Dhru Purohit Show - #213: Hunt, Gather, Parent with Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

Hunt, Gather, Parent | This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and Paleovalley. Having children of your own is sure to make you think about the way you were raised and question if you want to do things the same. It’s also sure to raise lots of questions about how your interactions with your child are impacting their development and your relationships. What we see as commonplace parenting here in the US is quite different than other parts of the world. Helicopter parenting takes away from our kids’ independence and autonomy and often leads to conflict. Luckily, there are ways we can be more conscious to help everyone in the family flourish.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff. Michaeleen is a correspondent for NPR’s Science Desk. In 2015, she was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Prior to joining NPR, Michaeleen was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. She has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis. Her new book Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans shares what she’s learned in her own parenting journey as well as through her research on families across the globe.  In this episode, we dive into: -Michaeleen’s personal struggles with her daughter Rosy (6:30)  -Why the way we parent in the West is strange (14:39) -The importance of autonomy for children (18:20)  -The rising rates of anxiety and depression in kids, and how the way we parent in the West is contributing to that (23:07)  -How Michaeleen’s daughter Rosy puts herself to sleep at night (28:29)  -The greatest gift you can give your child (37:19) -The best way to motivate your kids (41:03)  -Why children don’t really need child-centered activities (51:50)  -Why we shouldn’t constantly praise our kids (59:08)  -The value of a communal approach to raising children (1:04:30)  -Michaeleen’s TEAM approach to parenting (1:07:34)  -How to make this approach work in a busy family life (1:21:15)  For more on Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff you can follow her on Twitter @FoodieScience, and through her website https://michaeleendoucleff.com/. You can contact her directly by email at [e-mail]. Get her book, Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans at https://michaeleendoucleff.com/hunt-gather-parent/.  This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and Paleovalley. If I had to pick one supplement that has made the biggest difference in my overall health, it would be magnesium. I personally started taking magnesium to help with my sleep, especially when I travel, and it’s been a game changer. But I don’t take just any old magnesium, I take BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough. It contains 7 different forms of magnesium, which all have different functions in the body. I haven’t found anything else like it on the market. Right now, BiOptimizers is offering my community a few special bundles, just head over to https://magbreakthrough.com/dhru, with code DHRU10.  Not all turmeric supplements are created equal. I love taking Turmeric Complex from Paleovalley. It contains organic whole food turmeric, so you get the synergistic effects of all its compounds. It also contains coconut oil and black pepper which have been shown to improve the absorption of those active compounds by 2,000%, plus it includes other natural anti-inflammatories like organic ginger, rosemary, and cloves. Right now, Paleovalley is offering my listeners 15% off at https://paleovalley.com/dhru. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I started to realize that there's this common way of relating to children that parents all over the world have turned to for thousands of years. And in fact, in the Western world, in the U.S., we're kind of doing something that's really strange. And we've kind of like forgotten these kind of key elements of relating to children that's based on collaboration instead of conflict and tension. So if I had to pick one supplement that's made the biggest difference. in my overall health, it would have to be magnesium. This super mineral is needed for over 400 different

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This week's guest is Dr. Mickelene Doclef. Michelin Dolef is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. In 2015, she was part of a team that earned the George Foster Peabody Award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Prior to joining NPR, Mikaline was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. McAleen has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a master's degree in viticulture and analogy from the University of California

Davis. She lives with her husband, daughter, and German Shepherd Mango in San Francisco. Thank you for being here on the podcast. It's an honor to have you here. I can't wait to dig into your fantastic book. Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. There's so many through lines that are covered inside Hunt, Gather, Parent. And I want to start at the beginning because that's how your book is written. I typically don't start at the beginning with interviews because I find that, especially when somebody's been on book tour for a while, they get a lot of the same questions. So I like to bring a different angle. Here, I actually thought I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't start from the beginning. One of those through lines is this through line of calmness, calmness and

collectiveness and equanimity as parents that transfers out into the equanimity in our kids. Now, one of the reasons that you wrote about this through line is because you had anything but equanimity at the time. So take us from the beginning and tell us the story of how you found yourself basically at rock bottom with your daughter. Yeah, so at the time, Rosie, my daughter, was two, two and a half. And, you know, she's always, she's a very smart girl, very smart, very bold and courageous. but she'd always been very fiery, you know, cried a lot as a baby. And when she became about two, two and a half, she started to have a lot of tantrums. And I really didn't know what to do.

They became very explosive. And, you know, I read books. I read blogs. I listened to podcasts. And everything I did seemed to make things worse. And it got to the point where, like, I would try to pick her up or hug her or hold her. And she would just like slap me across the face. And in the book, I start off by these mornings.

I would lay in the bed at 5 a.m. before she woke up, number one, kind of dreading her waking up, which was like a horrible feeling to dread to see your daughter. But also like really strategizing, like, okay, what am I going to do when she tries to hit me? And, you know, I was trying so hard to help her. And I really, I kind of gave up, to be honest with you. I kind of thought this is just going to be our existence. And we're going to, Rosie and I are going to be kind of locked in these constant power struggles. And like I learned later, like anger struggles.

Let's take a step back. And what were the expectations that you had going into parenting? How much exposure did you have to kids around you, whether it was helping out with friends, siblings or just growing up? Yeah, you know, very little, right? Like, I think a lot of it is what we see on. TV or social media, which, you know, isn't very realistic. And so I very little. I really, you know, it was interesting. My husband always said there was so much emphasis put on the birth.

And we prepared so much for the birth. And then we were kind of like, once she came out, we were kind of like, okay, now what do we do? You know, I mean, we seriously had very little knowledge retrospectively had very little knowledge about how to handle a baby, how to handle a toddler, how to handle a five-year-old. I think our culture kind of has devalued, one, the teachers for this, which have been traditionally been the older generation in the home or the neighbors or close friends. But we have also devalued just any sort of like deep, I believe, knowledge in this field. And we kind of expect parents to know what to do. We think parenting is kind of this instinct. And it's not at all. It's a skill and a craft that takes time and

it takes, you know, very important teachers. Yeah. And the beautiful thing about that, we'll dig into that a little bit. Teaching can happen in different ways. Some of the societies that you were visiting, they weren't reading books on parenting, but they were still getting teaching on a regular basis from the people around them. We'll jump into that. a little later on. So take us from there. You know, you are at this place where you're in this rock bottom. You got invited to go do a story for, I believe it was for NPR. Shout out to NPR. I'm a big fan. KPCC and WHYY are my local, local stations. And you got invited for a story and quickly there, you realize there was a different story, a much bigger story that was present.

Can you chat a little bit more about that? Yeah, so totally independent of Rosie's tantrums. At the same time, NPR sent me down for my job to the Yucatan. It's led to a small Maya village. And I was actually doing a story on attention and how kids there seem to be better at paying attention under certain instances than American kids. But when I got there, yes, you're right. Like, I just realized the moms there, I spent most of my time with the moms. And they just showed me that there was this way bigger story going on. And it was about parenting. general. I remember one mom who's in the book a lot, Maria Tumborges, you know, she was just, is such a calm, confident parent. And the way she interacted with her children, she has five kids, three young girls, was just something I had never seen. I say in the book, like my interaction with Rosie is like this white-necled ride on like Cat Five Rapids. And Maria was just like, it was like we were on this you know, very smooth, calm river, you know, floating down. There was no arguing, bickering, very little conflict between her and her children. And I spent, you know, days with her. And,

and yet the, her daughters were kind and respectful and generous. And, you know, they were super helpful. So one morning, they were on spring break and the 12-year-old, the oldest, Anhala, she had stayed up late watching a shark movie the night before. She got up. up around 11, walk past me and her mom and just started washing the dishes, like, without anyone asking. And I was just shocked. I was like, you know, what 12 year old does this? And Maria was like, well, you know, she's old enough now to know it needs to be done. And so she sees it and she does it. And I left there just being like, number one, like, here's these these moms that had just such a cooperative, collaborative relationship with their child, children, and raising such genuinely

kind children. And here I was, like, I couldn't even get Rosie to, like, stop hitting me. And I just felt like, I want to learn about that. I want to learn about what Maria and other moms are doing. And I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it in parenting books. And I kind of let it go for a while. I was kind of like, well, you know, I've got other things I got to do. But then NPR sent me up to, for another trip up in the Arctic, to a town called Ikeloat, which is an Inuit town. And I was shocked. I saw a very similar style of parenting. It was the parents were calm and confident and the kids were kind and generous. And I started to read more and I started to realize that there's this common way of relating to children that parents all over the world have turned to for thousands of

years. And in fact, in the Western world, in the U.S., we're kind of doing something that's really strange. And we've kind of like forgotten these kind of key elements of relating to children that's based on collaboration instead of conflict and tension. And so this is really what the book is about. It's like, I want to learn this way. And I want them to help me with Rosie and teach me how to interact with Rosie this way. And so we went back to the Maya village. We went up to the Arctic. And we also went to, with an incredible hunter-gatherer group in Tanzania called the Hadzabe. And the parents there just really taught me these invaluable skills. You know, you mentioned that a lot of how we parent in the West and listeners of my podcast know that I'm not a parent yet.

But one of the reasons that I do these episodes is because I'm so fascinated, especially because I have some friends who seem like there's a natural innate instinct, as you were sharing earlier, like we should just know. And there's a calmness about them and the way that they handle their kids and how their kids respond to them. And then there's other parents where this is the majority, where it is just to be honest and blunt, it's a little bit of a shit show on a regular basis. And everybody is trying to navigate and do their best. And I'm always curious about how to go about it better. And that's why I want to talk to people like yourself. And it's why some of our top couple podcasts have been on parenting.

But you mentioned that the way that we parent in the West is quite strange. And if we took some members of these. communities that you went to go visit, these modern-day hunter-gatherer societies, and we dropped them into our society, and they were able to sort of observe and watch us from a distance, starting from the morning all the way down to like the evening and sleep routine, what would be some of the things that they would notice and start to scratch their head and say, these guys might be like aliens or something weird is going on over here? I mean, the any of the moms and dads up in the Arctic kind of did this, right?

They saw, you know, we were very close and they saw one of the moms was our interpreter. She helped interpret it. She saw us all day long. And she started to tell me all the crazy things I was doing. You know, and I think the number one thing is we interfere. We interfere with children, I mean, just leaps and bounds too much. And we try to control them. You know, one of the psychologists told me really early on who studies Maya communities in Guatemala

that, you know, our relationship with our children and really our relationships with everyone is based on control, right? Like, am I controlling you or you're controlling me? You know, the kids are out of control. Like everything is kind of from the perspective of control. And in the communities in the book, they actually aren't trying to control the child. The parents would even tell you there, you can't control people. when you try to control somebody, they fight back.

That's where the tension and the conflict comes from. But they do guide children and they try to collaborate with children. And I think a big part of this book is me learning to collaborate with Rosie. And so that I'm not just throwing up my hands and saying you can do whatever you want, but I'm trying to interact with her in a way that meets her goals and what she is going after and my goals and what I'm going after. And to be honest, this has led me to be a amazing. much better communicator and have much better relationships with adults because it's the same applies,

right? You know, that if you if you interact with adults in a collaborative way, where you watch them or listen and really hear what they're saying and then try to build off that idea or, you know, how can you contribute to that idea, you have a much better relationship with that person than if you come at them with, I know what's right for this person and I'm going to force them to do it. And I think that's how we often think of children. I as a parent know what's right. And I have all the knowledge. And I'm going to like, you know, make sure my daughter does that.

And that's how I was treating Rosie. And with her tantrums, that's how I was treating her. I was trying to get rid of them as quick as possible. You know, and what I learned from these other parents is that you have to let, you have to let kids be. And you are there as a guide and you are there to support them. So the mom, Elizabeth Tugumiak just kept telling me, leave her alone. Stop interfering.

You know, she's fine. If she's not grumpy, you know, I think that they would also see that we, we box them in physically. You know, we so underestimate their abilities physically. You know, a lot of kids by the time they're five, six, know how to use knives, they know how to cook. You know, they start to know how to take care of a toddler or a baby, you know. And we hold our kids back by trying to, because we think we know it's right for them, instead of watching them and saying, oh, wow, she's really good at this. Maybe I can help her improve in that area.

Does that make sense at all? It absolutely makes sense. And I think that one area of duality that you often see with a lot of parents is from a young age, there's this intervening, especially in the modern day parent, the helicopter parent, where we are, you know, if I would put on my sort of evolutionary, you know, anthropology hat on for a second, kids typically were a much bigger part of our upbringing. We would be raised, you know, there wouldn't be just one kid in the household, let alone the village. So we wouldn't necessarily give all of our attention to one child, one kid.

And because of the way that nuclear families have evolved over a period of time, often most households, at least the first kid, is really the only kid that's there. And a lot of people aren't necessarily always having kids at the same time. And even if they are, you see them at playdates or on the weekends and at birthday parties, which have their own challenges. We'll get to that in a little bit. So we overput attention in that area. And then I see this other pattern, which is a lot of parents complain about the fact that their child constantly bugs them, especially as they get older, three, four, five. Mommy, mommy, should I do this? Mommy, should I do that? Daddy, should I do this?

Daddy, should I do that? And they're like, why do you keep bugging me and sitting there as an observer? I'm like, I kind of saw you doing the same thing to them last week. Bingo, you nailed it. Like, exactly. That we sit there and tell them what to do constantly. And like I say in the book, I thought I was like a laissez-off fair parents. I thought I was super hands-off compared to the San Francisco moms around me and dads.

But compared to the families that we were with in the book, book, I was a bossy band. I was bossing Rosie around so much, so much more than I needed to. And you're right. We're just teaching them to come back to us, to depend on us for feedback, entertainment, praise, stimulation. You know, a little 18-month-old can sit and play with something for an hour without any interruption. And in many communities in the world, that 18-month is allowed to do that. And over time, that skill-backed. builds, right? They don't, they could, they will learn to to entertain themselves and take care of themselves for hours every day. But we go into that 18 month old and we, we start telling them what to do.

Oh, look at this book. Oh, look at this animal. You know, and we do it because we love them and we think it's best thing for them. But you're, you're exactly right. We're training them to depend on us for, for their entertainment, for their stimulation, for feedback. And, and so we kind of have to de-pattern them a little bit and tell them like you can do it and the bet you can do it without me you can you can take care of yourself even if there isn't another sibling around so rosy is an only child and during the pandemic she and even now in the weekend she can play by herself in the living room for like three or four hours like while i work because i've taught her that over time because i've let go and stop telling her what to do she has built that skill in herself so one of the things i found really really

helpful was to actually count how many times I'm telling Rosie something to do or giving her feedback or giving her praise or criticizing her. And there's been studies of this of modern hunter-gathered communities. And I actually did it while we were with the Hadzabe in Africa, in Tanzania. I like counted how many times the parents would talk to the child. And these are, you know, these are times when the children and the parents are very close. They're not, you know, off, away from each other. And we're talking like one, two, three times an hour. And we're talking like one, two, three times an hour and most they will say something to a child and they're there with the child working with the child or you know walking or by the fire but they're just they're just not constantly

sending instructions commands and feedback and what i come to realize is every time i tell rosy something even praise but a command a directive i am running the risk of resistance and i'm running the risk of her getting upset or her not doing it and then me getting upset And so I actually started to like try to give her only three commands per hour. And that's really what autonomy looks like to a child. That's really what autonomy is, or independence, is allowing the kid to make their decisions moment to moment. You're still there watching and making sure they're safe and you're still guiding them. But really they are the captain of their own team, so to speak.

And this decreases conflict enormously. between me and Rosie when I just one, two, three times an hour. It's very hard to do. But it really, really improves a relationship. And this isn't just about a mother, daughter, mother's son, father, daughter, you know, any sort of relationship with a child that would be there. This is also a little bit bigger. And this is about an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and other aspects. Can you make that connection and help our listeners understand how this tied into the larger mental health of how a new generation is being brought up. Yeah. So as you know, right, there's a probably growing epidemic of anxiety and depression with kids. And, you know,

the statistic is like one in three will have some sort of, you know, clinical depression or anxiety by the time they're an adult, right? So, and I have to say this is not normal, right? Like we, we've come, it's become accepted, but in many, many cultures in the world, this is unheard of. You know, this is this in the places that we the hadzabe for instance like childhood anxiety just doesn't exist now what's amazing is that many western psychologists modern western psychologists have linked this anxiety and depression and children to the lack of autonomy so autonomy is the ability to make your own decisions at least feel like you're making your own decisions you're making you have choices and you're guiding your life so not just moment to moment but kind of the broad picture too like

day to day, you're kind of doing what you feel is best and you're choosing. And there's all these studies that link autonomy to these wonderful things in kids, confidence, self-sufficiency, executive function, better performance in school, better performance later in life, reduced risk of anxiety and depression. I mean, the list goes on and on. And yet at the same time, our parenting has just gone in the opposite direction where we, I don't even think we really understand what it means to give a child autonomy. But we've become, we control their schedule from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. We control what they eat, what who they talk to, what they do after school. You know, school itself is a highly regulated activity. So I have to say all the groups in the

book go to the kids go to school. But when they get home, they have much more autonomy, enormous amounts of autonomy. And so what I, I thought I kind of knew what autonomy was and I thought I was giving it to Rosie, but I really didn't understand it until doing the research for the book. But it is really about turning to the child and letting the child, you know, when they're little, it's about welcoming them into your world and then kind of just hang it off, you know, just letting them go and letting them be, watching them carefully so they're safe. And then as they're getting older, it's about allowing them to make decisions in their life too, right? Like what they do after school, who they do it with. Also,

empowering them so they can do it for themselves. They can get to school on their own. They can, you know, go to the after-school activities on their own. These are the things that psychologists and psychologists have shown protect children from anxiety and depression. Because I think what happens and what a lot of what I've read is that if you feel like your life is out of your control, I mean, we know this given the pandemic, right? That when there's like uncertainty in your life and you feel like you don't have control over what's going to happen, it's very stressful. right if this causes a lot of I mean I felt it right like at the beginning of the pandemic we're like oh my gosh what's going to happen right what's next and this this this causes anxiety and stress and over time that turns into depression and this is I think how kids many American kids feel all the time like they don't know what's going to happen in their life they don't know what's going to be next and the answer really is is to learn how to give them autonomy in a way that keeps them safe and also meets the goals you have for them you know it's not about three bring your hands up and being like, whatever.

It's about learning how to guide them in a way that's collaborative instead of really heavy-handed. And one of the things you mentioned about autonomy is that the same thing that the kids want is the same thing that adults want, right? Adults want autonomy. They want the freedom to be able to make their own choices. They want the ability to be able to fall in their face, even if they made a decision and say, okay, great, I learned from that.

And now I want to go in a different direction, right? Absolutely. For a lot of the kids, there's this feeling of, again, as you mentioned, parents feel like they know better and out of protection, out of a deep care. And a little bit of safeism, this idea that we can protect them. You know, a little bit of that kind of comes from, you know, having the television on too much and seeing the worst case scenarios in the news. There's a friend of mine, Reverend Michael Beck, who's out here in Los Angeles. And he says, you know, the news, we have to understand that most news, you know, NPR does a good job about this. but most news is the lowest common denominator of the human experience.

Like, it's all the worst things that can happen. So we get a safeism approach. We think that we need to protect from every single thing that's out there. And then we don't end up giving that autonomy. And the interesting thing about autonomy is that, just like you said earlier, you thought you were giving autonomy. And if you go to most people out on the street, I'm here in Los Angeles, if I walk up to most people, I say, do you eat healthy?

10 out of 10, 9 out of 10 people are going to say that they eat healthy because their version of healthy is maybe only one cigarette a day or, you know, two Coca-Cola every day, whatever. Everybody thinks that they eat healthy because they have a different definition of it. In that same way, a lot of parents think that they're giving autonomy. I think a good example of autonomy. I'm jumping ahead a little bit in the book, but talk about your sleep time routine and the battle that you had with Rosie. and how control and lack of autonomy would flow through that process. Yeah, this was incredible kind of epiphany for me. And I have to say, before I say that, like, it's one of the big paradoxes of American parenting

is that parents will tell researchers, I value autonomy and independence in my kids. It's super important. But then when the researchers actually analyze what's happening, the parents aren't giving two of them, giving kids that at all. So it's a very, like, it's one of the big paradoxes. And this is what I was doing with the sleep, too. the sleep for sure. So, you know, I have been, Rosie has had a really hard time sleeping since she was a baby. Or I should say we had a hard time putting her to sleep. We had a hard time getting her to go to

sleep. And, you know, every night it was kind of like a hell on earth here, you know, like we would just go through this horrible routine where like, you know, I would try to get her to put it. I like gave up on the bath. Like I gave up on the bath a long time ago. I was just like, you're going to have, that one got like, because we just couldn't do it all. couldn't get her in the bath, we couldn't brush the teeth, we couldn't get the pajamas on, read the book. Like, there was just too much control over what she was doing, right? We were having to tell her to do so many things within this short period of time when we were all tired, right? When she's tired and like emotionally kind of, you know, thin. And so while I was writing the book and I was

drawing one of the illustrations for the illustrator Ella Trujillo, whose illustrations are amazing. You know, I heard my husband upstairs starting to do the bedtime routine. And, you know, there was yelling. And it was and I was like, oh, I got to go up there and do it. And then I was looking at my drawing. And in the drawing, I was saying that if you want to teach kids things, you have to model it and you have to give them practice. And so I went upstairs and I, Rosie was like naked jumping on the bed. And my husband was like holding her pajamas and they were screaming. And I was getting ready to go into my same spiel of like, okay, you've got to do this now, Rosie, you've got to calm down. And really, I was trying to like control her, trying to control when she went to bed

at 8.30 every night because this is what I thought she needed. And then I realized, I thought back to that illustration and I was like, wait a second, what am I modeling right now? You know, like I'm modeling demanding bossy behavior, inflexibility, lack of confidence in her ability to to decide when she goes to bed. And what is she practicing? Every night at 8.30, she was practicing getting in a big argument with me and my husband or, you know, getting really ramped up and hyper and jumping around and screaming. And I had taught her this.

I had taught her over like three years that bedtime meant that we were going to get in a big fight. We were going to, she was going to, you know, strip and run around like a wild animal. And we were just making it worse and worse. worse. And one of the researchers I talked to said, this generates enormous amount of stress around bedtime for kids. And they bring that into their adulthood. And so that when they're 18, 19, 20, they don't really know how to settle themselves down at night because they've been taught to rev up like this. And so I was like, it was like a brick in my face. I was like, wow, I'm doing everything wrong, like the opposite of what I need to do. And so what I did, and I have to say that when

we traveled, there was no stress around bedtime. None. And parents, I would ask parents about it and they would be like, well, I don't know. Sometimes we have to like turn the lights off or, you know, I have to like tell them to go to bed. But there was just like, it was no big deal. And what I, what I realized was was trying to control Rosie way too much, right? I was trying to control when she went to bed every night, when she wake up, you know, what she did before she went to bed. It was just me and my agenda. And I realized that she didn't have the skill to like listen to her body and listen to the signals in her body and tell her, oh, it's, I'm tired and I need to calm myself down. And so I just threw out the whole bedtime routine. I threw out everything and I said, okay, Rosie, you're going to

decide when you go to bed. When your body is tired, you're going to go decide. And then I'll help you go to bed. I'll help you calm down by laying down next to you and being calm myself. And, um, The first night, I think she went to bed like at 11. It was really late. But she went right to sleep. And she woke up. I couldn't believe it. She woke up.

She was totally fine. And, you know, a couple of nights later, it was a little earlier and a little earlier. And by like week, I think by like day 10, she actually walked upstairs and just put herself right to bed. Like at 7.30. And I was just like, what does happen? And I have to say that since we switched it up, and I go into a little bit more detail in the book about like, what I did specifically to help guide her and help teach her this skill of putting herself to sleep. But since then, we have had no problems at bedtime. It's been like incredible. Even my mom,

she came and visited us recently after she got vaccinated. You know, she was just like, you know, this is, it's amazing how peaceful bedtimes are. And it's true. And congratulations on that, because, I mean, that's really where the book starts off is this battle. that especially shows it at bedtime, separate from the slapping incident and everything else, but to become there full circle and also realize that you had the knowledge, but it just takes practice sometimes. It takes trying. It takes embracing it to actually give your kid a chance to try to see if this process works.

And it wasn't right away. You know, it took a little bit of time to do that. But it ended up working because that's what happens is when we trust people and we allow them to, to self-soothe. You know, we've done a few episodes. We do a lot of exploring the inner workings of the brain and its connection to the gut. And we talk a lot about the vagal nerve and how so much of putting us in a rest and relaxed state and is based on soothing and self-soothing and especially being able to calm that

vagus nerve down, which connects all the way from our base of our skull down to the gut. and we've had pasta guests share that a big part of vagal toning, as it's called, and self-soothing is autonomy because when you're not relying on other people to fill that void of stimulation that you're looking for, I need this thing to calm me down, I need this person to calm me down, I need this situation to relax me. And that could be alcohol, that could be, you know, marijuana, that could be something else. And again, no judgment on those things. but if we're constantly relying on something else instead of learning how to self-soothe,

then our nervous system never fully gets into that rest and relaxed state, which leads to the sleepiness, which reads to the being able to know that like, if I go to sleep on my own, like everything is going to be okay. Like I'm going to be okay. And as you mentioned before, that translates into everything we do in the world.

If you get fired from a job. And yes, it might suck. It might be really challenging. but there's this process. If you've been practicing that stuff as a kid, you're like, okay, I'm okay in the world, right? I've always been okay. I always know how to be okay.

I'm going to be okay in this situation. That's so interesting. I mean, that whole part about the vaguenerve, but also this, I think that that's a big part of the towards the end of the book where if the parent in the child or in constant conflict, then I think the child kind of, at least for me, I kind of thought of the world as conflictual, right? Because I grew up with, like, parents that were arguing with me a lot, I kind of thought that that's the way the world was, right? That it would be kind of adversarial. And I talk about in the book how a parent that's collaborative and calm with their children

teaches the child, like, that the world is calm and collaborative, right? That the child, whatever the child's relationship is with the parent, that's kind of what the child then turns and sees the world as, right? And so it's just like, what you're saying. Like if you go to bed at night under this stressful power struggle with your parents, then yeah, like you wake up and you, yeah, how you couldn't, but help doesn't see the world as stressful and conflictual, right? But if you go to bed in a collaborative calm state with your parents, then yeah, then you wake up in that same state. And I do agree. The like autonomy is the key for it, you know. I mean, think about what autonomy conveys

to a child. It conveys that the parent is confident in them, that the parent trusts them to grow and like you say, make mistakes, but get back up, you know, and it models all of that, right? And it's such a gift. One of the quotes I have in the book is that there's just no bigger gift to give a child than the right to make their own decisions. And I really, I really think it's a gift, the best gift. It's super well said, you know, I haven't been to Japan, but I was watching a documentary about families in Japan. And one of the things that I noticed that's also on the side of, like, not interrupting frequently is a lot of Japanese families when they need to go and get somebody in the family's attention,

a kid or a child, they'll like go and they'll walk up to them, even if they're in the same household. They're not yelling like, Becky, like, get over here. Like, you know, you got to do this or got to do that. There is this reverence for attention. And the fact that even if it's a child, if their attention is on something else, yes, you're the parent and you might need something from them, but to just yell and throw out something to them.

And now the opposite of autonomy is brute force, right? You are brute forcing your way into their attention, trying to hijack them from whatever they're focused on. And I can remember being a kid, and I'm actually very thankful. My parents gave me a ton of autonomy, and I grew up in that generation, and they probably didn't know how to do anything different

because they were immigrants to this country. But I can just remember the few times that other people would do that to me, how frustrating that was as a child that I'm focused on something else and you're coming over here and you're like shaking me. It'd be the equivalent of shaking somebody while they're trying to sleep, right, and trying to wake them up and put their attention on something else. That's such an interesting observation. I mean, I've actually just been reading about this idea of like how cooperation is also respecting other people's time and their attention, right,

and like knowing not when to interrupt and how to do it. And that's such an interesting. interesting observation. In the Maya village, actually everywhere, I never saw a parent yell at a child like that. Like, Becky, come over here. And like, you know, I just, I actually, even when we went down there the first time, the radio producer I was with wanted to get some sound. And she was like, can you yell over and get help me, the little girl, Helme, to come over. And the mom did not want to do it. I remember what she was very reluctant. And like, and the producer like pushed her because she's like, oh, you know, just call her over here. And, you know, just call her over here. And the mom. And the mom did not want to do it. And I remember what she was very reluctant. And like, and like, and the producer like, she's like, oh, And she was like, and she finally did it. And but you could tell she went against all of her kind of her gut of how you treat other people. And you're so right. If you treat children like that, then they're just going to treat you like that back, right? It's startling. You know, I went to go visit, not in the form of exploring parenting, but I went to go stay and visit a hunter-gatherer group in Kenya, actually.

They're called the Samburu tribe. And they're a nomadic tribe who's been traveling and, you know, hurting cattle and goats. And when I was in their communities and spending time with them through this program that Summit series set up, which was all about, you know, working to save elephants that were being poached and those tribes people being part of the process, I never saw, you know, in all that time they were spending with these families and them inviting us into their place, they wouldn't yell at each other because in a way, this yelling is, it's very startling. And startling, you know, increases your cortisol and immediately think something's wrong and it's an escalation. And so this just goes back to this idea that we think we're giving autonomy, but even the small ways coming from pure intentions, but the small ways that we consistently interrupt each other and we could be doing this to our partners as well, too, not just kids, is very off-putting and can create a sense of agitation. And really what you say inside of the book is that in the West, we primarily rely on two types of motivation. We rely on rewards and punishment as primary.

primary vehicles and levers for motivation. Tell us what these other groups do when it comes to motivating kids and how they don't necessarily rely on those two things. Yeah, this is such a good question. And I talk a lot about intrinsic motivation in the book, right? This like natural drive to do something that you're doing it because you just inherently want to and not because somebody is forcing you or paying you to do it. And this is, you know, if you think about this is what we really want our kids to do. Like we want them to want to want to help us, right, with the chores or we want them to want to do their homework, you know, because there's all this great data showing that this type of motivation is long term. You know, it tends to be more intense and more productive.

And one of the big, big ingredients for this motivation is connection, that the child feels connected to the person that they're helping or that there's a connection in their, a task. So this is the difference in a parent. So one of the big things I saw in the, with the Maya families is tasks were done together as a shared responsibility. So there's a study that just came out where researchers asked like eight, nine year old Maya kids, like, why do you help around the house? And some of the kids are really like, well, because I live there, because I'm a family member, you know, but a bunch of them say like, it's a shared responsibility that we all do it together. And so I think this is a huge motivating fact.

to say, hey, instead of, you know, go fold, go make your bed or go clean up the living room. Hey, come help me. Let's make the beds together. Let's all do it together. Let's clean up the living room together. And actually, this has really improved my relationship with my husband, because we used to argue about the chores all the time, right? Like, you did this yesterday and I washed the dishes today. But now it's like, we all do it together. Everybody does the dishes together. Everybody, you know, cleans up the living room and does the laundry together. And And this is hugely motivating for children if you just, they want to work with you. They are hardwired to work together and cooperate with people.

The other huge thing is that the parents are more likely to accept the child's help in their contribution. So it's such an interesting study where a little boy comes over where the mom's doing the laundry and he starts throwing the laundry around the room. and the researchers asked the Maya, my mom's, well, what did you do? And the Maya, well, let me, I'll tell you the white middle class American parents first. So they asked the white middle class American parents, what do you do? And, you know, they do, they say what I would have said. Like, oh, she's, she's, he's making a mess.

You know, I tell him to go play. He just wants to play. I got to get this laundry done. So I shoe him away. The Maya moms say, you know, I'm a little bit upset because he's making, a mess, but I'm excited because he wants to help me. And he's showing interest in doing the laundry. And so I start to guide him and tell him like the clothes belong in the bin or we fold the clothes like this. And so the, the, the, my mom is seeing the interest to help. There's, she's

interpreting the child's, uh, behavior and motivation pro socially, right? As like, oh, he wants to help. And, and then she accepts his help. And, and then she accepts his help. And, And this psychologist have shown is hugely motivating for children, is that you accept their contributions. Even though it looks like maybe they're not really helping or they don't know how to do it, you at least acknowledge, oh, they want to help and you accept what they do. So for instance, if Rosie's helping me in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, maybe they don't look very good, maybe they aren't very good.

But instead of throwing them out or telling them, that's not the right, you know, maybe I'll fix them a little bit and then I use them. So it sounds very subtle, but it's huge. Once I started accepting Rosie's contribution and seeing her behavior as wanting to help me, our relationship improves so much because then I accepted her hope and then I guided her so that she could become more helpful instead of assuming she just wants to play or wants to make a mess. Does that make sense?

That totally makes sense. And I wanted to make sure I gave you enough time to complete that before jumping in. And I think it's that's present, not just between parents and a child, but I also see that for a lot of my friends who do have kids and are married. One of the things that's a pattern that I notice just observing, right, here in Los Angeles with my friend's group. I have a dad, I have a men's group that meets every Thursday and goes on a walk and kind of talks about what's going on in life, both the positive, the negative. It's a way to bond, connect. That's nice. Yeah, no, it's really beautiful.

And I'm very lucky for it. We've been doing it for about five years now, which has been really beautiful. Both with that group for the gentlemen that have kids and also for other groups, we will hear stories of sometimes, you know, a dad who maybe doesn't have a lot of experience with, you know, handling kids or maybe changing diapers or whatever. And all human beings, and it could also be moms in some situations, but it tends to be dads because moms are usually the one that are looking after kids as the primary. if even adults get discouraged.

So if somebody comes in and says, you're doing it wrong, let me just take over and do it, right? Or you're not going to know how to do it. Let me do it now. Now we've discouraged that person and they don't feel like participating. They're demotivated. Anybody, even if you don't have kids, can understand that if you're in a job, you're trying your best to figure something out. It's a complex problem. Somebody comes over to you and they're like, oh, geez, this is taking too much time.

Let me just do it. And you're like, okay, what the hell did you, why am I even here in the first place? Right. And kids would naturally feel that too. There's this part where you hinted at it earlier, but a lot of parents are actually just genuinely under this idea of safeism. And I use safeism because it's become a little bit of a religion where we think we are doing things that are to protect them. And one of those things are, I don't want my kid around the stove. I don't want them touching a hot pan.

I don't want them touching a knife. what did you see in these other cultures around the world when it came to those topics? Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I think we think of it very like the extremes, right? It's either like they're only safe if they're not near it, right? Right? You either like, they're either you shoe them away from the stove or you keep them away from the knives and then they're safe or they use the knife and then they're injured. Like there's not there's not anything between.

And what I saw in all three places that we went to was in between. So there's this idea that, like, you slowly expose the child to these things if they show an interest, right? If you want them to learn to cook at the stove, if you want them to learn to use a knife. You know, these are skills we need that, you know, eventually children need to cook for themselves when they go to college. So you slowly introduce them to these things, starting from a very young age. So the first thing, one of the my moms told me was the first thing she teaches her kids is, sharp and hot. So we were talking about babies, right? So she burns herself or she accidentally touches the stove and she says, oh, hot. You know, and she shows the little baby like, this hurt me.

Right. So she very early on, she doesn't need to, you know, childproof her kitchen because she's empowering the child very early on to know it's hot. And then the know things are sharp. So, you know, she'll show the knife and she'll kind of, you know, touch it a little bit and go, How, ooh, sharp. Or if she accidentally cuts herself or another kid cuts herself, she'll show the little baby toddler, look what this did. This is why we have to be careful. And so then over time, first it's safety,

and then it's learning to use them. So, you know, if a child shows a lot of interest, there's a really interesting study where the family, it's an indigenous group in Mexico, the family sells pork. So they raise pigs and they slaughter the animals and then cook the pork. And she said the two-year-old little boy was just super excited about cooking the pork.

And she's like, well, what do I do? You know, he can't fry pork. He's two. So she said she would set him next to it and she would let him hold the plate so that he could hold the plate while she put the pork onto the plate. And then over time, you know, she showed him and then he could start putting the pork in the pen. And she just said she slowly added on more things. And I think she said something like, you know, I was watching him like a hawk to be sure he was okay. But I was also giving him the skills over time to use this powerful piece of equipment, right?

And then she says something like, and by the time he was nine, he could like slaughter the whole pig and fry it up or something. You know, and it was just, to me it was really incredible because here's a two-year-old that clearly can't fry pork, you know, can't use the stove. But instead of shoeing him off and telling him it's too dangerous and making him afraid of the stove, she kept him there. and taught him very gently over time how to do it. And that's what I've been trying to do with Rosie with lots of things, right? Like cooking, knives, going to the store. She really wants to go to the market that's like three blocks away. So we've just been like slowly, you know, step by step teaching her the skills she needs to do it in a way that's safe instead of just denying her those opportunities.

No, it was beautiful. And there was so many beautiful examples of that inside of the book. I can hear some parents listening right now and having not gotten a chance to go into the book and feeling a sense of like this is all beautiful and it sounds like really, really magical and it's amazing what we can learn from these groups, these hunter-gatherer societies around the world about how they parent. And also like, how do you find the time to give her the time? Yeah.

That's, I know as I was reading with two, two happy. on one hat is my own hat sort of okay great how do I want to prepare for kids in the future me and my fiance and then also somebody else reading to it or listening to this podcast and feeling like with a little skeptical eye thinking like where are you finding the time to give the time to Rosie or somebody else's child yeah and I can say I do have very little time I have way too stressful of a job and actually I don't think I could be a parent without this book and still be saying right now. I think the key thing is that something we haven't really talked about is I have completely gotten rid of all child-centered activities, which took up enormous amounts of our time.

So in the book, psychologists call like any activity that we do as parents only because we're parents and that we do only for the child. So like four-year-old birthday parties, kitty museums, who play areas, play dates with kids where you don't know the parents or you don't like the parents. So these things are very strange. And no culture in around the world creates this kind of fantasy land for children. So after I got back from the Yucatan, the first trip, I got rid of all of those. I was like, I don't enjoy them. I feel overstimulated while I'm in these places at a birthday party.

And afterwards, Rosie is poorly behaved. There's like this hangover effect of like, I want more. I want more cupcakes. I want more. And so I got rid of them. And the activities over the weekend are first cleaning and cooking and doing the laundry stuff that we have to get done. And we all do them together.

And so we have time because we're not rushing off to another activity. And then we go and do things that my husband and I want to do. They may be modified a little bit so that Rosie can do them. But we do what we want to do, what we did before she was there. and we welcome her into our world. And this builds what you're talking about, this connection that children need to be motivated and to feel good.

They want to be in our world. They really don't actually want those birthday parties and kidney museums. They think they do because it's all they've had. But being in the real adult world is such a richer environment, a richer experience for them, and provides them the skills

they need to become an adult. So yes, not every morning is Rosie helping me make breakfast like this morning. I was rushing to get to a podcast. But I find the time on the weekends and in the evenings because I have no longer feel the need to entertain her with these other activities. And instead, I do the things that we naturally would do as, you know, two 40-year-old adults. We do a lot of episodes on sort of traditional diets and even diets of hunter-gather groups, some of the ones exactly that you went and spent time with. One of the interesting things

about those different groups out there is there's no kids menu. There's no kids menu that they sit down and they're eating something completely separate than what their parents are eating. Sure, they might be given certain types of foods that are easy to chew when they're younger and sometimes not because actually chewing is a big part of development of teeth and our facial structure and it impacts our breathing. And so it's important. So there's no separate kids menu, which would make sense going back to your analogy, that there really shouldn't be like kids' activities. You want your child to learn how to swim. Great.

Why don't you both take swimming classes together or you go to the pool together? And now it's an activity for you and it's an activity for them. I love that because I can see a collective sense of people, especially parents thinking like and listening here and being like, wait, you mean that we can just like not go to that stuff? Like, that's okay. And I think you saying it and writing about it, gives them permission to start peeling back and saying, well, we don't have to do these things. What would a different life look like? And I really applaud you for putting that out there and being

willing to try. Let me ask you one follow-up question about that. What has been the challenging side of that of peeling back from some of those activities and not being as involved as many those kid-centric activities? We shared earlier that there used to be a lot more kids around the village, you know, the neighborhood even. And now kids a lot of times are kind of on their own. Do you ever worry about lack of socialization or any other components that have come up? You know, I think at first there was there was pressure, right, to do those activities, especially the birthday parties, right? Like, I remember when I first was like, I'm not going to another birthday party. I'm just done. You know, if some parent wants to pick Rosie up and take her,

great, but I'm not. And I remember when it first happened, There was some big birthday party and everyone made this bag with like the kid's name on it. And like, Rosie was like, we don't have the bag, mom. You know, it was like this like fear of missing out like came. And I was like, oh, yeah, we don't have the bag at first. And then I was like, you know what? We don't need another bag. I was like, I don't want that bag anyway.

Like, you know. But I remember feeling pressure at the beginning that like there was some judgment like, oh, my clean doesn't take your kid to these things. And, you know, I think that we do them because we think that they're really good for kids, you know. one reason. And so I think that there was this feeling of like, oh, she's a bad mom. But what I learned was that they're not really great for kids, you know, especially not all kids, you know, kids that, you know, tend to that need more calm environments, kids that need less stimulation, kids that like to be outside on their own and explore. They're not. You know,

they're taking away time for doing those other things. And so I think just over time I got more of a spine and was like, I really believe in this. And I really believe that treating Rosie kind of like a VIP member of the family on the weekends by carting her off to all these different places and scheduling her day. So it was not helping her. And it was not helping our family. And I think it really erodes their motivation to cooperate with their family. So that's been a challenge. The other challenge is the autonomy aspect. You know, parents, parents want to control her. her a lot more than I do. And I've learned, it just happened actually yesterday when I picked her up from school, she and her little friend ran to the car because they know how to run to the car. The car's

right there. It wasn't very far. And I've trained her. I've trained her to stop at the intersections. And, you know, she can walk down the street. She's highly capable. And the preschool parent or the preschool administrator started yelling at her. And I don't know if I should have said anything. I probably should have just ignored it, but I said, you know, she's okay. She knows how to do it. And I just kind of have learned to just be confident in her. And like I say, have a little bit more of a spine, but do it in a gentle way because I don't want to start an argument, right? I just, but that's been tough because you're right. The safeism is is very strong. And it comes from a good place. It absolutely comes from a good place. But I do think it's holding back our kids on top of making making them. anxious. And so yeah, it's soft and gentle, just like the book. I think people change slowly and we have to recognize that and we can't force them to change. And forcing just causes conflict.

So I just have been calm and confident and what I think is right for Rosie and our family. And I just kind of tell people that gently. I have a few more questions about that. But we'll come back to that in a second. Let's walk through one more aspect. before we get into the team acronym and the team approach to parenting that you talk in the book. Praise. You rarely saw Mayan mothers praising their, like, constantly sort of complimenting their kids throughout the day. And so talk a little bit about praise because I think if your child is in, you know, some of these more different schools of approaches of raising kids, Waldorf, or Montessori or other stuff. There are some themes that are there in terms of

if you're constantly good boying or good girl, good girling your kid, you are creating a dependence where they're looking for you for affirmation for everything. But we often would think of, you know, giving compliments as a positive thing, but you saw something, you know, different, sort of a sophistication in how compliments were given.

Yeah. This was actually one of the hardest things for me to really change on. I really thought that all, like, praise couldn't be bad, right? But what I saw was that, first of all around the world, not just in these three cultures. Like, I've traveled a lot for my job and in here, and I've never seen parents praise children the way it sometimes happens here, which is kind of a constant stream of it, but also inappropriate amounts, right? Like for what the child actually did. And there's this incredible book written by Grace Cho and Peggy Miller that follows this idea.

with five households in the Midwest. And what she argues in that book is that, like you say, that there could be like this dependency, but also that praise can be actually really demotivating for children. That if they don't think the praise is appropriate, if they feel like it's overdone or they haven't earned it, that it can demotivate them. She also shows that it can cause competition

between siblings and can cause conflict. And I actually see that at our job, that when there's a lot of praise going on, people get in fights. Like, why didn't I get it? You know, like, so instead of praising, there's all these things that parents will do. They will give kind of a nod or a wink. They will point out the maturity. This is a huge one.

And so powerful with my daughter, so powerful. with children is that when a kid does something that's, you know, they share. Okay, so you give a kid a cookie and the kid voluntarily shares with their sibling, which is very common in many parts of the world. You know, the parent will say something like, oh, what a big girl. That was like a big girl. You know, and so connecting the appropriate behavior or the desired behavior to maturity, that's a huge one.

But then I will also say they will not ignore the criticism. And this is something else that has become really, I mean, Sorry, they will not ignore the mistakes. This is something that's become really common in our culture is to erase mistakes and never criticize a child. And in her book, Peggy and Grace show this, that the parents just ignore the mistakes. And actually, these are mistakes are a great time to teach a child. So if the child doesn't share the cookie, the parent would say, oh, because you're a baby. Or they would be like, oh, because you're, oh, because you're just so generous, so kind of sarcastic.

there's like a teasing element to it. And it's done in a way that's not supposed to like generate conflict and strife, but it's just supposed to point out to the child that that's an immature way to behave. So there's a whole suite of tools that you can use besides praise. And I also mentioned accepting the contribution, which is huge. Right. So in the book, I talk about Rosie making kebabs with me at dinner and how at first I really wanted to control what she did and I wanted to make sure she made them exactly how I made them and I was grabbing from her and and you know it she just ran off screaming and crying and I realized like I'm not cooperating with her and I'm not accepting her contributions and so we tried it again you know and she made some funny chicken pepper looking kebab and I took it and

I put it on the platter and her face just lit up like like like you know huge smile on her face and she was like oh mama's using my contribution mom is using my you know what I made for the dinner. And that acceptance of her, of what she did and what she made, I think is a hundred times more powerful than me saying, oh, good job. What a beautiful kebab. You know, because it's real, you know, I really valued it. It's like we're part of it, as we all do for everything. It's that acknowledgement. It's that connection. It's that sense of, as you mentioned throughout the book, like kids want to model us and they constantly do model us. So they're want to be included. That's wired into our DNA as human beings. We want to fit in. We want to be

liked. We want to be included. And the real question is, can we get it in a way that is benevolent? And benevolent means, you know, appropriate for the situation. That means if, you know, criticism is needed, then great criticism. If, you know, an appropriate acknowledgement is needed, an appropriate acknowledgement. We want benevolent leaders, parents, mothers, fathers, grandparents. And I think that, you know, thinking again to the history of, you know, humanity, I once heard from a friend of mine, he said, you know, really this new experiment we have where parents are completely on their own is, is exactly that. It's new. It's a test. It's a new thing that we're trying in society. It used to be that the grandparents were there. And really the parents' job was to make sure that food was on the table and that you didn't die. And that it's a grandparent's job to really raise the parents into how to be better, you know, parents. themselves for the kids. And I'm sure you saw a lot of that in these societies. There wasn't an elderly home where the old folks were. They were sort of weed throughout society and very much part of the parenting process too. Huge part of the parenting process. Huge. And maybe not

just the relatives, just any of the older, the elders, you know, a friend, a neighbor. You know, when we first got up to the Arctic, the mom's there just in the grandma's like, they just were stunned that I was with her by myself, like for the first 48 hours before we moved in with this family. They were just like, you've been with her by yourself and you have no help. This is crazy, lady. Like, you're crazy. And there's like a reason why she's so poorly behaved. She's sick of you. And she needs to be around other people. They literally told me that. They were like, she's sick of you. Yeah, this is, I mean, there's good evolutionary biological evidence that children, human children, human babies are really designed to be raised by like four or five people,

not one or two. And that moms and dads and the nuclear family are doing this job of like four or five people. And that's why I think one of the reasons why you're so exhausted. And you're right. We've also lost the teachers, the ones that show us that have already done it and can show us how to do it in our homes. And so, yeah, this is a huge difference, you know. And by the time, like the second or third day, you know, some of the other parents were helping with Rosie, but the other kids were helping with Rosie.

You know, like the nine-year-old, the 13-year-old, they just took her and they went outside. And I went and see her for like four or five hours. And, you know, they are trained. The parents have trained them to take care of the little ones. And I think we really undervalue the role that other kids can play in our children's lives. And there's some really interesting work that shows that kids that are a few years older, four or five, even, are way better at teaching than, an adult is to a child because they make it fun. They know how to make it fun.

But also they kind of understand better where the child's at because they were there not that long ago. And so they guide differently than an adult. So during the pandemic, our neighbor, he's only seven, but he's become an amazing parent to Rosie. And we've kind of trained him, you know, and I watched him and taught him. And he's really good at taking care of her now. And, you know, and he loves it.

He loves that responsibility in that, you know, that he's, you know, because he was unemployed over there. He had like three hours of Zoom and then he was doing nothing. And so, you know, he comes over here and he and he works a bit. And he's been great. Let's talk about like putting this all together and this acronym that you came up with, which is called the, which is called team. Tell us what it stands for and how the team approach to parenting really sort of like dramatically changed how you guys handled things at home. Yeah. So T is like together, this idea that like, like you say, children are hardwired to be with other people and work. together with other people. And so if we constantly are trying to push them to be independent,

you know, if they want to be independent, you know, sure, go ahead, right? But if we're constantly trying to pull them apart from other people, we're going to create conflict and that they're much more likely to do things together with you or with a grandparent or another kid. It does not have to be the parents. Like you said, many cultures, parents do not play the role that is such a big role in children's lives. But children do like to be with people, people that love them. And then E is this idea we've really discussed, like encouraging children to do things versus forcing them. Like, nobody likes to be forced to do things. And, you know, talk about like eroding a motivation.

You force somebody to do something and their motivation just plummets, you know. And so even simple things, if I can interject for a second, like, go go stand next to your grandmother and smile for this photo, right? Like we think of that as like, listen, there might be sometimes that that's appropriate. but in most cases, if you are really sort of reading the room and reading your child, and that's not something that they're feeling at the moment, that is also as much as people say, well, how else are they going to learn? You know, that is a little bit of brute force in that moment. We're telling the child, we know what's right for them, even if in that moment they're not

really feeling that that's something that they really want to do. You know, that's a really interesting example because, you know, we talk a lot about autonomy. And yet the parents in all three places we went to will get children involved in work. And so they really save their commands to a child, their instructions to children, for things that they see as super important, right? Like, come help me with dinner. Come, you know, go grab the baby because she's crying. So they save these commands and instructions for these things that they think are the most valuable to the child and the family.

And so I think that's what I've changed a lot is like really thinking like, is it, do I really want to use up my command and control of Rosie? Because I have very little of it on something like that, right? Go stand over there and smile. Go do this, right? And I think that there's a very deliberate thought process in the parent's mind. It's like, is this really where I want to like wield my control over the child. That's a beautiful point. And it makes me think, you know, just interjecting as you kind of walk us through the team acronym,

It makes me think as adults we only have, and there's a ton of research on this, we only have the ability to make certain decisions in a day, right? There's decision fatigue is a very well-known component. So the more decisions you're constantly having to make, the more you're not able to have that sort of, and it's not willpower, but it's basically a form of that to be able to make the right decision for work, for your life, whatever it might be. So in that same way, you know, there's no judgment if somebody wants to say that that's the important thing for their family. Like, hey, look, grandmother, you know, they just came in. It's been a

long time since we've seen them. Like, please, it would be very important to do this sort of occasion. And my guess is that kids are going to be more likely to listen. It's when the commands are frequent and they're all kept at the same level of importance that I think that kids start to feel like, just like we would as adults, like, Jesus, really? Like another thing that you want me to do in this moment over here? Exactly. Like if it's flip it, right? And exactly. they're not robots, right? Which sometimes I think we, I think of Rosie as a robot. And it's not.

I think that's exactly right. And that said, there's all these things you can do to encourage the child to do it. And that's, I think, in the middle of the book is all these tools, right, to encourage versus forcing the child to do it. You know, there's a lot of tricks. Well, I interrupted you as you were kind of walking through the acronym. So we went through the first one with the togetherness. We went through, we were kind of going through the encouragement as you were sharing. Please continue on.

And then A is autonomy, which we've talked a lot about. And the one thing I have to say about autonomy is that it also has this, it's different than independent. Or a lot of psychologists would say it's different than independence. And that when a child is autonomous, they're also expected to be helpful and kind and think about the group. So it's not just completely out there disconnected, but you're also a, where of what other people are doing and you're trying, you know, if they need help, you're there.

So it's kind of your ability to make your own decisions, but you're also thinking of the group and aware of the group. So it's a little bit different than independence. And then M is minimal interference, which I think is really hard for, we've talked a lot about this, but for, you know, when it comes to this safism that you've been talking about, right? That's kind of maximal interference that we know what's right for the kid and we're going to, we're going to like do everything we can to make sure that happens versus stepping back, letting the child explore, letting the child do what they do, and just being there to help if they need it. And even then, it's a very gentle.

Sometimes the kid doesn't even know you've helped them. So it's a shifting your perspective. Maximal interference is like, I think I know what's right. And the more I do, the better parent I am, which is I think sometimes we get stuck in that mindset. Minimal interference is, actually, the kid knows what's right, like most of the time. And I'm there to help them. And maybe if they get in a sticky situation, I'm there to come and get them out of it.

But otherwise, I have confidence the child really knows what they're doing. One of the hunter-gatherer groups, the word for teach and learn is the same. So like the child teaches and learns at the same time themselves. And they'll say like, look, look at him teaching himself, right? That the teaching comes from the child, not from the parent. It's such a powerful thing. They're all so simple, but when we see the ways they show up throughout the day in our lives and our need to control.

And just like people model behavior, you know, a lot of people weren't raised in a household like that. They weren't raised with autonomy, with minimal interference. And so it's natural that we ended up modeling off of that, a little bit of television, and maybe a couple books that we ended up reading on the topic. So, you know, an important factor. that you mentioned in the beginning of the book. And also at the end, too, is like, look, if you haven't, there's, there's no right, right?

There's no right way to parenting. So we're not like throwing this in and saying everybody's got to be this way. It's basically action reaction. If you want less stress in your life, great, try this. If you're okay, you have no challenges and what you're doing works for you. Great. Keep that up. And it's just like you get your pick and choose.

Yeah. And, you know, I had this incredible woman, Karina Kramer. I acknowledge her at the end. She's an Inuit that lives up in Katsabu. She read the whole book and gave me her feedback before we published it. And she kept telling me, Michael, it's not that hard. She kept saying, just focus on the relationship. You know, is what I'm doing creating conflict? Is it improving the relationship or hurting the relationship? And if it's improving it, keep doing it. If it's hurting it, then take a step back and like reassess, right? She just said, and it's something I've been using with a lot of, like, with my husband and at work, it's like, okay, let me think of it. What can I do to improve the relationship or is my action going to hurt the relationship?

And I think it boils down to that. I think we do a lot of things that create conflict that we don't really need to do. And if we stop and think about that, is this going to create conflict? I think that's a great guiding light, at least for me, that's been a really great guiding light. You know, if I step in here and boss Ruthie around right now, is that going to help our relationship or is it going to hurt it. And like, what could I do it in a way that that helps instead of hurts it? You know, with the concept of hunter-gatherer groups, you know, sometimes people have these images in their head of like people with minimal clothing living in the jungle. You know, it's like very,

you know, based on like documentaries and stuff that they probably seen on the BBC. But you share that a lot of these groups, they were, you know, their kids were watching TV. One of the girls' favorite shows was CSI. Like, you know, they had cell phones. So they actually were dealing with some of the trappings of technology that we benefit from. But in the case of, like, let's say, extreme video gaming and screen time, which is something that we deal with in the West, did you feel like you've got any insights in that kind of category and how this might, this style of parenting and this team approach could work within some of those complexities that we are going through? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think that what I saw,

and is that access was a it was parents regulated the screens more at the point of access than at the point of like hours or whatever that you know i think that they i rarely saw a parent take something away from a child but for instance like with the maya the children don't get phones until they can buy the phone so like the parents had TVs and some parents had phones or tablets but like a child was not given a phone until the child could earn the money by working, usually when they're 15, 16 at a job, and could pay for the phone and pay for the service. And so, again, it's very child-driven, right? The child decides when they get that phone and how much they want it. And what that ended up being is then the parent isn't having to regulate the phone usage, you know.

Which is draining. Which is draining and horribly causing horrible conflicts, right? So I think that there was there definitely you know there's definitely these communities have all the technology we have. But I think that there was also a valuing of things beyond it, much more too. So for instance, up in the Arctic, you know, a lot of kids played video games a lot. But they also spent enormous amounts of time outside or their parents would take them fishing or or we went normal hunting. I mean like there was I think that we kind of get. so narrowed in on like the whole day is on the screen.

And I saw a lot more balance of like valuing the time outside, valuing the time off the screen way more, not just the kids, but the parents too, right? That like a big chunk of the day was outside, you know, for both. And so they, yeah, I remember the grandma, Maria in the Arctic. She went on like this 10-day hunting trip. She's incredible. She's 75. She was like carapoo hunting for like 10 days.

And she came back and she was like, I got up so much. TV to catch up on. She'd like recorded all the episodes. You know, but then she had just spent 10 days out on the land without any technology, right? And it's such an interesting like mixture, right?

That it's not one way or the other, but it's valuing kind of both, I think, at some ways. Yeah, there's an entrepreneur. His name is David Hanmeyer Henson. He's the creator of this programming language, Ruby on Rails. And anyways, he's got a couple kids.

And he goes on Twitter sometimes. And he's like, look, I'm less worried about video games and screen time. And in fact, I let my child choose, but the biggest thing is I make sure that I have other options that are there for them because kids want to do fun stuff. They want to go jump in a lake. They want to throw rocks around. They want to do crazy things. They want to climb trees. And so my job as a parent is that I provide options so that there's not only one option, stay at home and be on, you know, it's like if we had to stay at home, what are most of us going to do? We're going to be

flipping through our phone and just kind of doing that unless there's another option, which is doing something collective as a group together outside participatory and together. And I always really just appreciated that approach to things. Yeah, that's so great. That's what I saw, especially in the Arctic, that's what I saw. There was just this mixture. It was like, it doesn't have to be one way or the other, but, you know, going outside is really important.

You know, learning to fish is really important. You know, learning to hunt is really important. And so it's like we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's like, you know, keep all those good things that are happening outside the video games as well, right? and a lot easier to do if you're pulling away from the child-centric activities, right? That's a big component. If you're trying to do that and these things as well, I can see how parents are spinning their heads thinking, how the hell are we going to get all this stuff done?

And you can't, right? Yeah, I mean, many people ask me, what do you do on a Saturday? I mean, many Saturdays I would go to a park or the beach we live by the water. And I will read for three or four hours. And Rosie just plays. You know, sometimes there's kids there. Sometimes there's not. But, like, it's fantastic.

I love it. It's so regenerative and she's exhausted afterwards, right? She comes home and she's relaxed and she doesn't really care about the screen that much. A couple more questions here as we start to wind down the interview. You know, there's parents that are listening and the tendency is for reasons that are much bigger than my understanding is that I hear from a lot of the moms that listen to the podcast when, especially we have a big episode like this, which is a game changer in terms of how you think about parenting, naturally what can come up is these feelings of, you know, shoot, I've messed up, I've been not good, I didn't have the right approach, I failed my child for any parent and that's feeling that way, what would you like to share with them as they're feeling really

excited about this, but then also feeling a little bit guilty or beating themselves up about how they've approached it previously? Yeah. I mean, first of all, I mean, of course you've done it the other way. That's what everyone has been teaching us. That's the only thing we see. So it's not nobody should feel bad about it at all. But the second thing, too, is like, number one, the methods that in this book work on every age. You know, some of the things are a little easier when the children are babies.

And some of the things are actually harder or toddlers. But I say, like, I actually abuse them on adults. Many adults. So, you know, children have an enormous desire to help and contribute and work together with their parents. And you just have to, if you haven't been doing it and the kids are a little bit older, 11, 12 teenagers, you just have to start weaning them into it slowly. You know, some of the things in the book, you just have to have a little bit more patience. One of the, you know, bringing kids into the adult world with an older child, they might not know how to behave. And so just teach them slowly, you know, and just realize that children can change very easily

and they can make huge changes at any age, but it can take a little bit of time and a little bit of patience. But definitely, like, again, look to the relationship, you know, try some of the stuff in the book. And if it makes your relationship with your children, no matter their age, no matter how they've been raised, better, then keep doing them, right? I guarantee you if you try two things in the book, both of them will reduce conflict in your home. If you give it like a couple weeks,

because again, these are techniques that parents have used all over the world for thousands and thousands of years. And there's a reason that they keep coming back to them. It's because they work. And they do work on older kids and adults as well. I am like, you know, I'm 44. And like with some of the methods in the book, I have really become a much less angry person.

I mean, huge decrease in anger. And so if I can change that much at 44, kids can do anything. One of the psychiatrists told me really early on when I was researching was that this idea that there's like a window of opportunity with kids. And, you know, if you don't do X before they're four or five, then, you know, the window of opportunity closes. That is a very Western opinion of kids. Many cultures see kids as these incredibly malleable things that can change quickly.

And just like during the pandemic, I think, you know, some kids have struggled and, you know, parents have struggled, but they can bounce back. They're resilient. They can bounce back. Kids and adults are so much stronger than we often give them credit for. Yes. We need to be reminded that. And also the science, the science of neuroplasticity teaches us, right? We used to think that you had a certain amount of brain cells and after 25 it was all downhill.

And then we know that's not true. We can grow new brain cells. We can teach an old dog nutrition. So for whoever's listening, if you think it's too late, it's not too late. This is the perfect time. You're here for a reason. You're listening to this interview for a reason. And this book was written for a reason.

Doctor, thank you so much for being on the podcast, sharing your wisdom with us. The book is out there. It's fantastic. People can pick it up. We have a link to the book on Amazon and other websites in the show notes. Anything else fun or interesting that's happening this time in your world where people can continue to keep in touch with you. Like, are you active on social media?

Any other cool projects or stories where they can dive deeper into this topic with you? Yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm at like Foodie Science on Twitter. You can also email me. I love getting email M.Ducliff at NPR.org. I'm hoping to do a series on NPR about the rich, diverse parenting we have in the U.S. These stories are leaving the U.S. But, like, you know, we have, I mean, like, even your experience is, you know, so different

of mine. And I want to hear from parents that, you know, where the elements that are in the book they were raised with or they have other ideas for decreasing conflict in the home. So I want to kind of look at like, what is American parenting and just how rich and wonderful it actually is. We just look at this tiny, tiny view of it with, you know, books and experts. But there's so much more out there. So I'm hoping to do a series on NPR about this in the next couple months. So if you want to email me ideas, I would love it. that's fantastic well we'll link over to your website hunt gatherer parent it's out there please pick it up i've been recommending it to everybody who's been following me on instagram i don't

know if you're on instagram but i tagged you today inside of my stories and sharing why i really think this is a book for not just people who have kids but people who are preparing for kids because i saw a funny meme the other day and it was basically saying um you know if dogs are the new kids than basically what are kids. And somebody wrote back on this meme and they said, kids are the new exotic animals because you got to be a little crazy and you got to be a little rich to afford one. And I just started laughing incredibly because a lot of people feel that that's true. They think you got to have a ton of money so you can have help or you got to be a little effing crazy if you're going to go down that pathway. And while I can understand that, we also don't want to leave it

there. There are tools, time-tested tools and practices for us to be able to create a different vision when it comes to raising kids. And your work is very much a part of that. So thank you for what you do. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was really a pleasure and an honor.