner.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 59:17Shane Parrish?

  And I was like, I didn't even think you noticed. He's like, yeah. Like, it was just this moment of like, oh, I was like, I so I was doing it because I wanted to pay attention to them. And my motivation was like, less of a, you know, it's sort of communicating values, which is like, we need to chat face to face, but it was also about avoiding regret. I didn't want them. I always think about like, well, they're going to move out one day.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:41Shane Parrish?

  I hope eventually. And when they move out, I'm gonna wish I was having dinner with them.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  And what was more important? Checking your email for the on your time or like?

• 59:51Shane Parrish?

  And so all of these thoughts lead to like, I'm just gonna leave. And I'm not, I usually am, but like, I'm not 100% confident that I can just like leave it in my pocket and then.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  You can't.

• 1:00:02Shane Parrish?

  But the other thing that I've started doing recently is when I'm with them, I put it on silent mode.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:00:08Shane Parrish?

  And the only people that can get through silent mode are them.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, all these things that you're doing are transmitting the value of like, you care about interacting with them. More than the phone.

• 1:00:20Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, I I didn't think they paid attention. Oh, at least one of them pays attention.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  I think it's a fascinating observation. I've been, I'm writing a chapter now about how actually kids don't like technology as much as you think they do.

• 1:00:30Shane Parrish?

  Oh, tell me more about this.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  Because I just asked them.

• 1:00:34Shane Parrish?

  But can they answer that? I mean,

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm not talking about like,

• 1:00:37Shane Parrish?

  what kind of car you want, you end up with Homer Simpson's car, right?

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  It's not that blatant. And you can actually find it in in these um like in conversations or in books, people will say these, that people will like, say what you just said, like, kids will say things like, oh, I really like this night because we're not on the screens. You know, so kids, that's what I'm saying, like, but you can ask them, you can say like, well, what what do you do on the iPad after school? I do this, I do that. And then one little girl said, without even me saying anything was like, but you know, I would do something more fun and more better if my parents let me. Oh, you don't want to actually be on that bed? No, I don't really want to be on that bed. Actually, and Rosie one day said to me like not that long ago, she said, I thought you wanted me on the Netflix.

• 1:01:19Shane Parrish?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Because I kind of did in the sense that like what you're talking about using it as currency, right? So I was like pushing it at her, right?

• 1:01:27Shane Parrish?

  You need to find something.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  You don't need it. It was really weird.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  Again, it's this question of wanting it, wanting to pick up your phone and actually enjoying it and actually valuing it and actually like, I think most kids would rather do something else. But they are like, especially teenagers that have been on technology for so long. I mean, their brains are so wired to want it. They call them motivational magnets. The cues turn into these like magnets that pull you there, not the actual software, the cues.

• 1:02:04Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  And you actually transfer the value onto the cues. And it's this very, very, very strong pull. To get away from that, you have to protect the child from the cues.

• 1:02:13Shane Parrish?

  What do you tell your, I don't know, like I'm picking random ages here, but like your, your sixteen year old or your twelve year old that they can't watch a show on Netflix? Or that's not what our family does or values, but then they go to school and everybody's talking about it. Now they feel left out. They feel like they're not a part of something.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  Right, right. Isn't it interesting how it's all about fear? Because we think it's about reward, but it's actually about fear and the fear and the reward system are all enmeshed.

• 1:02:42Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  Um, so I think at the teenage years, you start, you really, they, they really need to start to understand how it affects their brain.

• 1:02:50Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  You know, and how it's manipulating their brain, kind of wiring, wiring up their reward system to prioritize it over everything else. Teenagers don't like to be manipulated. So I think you start there. You start with this conversation of how this actually works. One of the neuroscientists said to me, he has a twelve year old boy, just gave him a phone. He gave him this like hour long PowerPoint on what the phone does through his brain and how it works and how the, this thing called sign tracking and all this stuff. Um, and then they had, they sat down and they said, okay, he said, how much of your day do you want the phone to take up?

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Let's write it down. How much do you want? And I think the kids is done like forty five minutes a day, which sounds about what you're doing, right?

• 1:03:32Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  And he said, okay. And they wrote it out. And he said, now it's my job as the parent to hold him to that. It becomes more of this cooperation thing where they're like.

• 1:03:43Shane Parrish?

  Well, that's what it is, right? You're effectively trying to come up with something with them, but you're still the parental authority.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  Oh, I think absolutely you are. It's your house.

• 1:03:52Shane Parrish?

  To coaching.

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's more, it's a more guidance. But then there, I think that there's these rules that makes sense just neuro, neurologically, you know, like no, no screens in the bedroom.

• 1:04:03Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  I mean, like we got rid of, right now we have no screens after seven and I try to hold it to myself.

• 1:04:11Shane Parrish?

  I, I can't do that just because of homework too. Like they do all their homework on technology.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  Sure. I mean, not.

• 1:04:17Shane Parrish?

  But like they leave their phones in the living room. They're not letting their phones in their bedroom at this point, you know, this all changes.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  But try, try it in the sense that like, if you can, one of the neuroscientists who studies dopamine in the eyes told me three hours before bedtime.

• 1:04:33Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  And so I started do, I mean, it's crazy, right? That's like seven o'clock, right?

• 1:04:36Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  Um, and I started doing it like maybe in November and I, Shane, I sleep like I've never slept before. I mean, I'm not kidding you. I'm like, I mean, I, and I think, I think kids will feel the same. I mean, it really affects your, the sleep. There's no doubt.

• 1:04:50Shane Parrish?

  Is there a book you came across in your research that like parents of teens, you know, sort of twelve, thirteen can be like, hey, before you get a phone, before we talk about technology, I want you to read this and let's have a conversation about it.

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  I would recommend watching Social Dilemma.

• 1:05:04Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Have you watched that? Have you guys watched that?

• 1:05:05Shane Parrish?

  No.

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  Definitely watch that. I've heard of some teenagers tell me they've had to watch it in school. Like it's.

• 1:05:10Shane Parrish?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:05:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's good.

• 1:05:12Shane Parrish?

  The same schools that don't ban phones.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  I'm not sure. I haven't done the cross correlation data on that, but I, but the problem is, is that parents don't know these things. Like parents, it's not like I say, like it's not an even playing field right now. The tech industry has all this knowledge and tools and goals about technology and how it affects your brain. And it affects children's brains more that way because of, you know, they're not as developed. And parents have none of it right now. It's a really, really uneven playing field and we're playing with these old rules of two hours of screen time a night and.

• 1:05:48Shane Parrish?

  I try to be, I mean, personally, I just try it. Like the rules are interesting. We're trying to get away from rules into more like autonomy, if you will, within, within certain limits of.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:59Shane Parrish?

  How that goes, but I mean, it's just a nonstop struggle and I have great kids, so I can imagine.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:06:06Shane Parrish?

  If you had more difficult children, I can, like some nights I go to bed and I'm like, man, I just won the Olympics, right? Nobody died today. Everybody ate food. This is a win.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  And they were on the screen for an hour.

• 1:06:17Shane Parrish?

  And you know, like some days I'm like, oh, I just don't care. I need a break, right? Like I, I need a.

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  I mean, it really is about setting up your environment. I mean, I, I said that earlier.

• 1:06:27Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Speaker 00

  I said, like, you set up an environment where the child can be autonomous and you, it's about doing that with the screens. It's just gonna be hard. It's just gonna be harder because. They they are magnets.

• 1:06:39Shane Parrish?

  I want to come back to this just before we end, but like, what have you learned about in not these tribes, but in sort of Western culture, what can we do for our environment? That sort of at least adds friction to things, if not removes them as a possibility.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  You mean for technology?

• 1:06:58Shane Parrish?

  Well, for technology or anything like, what can we do to encourage autonomy in our kids?

• 1:07:04Shane Parrish?

  Through the environment, I I'm a big fan of the environment is like the hidden hand.

• 1:07:08Speaker 00

  It is.

• 1:07:08Shane Parrish?

  I think James Clear said that the hidden hand that shapes your your.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, like we said, like a prediction machine, I come into an environment and it's like, I know, like I'm predicting everything that I've done here in the past, especially with younger children. I mean, older children too, it's about empowering them. So you don't have to say anything to them, right? It's teaching them the skills they need so that they can be autonomous in your environment. So you can either change the environment and get rid of everything, which is what we kind of tend to do with kids. But then you just leave them unempowered, right? Or you slowly teach them, you know? So does that make sense?

• 1:07:46Shane Parrish?

  A little bit, yeah, I I think it's just, I I'm trying to make it practical for.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Right, so give me an example of something that you've.

• 1:07:53Shane Parrish?

  Like a house environment, like what are the things? So like one thing that you mentioned that I I picked up on, which I mean, we don't do. Other people may or may not, and I really try not to judge other people. Everybody's doing their best, I really.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  And every kid is different, that's the thing too.

• 1:08:08Shane Parrish?

  So but like having a TV in your room or having something like, so that's an environmental choice, right? Where you put the TV.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  That's a parental choice.

• 1:08:15Shane Parrish?

  And so if you put the TV and sort of the main floor, you end up with one sort of, you're you're exemplifying one thing.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:23Shane Parrish?

  And if you put it in the basement, you're you're sort of like putting it out of the way, it's not a showpiece. And then the kids get more autonomy in a way because they have to go downstairs and like figure it out themselves and hang out with their friends if they want to watch TV. And so like, I'm just thinking, are there any other environmental? I would love to learn some, I'm sure everybody else listening would.

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  I think one of the things that maybe we haven't said explicitly that should be said is like. I don't think children can be autonomous with technology, some technologies.

• 1:08:51Shane Parrish?

  Oh, that's interesting. Okay.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Right. I don't think that they're capable.

• 1:08:55Shane Parrish?

  I don't even think adults are capable.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm not.

• 1:08:58Shane Parrish?

  So use the environment to shape the technologies. It's like screen time limits or app limits or something.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  That's right. So like, let's take like Inuit hunting. A lot of, one of the big goals in, is to teach boys, but now girls too, it's very mixed, to seal hunt.

• 1:09:15Shane Parrish?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  Okay. They have to do, many families have to do it. And like, you know, this is a skill you have to learn, right? Well, the seal hunt is crazy. It is a crazy skill. You have to go out on the ice, poke a hole in the middle of nowhere and stand, and then they put a little tiny like feather in the hole. And you sit there and you stare at it for six hours until the feather moves. And then you stab the ice. This is a very difficult.

• 1:09:43Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  Task. Well, you can't just take a six year old and tell him to go seal hunt.

• 1:09:47Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Right? What do they do? The dad explained it to me. He's like, when the kid can stay outside for six hours, then we'll take them with us. But we'll park them like way out because if they make noise, they're gonna mess it all up. And then if the kid still wants to do it, then we'll bring, you know, slowly bring them closer. And it's like, I mean, I think that's how we think of technology is a little bit like seal hunting.

• 1:10:08Shane Parrish?

  Little bit at a time, demonstrate responsibility and then.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, you delay it until they show a lot of interest and really want it. And then it's like, okay, well, where can you go in the seal hunt? You're gonna be way out there.

• 1:10:19Shane Parrish?

  Right.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  And then you, you show me you can do that.

• 1:10:21Shane Parrish?

  And then.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  And then I'll pull you in a little bit closer.

• 1:10:23Shane Parrish?

  Kind of like what I've done intuitively personally, which is like, okay, well, show me you can be responsible before we start adding.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Right. It's exactly what you like. And delaying it, you know, because they're, the kid's not capable of standing over the hole. Six hours, right? And it's like the, the parent's not gonna stick them in that situation and have them fail. Well, I think if you put a phone, give the child a phone and stick them in their bedroom or the video game, you're putting them at the seal hole to fail. Right? And so it's not new that this idea, I just think that we have to treat this thing as this tool that's like, kids can't. Learn yet. They don't have the mental capacity to sit over the hole for six hours. They don't have the mental capacity to carry a phone into their room and not go to bed. It's a slow process.

• 1:11:10Shane Parrish?

  Oh, yeah. And like, everybody's doing the best they can. Every child is different. Every sort of like environment's different, but then like every broader environment's different too, like.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  Actually, the community, the school.

• 1:11:21Shane Parrish?

  A lot of schools are all technology now. There's iPads and computers and laptops.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  Oh, and the school is crazy, which I think actually means at home it's more important.

• 1:11:32Shane Parrish?

  Oh, to go the other way. That's interesting.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  They need to build these other skills. I mean, like, I'm a big fan of Cal Newport. And he talks a lot about how like concentrating and these, and you know, doing this kind of deep thinking and stuff is, it takes practice.

• 1:11:46Shane Parrish?

  We always end with the same question, but I'm gonna use a slightly different version of it for you, which is, what is success as a parent for you?

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  So when I first, before I wrote the book, it was like, well, you're talking about like Yale. You know, it's like Rosie speaking Mandarin and going to Yale was, was, you know, like, and it, I don't, I don't even. Uh, but then when I wrote the book, I was like, success for me is Rosie feeling, growing up mentally healthy.

• 1:12:13Shane Parrish?

  What does that mean, mentally healthy?

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  Not having tons of anxiety and depression and like feeling suicidal and like, you know, like just like enjoying life. You know, like really enjoying life and enjoying our relationship, enjoying being part of the family, which I think is important for like mentally healthy kids. You know, that means working, having a job, that means having a family, that means whatever that means for her, but like, you know, waking up and being excited about the things she's doing in that day.

• 1:12:45Shane Parrish?

  That's a beautiful way to end this conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time.

• 1:12:56Shane Parrish?

  Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog/podcast or just Google The Knowledge Project. Recently, I've started to record my reflections and thoughts about the interview after the interview. I sit down, highlight the key moments that stood out for me, and I also talk about other connections to episodes and sort of what's got me pondering that I maybe haven't quite figured out. This is available to supporting members of The Knowledge Project. You can go to fs.blog/membership, check out the show notes for a link, and you can sign up today. And my reflections will just be available in your private podcast feed. You'll also skip all the ads at the front of the episode.

• 1:13:42Shane Parrish?

  The Frontam Street Blog is also where you can learn more about my new book, Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results. It's a transformative guide that hands you the tools to master your fate, sharpen your decision-making, and set yourself up for unparalleled success. Learn more at fs.blog/clear. Until next time.