Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Nurture vs Nurture: Family #3: Joan & Todd

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Dr. Mogel answers the question: Will our children hate us for a bucolic childhood on the farm? She also teaches us new words: poronkusema & mbuki-mvuki Make sure to subscribe to weekly episodes, dropping every Tuesday only on the Nurture vs Nurture feed. Just search “Nurture vs Nurture” on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or visit bit.ly/wendymogel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've called this podcast Nurture vs. Nurture because there are many different ways to raise sturdy, exuberant, educated kids. Today, you'll have the pleasure of meeting a family with a 10-acre working farm, Joan and Todd and their fierce 11-year-old daughter, Sasha, and gentle 8-year-old son, Gus. These children live the principle of what educators call experiential learning. Sasha can tell when an alpine dairy goat is in heat. Turns out they flag their tails. She knows the lineage of every animal on the farm and how to talk to them using subtle shifts in tone. This sister and brother use their environment and imagination to practice life skills. If one goat picks on another, they are taken to goat court in the manger, where the

children present arguments on behalf of their clients and use a hammer as a gavel to wrap up the proceedings. Yet Joan worries. Are the children getting sufficiently civilized for the real world? Are they too much like wild creatures themselves? They leave a peanut butter knife in the middle of the couch, shoes where someone might easily trip, and frequently forget to flush the toilet, even if they've pooped. In this episode, you'll hear what the 11th century philosopher Moses Maimonides has to say about effective strategies for getting kids to follow rules. It's bribery, and it's different for young children and teenagers.

And you'll find out why I believe a long-haired chihuahua belongs on a farm even when mom says, we already have so many animals, I couldn't even tell you the number. Today's untranslatable word is Finnish, boronkusema, P-O-R-O-N-K-U-S-E-M-A. It's the distance a reindeer can comfortably travel before needing to take a break to urinate. Boron means reindeer and kusema means peat by. eight. Boron means reindeer and kushima means peat pie. I'll also introduce you to a Bantu term used in sub-Saharan Africa about joyful self-expression. First, a disclaimer. What you are about to listen to is not a professional counseling session. Each episode is a one-time conversation and the advice I offer does not constitute psychological treatment or serve as a substitute for professional diagnosis, intervention, or behavioral health care.

In order to protect their privacy, our guests have been given pseudonyms and some personal details have been changed. If you have concerns about your child's well-being or your own, seek out guidance from a medical or mental health professional. Good places to start? Your child's pediatrician, the counseling staff at your child's school, and the American Psychological Association's comprehensive guide to finding resources in your Now, on to the fun. In the meantime, we got this. We got this. We got this. Hi.

Thank you so much, Joan and Todd. So the reason we do this is for the kids. Sure. I do want to tell the audience what I just saw. do this is for the kids. Sure. I do want to tell the audience what I just saw. So Todd, outside your window, it's snowing. And I saw two small creatures walk by together. And they looked like deer. And I'm assuming that that's Sasha and Jack on their own outdoors doing something right now without a parent hovering over and peering at them and sizing them up. This is somewhat true. You've just described their usual day, but today they're actually, we host a farm camp

here on the farm and we have a small pod of-free kids that come here and get to play on the farm, masked and socially distanced. And there's a teacher that doesn't totally hover, but he keeps everybody safe. Let's talk about this farm situation. Jonah and Todd live on a farm and in their application to be on the show, here are some of the things they talked about procreation and sex without necessarily having to have a third-party book explaining it, life and death, caring about sick animals, the seasons, navigating on their own. These are all the things we wish so much for kids to have. And a lot of children are just naturally deprived of this because of their living circumstances now. And then at the same time, when you described some of your frustrations or the things you wish they would figure out. You did mention

pooping and then flushing. And this is a really, really common problem that you may not realize how common it is and how old children are before they kind of get that habit these days. And so you fall squarely in the mainstream of parenting frustration. Talk to me about the advantages of living on a farm that you didn't anticipate, because this has not been a lifelong environment for your family. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah. I mean, what, Sarah, the last, I guess, 15, 20 years, 15 years? How long has it been? Since we've been farming? Yeah. Started officially 2005. It's been a whirlwind. I mean, really, I didn't think of it that way at all. We went into farming because of our love for farming and the earth and wanting to connect

with where our food comes from. And I kind of use a permaculture sense of things. Can you talk about what a permaculture sense of things is both in the literal and the symbolic meaning to you of that? What does it mean for the mission of your family? Sure. It's balance. It's a whole circle of balance where we have chickens run behind our cows because they can eat grubs and till in the soil better. So one moment, tell us what grubs are for those who don't know. Oh, yeah. So grubs are the little start of a fly or any sort of insect for that matter.

I guess I'm not sure if that's a technical term. Fly larva. Larva. Yeah. So it's the beginning stage. And essentially when feces breaks down, there's a couple of things that are happening. There's a lot of science involved. But part of it is little creatures going in there and laying their eggs

and hatching so that they could eat so those chickens are in a little movable chicken coop and they go behind the cows who have already pooped and it might be a hot day and so they go in and they they mix it all up and they get it into the soil and they eat the grubs there's not a lot of flies wow and there's just a whole balance so then of course once they leave the grass is able to grow up there's more carbon sequestered in the soil and it holds moisture better there's a whole balance in permaculture farming. So essentially, you don't want to do a monocrop. You don't want to just blast it with fertilizer. You're using the earth's natural systems to create your food and your meat and all such things. You want to add to that?

Sure. Yeah. So permaculture is like what it sounds like permanent culture. So you're trying to create a balanced closed loop system when you're producing food and it goes beyond just nutrient cycling. It's also, you want to model natural habits, human habits. So like, for example, we position our herb garden right outside the window of the kitchen because we want to be able to run out and snip some rosemary when we're cooking. Those types of plants like vegetables that need more maintenance are also located close to where the tools are kept, where the fertilizer is, where we're going to be accessing a lot. And then the crops we grow that are more long-term, like the perennials and the fruit trees are a little further out from the house because we

don't go to them every day. They don't need maintenance every day. We harvest from them once a year. And so sort of the way you design your landscape and plant your crops, you're keeping in mind natural cycles, nutrient cycles, you're keeping in mind human behavior and habits. And then you're also trying to utilize natural systems to your advantage rather than always working against nature, which is what most of agriculture does by spraying and denutrifying the soil and sterilizing everything. We actually try to utilize natural systems in our farming. The idea is to keep as much of a closed loop system on the farm as possible, bringing in the least amount of inputs and keeping nutrient cycles balanced. So let's jump off from one animal will benefit the other to talk about the family.

Yeah. So moving to hear you describe this because it reminds me of students taking an environmental science class and then there's the Quizlet and the flashcards and the phrase carbon sequestered and is it true or false? This is learning by doing and it's absolutely the way children learn best, using all five senses in the three-dimensional world. And you also mentioned, Joan, about the changing of seasons and how the children are accustomed to that and learn the rhythm of that. So one animal benefiting the other in your particular family. Describe to me the challenges and reward of, let's start with Sasha. How does she benefit and tax and challenge the rest of the system?

Right. Well, I would say Sasha is our observer and our alert system for the family. She's really in tune when somebody's hurt or sick because she's always hyper-focused on anything being out of balance, essentially. If she notices a change to our rhythm, a change to our habits, she's the first to say, why are we doing this? Or what's wrong about this situation? It's not what we're used to doing. And the same goes for outside on the farm. She's the first one to come running in and say, there's an injured goat. There's an injured goat. She comes into the house and she gets to say that sentence. Ma, there's an injured goat. There's an injured goat. She comes into the house and she gets to say that sentence. Ma, there's an injured goat. Absolutely. I hope you're enjoying episode three of Nurture vs. Nurture with Dr. Wendy Mogul,

a podcast brought to you by the Armchair Team, Wabiwab, Monica, and myself, Dan Ravitt. If you'd like to hear the rest of this incredible episode, please go over to the Nurture vs. Nurture feed and subscribe. That's where all the new episodes of Dr. Mogul's podcast will live. Nurture vs. Nurture will not exist on the armchair feed. It'll be on its own feed. So please search Nurture vs. Nurture on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.