0:00:00 - 0:00:23 OK. I'm gonna see if the volume works better on this last time I did this. People said they couldn't hear what I was saying. The, the audio is cutting in and out. I'm just uh testing the mic here. So I wanna see, I'm just gonna wait for a second until someone joins. So I can verify this is actually working 0:00:23 - 0:00:47 . The technical difficulties of making videos has been very annoying. Hey, Sally, can you hear me? Ok, or is this cutting in and out? I made a four hour video a few weeks ago and uh the, the video just totally cut out uh about an hour in and it was choppy before that. I don't know what the heck was going 0:00:47 - 0:01:08 on, but I lost a lot of content and it was very annoying. Ok. So Sally says she can hear me. So let me restart this rant. So it will be good. Hopefully it'll be a little more fluid this time. Ok. So um what is love? Love is a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the benefit of another. In order to do 0:01:08 - 0:01:32 that, you have to understand what benefits you have to understand the cost and benefit and be able to calculate the long term benefit of something. It can't be about short term benefit. You have to maximize it over the span of its effects, right? So for a parent to love a child, a parent needs to know 0:01:31 - 0:01:56 something about the world, they need to know what benefits and what does not benefit. They need to know the cost of things and they need to know the relative prioritization between things between options because all options aren't equal, right. So, um they also need to be willing to sacrifice themselves 0:01:55 - 0:02:20 . What does that mean? Well, it's, it's a willingness to give away uh the things of value that you have or could have in preference to the benefit of another. It means also to become everything that you could be for another person, for their benefit. And so that is the landscape that we're operating 0:02:19 - 0:02:51 on here. Now, how do most parents treat love? Well, they treat love as giving their kids what their kids say they want. No, there are few facets of that that would be well to drill down into first off, they give them what they say they want, what child always says what they actually want. So that doesn't 0:02:50 - 0:03:10 happen all the time, does it? So even right there, if, if uh I don't know if a kid was just really upset and they said I, I wish you would just die. You know, you've got one of these unruly teenagers and they're having a mood and they say, I wish you would just die. Do you go kill yourself if you love 0:03:09 - 0:03:28 your kid? Right. Of course not. That's not actually what they want. They're a little upset right now. And this is an extreme example, but you can dial it down and it doesn't have to be a negative thing. The kid said, I wish I was enclosed in a casing of candy, you know, licorice or something and I just 0:03:27 - 0:03:45 eat my way out. They probably actually don't want that after a few bites. They'd feel really sick, you know, and then they might suffocate. So why would that be a bad idea? Because they have no idea what they're talking about, right? Or they don't have the maturity to actually place themselves in that 0:03:45 - 0:04:07 situation and imagine what it would be like. There's a question of accuracy. There's a question of honesty. So here's the thing though about giving a kid what, what they say they want. It's not just a question of what they say they want equals what they want. Although that frequently is not the case 0:04:07 - 0:04:32 . It's a question of what, whether, what they want is any good. Now, let me present to you what I hope is, is kind of a shocking thought experiment. If you think that your kids know better, what is good for them than you do, wouldn't that, wouldn't that require them to understand the world better than 0:04:32 - 0:04:54 you do? Wouldn't that mean that they could understand what is good and what is bad, better than you do and what is valuable and they have a better ranking, a priority ranking of things than you do. And if you truly believe that, why haven't you given them the keys to your car, signed over the mortgage 0:04:53 - 0:05:23 to their name, sent them to work instead of yourself and given them the checkbook. The answer is quite simple. You don't actually believe that you don't actually believe that. And so to believe that you should give your kids, what they say they want is to live in this weird disjoint reality where somehow 0:05:22 - 0:05:47 they know what's good for them better than you do and yet they don't know what's better for you better than you do. How does that work? Well, it doesn't work. It's logically impossible. Ok. So why are so many parents living in this willful delusion where their purpose in life is to give their kids, whatever 0:05:47 - 0:06:10 they say they want. The reason is that's not actually even what their purpose is because all of those parents, there are many times where they tell their kids to go take a hike where they decline to give kids what they say they want. So what's actually driving all of this? Well, it's, it's selfishness 0:06:09 - 0:06:33 . That's what's driving it. It's the root evil of all things, which is the desire to feel good without actually being good. Parents want to feel good about themselves and that's how they make their decisions regarding their kids. How do you prove this? We'll look at what choices they make and why they 0:06:32 - 0:06:59 make them a kid's life will be radically different if their parent makes sacrifices to set them up for success in life at an early age. How different? Well, let's start at the very beginning. What is the difference between a parent? Uh Well, a group of parents, a set of parents, a father and a mother 0:06:58 - 0:07:26 who create an environment, sorry, who live a life so that they are healthy and ready to have Children when they do. So what do I mean by this? Um So like the parents haven't been on meth their whole lives, right? They're not homeless, they're not mal uh nourished these things have an effect on the embryo 0:07:25 - 0:00:00 , right? What if uh a woman is over a certain age or a man is over a much greater age? There is degradation of the sperm and the egg over time. Um obviously men are constantly making more, but as they get older that gets uh deteriorated too. But of course, it happens a lot sooner with, with a woman. 0:00:00 - 0:08:23 So a woman having her first baby at 36 years old is already making selfish choices that will impact her kid, right? And I'm not talking about just the biological side of that. But, but once the kid is born, she's gonna have way less energy for that kid and she will have trained herself uh to be very 0:08:22 - 0:08:49 self focused through a lifetime of adulthood, of being on, on her own, or at least without a child. And now all of a sudden she's in this environment where, what's best for the kid requires her absolute total commitment. 24 7. Good luck with that. Ok. Doesn't turn out well. So what if, uh what if a lady 0:08:48 - 0:09:09 gets pregnant and she's not married? Well, you can look at the statistics, it's not going to go well for the kid. So these choices they, they start before a child is even born. But what about once the kid is born? Well, there are all kinds of choices that are going to make a difference. What happens 0:09:09 - 0:09:30 in the, in the hours after birth and the days after birth can make lifelong differences. So, so uh not to get lost in details here, but it's actually super important for a kid to eat very soon after they're born. And if they don't, they have to get put on a, on a feeding tube and then they're in the 0:09:30 - 0:09:54 NICU for a week and being in a NICU for a week or two away from mom could have lifelong effects. There's there are signals that need to, to establish between crying and eating and um being in the presence of on the breast of very close to the mother is super duper important. For a variety of reasons 0:09:54 - 0:10:13 and, uh, these are obvious things. They're not, uh, this isn't rocket science or some mystery. Right. So, my point is like, right after the birth, these things start mattering and, and I already made a case for before birth. So, what about as the kid gets older now? We could just go through this and 0:10:13 - 0:10:35 present this dichotomy of choices that hardly anyone thinks about. And why did they not think about it? Well, because those of us who have been through it don't love them and we don't teach them these things we know or we should know or the, the brighter ones among us know, but we're not communicating 0:10:34 - 0:10:55 these things to other people that we say we love. So let's fast forward. So we're just gonna skip over preschool and kindergarten and everything else. There are tons of things that would be really good to talk about there. But once kids get to an age where they can start working, which is a very young 0:10:55 - 0:11:15 age and it's an age younger than the law permits. Historically, they would start working as soon as they could physically. Right. And, and they'd start in the home with mom doing the stuff that mom does and then they'd go out into the fields with dad as soon as they could do the stuff that dad did if 0:11:15 - 0:11:45 they were boys and if they were girls, maybe they did both, um, or maybe they stayed with mom, it just would depend. So in our society, we delay this for years and often at least a decade, at least. So, uh I taught at, at, at a university for almost nine years. I was at a university for 14 years, one 0:11:45 - 0:12:14 or another university as a student. And most of the college students that I interacted with never worked before. Not once, they never had a paid job outside of the home. So, were these people different? Yes, they were in a good way. No, no, they were not. And that now is all historic. What about today 0:12:14 - 0:12:39 ? It's, it's fewer people work today than before. And so what happens when a young person has never had a job? And they're 26 years old or even 24 or even 22 or even 18? Well, where are they going to learn the lessons that people typically learn at work? They'd have to be ridiculously exceptional to 0:12:39 - 0:13:05 pick those things up through osmosis or observation or something. Right. And news flash, it doesn't happen by and large. It doesn't happen. And this is where this is one of many examples where what normal people regard as like magic. Magic, exceptionalism is actually due to choice. It's due to the choice 0:13:05 - 0:13:33 of the individual. It's due to the choices in society and probably more than either of those two, the choices of their parents. If you set up structures where success is taught and incentivized, your Children are way more likely to be successful. It's not 100% but it's a lot higher likelihood than if 0:13:33 - 0:13:58 you just let them float down the river of life like most parents today do. And how do they end up? Look around, they're broke, they're miserable. They're unstable. They're lonely. It's not a good thing. They're probably obese, they're unhealthy. They're not happy people, they're not strong contributing 0:13:57 - 0:14:22 people. So, why not? Well, because their parents stopped doing all the things that parents have always done to set kids up for success against a backdrop of challenge is greater than our parents faced. The world. Today is a much harder place, but we're not even doing what they did to make it work. We're 0:14:22 - 0:14:46 doing far less. I say we, but I should say you, I'm doing it. Some of you might be too but not many. And it's an amazing thing because this is as obvious as the sun rising. But we've got our heads so far up our butts that we're sending our kids off to the meat grinder and pretending that we're good parents 0:14:46 - 0:15:15 in doing. So, this is much bigger than public schools, which is obviously a big chunk of what I've talked about on this topic. So, um, all kids should be working as early as they legally can. They ought to be working as many hours as the law allows as early as they can. And the difference this will make 0:15:14 - 0:15:35 in a child's life is enormous, but that's not actually what I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about the extra mile that a parent can go for that will, will radically increase a kid's ability to be successful in life. You know, most people, if you have kids at home now, that should be at home. So eight 0:15:35 - 0:16:07 , less than 18, the likelihood of that kid having a life anywhere near as uh abundant as yours is abysmally low. Their peer group will have a life that is much, much worse than yours. Why? Because the challenges are greater, the tools are not. That's why they likely will not own a car ever. They will 0:16:06 - 0:16:31 likely never own a home. They will likely never be able to get out of roommate situations where they depend on other people to share the rent. They may never get out of your house. They will probably never have what you would call a career. They'll probably just jump from no skill, labor job to no skill 0:16:31 - 0:16:56 , labor job. And they're probably going to be among the majority who are in some sort of supercharged welfare state system thing where they're basically slaves, where they're just getting food from the government and that's going to be their life. Why? Because like I said, the challenges are greater 0:16:55 - 0:17:22 . The tools are not, but we're not even using the, the tools that we have. So what are the greater tools than that you need to look at the extra mile, you can go as a parent to set up systems that give them a quicker start in life and allow them to accelerate faster in life than historic. Well, it, than 0:17:22 - 0:17:44 we're used to in recent history than we're used to in recent history. The standard right now is you're not an adult until you're 26. That's crazy. But that's the standard. You're on your parents' insurance till you're 26 and you start adulting sometime after that. So like, I don't know, you have your 0:17:43 - 0:18:02 first baby right before you hit menopause or something. If you're a woman and if you're a guy, you know, you're chilling in your mom's basement until your grandfather dies and leaves you an inheritance or something. Ok. That's kind of where we are as a society and people are just floating around. Uh 0:18:01 - 0:18:24 assuming they're entitled to everything without being willing to do anything to get it. And they're honestly waiting and fighting for um the events that will bring them prosperity without them having to do anything to get it. So that's where we are as a society. How do you crack your kids out of this 0:18:23 - 0:18:45 ? Well, the first thing you do is recognize reality. So it's statistically impossible for the majority of people to be different than average, to be better than average. It's statistically impossible for the majority of people to be better than average. But when you look at your kids, let's say you've 0:18:45 - 0:19:10 got a, a nine year old girl and you look at her, you're not seeing her as the, the trashy 23 year old that was in line next to you at Walmart. You're not seeing her as the prostitute that's over on the corner. You're not seeing her as the girl on onlyfans. That Fox News is running yet another article 0:19:10 - 0:19:36 about right. If you have a young boy who's nine, you're not looking at him and seeing someone who's gonna be a complete loser who's £350 sitting in your basement smelling terrible and does nothing with his life and he's 33 and uh, he's more interested in the latest video game than anything else. He's 0:19:36 - 0:20:02 never had a girlfriend. You know, you're, you're not seeing that but why not? What is your answer to the question as to why it's going to be different for your kids? Because look around and that's how it is today. It will be worse when that nine year old turns 18, it will be worse. So tell me why you 0:20:02 - 0:20:24 have any plausible reason to believe it's going to be different for your kid. If you don't have a reason, then that's the path that kids headed toward. So maybe, maybe a reason is, well, I don't have my kid in public schools. We're making tremendous sacrifices as a family or I'm building on this chain 0:20:24 - 0:20:45 of wise choices I started to make as a young person to get to that point today and our kids aren't in public schools. Ok. Great. That's a great reason. Good, good, good, good, good, good. Uh Maybe the choices you made before preclude that. Um So you, you don't have a choice or the, the choice is extraordinarily 0:20:44 - 0:21:05 expensive and you're not willing to do it. Ok. Fine. Whatever. Or maybe that's what you're doing. And the question is, what else are you doing? So, in either case, there are other things that you need to think about and do one is uh there could be, well, I taught my kid from day one that when they turned 0:21:05 - 0:21:28 18, they were gonna be on their own. They were either going to be paying rent in my house market rent, renting a place or homeless. Those were their three options and um they believe me because I'm not the kind of person that messes around and so they sorted themselves out so that by the time they turned 0:21:28 - 0:21:53 18, they could go move out and be on their own or 18 or graduated high school, you know, whatever comes later. So, um ok, cool. That's great. Maybe you made it clear to them that at the earliest age where they can legally work, they would be doing so well, great and you can go on and on, we could go 0:21:52 - 0:22:12 the extra mile. So, so the legal requirement that's all normal stuff that every parent should be doing. But the legal requirements for, for working are different when the kid is working for you. So do you own your own business or could you, um, so you can start up an LLC, even if you have a full time 0:22:12 - 0:22:28 job and just do something where you could employ your kids or you could do some kind of just neighborhood hustle, right. Start up a lawn mowing business or whatever, whatever, whatever. So that your kid has an opportunity to work and earn money. You can drive your kid around the neighborhood and knock 0:22:28 - 0:22:49 on the, the kid can knock on the doors and ask if they could mow lawns for money, right. Whatever the thing might be, whatever it might be, you know, kids could babysit for money. There are things that kids can do to have a job at an early age, at least by the time they can legally work. Right? So, if 0:22:49 - 0:23:12 that's, if those things aren't on the list, if, if you don't promote your kids reading books rather than playing video games or lifting weights rather than, um, playing video games. If you, if you don't promote getting outside and playing, rather than scrolling on the phone. Let's talk about that. If 0:23:12 - 0:23:39 your kid is in a place where they cannot afford a phone and a plan and you have given them a phone and, or a plan, I'm not sure what you think you're doing, but I assure you it's way worse than what you think you're doing that is not a beneficial thing. It's an incredibly harmful thing. Now, if you're 0:23:39 - 0:24:04 like one of these parents that say, well, I want them to have a phone in case something happens and they can contact me. Why don't they have a flip phone? If you have teenage kids, especially kids, younger than teenagers and especially female, kids, daughters and you have given them a smartphone, you 0:24:04 - 0:24:30 are an idiot and you are harming your kid big time. I don't know how else to say that. I don't know how you think that's an ok, good thing to do. You should hit the literature on that one. After 2008. There was a ridiculous increase in depression and suicide and all kinds of nasty things, especially 0:24:29 - 0:24:56 among girls and it's all from social media. I shouldn't say it's all. But the vast majority of that is enabled by social media. I would tell a wise young person today, male or female, but especially males because this is an especially female problem if you're on a first date and that person has to look 0:24:55 - 0:25:17 at their phone even once, but especially more than once during the date, you should immediately drop them. I would even walk out of the gate but never ever ask them out again. That's how much of a red flag it is when you go out in public and you see these moms with young toddlers, just one, just one 0:25:16 - 0:25:41 young young toddler and for 20 minutes they're scrolling through their phones and never even look at their kid once. Why would you want a life like that if you're a man? And if you're a parent, why would you want your daughter to be like that? You cannot have the joy that motherhood provides if it's 0:25:40 - 0:26:02 not a full time job to you. And I mean, 24 7, not eight hours a day. And if you love your phone more than your kid, you're not going to have that joy. So why are you putting your kids into that situation again? What reason do you have to believe that they're not gonna turn out the way everyone else does 0:26:01 - 0:26:25 in that situation? What benefit is there to justify the risk? There isn't one, there isn't one. So by definition, you are harming your kid by doing that greatly harming your kid. You know, there's a collection of common sense things that all parents should be doing for their kids that are becoming so 0:26:24 - 0:26:52 exceptionally rare that if you do any number of them, just a few, your kids are going to be like uh this movie trope of Super Soldiers. You know, they're basically going to be Captain America amongst a sea of mere mortals because these negative consequences are so pervasive and pernicious that kids who 0:26:52 - 0:27:16 aren't part of that are going to be like a different species of animal. That's how that's the difference it makes. So you know, I've ranted about testosterone on this channel and I, I feel like, you know, I don't feel like statistically that the, the stats on those videos, no one watches them, which 0:27:15 - 0:27:36 tells me that people don't think that that's a problem or they think it's a problem. They can't do anything about both of those are false. Both of those are false. But this is just one of many things. So I want you to imagine an 18 year old woman today who didn't, whose parents didn't give her a cell 0:27:36 - 0:28:00 phone. Maybe she got herself one when she had a job and she had enough money and maybe her parents had enough sense to say you will not have a cell phone under the age of 18 in my house until you have a car that you paid for and the insurance that you pay for and the gas that you pay for. So 100% if 0:28:00 - 0:28:24 you can't afford a car, you can't afford a phone. How different is that young woman than an 18 year old who was given a smartphone when she was nine worlds apart. Guarantee they are worlds apart. Uh And, and the first one is much better than the second one. Guarantee you much better set up for success 0:28:24 - 0:28:48 in life, for happiness in life than a, a dopamine addicted, you know, peer pressure, adult, crazy person, ok, who can't go five minutes without looking at her phone? So she can't hold down a job and she'll never be a happy mom because she's just so used to those dopamine hits, you know, I'd rather be 0:28:48 - 0:29:09 married to someone who is addicted to meth and got over it than someone who's addicted to their cell phone. And that's, that's a strong statement to make. I would never marry either person knowing what I do now. But I'd much rather have the one than the other because it's not like everywhere you go people 0:29:09 - 0:29:33 are gonna be pushing you to do math, you know, and, and you can't get away with that socially either. It's, it's, uh, anyway, what a, what about a young man? We can, we can just do this all day long and draw these, these, uh, these differences? Ok. But the point remains, what reason do you have to believe 0:29:32 - 0:29:57 that your kid is going to be different? And now let's transition to what are you doing instead? And why are you doing this to your kids? The reasons are not the things you say. So you might say, well, I don't have a choice or you might say this or that or, or, well, it's not really that bad or, um, but 0:29:56 - 0:30:17 at the end of the day, the, the real reason that comes that, sorry, the most common reason that comes out if it's not making excuses for why you can't do it, it's, well, that's not what they want and this is really important. What they want doesn't matter. And you know, this, if what they wanted mattered 0:30:17 - 0:30:40 , it would mean that they know more about the world and, and, and how things work than you do. Is that true? If it is true, it's pretty pathetic on your part. If they're young enough that, you know, this conversation applies. But if you believed it was true, you'd give them the keys to your car, you'd 0:30:40 - 0:30:59 sign over the mortgage to your house, you give them your checkbook and you'd say, what do I do next? The truth is, you know, that they don't have that wisdom and you're not doing what you're doing because they say they want it, you're doing what they want you, what you say they, what I'm sorry, you're 0:30:59 - 0:31:25 doing what they say they want because you're selfish and you're lazy. Those are the only reasons and it, and you, you care about how you feel right now more than how they are gonna feel across the duration of their lives. That is the reason. It's the only reason. And that's why I say you don't love your 0:31:25 - 0:31:47 kid as much as you think you do because if you did, you wouldn't do the things that you do and you do a heck of a lot of other things that you don't do and that you won't do because you don't care about them as much as you say you do. There's a hard pill for people to swallow but I'm telling you, it's 0:31:47 - 0:32:09 the way it is. The good news is no matter how far along you are in this, maybe your kids are outside the house, they're older now and whatever, they've moved out of your basement. If you're still kicking, you can do something about it. And I know a couple of people, um, who, I guess, I don't know them 0:32:09 - 0:32:34 terribly well, you know, their, their kids don't want to talk to them. It doesn't matter. There's still more you can do if you've got knees and you've got a brain, you can pray. There's always something you can do. But most of you are in a place where you can do a heck of a lot more than that. No. You 0:32:34 - 0:32:59 know, God can do for us much more than we can do for ourselves. But one of the many gates to, to opening that blessing is to do everything that you can do yourself. So, um, what are the things that you can do to make these changes? You have to help your kids architect, a life of abundance. And I'm not 0:32:58 - 0:33:20 talking about worldly prosperity here. Although there are many overlaps. It's not a completely overlapping pair of sets. You need to keep, teach your kids the value of hard work and that life isn't about short term pleasure. You need to help them understand that the things that they're into, right. This 0:33:19 - 0:33:43 second are not going to be the things they wish they were, had done 10 years from now or 20 years from now. A person's, the, the quality of a person's life is most apparent to them after they turn 40 it takes that long for the value of their choices to manifest. And sometimes it's even longer than that 0:33:43 - 0:34:08 . If you live your life, like most parents do where you're just constantly taking your kids to this place or that place or, uh, just constantly facilitating the short term pleasure of your kids even having them into hobbies, you know, sports or they go do this thing or they go do that or they have horses 0:34:07 - 0:34:42 or whatever, you have to be thinking of the big picture. You have to help them design a, a life that's oriented towards a transcendental purpose, a higher purpose ironically, but by design, the task of a parent is to help their kids be the best parents. And so you have to teach them first and foremost 0:34:42 - 0:35:06 through your example, how to live your life for the benefit of your kids. Now, what that entails and one of the reasons, one of the main reasons people don't do this is you're gonna have to fight some battles first and foremost with yourself. You can't be a part time good parent and the first battle 0:35:05 - 0:35:30 you have to fight is a willingness to submit to a job that never ends. Now, most parents are like dismissively superficially talk about how parenting is a job that never ends. But how many parents live that way, instead, what you see is parents that have all these escapes. It's like when you're playing 0:35:30 - 0:35:50 tag as a little kid and there's the safe spot, the home base or whatever it's called where no one can get you for a lot of parents. It's their phone and they'll sit there on their phone and that's like the old timey 19 sixties dad with the newspaper. No one bothers dad when he's got his newspaper in 0:35:50 - 0:36:11 his pipe. That's the, the trope from the bygone era. Well, the modern thing is a parent who's just sitting there scrolling on their phone and the kid could literally chop the dog's head off and the parent would not care just off in another world. Well, you may as well take up heroin. Right. And just 0:36:10 - 0:36:31 zone out on that instead. And there are many other things that, that parents do to get zone out time. This might be why so many parents have their kids in after school, sports and hobbies and stuff because someone else is dealing with them. It's certainly 100% why most parents have their kids in public 0:36:31 - 0:37:00 schools. They become someone else's problem for six plus hours a day. That's not right. If a kid goes outside of your purview, it ought to be because they're going into a place or situation that's better than what you could give them. So that's not the case for all these other things, they're mostly 0:36:59 - 0:37:22 going around their peers in these situations. And that is not again, if that's a better situation and you can provide them then that's really sad. And you have failed as a human being. So we need to uh to make the sacrifices first and foremost, fight the battles with ourselves and get over. This need 0:37:22 - 0:37:46 to take breaks to have off time every single day or on a regular basis or have some way where we can hit a button and tap out of being a parent for a while because it's not right. The second battle, we have to fight, their parents don't want to fight is with the kids because I'm telling you. So, uh I 0:37:46 - 0:38:11 have experienced rehabilitating dogs and uh particularly Huskies and the thing with Huskies, they're, they're very similar to wolves. They have a lot of those genetics and temperament uh qualities. The thing about huskies is, and I imagine it's like this for a lot of other dogs if they're in a certain 0:38:10 - 0:38:36 , if they've never been trained properly, if they've never been socialized properly, it's really hard to get them to where they need to be. It's immensely more difficult than if you do it right the first time, like orders of magnitude, uh we rescued a male dog once and part of his rehabilitation. So 0:38:36 - 0:38:58 , so not to get too off topic, but this is actually quite related. So, Huskies are happiest when they have the ability to do what Huskies do, which is run and be crazy. They're working dogs. Um But also when they have an environment where they are not, the alpha dog, Huskies are happiest when they are 0:38:58 - 0:39:18 not the alpha dog. That's kind of a surprising thing in, in humanity, we have this tendency to think that the best place to be is at the top of a hierarchy. That that's where you're going to be happiest. That's actually not true. Jesus taught this. He whose greatest will be the least the hierarchy of 0:39:18 - 0:39:42 , of greatness in God's kingdom is a hierarchy of service. It's a willingness to suffer for the benefit of others. OK? And most people don't want to do that at all, let alone more than anyone else in husky world. The alpha dog is responsible for everything. The well being of the entire pack rests on 0:39:42 - 0:40:02 the shoulders of the alpha at any moment, they might have to fight off a predator bigger than them or another dog. There's never rest, you're always on and you have to perform all the time. You're constantly monitoring the pack and keeping people in line if they do things that, that uh would be to the 0:40:02 - 0:40:20 detriment of the pack. And I'm not trying to impute, you know, some sort of wisdom or intelligence to dogs that they don't have. But roughly speaking, this is how it goes when someone's out of line, you bite them, you make sure everyone knows you're in charge and that works out the best when bad things 0:40:19 - 0:40:44 happen and when bad things happen, you're the one that has to deal with it. So when a dog does not have a human who obviously has that role, it will feel the need, it will feel insecure and it will be unstable and it will feel the need to become that alpha dog. And so it starts biting people and peeing 0:40:43 - 0:41:06 on things and tearing things up and it's just wild. So when you rehab a dog, you have to help it, understand that it's safe and someone else is worried about all of that and they can just relax and have fun and run around and be crazy like Huskies most enjoy. So when you have a kid that has not had a 0:41:06 - 0:41:28 parent who gives them this walled garden where they say, look, the world is an absolutely atrociously terrible place. You're safe here because I am one tough son of a gun and nothing's gonna come through that door to hurt you because I'll die before that happens. And I'll probably take a bunch of them 0:41:27 - 0:41:49 out too if a parent doesn't have that or a child doesn't have that in a father and doesn't have in a mother, someone who's, you know, the father's primarily directed out their attention is outside the wall, the mother's attentions inside the wall and she says I'm going to make everything here as good 0:41:49 - 0:00:00 as I know it can be. And I'll give my life to do it. And if they can't say that sincerely, that kid is gonna go off the rails to some degree, it commensurate. It's proportional to how the father and mother are fulfilling their roles because that kid will feel like it needs those things. It's divine, 0:00:00 - 0:42:33 it's coded into us. And if we don't provide that, where are they going to get it? They will have to manufacture it in themselves. Or if they have the sense to know that, that they're not going to be able to do it. Some can but many can't, they're going to seek it in places that they will not find it 0:42:33 - 0:42:55 but will lie to them and tell them it's there and it's going to be absolutely disastrous and that's what's happening, look around. But just like that, that alpha husky has to turn and bite the other members of the pack from time to time. Parents have to bite their kids figuratively speaking, how does 0:42:55 - 0:43:23 this happen? Discipline, discipline. And I'm not limiting this to corporal punishment or something basic or, or barbaric. It's a, it's a holistic consummate thing where you have to structure everything in your life for the, for the greatest likelihood of the greatest benefit for your kids. And those 0:43:23 - 0:43:47 are the battles that parents don't want to fight. Now. That makes it maybe sound like it's some enormous thing like a one time, enormous thing. So when I was rehabilitating this male dog, I mentioned he had been abused, he was in AAA cage for three years when we got him, he was in rough shape. But um 0:43:46 - 0:00:00 , I, I had faith that we could help him. And so what it took was twice. I was in an all out melee with this dog where I don't know what the heck happened. Some kind of weird Matrix. John Wick something with Keanu Reeves karate maneuvers, wrestling with this dog because he's trying to kill me. Right? 0:00:00 - 0:44:36 And the thing with dog psychology is when they challenge you, you cannot stop or back down until you win. Because if you retreat, they, you've, you've now reinforced their dominance and it's gonna be even harder to unseat that. So you can't pick the time and the place when they challenge you. But when 0:44:36 - 0:44:57 they do, you have to, to go all out until you win. And I don't know how it happened that in these two battles, he didn't bite me. He was trying and he is a fast, fast, strong dog, but somehow I pinned him to the ground. I didn't hurt him in case you're wondering which is part of the challenge, right 0:44:56 - 0:45:20 ? Because it's this dog's trying to kill me, but I'm not allowed to kill him and I'm just trying nor do I want to. But I'm trying. My goal is to pin him to the ground. So he submits in spite of his best effort anyway, that's not how it is with kids. Right. It's not this one off or two time battle Royale 0:45:19 - 0:45:44 figuratively speaking, it's 24 7 little things and that's a lot for people to do. And so they opt out because they have, they have the choice, right. And what I'm saying is you're choosing the lesser path and it's, the whole thing is gonna blow up in your face. Guaranteed the end of that road is a place 0:45:43 - 0:46:05 neither of you wanna be. But it's a day by day, moment by moment, choice. So you shouldn't be overwhelmed by the intensity required because it's not a one time thing, but it's fair to be overwhelmed by the duration. But you just need to get over it. If you love your kid, you'll make it work, you'll become 0:46:05 - 0:46:28 the person, you need to be to make it work because their benefit is more important than your comfort. And you really, really, really, really have to believe that and you can't fake it. It's not gonna work otherwise. So when you talk to someone about their kid working, they'll say, but my kid doesn't 0:46:27 - 0:46:51 wanna work. Who freaking cares what your kid wants to do. If you've raised them in a, in a household where they have the choice, it's gonna be real painful to revoke that choice, but you gotta do it. It's like teaching a kid to eat vegetables. You can't like strap the kid to a chair and shove him down 0:46:50 - 0:47:15 the throat. It takes tons of patient, deliberate tenacious effort and you just have to keep working it and you have to sit there at the table for three hours if that's what it takes for them to crack. Right. It's like that with kids. So here's the test how much of the load of keeping your household running 0:47:15 - 0:00:00 . I'm not talking about paying the bills but, you know, cutting the lawn. If you have one, dusting the furniture, cleaning the toilets, how much of that do your kids take on? Because as a parent, your primary responsibility ought to be training them to do that. Well, not doing those things yourself. 0:00:00 - 0:47:55 Now saying that, you know, someone might get defensive and say, well, that's lazy. The parents shouldn't be offloading all that to their kids. It's way harder to offload it than it is to do it yourself. And you know that and that's the real reason you do it yourself. So don't pull that on me because 0:47:55 - 0:48:19 we both know you're lying. It's way, way harder to train them to do it well, and watch them and have that, that diligence to keep checking on them and do not lose your mind and do not give up than it is to just do it yourself. You should always have a kid with you when you're doing anything around the 0:48:19 - 0:48:43 house and as much as you can, you should delegate to them those tasks as they become able to do it and news flash, they can do it at a way younger age than you think. So, if you, when in doubt, try it out and you can pull it back if it's too soon. But odds are, they can handle it. It just requires a 0:48:43 - 0:49:05 lot of your time, a lot more time than it would take for you to do it yourself. But the beauty is, it will have a payoff and those payoffs happen a lot sooner than you think. Um As an example, there, there are many, many things in my house as my kids get older that, that have this residual payoff because 0:49:05 - 0:49:23 we invested the time to train them up to be able to do it. And I told you how I'm painting my house right now, uh, on another video, the exterior of our house, we're painting it. It's, it, it would have cost a fortune to get someone else to do it. And, and uh, but it would have been easier to just cut 0:49:23 - 0:49:50 the check. But I thought, you know, if we save that money, we can, we can buy two experiences. One is probably maybe three experiences I think, I think roughly it's gonna, it's gonna be enough money for two annual vacations. Nice ones, right? Like a week long. But the other thing that ad buys us, the 0:49:50 - 0:50:16 third experience is the experience for my wife and I to teach my kids how to paint a house because normal kids don't know how to paint. Right. And so what we did is we stretched this out over three years. How's that? For time commitment? So, three summers we started on the, the, these, uh, sheds we have 0:50:16 - 0:50:37 because we didn't really care a whole ton if those didn't look very good. Plus it's smaller. We didn't want to overwhelm the kids. So we set aside time over summer and we worked on this for a couple Saturdays and we got the sheds painted, the kids hated it. They hated it. Right. And, but they got a little 0:50:37 - 0:50:54 better at it. And then we moved on to the house and there was a systematic way that we did that and, you know, they slopped paint everywhere and we had to go back and fix it. That was a lesson in and of itself. They spilled paint on the ground in certain places and we had to go up and clean it up. That 0:50:53 - 0:51:14 was a lesson is all of a sudden they're getting all these uh, windows of perception that they'd never have if I had just paid somebody to do this. Right. This is just a tiny, tiny example. And in this there were things that only I can do. So I'm the one climbing up on the roof and doing crazy stuff off 0:51:13 - 0:51:38 a ladder. Right. But even in that there, there have been a few opportunities where I had uh one of my kids or another of my kids run something up the ladder for me and it was a tiny little chunk of the greater picture, but they were able to build confidence and getting up there and they're a little scared 0:51:37 - 0:52:05 . But again, it's all steps, it's all steps upward and onward for them. And it's impossible to accurately estimate the value of a lot of these things piled together. And by the time you get to the place where you probably can estimate that it's going to be too late to generate those experiences. So you 0:52:05 - 0:52:25 have to do this stuff from the beginning or as soon as you find out. And like I said, it's never too late to do something, but it's certainly too late to do everything. It's always too late to do everything. So the time to, to make the changes towards this is now and, you know, I, I don't think this 0:52:25 - 0:52:57 will be the last time I speak about the importance of being exceptional today and how only those who are exceptional are going to have what we consider to be normal lives. That's a theme I'll keep coming back to, but my goodness, please don't excuse your failures as a parent by referring to what your 0:52:57 - 0:53:23 kids want. I mean, if you're in that position where all you are is a butler or a maid to your kid, just hang it up now, give your kids up for adoption let someone else do it better. That's, that is not what we're here for. So, you know, I've, I've made a bunch of videos about helping to architect your 0:53:23 - 0:53:46 kids lives. What some career possibilities you might think about are I'm telling you if your kid is a normal person that doesn't really wake up to being an adult until they're 26 plus it's going to be too late. They are going to have abysmal lives and the doors remaining to them to make any difference 0:53:45 - 0:54:09 in that will be very few. It would require a wholesale change and a willingness to be a person 100 times better than they've been so far in their life and, and uh it's just not gonna happen in any measurable quantity. Think about where you want your kid to be as an adult and when they become a parent 0:54:08 - 0:54:34 and think about what reasons you have to believe they're ever gonna get there. And if you don't have suitable reasons, go find some make changes so that they have that path to abundance in life, that's what we're meant to be doing as parents. So I hope that that's useful. I hope this has been worth watching 0:54:34 - 0:55:01 . And uh most of all, I hope you have some ideas of things that you can change today a longer term basis. Uh As I'm wrapping up, the thought occurred to me in our discussion about battles. I did not address battles between spouses that has to happen. I think more often than not the reason you're not 0:55:01 - 0:55:24 the parent that, you know, you could be is because you're afraid of confronting your spouse and that's you, you don't want to be uncomfortable and have that uncomfortable situation where you have to say no, this is the way it's gotta be. And here are my reasons now, I don't wanna start parsing through 0:55:24 - 0:55:49 gender roles and all this and that whatever here but have the difficult conversations with your spouses, uh not edicts, but conversations and bring these things up and go through all the turmoil that generates because that's what it takes to do everything that you can do. If, if you haven't tried to 0:55:49 - 0:56:15 push on that, it's still your fault until you're doing everything you can. You're not doing everything you can and it's your fault. So have the battles with yourself, have the battles with your kids, have the battles with your spouse so that you can get all the information hashed out and figure out what 0:56:14 - 0:56:21 you can do to move to a better place. All right, take care. I'm gonna end this.