We have talked many times now about Jonathan Hate and his book The Ancient Think, It's yours in mind new It's like most contemporary parenting book, like The Favorite Yeah, and specifically The Anxious Generation is about the impact that technology has on kids, technology screen, specifically social media, all of that stuff, and how we as parents aren't doing our kids a favor by allowing them free reign on an open market for stupidity or however you want to put it.
He draws a direct core connection in this book between the fact that there's instant gratification and constant stimulus, and how that the correlation, the connection of when those phones smartphones started to phase into teenage society that so went this draw or this increase in depression, anxiety, and a lot of people, I don't get me wrong, a lot of people want to blame social media, and I don't
know that it's necessarily social media specifically. I think there's a bigger problem in that you have the phone becomes a distraction where you don't know how to deal with being bored, and then you also have this parenting movement that makes where people don't know how to deal with negative experiences like we pacify children at every turn, with any opportunity that we can, and I don't know that that's the right thing to do, for whatever it.
Seems to ourselves now, Yeah, exactly.
Like it's hard to like it's a weird thing where people go. You know what I did. I went on a walk the other day and I just want it was so nice. Yeah, it was so nice.
I love standing in a line.
I don't love standing in line, but I love standing in a line without my phone or without you know, looking at it, because then I get to look at and judge everybody else because no one is looking up at me, no, no one.
I got five seconds. I laughed at myself. I put my phone in.
My pocket because I texted people that I was beating for coffee. I set their line for what had to be five mississips, and then I pulled my phone back out again, and I giggled, and I did it and then went about sending emails.
There's a direct correlation.
I firmly believe this, and don't think I'm so woo woo for saying it, But a direct correlation between battling anxiety and having moments of silence and peace. Yeah, whether it's meditation or taking that walk without stimulation, whatever, there's absolutely a correlation to reducing your anxiety the more moments of peace that you have.
And at its core, I think that's what he's talking about in this interview where he points out that kids need to be pushed beyond their fear and their comfort zone in order to build resilience, and he kind of says that he's really calling out dads because that traditionally has been their role. He also says it doesn't mean moms can't do it. He just said, for whatever reason, psychologically, this seems to be the thing that dads do without
even thinking about it. They're the ones that are like, yeah, go do this thing, or they want to play monster when the kids are young because they want to just scare them a little, but in a fun way.
There's something very off putting about dads who are the careful ones. To me, I'm looking right at you when I say this, but I mean, yeah, okay, good.
I'm not. But maybe emotionally.
You can't laugh away if you are If you're a dude and you have kids and you're the one who says.
Careful with that, it's sharp that stove is hot. Careful all around the stairs, careful, careful, don't touch that, careful with that, don't put your hand on the dog's face, don't do like that to me is very off putting.
It And as a there are obvious things that I would want my kids to be careful about, yes, but me telling them to be careful is nowhere near as great a lesson as the dog biting their thumb or the stove actually being hot, or the knife actually being sharp.
Yet consequences are awesome. They're great teachers. I say this a lot, but one of the top, like I don't know themes of parenting that my dad gave to me was he would constantly tell the story about him and my grandfather where my grandfather would just tell him to go do stuff around the farm, and my dad, as like a seven eight year old, would go, well, if he's asking you to do it, it must mean I could do it. But as he got older, he realized
that these were just tests. These were just him like throwing it into a problem and seeing if he could figure it out. And my dad learned as an adult that that's where his self esteem came from.
Go fix that head, gasket leak on the tractor.
You're not exaggerating.
I mean my dad and my uncle drove a stick shift pickup to feed the cattle on the ranch and they got in a fight and took out about twenty yards of fence and then had to go fix the fence.
And my grandfather was like, this is just what it was. These are all just.
Natural consequences presenting themselves, and so he talks about like and my version of this was my wife hated this. We lived on the same block as our elementary school and my kids wanted to walk home from school by themselves, and I said sure, and she's like, what are you doing. I said, they're walking to school and they're walking home from school, and she's like, that's not safe. I go, there are hundreds of people around dropping their kids off.
If somebody grabs one of them and they're screaming or something, somebody's gonna do something. But also, that's not the time to grab a can do us. That's busy, prime time.
It's lazy.
They're not even crossing a street, lady like.
And to me, the best example of this was that when I would drop Jacob off at kindergarten, Jack was maybe two or three, and he goes, can I go home? And I and he loved it. He loved running around the corner where I could not see him as soon as we dropped him off, because he liked going into the door, and he loved being in the house by himself. Jacob was not this way, but he just loved all of it. And so I was like, great, like knock yourself out. And he told me one time this guy
stopped and said, hey, are you okay? And he said, he goes, I know I'm not supposed to talk to trangers. So I gave him a thumbs up and I ran in the house.
I buy a.
Kid outside by himself walking some way in.
You don't call your wife lady to her face. Yeah, all right, rough housing. I've said it before.
We're talking about Jonathan hate challenges that the dads should be willing to challenge their kids.
Get in there.
Maybe maybe not see how well they can take a punch, but you know, understand the kids are going to scrape their knees. One of the things we used to love doing, and I've mentioned before, is my kids would jump up on our bed and we would pillow fight and The rule was, we'll do it as long as no one cries, and then the first time someone cries, game over, and I would hit them harder and harder.
Your son harder, no, but rarely. He was the first one.
I don't think i've ever I think I've seen my brother cry once.
It was like six. I mean, it wasn't like he was fifteen or anything.
I don't know if this is your intent, but what I like about your example is is that you're not saying they can't feel You're just but you're also teaching them to push through and manage the emotion. If they want the fun to continue, they just got to hold it together. Because, in all honesty, I if I'm hitting them with a pillow right now, you could you can do some damage. But I'm hitting them with pillow and they're falling down on a bed covered with pillows, like this is the easiest.
You weren't taking the pillow launching it in their face to throw them up against.
A wall in the first ten minutes, like sibling fights. That's like twenty minutes in when Gary's starting to feel winded, when I'm starting getting tired, I'm like, I need somebody cry.
He starts.
He starts putting onions in the pillow case just to get anything, something going, something to get it started.
But it's upun it's it's incumbent upon dads because just by our nature to push that envelope, to push that free play, to push the risk taking.
I love his example. He says, starting at eight years old, you should find activities that your kid could do on their own. And one of the examples, he says, you take up to a science center and you say, go roam around and do whatever you want. I will meet you in the cafeteria. And here's the I've traveled with high school kids for a choir, and what's interesting is is that you know, people go, what if the kid
gets taken and all that stuff. But I think that there's also that's a safe environment, right, It's an enclosed space that you can also teach your kids to exist in that discomfort and if they feel fear, then that's going to make them more aware of their surroundings. Like one of the young men on the trip, he was we were traveling on this metro station late at night in downtown Dallas, and he actually said about one of the girls.
He goes.
These girls have no survival skills, Like they have no way looking out for themselves.
They're not even aware of anything.
That's because they're like standing on their phones right next to the doorway of the train, waiting for somebody to write before the closes, just to grab the phone, and then the train's gone, and you're like, and they're not even thinking.
About that kind of stuff.
And I don't know how you can if you haven't experienced any kind of fear or discomfort.
My wife refers to that as aware bear. Ooh, people to be being aware bear if you're ever in an environment that you're not sure of, or you know, a group of people whatever. It's childish, but it absolutely seals the point of just just know what's going on, what's aware of what's going on.
And there's a I think we all could agree too, there's a there's a there's a spectrum, right, there's a boundary of what you don't want them to live in fear?
I don't.
I don't know so far. This is what way I've raised my kids, and it seems to be working out, is it. I also don't teach them and everybody's out to get them somebody's trying to grab them at every turn, like. I don't want them to become a rodent where they're just constantly looking over their shoulder at every moment like that does.
That's no way to live either, A moment rodent.
Hoffman's in there rhyming, hmmm, tips, I like a were bear in a moment romrote, I gotta work on this.