Jordan Peterson Vs Us Parenting Strategies

Malcolm and Simone contrast their parenting approach with Jordan Peterson's authoritarian tactics. They believe kids should develop internal morals, not obey external authority.

Simone: what you do now with our children is show when their will has crossed a line with your will, whereas Jordan Peterson's strategy is, I am going to let my will rule this household, and you have to bend to my will. Mm, .

Malcolm: Yeah, no, no, no. It makes perfect sense.

Malcolm: And I understand, like, I, I really, I get it like, and I, and again, I'm saying, I actually don't think it's wrong for the type of, of, of families that really crave structure. I think it's incredibly effective.

Malcolm: I want to raise kids where the punishment for unjust action is. is how it makes them feel about themselves, not an external authority applying that punishment because then you enter the real world and you see external authorities not applying punishment for bad action.

Malcolm: You see the zeitgeist in society says, this is what's good, right? Because look at our society right [00:01:00] now, the things that rewards the things that cancels, right? These are all the little kids that were taught to obey authority, you know, and they. They go out into society and they're looking for what's right and what's wrong.

Malcolm: And so they look at what is the authority punishing? What is the authority not punishing? The things the authority doesn't punish, well, those must be the right things. And the thing the authority does punish, those must be the wrong things. Instead of trying to determine those things for themselves and take their own mental weight for that.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hi Malcolm. Hello

Malcolm: Simone. So you read this Jordan Peterson book and we've been talking more about various things that we either agree with or don't agree with in it. And one of the areas I really want to focus on is parenting strategy. We touched on it a bit with the eight passengers situation video.

Malcolm: But I, I I

Malcolm: don't have a prescription where I'm not like, this is the right way to do it. I actually think for different. [00:02:00] genetic sociological clusters, which likely are inherited through a family. There are different strategies. So contrast two broad strategies, the Jordan Peterson strategy, right? Which is and we'll go into it, but essentially it's a very controlling strategy that is focused on the adult breaking the child's will.

Malcolm: It's

Simone: about discipline and structure.

Malcolm: Yes. And then the other strategy, which is much closer to the strategy that our family employs and was employed with both of us when we were growing up, I'd called the Rodney Atkins strategy which comes from the, the he's mine song, great country song if you haven't heard it.

Malcolm: But the thesis of what happens in the song is a guy catches a group of teenagers out smoking in a field and is, is, is taking them to his dad, to, to what he thinks is their dad's house, right? One of their dad's house. Cause he saw where they were running. And he's, he's complaining that these kids won't speak when spoken to, and they were getting up to mischief.[00:03:00]

Malcolm: And the dad's like, you know, he's mine. He's really proud of his son for doing all that in a way. And he's like, if you knew me back then it'd be no surprise to you what he's done. And then, you know, other things like the kids that have football game and somebody takes a cheap shot at their little kicker and he.

Malcolm: Punches the kid and he ends up getting removed from the game. And, you know, he's obviously being punished and he's like, talking about how he jumps up in the stadium and shouts, he's mine. And he's all proud of his son for doing this. But it reminds me a lot of parenting strategies that my parents utilized for me to the extent where I really realized, and I think also part of the, he's mine song, it keeps going back to, if you understood what I was like when I was a kid.

Malcolm: You would understand, one, that the same traits that I am nurturing when I'm a kid are what eventually led me to become successful, and what will allow them to become successful, one[00:04:00] but two, that any other reaction to this, you know, again, it is showing that it is potentially an intergenerational genetic thing would obviously be a, a deleterious reaction, and I know this from when I was a kid.

Malcolm: So, Let's go into the, well, okay. So here's an example from my own childhood before we go into the, what Jordan Peterson recommends is I remember I got in trouble once at school with, with one of my teachers I, I don't remember the specifics of it, but it felt very unjust to me at the time.

Malcolm: And so I went to my mom afterwards and I was like, Oh, the teacher said this about what I had done. And she goes, Oh, you don't need to listen to them. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And she goes, well, I mean, she's an elementary school teacher. She's not exactly in adult society, respectable. She's like, if she had great advice on how to live her life, she wouldn't have become an elementary school teacher.

Malcolm: So what you [00:05:00] need to ask yourself is, are you proud of the way you acted? Do you think what you did was right? And if you didn't, then you do need to feel bad. You do need to punish yourself, but you need to understand right from wrong on your own and not have it be what authority figures tell you. I got into so much trouble in school.

Malcolm: I was at the principals like every other day. When I was in school because I was told, oh yeah, teachers are all losers. You could just ignore them. The goal is don't get caught or don't get expelled because that will have a permanent effect on your life. But other than that, I mean, it's up to you what's right and wrong.

Malcolm: And you should learn that for yourself and live by your own moral code. Which is just wildly different. And then you should even take pride in defying authority when authority is unjust. Which is really different. So let's talk about the Jordan Peterson strategy, right? So can you go into this scene from the book?

Simone: Yeah. Jordan Peterson describes a couple of scenes and, and mostly [00:06:00] his, his parenting tactics involved, basically making it clear that he is the alpha of the household. And when he says you have to do something, you have to do it. And if you defy him, he will essentially wait you out. So at one point. He waits for like 30 minutes while a toddler refuses to eat and doesn't let the toddler leave the table and is basically like, you don't get to leave the table until you eat.

Simone: And then when he does eat, he praises him and says, you're a very good boy and, you know, gives him a lot of praise when he does what he wants. And then otherwise it's just like, you don't get to go anywhere. He's like a stone wall. And what he argues in the book is, you know, I can, like, for me, 30 minutes is 30 minutes.

Simone: For a kid, 30 minutes is like... Forever. So you can outlast a kid a lot faster. That's why he says it's sustainable because apparently he's only been around very weak, well children.

Malcolm: No, I can't even imagine. And so I know that even if somebody did that to me when I was a kid, cause I did have a few authority figures try things like that when I was a kid, try these little gambits [00:07:00] like that.

Malcolm: And even if in the moment I might be like, okay, I'm going to go along with what you say. He's under this impression that once he's done this, he's broken the kid's will, and from that point on, the kid will listen to him about that thing. No, no, no, no, no, no. With me, now, you have created a, a... A challenge.

Simone: A challenge. The gauntlet has been thrown

Malcolm: at that point. The gauntlet has been thrown. I have walked out of that situation fuming and I am going to do literally everything I can in my power to challenge you, like, like, like challenge you for dominance because you have shown that you, you're trying to show that like you own my mind.

Malcolm: Right. And, and I would, even as a child, like, I remember people are like, Oh. Eventually, a kid will get tired of resisting and I'm like, well, I'm not tired of resisting. If anything, Jordan's a game over

Simone: time, right? But Jordan Peterson and the people who his acolytes, like parents we've met who really support this few, they [00:08:00] argue.

Simone: A couple of things. So let's, let's steel man them. They argue that children really want to structure. Children really want discipline. Children really want a strong parent to tell them how things are. And then second they believe that what they're doing is providing sort of life on training wheels that, you know, if a child does things that are socially unacceptable, they won't have any friends.

Simone: So before that even happens, I'm going to create sort of a microcosm of that in the home. So that rather than then just not ending up with any friends and learning from life, because life is a very strict teacher, a cruel teacher sometimes, I'm going to let them learn this in the home where it's not going to hurt them as much to learn it.

Simone: So those are the two things that I've seen argued both in the book and by... People who are proponents of this approach personally, before you give your critique, which I'm sure is going to be quite different from mine I would argue both of those things are really important, like, you know, making sure that people learn how the real world imposes [00:09:00] rules and providing little microcosms of that at home.

Simone: I think that is important. I think that is valuable. I don't think that establishing yourself as an arbitrary authority figure is going to do it. And second, I do think that kids want structure and crave structure and crave a strong leader. But not a tyrant. A leader is someone who inspires followers, someone who through their own action inspires you to take your own initiative.

Simone: And I think that the true discipline in a household, like the true discipline that a parent should show and a structure a parent should show, is through their own self discipline and their own self mastery. And children copy their

Malcolm: parents. I think you're saying right here. Okay. So you right here are saying one thing, you're saying two things, which one of them is true and the other isn't true.

Malcolm: The one that is true is I think the best way for people like us to signal to our kids how to be is through self discipline. Okay. The thing that is not true is the kids structure. I think certain people, so what's really important about every one of these people we know of, everyone who raises their kids this way, Has admitted that [00:10:00] they personally crave structure that they personally benefited from highly structured environments at times in their life.

Malcolm: Okay. Yeah, they have said that sociological profile of person. And this is what I was saying. Who likes to be dominated. And this person has kids who like to be mentally dominated. So you

Simone: just, just a totally, like, these are like different subspecies of human. Yeah, no, they're

Malcolm: basically a different sociological subspecies of human.

Malcolm: And this is why you can't just take one culture and impose it on another cultural group. These people, if you did our style of child rearing with them, which is about. Stoking the child's will and having them take personal responsibility for their own failures. They, they'd find it miserable. They wouldn't know where to go.

Malcolm: They'd be like, like certain people are, I don't want to say born to be minions, but they, they really, really crave structure and structured environments. And there are ways that you can be like a great warrior in a structured environment. So [00:11:00] not all. You know, structured environment tropes, a knight, for example, is, is somebody who is living in a structured environment, right?

Malcolm: Like, so not all structured environment tropes are anti masculine. Like, I don't want you to, well, I think that, you know, from my cultural perspective, they still kind of are like you know, a knight who takes orders from a king is still a little b***h. I'm sorry. That's just the way my culture would see it.

Malcolm: The knight should take orders only from his own conscience. But this is a different cultural perspective, right? And, and it would obviously be framed by my own sociological predilections. So I actually think what you're seeing here is these families are doing what's right for their kids because it, what it's what's right for them.

Malcolm: Right. And so one question parish always ask themselves is do you personally create structure?

Malcolm: If so, then a structured child rearing strategy may work for your kids. If not, then a structured child rearing strategy probably won't work for your kids. [00:12:00] And. With that said, this is also why it's useful to marry someone of a similar or aligned sociological persuasion as yourself. Because you don't know, you know, if you have a wife who really craves structure and a husband who really craves you know, being out there and, and, and building their will and, and relying on, and this is what you were talking about.

Malcolm: So when you said it's about showing your own mental sort of dominance and restraint and, and, and maturity. To your kids, what you're actually saying there is, I take personal responsibility for my own mind, and I hope to reflect that to my kids. Well,

Simone: and also our kids just copy everything

Malcolm: we do. The second thing, and they do copy everything we do.

Malcolm: And then you can see this in the way they even handle punishment, which we'll talk a bit about punishment in here. And this is the video I'll include the clip in because I think it's a great clip to sort of annotate. But anyway the second thing [00:13:00] that you said there is it teaches them about the real world, right?

Malcolm: This, I would disagree pretty strongly. That's not the way the real world works

Simone: in the real world. Wait, wait, wait. So which, which is not the way the real world works? What the, sort of the philosophy of the, the Jordan Pearson acolytes

Malcolm: acolytes is not the way most of the real world works. You don't get sit in a timeout.

Malcolm: You lose your job. People don't talk to you. The real world provides consequences to you. You providing the consequences to yourself. Or having some authority figure who's out there. In fact, I think it teaches really toxic mindset, which is that the world or authority should be the one to punish people who do bad rather than you as an individual should punish yourself for doing bad.

Malcolm: You as an individual should. feel bad when you do bad. And that's where the punishment should come from. And so I'm gonna actually roll a little clip here because I think it's really interesting. It's of one of our kids getting angry. And in the [00:14:00] clip what you will see is, he is He's upset with his brother because he knows they need to be leaving the house to go to spend some time with a babysitter and the brother isn't having it, he just wants to play the piano and then the brother keeps pushing him away and he is at first vocalizing how he's feeling, like he's showing it.

Malcolm: I feel anger. But he's not reacting on that anger after a few pushes. He holds his brother's hands really tight. And this is something we do with the kids, not as tight as he's holding his brother hand, but we hold their hands and we look at them in the eyes and we talk to them, right? When we really need to get their attention.

Malcolm: Then we have them repeat back to us to make sure they understood what we were saying, right? But you could tell he holds his brother's hands a little too tight and the brother makes a noise like he's being hurt and immediately. And it made me respect my son so much in the moment. You can see he's ashamed of what he's done.

Malcolm: He's still feeling angry. Like, he puts his hands behind his back. [00:15:00] But he's ashamed of what he's done. And he's trying to, to, to think through what do I do? Like, I'm still angry, right? How do I relate to this? And I point out to him that he's making monster sounds. Like, he's talking like he's a monster.

Malcolm: And. He replies, I think really interesting, like, like, I'm a monster because I bopped Toasty and I want to bop Toasty, I'm a monster because I want to bop Toasty, and, and, and bop is the word we use in our family for hit someone or hurt someone. So what he's saying is the fact that I hurt him. Makes me bad in this moment.

Octavian: I didn't mean to hurt you. No! Yeah! Let's all go to Toasty's house. No!

Malcolm: Are you, are you, did you make a mistake Octavian? Can you tell Toasty you're sorry? [00:16:00]

Octavian: I'm not. I'm trying to get him to Toasty's house.

Malcolm: Can you tell him you're sorry? You're not supposed to hurt Toasty.

Octavian: No.

Malcolm: I turn mad.

Octavian: I turn mad. Because. I'm. Sturdy.

Malcolm: Which I just thought was very interesting. And to me, it shows a difference in how we expect our kids to act. I want to raise kids where the punishment for unjust action is. is how it makes them feel about themselves, not an external authority applying that punishment because then you enter the real world and you see external authorities not applying punishment for bad action.

Malcolm: You see the [00:17:00] zeitgeist in society says, this is what's good, right? Because look at our society right now, the things that rewards the things that cancels, right? These are all the little kids that were taught to obey authority, you know, and they. They go out into society and they're looking for what's right and what's wrong.

Malcolm: And so they look at what is the authority punishing? What is the authority not punishing? The things the authority doesn't punish, well, those must be the right things. And the thing the authority does punish, those must be the wrong things. Instead of trying to determine those things for themselves and take their own mental weight for that.

Simone: Yeah. I mean, I, I agree with you. It's not, It's not the most accurate way to go. I've heard other people talk on podcasts about sort of versions of this form of discipline of like a microcosms of the real world that I really like for, for example, like, one teacher whose interview I listened to described how in working with his students.

Simone: He, he implements laws the way laws are typically implemented, which is when you get caught, you pay a penalty, but sometimes the penalty is [00:18:00] worth it. So like sometimes when you get a speeding ticket, it's kind of worth it. You were willing to pay that amount to kind of get where you needed to go faster.

Simone: It was an emergency or something like that. So he. You know, he pointed out, like, if, if a kid starts acting out in class to cheer up a friend, well, maybe it's worth it that they get punished because it's worth it for their friend to be cheered up. And he talks with the students about that. And I kind of like that because 1, it shows how, like, in the real world, like, in many cases, you only get punished if you get caught.

Simone: And 2, sometimes it's, sometimes it's worth it to. Run that risk of getting caught and to pay a penalty because sometimes rules are worth breaking. I love that kind of philosophy. So I don't think like using adult punishment as an approximation of real world punishments, it's always a bad idea. And I think that sometimes it's very effective.

Simone: But the way

Malcolm: you relate to punishment teaches kids values. So another story from my childhood, right. Is one day a teacher was like, Oh I forgot, like one kid was, was picking on another [00:19:00] kid. And I had told the teacher. And the teacher had praised me about it to my mom and, you know, afterwards she took me aside and she goes, don't be a little pussy.

Malcolm: Like, don't go to a teacher. Don't go to an authority is what she was saying in adult language. When you see an injustice resolves the situation yourself, she's like, Could you not have done anything? Could you not have intervened? Could you not have decked this kid? And yes, I would have been punished for that, but that would have been honorable rather than being a little snitch, being a little b***h, you know, going to authority from, from the.

Malcolm: Perspective that was being ingrained to me by my parent, you know, and I, I, I think that that was really valuable and it's a different way of dealing, seeing and relating to authority. But here's where I think these two strategies sort of come to a head, right? Which is when kids are doing genuinely dangerous things, right?

Malcolm: Like teaching kids to not run into roads and stuff like that. [00:20:00] Like, do you actually teaching kids to not, and this is where you learned a piece of parenting strategy from. A safari. So can you go into this, this safari revelation you had?

Simone: Yeah. I mean, when you're out on safari, you're just looking at animals and you have nothing else to do.

Simone: So you start thinking a lot. Right. And we went on a multi day safari at one point. It was really awesome. So lucky to do it. And we watched a lot of cubs with mothers, which was great. Cause I mean, it's cool to see lions. Well, yeah, but it wasn't just lion cubs. It was also a few other things, but yeah, like the lion cubs are the most impactful thing that we looked at.

Simone: And it's interesting to see how mammals like across species. engage with discipline. And with lions, it was so clear how they did. So a lion cub would play and constantly push boundaries because that's the whole point of play is to like learn your own boundaries and other people's boundaries. So like one, we love that.

Simone: We love the kids push boundaries and we want them to, because that's how [00:21:00] mammals. And probably many other species learn what their limits are and what other people's limits are. What would happen when they would push boundaries with a, an adult lion is they would start jumping on them, biting them, playing with their tails, et cetera.

Simone: And for a while, as long as they were not being too crazy, the lions would just kind of, meh, you know, like they would look irritable. They might like kick a leg a little bit or make a small noise, but they wouldn't do anything crazy. And then as soon as one of the lion cubs crossed the line, the, you know, they'd get a big swipe of the paw, a roar, you know, they'd immediately get like very.

Simone: Visceral, immediate, but not harming, you

Malcolm: know, like, not crazy. And they would give them a grumble first, you know, like They'd get, yeah, they'd

Simone: get warnings, and then they'd get, like, a sort of, like, they'd get, like, hit by a paw, or, and, or roared at, and then they would, you know, kind of go back off, and sort of start, like, recalibrating, in terms of the

Malcolm: boundaries that they were pushing.

Malcolm: This is very different than spanking style [00:22:00] punishment. Yeah,

Simone: well, because it was immediate. And that's so important. And it was like simple and it was over. It wasn't like this whole, like, wait till your dad comes home or I'm going to like spank you or just like, whatever. It's crazy. It's such

Malcolm: a structured style of punishment.

Malcolm: I almost can't imagine it being that like I remember I have to, I had different nannies when I was a kid and some would try that and all it did was just build resentment for me and like, Oh, well I really need to undermine this person because I began to see them given the way I was raised as an unjust authority when they would do things like that.

Malcolm: So I would. feel good when I would undermine them and do things that made their lives harder because I was undermining the, the authoritarian state, the the bad guy. Right? And so, these, these two parenting styles work so incongruously with each other. The, the lion style, which is one that we've really adapted in our kids.

Malcolm: I think it would be like, well, what if the kids do something really dangerous, like run into a road or something like that, except they, they seem to learn really [00:23:00] quickly from this style which is to say, first, you're like, no. So most of them, they just don't do the things they're not supposed to do.

Malcolm: Like, it's. Fairly rare that they do something that they're generally not supposed to do, but when they do, you know, when they're pushing things a little too far first, it's like, you know, and the kids back off, like they understand, but they don't feel bad about it. And then if they do do something bad, we do the bop, right?

Malcolm: Which is to say, like a lion would where it's clearly not meant to cause physical pain. But it's meant to sort of show, like, you've. Crossed a boundary. And what's really interesting about this is the way the kids emotionally respond to it when you do this. It's almost like their brain is structured in a way where it takes it as seriously as if you had caused physical pain.

Malcolm: So even though you're just slightly like, Tapping them or something, you know, like a lion would they like absolutely are, are freaked out by it. And they're freaked out by it, I think because they're sort of genetically coded to be, they're [00:24:00] genetically coded to, oh, this is what happens when I have cost boundaries with one of the adults of my tribe.

Malcolm: I need to emotionally take a lesson from this, and I think that some of that emotional lesson can be lost from something like, or something is structured as like spanking or something like that, because in that moment, they're, they're waiting, they're thinking through the, the dominance dynamics at split play here.

Malcolm: It's not an organic punishment style. And so I, I, I do question that. And I know that, I don't know if he recommends spanking in any of his books. I'm just giving that as an example.

Simone: Yeah, he doesn't talk about that. I mean, I would say broadly Jordan Peterson's tactics as he described them are very reasonable.

Simone: And mostly what he described was basically just waiting kids out. Like there was another example he presented of a. kid he was babysitting who supposedly allegedly refused to go to sleep each night you know, until after he got to do a bunch of indulgent things. And Jordan Peterson would just like keep holding him down in his bed.

Simone: And then [00:25:00] just, I think, like say something like go to bed monster. And then like. Eventually the kid just gave up and went to bed. And Jordan Peterson was very proud of himself for this. But yeah, it was really just, it wasn't like spanking or delayed. It was really, it was late. It was waiting things out.

Simone: And I would say that Jordan Peterson's strategy does not run afoul of our philosophy on like immediate boundaries, because that's exactly what he was showing. He was like, my boundary is you go to sleep. My boundary is you finish your dinner until you leave. Like

Simone: you cannot leave the table until you finish your dinner. So

Malcolm: it does, it does run afoul of my strategy and I can tell you it wouldn't work with me

Simone: because you would, you would backfire, you would, you would hate, you would brush, you would bristle at the idea of someone enforcing their will upon you. And I understand that.

Simone: Whereas your philosophy is very different. It's it's when. What you do now with our children is show when their will has crossed a line with your will, whereas Jordan Peterson's strategy is, I am [00:26:00] going to let my will rule this household, and you have to bend to my will. Mm, that is

Malcolm: really, like, it's like spheres of will.

Malcolm: They have a sphere of will, I have a sphere of will. Sometimes I show them their sphere of will has overlapped with my sphere of will. And

Simone: but in the Peterson household, you enter the Peterson sphere of influence, and that is the only sphere of influence. If that makes

Malcolm: sense. Yeah, no, no, no. It makes perfect sense.

Malcolm: And I understand, like, I, I really, I get it like, and I, and again, I'm saying, I actually don't think it's wrong for the type of, of, of families that really crave structure. I think it's incredibly effective. And I think people have

Simone: to experiment and like actually see what works for kids. Like maybe being the Peterson stonewall is the correct way to go.

Simone: And maybe just showing where your boundaries are is the correct way to go. But forcing it where it's not going to

Malcolm: work is, yeah. I was just thinking the stereotype of the type of parent who's most likely to do this sort of discipline is of the military dad. And there is no per draws people that [00:27:00] structure more than the military.

Malcolm: It's a very structured environment. So it would make sense why that would, that associated stereotype would exist. Very interesting. And I'd also point out that I, I shouldn't like, I can, I can be like, these people are different from me, you know? And so I, I like, like for my cultural perspective, what they're doing isn't good, but it's important to remember that their cultural perspective is necessary.

Malcolm: Society doesn't work if you can't have trained militaries of people who follow order. Society doesn't work without the disciplined group. Society doesn't work without the obedient group. Like it may in, in our current world lead to some negative externalities, which we've talked about, but there is no world, like a world where it's only people like, you know, me and Rodney Atkinson kids and stuff like that, you know, that's a world that is.

Malcolm: Chaotic, chaotic, that's the world that's, that's far more chaotic. [00:28:00] And I think it's a world where even things like historically, I mean, you know, you may have a harder time defending yourself and stuff like that. Like you've got to look at the way. These two groups historically would have fought wars, right?

Malcolm: Like, one group, the group that can follow orders, likely would have led to much larger civilizational structures with things like organized military, whereas you know, my sociological structure would be much more optimized for sort of a barbarian like environment where you have small tribes where they fight, you know, as a, as a group but it's about individual prowess.

Malcolm: And individual you know, sort of showmanship and proving to yourself who you are, right? Which is just a very different environment, and it's a very different cultural structure, and they can both be optimal at different points in human history, but I think the true optimum is when they work together.

Malcolm: And, and when they respect that they are different. And so I think it's just something that we need to be More careful about, especially in the conservative [00:29:00] community is, is coming up with sort of cure all parenting strategies and saying this is the way all families should parent because I think that can lead to really sort of negative aspects when the kids grow

Simone: up.

Simone: Yeah, I totally agree. And it's nice to hear someone say that there is no particular pathway that's appropriate because yeah, I totally, and well, also every kid, I think even within family, like we, we might have within our family, kids with very different needs in terms of discipline. So like I, I knew I was never disciplined as a child.

Simone: Because I was so self disciplined. Like, I would, you know, criticize my parents for being insufficiently disciplined, so.

Malcolm: I'm just thinking, like, the nights where we've done things were like Octavian. Or, or, or one of the kids, like, kept, kept getting out of bed. Cause this happened recently. And it was, I just went downstairs and basically growled at them and was like, get in bed now.

Malcolm: And they go, and they get in bed and they go.[00:30:00] And I'm like, don't get out. But they, they got out some, like, like some, most of the time they'll stay in bed when I do that. But sometimes they want to push boundaries and it's like, whatever. You know? You respect that. The room's locked for a reason, whatever.

Malcolm: You know, they, they, they went to sleep in their beds, didn't they? I mean,

Simone: the room is not our, our bedroom doors are locked so we can, we can hear them and they, they can't get in our beds all night. While we're like completely passed out, but like they can get anywhere in the house. And that's the problem.

Simone: Like when they start playing with the toilet, when they start playing with the kitchen,

Malcolm: Oh, yes. You got it the other night when one of them decided to start playing with the toilet to

Simone: Jackson Pollock toilet water all over. Yeah. That was not my favorite moment. It is a very toddler thing to do, but yeah, no, it's, it's, it's going to be interesting to see how our philosophy on child [00:31:00] discipline evolves over time.

Simone: I would say the 1 thing that I expect to stay very consistent over time. Which is also something that Jordan Peterson advocated for, so I like it, is to not have very many rules, just like, very few rules, be really clear about what really matters and more broadly speaking, I would say, modeling good behavior is the most important thing, that kids are going to reflect what they see, so.

Malcolm: Well, I also think that a lot of a kid's behavior is genetic. Like when I look at our kids their, their personalities seem really baked in, even from stuff that like we, we didn't do with them. And it might just be that we're really lucky. Like our kids just genuinely do not break rules that often. They very rarely do bad things and they very rarely are mean to each other.

Malcolm: And we could. Take credit for that being our parenting, but I suspect a lot of that is just internally who they are and that we've just gotten very easy kids in that respect. But I, I mean, I got easy kids. I got self disciplined kids because I [00:32:00] married a self disciplined woman. And so keep in mind again, when you're choosing partners if you choose a partner that lacks mental self discipline, it's not just them that's going to make your life hell.

Malcolm: It's your kids that are also going to make your life hell. If you marry a narcissistic person, it's not just them that that'll be reflected back through. It's the kids. And keep in mind that they being an unself disciplined person or a narcissistic person will raise your kids in an environment where that's being modeled to them.

Malcolm: And, and, and that can be very hard for a young child.

Simone: Yeah, yeah, I also like your philosophy, just as I guess an ending note of. Children being like plants that you can't necessarily choose what plant you're going to get. Like you get mystery seeds and you can build a trellis. You can add more water, more fertilizer, try to change the shade or sunshine situation.

Simone: But in the end, like you cannot a pear tree. Look like a grapevine and grow like a [00:33:00] grapevine and vice versa. So you have to look at how your kids are behaving. And so

Malcolm: I'm philosophy upon which our school system is based as well.

Simone: Exactly. So I'm really curious to see, like, you know, let's say it's 10 years from now.

Simone: And we're like, Oh man, like we had no idea, like one of our kids, like we're just full out Jordan Peterson, Peterson hanging him. Like some other kid were like, just anarchy. I don't know, you know, and I also wonder how parents deal, especially when they have larger families, you know, five, six kids and those kids require different discipline.

Simone: Consistency of discipline is something that you've also pointed out is really important. So, you know, how much of a problem is it going to be if the appropriate discipline for one child is really different from, from another child. You know, like one, one kid just needs to have a long conversation about what was going on, whereas the other one needs like.

Simone: You know, someone to sort of like, like physically restrain them for a second, hold them to a wall and let them calm down. Right. Like, are they going to see that as a condition?

Malcolm: That's rarer than you think. All of our kids [00:34:00] require basically the same discipline so far. I suspect that that's

Simone: what we're going to that are old enough to be

Malcolm: naughty.

Malcolm: Well, yeah. And, and I, I see, I mean, I'm getting the impression of the personalities we're going to get, you know, you're pregnant with the next one. So nine weeks just got the confirmation of the heartbeat again today. It's only 0. 5 percent chance it doesn't make it. which is very exciting. So, yeah, I, I, I think that you might be right, but keep in mind you're working with the same parental gene set with all of the kids.

Malcolm: Having a kid that's just a completely different sociological profile instead of just a different personality on top of the same basic profile is pretty unlikely. Unless you're like adopting or something like that. And that's actually something I've, I've, I've heard of or noticed in families that adopt kids is having to implement very different parenting strategies for each of the kids.

Malcolm: Whereas when families don't adopt kids generally, I haven't heard of that.

Malcolm: Although I have heard occasionally families will have like one demon child that's just like [00:35:00] a bad person to start with. I, I've heard that like the, you know, the serial killer families and stuff like that. And they're like, yeah, I always knew that this kid, you know, he kept torturing cats or something. What do you do if that happens?

Malcolm: Right? Terrifying. Yeah.

Simone: Well, fingers crossed. Everything's good. And yeah, I'm, I'm lucky that, and we're lucky that our kids are so great. I don't think we're ever going to be driven to the brink with them. They're just ethical, nice people who also hate authority.

Malcolm: So they also hate authority, so they'll make our lives hard.

Malcolm: Don't worry.

Simone: Isn't that the point? Well, I love you so much. I

Malcolm: love you too.

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