1:57

Is

2:00

there a universal answer? What is going

2:02

to make sovereign and

2:05

confident little people that have

2:07

a sense of agency and think for themselves

2:10

and don't cower and

2:12

conform and fall

2:14

to the feet of authority but challenge it

2:16

and ask curious questions? And

2:19

this conversation didn't disappoint. I learned

2:21

a lot. I hope that you do too. Let

2:24

me know your favorite part of the podcast in the comments

2:26

below. And without further ado,

2:28

please help me welcome Matt Bateman.

2:31

Matt, thank you so much for coming on the

2:33

podcast. I'm so excited

2:35

to have you. And I feel like we were rescheduling

2:38

and scheduling and you had a

2:40

baby and I had a baby. And

2:42

it actually works out perfect because

2:45

I tend to find myself in these

2:47

little pockets of curiosity

2:49

and education has been very alive for me.

2:52

And tomorrow I actually have someone from Synergy

2:55

coming on as well. So you guys are back

2:57

to back guests, which is incredible. So I

2:59

just felt like with everything happening, the

3:01

timing was meant to be. So thank you so much for being

3:03

here. Oh, I'm happy to

3:05

join. And yeah, mine is almost

3:08

nine months old now. So almost as much

3:10

time out of the womb as in the womb, which is like

3:12

a milestone. Oh yeah, for

3:14

sure. You have how many kids? Two.

3:17

So the older ones, three and a half

3:19

going on 40. Younger

3:24

ones, still a baby.

3:25

Yeah, we're on a very

3:27

similar trajectory. My oldest is three and a

3:29

half and then my youngest is one. So

3:32

we're like neck and neck, but it's a really cool

3:34

place to be.

3:34

Yeah. So I think

3:37

I love that you work with Montessori

3:40

right now. Our oldest is in a Montessori

3:42

program. That's great.

3:44

So I guess the first question

3:47

is let's define what

3:50

Montessori is supposed to be. What

3:52

does a pristine Montessori program look

3:54

like and what are the foundational

3:57

cornerstones of their

3:59

approach to education?

3:59

Yeah, I mean the kind of very

4:03

basic idea of Montessori, you think I could

4:05

explain this more concisely given this is what I do

4:07

for a living, but I'll do my best. The very basic idea

4:09

is that

4:11

if you prepare an environment

4:13

in a certain way so that it's like very

4:16

perfect for a child

4:18

of a certain age, let's just take a three-year-old,

4:20

and like it's full

4:22

of just the right number of materials and just

4:25

the right types of materials where children can do

4:27

real things and interact with them in a certain way.

4:29

It's not overwhelming, it's not overstimulating, but it's

4:31

also not understimulating. It's not full of things that they

4:33

can't reach or don't understand, and

4:35

it's full of child-sized furniture. And you

4:38

have a teacher that really understands

4:40

the materials in the classroom and kind of how they're

4:42

supposed to be used and how to really inspire children

4:44

to use them for real tasks,

4:46

like really real tasks, like studying literacy

4:49

or math, which three-year-olds in Montessori

4:51

classrooms do, or like making a

4:54

cup of real tea, like things that you wouldn't

4:56

think that a three-year-old could do, but real things, not

4:58

like having a tea party

5:00

with a doll, but like making

5:03

real tea for a guest. And

5:05

then you let the child free in that

5:07

environment. So it's all set

5:09

up, the teacher knows what they're doing, and the environment is

5:11

all set up, and under those circumstances

5:14

you can give the child a tremendous amount

5:16

of latitude. You can say, do what you want.

5:18

And it's not like there are no boundaries.

5:20

It's not like if the child decides to trash the room, that the

5:23

teacher will do nothing. But in those circumstances,

5:25

the child will tend to

5:27

want to work on something. They'll want

5:29

to pick something off the shelf

5:31

that's interesting to them, or they'll want to go to the teacher

5:33

and ask for an explanation of how something is used, and

5:36

they will work with that material. And

5:38

not just for a minute, like people

5:41

think of three-year-olds, oh, they'll play with it for a minute, but

5:43

for like 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30

5:45

minutes, an hour, they'll really get

5:47

into it, and they'll concentrate, and they'll lose themselves

5:50

into it. They'll get into a kind of flow state.

5:52

And that is the goal. I

5:54

mean, that's kind of getting children into that

5:57

state of deep concentration is the goal of Montessori,

5:59

and that's where the magic is.

5:59

happens. So that's the basic idea. You

6:02

set everything up, it's beautiful, it's perfect, you

6:04

give the child a lot of freedom, and then they do this real

6:06

meaningful work.

6:07

So it seems that I was

6:10

actually surprised to learn that there's no

6:12

official Montessori

6:15

accreditation. Almost

6:17

anyone can flop it on like a toy or

6:19

a school. So you have to be really

6:21

diligent as to what you're either

6:24

buying or where you're placing your kid because

6:26

there's not really anyone coming to make sure

6:28

that they're licensed to use that

6:30

name. Which to me seems really

6:33

crazy. Is that the same for other types

6:35

of particular schools? Is it the same

6:37

for like a Waldorf school or like

6:40

a Socratic school? Do you know anything about

6:42

the licensing there or is it the same?

6:43

It's definitely the same for Socratic, for kind of

6:46

broad things like Socratic. I'm not, I shouldn't

6:48

know the answer to this. I'm not sure about Waldorf or Reggio.

6:50

I seriously they have trademarks,

6:53

but they might. But yeah, Montessori

6:55

is like,

6:57

it's a bunch of things, but it's like, I mean, you're right. Anybody

6:59

can hang up a shingle and say, we're a Montessori school

7:01

and they can have literally nothing in the school that

7:04

has anything to do with Montessori and nobody will

7:06

stop them from doing that. At least in most

7:08

places in the US, there are a couple of states that have

7:12

exceptions to that. And that's the US,

7:14

by the way, like in Australia, like you

7:16

can't just do that. Like there's

7:18

a, there's like a kind of governing body that has a partnership

7:21

with the actual government. Yeah, it's

7:23

not trademarked.

7:25

And there's like in the Montessori world, we

7:27

call Montessori schools that, you know, are

7:29

like, they suck and they're not really Montessori, but

7:31

they call themselves Montessori. We call them Montessori something

7:33

or Montessori, we have pejorative terms for

7:35

them. But the bottom line as a parent

7:38

is that you've got to go in and judge like

7:40

doesn't look anything like the things

7:42

that I said it looked like. And there's kind

7:44

of like a checklist that I sometimes compare.

7:46

Like what to look for? Like, is there something on

7:48

the wall that's at the adult's height in

7:51

a toddler classroom and that's words, you

7:53

know, it's like an inspirational poster, like

7:55

a quote from Montessori or something. It's like, who's that

7:57

for? It's not for the child, right?

7:59

So there's kind of things like that where if

8:02

they're really obsessed about the environment that you

8:04

won't see in a good Montessori environment

8:06

Is there a reason that you leaned into Montessori

8:08

and not something like Waldorf or not something

8:10

like a stoic a stoic program?

8:13

like Yeah, I mean I

8:17

So I used to be a

8:19

philosophy professor that's my kind of first

8:22

career and I Didn't

8:24

love academia and I was kind of looking

8:26

for and out and I've worked a lot with

8:28

children including teaching at preschools And so one of the things

8:31

that I was looking at was like do I want to get into education?

8:34

And I didn't know anything about Montessori

8:37

And one of my friends showed me a Montessori school He

8:39

flew me out to California

8:40

and I saw my first Montessori classroom and it was

8:42

like a

8:43

love at first sight thing for me I've seen a lot

8:45

of different kinds of preschools. I've worked in preschools

8:48

like good progressive preschools and

8:51

Montessori is just it's different like you

8:53

don't get that I don't

8:56

even know how to explain it. You know like I mean for me

8:58

as a child I don't know what what you maybe

9:00

you have something like this as a child like I got really

9:03

into Legos Like I would like work

9:05

with Legos for two hours or like I'd

9:08

play at the creek for like four hours And my parents would have to drag

9:10

me back inside and eat But that

9:12

kind of focus is in a Montessori

9:15

classroom except it's not

9:17

with Legos It's with like and paper letters

9:20

or golden beads that teach you math

9:21

or like making yourself a snack and cutting

9:23

the banana yourself Or peeling the orange yourself It's

9:26

that kind of focus on real things and I just I

9:28

don't think you get that in other approaches But whatever

9:31

other virtues they might have I think regio is really

9:33

good at creativity and family connections different

9:35

approaches have different strengths But for me it was like

9:45

Very very often

9:46

So you have and I mean I've experienced

9:49

this when I go to like pick up my son

9:51

or if I come early And I get to kind of peek

9:53

in at what he's doing or the teacher will

9:55

tell you what he was like his I

9:58

love that they call it their work. I don't know why I

10:00

find it's really cute. But like

10:02

what his work was that day, and it might be that

10:04

he worked on like a real

10:07

key and lock and like, you

10:09

know, sorting those out and figuring out what goes with

10:11

what for 20, 30 an hour. And

10:14

I'm like, it's really hard to

10:16

see that focus in the house because the house is not

10:18

set up like a Montessori

10:20

classroom, right? And it could definitely

10:22

be better, but it's nowhere near the

10:24

setup that he has at his program.

10:27

So is that kind

10:29

of undoing a lot of what people

10:31

are paying for when they send their child to

10:33

a Montessori program and they come back to the house and

10:35

it's very different? Is that like, is

10:37

that a problem or is that adjusting them

10:40

to the real world and different circumstances?

10:43

I mean, it's neither,

10:45

I don't know. So

10:49

it's a lot of, like you can set up your

10:51

house

10:52

like in a very, very Montessori way. If you ever

10:55

go on Montessori tech talk, you will immediately

10:57

feel terrible as a normal parent because you're

10:59

like, what the hell? Like how is this two

11:01

year old using a Keurig and making her

11:04

parents coffee every morning and ridiculous

11:06

things? And I think a lot of them are like actually

11:08

fake and kind of weirdly edited, but

11:10

you can do a lot to set up your home, and

11:13

we do a lot at home, but we don't do nearly

11:16

as much as they do in a Montessori school. So we

11:18

like have a shelf for our daughter where there's like,

11:20

I mean, multiple shelves, but like in the kitchen, there's a special

11:22

shelf where she has her own plates and bowls

11:25

and cups, and she has a paper towel roll that

11:27

she can use to clean up messes. And she uses it, I mean, it's

11:29

helpful to have it. She uses it a lot of the time. Is

11:31

it the same kind of maniacal

11:33

level of

11:34

empowerment and independence that you get

11:37

in a Montessori classroom? No, and she doesn't

11:39

exhibit the same behaviors at home, though

11:41

there's some overlap. I like

11:44

paying somebody to do it for me. I mean, this

11:46

is, I mean, the kind of idea of Montessori school

11:48

is that

11:49

you get this a few hours a day

11:52

of this very intense work, as

11:55

the teacher describes it, and I like that that term resonates with

11:57

you. Does the child's entire

11:59

life have to be like that?

11:59

No, like they can run around they can play

12:02

they can be silly they can like they

12:04

can watch TV Like it's okay,

12:06

and it's good a lot of those things are good It's just

12:09

the special period of focused work

12:11

is not usually something that happens naturally Unless

12:14

you really try and that's the Montessori school stop.

12:16

That's how I think about it

12:17

So you mentioned TV, which I'm so

12:20

glad that you did Because

12:23

my oldest is in his threes still

12:25

and the class that he's in I think the

12:27

youngest is three and then the oldest

12:30

is five in a couple months It's

12:33

like a really big conversation that the parents are

12:35

having with the teachers is well

12:38

what do we do with technology and what do we do

12:40

with screens and It's

12:42

there. It is the mass belief

12:45

that it is just wrong period

12:47

tech is bad period and

12:50

I feel like an outlier when I'm going to these

12:52

meetings because I feel Like

12:54

I read a lot of the studies and Peter Atiyah

12:57

actually did a really great Dissection

13:00

of all of the current ones when it comes to

13:02

screens in language development Cognitive

13:05

abilities and he was like well this as

13:07

my interpretation of these studies This is what

13:10

the conclusion is and his conclusion

13:12

from those studies was there are so many competing

13:15

factors as to what creates a delay

13:17

and in language or cognitive

13:19

ability or Attention deficit

13:22

or things that kind of mimic that it

13:24

has to do with like are you engaged with the

13:26

content? What kind of content what

13:29

other activities are you doing outside of TV?

13:31

Are you using the TV as a nanny and just putting

13:33

them in front of the TV for three hours four

13:36

hours a day? And just like not really parenting

13:38

all of these things kind of contribute into

13:40

all of these concerns that we have as a parent It's not

13:42

the TV the TV just kind of signals Maybe

13:45

other bad practices as parents that we might

13:48

have but rather than look

13:50

at it that way They just say no all tech

13:52

is bad. So I guess

13:54

what's your stance on technology? And then

13:57

do we kind of have to supplement

13:59

it? we are subscribing to a program like

14:01

Montessori.

14:02

Where to start? So in the

14:04

monos- the Montessori world is you

14:06

will often find people who are very technology

14:09

shy,

14:10

if not outright anti-technology. That's

14:13

not me and that's not us so this is this

14:15

is it's not a uniform view and

14:17

I don't think it would have been Maria Montessori's view.

14:19

I think Montessori there's evidence that she was like

14:21

experimenting with moving images in the classroom and

14:24

the kinds of like she's like what you can get a video

14:26

of an elephant for a child to see instead of just like an

14:29

illustrated picture of an elephant that's great but

14:32

um putting all that aside just what's

14:34

the what's the actual right answer here?

14:36

I

14:37

think I mean I would go even further than you

14:40

went I would say technology

14:43

is good

14:45

and

14:46

I don't want

14:49

my children so my daughter is three

14:52

she's old enough to kind of absorb vibes from

14:54

kind of adults about these things I don't want my children

14:57

to

14:58

grow up with adults who are cynical about

15:00

it who are like oh like screen

15:02

time sucks or social media is destroying the world or

15:04

whatever like if they're like oh like yeah you can you can

15:07

watch tv but that's a bad thing for you to do and

15:09

they're kind of like

15:10

now they're getting these kind of mixed motives and mixed messages

15:12

I think the internet

15:14

is good technology is good computers

15:16

are good tv is good that

15:19

doesn't mean that it's

15:20

risk-free um

15:22

like there are risks to

15:24

technologies I mean and then one of the major risks

15:27

like the risk of riding a bike is that you fall

15:29

off and crack your skull open the risk of watching

15:31

tv is that you turn into a passive zombie and

15:33

like you're just kind of using the screen as a babysitter and you're

15:35

watching low value content you got to manage those risks

15:38

like nothing is risk-free but basically

15:40

it's good and yeah

15:42

like it shouldn't dominate like you shouldn't have the child

15:44

in front of the screens passively all the time to the point where they're not

15:47

doing other things or interacting with people that's really bad

15:49

um but I agree with like

15:51

who's the author of the study

15:52

that you mentioned I mean

15:53

he's not the author of the study but he he

15:55

did like a mass interpretation for his

15:57

letter is dr peter atia

15:59

Yeah, I mean, I agree that I don't even think

16:02

that screen time should be a concept.

16:04

Like it's like screen time, like calling

16:07

grandma

16:08

and like binging on Tik TOK are not the

16:10

same category of thing. Like

16:12

it's not like, Oh, there's screen time and both of

16:14

those things belong together because they share some essential

16:17

property of being on a screen. There's nothing

16:19

in common. And I don't even think that,

16:21

I mean, my three year old loves movies and

16:23

she loves narratives. She's a story. She's like a musical

16:25

theater kid. And she has been, she was one. We

16:28

show her Disney movies, like long

16:31

movies that it's hard for a kid to pay attention to. And

16:33

she doesn't really fully understand it. And she has to struggle and

16:35

she asks, ask a million questions. Like

16:37

that's good for her. She's very actively

16:39

engaged and we'll keep kind

16:41

of ramping it up the older that she gets. She

16:43

watches like 30 minutes an hour of TV every day. And I don't

16:45

feel, I think it's a positive

16:48

good for her.

16:48

Yeah, I'm in the same camp too. And I've,

16:50

we found a couple of really good shows

16:53

that have helped with him, like understanding

16:55

emotional intelligence and things like mindfulness

16:58

and breathing. One of our favorites is Stillwater.

17:00

I don't know if you have her watching that, but

17:03

it is, it is amazing. It's a lot of like

17:06

Eastern philosophy. So like there's

17:08

like a lot of Zen.

17:08

Oh, the books. I know the books.

17:10

Okay. Yeah. It's on Apple.

17:12

That panda.

17:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. So

17:15

that's one of our favorites. So if he's in a place, we

17:18

kind of like, and I think an important thing too,

17:21

is how many adults aren't really great

17:23

at modulating like the

17:25

exact dosage that we should be having

17:27

on social media, for example, because

17:30

it's, it was introduced to us at a weird

17:32

age and we didn't really know necessarily

17:34

the how it hijacks your, it

17:36

can hijack your brain. So I think something

17:38

that's really important for him is to understand how

17:41

to calibrate that. So when is

17:43

too much? Like when are my eyes glazing over? When

17:45

do I start to feel like really fidgety? Cause

17:48

I've been sitting for too long. So having him work

17:50

through those very real things. And

17:52

then if he gets to this place where he's agitated, be like,

17:54

well, how does your, like, what is your body

17:57

telling you? Like, is your body telling you that

17:59

maybe you. did too much of your iPad

18:01

or that you did too, right? So not just like

18:03

making the decisions for him, which I think goes back

18:06

to Montessori, which is self sufficiency

18:08

and really instilling a sense of agency into the

18:10

child.

18:11

I think that that's totally true. I have

18:13

not been as successful with my daughter

18:15

at getting her to kind of decide to stop. She

18:17

will decide to stop on her own, but often we impose

18:20

limits for like, yeah, like go outside, you know, do something

18:22

else. But I've

18:24

seen parents who do it. I've seen parents who like have

18:26

a two year old who like they're like, yeah, we just let them play with

18:28

the iPad whenever they want. And they just don't use it more than 30 minutes

18:31

a day. I'm

18:31

like, wow, I mean, if that's the

18:33

temperament of your child, or that's what you've been doing

18:35

in terms of setting up, that's amazing. And

18:37

I've talked to older children like eight, 10,

18:40

12 year olds, who are there,

18:43

once the child gets a little bit older, it's not that hard

18:45

to sensitize them to this kind of thing that you're

18:48

talking about. And they can be very sophisticated,

18:50

like even things like, you know,

18:52

oh, like, like a 10 year old

18:54

boy or a 12 year old boy who watches Dune,

18:56

and who also spends a lot of time on TikTok.

18:59

And the next day,

19:00

they like they're like, I was thinking about Dune last night

19:02

as I was falling asleep. And like, I have these questions

19:04

and as soon as this long complex

19:07

epic story with this rich, and

19:09

you're like, Oh, that's interesting. Like, I have a question

19:11

like, so you can answer the question about Dune, but I have a question, like,

19:14

do you ever think about TikTok the next day? Like,

19:16

oh, not really, like, I

19:18

usually just kind of think about them more. And then I forget about them.

19:20

Oh, that's interesting. Like, that's an interesting thing to notice.

19:22

So if you want something that like really stimulates your thought,

19:24

you might want to watch something longer form or more complicated,

19:27

like children can be sensitized to these

19:29

things. It's just like you said, it's like, we

19:31

haven't figured out as a society

19:33

as parents, as educators, like, what is

19:36

the kind of dosage? What

19:38

is the language around it? How do we teach

19:40

the skill to make it so that, you

19:42

know, social media is a terrible servant,

19:45

or it's a terrible master, but an awesome servant. So how

19:47

do we, for some people, it's a servant,

19:49

and it's great. And like, how do we kind of make our children

19:52

see

19:52

it that way?

19:54

Yeah, I was watching Matthew

19:56

McConaughey just did a morning interview,

19:59

and he was talking about the decision that he made

20:01

for his child to get on to Instagram.

20:03

I think his kid's like 13 or 14 years

20:06

in the teenage era era. And I mean,

20:08

he obviously held out a lot longer than a lot

20:11

of parents, but the way that he described it is

20:13

I guess he was like showing different

20:15

examples of how people use it. And it's like,

20:17

well, what are your intentions with

20:19

this technology? And I think that's a

20:21

lot of it is understanding how to use

20:23

it. Like you can use it to create like

20:26

just like more like

20:29

more dispersed and decentralized

20:31

information, right? Like now you see independent journalism

20:34

taking off, which is incredible. You see people

20:36

starting their own schools, which you would

20:38

have never thought is possible or as

20:42

popular as it is now. So it kind of

20:44

gives power back to the individual if you use

20:46

it properly, or you could just use it as

20:48

some way to numb yourself. So like teaching

20:50

your kid intention, I think is also really, really,

20:52

really important.

20:53

I think it's really, really important. And I

20:55

also think,

20:57

you know, let's just assume that the world stays the same.

21:00

Like it's really important to give teach

21:03

this kind of high agency approach to technology,

21:05

like some people are going to be like me, like

21:07

I'm like on Twitter all the time, I don't think

21:10

that I'm addicted. I wouldn't describe myself as addicted to

21:12

Twitter. I think it's a tremendous value for me. But

21:15

you know, some people might just decide to not use social

21:17

media that much, they like use it a little bit

21:19

or use it not at all. That's also fine. Like what, how

21:22

does it fit into your life? But putting all that

21:24

aside, I think that social media

21:26

just has to get better. Like it's actually

21:28

like, I

21:30

mean, the first time that like a 14 year old

21:32

goes viral or whatever, and they get their phone blows

21:34

up or their computer blows up, and they're getting six likes

21:37

a second, and like,

21:38

it is very hard to kind of contextualize

21:41

that and process that and kind of, you know,

21:43

like is, and I generally

21:45

think that social media, like it's kind

21:48

of tuned for virality, and it's tuned

21:50

for kind of passivity and repeated things. And

21:52

it doesn't have to be like the products could be better.

21:55

No, for sure. But then it's like, how do

21:57

you get someone to stay on it for as long as possible?

22:00

You're not creating an extrinsic

22:02

motivating factor. Like if you're not doing, oh,

22:04

how many followers do I have? Or likes or repost

22:07

or comments and yada yada. Instead of just having

22:09

that more internal locus of control where

22:11

it's like, no, I'm doing this because

22:13

it's like art for me or it's meaning

22:15

for me

22:16

or it's my work or whatever. Exactly.

22:18

And I think it's like

22:20

the people that are really good at social

22:22

media often, um, or I

22:24

think have the right perspective on it. They're often either

22:26

they're light users of it. I kind of use it casually. Or

22:30

they were doing their own weird thing for like eight

22:32

years on YouTube and Instagram and Twitter

22:34

and nobody cared. They had like a hundred followers

22:36

and like one notification a week. And then like after

22:39

a while, like something clicked and they grew,

22:41

but like, you know, they, like, it wasn't

22:43

like they didn't get it too early. They didn't get the kind of like

22:45

viral adjustment too early. And so they really centered themselves

22:48

on like, no, I'm just producing the kinds of things that I want.

22:50

And now my numbers are going up. And if you're

22:53

motivated in the right way and numbers are going up, that's great.

22:55

Numbers go up is not bad. Numbers grow up is good.

22:57

Um, but if kind of like the first thing that happens to you is

23:00

like, oh, I can get a lot of attention for being

23:02

a weirdo or like, you know, acting

23:05

a little bit slutty or like whatever it is like

23:07

that can like affect your behavior. And

23:09

I think parents and educators have to be aware

23:12

of that. Like I think the concerns are very

23:14

real. I just,

23:16

the apocalyptic, like social media is bad. It's

23:18

like heroin. It's like, that is not real. Um,

23:20

and, um, and it's, it's tough as

23:22

a parent. I sympathize with anybody.

23:26

Be easy on yourself as a parent. If you feel like

23:29

this is harder, you're making mistakes and you're coming down to where

23:31

you're being too lax. Like everybody's trying to

23:33

figure this out.

23:34

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I would say like probably just

23:36

the universal answer is to just be

23:38

aware, be aware and be present with

23:41

your child. So if something does

23:43

happen that you can see a shift

23:45

with like their, like their emotions, their behaviors,

23:48

whatever, and you can be like, Hey, what's going on? We

23:50

kind of talked about that the other day. Um,

23:53

we were, we were going for our walk

23:55

with our baby. We had just dropped our oldest

23:57

off at school. So it was, um, like in the morning.

24:00

And someone was doing like a drop off, like

24:02

it was very clear that they just had a sleepover and

24:04

the other parent was like dropping them off. And

24:07

my husband was like, Oh, that's so cute.

24:09

Like, Oh, I can't wait till they have sleepovers.

24:12

And I looked at him like they're not having sleepovers.

24:15

And he goes, so I have a cop

24:18

dad and I just I've seen the different

24:20

side of the world than he's seen. And

24:23

I was like, they're not having sleepovers. And

24:25

he's like, Well, what do you mean? And I was

24:27

like, that's a risk I'm not willing

24:29

to take. And he's like, Well, you just have to really

24:32

know the parent. And I was like, I was

24:34

like, Eric, not over 90% of

24:36

the time, it is someone that you

24:39

really know, or even worse,

24:41

a family member. So like, just

24:43

there's not sleepovers happening. So

24:46

we had this conversation and he's like,

24:48

well, I think that if

24:50

you're present, then you'll see like, if something

24:52

happens, then you'll, you'll know

24:54

because they'll be acting different. And

24:56

maybe go inward or as a year, but then it's too late,

24:58

then something happens. So like, yes, it's important

25:01

to stay energetically attuned

25:03

to your kid. But like, it's also assessing

25:06

certain risks. And for me, that risk is just not

25:08

worth it. Like, there's just no, the benefit

25:10

doesn't outweigh that risk for me. Yeah,

25:12

I mean, just on

25:15

the specific topic, it's interesting.

25:17

So just speaking about different risk profiles,

25:19

my three and a half year old just had her first weekend

25:23

away from us with our like best friends

25:25

in the world, like our family friends that we've known for 20 years

25:27

and that have kids the same age as ours. And she's really

25:29

comfortable with them. But we went to the beach, we went

25:31

to Corpus Christi four hours away. And

25:34

then Gina and I drove back my wife and I drove back and we left

25:36

Alice there for two days and like, it was like,

25:38

and she like had the time of her life and she

25:41

got sick and she threw up and like, I don't even know all

25:43

the things that happened. But like, it was

25:45

like very traumatic for Gina and I, you

25:47

know, who were like thinking about her 24 seven

25:49

and she comes back and she's totally fine. Right.

25:52

So yeah, I mean, just on the specific topic of, I

25:55

mean, I assume you're worried about like,

25:57

like sexual assault. Yeah. Yeah.

25:59

Yeah, I mean, there's a

26:02

real

26:05

so monsters exist. Like,

26:08

like there are monsters in the world. And we

26:10

unlike, you know, as rare as they are. I

26:13

mean, we have 120 schools, like

26:15

we can't pretend away, just like statistically,

26:17

like 10,000 families, 1000s of teachers at 120 schools, like, we have to have

26:21

policies like, you know, like teachers

26:24

aren't with children alone, or there are cameras in the classroom,

26:26

like we can't like, I don't think that we've

26:28

ever had an incident. And hopefully we never will.

26:30

But like, you can't ignore

26:32

the fact that as rare and as awful as

26:34

it is, like, this is a real thing. It's,

26:38

I think it's hard to know how to

26:40

manage that as a parent. It's like very,

26:42

most

26:43

of the answers that people give you in terms of like, oh,

26:45

like, we're just not worried about that. Or like, I

26:47

mean, your answer also strikes me as like, you're

26:49

gonna like your child's gonna get to the point where like, you

26:51

know, you're gonna have to go to war with them to prevent to sleep

26:53

over. And maybe that's worth it to you. And maybe it's

26:56

not. It's very hard to navigate.

26:59

No, yeah, I don't expect it

27:01

to be easy. And I'm assuming

27:03

that like my stance is probably going to be

27:05

like rare. I think most parents

27:08

are probably gonna think that I'm saying like, I'm,

27:11

it's like not even an abundance of caution, of

27:13

caution, it's probably exceeding that in some

27:15

people's minds. But again, I had

27:17

a cop dad, I've like, I know people

27:19

that it just has gone the wrong way. So sure,

27:23

statistically, it doesn't maybe happen

27:25

as often as like the news

27:27

and social media try to make it out. But like,

27:30

just from an antidote, anecdotal

27:32

level, like I've just, I've seen

27:34

unfortunately, the monsters. And

27:37

yeah, it just, like

27:39

for me, it's just you guys can hang out.

27:41

And then what are you going to be doing anyways, it's probably

27:43

going to be sleeping, right? Hopefully it's just sleeping,

27:46

then you can come home and sleep. So you can go hang

27:48

out as late as you'd want. And then I'll come

27:50

pick you up when it's time for bed. But so far,

27:52

me and my husband are at an impasse because

27:55

he is team sleepover. And I am team

27:57

absolutely not. So we'll see who wins

27:59

once we get to that stage.

28:00

Yeah, it's interesting how

28:03

I

28:05

think most parents, most sets

28:07

of parents are like basically aligned, but

28:09

then there's kind of specific issues on, I mean, my

28:11

wife and I are very, very aligned and like, there's

28:13

still issues on which we clash, you know,

28:16

like the basic even things like sleep training. And

28:20

it's always like, it's

28:22

one of those intense things to navigate. Yeah,

28:25

as a parent,

28:26

sleep training is an interesting one, because

28:28

I feel like that's really common in past.

28:30

I feel that usually, usually it's

28:33

the more emotional parent

28:35

has like a really big aversion to the

28:37

sleep training. And then the other parent

28:39

who's maybe just more logical or

28:42

like left brained is like, it's fine.

28:44

And it's only a few nights that we have to do this

28:47

until they figure it out. How

28:49

do you like, how do you come

28:51

to a place of agreement on something? Because

28:54

usually when it comes to the sleep training, a lot of people,

28:56

the fear and aversion is that they're going

28:59

to feel the child's going to feel abandoned, that

29:01

you're going to kind of create some kind of like

29:06

distance between you and them and that relationship,

29:09

the trust is going to be broken, all

29:11

sorts of things are not going to feel supported. So

29:13

like pretty big fears.

29:16

And I would say like some of them are probably justified.

29:18

How do you get over like that in

29:21

past?

29:22

So just tactically,

29:25

like, I mean, so I mean, I'm just going to give you a

29:27

couple of different stories. So I know

29:30

a couple

29:31

where it was like you said, like, you know, the dad

29:33

was like, you know, like, you should do sleep training. Like they're

29:35

ready, you know, they're old enough, like they're old enough to

29:37

sleep through the night. Here's what all the research says, blah,

29:39

blah, blah. And the mom was like, okay, I, I cerebrally

29:42

understand that. And I'm not

29:44

going to listen to my child cry for 45 minutes

29:46

or whatever without, without going in there. And

29:49

there's different kinds of sleep training. Like you don't necessarily

29:51

have to wait 45 minutes, but they

29:53

were thinking about kind of cold turkey approach. And

29:56

the wife checked into a hotel for a weekend.

29:59

it. Like she kind of did the same thing

30:02

because she kind of knew like she's like, No, I

30:04

agree with it intellectually. But I just I

30:06

can't

30:07

make myself believe it in the moment. And so

30:10

and that's how they handled it. But

30:12

there's also just like what's again, what's true

30:14

here? Like is it going to damage

30:16

your child? What are even if you don't think it's

30:18

going to damage your child are there trade offs

30:21

to consider? Just where are you at

30:23

as parents? Like some parents don't

30:25

mind that like they've got a you know, a sleep sharing

30:28

set up and they like it and they like settling with their kid

30:30

and they don't mind it. Other parents like want

30:32

that space. They kind of

30:34

need that space. My

30:36

view is, I

30:37

mean, I think children do feel abandoned when

30:40

they cry and nobody comes for them. And all

30:42

the evidence physiological evidence

30:45

suggests that they do feel abandoned. I also

30:47

don't think it matters that much

30:50

like I don't think that they feel abandoned in such a way that

30:52

like it sticks

30:53

with them and makes them feel traumatized.

30:57

A very, very common thing this so we're sleep training

30:59

our son right now is he cries,

31:01

like the cry of abandonment, you

31:03

know, when we leave them there. And we

31:06

do a thing where like we wait 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, it depends how

31:10

long we'll wait

31:11

before we go in there.

31:13

And the next morning is fine.

31:16

And that that's I mean, it sounds like a small

31:18

thing. Like you might think like, Yeah, like he seems fine.

31:20

But like, there's some trauma to break into the brain. I don't

31:23

I think if your child looks up at you with like,

31:25

kind of wild grin, so

31:27

happy to see you in the morning, not relief, not like, Oh,

31:29

my God, thank God, like, you're finally here,

31:31

that usually results in more panic crying. But

31:34

she's just like, he's fine. Like

31:36

he's happy to see you. And that I think that that's the kind of

31:38

thing you want to monitor as a parent and center on,

31:40

you know, like, is it does it affect things the next

31:42

day? Is it building up a pattern

31:45

of

31:45

behavior or a pattern of kind of panic or

31:47

clinginess or something like that? I would worry about that

31:49

more than the crying in the moment.

31:52

Yeah, I agree, too. It's just assessing the

31:54

attachment style. So are they displaying

31:56

healthy attachment afterwards? Or are they kind

31:58

of showing avoidant attachment?

31:59

or something like

32:00

that. Yeah, it's really interesting

32:03

with that. I feel like we are

32:05

evolved and

32:07

adapted to deal and process and

32:11

transmute trauma, right?

32:13

Like some traumas stick, absolutely.

32:15

And they probably take a lot of conscious

32:18

effort to transcend and to

32:20

like really heal from. But I would say vastly

32:23

speaking, we are quite literally

32:25

created to be able to like, to get

32:28

over it. Otherwise we wouldn't be where we're at.

32:30

So I think if we're gonna like say something like

32:33

sleep training in my mind, if you do it, if

32:36

you do it the right way with your kid

32:39

to where you're assessing them, making sure that

32:41

you're not going beyond what

32:43

their level is, like their challenge

32:45

level is, then I don't think that that's gonna

32:47

be the reason that you have like a broken

32:49

adult later on. I think it takes probably

32:51

a lot more than that. Yeah,

32:53

I don't think so. But there are people who humanly

32:56

disagree with both of us. And

32:58

you know,

32:59

like you gotta kind of, this is one of those things that you have to decide

33:01

as a parent. I mean, modern parenting is, it's weird.

33:04

Like the

33:06

amount of attention that a child gets

33:08

from their parents,

33:11

often from one parent, like during the day is unprecedented.

33:14

It's just like an insane amount of undivided

33:17

attention. People have fewer kids, they have less support,

33:19

you got a ton of attention with a parent. But

33:22

then also like conversely, like

33:25

the amount of kind of space and privacy that

33:27

parents kind of expect to need in order to be able to work and

33:29

do things is also unusual and unprecedented.

33:32

And so, I mean, children are

33:34

getting tons of help and support and

33:36

nutrition and all sorts of things that they never would have gotten in

33:38

history. But also like people are like, yeah, like

33:40

you can go to your room and cry until you sleep. Like

33:42

that's new, like that, like, you know, Cave

33:45

Alice, my daughter's name is Alice, Cave Alice would have had a

33:47

zillion people to sleep on and would have cuddled up

33:49

with whoever was there. And we're

33:52

all kind of figuring out what

33:54

it means for human nature that

33:56

we live in the kind of world that we do.

33:58

Yeah.

33:59

That's a really good point too. Our

34:02

toddler is going through a bit of a battle

34:05

when it comes to sleep. So every night is a

34:07

negotiation. And I don't ever want to shut it down

34:09

because I want him to take this

34:12

into the real world. I want

34:14

if he wants something and someone says no, he's

34:16

like, well, how else can I get this thing? Maybe

34:18

I can offer you something else. So we

34:21

try to create a healthy,

34:24

respectable dynamic where he's allowed to

34:26

negotiate. And sometimes I'm like,

34:29

absolutely not. I'm standing firm

34:31

in this thing. But every night is a negotiation.

34:34

And my husband's like, I just want him to

34:37

go to sleep and be fine and

34:39

understand that he's not lonely. And

34:41

I was like, he is lonely. I

34:43

feel lonely if I sleep by myself and I'm

34:45

an adult. If you're traveling

34:47

and you're not here, it's harder for me to sleep. And

34:50

when in history have you had someone

34:52

sleep by themselves? And like you mentioned the

34:55

cave, there would have been a whole bunch of people in there

34:57

just for safety purposes. So it's

34:59

not natural to sleep by yourself. And

35:01

I think his feelings are totally valid.

35:04

It is, I mean, this thought occurred to

35:06

me when we started sleep training our first child.

35:08

She was like six months old. She was actually really good with sleep.

35:11

She kind of sleep trained herself or someone has a

35:13

different story. But I was

35:15

like, man, she's not gonna sleep

35:18

with someone regularly like in the same

35:20

bed as someone for like

35:21

years.

35:24

Like I would, I mean, I'm a

35:26

married adult. I sleep

35:28

with someone almost every night. Like it's

35:32

just kind of occurred to me. It's like, wow, like she's gonna

35:34

sleep on her own for like the next 20 years or whatever. Like

35:36

that's crazy. But

35:39

it is something that most of us do as children.

35:42

Yeah, I know. That's why I was like, offer that little guy

35:44

some empathy because it's

35:46

not the best sleeping by yourself. Sometimes

35:49

it's great, but like overall, you want

35:51

someone to cuddle with and I think that's

35:53

totally normal.

35:54

And different children are totally different. Like my

35:56

daughter who's super, super extroverted, she like,

35:59

I mean, heard the rules.

35:59

for her is like she just has to stay in her room.

36:02

You don't have to go to sleep. And she like gets

36:04

up and she gets books and she reads them and she enacts

36:07

little plays. And she might be up for like two hours

36:09

after we close the door. Like she does crazy things

36:11

like we'll find her the next morning with like a whole

36:13

dollhouse setup or like she's been building with

36:16

blocks. But you know, eventually she chooses to go

36:18

to sleep and we're fine with that, you know, but

36:20

other children are mean,

36:22

they would struggle, I think, to kind of play

36:24

by themselves like that. So you don't even have to know

36:26

your child.

36:27

Yeah, mine would not. That's not him

36:29

at all. When we first transitioned to him to like

36:31

a regular bed, he would just sit on the edge

36:34

and he was scared to even get out. He's

36:36

like, I don't know what's happening here. Yeah,

36:39

he's very sweet. He sounds

36:40

very sweet.

36:41

So when it comes

36:44

to

36:44

age, and there's like this really

36:46

famous longitudinal study that I just

36:49

became aware of, it's based out of

36:51

Canada. And this psychologist,

36:54

Adam Lane Smith was talking about it recently on

36:56

a podcast where there's

36:58

pretty heavily correlated relationship

37:01

between kids that go into daycare young

37:03

and then not so favorable

37:05

outcomes later on when it comes to increase

37:08

in anxiety, depression, high divorce

37:11

rates, like low self

37:13

esteem, low performance in a job

37:15

or like maybe no career that they're really passionate about,

37:17

like just heavily correlated with not favorable

37:20

outcomes in adulthood. So

37:22

obviously, there's different

37:25

when you say daycare, you can't really lump

37:27

everything into the same category because

37:29

where I've had this conversation,

37:31

we had this conversation just the other day,

37:34

because we're trying to figure out what we're doing with our youngest,

37:36

because I feel like every time you have

37:38

another baby, you're like, re assessing

37:40

your decisions that you made at the first one, are we going

37:42

to do this again? Where should I adjust, etc.

37:44

So when you say daycare, I think it's

37:47

really important to decipher like, what

37:49

does that mean? And I think in this study,

37:51

it's one of those drop offs where it's

37:53

kind of chaotic, and there are too many kids

37:56

and not as many adults and no structure whatsoever.

37:59

And you know, the TVs on the music's on

38:01

over stimulation is like the name of

38:03

the game. So to me, that's what I think

38:05

of when I think daycare. I don't think of a

38:08

structured quiet intentional

38:10

environment. So is there a too

38:12

soon for a child to start

38:15

a Montessori program? Is there like a sweet spot

38:17

where you like to see them start the program?

38:19

Like,

38:20

so you're

38:22

going to want to make a judgment as to kind of how good

38:24

the programs are again, but I mean,

38:26

you know,

38:27

our children go to

38:29

our schools. Um, the schools that I

38:31

helped build and run, we have

38:34

very, very good infant programs and both

38:36

of our children started at three months old.

38:38

Oh, wow. And

38:40

I mean, we don't have to take that path. Like

38:43

we make enough money that we could like stay with them or

38:45

hire a nanny or something like that. I actually

38:48

think that our, this is the

38:50

best thing for him, for her, for

38:52

our two children, um, it was the best thing for her and

38:54

it is the best thing for him. It's a beautiful

38:57

environment, incredibly intentional.

39:00

Um, it's a one to three ratio. There are other

39:03

babies between three months old and 18 months

39:05

old that they kind of like learn to get along and interact

39:07

with one another and get interested with one another, interested

39:10

in one another day. It's a really good

39:12

environment for moving around. I think like a

39:14

lot of very young environment, like

39:16

infant environments, like I think of them as like container

39:19

transfer systems. It's like, okay, like we're putting the baby

39:21

in the jumper and this baby is contained and now we're putting the

39:23

baby in the crib and now we're putting the baby in their high

39:25

chair to eat. And like the babies can't, they're like put from

39:28

one jail to another and they can't really move.

39:30

And that's how the situation is managed. And that's

39:32

not how we manage children. We give them a ton

39:34

of freedom and it's, I mean, you wouldn't think that it works,

39:37

but it does like, it's fine for there to be a nap

39:39

area where some children are napping and others aren't, they figure

39:41

it out and it's not that disruptive when

39:43

one child happens to crawl into the nap area. So we

39:45

have this amazing system. Um, but

39:48

yeah, like, I mean, I don't

39:51

know what particular longitudinal

39:53

study you're referring to, but there were, um, like six

39:55

months ago, a year ago, a bunch of

39:57

data in the U S got released on.

39:59

and

40:00

kind of medium term outcomes, I

40:03

think, for public preschool programs,

40:05

because this is something that the federal government

40:08

has considered forever. Like should there, like

40:10

we've got K-12 public schools, like should there

40:12

be pre-K public schools

40:14

and some cities or some states do it, and

40:17

like New York has universal pre-K. And

40:20

the outcomes for children that go to those preschools are

40:23

pretty mixed, like in some states and in some cases

40:25

worse than children who don't go to preschool.

40:29

And that doesn't surprise me at all. I

40:31

mean, I think that

40:33

what you said is right, like you can't lump everything

40:35

together. And if you're looking at publicly

40:37

funded preschool programs that are a huge

40:40

range of quality and attention

40:43

and staffing ratios and things like that, would

40:46

it be better for some of those children to stay at home

40:48

and not get preschool? Yeah, probably

40:50

it would. And probably the parents

40:52

aren't in a situation where they can do that.

40:55

And so it's just, there's a lot to think about

40:58

there, but it doesn't surprise me that if

41:00

you kind of look at it on average and aggregate that there

41:02

are big problems longitudinally with the

41:04

median preschool program. So don't pick the median preschool

41:06

program. As a parent, pick a great one.

41:08

So when it comes to older children

41:11

and high school

41:13

children and public school, I

41:15

guess let's start with the public school. Where

41:18

do you see, like is

41:21

the biggest shortcoming?

41:23

Like what is, where do you see it failing

41:26

children the most? And then why has

41:28

it not been updated ever? Why

41:30

is it, are we still doing the same thing basically

41:33

from the origin?

41:35

So if you forget about public school for a second and

41:37

just look at like traditional education, some private

41:39

schools, mostly like public schools,

41:42

but they like have slightly better facilities or

41:44

they seem like slightly happier places. But

41:46

the basic thing that they do is the same, which is,

41:49

there's 45 minute block classes, there's

41:51

a schedule, there's a teacher in each class,

41:54

the ratios are somewhere between like one and 15 and

41:56

a really good case and one and 40 and a more

41:58

typical case. I don't like.

41:59

that system, whether it's a public

42:02

school or a private school. I don't think that it's

42:04

good for children to spend 13

42:07

years of their lives,

42:09

eight hours a day, five

42:11

days a week, most of the year, a

42:15

little bit more than half of the year

42:17

until they're 18, which is a crazy

42:19

old time to stop doing that. I

42:21

mean, teenagers should be doing

42:24

stuff and going out and it's like, no, they're spending eight

42:26

hours a day in a fairly constrained environment.

42:28

I think, I mean, the problem with it

42:30

is, I mean, all the critiques of

42:32

the traditional education, I think are true. Like it teaches you compliance,

42:36

it teaches you how to be good at the

42:38

game, at the system, it disconnects

42:40

you from reality. There's

42:42

a Paul Graham quote that's something like, look, in

42:44

real life, you do very hard things.

42:47

And if you do okay, like

42:49

that's great. Like you've accomplished something in school,

42:51

you do incredibly easy things and

42:54

you have to do perfectly or else you suck. Like,

42:56

I mean, it's like in real life, if you get a C, because

42:58

you're doing something real and you accomplish something in

43:00

school, if you get a C, like it's a disaster,

43:03

right? And so the whole orientation

43:06

of schools, if you've got a really smart student

43:08

going through a K 12 system, like they'll come out lazy, like

43:10

they'll come out thinking, I don't have to try that much

43:13

to skate through. And I expect all of life to be like this.

43:15

If you've got a child who's like a little bit off the beaten

43:17

path and needs to wiggle and move, like they're going to come out

43:19

thinking like the world is not for me and I have

43:21

to fight the system and everything sucks. And

43:24

they'll never have gotten the confidence that they need,

43:26

they needed to get. If you, I mean, there's

43:29

just doesn't really work for anyone for

43:31

a few students, it does, but it's

43:34

developmentally bad. It's not what children need

43:36

as to why it hasn't changed.

43:38

I mean, it's

43:40

a few things. So one is that

43:42

I don't think that there's, it's not like there's a general

43:44

consensus as to how education should look.

43:47

Like education, it's a young field. People

43:50

didn't really start thinking about education from first

43:52

principles until the

43:54

1900s.

43:54

So it's like a hundred year old

43:57

field. And then the second issue is like, I mean, this is

43:59

where the public.

43:59

look part of the public system comes in. It's a massive

44:02

bureaucracy. It's

44:03

a huge behemoth

44:05

that people have now

44:07

spent generations not thinking about their child education.

44:09

Like you go like you send them to the local public school and you

44:11

don't think about it and hopefully it's okay and maybe you join the PTA

44:13

but you just you don't think that much about the education.

44:16

The teachers don't think that much about the education. The

44:19

superintendents don't think that much about the education. It's

44:21

a big administrative

44:23

bureaucracy and it just kind of has a lot of

44:25

inertia behind it and people are okay with it. People

44:27

are just used to it. There's very little impetus

44:30

for change. I mean as much as I criticize

44:32

the public system like

44:34

something like 80% of parents are happy with it

44:37

and 90% of children go to public schools.

44:39

It's like it's like even you can criticize it

44:41

and you can say oh people are peeling off more students or homeschooling.

44:43

The public system is there and it's huge

44:46

and it's fine in the sense of

44:48

like none of the threats to it are existential.

44:50

Yeah and I feel like that's

44:53

probably because a lot of parents don't have an option

44:55

right and like they're not really as involved

44:58

as they'd like to be so it's easy to say like

45:00

oh the school's fine when you're not really

45:03

like super dug into

45:05

what's actually

45:05

going on. Yeah I mean

45:07

when you when you I mean it's hard to it

45:09

takes a lot of time and money to do

45:11

something different

45:13

and

45:15

it's just

45:16

that that disincentivizes taking responsibility

45:18

or being really thoughtful.

45:20

So what do you do if you're in a situation

45:23

where you don't like

45:25

you have Montessori lower schools

45:27

but there's no upper school so how does that transition

45:30

look like for those kids? Is it really difficult

45:32

or would you recommend them doing a pod

45:34

after or throwing them into

45:36

something that's more that looks more like

45:38

a traditional public school whether it be private

45:41

or public but you have those block classes? I

45:43

mean I would definitely recommend doing something different

45:46

just because it's better for the child but I

45:48

don't think it's like a lot of people have the impression that

45:50

if you go to alternative education or Montessori

45:52

education let's just take Montessori in particular and

45:55

then you put them into a normal school which a lot

45:57

of parents like know that they're going to have to do at some point

45:59

they can't afford it for

45:59

forever or this is just

46:03

what the circumstances permit them or for whatever

46:05

reason. Are they gonna be ruined?

46:07

Is it gonna be like, oh, like now they hate

46:09

it and they can't get used to it and there's this adjustment

46:11

period and all the other kids think that they're weird monosauric? And

46:14

the basic answer to that question is they're fine. I've

46:17

seen it happen a million times. We have many,

46:20

many, many students

46:21

go into the public system or private systems

46:23

much more structured around kindergarten

46:25

or first grade or second grade or whatever the transition point

46:28

is.

46:30

They figured out in like a day, like their

46:32

children, they learn, they learn that it's different. And

46:35

some of the things that stick with them from Montessori

46:37

really, really helped them. They tend to be a little

46:39

bit more advanced than their peers. You

46:41

get a lot of

46:43

literacy and math and pre-K way

46:45

more than you typically do in kindergarten. You

46:48

think of the teacher as an ally. You think of your friends

46:50

as comrades. Like it's a Montessori school sent

46:52

to be a benevolent place. And so that just kind of inoculates

46:55

you against a certain kind of cynicism that you could have

46:57

about teachers and instructors in school.

47:01

It's a good thing, but yeah, like will the Montessori kid

47:03

like follow the teacher to the board when they get out their chalk

47:05

because they think that they're about to get a personalized lesson, like maybe

47:07

for a day or two, but they'll figure it out pretty quickly.

47:10

Does it become more difficult the older that they get?

47:12

So let's say they go all the way to eighth grade and

47:14

then they have to go to a more traditional

47:17

high school.

47:17

I mean, a lot of, I think

47:19

eighth grade is actually a good age to transition.

47:22

Like a lot of teenagers,

47:25

here's this kind of funny perverse thing that

47:27

happens to Montessori children, especially if they stay in

47:29

it for longer is that they see movies

47:32

and they have friends and they're like, oh,

47:34

like in Harry Potter, like

47:37

they'll have to like sit in desks and they've got a teacher

47:39

who's yelling at them and they take tests and like, or

47:42

they feed like Ferris Bueller, they would

47:44

never see that now that's true. But

47:47

they get this idea of like school

47:49

is kind of interesting. Like traditional school

47:51

is this kind of like fun place where you get to go and

47:53

rebel and like you get to be allied against the

47:55

teachers. And a lot of children want that experience

47:58

at some point.

47:59

Like if they've only been to. like hippy, hippy, Montessori

48:01

schools or whatever. And you know, or they just

48:03

want a bigger school. I talked to a family just

48:05

this last weekend who like they've got a

48:07

son who loves sports, he loves football,

48:09

he loves basketball. Like our high school, we have high

48:11

schools, like they've got like 80 children and like

48:13

they're not 80

48:15

teenagers. They're not gonna have big sports

48:17

teams. There's gonna be limited options for that. So if that's what you

48:19

want, you can go. I think it's

48:21

fine.

48:22

Even for a child who's for a teenager

48:24

who's kind of

48:25

shy about it, who's like, you know,

48:27

they've had their little intimate

48:29

school with alternative education for

48:31

the last 13 years or however long

48:34

and now they're transitioning into high school or transitioning

48:36

into college. I

48:38

don't think it's that hard. I mean, for any particular

48:40

child, yeah, like teenagers, transitions

48:42

are hard, but you know, I mean, if you go to like,

48:45

I went to public school in Tennessee, pretty typical

48:47

public schools, the transition from elementary school

48:49

to middle school was hard for me.

48:51

It's like the transition from middle school to high school

48:53

was hard for me. Like these were big transitions no

48:55

matter what. It's like, wow, older kids,

48:58

like totally different norms. People are making out in the hallways. What

49:00

the F is this? You know,

49:02

like, you gotta deal with that no matter what. It's

49:05

part of growing up and I don't think that it's especially

49:07

jarring. And I think that there are tons of advantages

49:10

to kind of having that alternative education early. I

49:13

do not think that your attitude should be as a parent. Well,

49:16

they've got to go to the real world at some point. So let's

49:18

start breaking their souls in early so that

49:20

they don't hate it. Like, I think your attitude should be, I'm

49:23

gonna give them an agency

49:25

centric education and really help them be

49:27

their best self for as long as possible. And if I have

49:29

to compromise at some point, so be it. But then

49:31

they'll be strong and better positioned to deal with

49:34

whatever compromises come their way.

49:35

Yeah, I tend to take that perspective

49:39

as well. And it's like, how do you create

49:41

something that's like the best or most

49:44

pristine version

49:46

for them to like kind of protect all

49:48

of that for as long as possible? Because unfortunately,

49:51

like they will be in the real world, but if I

49:53

can control it for as long as I can and

49:55

like try to instill that sense of agency,

49:58

I think that's really important. I love that. at

50:00

the Montessori school that my son goes to, like there's no

50:02

like Mr. or Mrs. They call all

50:04

the teachers by their first name. And

50:07

to me, I've seen some people, cause I'm in

50:09

the South, so some people

50:11

think that's like really disrespectful because they're not saying

50:13

ma'am or sir or addressing

50:15

them by like a title. And I want

50:18

my son to know that just because

50:20

someone is older than you or in a perceived

50:23

position of authority

50:25

or power does not mean that you don't have the right

50:27

to stand up for yourself, does not make you lesser

50:29

than, does not mean that you can't challenge

50:32

said authority. So I think it like, it

50:34

instills, like we're all people and

50:36

we all have a right to like discuss

50:38

like your boundaries and what you want. And

50:41

again, it goes back to agency and kind of like sovereignty

50:44

really on a fundamental level. And for

50:46

me, that's so important. And like this whole

50:48

idea of respect, I think is really like

50:51

forced compliance. We just don't want to call

50:53

it that. So it's like you're a little person, so

50:56

you have to listen to everyone. And then that goes into

50:58

adulthood, which leads to like lack of critical

51:00

thinking and you just following whatever someone is telling

51:02

you to do because that's what you have been trained to do since

51:05

you were three, four, five.

51:06

Yeah, I think

51:07

that there are two

51:10

very different types of

51:13

authority,

51:14

at least two. One is like,

51:17

you have to do what I say, children are there to be seen and

51:19

not heard, blah, blah, blah, like all that stuff

51:21

I handed when I was growing up and it was everywhere.

51:25

But another is

51:28

the authority figure has like gravitas. Like

51:31

it's like, they're not like demanding obedience,

51:34

but they're like, you can tell

51:36

that they've kind of got the air of wisdom and seriousness

51:39

and you trust them. And I

51:42

think that

51:44

that's good. It's hard to

51:46

find, but it's good. And I think that the

51:48

thing that I worry about is schools that have neither

51:51

actually, like where it's like really like, there's

51:54

not a trusted authority figure at all and the animals

51:56

are in charge of the zoo. And like, I think a lot

51:59

of people, a lot of public schools end up being

52:01

like this, where it's like, they try to, nobody

52:04

really has gravitas, and so they try to crack down,

52:06

but the students find ways around it, and it's kind of a scary

52:08

place for

52:09

students, where there's

52:12

tons of behavioral issues, and it's

52:14

chaotic, and the rules aren't enforced,

52:16

and if something goes wrong, there's nobody that you can go to. I

52:19

do worry about, especially in public schools and large

52:21

schools, I worry about that kind of environment, but

52:23

I basically agree with you, like

52:25

I don't think it's good

52:27

that children grow up under

52:29

some form of

52:32

educational or just

52:33

behavioral authoritarianism, like that is very

52:35

bad for children.

52:36

Yeah, I think that's the difference too, between

52:39

what's a leader, like what is a healthy leader, or

52:43

some schools call them guides, right? And

52:46

I think that's the idea too, it's someone

52:48

that you trust has your best interest at

52:50

heart, and they're on your team,

52:52

right? They want what's best for you, and that's kind

52:54

of how we explain a lot of things to

52:56

our son. When we make these decisions,

52:59

it's our job to keep you safe, and

53:01

to do what's best for you and your body, and

53:03

your mind, so when we're telling you something, it's

53:05

not because we don't want you to have fun, or we don't want

53:07

you to explore, it's like we are quite literally protecting

53:10

you in that moment. So I

53:12

think there's a huge difference between someone exudes

53:14

leadership, versus someone who is

53:16

more of the old school, 90s

53:19

parent, seen not heard,

53:21

listen, or I'll make you listen kind

53:23

of parenting, which is not what we

53:25

subscribe to at all. Yeah, I

53:27

think that that kind of parenting, it still exists,

53:30

it's become a lot less common, and I think

53:32

that in general, the pendulum has swung

53:34

the other way. There are a lot of parents

53:36

who don't know how to say no.

53:40

And if you go to Target or whatever,

53:42

like I mean you see, guilty.

53:45

Yeah, I mean

53:47

my first job as a teenager, not my first job, but

53:49

the first job where I got a paycheck and a W-2

53:52

was at Toys R Us. Toys R Us has gone out of business

53:55

for your younger listeners. It used to be like a

53:57

dedicated big box toy store. And

54:00

you would see a lot

54:01

of really horrific, overly

54:04

permissive parenting there, where the children

54:06

would scream at the parent, and the parent would just kind of roll their eyes

54:08

and capitulate. And then, I mean,

54:10

just in my parenting, one time I took

54:12

my three-year-old to Target, and she was like,

54:15

I was like, you can have one toy. She took

54:17

like 20 minutes to pick a toy.

54:19

And finally, I was like, if you don't pick a toy, we're gonna leave. And

54:21

she didn't, still didn't pick a toy. She was really pushing

54:24

the limits. And I was like, okay, we're gonna go. I've gotta be

54:26

somewhere. And she threw a huge screaming

54:28

set in the middle of Target, like huge, total

54:30

meltdown tantrum. And the

54:33

parents around me, like the withering

54:35

stares of like, I mean, what they were,

54:37

they're muttering under their breath or saying to me, I was just like, can

54:39

you just give her the toy? Yeah.

54:42

And it's like, no, like I'm not gonna do that. But

54:44

that, like,

54:45

that is that kind of limit setting.

54:48

It's almost like a lost art now, or it's a dying

54:50

art.

54:51

Yeah, because you're trying to appease everyone

54:53

around you instead of doing what's best for your child,

54:56

which to me is bananas. It's like, I

54:58

don't care if you don't like the scream of

55:00

my child. Like there's, you don't know the whole context

55:02

of the situation. I'm parenting the best that I

55:04

possibly can in this moment. And then

55:07

you have-

55:07

It's hard. It's hard when your child

55:09

is screaming to not capitulate, in public

55:11

to not capitulate. Even if not in public, it's hard to not

55:13

capitulate. It takes a certain-

55:15

Or just reps.

55:16

I, we

55:17

travel a lot. We've always traveled

55:20

with our babies and there's a personality type

55:24

and then also an adjustment period. So our oldest

55:26

was a horrible traveler.

55:29

Like he was one of those babies

55:31

that you were like, how is it possible that he

55:33

is crying for the whole four hour flight? And he's

55:35

just, he's done that before. And

55:39

I was really fortunate that I had an incredible

55:41

flight attendant. And she was like very understanding

55:44

and like, let me come into the front to like where

55:46

it was noisy to try to get him to go to sleep and

55:48

rocking him. But all of the people around me

55:51

were just horrified. It's

55:53

like, well, what would- And he was a baby at the time.

55:55

So what would you like me to do? And they're like, I'm in

55:57

the one lady had the audacity to say-

55:59

I'm not above dosing my children.

56:02

And I'm like, well, he's...

56:03

Was what? Like, Benetriol

56:04

or something? Yeah. And

56:06

I'm like, he's five months old, he can die.

56:09

They literally cannot have

56:11

that medication yet. Like, mind

56:14

your business. Sit down. And the fact that

56:16

you can't control your emotional state and your

56:18

grown adult and you expect my five month

56:20

old to is insanity. Right? So

56:22

how about you work on yourself?

56:24

It's so interesting. I mean, you see this

56:26

kind of thing happen on... Twitter

56:28

is a good place for this. Where somebody

56:31

will express something like... There'll

56:35

be a tweet that's like, all I'm saying is, if

56:37

I had a baby, I just wouldn't take them out in public

56:39

if they were gonna cry. And then there's like 4,000 quote tweets.

56:42

It's like, you hate children. Like, a bunch

56:44

of people defending them. And it's like this huge flame war.

56:47

And you get into kind of pro- and anti-natalism

56:49

radicalism. But

56:52

it is... I think the kind of underlying

56:54

truth

56:56

or the kind of interesting thing to grapple

56:58

with is that there just

57:01

aren't that many spaces, public spaces

57:03

in modern life that accommodate children

57:06

well. Like, even if children are tolerated,

57:08

it's like not that... Like, they're kind of

57:10

an afterthought or like people put up with them

57:12

or it's unpleasant for the

57:14

child and it's unpleasant for everybody around them. It's

57:17

hard, man, being a parent. Like,

57:20

we live in the suburbs now, but we lived

57:22

in New York

57:24

with our oldest

57:27

from when she was born until when she was

57:29

two and a half or so. And

57:31

it's like... I mean, there's a lot of things you can do. It's great

57:33

to have a toddler in the city. There's a lot of good things about it. But

57:36

there's a lot of things where it's like basically

57:38

ruled out that you can kind of go someplace with

57:41

her. And I don't like that. Like,

57:43

if I were kind of designing society from first principle, I

57:45

don't know exactly what all the answers are, but I

57:47

just think... Like, if you go to a place like...

57:51

I don't know, a good place somewhere in Europe. Okay, Venice.

57:53

This is an extreme example of Venice. Venice is a place where

57:55

there are no cars. This ideal

57:58

Disneyland, like, resort...

57:59

historical preserve island of Italy

58:02

where everything is old and all sorts of alleys

58:04

and canals and there are no cars Like

58:06

people just gather in squares with their children

58:09

children of all ages just run around and crawl around and

58:11

kick soccer balls the adults sit around the drink

58:13

spritzes and aperol and whatever and There's

58:16

just nothing like that in the US where this is kind

58:19

of like integrated public commons and children

58:21

are kind of welcome um, even in the suburb is like rare

58:23

to see like teenagers roaming around and out and about

58:25

and it's just I mean even rarer than when

58:27

I was a kid, so I don't know exactly what's

58:29

happened there, but it's not good how

58:31

Tucked away children

58:33

are it does seem that it's it's

58:36

an intentional design

58:38

that we have made society very Very

58:41

almost hostile to young families

58:43

like you said there It's very much an afterthought

58:46

and it's something that you don't think about Maybe

58:48

primarily until you're in the thick of it with

58:51

small children But even something as simple as going to

58:53

the bathroom and you go to the bathroom and there's

58:55

not a single toilet That a kid can

58:57

reach in the till they're honestly probably like eight

59:00

nine Like right like they're gonna be

59:02

too small and it's gonna be hard for them to aim We're

59:04

gonna get up there

59:05

like a sink with a stool where they can like stand

59:07

at the like how hard is it to like hold a three-year-old

59:10

up at The sink while they're like

59:11

rubbing their hands under the water It's just like I mean

59:13

and like one in a hundred bathrooms

59:16

will have this like little folding stool for them to stand on

59:18

and you're Like oh my god. This is so awesome But it's

59:20

but like think of how many how many accessible

59:22

bathrooms we have right? So we have handicap

59:25

bathrooms so that people with wheelchairs

59:27

can use the bathroom Respectfully and

59:29

with ease and I would venture

59:32

to say there are significantly more children

59:34

That struggle to reach a toilet than people

59:36

that are in a wheelchair that need like that

59:39

specific design I don't know the numbers and

59:41

maybe I'm off but I

59:44

There's definitely more kids. So why why

59:46

are we making such a huge adjustment for a smaller

59:49

group of people? But we're not taking in to account

59:51

children at all. It just doesn't mean

59:53

There's like some sort of vicious negative

59:56

cycle where it's like well the expectation

59:58

is that you don't generally take kids places

1:00:00

and so people don't design for it. And because people don't design

1:00:03

for it, then it's really hard. And so people don't want to take their kids

1:00:05

places. And again, I don't

1:00:07

know kind of exactly what the answer is,

1:00:09

but there are different places. There's

1:00:11

this Netflix show that everybody should watch at least

1:00:13

a couple of episodes of called Old Enough. You

1:00:16

heard of this?

1:00:16

No, I'm gonna write it down though.

1:00:17

It's a Japanese show that's been like subtitled

1:00:21

for Americans and the episodes are like 10 minutes long or

1:00:23

something.

1:00:24

It's basically like toddlers

1:00:27

in suburban and rural Japan where

1:00:29

there is a culture of like, yeah, like

1:00:31

the two year olds just kind of walk half a mile

1:00:33

to the store and buy oranges for

1:00:36

mom and then walk back. And

1:00:38

like all the cars know to stop

1:00:41

and the toddler like sometimes forgets things and

1:00:43

sometimes gets lost. But like the children

1:00:45

have an insane level of independence. But

1:00:47

the thing that enables that independence is this like

1:00:50

massive culture-wide, totally

1:00:52

different perspective on accommodating children

1:00:54

and helping children and not being understanding of children

1:00:56

and being on the lookout for children that just were

1:00:59

so far away from that. It's hard to know how to even

1:01:01

achieve that

1:01:05

in an American life. It is interesting too. If

1:01:07

you go your whole, like

1:01:09

first however many years, let's even say

1:01:12

just like your first 12, six years of feeling

1:01:14

like an inconvenience, feeling like

1:01:16

an afterthought, feeling like you're

1:01:18

not welcome. And you have to

1:01:21

at least on some level think that it's

1:01:23

possible that a part of that is gonna stick

1:01:25

with you into adulthood. And then you wonder

1:01:28

why like we have so much anxiety or

1:01:30

we don't feel like we belong or we feel like

1:01:32

what do you know what I mean? Like there, we feel like this huge

1:01:35

disconnect. It almost seems, I

1:01:37

don't know, I would say there's a correlation there. I

1:01:39

would say like look at places like Japan and is

1:01:41

that the same where you have maybe a

1:01:43

society that's a lot more understanding

1:01:45

and open and adopting to these kids

1:01:48

versus one that's like, you're ruining my breakfast

1:01:50

to get out of here. Yeah,

1:01:51

I mean, I think it definitely matters. And it's not the only

1:01:53

thing that matters. And it's so multi-factorial that it's

1:01:55

hard to like point to because this culture does it right.

1:01:58

Like every single adult is 10% half. happier.

1:02:00

It's never that clean. But it is. I mean,

1:02:03

one Montessori in the early 1900s started

1:02:06

making her very intentional preschool

1:02:08

programs. She had to commission people

1:02:11

to design child size furniture. It didn't

1:02:13

exist. Oh, wow. It's less

1:02:15

than 100. It's about 100 years old that child size

1:02:17

furniture. And now it's everywhere. Now, like Fisher Price has

1:02:19

it and every house has it. But like,

1:02:21

if you kind of multiply that out, okay, there's child size furniture

1:02:24

everywhere. But like, you know, is the world

1:02:27

welcoming to children? Not really.

1:02:29

I mean, it's not terrible. I don't want to overstate

1:02:32

it, but it's like,

1:02:33

pretty well not that welcoming

1:02:35

to children. It's not designed for children.

1:02:38

The kind of things that you see in a Montessori classroom

1:02:40

are very much the exception. I'm

1:02:42

not the rule. Like you don't see that kind of thing

1:02:44

in public spaces almost ever, at least

1:02:46

in the US. And does that

1:02:49

have an impact on children? Yeah, it has an impact

1:02:51

on children. That's why Montessori designed the furniture

1:02:53

to make them feel welcome,

1:02:54

to make them feel like this is a place for them where

1:02:56

they can feel proud of it. And they can take ownership of

1:02:59

it and they're welcome and they belong. Like

1:03:02

children definitely don't feel that way in a lot of spaces.

1:03:05

I had no idea that's so neat with

1:03:07

the furniture. I had no idea.

1:03:09

Yeah, it's crazy how

1:03:11

I mean, I mean,

1:03:14

this is a point that I make a lot, but just how

1:03:17

everybody kind of thinks of like, oh, education has always

1:03:19

been this way. Like, most things

1:03:21

in education are

1:03:22

pretty young.

1:03:24

They're pretty new, especially for

1:03:26

early childhood. The idea that a child could learn

1:03:29

how to read at three or four years old is

1:03:31

incredible. I mean, nobody thought that for thousands

1:03:33

of years,

1:03:34

for hundreds of years, really, since like the sixth century

1:03:37

BC, you start teaching children how to read

1:03:39

when they're seven. It's

1:03:41

a very new idea. Three,

1:03:44

four years old.

1:03:45

Yeah, so I guess what's the difference there? Because

1:03:47

I think, isn't it like the Swiss

1:03:49

model, they don't really start school till they're seven.

1:03:52

And then what this thing I was watching was saying

1:03:54

that this whole Western

1:03:57

idea of having kids read early is

1:03:59

putting a lot of stress. on to them and pressure

1:04:01

and it's like trying to get them to like perform

1:04:04

and compete whereas the more Nordic

1:04:06

models are more lackadaisical

1:04:08

and they don't really focus on any

1:04:10

of that until seven. Yeah

1:04:11

I mean that's true and there's there's

1:04:17

there's been arguments about this for

1:04:19

a long time when the arguments are not resolved

1:04:22

like there's not a general consensus about it so

1:04:24

a lot of more progressive educators

1:04:27

think that it's pretty inhuman

1:04:29

to have a child start

1:04:31

drilling on reading when they're three years old

1:04:34

or whatever and there's something

1:04:36

to that I think that there is there's there are real concerns

1:04:38

of like exactly how are you doing it like are you having

1:04:40

the child sit down or you were were you're ordering them

1:04:42

with stickers are you punishing them if they don't do it are you kind

1:04:45

of forcing them to do it the same way that I forced my child

1:04:47

to like take a bath even when she doesn't want to is that

1:04:49

their experience of reading when they're three if

1:04:51

you're gonna teach reading that way I think you should wait

1:04:54

a little bit longer. On the other hand and

1:04:56

this is Montessori's innovation she

1:04:59

basically made reading into like a 17 part

1:05:02

game that

1:05:03

children love and that they start practicing

1:05:05

when they're two before they even understand that they're practicing

1:05:07

and I mean Montessori like the two-year-olds

1:05:09

like learn to wash tables and

1:05:12

what are they doing when they're washing the table there's a very specific

1:05:14

motion that they use it helps them hold up their hand when

1:05:16

they're writing a pencil or they're all the puzzles have

1:05:18

little knobs on them that

1:05:20

require the same motion to use it as they're building

1:05:23

up the muscles and then they're playing sound games it's like rhyming

1:05:26

games what starts with the there's what

1:05:28

sorts of the guh they're learning how to isolate sounds

1:05:30

and perception and so by the time when there's three they

1:05:33

get

1:05:33

introduced to the idea of a letter which is in this really

1:05:35

fun sandpaper letter that kids love to trace and they love to

1:05:37

touch it's like oh yeah like so I already know what

1:05:39

that sound is and they already know how to kind

1:05:41

of move their fingers precisely and now they're tracing letters

1:05:44

it's like by the time therefore they're just writing

1:05:46

and they haven't it's like they haven't even had to drill at

1:05:48

all even though they've had lots and practice so if

1:05:50

you break it and this is a genius of Montessori is to break

1:05:52

things down like that if you do it like that it is

1:05:54

way better to learn early way

1:05:56

way better it's just it's easier

1:05:58

it's more fun

1:06:01

You don't have to do drills ever. Like you never

1:06:03

have to go through a period of like, you

1:06:06

know, somebody's giving you phonics cards and you're just struggling

1:06:08

to remember them and you don't like it and you're repeating a cursive

1:06:10

letter on a piece of paper 7,000 times and like

1:06:13

you're doing it because somebody's telling you to do it. You

1:06:15

do need practice. Lots and lots of repetition

1:06:17

and practice to learn literacy, but you

1:06:19

can do it when you're three. You can do it when you're four

1:06:22

in a way that is very joyful

1:06:25

and serious and fun. And

1:06:29

if that's the way that you're learning it,

1:06:31

it's the better way to learn it.

1:06:32

No, that makes a lot more sense. Right. And it goes back

1:06:34

to not everything is deserves to be lumped

1:06:36

into the same category. So yeah,

1:06:39

that makes sense. Before we wrap

1:06:42

up, is there like one piece

1:06:45

of advice that you would give to

1:06:47

parents that are trying to figure out

1:06:49

what to do with education for their child

1:06:52

or they kind of feel like they're at an impasse?

1:06:55

What to do with what with their child? Sorry. As

1:06:57

far as education. Yeah. I

1:07:00

mean,

1:07:02

so in terms of schooling and education,

1:07:05

the thing that I would say is

1:07:08

you should evaluate

1:07:10

specific

1:07:10

teachers and classrooms.

1:07:13

Like the ones that are available to you in your vicinity. Like,

1:07:16

I mean, it's easy for me to sit here and say Montessori is the best. And

1:07:18

I do think that Montessori is the best. And I do think that it matters. I've

1:07:20

dedicated my life to it.

1:07:22

And the traditional system is awful. And I do think that the traditional

1:07:25

system is awful. But when it comes down to

1:07:27

it, if you've got like a six year old or a nine

1:07:29

year old and you've just moved or whatever, and you're looking

1:07:31

at your options, they're going to it's not

1:07:33

the school or the philosophy that they're going to be

1:07:35

with. It's all of that channeled

1:07:37

through a specific teacher in a specific

1:07:40

classroom environment. And you

1:07:42

can find if you can find one great teacher that

1:07:44

you think that your child will connect with

1:07:46

that will really get your child that's that has

1:07:48

gravitas that will really teach excite

1:07:50

them and challenge them and do all the things that you want

1:07:52

them to do in education, like nothing else matters

1:07:55

in the system, really, I mean, other things do matter.

1:07:57

But that is the most important thing to find. And that's the hardest

1:07:59

thing to find.

1:07:59

So I mean, I would even say this is true

1:08:02

of Montessori classrooms. Like what classroom

1:08:04

is your child going to be and go and look at it and observe

1:08:07

and picture your child there.

1:08:09

Um, you know, how will they do like, you

1:08:11

know, what will they love it? What kind of child do you have?

1:08:13

Do you have a child that needs something a little bit more warm and

1:08:16

funny? Or do you have a child that needs something a little bit more structured,

1:08:18

like

1:08:18

really evaluate the specifics in

1:08:21

terms of parenting,

1:08:22

the one piece of parenting advice that I always

1:08:25

give. So maybe this can be the last thing that I say is, um,

1:08:27

and this is, this is a kind of core Montessori principle. If

1:08:30

your child is focused on

1:08:32

something,

1:08:33

not like zoned out in front of the TV or

1:08:36

video games, but like they're doing something

1:08:38

actively, like with their hands, they're

1:08:40

engaged, um,

1:08:43

don't interrupt it.

1:08:44

Let them be.

1:08:46

Don't go in and it means so tempting as a

1:08:48

parent to like comment or

1:08:50

to get excited or to go and play with your child or whatever.

1:08:53

Like I mean, when I training babysitters, I say

1:08:55

like, when my child is like really into something, what do you do?

1:08:57

And the babysitter naturally says like, Oh, I would play

1:08:59

with her. I would engage with her. I would talk to

1:09:01

her. I would encourage her. I would be like, no, you get out your

1:09:04

phone and you doom scroll.

1:09:06

Like I don't mess with my child when they're concentrating

1:09:09

to leave her be. And like, it's very

1:09:11

counterintuitive, but that, that is how concentration

1:09:13

builds. And that is that kind of like

1:09:16

independent

1:09:16

engagement, that capacity

1:09:18

for persistence or sticking with it for

1:09:20

ignoring distractions for like really being

1:09:23

into something like that is what most

1:09:25

people don't have. And it starts in early childhood and

1:09:27

you don't want to mess with it.

1:09:29

Oh my gosh. That's amazing. I'm going to take

1:09:31

that. I didn't know that cause that would be

1:09:33

my reflex as well. So thank you for sharing

1:09:35

that. Yeah, of course. Awesome.

1:09:38

Um, before we take off, can you tell the listeners

1:09:40

where they can follow you and how they can support

1:09:42

you, um, any projects, all of that good stuff?

1:09:44

Sure. I may have mentioned earlier that

1:09:46

I am on Twitter a lot. That's the best way to follow

1:09:48

me. I'm at M Bateman

1:09:50

B A T M A N on Twitter.

1:09:53

My organization. I there's a

1:09:55

lot of it's like one of these umbrella organizations

1:09:57

with a lot of sub organizations who've got a training center. We've got

1:09:59

a high.

1:09:59

the main thing to follow his guidepost

1:10:02

one a sorry so if you want to like our schools skiercross

1:10:04

one sorry know what's going to sponsor

1:10:06

a dot com and from there you can get to our homes we

1:10:09

resources or school locations are the

1:10:11

many many many things that we do so

1:10:13

yeah

1:10:14

those are the two main things

1:10:15

awesome enabling all of that below

1:10:17

for every line thank you so much matt

1:10:19

this is amazing and it was a pleasure

1:10:21

having you on

1:10:22

your thank you so much kinda through the punter being

1:10:24

her and

1:10:25

that's it for this week's episode and chatting

1:10:27

that can as if you enjoyed the content please leave

1:10:29

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1:10:31

share it on your social media word of mouth

1:10:34

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1:10:36

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1:10:38

was the most anything that you agreed with disagreed

1:10:41

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1:10:43

below and i'll see you next week i

1:10:45

have a buddy