0:00:00 - 0:00:23 All right, we're gonna do a video on some ideas about parenting and in particular, I want to focus on this idea of extending childhood artificially. Now, this is a subset of an idea I've spoken about before, which is you being the architect of your child's life. Now, whenever we get into these kinds 0:00:22 - 0:00:42 of topics, parenting emotions flare, it's a topic that people really don't want any advice on. And that's unfortunate. So let's guide ourselves in this. Let's motivate this with a goal. If I asked you what's important to you with your Children, what's your goal with your Children? There are a lot of 0:00:42 - 0:01:00 good answers to this, but let's just throw out one potential goal, which is that you would like your Children to have Children and you would like those grandchildren to be people that you'd like to spend time with. That's a pretty good goal, right? So, you know that there are kids running around that 0:01:00 - 0:01:22 are rotten. One of the benefits of being a grandmother or grandfather is that you get a significant share of residual benefits of having Children around, but you have far fewer of the costs. You're not the one that has to do the laundry or cook the food or provide the clothing, you just get to play with 0:01:22 - 0:01:42 them. It's all the fun stuff with a lot less of the baggage. Isn't that nice? It's, it's quite a residual. So the better you do as a parent, the more enjoyable your experience as a grandparent will be. Now, that might sound kind of selfish. But it's one of these things where we should just be honest 0:01:41 - 0:01:59 about it and start from there. And if we want to get better from that, that's great. But it's, it's one of many situations where people pretend that they have much nobler and altruistic goals than they really do. And how do you prove it? Well, it's the same thing if we invert this, it's the same thing 0:01:59 - 0:02:20 with how Children regard their parents or grandparents as they age, we all would like to think of ourselves as these altruistic people. But how often do you go and visit elderly people? How often do you call your parents as you, as you grow into adulthood? How, how willing are you to open your home to 0:02:19 - 0:02:37 your aging relatives if they need help? And these are things that very few people are willing to do. So let's get real, let's get honest and let's just start from the basics, which is, let's aim for behavior as parents that generate grandchildren. We actually want to be around. Now, there are a lot of 0:02:37 - 0:02:58 benefits to this long term view. Uh The primary one is that it extends our our event horizon. We make choices based on long term results instead of short term results, maybe as we opened this discussion. And I said, what's your goal with your Children? Maybe you thought something like? Well, I want them 0:02:58 - 0:03:17 to be happy. OK, that's great. But what do you mean by that? What's your time horizon today? You want them to be happy today? You want them to be happy next week, next month, next year, because the behavior you engage in to optimize that goal will be very different depending on the time horizon. So you 0:03:17 - 0:03:38 should be looking long term because that's going to, to help you find the best behavior you should want your Children to have Children, to find someone to marry and to have Children with, right? And that's an increasingly difficult thing to do. So if you're just focused on them being happy next week 0:03:38 - 0:03:59 , next month, next year, it's almost certain that that path is going to be completely different than the path that leads to them having Children. You need to understand that it's very important. Uh It's important and we'll get back to this because under the false pretense of empathy, parents today are 0:03:59 - 0:04:19 absolutely ruining their Children. And so how do we avoid that? How do we make sure we're not part of that? Well, let me give you an analogy. I've done some work in the field of malnutrition. And it was really surprising for me to learn that malnutrition is not a problem of a lack of calories. It's a 0:04:19 - 0:04:39 problem of a lack of nutrients. It can actually be solved just by making sure that kids get certain vitamins and minerals on a daily basis. And so you can fix this with a pill. Actually, it doesn't take a huge amount of food. And that's really sad because it's a completely preventable situation. Um Money 0:04:39 - 0:05:01 really isn't the problem. The problem is people not caring. And so if your child was in danger of being malnourished, you would do what you could to prevent that. Why? Because if you don't get the vitamins and minerals you need as a child as a young child, what happens is your body doesn't grow in normal 0:05:00 - 0:05:24 ways. And this is most obviously manifested at the level of physical height. But when there's a problem with growth in height, there's also typically a problem with growth in organs. It's not just your skeletal structure that's lacking the nutrients, it's your organs. And so this can cause lifelong problems 0:05:23 - 0:05:45 with, with your internal organs, including your brain. And so a malnourished child will have a very low IQ his or her entire life. And because of that, they will struggle to support themselves their entire lives. And then when they have Children, which they're more likely to do because they don't understand 0:05:45 - 0:06:06 things when they have Children, they will be even less equipped to provide the necessities of life for their Children than just themselves because there's more mouths to feed. And so it's this cascading problem. So you would do many things to prevent this, everything up to and including your whole capability 0:06:05 - 0:06:28 . You'd do anything you could to prevent it. And yet the odds are very high that you're stunting your kid's character right now, if you're a parent or that you have, if you're a grandparent and that's a hard pill to swallow. Pun intended. Right. It's a hard pill to swallow. But just like malnutrition 0:06:27 - 0:06:49 can be cured with the right pill at the right time. The first step in correcting your mistakes in raising your Children is to admit that you have a problem and it hurts, but it hurts a lot less than a lifetime of, of dealing with the consequences of that problem. And if you're in the, the position where 0:06:49 - 0:07:09 your kids are already grown, it's never too late to have an effect on them and their kids, if they have kids or if they're going to have kids and even if you can't have an effect there, I refer you to Titus chapter two which says that men and women ought to go out of their way to teach the younger generation 0:07:08 - 0:07:31 and that includes people that are not your Children. Uh, none of you are my Children. Well, my chil Children will watch this, but I'm publishing this to the world. And so that's in fulfillment of Titus two. And you can do that as well. You can do Titus Two, you can do Titus Two as well. So this problem 0:07:30 - 0:07:50 of extending childhood artificially, it's, it's a tuning problem. And so for the, the sake of completion here, I'd like to highlight the other problem because it's like a needle that can go either way and we want it right in the middle. It's, it's a, it's a gauge that we want to be right in the middle 0:07:50 - 0:08:15 . And so the other side of the gauge is when when Children mature too soon, it's the premature termination of childhood. Now, this is something that I experienced and I am passionate about um doing what I can to prevent kids from having to go through this because it's not fun. So an an example of this 0:08:15 - 0:08:40 is when poor kids need to get a job and work to help pay household expenses. You know, this is a case where kids have parents borrow money from them or kids have to go buy their own pants. Um That's not a good thing for a 15 year old to have to worry about. And I just say 15 because I think that's the 0:08:40 - 0:09:06 legal age to get a job if you're not working for your parents. Or an example that I've seen is also um when older daughters are basically they become servants to their mothers who keep having babies when the mother is too old to take care of them. Well, so um that's prema premature termination of childhood 0:09:05 - 0:09:33 . Now, the problem of extending or terminating childhood, it itself it's a gauge. But when you zoom in to either side, that is a gauge as well. What do I mean by that on the side of, of terminating childhood, too early, there is also a gauge where some of the things that seem like early termination of 0:09:33 - 0:09:52 childhood are actually really good experiences to help prep Children for adulthood. And those are actually the very thing the pre this presentation is gonna talk about that's lacking in most Children today. So for example, I mentioned older daughters being enslaved to take care of the babies of older 0:09:52 - 0:10:16 mothers. Well, a good version of this is having Children. Uh sons and daughters gain experience caring for babies that are their younger siblings. That's great. That's a great thing to rotate in. But it's inappropriate when that, that child, it's almost always a daughter that gets roped into this when 0:10:16 - 0:10:40 that, when that daughter is taking care of that kid so often that they are doing the lion's share of the rearing of the child. It's as if it's their own kid, that's not right. It's messed up and it will damage that daughter. Um maybe she'll want to flee the house. And so she marries a man that she shouldn't 0:10:39 - 0:10:58 marry just to get out of the house or she moves out when that's not a good idea yet or whatever the case may be or she just resents having Children that can happen as well. She's paying all the cost with very little of the benefits. She's not the one that got the, the blast of positive hormones when 0:10:58 - 0:11:19 she had the baby or when she nurses. So she's getting all the cost without the benefit. She just gets the dirty diapers. Uh and, and the same with poor kids needing to work at a young age. Sometimes they come out of that with a resentful attitude towards work or um they become workaholics because they 0:11:19 - 0:11:39 , it it's so ingrained in their identity that they just can't set it aside or whatever the case may be now, thankfully, uh early. Well, I should say premature maturation of Children is largely a problem of the past. We're not sending six year olds to go work in the coal mines. Most women don't drop out 0:11:39 - 0:12:03 of 10th grade these days to help their mother at home. That's something that, that used to happen quite often. Um But not today. Instead, we have the problem of Children maturing too late. It's this artificial extension of childhood. What are some examples of this? You see it all around uh young, young 0:12:03 - 0:12:24 people today, they have very little interest in getting a driver's license. Now, this is quite alien to anyone over the age of 30 because all of us were at the, the DMV or whatever it's called in your state to get your driver's license the day you could, the day you could get it. You had it because that 0:12:24 - 0:12:49 was freedom. Right. It was a good thing. Everybody was all over it. Another telltale sign is, um, a certain degree of physical affection between parents and Children. Um, guys at a certain age, it just gets a little weird, uh, adult Children snuggling up with their parents. It's, it's weird now there's 0:12:48 - 0:13:08 nothing wrong with, with, with a hug and whatever and just normal stuff is great and important. It's very important. Physical affection between parents and Children totally appropriate. But there's a level where it's just weird and the weirdness of it is not the limit of the problem. It's, that it points 0:13:08 - 0:13:37 to a much bigger problem. Uh, a child who's doing those things when they are, the age of an adult is still a child in many other ways that, that are all a problem. Right. What about, uh, a kid that doesn't have a job when legally they're old enough to have one, let alone when they're 18. What about a 0:13:37 - 0:14:01 child that doesn't pay any of their expenses? Now again, a 15 year old shouldn't have to buy their pants. Right. Not fancy pants. Not, you know, oh, I want this, these designer shoes or something but just to not be naked kind of clothing. Um, but as a child becomes an adult more and more of their expenses 0:14:01 - 0:14:28 ought to be paid by themselves. And once they turn 18, the reasonable standard is that a parent is only paying for the things that I guess to put this in the best way, a parent is only paying for what they would pay for anyway. So, if a child is going to be on a parent's car insurance policy or health 0:14:27 - 0:14:49 insurance policy, they should pay their share of that. And it's still probably going to be far less expensive than it would be if the child had their own policy, but they should be paying their share of it. Same thing with cell phones, same thing with rent. If your child's living at home and they're 0:14:48 - 0:15:06 18, they ought to be paying their rent and they've graduated from high school because of course, that depends on how old they are when they get in. But once they've graduated high school and they're 18, they ought to be paying rent if they're living in your house. Now, does that have to be market? No 0:15:06 - 0:15:28 , it should approach market. There should be a plan for that. We're getting to that. Ok. What about a car? There are people who just give their kids cars. Not a good idea. There are people who sell their kids cars or cosign on a loan or something and then they offer the child an interest free loan or 0:15:28 - 0:15:50 something like that. Well, that's approaching better, but we're gonna get into this in a second. What the standard is. What about tuition? Is there ever a case where parents should pay for college for their kids? Probably not. Probably not. And this opens up a can of worms that I'm gonna try to be as 0:15:50 - 0:00:00 brief as I can with. If you lend someone money, you should only do so if you can legally secure collateral, if you can't legally secure collateral or you don't want to, you should only give that money if it's a gift, if you obey that principle. And it's a suggestion. But if you obey that suggestion, 0:00:00 - 0:16:40 you are going to find yourself uh avoiding all kinds of problems and helping people in ways that you wouldn't if you didn't. But the long and short of all of this is that you're going to find that what people regard as normal parenting today is actually stunting the character of their Children through 0:16:40 - 0:17:13 artificially extending their childhood. It's not good, even though it's normal, it's very bad. And what good, good parenting actually is will be regarded as exposing Children to adulthood too soon, even though it's not, that's the point. Ok. Now, why does all this matter? It matters because boys and 0:17:13 - 0:17:33 girls do not have any time to waste. And this flies in the face of the attitude of parents today who act like their Children are all Peter Pan and Neverland and that they're never gonna grow up and they have all the time in the world that there's any such thing as free time, there isn't, there isn't 0:17:32 - 0:17:59 even appropriate play for young Children. It has a purpose. It's a very important purpose. But what happens as a child ages is they get exposed to more and more of reality and the things that gave them joy as, um, ignorant Children in their innocence can't give them joy anymore. Now, look around you 0:17:58 - 0:18:22 at people in their mid and late twenties today. And I ask you a simple question. Are they happy? No, they're miserable. They're measurably more miserable than prior generations. Why? Now the answer to that can be quite complicated. But if we had to reduce it down to a single source is that they never 0:18:22 - 0:18:49 grew up, they are clinging to the things that brought them joy as innocent Children after they've lost their innocence. Is that kind? Is that caring? Is that loving? No, it's the example of short sighted selfishness in their parents and it is their parents' fault. Boys need years to prepare to be a husband 0:18:49 - 0:19:11 and a father. And when you delay their development, you rob them from this. But it gets worse because it's not something that can just be delayed without consequence. One of the consequences of delaying the development of boys is that you reduce the set of women who will be attracted to them. Not just 0:19:11 - 0:19:37 because the quality of your son degrades, but because women care about the age of the men that they're attracted to. They care less than men do about the women that they're attracted to. But they do care and that care is increasing culturally, with the passage of time, it's so extreme today, that many 0:19:36 - 0:20:02 people, many young people consider a, uh a man who's at least two years older than them. I should say women, many young women consider a man who's at least two ages, two years older than them to be an age gap situation. Whereas not too long ago, anything under 10 years was not unusual. And so, uh, as 0:20:01 - 0:20:25 your, your son continues to be a little boy, what you're doing is you're shrinking the window of women that he has a chance with when he finally becomes a man. And that's against the backdrop of a shrinking set of eligible women anyway, because most women don't want to have Children today. Uh, they don't 0:20:25 - 0:20:45 want, uh, an increasing number, want to work for a very long time before they quote unquote, settle down and they want to party and all these other things and they have ridiculously high standards for income and looks. So it's already hard and you're making it worse. What a what about for girls? Well 0:20:45 - 0:21:11 , girls can't afford to wait because they maximize their relationship capital when they're 18. And this is a terrible truth. But it is what it is. If you shield people from this, you just hurt them every delay. That you create in raising your girl into a woman is going to decrease the quality of men 0:21:10 - 0:21:35 that she has a chance with. And this in turn is gonna decrease the odds that she's ever going to get married. That if she marries, she's gonna have kids that if she has kids, they're gonna be kids. You want to be around and just like for boys, the set of viable men for women to marry is shrinking very 0:21:34 - 0:22:01 quickly. Inflation is drastically increasing the amount of income a man has to make so that his wife can stay at home or even have kids. And uh the testosterone levels are dropping very quickly, which means fewer men are interested in the first place. And interesting in the second place, many men have 0:22:01 - 0:00:00 issues even making babies at this point, young men, twenties in their twenties and it's those numbers are increasing. So it's a bad situation to begin with. You make it much worse with every delay that you inject into your Children. Now, I want to dive a little deeper for our penultimate slide here. 0:00:00 - 0:22:52 I encourage you to go over the lives of your Children and think about the direction of each thing in their lives. So this is how to address the problem. Look over their lives because I promise you there are tons of things or at least a few things that are significant in the life of each of your Children 0:22:51 - 0:23:19 right now where they were things that seemed good but that they've outgrown their use their benefit. And so it's interesting that, that this mirrors the, the idea itself of premature, I'm sorry of uh artificial extension of childhood. You're taking something that's good childhood and you're extending 0:23:18 - 0:23:45 it past the point when it's good and it becomes bad. Similarly to address this, look into the life of the child and identify the things that have outgrown their utility. This is an application of an idea. I've brought up uh many times now and I'll, I'll talk about it again of this word language which 0:23:45 - 0:24:14 means much more than what we use it for. But these are ideas or things or people or places activities that draw them up to more or better than they had or were or did before. And it's like a ladder in that way. It's a rung where if you climb up, you're now higher than you were before. The problem is 0:24:14 - 0:24:37 if you stay on that rung, you can never go higher. And in life, those things that we hold on to for longer than we should, they turn into tethers that not only keep us where we are, but since it's impossible to stay the same, it brings us down lower than we used to be worse than we used to be less happy 0:24:36 - 0:25:00 than we used to be weaker. All these negative changes. And so look for those rungs that have become tethers in their lives. Here's some tips, some examples, I should say, just examples. This is such a broad thing that you'll have to look at your own situation. You'll see things. But what about a book 0:25:00 - 0:25:21 series that the child really likes? And they've read this book 20 times? Well, that's great to a point. But at some point they're hurting themselves by rereading that book again and again and again, why? Because it's not a zero sum game time is a limited resource and now they're wasting it. They're not 0:25:21 - 0:25:36 gonna get anything out of that book, reading it for the 20th time that they haven't gotten already unless it's the scriptures. The point is the set of books that you can reread again and again and again and get something out that's greater than what you would get out of reading another book is, it's 0:25:36 - 0:25:59 a shrinking set with, with every increment of reading. And so they've got to move on to something else. Right. So, what do you do in that situation? Well, maybe you say, look, you're not allowed to read this book again or this series until you come to me. I will assign you something to do that's better 0:25:59 - 0:26:18 . And then once you're through that, you can go read the book again. And what's, what's the principle here, you use what they want to draw them to better things than what they want. This is a shocker because modern parents think that their purpose in life is to provide present pleasure for their Children 0:26:18 - 0:26:42 . It's not, it's to maximize their long term joy. That's what God's purpose is with us. That's what our purpose ought to be with our Children. And in order to maximize our long term joy, the Lord puts us in positions that create a whole lot of short term discomfort to put it lightly. And if you aren't 0:26:42 - 0:27:02 doing that with your Children, you are not leading them to the greatest long term joy because guess what? You haven't solved some problem better than God. If that's the cost for God to do it with you, it's absolutely the cost of you to do it with your Children. You have invested him in that. Trust me 0:27:02 - 0:27:25 . What are some other examples? Maybe there's a kind of toy that they really like? Ok, well, use that, use that. So I'm not saying rip these things down, you know, out from their lives by the roots, use the momentum to point them to better things. They have a desire for something, use that desire to 0:27:25 - 0:00:00 point them to better things. So you can, you can wean them off of tho those toys. Maybe it's video games, who knows what right could be anything wean them off of those things by interleaving better things. So like I I mentioned video games, maybe you buy yourself one of those egg timers and you say, 0:00:00 - 0:28:09 yeah, you could play video games for 15 minutes for every hour that you read a book or I need you to go outside and play for two hours. I'm gonna set this timer and when this rings you can come in and set it again for 15 minutes. You could play a video game. Right. Because by doing good things that they 0:28:09 - 0:28:31 might not enjoy right now, they're going to learn to enjoy them. You know, who enjoys lifting weights the first time they do it. But if you stay at it you will learn to, to love it and it's a good thing. Right. Maybe there's a hobby that they really like. May, maybe they like lifting weights. I know 0:28:31 - 0:28:50 , I have a friend who has a teenage son who's all about it. Well, what, what don't they like? That's really good. And you could use that to interleave it. Right. And, and help train them to better things or to, um, you know, lifting weights is a good thing, but it has to be measured. If you're in the 0:28:50 - 0:29:16 gym, eight hours a day, you're wasting your life. Right. Unless that's your job, I guess, whether you work at a gym or you're a bodybuilder. But anyway, it's probably clear what about a job that I initially makes them grow, but whose comfort prevents them from making further progress. So, I, uh, had 0:29:15 - 0:29:35 a close friend whose father owned a restaurant in a mall. And so because of the family situation, he was able to start working at a much younger age than most kids, which was great. It was great. It taught him all sorts of responsibility at a young age and he was making money and at the time it was a 0:29:35 - 0:29:57 lot of money for, for his age. But pretty quickly that rung up became a tether down because, whereas that was pushing his limits and a great opportunity when he was, he was young with every year that he got older, it wasn't the best thing he could be doing, but it was so much more comfortable because 0:29:57 - 0:30:18 he was used to it than anything else he could do that would continue to help him grow. And he had tremendous pressure from his parents to stay there because he was reliable and trustworthy and most employees in that sort of situation, aren't they come and they go and there are problems. And so they encouraged 0:30:18 - 0:30:39 him to stay longer than he should because it helped them. And so these are all examples, you know, going back to hobbies that they really like or that were really good for them at a time. There's a long list of things that it's appropriate for young Children to be doing that are not appropriate uses 0:30:39 - 0:31:03 of time for say older teenagers, it's time to move on and, and what you do by keeping your kids in uh extracurricular activities uh into high school one, you're, you're robbing time away from their academics. But there are some cases where particularly outperforming Children can do well in both things 0:31:03 - 0:31:25 at the same time. But you're training your kids to be little dopamine fiends who always have something exciting to go and do. Now, those are shallow things that won't provide them long term joy. But they don't know that. And when they have the opportunity to do something else, like work an actual career 0:31:24 - 0:31:47 that takes their quite a bit of their, uh, heart and soul to do or to be a mother, which takes all of your heart and soul to do. They're gonna look at that and say, well, this isn't exciting and shiny. Uh, I've been playing for the last however many years of my life and I just wanna keep playing and 0:31:47 - 0:32:07 so they'll delay it or they'll do it halfheartedly and you won't end up with grandchildren that you want to spend time with or you won't end up with grandchildren at all. That's what you're choosing by choosing to keep your kids in these things. Now, one thing I didn't really talk about in this, we're 0:32:06 - 0:32:29 , we're pretty much to the end of this is that the costs of these things almost always include money. There are greater costs and those are the ones we've discussed so far, uh, that have to do with the development of your Children. But I fear that very few people have sat down and calculated the financial 0:32:29 - 0:32:51 cost of the poor choices they make with their Children because it is expensive. Now, I agree with the many people who say it costs more than ever to raise kids today. That's obvious, you know, just look at the price of diapers, but much of the money that's spent on Children today is optional. For example 0:32:50 - 0:33:09 , there's no reason you need to go out and buy new clothes for little kids. You can definitely find someone who has kids that used to be little and get those clothes used for free or very little money compared to buying them new. You can reuse your clothes with other kids. And now all of a sudden you're 0:33:09 - 0:33:31 saving thousands of dollars, but there are also things that just shouldn't be in an older child's life at all. Uh And I'm just gonna hammer down on extracurriculars. It's absolutely insane to spend all that money on fun time for your kids. Now you can convince yourself that you're developing some deep 0:33:30 - 0:33:52 , I don't know, capability for your kids by putting them in these things. But again, it's a rung that can turn into a tether and think about that if a kid gets, let me just pluck one out of thin air and I'm not talking about any of the people I know. Well, so this should be safe and if it happens to 0:33:52 - 0:34:12 be to fit your situation, great use it. But I'm not thinking about you or talking about you, but let's say that your kid gets really, really good on the piano and you spend thousands of dollars on these piano lessons. It's a huge chunk of time. You're driving them all over the place to get them to the 0:34:12 - 0:34:35 , the things that they need to do, whatever, it's a big sacrifice and they're good. The kid gets really good at piano. You're thinking, wow. I've instilled this wonderful skill and they've worked so hard on this and you're right. But not only is that never gonna be useful for hardly anything, that level 0:34:35 - 0:34:54 of ability. I mean, they can go and give other kids lessons now and that might actually be quite a useful thing in, under certain situations. But here's the damage you've done without knowing it. You've gotten them really good at something. They've climbed the curve of work really hard at something and 0:34:54 - 0:35:17 now you're good at it and that's gonna make it that much harder for them to go and work their way up that ladder with anything else. Here's the thing on the one hand, people who have never worked hard on something and gotten over the hump, obviously they don't know what that's like and they don't understand 0:35:16 - 0:35:38 how hard it is to master something. So it's good to give them that exposure. On the other hand, everything a person does that with makes it that much less likely they will ever do that again. Why? Because it's a zero sum game. There's only so much time that you have everything you master for everything 0:35:38 - 0:35:57 you master. There's an infinite number of things that you haven't mastered and you can't do the one and the other at the same time, you know, if, if you want your kid to be a piano prodigy and they start practicing four hours a day when they're five years old, that's great. But list out the things that 0:35:57 - 0:36:22 they can't do because of that and it caused something. And, uh, anyway, that's worth thinking about when Children are Children is the best time to choose the things that they're going to learn to be good at as, as Children. That, that might seem like a well done kind of comment. But it's a good segue 0:36:21 - 0:36:52 to the slide. That's on the screen. Your job as a parent is to intentionally and incrementally expose your Children to a greater share of adult responsibility. It's a very important duty. It's not too protect them from all adult responsibility. If your kid 17 and they don't have a hefty share of the 0:36:52 - 0:37:13 chores around the house, you have failed as a parent if your kid is 18 and they don't know how to cook dinner and do a reasonably good job. You have failed as a parent if your kid's 18 and doesn't have a job, you have failed as a parent if your kid's 18 and doesn't have a driver's license, you failed 0:37:13 - 0:37:39 as a parent if we could keep going with this. Ok? If your kid's 24 and you're paying their cell phone bill. You have failed as a parent. We go on and on because you have artificially insulated them from the appropriate share of adult responsibilities. You've done the opposite of what you were supposed 0:37:39 - 0:38:10 to do. You've made them less prepared for life than they would otherwise be. You've, you've been an anti parent, you've preserved a child into adulthood. Not in a good way, not in a protected way. You've ruined a child, you've stunted a child, you know, uh that, that uh they, they are mean words in my 0:38:10 - 0:38:40 head. Let me bypass those, that um energetic climate activist, Greta, whatever her last name is, you know, she's famous for saying you've stolen my childhood. Well, you've stolen their adulthood by being an anti parent. So fix it, do what you can to fix it. And the, the question is this, what, what is 0:38:40 - 0:39:01 your motive, installing adulthood for your kids? Is it to help them or do you just care more about your own short term pleasure than you do their long term joy? You know, it's so funny the people that, that scream the loudest about we need to be compassionate and empathetic and love our Children in defense 0:39:01 - 0:39:24 of the sort of things I'm arguing against right here. Their motives are the furthest from what they state. Everything they do is oriented to their own selfish short term pleasure. They want to feel good about themselves. So they pay their kids bills. They want to feel good about themselves. So they let 0:39:24 - 0:39:44 their kid move back in with them for no rent without rent. They want to feel good about themselves. So they put their kids in after school programs when they're in 11th grade and so on and so forth. It's not about the long term joy of the child. Not one of those people says, you know, when my daughter 0:39:43 - 0:40:10 turns 40 a significant share of her joy will be the, the horse, the horse activities that she did when she was 16, that she was running around riding horses as if her parents were millionaires because guess what? She's not gonna have horses at 40 because she's going to either be single and living in 0:40:10 - 0:40:35 an apartment with roommates and cats or she's gonna have married a doofus who can't afford to give her horses. Right. She's probably gonna be a single mom off somewhere struggling to make rent. So these are strong words. But I'm telling you, if you look at the facts, you'll see that they line up. Don't 0:40:34 - 0:40:59 let your emotions get in the way of the good that you would otherwise do. Set that aside and think about whether it's true or not. Now, if you've made a long term plan and you're trying to maximize the joy that your kid has in the, the 2nd 40 years of their lives and you really think that that four hours 0:40:59 - 0:00:00 a day of piano from the time they're five years old is the key. Uh, sorry, I just can't stop with the puns then. Good for you. Do it. Right. But odds are that, that's not the case. You're probably doing it because everybody else does it or just because. Oh, well, you know, she really likes swimming, 0:00:00 - 0:41:42 she really likes gymnastics. He wants to be on the wrestling team. Who cares what they want? Because if you were to get a time machine and go 40 years into the future and that's what they want, then none of those things are gonna have anything to do with the thing you're putting them in now, except that 0:41:42 - 0:42:05 the thing that you're putting them in now is in the way of something they could be doing that actually contributes to their long term joy. And what is the key in all of this? It's not just to ask why you're doing what you're doing because you can say something like, well, my kids in gymnastics because 0:42:04 - 0:42:25 I want them to stay in shape. Ok, great. The second question that's essential to an honest analysis is to say, is this the best way to get that? And the answer most often will be no turns out that you can prevent someone from being fat. If you teach them to not eat too much, turns out that if you want 0:42:25 - 0:42:49 to be get in and stay in shape long term, then learning how to work out at home is the way to do it. Because if you're a busy young mother, you can't join a gymnastics class to stay thin. You're going to have to do it at home with little babies running around. Right. So, all you're doing is giving your 0:42:49 - 0:43:08 kid another excuse to get fat because they're gonna say, oh, when I was younger it was so easy because I was in gymnastics. I was burning so many calories. but now I got these babies and I just have to be fat and that's what they're gonna say anyway, to try to wrap this up and come back to what I was 0:43:08 - 0:43:29 saying in the other video about being an architect for the lives of your Children. You should have a plan. Now, it doesn't mean that it's a contract, it's not a contract. Your kid is a free agent. They can do what they want to an extent and much more so after they turn 18, but you ought to have a sketch 0:43:29 - 0:43:49 of where you'd like them to go and what you're going to do to help them get there. And that plan should absolutely include a timeline. Now, how much of the plan you share with them is up to you. But there are elements of the timeline that they should absolutely know about. It's completely appropriate 0:43:49 - 0:44:08 to tell your kid from a young age the day you turn 18 and graduate high school, you will be paying rent or you will not be living here. It's completely appropriate to tell your kid how much that rent would be in today's dollars so that they have an idea and they can prepare for that. It's completely 0:44:08 - 0:44:31 appropriate to tell them. Look. Just so, you know, once you're an adult, you're not gonna be on our cell phone plan unless you pay your share and, and so on and so forth. Now. Um, well, I won't get into that. Ok. So please remember your role here because you can either be a tremendous asset to your Children 0:44:30 - 0:00:00 or tremendous hindrance. And unfortunately, most parents are a hindrance in aggregate and that's very, very unfortunate.