(00:00) The cultural thing is no child is allowed to be in any challenging situation. That’s the recipe for making people who can’t deal with challenges. Are we here as parents to teach our kids? Are we here to mold them? What we’re told, you’re this grownup wise person. You get these children. they’re going to be savages unless you steer them correctly.
(00:33) I applied that to my patients and see if it fit. What I found is it didn’t. I started seeing disease and quote bad behavior as a communication strategy from the children to try to help their parents see the world in a new and better way. They are magnificent beings with incredible intelligence. All you have to do is listen to I believe the recording I recommend more than any other is my victimless mothering workshop which is the product of 14 years of motherhood where I help smoke out the reflexive control-based habits of unconscious parenting and specifically the way that conditional love hides in the well-meaning holistic
(01:19) mama vibes of a woman like me who is so convinced that she’s ending all the abuse of her mother line by imposing rules meant to protect protect her kids against toxic food, tech, and pharma. I have been humbled and I’ve seen some darkness in my own righteousness and in the holistic health mothering world.
(01:39) So, I want to open the conversation and I think it went really well. So, I’d love to share these recordings with you. An attendee said, “I was pretty emotional during the call. I journaled like 10 pages afterwards. My husband told me I looked happier already and I feel lighter. That call with Kelly felt like 10 years of therapy in 1 hour.
(02:01) It cut through to the core. So, I hope you’ll check it out and commit with me to truly ending victim consciousness and fear-based parenting in all of the places that it hides. The link is in show notes. Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan and today I have back on my soul ally friend and colleague Dr. Tom Cowan.
(02:30) Many of you may know him for his books on subjects ranging from anthroposophicalical medicine to water to cancer. And of course, he has really been uh sounding many an alarm over the past couple of years about germ theory and is essentially the person that I look to in my life for perspectives on reality that I can trust. He is such a special human and he has a new book out called Common Sense Child Rearing on the application of so many of the ways that he is freely thinking about many arenas of the human experience to the parent child dynamic. So we do some pretty
(03:19) serious myth busting together and I have in my own journey come to very very similar if not the exact same perspectives that he has and the humility that has been asked of me as a mother as I have expanded into this deeper maturation over the past couple of years is something that he is very familiar with and I would say has masterful experience with.
(03:46) So, we cover what government and parenting have in common. And the most powerful shift in perspective on both of those things that allows you to see more clearly what the role of authority actually is. We cover how to react when your kid draws on the walls, doesn’t eat his dinner, or acts out in school and also why you shouldn’t play with your kids.
(04:18) So, I hope that this is as hearttopening and inspirational for you as it was for me. I had tears in my eyes by the end of this conversation. Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show. Hey, Kelly. Good to see you again as always. As always, just here to continue yapping about the nature of reality, biology, life, and as best we know, as I was saying off offline, yeah, you are one of the most practiced individuals I know in admitting when it is that you don’t know.
(04:56) So the topic that we’re going to address today, I think in some instances where folks have been following your work, your books, your trajectory, they might be surprised to imagine that you would put out a book on child rearing of of all things. But I have personally experienced you as a template of a safe, attuned, emotionally available parental figure who provides me guidance and sometimes solicited, sometimes not, but always welcome on some deeper level advice.
(05:34) And I know that the wisdom that you’ve collected because I do experience it as wisdom and the the sort of place that you occupy in the collective. Am I allowed to call you like an elder? Is that okay? Is that offensive? This place that you occupy I’m getting there. That’s for sure. It’s really like a bereft like a cavernous realm.
(05:54) Nobody is standing in that place handing down wisdom, right? And so what has trickled through you over many decades has come through many avenues, right? It’s come through your own experience as a kid, right? It’s come through your years as a clinician and also as a Waldorf school consultant and your time as a father and a grandfather.
(06:23) But I actually think it’s your particular brand of like heart mind connection. It’s your particular way of allowing your your thoughts to be informed by a kind of sensibility and and that’s why you know I love the name of your latest book which is common sense child rearing right this idea that there is a sort of a sense to bring to bear I actually think is is what makes the advice and guidance that you provide so powerful. It’s just part of your nature. It’s part of how you process reality.
(07:02) And when you apply that to human relationships and specifically, you know, what many of us would would see as the most important relationships in our lives, which is our relationship to our own children. There is just a whole new world that that opens up. You’re also one of the the best listeners I know.
(07:27) And we when we talk about medical stuff, you know, we talk about clinical stuff, I know that you often reference that being pretty much the only thing a clinician has to do is just learn how to actively listen. But when it comes to parent child dynamics, I wonder if we could sort of, you know, zoom out really far before we get into some of the amazing stories that you describe in this book.
(07:52) And if you could talk about what you at this point in your own development think of the parent child relationship as being about, right? Like are we here as parents to teach our kids? Are we here to mold them? Do they come tabularasa and we have to inform all the aspects of their being? Do they come as spiritual teachers for us? like how are you thinking about this diad and sort of the context for everything else that we’re going to talk about today when it comes to child rearing you know how is it that you’re you’re thinking about the nature of this relationship these days so the process that I would answer that
(08:34) is and I think the process that I maybe try to do everything is I have an idea just like anybody else and then I see what what happens in reality and then I see if my idea was right and a lot of times I start with you know with everything now debunking the negative so here’s one way to answer your question so what is the relationship between a parent and child what we’re told the sort of usual reality is something like you’re this grownup mature wise person and you get these children and they’re going to be savages and unless you steer them correctly with
(09:25) your wisdom, discipline, you know, advice, guidance, money, etc., it’s they’re savages, homeless, drug addicts, and you bet you can’t let that happen. So that’s that’s the usual thing and as a result of that parents including me and I used to joke that if they gave the worst parent of the year award I would be in the running for many years when with my own children which I think is a little bit of an exaggeration but not it’s not out of line because I had that idea too so that therefore or when something
(10:11) quote bad happens, you freak out. Freaking out means yell at them, punish them, send them to their room. And on the other hand, you keep doing things that will make them not be savages, like send them to the best schools. and you don’t bother to look into the sort of nature of school or even this school because obviously if they don’t go to Harvard they’re going to be savages and that puts you in puts the parent into a very hard situation because what happens is uh the children don’t cooperate and in fact they start acting and I’ve never said it quite like this cuz I never had the question quite like this,
(11:03) but they start acting more like savages than they otherwise would. and particularly in front of your friends and family members and like teachers. And that’s then comes, oh my god, my child is a savage and I’m a horrible parent and I’m in trouble because not only am I a horrible parent, but like everybody around me can see it.
(11:36) And so I’ve got to do something about this. And at that point, you’re off somewhere where you you do not want to be. Now, I took that idea because that’s the idea that I had, you know, from growing up and everything. And the that’s in the culture, like that’s what that’s what it means. And I applied that to my patients and to and see if it fit.
(12:03) And what I found is it didn’t. And what I found the answer to your question is it seemed to me that the children are there. They come into the world as you know this whatever you call it sort of this spiritual being that comes into this body that’s incredibly grateful to their parents for giving them life and giving them food and shelter and warmth and love. and they expect this is going to be just great.
(12:39) You know, I’m with my parents and what they see is like these people are kind of nuts. They have all this stuff going on in their head. And not only that, they poison me and give me crappy food and all kinds of stuff. And I love them and I want to wake them up. And so I tried to alert them that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.
(13:09) And I started seeing disease and quote bad behavior as a communication strategy from the children to try to help their parents see the world in a new and better way. And once I got that lesson and saw it in practice, so then the benefit that I had is I could think a new thought like at this. And then I could take an like an autistic child, so-called autistic, who was so offthe-wall, you couldn’t even be in the same room with him, ripping my thing apart and saying he’s just trying to tell you that the way you’ve been, you know, vaccinating him and feeding
(13:51) him and all this that he’s never cooperated with the food and and the way that you hate each other as parents, you know, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. He doesn’t actually have a problem. He’s just trying. It’s the only way he can think of cuz what what’s a four-year-old going to do? He can’t write you an essay on how everything is wrong and the problems with the vaccines and, you know, the food and everything. They can’t do that. So, they bang their head.
(14:22) At a certain point, some parents will say, “I don’t like this head banging because it’s like horrible to watch. I’m gonna look into how to live differently.” And it changes everything. And I saw that in particularly in this one child who then got quote cured of autism in like six months because all because we convinced the situation that it wasn’t his problem.
(14:53) And then of course he had issues but he started eating whatever we gave them. And he even said you should go ask Cowan what I should eat. you know, cuz he once the communication was acknowledged, the reason for this is over. And I got to the point with children cuz I started seeing disease as a as a kind of way that they were they were talking to their parents about what was wrong.
(15:30) And I would have these children as patients and I would say to them, “You don’t have to act like this anymore. I’ll tell the parents.” And of course, they’re three or six, they don’t know what I’m talking about, but I would say it just, you know, so they would know. Or even if they were 2 months old, you don’t have to cry all the time.
(15:50) I’ll tell them to stop this because the crying all the time got them to stop. And if you don’t want them to cry all the time, you got to listen. So, in other words, the answer to your question, I think, is a child is the person who helps you see things that you couldn’t you wouldn’t see otherwise. I love that. That couldn’t literally not be more true in my experience.
(16:14) And I’m struck my experience too. Yeah. I’m struck as you’re talking though, and I’m sure you’ve thought of this. For whatever reason, the parallel hasn’t been as as crystal clear as it is for me right now by the exact overlay onto our relationship to parentified authorities in government, right? that the the default assumption is that people are fundamentally savages, are fundamentally bad and badnatured and have these selfish impulses that need to be socioculturally regulated through, you know, legislation and mandates and and
(16:53) so-called laws that atomize all of us into these totally separate entities that Yeah. do display and manifest that which was it’s the same as the alipathic consciousness, right? It’s like the anti-medations that perpetuate exactly that which they purport to resolve.
(17:17) So, it’s it’s this this warfare zero-sum game consciousness that is predicated on a belief that we are fundamentally badnatured sinful right beings. And and I know you know you you even caught me in it recently because I was telling you how you know sometimes I wish if government were to do anything and obviously for those who don’t already know we lean voluntarist both of us in our in our perspectives on the role of you know authority in in society.
(17:53) But I was saying to you, I was like, well, you know, if government’s going to do anything, they should really regulate industrial chemicals, right? Because this this would change everything overnight. Like, if there was really a role for government, it should be to to, you know, take plastics off the market and and take chemicals out of the hands of these industrial moguls, whatever.
(18:18) and you came, you know, with the same perspective that you bring to the parenting arena, which is that regulation never works. So, you know, when it comes to punishment and even reward, I mean, I’ve certainly come to the same perspective in the parenting realm, but clearly I have a little bit of work to do um resolving the parentification of of regulatory agencies.
(18:43) Do you think it’s fair to say that your perspective is that that that kind of top- down regulation almost always breeds that which it or encourages at least that which it, you know, intends to minimize. You’re right. It’s exactly the same. They think we’re savages who first chance we get are going to kill each other. Even though that’s whenever you look at like so-called private sector or how people like do business together when and unregulate, they don’t kill each other cuz that’s stupid, right? And they say, “Well, who’s going to clean the roads?” And you say, “Well, I’ll call Danny Mack and he is a road cleaning service and the 10 of us on our block will pay him and he’ll clean the
(19:17) road.” But as soon as you say, “No, you give me the authority to tell you what you can put in your food or your land or whatever, and then I’m going to force people through threats of violence, right? If you don’t cooperate or throw your ass in jail, then you’re you’re in a war and you’re going to lose because anyway, everybody loses in a war.
(19:49) So, you’re just in a fight and you know that that’s a little bit off subject, but all that comes about when you do two things. One is you you have a system where you don’t take personal responsibility. Like if you throw garbage on my place without an authority, you would go to the person and say don’t do that.
(20:14) And most people wouldn’t do that if they knew they were going to be held responsible because it doesn’t make any sense. And the other thing that has to happen is the people get used to it’s not their responsibility to do anything about anything bad. The EPA will decide, Kennedy will decide. Somebody will decide what’s good or bad. I don’t have any responsibility. And that’s a dictator.
(20:41) That’s like a powerlessness. Yeah. You’re accepting powerlessness. So, there’s one tool that you can find lying out and about in my house any time of day, and that is the Sonic Slider. It’s a highly calibrated tuning fork developed by my friend and bioenergetic and sound healing pioneer, Eileen Musk.
(21:06) It delivers a deep, penetrating, very specific vibration that tones your body from the inside out. I think of it as like harmonizing and organizing anything that I apply it to. So, it works on fascia, lymph, and subtle energy, of course. And it unwinds tension. It boosts circulation, vitality, and coherence in your electric body, which by the way is where it’s at, in case you haven’t heard.
(21:30) I use it on my face actually to lift and brighten. And I use it on my joints if I have any postworkout inflammation or pain. And then also on my midline to harmonize my nervous system. And every night before bed, I vibrate it on my third eye just because it feels good.
(21:52) So this is one of those tools that bridges science and soul in the way that only Eileen knows how to. It’s super simple to use. You literally just tap it and then gently hold it anywhere that you want to apply it and it feels amazing. So use code Kelly Brogan at biofieldtuningstore.com for 15% off your first purchase and it also happens to be one of my favorite gifts to give people. Enjoy.
(22:22) So when we are navigating our respective realities, part of the emotional immaturity that we bring to bear is the insistence that somebody else share our reality in order for us to feel okay. Right? And and so when we grow into our role as parents, but we haven’t progressed or matured that relationship to other people having different opinions, perspectives, and experiences, then we impose on our kids the mandate that they have to conform to our perspective, to our experience.
(22:56) And sometimes this can be like very subtle and manipulative, especially I would argue in the like holistic world where there’s like a zero tolerance policy for having any sort of like less informed perspective on like what healthy food is or what like the the healthy way of being is.
(23:15) But certainly it also you know the way most of us grew up there was the good bad dichotomy and there was like the way you get mommy and daddy’s love which is conforming to their reality and the way that you get a withdrawal you experience a withdrawal of love at best and you know violence and abuse at at worst.
(23:34) So you talk about what it is to get on your kids team, right? Get on their side, stay there, and to resolve, this would be my language, like resolve the triangulation, right? Like resolve this the zero sum game. Resolve the I’m right, you’re wrong. And you know, I think about if that were, and I’d love for you to talk more about that, but I think about if that were the one commitment that every parent made, even if it was the most uncomfortable practice, ask me how I know, that we would have the foundation for healthy romantic relationships later in our lives, right? where you could actually be an ally with your partner even
(24:15) through differences, even through projections, even through painful ruptures, right? Rather than really playing this game of uh two teams, one is right and one is wrong. So, like what does it look like to find your kid radically right in this way, you know, at all times? What does it look like to open yourself to to their reality in a non-coercive, non-corrective compartment? Yeah.
(24:47) So that it reminds me of one of the stories in the book which I think is sort of what you’re talking about. So we have this a cultural right thought that tolerance and anti-bigotry and anti- prejudice is good and prejudice bigotry intolerance is bad right so you go you get uh in so school which is a co you know you have to go to school I talk a lot about that in the book if you don’t go go to school, you’re going to end up not getting a job.
(25:26) I mean, now even in New York City, you have to have a high school degree to be a sanitation engineer, otherwise known as a garbage collector, which is amazing because I don’t know, I actually was a collected garbage for summer and I don’t you don’t need to know anything about Chaucer or anything to collect garbage.
(25:50) But anyway, so you have this coercive environment in a public school, right? And the the secretary of education says, “Our whole goal is to get everybody with a college degree because then you’ll have a good work job and you’ll not be homeless and a savage.” Right? That’s the goal. Never mind that for all the 18 year olds, there’s approximately 47% of them, there’s a space in college for them to go to, which means 53% are losers because there’s no place to go to college, even if they all wanted to. But anyways, so that’s the first problem.
(26:28) But the second problem is, okay, so you have this coercive environment that everybody has to go to and you’re high school and they have a course on tolerance, right? Because everybody’s wants everybody to be tolerant. So they have a a course on tolerance and then you have to write a paper at the end describing what you’ve learned about tolerance.
(26:53) And your child writes a paper and it says tolerance is [ __ ] Right? because that’s what he thinks. And now you have a choice. This is the choice I think you’re talking about. How can you say tolerance is [ __ ] As a matter of fact, Freddy, in this school, we do not tolerate an attitude like that. And we’re going to flunk your sorry ass. And then you’re going to end up not even be able to be a janitor.
(27:19) you’d be homeless shooting crack on the streets of Albany cuz you wrote tolerance is [ __ ] and we do not tolerate that in in this home in this family in this school in this society we are tolerant people and I you know you see that and so when I would have these children oh what’s the matter with with Freddy Freddy has oppositional defiant disorder.
(27:51) What did he do? He he wrote in tolerance class, “Tolerance is [ __ ] Don’t you know better?” So I, you know, I don’t know that I ever actually did that cuz I was smart enough not to think that I But that made no sense. So I, so I said, “Freddy, what what’s up?” Yeah. I you know, I And so he would tell me the story of how he got to come to this conclusion, and it made perfect sense.
(28:23) Now, I didn’t necess I didn’t necessarily agree that he should be intolerant, right? But I was interested in what he had to say. And when I found out, it made perfect sense. And as a matter of fact, the person he doesn’t like who happens to be whatever did something really nasty to him and he doesn’t like them. And I just heard it and said I even mostly don’t say anything except yeah I can see why you wouldn’t like you know Joe cuz he’s he was mean and that’s the end of it.
(28:56) And what I then heard was you know what I’ll probably try to get along with him a little better. I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t presume to say you know you should stop being s so intolerant. I just heard what he had to say. It made sense. And that’s when the children would start to say, “Hey, you know what? This guy’s on my side.” Because his parents said, “You know, you’re going to be a savage and you’re going to end up on the street snorting cocaine.
(29:25) ” And they would threaten him, right? That’s what we do. And not only that, if you keep doing this, we’re gonna we’re gonna drug your ass, right? I mean, you know that world, too, a lot better than I do. If you’re a a seven-year-old and you won’t sit still in tolerance class, they’re going to drug you to make sure because we do not tolerate people who don’t pay attention in tolerance class. And yet, that seems to be how our children think.
(29:56) I mean, that’s that not how our children think. That seems to be the way we raise our children. It’s just one threat and punishment or reward after another. And nobody says, “How did you end up coming to that?” Well, I because he’s doing stuff I don’t like. And they almost always, if not always, had perfectly good reasons and had the whole thing thought out.
(30:22) And when I listened, I would say, “Yeah, that makes sense. That’s what I would have done.” When I think about like the exquisite vulnerability of allowing for, you know, someone that you deem to be, and this applies to pets, too, right? That you deem to be more helpless, more dependent and potentially more ignorant.
(30:50) The vulnerability that arises when you say, “I will allow you free reign, right? Like, I will allow you dominion over your self.” there’s this whole paradigm shift from controlbased interactions and transactional dynamics to well, I don’t know, trust and intimacy, right? Like whatever is on the other side. And I remember my own initiation to, you know, this this first chapter in your book explores this concept we’re talking about of of getting on your kid’s side.
(31:21) I remember my initiation to this was when and I’ve talked about this a lot and and written about it myself so maybe this is redundant but when I was inspired to ask my girls was a few years ago maybe four or five years ago to ask them if there was anything that I had done you know that was still like bothering them right and my one daughter wrote me I guess it was like an email or a text I don’t know what it was at the time she wrote me basically, you know, her perspective on what had gone down in our family, the preceding years that brought us from, you know, the Northeast to Miami and this kind of cataclysmic, you know, un unfoldment in my in my life
(32:04) where I experienced myself as the heroine, you know, like I am the one who is ending cycles of, you know, abuse in my motherline and look at me, I’m so courageous doing it differently. And her story about me was that I was like selfish and that I had destroyed, you know, the family and particularly like how I had treated my own parents, right? And of course, my reflex was to correct her around the story.
(32:39) Like, oh, you just don’t know the story. Wait till I tell you the story that features me as the heroine. then you’ll understand that you’re just you just don’t have all the facts, right? But I had a night before I was going to talk to her and what arose in that night was I mean some of the deepest shame I’ve probably ever felt where I was like quietly with the possibility that I was going to go down in history as a bad mom, right? which I’d never considered before because I was so busy being what I thought would be would look I guess this wasn’t conscious but would look like what a good mom does a good spiritual mom good
(33:18) new age mom right like my kids have never eaten pizza birthday cake at a birthday party whatever and when I sat down with her I had of course this luxury of like the whole night to prepare my adult self to show up to this interaction and it was probably the most courageous thing I had done up until that point in my life which was simply to sit there and say look her in the eyes and say tell me more. Yeah that’s it.
(33:47) I never want to this day I have not aired my version of the story and within literally 48 hours of that experience there was more affection right like so she would like started like touching me and hugging me in ways that she hadn’t before. It was an immediate reward for me.
(34:15) So, I was like immediately conditioned to recognize that when I stay on my children’s team, when we have different perspectives on things big and small, that it’s actually it gets me closer to what it is that I want, which is connection, right? And of course, this is true in every relationship in in all aspects of your life.
(34:34) But whatever that emotional courage is that at least in these initial cases seems to be required, I certainly wouldn’t, you know, diminish how challenging and and vulnerable it can be. But like phrases like tell me more or that makes sense, right? like he said that several times that makes sense to just say that makes sense instead of here’s what I think the reflex to like insert and impose your potentially like radically or even slightly different perspective is so ingrained that interrupting that reflex I think it helps to have these like little phrases because I couldn’t agree more that this is how you experience
(35:11) your children and children in general right in in such a different way, right? They’re not they’re not yours to manage anymore. They’re they’re interesting and they’re, you know, um sources of like very valuable perspectives that you like funny curious perspectives that you wouldn’t otherwise have any access to.
(35:34) And I know this is how you think that that there’s like these these like meaningful puzzles that are represented by every conflict or experience of adversity or so-called illness that there’s there’s some kind of you know there’s a puzzle and you can’t possibly zoom out enough to see what the puzzle is actually depicting unless you have that kind of a comportment towards what’s happening where you don’t come in knowing knowing better.
(36:02) So, I want to talk a little bit about this concept of because there were many parts of this book that even though I talk to you about this stuff all the time, I ask you parenting advice, you know, I I’m familiar with with how you you think in this realm, there were there were still so many parts of it that really hit home for me. And one was around this concept of you called it perseverance.
(36:21) And you tell a story about this guy Willie from your high school. And it’s this idea that you know sometimes our kids need to go through and maybe this is even more for sons right so I don’t have sons I don’t know but they need to go through experiences challenges and even adversity and kind of be in it right and and even like forge their path through it without the meddling of a parent and and you talk about it from the perspective of of challenges but also So from the perspective of play, right? Like you talk about how you don’t think that you should play with your kids,
(37:01) which is very refreshing, you know, for for me to hear. So when it comes to sort of the the benevolent side, right, the light side of meddling in your in your kids’ lives, either to help them uh with their with their problems in this way or even to just like make sure they’re always entertained through constructive play.
(37:28) What do you see as being the potential for a parent to support a child like from the background? Like how does that how does that look and any you know stories that you want to share to support how you got to this perspective? Let me say something about the first thing you said which I can’t really summarize but I got there because I ended up thinking my medicine changed when I saw every symptom and every experience that my patients and maybe even I was going through was because was the wisdom of the body communicating no exceptions whether it’s cancer, Alzheimer’s, a splinter in your finger or whatever. And so I applied that same
(38:06) way of thinking to say children and discipline that this if you actually bother to listen to the story you see that it makes sense and it’s the wisdom of the body. So let me give the example I use in the book. I was with my I think he was three or fouryear-old grandson who was staying with us and every morning he would come down and play with his farm animal blocks etc.
(38:40) And one day I hear he’s downstairs and I hear grandpa and it was a funny way of saying it. And so I go down and look and he had crayon all over the white walls. And again, this is like the sav like only a savage would do that. And this is horrible because you know now we’re going to have to paint the walls and and blah blah blah the whole thing. So he needs to be punished so he doesn’t ever do this again.
(39:06) And interestingly, I as soon as I come down, he points at the wall and says, “Yuck.” So, I got myself together and thought, first of all, he doesn’t need to be told that this was a quote bad behavior because he already knew. He called me down and told me to look at it. So any sort of cognitive, you know, well Ben, this is the reason we don’t crayon on the walls, you know, he already knew that.
(39:38) And so I thought about how do I stay on his side? And so even the wisdom of the body, why would he do this? Because it’s fun. It’s white walls. He’s got crayons. He drew a picture. Like he didn’t come with the rules that say, you know, well, these white walls you don’t draw on, etc., and these you do. He didn’t know that, but he had a sense obviously. So there was no even saying anything about bad.
(40:02) This is wrong. I said, “Why don’t we just go get go to the store, get some paints, and we’ll we’ll spend today painting the wall.” And he had fun doing that. And here’s what’s also important about that. He never did that again. Whereas I can almost guarantee if I had a you’re gonna end up in a co you know cocaine addict on the streets because you’re you know if I was him I’d do it again just to see if you really mean it.
(40:28) You know you’re going to punish them. Now, when it comes to this perseverance and like uh the thing is so I’m in this high school and it’s 80% Jews and 20% blacks and there’s this big thing in our high school about the basketball team and I was the only white kid on the basketball happen to be a very good basketball player and there was somebody better on the team named Willie and I was intruding in their space and so I got punched and harassed and all kinds of stuff.
(41:07) But, you know, Willie recognized that I was helping the team and he wanted to go to college on a basketball scholarship and if I helped the team, he was going to keep me around cuz, you know, and so we became like friends and played, you know, almost every day one-on-one, you know, and he beat the hell out of me all the time.
(41:31) But I had certain things that I could help him. But in overall it was a pretty rough experience. And I never told anybody. I never told my parents. I never complained to anybody. So apart from your child getting like really injured, like that’s different. That’s like protective use of force.
(41:56) It’s like you don’t let your dog run out into the road and get hit by a car cuz that, you know, so you protect them against that. But apart from that, the way I saw it is like I learned a lot from that and I actually saw him as one of the biggest teachers of my life and I’m glad that nobody intervene and tried to, you know, figure out how to make it all work.
(42:25) You know, I just we just worked it out. And unless a child says, “I need to talk to somebody about this,” which is fine, then you hear what they say, or I need help with this, or I’m scared about my well-being or my physical safety, that’s different. But we have this the thing now like the cultural thing is no child is allowed to do is to be in any kind of challenging situation ever.
(42:57) I’m exaggerating a little bit, but that’s the recipe for making people who can’t deal with challenges. I mean, that’s what you’re teaching then. Just like in tolerance class, you’re teaching how to be intolerant. And by punishing Ben, you’re teaching a child how to, you know, try to submit to authority even when it in his world, he didn’t do anything wrong. And you can see it if you actually hear the story.
(43:32) I can see it being fun to to draw a picture on a wall. I can see writing tolerance is [ __ ] I can see defending myself against somebody who’s trying to harass me. I can see, you know, persevering in in a in a team that I wanted to be on because I wanted to be on that team and I was going to figure out how to make it work.
(43:57) And I think it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. And the reason I I say that is because if there’s anybody I would want to hear from in in from my high school, it’s Willie. What did you think about what was happening? And I don’t even know what he knows about it or thinks about it, but not, you know, Charles who went to medical school and got became a neurosurgeon and Ricky went to Harvard and the MIT people that I was hanging out with. I don’t really care what they think. I want to know what Willie thought about what was happening
(44:28) with that team. So, if you’re enjoying this episode, I want to extend a $300 gift to you so that you can start your Juvent journey. Head to juvent.com/Kelly Brogan. The code is kelly300 to use at checkout. So, I believe that movement is medicine. And even though I prioritize exercise and dance, I am definitely not walking 5 miles a day barefoot to get the micro impact that my biology is expecting.
(45:01) Unlike vibration plates, Juvent impact platform is an expertly calibrated and personalized technology with data behind their claims around enhancing athletic performance, musculoskeletal support, and a host of benefits related to lymphatics and fascia. When you invest in one for your family, you can put it in the living room and hop on it for 10 to 20 minutes a day, knowing that you’re supporting your longevity and youthful body in ways that are proven.
(45:31) Again, that’s juven.com/Kelly Brogan. The code is kelly300 for $300 off at checkout. Your future body will thank you. And if you don’t completely love it after 6 weeks, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked. enjoy. And it’s probably because, again, not knowing what it’s like to grow up as a young man, the role of hierarchy and competition and respect is obliterated by this egalitarian concept of right like everybody gets, you know, the same opportunities and and we all have to play nice and harmony is what we’re prizing. And no, nobody has a superior,
(46:15) you know, competence than anybody else. And what you were working out was probably much more aligned with the biological reality of what it is to be a man in the world. And I mean, I cried when I read this part of the book. It’s just so moving to feel like you’re such an amazing storyteller that it’s so easy to to feel like a fly on the wall of that experience of of you as this this teenage guy having this admiration and and respect and and sort of the complexity of also a little bit of intimidation and right like figuring it all out on your own. I think this is
(46:51) particularly salient to to the way that most parents are interacting with their sons today and how we are raising these these lambs and then women the world over are like where are all the wolves you know and it’s uh it’s quite problematic for the collective. Yeah.
(47:16) And you know the answer to the question so this what’s the attitude the approach to to the children it’s funny the what comes to me is you should try to bore the crap out of Yeah. So, let’s talk about playing because that was the other and actually a term. Did you make up this term? I don’t know. Playing um a term you use in the in the book to talk about like how you think about playing, right? Because I know that so many of us especially who are in these sort of modular family lives where it’s like a mom alone with the kids or maybe the two parents in the living room. Especially when you have, you know, this this handed
(47:52) generationally transmitted experience of insecure attachment. So that being with your own infant or your own child is like boring, right? I have I have a whole podcast about that, right? A lot of us I I would say as mothers experience that and we think, okay, well, a good mom plays with her kid, right? And so what are we going to play now? And I loved this discussion, you know, that you have in the book about play, how to relate to it, and what actually it could look like, which seems to be uh preceded by, as you’re saying, a good dose of of boredup.
(48:28) So, yeah, how do you think about that? Yeah, your job as a parent is to provide the possibility of a quote natural environment as best you can. trees and streams and birds and cats and monkeys and dogs and you know forts to build and and blocks and crayons and everything else that’s particularly stuff that’s real food to make gardens, chickens, you know, goats, everything.
(49:08) And then you get out of the way and then you the child will. So if you’re not trying to tell them what to do or play with them or let’s do this. I mean you may have to do it a little bit but you go about doing your life. You take care of the chickens. You take care of the goats. You make applesauce. You plant the carrots. You whatever.
(49:32) the child will inevitably the only reason they get bored and and canankerous is because you’re telling them what to do. If you get rid of all that energy and just say, “If you want to do nothing, fine. You don’t have to say anything. You just here we are. We’re gonna I’m doing my life.” They will literally 100% of the time say, “Can I help you plant carrots?” And then you don’t try to teach them how to plant carrots. You say, “Sure.
(50:05) ” And then you just plant carrots, say, “You want some?” And they’ll, if they ask you, “How do you do it?” Or you might watch them and say, “You do it like this.” But they can figure that stuff out. And what they’ll figure out is what they’re interested in. And one of them wants to sing and one of them wants to read Dustavski and one of them wants to plant carrots and feed the chickens and and wash the goats and the other wants to build tree forts.
(50:29) And that’s that’s your job is to find out what they would want to do and help them do it. As soon as you try to intervene and say this is good and this isn’t good and because we’re new age parents, we do this. If I’m a child, I’m not doing it. Cuz I’m going to I need to teach you that’s not how you interact with people. You interact with people.
(50:55) You come together out of freedom and out of my choice is to do this and maybe even do it together. Like let’s play a duet with recorders. Fine. Because you know that works and we both into it. That’s a kind of playing with them. But most of the time what you’ll find is the children will then quote play and the reason I don’t like play is play is defined and you could quibble with this as meaningless activity that a person does. Well, it’s not meaningless at all.
(51:26) It’s very meaningful to that person. They want to build a fort and see what happens if you build it this high and jump off the top. Do you break your leg or not? And when you don’t say, “Oh, if you build it four feet high, you jump off, you’re going to break your leg.” No, you they they can figure that they will figure that out. And it’s like so many things.
(51:51) The only way I learned that you can stop a child from reading is to try to teach them to read. Every other child figures it out. And it’s like all these things. So, you don’t need to do anything. And they will ask you if they want help with building the fort. and they will ask you if they need help with how to configure the chicken coupe or something and then you can help them cuz they said, “How do you do this?” And then you just do it.
(52:22) And that’s not that different than how you treat a good friend, right? You don’t say, “Oh, well, I’m going to teach you how to do this and you better listen or you’re going to be a savage.” You know, you don’t do that. And not only that, children don’t do that to each other. As soon as they do, they don’t like the one who’s comes with the teaching bullying energy and they get rid of them or they don’t want to have anything to do with them. So they learn not to do that.
(52:53) then everybody is much happier and so many of these fights and it’s it’s most a lot of parents it’s hell raising their children if you really got if you really they were really honest about what they’re experiencing. They can’t get their children to eat the food. They can’t get them to do anything. They can’t get them to go to bed.
(53:13) They’re worried about them all the time. nothing is working and they’re sick all the time and there is a way out of this. That’s my take and to learn what that is. Yeah. Open the pages. You know, just an example like I I tell people I had a 100% cure rate in food fights, right? I was going to ask it.
(53:41) And I don’t know how many percentage it was so high cuz I tell people what you know you got to eat good food and sometimes the GAPS diet my children won’t eat it and every night it was food fights and every night in our house it was food fights every night and I don’t know it’s an extremely high percentage so that dinner time and meal time is hell I mean I heard this from somebody else but the food fights are about autonomy the right to choose choose what you eat. And I want the right to choose what I eat.
(54:11) And I only eat food that I like. Period. If I don’t like it, I don’t eat it. And nobody’s going to tell me what to eat. And so I gave that to my children. You can eat whatever you want. Now, once you give that to your children, the magic is they give you the right to give them the food cuz they don’t actually care that much.
(54:35) So, I cooked the food and I gave it to them and they either ate it or didn’t. And if they didn’t, it was fine. And if they did, it was fine. And they would say, I remember Joe says, “Aren’t you going to punish me if I don’t eat?” Like I said, like what? He said, “Will you force me to eat the broccoli?” Like what? I’m gonna stuff it down your throat. Both unnatural consequences get linked, right? No, then you can’t, you know, go out.
(54:58) Yeah, you can’t go out. And eventually he got the idea that I wasn’t gonna force him to eat it. Now, I wasn’t going to give him Hostess Twinkies either because he couldn’t force me to give him what he he didn’t want that. But if he did, I could say, “No, you want to get it, you go to get money and go to the store and buy it.
(55:19) ” So, he either didn’t eat. And then by day two, he’s like, “Oh, fine. I’m going to eat.” Cuz he didn’t care that much. And I I saw that when I was in Swasilland, you know, they would bring the food out, give it to the children, and they ate. One time child says, “I’m not eating.” They ate his food.
(55:42) And if he had have said, “Oh, I want, you know, millet instead of porridge. This because I don’t like porridge.” They would have laughed and thought that was the funniest thing they ever heard because it’s ridiculous. this is that what we have and we’re grateful for it and we’re having a good time and if you don’t want to eat it that’s up to you and if you never want to eat you’ll starve and not one child ever does that. They just eat it. That’s the end of the food fights. Period.
(56:08) Cuz it’s not about the food. It’s about autonomy, choice, sovereignty. And I think that’s what this whole thing is about. You’re teaching them to be free. They have the choice. They are amazing, magnificent beings who come into the world with this incredible intelligence of what they want to do and all you have to do is listen to them and get out of the way.
(56:36) And don’t tell them they’re going to be savages and they figure it out. And sometimes they’ll need help and they’ll ask you and then you help them out. And what I hear you talking about is the restoration of natural consequences so that you can have experiences in your own, you know, uh, life scape as a kid that help inform how you’re going to make decisions going forward.
(57:02) And they’re not externalized through praise and reward linked to these Pavlovian type, you know, consequences like, you know, we were saying, you don’t get your iPad if you don’t eat your broccoli or if you do eat your broccoli, you get to go out to the ice cream plate. Like, none of those are actually natural consequences or rewards that would inform an intrinsically motivated decision-making apparatus moving forward.
(57:26) So then we wonder, why are we so controllable as a populace? Why are we influenced by, you know, virtue signaling and inducing shame in each other over, you know, the social fabric of our our decisions? And it’s it’s so common sense. I mean, it’s exactly what you describe it. It makes it makes sober sense to think about it this way.
(57:46) and my journey from, you know, conventional-mindedness to holistic wellnessmindedness to wherever it is that I’ve landed now. The humility that was asked of me, especially in this last leg of the journey over these past couple of years where I feel like I have really written a different story around a mother’s experience of teenage daughters than I ever knew possible, certainly from my own experience.
(58:13) and you’ve been, you know, a powerful witness helping me to get out of my own way. The humility that I have been asked to Yeah. experience is exactly what you’re describing. This is how my daughters provide the medicine that I need, right? And I I don’t get to stand on any of those pedestals that I would really like to position for myself, you know, as a know-it-all when it comes to so many things.
(58:42) I don’t I don’t get to if what I want is an experience of like the very particular soulfulness that they each bring to my life and the peak joy, you know, as you know, that I experience in my life is through these through these girls. I mean, I could cry just talking about it. It’s it’s so I feel so grateful that I came upon this kind of perspective that we’re talking about today before they left the house.
(59:14) And you know, you might say, well, but maybe you could experience it with with your your grandkids or whatever, but there’s not, you know, you have these these 18 years, let’s say, and it’s so different a task than than so many of us who are in our controlbased thinking and habits and reflexes imagine.
(59:34) It is like, oh, we got to raise these kids like, you know, utilitarian model so that they are good citizens and not savages, like you’re saying. And it’s such a different experience to just like relish them. Like I don’t know, it’s short. It’s temporary. Like get your mind right. Get out of your own [ __ ] way.
(59:54) And I think that’s so much of what you are a master at is is helping people to get out of their own way through, you know, your your very matter-of-act way of of presenting, you know, a new perspective on what what is an old way of being. But I also would say this is really your gift. Uh the gift being you looked at this situation with your girls and for whatever reason enough insight or emotional intelligence or something to say no that old model doesn’t work.
(1:00:34) I am going to get off my pedestal and listen and see what happens. And it’s like there’s so many sort of bells and whistles that go off in us like people are going to think I’m a bad parent or I don’t know what to do or what if they say something that hurts or I mean and that’s why I think it’s so inspirational to that you did it and then you see that it works.
(1:01:07) you see the magic of this and that you get exactly what you just described to have a glimpse into the the magical nature of human beings and our children. But if as a parent you’re trying to it’s protecting yourself and you really protecting yourself from what? From feeling alive. That’s what it is. And you chose I’m going to feel alive.
(1:01:33) whatever that means. And I think that’s why people are so inspired by it because most of us are too afraid for whatever reason. Well, it’s worth it. You know, it’s worth it. And I don’t know that I could have moved through, you know, the the major shifts out of, you know, dogma. And I got to get you to see my perspective on reality and the world with my daughters.
(1:01:59) had I not had your specific support as somebody who agrees with me about you know so many of these perspectives right to hear from from you like you know on on so many occasions how to reorient towards curiosity and permission it’s like you know that just expanding the permission field for who they get to be while still being connected to my heart and and it’s a rep prioritization and uh and you you’ve been so instrumental in that.
(1:02:34) So I I really feel like you are anchoring very necessary wisdom that can really only come from somebody who has done it many wrong ways, right? And then done it many right ways and iterated the process over literal decades and generations and you’ve put it all together in this book. It’s funny because I I was just uh interviewed in a podcast right before this and offline the interviewer asked me said, “You know, I have um a two-year-old and I wonder if you have I know you got to go, but I wonder if you have any like quick parenting advice for me.” And I was
(1:03:07) like, I do indeed. It’s called Common Sense Child Rearing by Dr. Tom Cowan. Look it up. It’s, you know, it’s a mic drop. So I’m so grateful that this is out there as a resource and also that it, you know, happens to echo exactly, you know, the perspective that I was on route to in my own weird and wild journey towards, you know, becoming a more yeah, a more sovereign adult, a more mature parent.
(1:03:41) And I’m not sure that there is a topic that is more important. And of course, you know, the book is not about your many other areas of expertise and it’s all related, right? It’s all related. So, you touch on many of the subjects that you know are um are showcased in your other works. And so, it’s such a beautiful compendium.
(1:04:02) I’m so grateful that you, you know, that you took the leap and actually put it, you know, to sent it to the presses because I know it was kind of hanging out on on your desk for a bunch of years. And I’m really grateful for the timing and and grateful to you always, Tom. All right, Kelly. [Music] [Music]
