1KHO 542: How to Be On Your Child's Side No Matter What | Dr. Tom Cowan, Commonsense Childrearing

Summary

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast – Episode 542: How to Be On Your Child's Side No Matter What | Dr. Tom Cowan, Commonsense Childrearing

Release Date: August 6, 2025

In this compelling episode of The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast, host Ginny Urch engages in a profound conversation with Dr. Thomas Cowan, the esteemed author of Common Sense Child Rearing. Dr. Cowan shares his transformative insights on childrearing, emphasizing the importance of aligning parenting practices with a child’s natural needs and innate wisdom. The discussion delves into various aspects of modern parenting, education, and healthcare, advocating for a more child-centric approach.

1. Introduction to Dr. Thomas Cowan

Ginny Urch opens the episode by expressing her admiration for Dr. Cowan's extensive body of work, which includes influential books like The Fourfold Path to Healing and Cancer and the New Biology of Water. She highlights her excitement about Dr. Cowan's latest book, Common Sense Child Rearing: Unconventional Wisdom for a Nourished Childhood, and commends its accessibility for busy parents.

2. Dr. Cowan's Approach to Pediatric Care

Dr. Cowan recounts his two-decade experience as a school doctor at Waldorf schools, where he developed a unique strategy of engaging directly with children as individual patients. He explains:

"I'm going to ask the questions to the child and I don't want you to help me... If they just sit there, let me try to deal with it." (05:01)

This method fosters trust and openness, allowing children to express themselves without fear of judgment or correction.

3. Being on the Child's Side

A central premise of Dr. Cowan's philosophy is unwavering support for the child. He emphasizes the necessity of prioritizing a child's well-being in a toxic culture. Ginny underscores this by noting the alarming disparity between the recommended outside play time and the average screen time for American children:

"If you could just set aside a thousand hours in your year... it's three hours a day approximately for your kids to get outside and play." (10:09)

4. Critique of Vaccines

The conversation takes a critical turn as Dr. Cowan addresses the controversial topic of vaccines. He challenges the foundational premises of virology and vaccine efficacy, asserting:

"No virus has ever been shown to even exist, let alone cause disease...the injection of this stuff in a living being can only result in a negative outcome." (16:17)

Dr. Cowan argues that vaccines are part of a broader issue of medical surveillance and questions the integrity of pediatric practices regarding vaccine administration.

5. Perspective on Ultrasounds and Medical Interventions

Dr. Cowan extends his critique to other medical practices such as ultrasounds, describing them as high-intensity energy beams that create a toxic environment for fetuses:

"We're putting your child in a highly toxic environment for no reason...you can't wait seven months? That's ridiculous." (22:02)

He advocates for minimizing unnecessary medical interventions to protect children's health from a young age.

6. Views on the School System

Discussing education, Dr. Cowan draws inspiration from Ivan Illich and critiques the mandatory public schooling system. He contends that:

"The whole project is about how to create an obedient society. That is the only goal of school." (33:12)

Dr. Cowan argues that public schooling enforces submission to authority and undermines children's natural learning processes, advocating instead for individualized, interest-driven education.

7. Importance of Play and Autonomous Learning

Emphasizing the biological imperative for play, Dr. Cowan highlights the benefits of unstructured, autonomous learning. He contrasts this with the rigid structures of traditional education systems:

"Children are biologically designed to play...they self-educate in these mixed-age groups." (44:03)

He encourages parents to create environments where children can explore and learn through play without undue interference or coercion.

8. Medical Surveillance and Cancer Screening

Addressing the broader theme of medical surveillance, Dr. Cowan critiques cancer screening practices, citing the lack of evidence supporting their effectiveness in prolonging life:

"There has never been a screening study that shows that people live longer or do better as a result of screening." (52:10)

Using a compelling analogy, he compares the body’s handling of tumors to managing garbage in a house, arguing that understanding disease as the body's communication mechanism, rather than a target for eradication, can revolutionize healthcare practices.

9. Closing Reflections and Favorite Childhood Memory

As the conversation winds down, Dr. Cowan reflects on his childhood memories, illustrating the enduring impact of outdoor play and interpersonal relationships:

"I did a lot playing golf and that was outside... I won the club championship easily my first year. And then I never played again. Just, just to say, you guys, not even worth it." (58:33)

Conclusion

This episode of The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast offers a thought-provoking exploration of modern parenting and healthcare practices. Dr. Thomas Cowan's candid insights challenge conventional wisdom, urging parents to prioritize their children's natural inclinations towards play, autonomous learning, and holistic health. His emphasis on being wholeheartedly on the child's side serves as a guiding principle for fostering healthier, more fulfilling childhoods in an increasingly complex world.

For listeners seeking to deepen their understanding of childrearing from a common-sense perspective, Dr. Cowan's Common Sense Child Rearing emerges as an invaluable resource.

Notable Quotes:

• "I'm going to ask the questions to the child and I don't want you to help me..." – Dr. Thomas Cowan (05:01)

• "No virus has ever been shown to even exist, let alone cause disease..." – Dr. Thomas Cowan (16:17)

• "The whole project is about how to create an obedient society. That is the only goal of school." – Dr. Thomas Cowan (33:12)

• "There has never been a screening study that shows that people live longer or do better as a result of screening." – Dr. Thomas Cowan (52:10)

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Note: Advertisements and non-content segments have been excluded to maintain focus on the core discussion.

Transcript

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[Ginny Urch]

Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And every once in a while, I am so, so, so excited about a guest. Dr. Thomas Cowan is here. Welcome.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Thank you. Good to be here.

[Ginny Urch]

It's amazing. Okay, are you ready for this? Here we go. I have this book, the Fourfold Path to Healing. Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement and Meditation in the Art of Medicine. I have this one, the Nourishing Traditions. Book of Baby and Child Care. I have this one, Cancer in the New Biology of Water, Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, Vaccine, Autoimmunity and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness. And the newest one that just came out, Common Sense Child Rearing. So this doesn't happen often, Tom, where I'm already a fan. If someone comes out with a new book and they're like, this person is going on podcasts. Are you interested? And I was like, wait a minute. No, I'm. I already have all the books, so thank you so much.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Thank you. Some of them, there's an evolution in those books. So there's considerable difference between how I see things now versus 25 years ago. I think that happens with everybody and it certainly happened with me. But hopefully I'm getting more and more accurate, although that's probably a matter of opinion for some people, but that's the goal anyways.

[Ginny Urch]

Well, these books have been transformative for me and really helped. I was skimming back through some of them I've got more recently, and then some of them I've had for close to 10 years. And so I was skimming back through what I read as a younger mom and the things that stuck out to me. And then you just came out with this book. It's called Common Sense. She Child Rearing. It came out this year in 2025. Unconventional wisdom for a Nourished Childhood. I underlined, basically almost the whole thing. It's fantastic in your books. They're kind of easy reads in a way like that. You can read them through kind of Fast because you're a parent, you don't have a ton of time and you get so much out of them. So this is common sense parenting, which makes sense because kids are really struggling and we have to go back to some of these common sense things. Can you kick it off with, you start off with this story, this wonderful story and, and you're so humble. I mean, when usually you have a doctor. You know, I think a lot of people's perception of a doctor is like, well, they know everything. And you say, no, no, I've always listened to my patients. If they come in and say, I cured my lupus with horse urine, you say, well, I'm going to ask, where's the horse? And what was your protocol? And you say a lot of your protocols came from your patients. So you're in this process of listening to your patients, even the children, and you talk about this story that you learned from a seven year old boy, something you learned from a seven year old boy. Can you talk about that?

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Yeah. So by the time I was doing this, I had been a school doctor for 20 some years at Waldorf schools. And that meant I would go to the school and they would send me difficult children and I would talk to them and talk to the teachers about them, etc. And I, over the years I developed a specific strategy of talking to children as a, quote, patient. And I did this with every child I saw, whether they had a cold or asthma or behavior problem or whatever. And this is pretty much anywhere over four or five years old. So the parents would come in or the parent with the child. And I would say, the way that I want to do this is I'm going to ask the questions to the child and I don't want you to help me. Like if the child doesn't talk to me, that's my problem. If they just sit there like this, that, that let me try to deal with it. And then I'm going to ask them questions and I don't want you to interrupt and say, no, that's wrong, or here's a better way to say it, or even if you hear something that you think is incorrect, just leave it alone. And then I'll talk to the child and then after that I'll ask you questions. You know, you can, you can say whatever you want. And during that time the child can interrupt and correct you. Now the interesting thing about that is many children, in fact most would start to laugh when I, when they heard that, like, oh, this is fun, like we never did this before.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

And if they don't agree, I wouldn't do that. The encounter. So they had to agree, basically. So I remember this mother. It was a school that I had gone to, I think the first time they wanted me to, you know, to see their children. The mother says, he won't talk to you. Fine. So I ask him questions. And the other thing is, I only got one sentence about from somebody else, like teachers or parents, because I didn't want to, like, prejudice the witness. The witness, like me. So I didn't know anything about him except that this guy threw a vase at some other girl and they were going to kick him out of school. So that's all I knew. Comes in, hat down, you know, I'm not talking to you. So I said, what's up? He said, nothing. How's school? I hate school. So tell me what happens at school. The teachers lie. And the mother, forgetting what I had just said two minutes ago, said, oh, Johnny, the teachers don't lie. And. And I gave her the dirtiest look you could ever imagine, right? Like, if you do this again, I'm kicking you out of here. So my whole thing was, so what do they lie about? Right. I don't know if they're lying or not. Right. I just. He just told me they are. And I said, you know, okay. And so he told me. He says, well, they say I. I start trouble, but it's really. Somebody else is teasing people. And he gives me this whole story and all the time I'm just asking questions. Right. So you mean that somebody else threw something at you for. Yes, they threw it at me first, and then they blame me and they don't let me go out for recess. And it's the only time I like is recess. I'd rather go home. And we just got a new house and we have the. This is. The guy won't talk to me, right? So he's telling me the whole story about crawdads and. And building forts and catching snakes. And. And I'm saying, well, how big are the snakes and what kind of fort? And. And I remember asking him at one point because, say, he doesn't get along with people, right? So. And I did this, a deliberately stupid question. I say, when you play with your friends at home, do you guys get along or do you fight? And he looks at me like, that's a stupid question. Of course we fight, like a little bit, you know. Right. You know, but it. It's obviously not a problem, right? He's fine. So, you know, we go through the whole thing. And then I ask one why question at the end. Before that, it's what happened, when did it happen, etc. And I said, hey, Joey, why'd you throw that vase at that girl? He said, so they would kick me out of school and I wouldn't have to go back again.

[Ginny Urch]

Brilliant.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Fair enough. I said, is there anything at this point I can do for you? And he looked at his mother and he said, hey, he's on my side. And that changed my world.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Because I realized I didn't say anything except ask him what happened. And I didn't judge him that he's throwing, you know, I mean, he had perfectly plausible story. And he's a smart guy. He figured out a way to get kicked out of school. Yates. I thought it should be. They should promote him to general or something.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. It's seven years old.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

What a smart guy he had. Got it all figured out. Yeah. And he said, well, you could talk to him and tell him stop lying. Yeah, that's what he said. I said, I'll do what I can, see what I can do, and I'll let you know. And that was it. Then he gets up, sticks his hand out, and he says, thanks, mister. And he walked out of the room.

[Ginny Urch]

Wow, seven years old.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

And I thought, what an amazing lesson in, you know, we were like buddies by then. Because he knew I wasn't judging him. I wasn't. And that I actually was interested in what he had to say. And he had a. Interesting story, you know, and he knew a lot about crawdads, and he would have gone on for an hour or so.

[Ginny Urch]

And he knew a lot about life. He knew about life. Look, it. Don't lie about me or I'm not coming here.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Yeah, yeah. This idea. He wouldn't talk to me. I mean, he. I would. He would have gone on another eye. Other things to do, you know, but.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah, you say he talked about how he hated school and wanted to play in the creek in the back of the new house. And why did he throw the jar? They'll send me home. I don't ever have to come back. It'd be great. So you wrote, if you want to raise a healthy child. And this is a big premise of the book. If you want to raise a healthy child in a toxic culture, you have to get on your child's side and stay there no matter what. And what I would contend, especially when we're talking about literally pretty simple things, get kids outside to play. If you could just, you know, set Aside a thousand hours in your year, it's three hours a day approximately for your kids to get outside and play. It alleviates a ton of the modern day parenting problems. But kids are only outside for a couple minutes on average. So it's like that's a whole bunch of people that are not on the kids side.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Right. And you know, that extended. And I started using that to see other things.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

And I developed this was consistent with how I saw medicine. I see what, what we call symptoms or what we sometimes call diseases as the body's communication strategy to make something happen. It's like you get a splinter in your finger and you don't take it out and you get pus. The pus is not an infection. It's not something to kill with antibiotics. It's a strategy to get the splinter out. And it's a big deal because if you see it like that, then you know, you could take the splinter out and help the body. But to stop the pus is a bad idea. And then, you know, you breathe in debris in your lungs like, you know, crap and smoke and chemtrails and all that. And then you cough it out to get rid of it. And then you go to the doctor and because they don't understand how this all works, they think you have a disease called bronchitis and they give you stuff to keep it in. Now where it got tricky. And this being on your child's side is. So I'm thinking, okay, you come into this world, your newborn baby, and you're excited, you know, and you got these parents and you're grateful for them, for giving you life and all that. And then day one, they inject you with a bunch of poison to try to, to prevent a sexually transmitted disease by an imaginary virus.

[Ginny Urch]

Now I thought, let's just go right there.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

I'm thinking to myself, so what would you say as a newborn baby? Like you could say, parents, we got to sit down and have a talk about virology and vaccines and all that, but you're only a bidet. Oh, like you don't know how to talk or you can't write them a letter or anything. So you scream. And then the parents sometimes say, oh my God. Well, we gave them this shot and they start screaming, I'm not going to do that again. But most of the time it doesn't get through to them. So they do it again at two months, three shots, and then next thing you know, the child keeps screaming. And then they have to up the ante because they're not listening. And they want you to listen not only to protect themselves. Right, because you're poisoning them, but to as gratitude. You got to have a different way of seeing the world here because. Because you're probably doing this to yourself. And then you, quote, act autistic. Now, that wakes a lot of parents up, and they start looking for, what am I going to do here now? How did I get to this? I got to this because I. You know, and the parents come in and say, like, here, Tom, you got to fix this child. Like, give him this drug or this medicine or this test, this. This diet. And it wouldn't work. And so I remember this, the worst, quote, autistic child I've ever seen. Ripping apart my exam room and everything. Nothing had worked. And I explained this. He's just trying to communicate that this is the way you're seeing the world and treating him is wrong. And he heard that and sat down next to the parent, looked at her like this, like, what are you gonna do with this? It's not me who's got the problem. And six months later, he was perfectly fine and would do pretty much anything we asked, as long as we didn't blame him for the problem. He was just communicating. And when I started to see that, that's when things started to work. And so I, being the genius that I am, I thought, well, if that's how it has to work, that's what I'm gonna think.

[Ginny Urch]

This is interesting. I mean, I love that we're starting here because obviously this is a really controversial topic. And in our home, we have a vaccine injury that happened right off the bat, even though I was. I mean, I had some information, but not all of it. And it's such an interesting situation. You're so. I feel like, bullied into it. I mean, if I could go back in time, I would have done things very differently. And then we switched to home birth with some of our younger kids, and the health is different. I mean, it's just. It's. You see it right in front of your face. You talk about common sense, parenting. And I was earlier this year at a confirmation hearing for RFK Jr. Where I just sat and listened. And it was all these questions that they were asking him. And it seemed like maybe 90% of the questions were about vaccines. It was just like, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. I mean, the whole thing. And I was thinking common sense. But isn't there. Aren't there other things that matter here? I mean, they're getting so many shots. Aren't there other Things, it's not working. The kids health is down the toilet. Aren't there other things? So I posted about it on social media. I just made a little clip. It was like vaccine, vaccine and the vaccine this, the vaccine that. Anyway, I lost 30,000 followers in one day, which is quite a bit of people, you know, that were just really mad and off they go. But we have our own experience with it and I've got a stack of books that I've read and yours is fantastic. You know, if you want a shorter one. Vaccines, Autoimmunity and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness. But you let's. I would love to talk about it. We've hardly talked about it on here. You wrote. The real issue with vaccines is that at this point in history of science and medicine, no virus has ever been shown to even exist, let alone cause disease. And every trial done in an attempt to prove that bacteria are also to cause disease in, well, people has failed. The bottom line is the injection of this stuff in a living being can only result in a negative outcome. There is no possibility of reward, no possibility of this being a road toward health, no role for the inj of any such product. If the goal is to raise a healthy child. I mean, this is a strong stance in this spot and you've been working on this for decades. But one of the things you do in the book and people could pick it up, I mean, it's important. Look at it. Or ask your pediatrician, how do they make a vaccine?

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Ask your pediatrician tomorrow after you hear this. How does a virologist prove the existence of a virus? I can guarantee you 99% of the pediatricians have no idea.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. And they don't even know how they make the vaccine. And then you walk through it. I mean, I think since these are our children, we owe it to them probably to read it at least. Right? It's on page 136. You're like, this is how they make a vaccine. This is crazy.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

It's crazy. Again, it all comes back to that first chapter. If you're on your child's side, you would not plead ignorance or plead, you know, appeal to authority. Well, so and so said or the consensus is, or something. This is a hugely important subject. But so are. You know, there's other things too. It's, it's not the only subject. There is, obviously, and we can talk about whatever you want, but this is huge because they're injecting you, as I said, with poisons for entities which have never been shown to exist. Now, I don't expect anybody to believe me about that, but I can guarantee you I can walk you through how they showed that the polio virus and then the measles virus and SARS CoV2 and HIV, how they showed them to that they exist. Once you hear that, which your pediatrician doesn't know, you can decide for yourself whether that sounds like friggin crazy, because that's what it is.

[Ginny Urch]

You wrote this Never waver in your commitment to never allow anyone to give your child any sort of vaccine ever in their life. So there's going to be some people listening that are really put off by that. But the whole point of the book is to be on your child's side. And so if you're on your child's side, you are responsible for being in the know about what's going on. And so this would be a great book for you to start. Some of the vaccine books that I have are laborious to get through. You know, they're hard. I don't totally understand them. You know, they're good. But I mean right here. Just start with this one. Start with common sense child rearing and going to give you a really good basis. So be on your child's side as.

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[Ginny Urch]

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[Ginny Urch]

You also talk about ultrasounds. Let's do that one too. We're already here.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Yeah, I mean, you know, ultrasounds, high intensity energy beams that have been shown for 50 years. There's all kind of research on this. They're in, in many ways worse than taking X rays. You're putting your child in a highly toxic environment for no reason. Like to see whether it's a boy or a girl. I mean, you can't wait seven months. That's ridiculous. If there was no cost to this, I guess maybe just to satisfy your curiosity, but there is a high cost. We're talking about bouncing. We are electromagnetic beings. Now let me just flesh that out for a minute, because you say that to most doctors. And by the way, as you said, you know, I am a trained medical doctor. You know, I worked in an emergency room for years to make money mostly, but as I was building my practice up. So I am not unfamiliar with the rap. Right. I have a medical degree and the training and the whole bit. And so you say, you know, we are electromagnetic beings. Oh, that's nonsense. You know, so how do you tell if somebody's heart is good? Well, you do an ekg, what is it? Measuring the electrical activity of their heart. If you have poor electrical activity, the heart, or no electrical activity, the heart, you're dead. Okay, how do you measure whether your brain is functioning? You do an eeg, what is it? Measuring the electrical activity of your brain. If it's off, you're having seizures or dementia. And same with your muscles. We are electromagnetic beings. Sound is another form of energy. And when you put high intensity sound directly into the womb and expose a baby, a fetus to it, you have no idea what's going to happen. And when anybody looks at that, it ain't good. And there's no. It's just like the vaccines. I mean, unfortunately for me, I wrote books about vaccines, as do most people. This is why it's so hard to read them. And at the time, I could not tell you how a virologist knew there was a virus, as hard as that is for me to like, say. But I have a paper trail, right?

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Why did I do that? Well, I say every mistake I made, every one, was because I believed what I was told without looking into it myself. And unfortunately, we do that a lot. I try to do it less now.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

So the virology went like this. You're exposed to a virus, we can't see it, we can't find it, we don't know it's there. The way they just to give you an example the way they found the polio virus. Virus, here's how they did it. 1908. So they see children who are paralyzed, right? They don't know why. So they take some of the spine of a child who died of polio, allegedly, and they grind it up, put it in a syringe. And they didn't look for a virus. They couldn't see a virus. They just took unpurified spinal diseased goop injected into the brain of two monkeys. One monkey died, one got paralyzed. That proved polio is a transmissible agent caused by an unseen entity called a virus. And I read that, and excuse my French, but I said, like, what the. And they did that for 50 years, like 100,000 monkeys. And then amazingly, somebody decides to inject normal spine, right? You know, somebody died of a car accident, right? So you do a control, right? Normal spine, grind it up, injected into the brain of monkeys. Monkey got paralyzed, monkey died. Proving that it's not got anything to do with the disease or a virus, but it was just monkeys don't like having spinal goop injected into their brain. Now, in 54, they changed that. And so we're not doing the monkey thing anymore. We're going to do cell cultures. So with like measles, they take the. The snot, the mucus from somebody who they say has measles, even though they couldn't define it. And they, you know, grind it up, filter it a little bit, don't look for a virus because they can't find the virus in the mucus. Take that and put that on a cell culture. Growing monkey kidney cells with kidney poison, antibiotics take away the food and add some other chemicals, the cells break down. And that to this day is how they proved there was a measles virus. And that is called the isolation of the virus. Now, let me just read you the original paper. I just happen was a guy named Enders. He did the whole thing with the monkey kidney cells and the antibiotics and the taking away the food without adding anything from measles. He says a second agent was obtained from an uninoculated culture of monkey kidney cells. So no measles involved. The cytopathic changes it induced, in other words, the breakdown of the cells could not be distinguished from the viruses isolated from measles. In other words, we got the same thing whether we put anything from measles person or not. And that proves there's a measles virus. To this day, every single virus. This is the gold standard of virology. And as far as my logic, I Don't know about you, but he proved that it wasn't anything to do with measles. Right.

[Ginny Urch]

Wow. I mean, it's like you said, you have to learn about it. This is your responsibility as a parent to at least read. And I had read some, but not enough. And then we made changes. We saw with our own eyes what happened. And some of our kids have long term effects from that which is on our shoulders. And then we switched. So I was with a midwife. I mean, we didn't even do the. I guess it's called the Doppler. Is that what it's called? We didn't even do the sound one. She wore this thing on her head, Tom, and like she listened. It was just. You don't. We didn't even do do that one because we talked about that. So, you know, I've got kids that have had no ultrasounds, nothing, no beams, no sound, nothing went on them. And you see the difference, you see the difference in those kids. But it's a tricky world.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Jenny. Yeah. I have a suggestion for you or any other parent who's in this position of you did something that, you know caused harm and you regret it.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

This will help everybody. And I don't say that lightly. I also distinguish it. It's not going to cure your child of everything. So what I would do. And so over time with my pediatric patients who were had asthma or had autism, I would say to them, you know, like, when the parents weren't there, I would sort of whisper, like, let me talk to the parents. You don't have to do it. You don't have to be the one to try to wake your parents up by screaming and not being able to breathe and et cetera. I'll tell them that we got to have a different way. But I would go into your child's room and I've done this myself. Because if you think you're going to be a parent and never make a mistake, you're in for a rude awakening. So you go into the child's room when the child is sleeping and say, look, I know that I did something that was not in your best interest. I did it with good intentions and I didn't know better. And now I know better. And I want to really say from the bottom of my heart, I wish I hadn't done that. But let's go on now and do the best we can. And I can guarantee you will see a change in your child. They know now, look, they're not holding you to the standard of you have to do everything, right. I mean, there's a few things, like injecting them with poison, that you got to figure that one out. But, you know, the rest of it, I mean, it's a cr. It's a tough gig. There is no manual for how to be a parent. And if I. If I look back on the things that I said and did, I mean, it just makes my hair stand up.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Little hair. I have.

[Ginny Urch]

You could. You could start with this book, Common Sense Child Rearing. And it will help. It will help get you on the right foot. It's a good one. Give it at the baby showers, things like that. So we have a lot of similar inputs. I mean, I've read the Nourishing Traditions book since, I guess, our third kid when we switched to the midwife. And I was on the Nourishing Traditions podcast last year. Actually, I was the top three podcast of the whole year of 2024. So really cool. I mean, I was really thrilled about this book and getting a chance to talk with you. I have this book, Deschooling Society by Ivan Ilitch. And one of my favorite authors of all time who has changed my life, I mean, extensively, is John Holt, and he's all about unschooling. So you had quoted John Holt in this book. I was just all. I was so into it. I love the book. I underlined almost the entire thing. So I guess we should talk about school. Let's talk about school. Because you talk about that in the book as well, and you talk about how Ivan Ilitch and these different authors, you had three of them, you were like, these. These three books really changed my view of the world. Can you talk about your thoughts on the current school system? You know, it's one of those things where we talk about how it's just part of everything. It's just sort of not even questioned. Even something as universally accepted and seemingly fundamental as the need and benefit of universal schooling must be questioned down to its core. So you're talking about always be on the child side. Always be on the child side. Does it make sense that we're pushing reading so young? Does it make sense that we're sending them off for seven, eight, nine hours? You know, they're riding the bus, that they're gone for that period of time. Recess is 20 minutes. Like, are we on the child's side when we make those decisions? So, I mean, I think this is fantastic. If you're talking about Common Sense child rearing, then we should also probably be talking about the schooling situation, because that's so much of their childhood.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Right. And, you know, in a way, I wrote this book as a tribute to one of my real heroes, which is Ivan Illich. I never met, but I credit him with partly teaching me how to think.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

And so this is my. Thank you for that. And let me talk about schooling from a point of view that a lot of people don't talk about. And I didn't talk about this too much in the book, but it's. It's worth going over because as Illich points out, there is an inevitable consequence of mandatory public schooling. Inevitable. Now, what do we mean by public? We mean government funded. What do we mean by mandatory? We mean you have to go. Now, the first thing that has to happen then is it has to be funded. Right. You have to have buildings and teachers and buses and nurses and all the rest of it. So you have to get the funding from somebody. And so typically, they get it by putting a lien or a tax on your personal property. In other words, the government assumes the responsibility of ownership of your personal property and charges you rent every year. That's determined by something that you had very little input in. Now, let's say you don't want to pay that because you don't want to send your child to school or you don't have children, or because you think it's crazy that some group of people can decide to charge you rent for your personal property. And if you don't follow, if you don't agree to pay it, they threaten you with violence. Meaning they either come and confiscate your property or they put you in a cage. Right. That's what happens. So inherently mandatory public schooling leads to a violent society because some people won't agree. So they will have to use authority and violent threats to get you to do that. So people then will learn that this is how you get things done. You threaten people, and if they don't agree with what you say, you actually do violence to them. You take away their personal property or you put them in a cage called jail. And once you submit to that authority. So the whole process is schooling is submitting to authority. That's what a child learns in school. And the whole system is based on submitting to authority. And interestingly, the founders, like Dewey and all the rest of these guys who came up with mandatory public schooling, this is what they said. We are creating a society where people will become obedient workers who submit to authority, pay their taxes, believe in the government, and allow the government the same people who are threatening you with violence to choose the curriculum of what your child needs to learn and when and how their need to learn it. Even though most of it, like virology and immunology and the history of governments, is complete bs, you anyways have no say. And you have to submit to all kinds of interventions and testing of your eyes and your ears and you're getting these shots, otherwise you have no say in this. The whole project is about how to create an obedient society. That is the only goal of school. Now, along the way, there are a few skills that you pick up that you would have picked up much more efficiently without school, like reading and math. You know, I talk about how do you learn to do math? So you get a child who wants to build a tree house, right? That's what he loves to do. And you say, okay, I'm going to find an expert tree house builder and you're going to spend, you know, a few weeks with him and he's going to teach you how you and three of your buddies, right? That's how it works. So it's your job as a parent to find the tree house builder, get three of his buddies, you know, and get them to the place. Okay? So you go there and the guy says, okay, so you take this log and you cut it in half and then you measure it and, and you add these two sides together and then you get the diagonal, etc. And this seven year old, eight year old boy says, what is adding together mean? Right? Because he's never been in school, he doesn't know. And the treehouse guy says, you don't know what adding is? No. He says, oh, I can't teach you how to build a tree house if you can't add because you don't know how to make things come out right. And the guy, okay. Says, okay, yeah, go home. Guy goes home to his parents, says, you teach me how to add in a week or I'm going somewhere else.

[Ginny Urch]

Yes, that's right. That's right. Yes, yes. They want to play the game, they learn to read. I mean, that's it. We didn't teach our youngest how to read. She can read. She can read everything. She's nine. No lessons. She can do it, right?

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

What happened? What happened?

[Ginny Urch]

Yes.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Illich proved that you can teach any illiterate peasant in Guatemala to read in six weeks.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

If you teach them how to read the contract that the landlord gave them to screw them out of their rights.

[Ginny Urch]

That's right.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Because they want to Know that? And that guy wants to know math. He doesn't want to know math. He wants to build a tree house. And this guy told him, you got to learn math in order to build a tree house. Which is true. It's true. Right. It's accurate. And so he gets it. And he will, diligently, you will have a great learner on your hands. And if you don't teach him right, he'll say, you got to find me somebody else who can teach me how to do this. Because you don't, you don't know what you're talking about. That is the ideal situation not only for a student, but for a teacher.

[Ginny Urch]

Yes. For the parent, for all the adults.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Yeah. For the. This will make your life so much easier. You know, I give the example, you get 10, 10 children who want to shoot a basketball, and you get, and you, you hire Steph Curry to teach him how to shoot a basketball. And then one of the children misbehaves so that Steph can't, you know, teach them how. Right. He's, he's just, I guarantee the other nine will tell this child, you get out of here or behave yourself or we're gonna, we're gonna take this into our own hands. That will never happen. Steph doesn't have to do anything. He just has to say, show up. You guys want to learn how to shoot a basket? You go like this and you go like this. And everybody's doing it and they want to know because they know this guy knows and I want to learn. And if you misbehave, we're kicking you but your butt out of here.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. I mean, you talk about the. Even right at the beginning where you're talking about trying to get kids outside and everyone knows, you know, they got kids, they're flopping on the ground, they don't want to go. You're like, no, you just like, you have all the other kids help. The other kids will help. They get help from the little bit of older kids that are there. This multi age play Dr. Peter Gray talks about it so much and this is about, it's an easier path. And you talk about the modern hysteria around reading. Modern hysteria. I did not have to teach my daughter how to read. Nothing. And she read, she takes a book with her everywhere she is, not anywhere without a book. Didn't have to teach her one thing, not one formal lesson, nothing. And for our older kids, we did this book called teach your kid to read in a hundred easy lessons. And it sure was, it was as easy As I could make it, they were older, you know, they weren't four and they weren't five, they were older. And you talk about how in the Waldorf schools, even up to age 11 or 12, and that Steiner said it's harmful to learn to read and write too soon. So these are things like all of it. You have to be exposed to it. And in this Ilitch book, Deschooling Society, he says that school is based off of this axiom that despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that we all have learned mostly things in school. But he says no, well, what we've mostly learned we know is from outside of school. And he talks about the school environment, how it mocks reality. Most learning happens casually. It's not the result of teaching in most cases. And he talks about non school learning. So, I mean, I've read books like this too. And it really gets you to think, how can I be on the child's side? The Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University helps you go from I know the way to I've arrived with our top 10 ranked online MBA. Gain skills you can learn today and apply tomorrow. Get ready to go from make it happen to made it happen and keep striving. Visit strayer.edu Jack WelchMBA to learn more. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chevinus. Many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia.

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[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

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[Ginny Urch]

Another one that you talk about is play. And to me this makes sense. This makes sense. Talking about common sense, to me it makes sense that the child is biologically designed to play. Dr. Peter Gray says, biologically designed to self educate in these mixed age groups. Biologically, that's how they work. They're out there playing. That's what the little kittens do. They're all playing. But then you become an adult and it's harder to play. Like, I have a hard time sitting down and making this lion talk to that lion. I don't really want to do that. I have other things I have to do that are important because all the kids need to eat and all of these different things. So you talk about how. And you said people got really mad about it. But you're like, the adult play is a sacred activity for kids, and at the very least, the adult shouldn't be pushing it one way or the other. Like, just let it happen. And that's another situation where it would make your life easier and their life easier. So you said you used to advise parents not to play with their kids, but you're like. I adjusted the wording over time, just about not interfering. Can you talk about the importance of that?

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Yeah. I mean, so the idea here is every. Everybody has things they, quote, need to do to keep, you know, body and soul together. And to me, the more things you're doing, which are like real imperatives, the better your life is. In other words, if you have chickens, you have to feed the chickens, otherwise the chickens die. If you have cows, you have to lead them to pasture, otherwise the cows die. If you have a big garden, you have to water the garden and plant the seeds. It's not like somebody is telling you you have to do that, or the government is making a law saying you have to water your seedlings. You can see that if you don't, they'll die. So what I'm suggesting is, you know, and you have to make food, like you say. So you. You go into a situation where there's stuff to do outside and there's gardens and creeks and rocks and stuff, and you're not telling them what to do. You're going and making bread. Why? Because somebody has to make bread. If you want to eat bread in order to eat, and you have to cut the. You have to collect the eggs and you have to feed the chickens. And if you do it in a happy, upbeat kind of way, like it's fun, right, because this is my life, then often the children will help you make bread. They'll knead it, and they'll help you with the chickens, and they'll collect the eggs and all that. And you're not. You're not even asking them to do it. You're just doing what you need to do. And then they want to go climb the tree, and they go climb the tree. And you're. The only way to get a child not to want to climb a tree is to say, if you don't climb this tree for 10 minutes a day, I'm going to make you sit in a room or some other thing. If you don't learn to read, we're going to Send you to the dunce class. I used to tell parents the only way to get a child not to read because parents used to come to me, I'm so worried my child can't read. And I used to say you should try to keep them from reading. And then when they're 15, tell me how it worked out because I guarantee it won't work. But the only way it will work is to try to force them to do it. Then they don't want to do it. And then they're not reading or not playing or not being outside or not making bread with you or not feeding chickens or not climbing trees because somebody is infringing on their autonomy and forcing them to do something which they actually would like to do. But it's more important to assert their autonomy. That's why they don't eat the food you give them, because you're trying to force them to eat this food. And even if they're hungry, children have amazing like, you know, self restraint. They will try to starve themselves to teach you a lesson of how to be a better person, which is you don't force people to eat food they don't like. I don't eat food I don't like. I don't go do things I don't like doing. I mean occasionally, but you know, more and more you try to organize your life. I like feeding the chickens and watering the garden and making food and making bread. It's just fun. It's life. And once you see it like that, they will happily join you and in fact they'll ask you, well, how come you need it like this instead of like this? And you just tell them right, because it works better. Or try it out and see. And then they learn. And then you'll find that there are certain things that they're really interested, like playing the flute. Fair enough. And then you go and they say if they don't know how to read, the flute person says he gotta learn how to read first. Then they'll take a month learn how to read, then they'll play the flute and you're not. If you. The only way to get that person not to play the flute is if you don't practice a half hour a day where you can't go outside. Any self respecting child will refuse to do it because they need to teach you a lesson.

[Ginny Urch]

Wow, that's a whole, it's the whole premise, it goes all the way through that these kids are innate. They have this innate wisdom in them that they are trying to communicate and Kids are really suffering, and so they are communicating a lot. There's a lot of communication happening. And you read the book, there are these simple changes that you can make. You prioritize the play. They don't have to be encouraged to play, they just do it. So don't discourage it. Don't stick your hand in and try and drive it one way or the other. You talk about punishments and rewards. And you said this, I mean, really profound thing as someone who is very successful, someone who has written all of these books. And you say, you know, if you look back, you feel cheated out of life. And you've spent 40 years trying to reconcile basically a forced situation. Education is forced, often the food is forced. You know, we're just directing everything. And in this control of children. You talk about radical monopolies, how in a radical monopoly, which a school situation where they're taking all the money from everyone. You say it always benefits the rich and not the less privileged in society. And they're sold as these great gifts to the public, but they rob the less advantaged to support the more advantaged members of society. So these are things to consider when you're thinking about how are we going to raise our kids and how are we going to treat them and how are we going to talk with them? So the book is called Common Sense Child Rearing. You talk about a lot of things in here. I mean, you're talking about fevers. We're in Michigan. You talk about how you grew up in Detroit. You know, people didn't have all of these different allergies and asthma. And you talk about, I knew one person who had this and one person who had that and that's it. So you're talking about fevers. Give me a medicine to produce a fever and I can cure any disease. So this is definitely something you want to know about right off the bat. Are you using Tylenol or not? I mean, you need to know what's going on there. So all of these different things and you talk about just make a small change. It's a gem gracious book, Tom. You say, look, you know, some people are going to be able to go whole hog. They're going to pull their kids out of the system. They're, you know, they're never going to use the ultrasound, but they're going to pull their kids out. They're going to let them play, but. Or some families aren't going to be able to make such a drastic change. So then you say, well, what if you did this? What if you told them a story, your own story, from your own family. One small change, instead of reading them the Disney book, you know, that type of thing. It's very gracious. So just a lot of things to think about and to take ownership for. Take ownership for in your life through this book. I. I wanted to ask, I. I put a couple notes because I thought, gosh, is it such an opportunity to get a chance to talk with you? I took a couple notes on some of the other books, and I thought, I don't know how much time we're going to have. I probably time for maybe one. I was like, oh, I want to ask about some of the other books since I have you here. So this is something that's really interesting. And you talk about cancer in the new biology of water, why the war on cancer has failed, and what that means for more effective prevention and treatment. So this might be the last thing that we get to today, but I was talking to this farmer. He's my favorite farmer. His name's Joel Salatin. And he was talking about how his dad went in for a routine examination, and he said he was diagnosed with cancer in that time period and he lived for another four or five years. But he said he was never the same. He was never the same again after that diagnosis. And so Joel told me just recently, within the last couple weeks, he said, I'm not doing those. I'm not doing those routine exams. And so you say this in cancer and the new biology of water. Just all sorts of different ways to think of things. We live in a surveillance state, and this includes medical surveillance. Can you just give a little insight on that as we wrap it up?

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

So we're talking about screening for cancer, and I've looked into this a lot, and there's a book guy named Gilbert Welch, Should I be tested for cancer? And here's the facts. There has never been a screening test. And let's define screening tests. You go in, how are you? Fine. Okay, we're going to do a psa. We're going to do an ultrasound, we're going to do a mammogram, we're going to do a colonoscopy, and we're going to look for a cancer somewhere in your body. That's screening. There has never been a screening study that shows that people live longer or do better as a result of screening. Now, that's not to say they don't catch cancers. But what's interesting is, for instance, you talk about a breast lump. So if you find a breast lump And I'll just make up some numbers here. You live an average of seven years, right? If you find it with a mammogram, then you find it three years before it would have shown up as a lump, and you live 10 years. So you essentially live the same amount of time, but the first three years were miserable because you had chemo and radiation and surgery, and you spent the rest of the 10 years being partially, at least debilitated and worried, whereas you would have been better off just waiting. Now, the reason for this, it turns out, is that our entire conception of disease is wrong. Here's an example. Remember I said, you know, you get debris in your lungs and you cough it up, and we call that bronchitis. So, Ginny, let me ask you this question, because I think you'll be able to sort this out for yourself. If you have a house, right? Most people have houses. And you have an entrance to your house, right? And somebody puts garbage, stinky garbage, just dumps it in the inside of your house. What do you do next? And by the way, whenever I ask people questions, think like a 7 year old.

[Ginny Urch]

I would take the garbage out.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Okay, how about this? First you would put it in a bag.

[Ginny Urch]

Yes, that would be a good idea, right? Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Put in a bag, take it to the garage. When the. When the garbage people come, you take it to the curb. Right? So somebody puts garbage in your house. Called your body, like glyphosate vaccines, bad thoughts. You know, there's a million different, different garbages. What do you do? You put it in a bag. That's called a tumor.

[Ginny Urch]

Yep.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

It's not a disease any more than bagging up the garbage in your house. Oh, Jenny, don't bag up the garbage in your house. Just let it sit there in the foyer. Like, that's ridiculous. So your body, in its wisdom, bags up the garbage, and then it takes it out to the curb. Now, if you get too much garbage, you get it in your garage, your garage gets full, and then you put it in the spare bedroom, then you put it in the master bedroom, and then you put in the kitchen, and then you have to move from your house. That's called dying. And that's what happens. This is not a disease. This is a strategy your body's using that changes everything. And that's why, if you want to not have garbage or tumors, don't put garbage in your house and take it out to the curb. Better. It's not like rocket science, this. But that's. And yeah, I mean, I know Joel and He's right. There is no gain for you. You just become part of surveillance. You start worrying, you get toxic therapies that don't work because they fundamentally misunderstand what the whole process of living and disease is about. Yeah.

[Ginny Urch]

And that's sort of the premise of the book, is that we fundamentally misunderstand quite a bit and that medical surveillance starts young. I think it starts with the, well, child visits.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ginny Urch]

And we had a crazy situation, Tom, where we had our third baby. We have five kids. We had the third one at home with the midwife because I pulled out of the system and I'd had cesarean sections, I'd had all the interventions, went the whole wrong direction and we changed and we end up with a midwife, end up with all these books, these nursing tradition books. I've got, you know, all of your stuff. Just for the last 10 years, really been making changes for our family. And we have this baby at home, which is a big change. First baby vaginally. I mean, it was really a big deal. And then I called to sign him up for his, well, child visit because I hadn't fully, you know, made the whole shift at two months. And Tom, they made me come in immediately or they were going to call child protective Services. They were like, he hasn't been seen by a doctor. I was like, he's been seen by the midwife, he's fine. You know, she comes every day. One day, two days, three days, two weeks. She comes all the time. She's been a midwife for 40 years. Like he's healthy and fine. I mean, they made me bring him in. I was going to bring him in for the two month visit and they made me bring him in. They had said they'd never seen a home birth baby. I mean, it was just wild to talk about the surveillance, surveillance state. That was the last one we ever did. So sometimes when you go down the wrong path, it does in some ways save you a bit because you end up making these major changes. But the surveillance state. And my mom just told me the other day they're, you know, they're older, so she says they're pestering them all the time to go to appointments because they're making money through them. I don't know if it's Medicare, if it's Medicare or Medicaid, but, you know, they're making all this money. So she's like, they pester you constantly to come in for these appointments. You don't even need them, you know, so it's just, it's really interesting. We fundamentally are misunderstanding a lot from fevers to ultrasounds to vaccines to education. So the books are, they'll help you to open your mind and it matters a lot. You know, I would say the kids are screaming out if, if you use that analogy at the very beginning with the vaccines. They don't really know how to put it, but they're screaming out. They're screaming out because of the screens and the social media and all of these things. What an honor. What an honor. Tom. Oh my goodness. I told my midwife. I was like, guess who I get to talk to? She was like, no way. So this has been the coolest thing ever. I so appreciate it. The book is phenomenal. Common sense Child rearing. Unconventional wisdom for nearest childhood. How to be on your child's side no matter what. Get there and stay there. We always end our show with the same question. Born and raised in Detroit. Which is cool. We're over in the Ann Arbor area. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

That's an interesting question. Favorite memory from my childhood that was outside. You know, I was going to say playing basketball with Willie, but that was mostly inside.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

He was the best basketball player I'd ever met and that's all I wanted to do was play basketball. And he was better than me. But we got along really well and it was really impactful in my life. But I also did a lot playing golf and that was outside. So I, I, maybe when I, they wouldn't let me play in the club championship at the place we belonged until I was 15. And then they let me play when I was and these were all these big shot doctors and people who, who really cared about supposedly like their life. But they mostly cared about golf. And I came in at age 15 and won the whole thing easily my first year. And then I never played again. Just, just to say, you guys, not even worth it.

[Ginny Urch]

Well, age 15. What a thing. What a thing. What. That's a great memory.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Maybe. You know, it was also I, I used to love going to my grandparents. Had a, had a cottage on Lake Erie before they killed Lake Erie. And we would go fishing at first thing in the morning with Gramps and Gramps and I got along really well. Not so much. My father and he would be out fishing first thing in the morning.

[Ginny Urch]

Yeah. And a lot of people talk about their grandparents. Dr. Tom Cowan, thank you so much for these books. They've been instrumental in my own parenting journey in helping me learn about what makes more sense and I'm thrilled that you wrote this one about parenting. Common sense, child rearing, unconventional wisdom for a nourished childhood. It is going to change so many families lives. Thank you so much for being here.

[Dr. Thomas Cowan]

Thank you and good luck with your work. You guys are doing good work.

[Ginny Urch]

Thank you.

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[Ginny Urch]

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[Ginny Urch]

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