Why fantasy beats a 'gray' childhood

Should you lie to your kids about Santa Claus? Malcolm and Simone Collins argue YES — and not doing so robs children of the magic, wonder, and crucial life lessons that come with a mythical childhood.

In this episode, they dive into:

* Why “never lying” to kids creates toxic blind trust in authority

* How their family builds an elaborate world of Krampus, Tommy Knockers, alive toys, slide eaters, and superhero dads

* The developmental need for scary stories, monsters, and survival play

* How Santa perfectly teaches kids that sometimes the entire world (media, government, schools) can push the same “lie”

* Why stripping away fantasy leaves childhood gray and boring

Plus adorable bonus audio of their kids asking about Daddy’s battle helmet from the “future war” against Krampus’s communist demon army.

If you’re a pronatalist parent who wants richer, more magical family traditions — this one’s for you. Merry Christmas and happy Future Day planning!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. It’s exciting to be here with you today. Today we are going to be doing two things. We’re gonna be talking about why you should lie to your children about Santa Claus. Yes. It was always that parent, and I swear to God, and they act like they’re taking the moral high ground when they’re talking about this.

Oh. Which is, I don’t, I don’t believe in ever lying to my children. Right. And you’re just like,

Simone Collins: Ugh. What Bores No.

Malcolm Collins: No. But I also think that, that they haven’t thought through the disservice they do to their children.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I think it is I’m not gonna say child abuse. But it, it certainly you know, in that sort of territory for me

Simone Collins: they’re wronging their children of a very young facet of childhood, a magical childhood.

We’ll

Malcolm Collins: talk about that. But we’re also gonna go into some studies on Santa Claus. And unfortunately I couldn’t find any. What I really wanted was a study on kids who were grown up believing and not believing in Santa Claus. Yeah.

Simone Collins: There’s nothing on that. [00:01:00]

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. At least no one’s ever found any significant differences.

Speaker 3: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. First sort of the, the central layout of the argument here. Right.

Simone Collins: Alright.

Malcolm Collins: The argument from the other side that I often hear is, well, and, and I think it’s important to remember whenever you’re dealing with a situation like this, you need to deal with the potential benefits. Versus drawbacks of both sides.

Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely. I think

Malcolm Collins: that both sides can pretend like there are literally zero benefits on the other side, which I think is just false, right? It is between the benefits and drawbacks that both sides give you, which are more benefits to drawbacks, right.

Speaker 3: Yes,

Malcolm Collins: in terms of child development, in terms of cultural transference, in terms of building good values, a healthy view of the world, and getting a full and complete childhood.

So, the people who say, I would never lie to my kids about anything the perspective they’re taking is they want [00:02:00] the kid to feel as if there is. Some form of authority that will never betrayal.

General, they want the kid to have some form of like, they won’t be able to fully emotionally trust them. If the kid know that there was ever a time in that kid’s life where they systemically misrepresented first of all, first of all, this actually almost feels kind of psychotic to me.

So I’ll explain it why in, in a few steps here. Okay. Where I don’t even see this as a, as a positive. So first, when your kid leaves you and the home and goes out into the world, the, the blindly trusting authority is a very, very negative trait to have.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. It’s not

Malcolm Collins: a good thing to teach your kid.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, because we’re constantly being lied to as adults. How can you not teach that to children? That’s bad.

Malcolm Collins: But worse than that it, it’s doing it in [00:03:00] favor because the parent will say, well, I want them to be able to trust me at least, right? Like me, the caregiver, me, the person who is, is there for them.

Oh, please. The problem with this mindset is. You are trying to make it, which, which, and I’ll explain where this becomes like really twisted and almost sort of brainwashy so that everything you say to your kid is true, but that is not the case. A lot of what you say is going to be based on your opinions and your perceptions.

Mm-hmm. And you never know how crazy you actually are.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like you may believe that processed food is poison. But to other people, that’s an overt lie. And the, the kids may see that as a lie and see you as someone who lied to them. And if you, if you believe or convince yourself that you’ve told them nothing but the truth, you’re going to look like a liar eventually.

You’re not gonna look like a

Malcolm Collins: liar. You’re gonna look like you are somebody who attempted to brainwash your kids into believing anything you told them. Mm. And that’s a really weird relationship [00:04:00] to have with your children. Like your children should doubt the things you say because you are not going to always be right.

And this relationship where at least with me, they know that they can always trust me to be right. I don’t like that at all. I think that’s really toxic.

It’s like these people are actively attempting to raise the delightful children from down the lane.

Malcolm Collins: But then let’s talk about , the positives, like why you want to lie to your kids about Santa Claus. And this actually comes to a. Larger relationship we have with our kids because we don’t just have Santa Claus in our family.

For example, my kids. And in my son’s world. So my son is at school today and in my kid’s world yesterday, Krampus came down and was scratching at their door because they had tried to hide some of their not iPad like tablets that they were watching in their bed to watch at night. And so then they got scared and then daddy came downstairs with the, the sword behind me here that they, they believe is.

A magical [00:05:00] sword that I used to fight off Krampus. And when I come downstairs this morning my oldest son is like, huh, Krampus got what was coming to him, right? He goes, he should have known better than to mess with the Collins family. And then he gives me like a high five for like a high five and he just loves it.

And then toast. You wanted to come up and give me a high five. Because Krampus was destroyed. And then after that they went to go check on a toter row that they had in a little glass jar to see if he had moved. It was a little toy, but they wanted to see if the toy had tried to escape, and then they got worried that the toy would try to escape.

So then daddy had to walk over and cast a magic spell of protection on the jar. Yeah. To keep the toy inate. And then the middle kid became upset because I cast a spell, but I didn’t have a cape on. And so we had to explain how capes worked and whether daddy was a superhero or not. And I explained to them, I go, that’s why the reporters [00:06:00] always come to our house is because I’m a superhero.

And then he goes, well, can you fly? And we went through all the superheroes who didn’t fly. And I was like, so to become a superhero, you have to become really smart and you’ve gotta study a lot and you’ve gotta, you know, and so in their, theirs is actually a world where when they look out from our house at night, there are krampuses hiding when they go to the woods where the swamp is, there’s witches in the woods.

Right? And as we point out historically, this is why witches lived in swamps, because you don’t want your kids going into the swamp. That’s why a witch lives in earth. In the swamp, the, the, the one of the ghouls that they talk about the most, that they believe lives in their house. Or the

Simone Collins: the Tommy Knockers.

Malcolm Collins: Tommy, the Tommy Knockers, and they

Simone Collins: live in a cave down, well, an old mine shaft down one of the pathways that you can get to from our house. And they, they’re like, oh, that’s where the Tommy Knockers are.

Malcolm Collins: And they’ll tell other people about it. Like, we’ll be walking by the mine shaft and they’ll tell, and they’ll be like,

Simone Collins: watch out for the Tommy Knockers.

You better walk, watch. People are always. Soak and they’re like, [00:07:00] okay, okay. Yeah, sure.

Malcolm Collins: And everybody just innately goes along with it. The one that they’ve gotten into more recently too from the internet is one is six. Se the six seven boy. The six seven he spa behind trees. Yeah. He thought he saw a six seven Boy.

In toasty bed, which was like a dark figure of a child who is scary and he thought he saw his hand reaching into his bed. And so, I told him that the Six seven Boy comes if you watch bad YouTube shows that are not good for your brain. And so now he’s afraid of watching bad YouTube channels.

But we also talk about how to like ward off the Six Seven Boy and how to, and the other one is, is eaters. There’s all sorts of eaters in the world. There’s train eaters and slide eaters and house eaters. And what I’ve learned is I think a, an eater is like a normal object, like a, a train or a house.

Mm-hmm. But if you go into it, it will eat you.

Yeah. And so you’ve got to, and I, I think this comes from the category of, of YouTube videos eaters, because I’ve, I’ve seen them, right? Like the [00:08:00] YouTube, whatever.

Simone Collins: It’s, so yeah. How these memes emerge. I’ve yet to see a YouTuber do an expose on the eater meme.

Malcolm Collins: Have you searched?

Simone Collins: I, I, should I? Yeah, I haven’t, I haven’t. I will search action date now. Search

Malcolm Collins: now? Yeah. But anyway the, the, the point here being is that if our kids are imagining something, be it a six, seven kid or eaters or if they’re not imagining something or, or, or Totoro being alive. Right.

Simone Collins: Well, I told them

Malcolm Collins: that. Oh, you told them that. That’s all. Yeah. We just, yes. And or continue to build on that. Mm-hmm. So they live in a world, like my kids actually grow up in a reality from their perspective where toys come to life and magic exists and there’s monsters outside the house. Daddy battles was a sword.

That’s the world that they live in. It is the world of childhood.

Simone Collins: The first thing I [00:09:00] pull up, it just combines the six seven kid and this. Slide eater.

Malcolm Collins: Really the missing six oh kid and the slide eater,

Simone Collins: that is the swap that our children love.

Malcolm Collins: I I like that. They like horror, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, there’s just, there’s just so much of it. And then like when kids get caught in this,

Malcolm Collins: they just can’t, it’s a slide, eat the two parents holding their kids’ leg, who’s half eaten by the slide. So

Simone Collins: good

eater. But yeah, there’s, there’s no, there’s no explanations of it. It’s just slop for children. And I almost,

Malcolm Collins: I almost want to try making child swap to see how well a child Swap channel does if we like,

Simone Collins: I mean, I’m looking at these, these videos and it’s 480 K views. [00:10:00] The one with the parents that we were just looking at 15 million views.

The, the one with the yellow slide and the teeth, 187,000 views we’re in the wrong line of business.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we’re in the, we have

Simone Collins: to

Malcolm Collins: come

Simone Collins: up and write scripts. Slops about duck is calling Slide. Eater eat duck in real life. Oh no. Oh, no. It’s always like these, like bizarre, like nightmare fuel, like mouth fusion with like toys.

But the point being is

Malcolm Collins: that our kids live in that world and you could be like, oh, well that’s not healthy for kids to live in a world of fantasy. It’s like, okay. That is the world that all children used to live in, right? Yeah. That is the world that when you watch your cartoons, whether it’s adventure time or like one of the ones where like the kid goes into kid world, right?

Simone Collins: Lippy, slide eater. It’s all about, it’s it, this is it’s

Malcolm Collins: slide eat. It’s, it’s

Simone Collins: the OTP of beat Flippy, [00:11:00]

Malcolm Collins: oh my god. Things. Things in the child’s life. Slides at playgrounds and flippy.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And now you get slide eaters. Yeah. But the point being is, is oh, and the little, the, the other, like other things that they believe our daughter believes that she needs to learn to act like a lady so that she can go to princess school.

Yes. ‘cause they want to take her to the castle to learn to be a princess. Yes. And all of these things are just like narratives that they have going on in their daily lives.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In other words, I mean, kids do this by themselves anyway, among themselves. And what’s different maybe about our household that I, I haven’t seen in every household is that we, yes.

And with them. So if they give us a narrative, we just play into it. And sometimes we will seed the narratives ourselves. Like our kids finding this, there’s a little, it’s a terrarium jar with a little clay totoro in it that my friend, my high school friend Amy, made for me that [00:12:00] I had from my childhood.

And the kids found it and we’re like, what’s this? And I’m like, oh, it’s Totoro, he’s alive. Like, and then they’d like ignore him for a bit and they’d be like, oh my God, Totoro moved. And then they run up to it and they’re like, he moved. And just like to make, to bring things alive like that. We just, we just either seed it or contribute to it and then continue with it.

That’s it. It’s so simple and it’s way more fun than being a curmudgeon,

Malcolm Collins: but, but it’s not just about curmudgeon versus non curmudgeon. Imagine the life of two children, right?

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Suppose a child lived in our household and, you know, would go to stay with the people who care for him during the day, during the day.

They come back at night, they play with us on weekends, and other than that, they’re in a house, right? Like. That’s a very contained and quite boring and unstimulating life for that child’s imagination, right? You can talk about things outside of the house that matter to adults. You could talk about being an astronaut, or you could talk about, you know, going into space.

Or you could [00:13:00] talk about driving a train, I guess, or being a police officer. But in reality, while a child’s mind will. You know, briefly flirt with these sorts of ideas. They’re never really gonna grab onto them in a, in a very tight, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a very sort of gray world that you’re putting the child in because the child just doesn’t care about adult concepts as much, like getting a job one day.

30 years from now after elementary school, middle school, high school and college, and a graduate degree, and then a beginning of a career, and then they’re an astronaut, you know, like. You are seeding their, you’re, you’re trying to get them excited about stuff that kids are just not designed to get excited about.

And so they live in this world where they may create imaginary scenarios with their siblings. But when they try to tell the caregivers in their lives about those imaginary [00:14:00] scenarios the caregiver is just like, no, that’s not real. Like the source of authority is a source of killjoy. It’s a source of of, of, of, of sort of killing unbridled imagination and exploration.

And, and we’re exploring taboo topics, right? Like, what is it, what is that really for a kid, but sort of metaphysical exploration of reality, right? And so they were, well, I don’t

Simone Collins: know. So the way that I view kid play in development is that, as you’ve pointed out in other episodes, there are various sort of like stimuli that really get us at different points in our lives.

That are important to recognize, like there are stages in where we’re, we are now personally as late thirties adults is. We’re very much all about family and we get so much fulfillment and happiness from being with our kids and building a really strong and safe environment for them. And people in their twenties get a lot of fulfillment from exploring and meeting new people [00:15:00] and going out into the world.

And people in their teens are really, they get a lot out of like social acceptance and cohesion and engagement. And then kids, it seems like the key things is with play is testing your own boundaries, testing other people’s boundaries, so understanding sort of where basic social rules are.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Obtaining resources, which is super, super important.

And avoiding death. Like basically like discovering how to not die. And that is why games like hide and seek, like tag are, are so big. Explain what you mean by obtaining resources. Obtaining resources is like fighting over toys competing for parents’ resources fighting for parents’. Affections.

Speaker 3: Yeah, like attention.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So it’s really. In your very earliest stages, it’s almost like you’re climbing up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in your interests in life. But it shows up in the type of play that you find most stimulating at any [00:16:00] given life stage and for kids. The play that stimulates them the most has to do with sort of violent life or death survival and understanding basic rules and boundaries of society, plus obtaining the resources that you need for survival.

And while kids appear to be fighting over stupid stuff like, oh, that, you know, toy that you guys found discarded, broken on the sidewalk, that now every sibling is fighting over even though it’s a piece of trash and they have really great toys at home. The reason why they’re fighting over that piece of trash is because like they are, they are conditioned to, to, to, there’s like a a drive to fight over resources to help them hone the skills they need to get resources throughout their lives to survive.

Malcolm Collins: And I wanna talk about Krampus here because people can be like, well, that’s just like a purely negative thing that you’ve invented for your kids. No, it’s

Simone Collins: about survival. Like all the stuff, like, and, and kids seek out these obsess obsessions with predators, with slide eaters, with [00:17:00] krampus. They, they, they want.

Predators in their lives. Right. And

Malcolm Collins: that’s the, that’s the point I was going to get to. Mm-hmm. Which is to say that in the before time before schools became weird, before parents became weird, the type of imaginary play that kids sought out the most, other than two factions fighting against each other, which is a big type cowboys in Indians, got their honors, et cetera.

Yes. Is. Scary stories. Mm-hmm. If you go with a group of kids and they’re doing a sleepover, the scary stories are the first thing to come out. Right. Like, that is just a, a really like critical thing for them is just doing the scary stories. Reading the scary stories, attempting to scare each other.

Absolutely. Even in my generation, one of the most popular books. And they tried to neuter it with scary stories to tell in the dark. Oh my gosh, yes. You know, you have the horrifying images from that. If you haven’t gotten that for your kids,

I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I’ll show images on screen here for somebody who hasn’t seen it, but it’s a genuinely scary [00:18:00] book for children and they tried to recently make the images less like.

Mortifying the children and nobody bought it. And they went back to the original images. ‘Cause they’re like, well, the images are the problem. It’s like, no, the images are the reason anybody buys this. The stories are fine. It’s, it’s like folktales. But the, the point I’m making here is to build on what Simone is saying, which is that kids.

For appropriate mental development, seek out scary phenomenon. Mm-hmm. The world of monsters and ghouls is a world that is exciting to them. Mm-hmm. And, and monsters and ghouls that are dangerous. Mm-hmm. I think an interesting thing that happened with a lot of children’s toys I wanna say like. The generation before this one mm-hmm.

Was that they realized that kids have a fascination with monsters and ghouls. And so then they tried to make everything about nice monsters and ghouls.

Simone Collins: Oh, it’s cute. Like monster, high monster. Yeah. I’m a pretty monster.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:19:00] Well, they, you know, I, I actually like the, the Monster High shows. I thought that they were, I know you,

Simone Collins: you like the aesthetic, it’s fine.

But like they aren’t, they aren’t predators that they are humanized. And the point of the reason why kids like these is they like that they’re afraid of them. They like. Planning fortifications against them, like our kids, like locking up the house, planning how they’re going to attack the aggressor defending themselves against the aggressor, like it is, it is something they deeply enjoy the way that a good old fashioned American loves prepping.

Getting all their guns. Yeah. Well also think

Malcolm Collins: about like the classic cartoons, right? Like the most classic of classic cartoons I’d say is Scooby-Doo in, in terms of like the, what I think of in terms of like really long runtime cultural impact and Scooby-Doo is just true crime, but for children like it, it literally is.

The kids go somewhere, they’re trapped in a place. It’s, it’s literally like a horror movie setup in every episode [00:20:00] with like bats flying overhead, a broken down van. They have to knock on the abandoned mansion. There are ghosts or ghouls or goblins inside the mansion, and then they have to figure out who’s never.

Simone Collins: Actually, I mean, yeah, I, I hear you. But it’s not, I wouldn’t say that’s sophisticated scary. That’s why I say it’s true

Malcolm Collins: crime. It’s true crime combined with ghosts and ghouls and goblins. And I think that this can be surprising to people because you and I have such a materialist outlook on reality. Like, while we are a type of Christian, we don’t even believe in like souls that are a separate thing from the body, right? Mm-hmm. We are materialist like metaphysical, materialist Christians, right? And I think that, that a lot of people see that as a very extreme position. And yet we’re almost as extreme in the opposite direction when it comes to children.

One of the reasons why I might feel this way. Is one. ‘cause this is how I was raised as a kid. But two, because I think because I was raised this way as a kid, it allowed me to sort of get that part of [00:21:00] exploration outta my system.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So I didn’t need to pretend things as an adult were real, that aren’t real.

Because I think what happens if you deny this to children is they, start to, and I think you see this with teens, right? So what you should see, like a correct, I think trajectory for children is, as a child becomes a teen, they know that most of that imaginary stuff that they thought was true when they were younger isn’t actually true, but they still explore you know.

Light of the feather stiff at a board at a birthday party or a Ouija board at a birthday party or sleepover or, you know, they, they may do that game where like, you know, you do the four things and then you choose how many, you know, the girls make them at school and they tell the future. A

Simone Collins: Coie catcher.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I’ll put the South Fort Cliff about them here. But yeah.

Speaker: , What if I were to tell you that the girls have a device which allows them to see into the future

Speaker 2: my turn my turn to me now. [00:22:00] Okay. What do you wanna, I wanna, if I’m gonna live in a big mansion in the future.. Okay. Pick a color. Blue. B-L-U-E-I pick another color. Red. Okay. Okay. Will live in a big mansion in the future. Definitely. Yes. Alright.

Speaker: Where did they get that bag?

Oh my God. How does it know the answer? Gentlemen, we have to get our hands on that device.

Malcolm Collins: Something like that. Right. And, and this is a a going down in terms of mysticism for the kid when they were very young, they believed in lots of mystical things. And when they’re a teen, they believe in some mystical things, but not other mystical things.

And I think they also

Simone Collins: understand that that was child’s play and that’s important.

Malcolm Collins: And so they, when they’re thinking about the world framing and the way they relate to the world, see maturation as a movement from a more mystical or supernatural world [00:23:00] to a less mystical or supernatural world.

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: However, if you raise a kid with a no supernatural, no, none of that, right?

And then they. Become a teen and they are engaging with some supernatural like Ouija boards and cootie catchers and whatever that stuff is. Then they, they’re moving in the exact wrong trajectory. You want them moving in because then from there they get into wicked, they get into whatever, right? You, you have put them on a trajectory, right, and you want to ensure that’s a downwards rather than an upwards trajectory in terms of how you’re dealing with your kids.

The final thing is that the, the, it teaches them, Santa Teaches children. A very, very important lesson, and almost nothing in society can help you teach children this better than Santa, which is that there are things out there in the world that literally every authority figure will lie to you about every person in society will lie to you about.

NASA will create a Santa Tracker app. You know, like the [00:24:00] news stations will pretend to cover him. Every little column in your life is going to say this isn’t, this is, this is true. And that you will then find among your, your kid friends, a group just like, Hey guys, you know, like a the kid drug dealer.

Do you believe Santa’s real. And then some are like, yeah, I do. And then others are like, no, I know what’s up. And then there’s the annoying kid who says, do you mean the historic Santa?

Simone Collins: That kid? No,

Malcolm Collins: I wanna teach I kids to punch that kid. The moment he says that, oh my

Simone Collins: God.

Malcolm Collins: Be like, you know what we’re talking about, Trevor.

Tna tr

Speaker 3: anyway. God.

Malcolm Collins: The, so, so the point I’m making here is these kids are gonna grow up in a world where everyone around them is going to lie to them, right? Like [00:25:00] about something like this is what happened. Like, is Santa not a great analogy for like the COR virus that, that went around and freaked everyone out?

In which the, you know, the CDC is telling you one thing, the president’s telling you one thing, the newspapers are telling you one thing, but then like that group of kids, you got this other group that’s like, nah, nah, nah man, you don’t know. Like, sometimes everyone can be in on a thing, and maybe the reason you’re not hearing about it is because YouTube blocks any video that talks about it maybe, and then shuts down their channel.

And, and, and Twitter is doing the same thing. No, but man, there’s evidence out there that you should check out, man, you are through Santa AC Culturizing children to this potentiality. And I think that’s really important for the world that the kids are going to enter. But yeah. Do you have thoughts Simone?

Simone Collins: I, I think another really important thing about Christmas and the way that we wanna do [00:26:00] it is if you, the moment you express as one of our kids disbelief in Santa, that’s fine. You’re free to not believe. That also means that you don’t get presents from Santa, and we want our kids to understand that you have to.

Be willing to pretend to believe something that you know is not true. That’s this like societal myth in order to get certain things because this is something, it’s a part of being an adult in our society today that sometimes, depending on the the group that you’re mixing with, you have to pretend that some things are true, that are obviously not true.

And or just to be cool with things that you’re not cool with, which is something that everyone who’s autistic in our family has to deal with to like, be okay with being in a social situation when you’re not okay with being in a social situation. And we, we think that Santa’s a really great [00:27:00] way to teach that, and it’s a very playful way to teach that of like, oh, okay.

Well, you didn’t get any gifts from Santa this year ‘cause you didn’t believe in him. And you know, if you don’t believe in Santa, you can’t deliver gifts to you. Of course. So I think that’s important. Another

Malcolm Collins: fun thing about building a miraculous world around your children.

Speaker 3: Mm. Is

Malcolm Collins: that the world that you build around them can be, just the word I’m looking for here. Unique to your family. So yes. I tell my kids you know, when they go to the school or whatever where they’re interacting with other people, I go, well, Krampus only comes after Collins’s. Mm-hmm. Right? Like the other kids don’t have to worry about him because the future police only come for the Collins.

Yeah. ‘cause the Collins are more important than other people, is what we tell them. We’re different, we’re special. Yeah. And we have different expectations of us. Right. So what’s really interesting is if you go to like an Orthodox Jewish family or something like that, the way that they differentiate their kids when their kids go to school and they know they’re different from [00:28:00] other people is through their different outfits and their different you know, ways of, of, of dressing and, and hairstyles and names.

And with our kids, yes, they have unique names, but their outfits are fairly normal other than being completely standardized. But outside of that, the thing that makes their world magical and makes them, or that’s different for them when they’re interacting with the other kids is they know, oh, I’m a Collins and we’ve got Krampus and we’ve got the future police, and we’ve got Lemon Week, and we’ve got all of these different holidays and traditions and monsters that other kids just.

Do not have in their lives. And for that reason, boast I have more responsibility in my life, but I’m also different from them. And the world that I live in is different from the world that they live in, which is boring and dull and gray. And I think that that’s really powerful as well. You know, the teacher who’s like, oh.

Octavian that doesn’t really exist. And, and we come home and we go, well that teacher’s a noob. Octavian. And he goes, oh, she’s a noob. I’m like, yeah, [00:29:00] she’s kind of like an imposter. If you’ve seen those from among us, which he really loves.

Simone Collins: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.

Malcolm Collins: And so. You know, you gotta use the well, that, that’s what we always gotta tell them about all the fundraisers that they get subjected to as well.

That they think you’re a noob. A trick for noobs.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We have a separate episode coming out. I don’t, well, no, it shouldn’t have come out somehow now a separate episode on how schools are just MLMs now. We are constantly hit. By, by fundraisers. With our school, when we recorded that episode, we were hit by three at once in one week.

Now we’re up to four. All in one week? Four. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In one week. In one week, yes. Yeah.

Simone Collins: So,

Malcolm Collins: But actually it has prompted me to move to having our oldest at home full-time. And so we’ll see what that looks like. You can wait until after this summer if that’s what you wanna do.

Simone Collins: I am, I’m gonna leave it up to him.

We’re gonna, we’re gonna ask him. We’ll see. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll, [00:30:00] we’ll talk with him about it.

Malcolm Collins: To see what he thinks about it, because my, the only thing he learned at school is how to shelf for MLMs. Yeah. For private equity funds. ‘cause that’s the, you know, the school that comes home, he is like, oh, Scholastic Fair.

It’s so interesting that I saw Scholastic as such a positive brand when I was younger.

Speaker 3: Oh yeah. And as

Malcolm Collins: told, I see it as such a slimy and scammy brand.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, like a really sort of a gross thing. And as a kid I thought it was like educational and wholesome. Works with the school system. But anyway the, the final thing is, is if you wanna have this stuff for your own kids, like just go for like kids, especially the more you have, like when you have a large family, kids love going along with this stuff, and they will expand on these worlds significantly when they’re alone.

Like they have you know, among themselves. Like squads for krampus hunting. They have squads for like, slide eater hunting to go on a slide [00:31:00] eater expedition. You know, they’ve gotta go and find the slide eater so they can kill it. You know, they’ve, they’ve got all of this. These, these fun ideas, which I really like because it’s a, it is a much richer world than we’re gonna go to the park today.

Let’s look at the birds. Like birds might be interesting to you as an adult, but they’re not as interesting to a kid. Right?

Simone Collins: Well, and I think the bigger thing too is that there’s a lot of resistance now to stuff that. I think is a crucial for kids development, like allowing kids to fight, allowing kids to have property disputes, allowing kids to push boundaries.

And, and, and I’m not saying like allow kids to push boundaries by just allowing them to walk all over you. I’m saying you set the boundaries, like you make it clear where those boundaries are. But kids need to push them to learn where they are, like it’s an interplay. And to contextualize these things as bad, to see it as bad when kids are afraid of monsters, to [00:32:00] see it as bad when kids are fighting over an object or over your affections or over your attention, or among themselves.

That is, is depriving them of really essential practice that is setting them up to go onto greater developmental stages in life. And they’re not going to do well with those greater developmental stages with at these basics in place.

Malcolm Collins: I I, the two final points I wanna make here is one is you could be like, oh, what about when your kids get older?

And it’s like, when my kids get older, they’re gonna love that. They can tell their friends about that weird cramps thing their dad used to do, or the, you know, they’re, they, no, they’re

Simone Collins: gonna love doing it to their younger siblings. They’re gonna love part of this.

Malcolm Collins: I know how much I love to brag about unique family traditions when I was a kid.

Yeah. You know, even when I no longer did them or I was outta that stage. Because then it’s like to the other kids, well my family does cooler things in your family. Yeah. We’re more unique. We’re more special. The other thing that I wanted to say was fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. It, [00:33:00] so when I put my kids down to bed at night and on the weekends, right, like the main way I play was them is by fighting.

And I think there are a few investments you can make for your kids that are more, you’re gonna get more out of than like, inflatable shields. Inflatable, bonkers. You know, I’ve been draining some of these

Speaker 3: that my kids have.

Malcolm Collins: Slightly more durable, bonkers than a lot of them. Simone hates how many I’ve collected, but the kids love boning and they’ve got the shields of, or just running at each other from across the room was a shield that was one of the ends at one of the videos where they just started on either side of a room and just started running at each other smack.

And I was like, guys. I have at least inflatable shields the next time you do this. Then I got those big round inflatable, like round their body bump bumpers now for them to run around and hit each other with. But the point being is kids love play fighting and. You know, I know there’s all these things that say like, read to your kid before they go to sleep.

I do not. I just fight them. I chase them around and tickle them and there is actually a study that shows [00:34:00] that like getting wound up before they go to bed helps kids sleep better. Which is what got us into this. It was sent by a fan. And it convinced me too, just give up reading ‘cause I didn’t find it fun.

They didn’t find it as fun and move entirely to fighting before they go to bed. So there’s that. The final thing is the studies on Santa the average age. Yeah. Actually, do you know the average age kids stop believing in Santa

Simone Collins: eight.

Malcolm Collins: Eight is exactly. It

Simone Collins: does not surprise me.

Malcolm Collins: And some

Simone Collins: when kids decide that they know absolutely everything about the world,

Malcolm Collins: some go on to hold the beliefs until they’re 15 or 16.

Simone Collins: As I should,

Malcolm Collins: which seems pretty old. We’re gonna have a 15-year-old on the show in, in the near future. He’s agreed. And we’ve, we’ve done follow up with him. Well, he

Simone Collins: said, he said he’s in, we’ll see

Malcolm Collins: for winter, what was it, winter break or some spring winter break.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: winter break. So it is

Simone Collins: don’t, no, because we don’t know yet.

It

Malcolm Collins: would come after. No, I can talk about it at least. I think our fans would be excited to know. So Destiny’s Kid might be coming [00:35:00] on, which I’d be really excited about. Because, you know, he’s gotten in trouble for saying like Nazi stuff online. And I’m just sort of interested how somebody of his generation and his age builds his world where like you can’t trust anything you hear from anyone.

Like everyone is a shill. Nobody trusts the media anymore. Wikipedia is completely institutionally captured. Yeah. AI is maybe the most trusted. Your school’s

Simone Collins: crazy. The news is crazy. Where do, yeah, where do we even go?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like how are you building your world framework? Like, I don’t even care about the Nazi stuff.

I’m like, whatever. You’re 15. What I care about is how do you come to any decision anymore at this age, right? Yeah. I mean, so I’m really excited. I hope that that happens. And we, we gotta, we gotta interview other, other people’s kids. That’s the other thing that I’d love to do as a show is interview more like young people, like I’d say like 14 to like 17, about their like world structure.

‘cause I find that to be personally fascinating and I think it will help us predict where our kids are going to go in terms of building the sorts of world [00:36:00] structures.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean I feel like we, plus a lot of parents would probably wanna know, right? Like, how are kids these days? Learning what, what it is they learn.

Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, there’s that. And any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I love this time of year. I love this holiday. I hope everyone has a very happy Christmas. If you need a little more fun after Christmas, consider future day. We need to like, put out guidance on how to celebrate future day at some point. Do you wanna do

Malcolm Collins: an episode on that next?

Oh, I guess we’ll do the one that I had prepped, but. We can, yeah, but

Simone Collins: we should also just make like a quick like how to PDF. Just like, here are the steps, here are the supplies you need. We just make it available readily for anyone

Malcolm Collins: without watching anything. The kids like future day, much more than Christmas.

I can tell you that. It’s by far favorite holiday.

Simone Collins: Love

Malcolm Collins: Christmas doesn’t have one of the things we got them for future day, as you know, those, glowing ball, things that you could like put your fingers on and move and it Yeah. And they’re not that extra. They’re like 15 bucks now, like 25 bucks [00:37:00] or something for like a decent, like glass one.

And you, we tell them that they, they can talk to the future police by using the thing. And so they, they

Simone Collins: love doing that.

Malcolm Collins: They love doing that. They think it’s so fun.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, it’s delightful. Love you. Have a great day. Love you too.

Simone Collins: I love the way we.

Malcolm Collins: Did you get to comments today?

Simone Collins: I did. People enjoyed it.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. I figured it’s a low intellect one in the

Simone Collins: episode as the left trying to sort of fob this off, like make it a thing to make people miserable. ‘cause that’s kind of how people read it. That like with this concept, the title

Malcolm Collins: card framing was like, the New York Times is trying to make divorce cool.

And it’s like the new Gen Z.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so I think the framing within the title card more than the episode itself.

Simone Collins: Mm. That makes sense.

Malcolm Collins: But they were doing it. I mean, it wasn’t a, a true thing. The, they, they were definitely being like, and now there’s divorce influencers.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and [00:38:00] there are divorce influencers, but there are also toilet cleaning influencers, so, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That for

Malcolm Collins: what

Simone Collins: it is. Are you aware of this, by the way?

Malcolm Collins: Wait, there’s toilet cleaning influencers. I, I am not. Why? Why do you watch that, Simone? Do we need to have a conversation? Is that your new fetish? ‘cause I’m not in No,

Simone Collins: no. As you can tell from the state of our toilets, it’s not apparently my thing

Malcolm Collins: probably should be.

That’s why you say that. But it’s actually true. It’s the only thing in our house that you do not fastidiously clean. I, because I just. I even clean them sometimes, which is crazy. I don’t know if you’ve noticed,

Simone Collins: we, we need to, you know what? Black Friday’s coming up, I’m gonna just buy proper brush sets because the big issue, I think that the, the bigger problem is that our kids are around the toilets all the time.

And so I can’t leave the brushes out because then the kids will play [00:39:00] with them like sorts and that’s. Not great. And so then it’s really inconvenient to clean the toilets ‘cause you have to go to a secured room to obtain the toilet brush and then bring it down and get the toilet soap and bring it over.

Malcolm Collins: That sounds like an excuse.

Simone Collins: And I’m always with the kids when I clean. And so then it means I have to leave the kids. And then if I leave the kids, they’re gonna inevitably break something or make a bigger mess. And then I’ve just produced. Functionally a larger mess in an attempt to clean up the contained mess that is a dirty toilet.

But yeah, it is

Malcolm Collins: an excuse. Anyway any fun comments where you were like, oh, that’s an interesting way of looking at it, or I.

Simone Collins: Everyone always has interesting things to say. IN nothing in particular stands out now, but I think that’s where the sleep deprivation speaking than the nature of the comments.

Malcolm Collins: All right, well then I will [00:40:00] get started. Mm-hmm.

Alright.

Kids: Literally, I helmet that. Daddy’s helmet. Yeah. I like your daddy’s.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I wore that helmet in the war. Toasty.

Kids: Yes. How can I

Malcolm Collins: daddy? It was in the future war. Do you not remember that one? No. I

Kids: like the red fighter on it and the golden, the red what? The red fighter and the golden on it. Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Oh. And so Daddy had to wear that when I, when I was in the war.

Kids: You fight in war.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Kids: You fight in war.

Malcolm Collins: I fought in the future war.

Kids: Who was your opponent?

Malcolm Collins: Who was my opponent? Yeah.

Kids: But where’s your horse?

Malcolm Collins: Where is your horse? It was my opponent was K’S Forces. So Krampus had a big army of demons and that’s who we, and, and I was fighting for the [00:41:00] future police.

Kids: What you mean?

Attacking crap is in the battle.

Malcolm Collins: One of, no, I was just fighting his forces. He has a large army. Oh yeah. Make sure you don’t drop that too.

Are you excited to have a dad who fought in the great future war?

Kids: Are you one of of future police in there?

Malcolm Collins: Am I one of the what? Torson, what’s

Kids: the future police in?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I was fighting for them. You’re gonna have to fight in the future war one day. You,

Kids: you So daddy. So daddy, are you one of the fierce police?

Malcolm Collins: Are you? Well, the thing, no, I worked for them. So the real thing that we killed them. Well, so the Kranes forces, they were all communists. Which is what you need to know about them. Okay. And that means they’re very dangerous.

Kids: Yeah. That, yeah. [00:42:00] How many people believe in crime is,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I think the bigger question is how many people believe in communism If,

Kids: if you believe.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, but off taking, have you ever seen a real communist

Kids: before? What’s a communist? Y’all make your own communists.

Malcolm Collins: There are people who wanna take everyone’s stuff. They’re like thieves. They want to take everything from everybody. I know they’re crap. I bet many of your teachers might be communists.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe