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Chris Do
I have two boys. They're not really boys anymore because My oldest is 21 and my youngest is 18. The oldest is a super high achieving, hyper intelligent person who's studying philosophy at Columbia. My youngest is finishing up his first year at Art center as an entertainment designer. What's shocking about this is my youngest, before he even turned 18, has had to file taxes because he has more than $200,000 in his bank account. And the reason why he has this, I think, is because the way we raise them to be free range humans, to be the creative souls that they're meant to be, and to give them a wide berth to explore their individual identity and their own passions and pursuits and do as little harm as possible. In this episode, I'm going to share some stories and lessons that I've learned. Parenting, co parenting with my wife, and how we raised our children. And I think this is especially applicable if you're a parent thinking about being a parent or one that wish your parents would do something like this. Because if we can just heal from some of this trauma that we've been raised in, I think the world would be a better place. All right, this episode is a little bit different than the kind of topics that you normally hear me talk about, but I think it's something really important. I have a strong POV on, which is about how I raised my kids and my point of view as not only a first generation immigrant, an Asian American, but a parent. And the idea here is what are my philosophies around how to raise an entrepreneurial child or how do you let the creative child survive into adulthood? I think those two ideas are actually really, really similar and we just use different language to describe them. I'm not that different than how many first generation immigrants are raised by parents, especially in the time in which we came to the United states in the 70s where we had two parents that were working. So this is the dual income household. They were at their job from sunrise to sunset basically. And when we would come home, we're latchkey kids, we take care of ourselves until our parents got home. And for a lot of it, it meant that my parents weren't around when we were looking for stuff to do. And this is in the time of pre Internet. This is like when you have three major channels and just to put into context, to let you all know how old I am, we would have to play around with the rabbit ears to try and get that channel, you know, like the one cool channel that we just couldn't watch and like trying to like, turn that dial. So it's kind of in between sometimes. Like, you know, don't. Don't move. There, There with the tin foil. I think all of that is just urban legend because it doesn't really work. So our entertainment choices were pretty limited. So we'd come home from school, especially during the summer, and I would like, I'm not watching soap operas, but that's what was available. Or there was PBS on Channel 9 for me. KCAL, Channel 9 and PBS. I just thought the programming was just too safe. It was like Sesame street. There was Mr. Rogers, and that was kind of the primary programming. So what do we do with our free time now? Reflecting back on my formative years, I just thought this thing that I so long for, more entertainment choices, more present parents, actually really helped me to develop as a human being. And that coupled with my own parents kind of laissez faire state of, like, how they parent, where I watched their siblings, their younger brothers and sisters raise their own children with a lot more control and authority. What they said was law in the house, and everybody was kind of tiptoeing, walking on eggshells to not to upset the parents. It was done mostly out of love and respect, but my parents just kind of let us do whatever we want. They had certain ideas and rules, but they didn't come down on it with an iron fist and say, you must do this. They want us to do well in school, but it wasn't like, you're disappointing the whole family. I'm so ashamed of you. It wasn't any of that kind of stuff. So this laissez faire style management in terms of raising us allowed me to dream, to daydream, and it allowed my creative child to survive into adulthood. So I was never told, you can't do that, you shouldn't do that, or, this isn't correct, you should be doing something else. They might have felt it, but they didn't explicitly say it. So I was thinking, man, now that I'm an adult and an entrepreneur and very comfortable with taking risk, I'm wondering how I can create an environment for my own children. Though not having the same needs and wants that I had growing up relatively poor and lower income, how do I create that same idea? I came across a yogi. His name is Sadhguru, and he's asked a lot of questions, and he has really deep thoughts. And he said something to the effect, and I'm paraphrasing here, that children are born into the world completely perfect. It's all the intervention and actions of adults, mostly parents, that ruin their child. And at first you might hear something like this and say, well, that's a pretty convenient excuse if you don't want to be a present parent. But there's something more to this, I think. And so my parenting style is really around having really healthy guardrails, but a wide berth for them to explore in between. So I have very firm rules for the things that matter to me, and almost no rules in between. And you might be sitting there thinking, well, what are the rules and how many are there? There's exactly two rules that I can think of right now. Number one is always give people respect. First. Respect is a very important thing for me. So when you disrespect me or disrespect friends or teachers or parents, that is not a good sign of a person who understands their place in the world. So give people respect until they're. They give you a reason not to respect them. And rule number two, zero tolerance for physical violence towards each other. So I have two boys, and they're about two and a half years apart. I wish we could have waited a little bit longer because it wasn't the quiet age gap, because they were still competing for resources. And it's a pretty typical thing. You know, you. You have a. Basically a shipping box from Amazon and they fight over literal garbage. Like, that's mine. I saw that first. And you have your own box. And this is my box. It's just dumb little things. And they knew if you want dad to rain hellfire on you, you would engage in physical violence. Now they would engage in verbal violence, and that's a different story. So we maintain those two rules, and that seemed to work really well. Now this is a direct contrast to how most parents raise their children. There's a term, it's called helicopter parenting, where you kind of. I think the way it sounds is like you hover over your kids. You're kind of micromanaging every little thing that they do. And the classic example of this is you go to a playground and you see a parent looking after their children. Like every little thing, like, make sure you don't get a splinter, wipe your hands and. And literally taking them up to the top of the slide and then letting them slide down, but running down as fast as possible to catch them on the way down. I don't have that kind of energy. But I also think, what do we want to do when we're doing this helicopter style parenting? I think we're trying to safeguard our Kids from getting hurt. That's generally a good thing. But what we're also doing is we're preventing them from experiencing small mistakes and learning that mistakes, little bumps and bruises, both metaphorically and literally, are what life is about. And I didn't want my children to experience setbacks and mistakes and failures, those bumps and bruises into their adulthood. They should be experiencing this and normalizing this as part of how we grow. So our desire to protect our children actually prevent them from making good decisions later on. I was at a workshop or seminar from a doctor who was like psychologist, and he was talking about this thing. It's like, what is parenting about? Parenting is when you download your operating system to the little human. And when you're not around, the little human operates with the same set of instructions without you. There's so this over parenting, this need to control, means they will do what you want when you're around. The real question is, what will they do when you're not around? That's the true test. And they said there's something that we need to recognize. The strong willed child, the one who is not easy to mold and tell what to do. And they said, please protect that strong will of that child. Because what parents want to do is they want to break the will of the child like they're a wild animal to be tamed. And they said they will need that strong will, that conviction that North Star that they have internally when people are telling them to do things that they know are not right. We've heard of like negative influence, like say they want them to commit a crime, cheat on a test, or to be mean to other kids, or to steal, to do drugs, whatever it is. It's very hard to stand up to a group of your peers. That strong will that exists inside of them, if you break that as a parent, you also break it when they need to use it when you're not around. So for me, it's about being able to share points of view, ways of thinking, but allowing the children to play, to explore, like how the world works and allow them to make their own mistakes. Because your desire to prevent those mistakes are going to create much bigger problems later on. I've been very fortunate in my life and to be privileged enough to be in communities where all my neighbors are affluent, they're upper class, upper middle class, or really just stupid rich. And I get to see how they parent their own children. And when my kids have a play date or they're around their other friends and I get to see how they operate Quite a few of them, a disproportion of them are really, in my opinion, poorly behave. They seem to have no boundaries and they'll do whatever they want. And it seems like they're the parent and the parent is the child. So they're really driving the relationship. They don't seem to be very grateful. They speak in commanding language versus asking for permission to do things. And I see just like a super unhealthy level of or lack of respect, like, I'm Mr. Doe. I'm not Chris. Don't call me Chris, okay? You don't earn that right until I give you that permission. I know it might be like that way at your house where you can call dad Bob and Mom Sarah. Maybe that's the way it works. But I'm old school like that. And the other thing that I see is that their ability to delay gratification is very finite. So when they don't get what they want, they start to go into turbo temper mode. And they seem to ask for things as if the world owes them something. Here's a classic example. We sometimes travel with other parents. And obviously if we're traveling, we're vacationing together, and they're pretty affluent. And I remember one time we're all being served our food. It's good food, everything. And they just eat the part that they want. And they're like, I want another one. And I was like, oh my God, how are they going to handle the situation? And then the parent raises their hand, motions to the flight attendant and says, can we have another one? And they're like, of course they get another one. And they rip it right open. They basically just eat one component of the entire meal. And now they're like, I want another one. I was like, there's got to be some boundaries around this. I understand the need to feed your children, but to say, like, the tone, the attitude, and the way you're doing this and your lack of being grateful and appreciative of what you're having, it's just driving me crazy. I see in many other situations, kids can't make decisions. Basic things like, do you want vanilla or chocolate? And they start to, like, have a total meltdown because it's either or. Or the parent says, well, you have it all. And then they do this where they just compensate the inability to make a decision with just spending more money and being super wasteful. So the feelings of anxiety, indecisiveness, overthinking seems very apparent to me. And the lack of clear boundaries both from the parent and the child is going to manifest itself. Later on they'll come into our home and we have certain rules like my kids have never drawn on the wall. They don't leave trash in areas and they clean up after themselves. And they don't put their feet up on the table or leave a cold or hot drink on a surface that can accommodate that. And then these kids come over, they're running around the house, they're digging into things like this is not your house. And their inability to observe like different set of rules signal to me like they're not paying attention to anything. I have to grimace a little bit. I'm like, can you not do that? And that isn't a play area, so please play over here. And I don't want you to get hurt, so please don't climb up on that shelf and try to pull those books down. And I was sitting there thinking, who raised these wild animals and where's the parental guidance that you would need for something like this, Especially when you're not in your own home? And I would then turn to my wife later and say, yeah, honey, if it's all the same to you, I prefer they don't come to our house. I don't understand this. And to me that's a reflection. Not on the children, because I think children are great. It's a reflection of how they were raised. And this is going to be a big problem later on, I guarantee it. So based on my limited data set and exposure to the children I see growing up with my own kids, what happens to these kids is there's a couple of different things that I've seen manifest. Number one is they wind up being self absorbed, egotistical, self important people. But you would think, okay, well that's not so bad. I mean, but what happens is when you go into the real world and everyone else isn't trained to accommodate you and appease you, you become isolated, you become the pariah of a community. And so they wind up not having great friends and people alienating them, people making fun of them. And so they have a lot of social interactions, social cue. They don't know how to read what's going on. Because everywhere they've been thus far, from the parents or the grandparents who lack boundaries and parenting skills have given them exactly what they've wanted. They've always been the most important person in the room. And you can't blame them for that. Because if I grew up in an environment for 20 years of my life or 18 years of my Life where everyone just gave me whatever I wanted and I got more of what I wanted without any restrictions or any penalties. Why wouldn't I expect the entire world to do that? That's the pattern in life that was established for them. So I think when we look at adults now, people who are in the public light, who don't know how to handle their fame, their. Their power, their influence, their wealth, we see that kind of bad behavior. And I can't help but to conjecture that. I think there was a lack of boundaries somewhere along the way that someone didn't sit them down and say, hey, chill out. Let me give you all an example, okay? My hot button issue is around respect. So if I'm traveling with someone, we're going to a museum or some science fair or something, I get to spend quite a bit of time with children and their parents. And I see the child running roughshod over their parents, saying, I want this. I don't want to do this anymore. And at some point, my thermometer, my inner thermometer, just reaches boiling point. I'm like, I can't take this anymore. And I shouldn't have to be the parent, but I'll go over to the child. I'll get down at the level. And it's like, you know, I don't know if you know this, but I'm gonna say this on behalf of your mom and dad, but they worked really hard to provide you what you have, the things that you get to enjoy. And the level of disrespect that I'm seeing is really hard for me to witness. I just wanted to let you know that this is my observation, and I would encourage you to try to be a little bit more grateful and to mind your manners. And I'm thinking, okay, I had to do this. I feel really not angry at them, but I feel really angry at the parent. And the typical response that I've gotten is, see Johnny, see Mary. That's how Uncle Chris raises his kids. And I'm like, well, where are you in this? Are you neutered in this operation? Don't you have authority and power to do something about this? So you're going to abdicate your responsibilities and export that to someone else, somebody like myself? And then you can see the kids, their reaction to this. They tighten up. They become really quiet, and they've never been spoken to like this before. And we get in the car, and all of a sudden it's like they're scared of me. And it's quite interesting because I have no power over them. I can't punish them, nor do I want to. But no one has ever spoken to them like that before, and it's a shock to their system. What happened with my own children is they would say, dad, I can't believe you said that to them. And now no one wants to come over and play at our house. I'm like, that's good. Until they learn respect and boundaries and to be grateful, I don't really want them here. They're not that welcome. I'm sorry. And then my kids get upset at me. It's like, oh, now we have no friends and everything. And for a little while, my own kids had some resentment and anger towards me for being the disciplinarian that I am. Like I told you before, I have two hot buttons, right? One is run respect, and the other one is run physical violence towards each other. So this is them crossing that boundary. And I'm going to lay it like, I don't do it the first infraction. I do it when I'm like, I can't handle this anymore. There's too much of this happening, and I have to just put a stop to this. I can't be around them, and I don't want to explode in anger. So fast forward a couple of years. When my kids are older and understand what's going on and they're around people like this, they turn to me like, oh, oh, my God, that's a mess. I can't stand them either. And then without directly apologizing to me, they say, dad, I'm just glad you raised us the right way. And so here's one lesson for all you parents. Like, I'm not trying to win the battle. I'm trying to win the war. So a lot of parents manage their own kids because they want to appease them and make them happy and feel like the kids love them and. And like them and respect them. I will forego the temporary loss of a battle to win the entire war. And the war is, I want to make sure that my children, when they're adults, have a good set of rules and beliefs and values and know how to govern themselves and know how to make decisions and to know that their decisions have consequences. And if it means that they don't like me for most of their life until they get into an age where they're more aware of who they are and they have their own identity, that then they can warm up to me. So I guess it was a couple of years ago when my wife would Notice with my oldest son, his attitude towards me started to change because I think for a long period of time, he was not so happy with me. And she goes, it's kind of crazy now. I think your son is falling in love with you because now it's always like, dad is so good at this. Dad is so great. And I know this. And I'm good because of dad. And poor Mom's like, what am I, chopped liver? I'm the person who's been taking care of you, wiping your butt, feeding you, making sure you're safe and not catching colds and getting splinters and hurting yourself. And then now Dad's getting all the credit. Everything you know how to do and that's good in you, you attribute to dad. Now, that's what I mean in terms of, like, playing the long game and making sure you're doing the right thing so you don't appease them in the moment. And the classic example, if your kid wants candy and they have a mouthful of cavities, the easy thing is to give them a candy. It's like, I just want them to be happy. I want to be a good parent. I want them to be happy. This is their child that I want to run. And after a while, they have no teeth left. So I'm the kind of person who's like, we don't really want to eat candy, and you can have it if you want, but try it and see how you feel about it. And so to this day, my kids don't really look forward to Halloween because they don't have a sweet tooth. They prefer not to eat candy at all. And so those ways of looking at the world have been set a long time ago. So if they're going to have a soda with sugar in it, it's an occasion. It's not slamming it down three times a day with every meal. The second observation with kids who grow up with lack of boundaries and respect is they carry that into adulthood. They wind up being bullies, they wind up being narcissists, and they wind up being really unpleasant people. I don't want to get too political, but all we have to do is look out into the landscape and says, who feels so entitled to everything that the world revolves around them? And then you just go back and I'm like, I wonder what their childhood was like. Oh, yeah, they're given everything and told that they can do anything and there's just zero boundaries and that the only person that matters in their universe is them. I don't think I'M saying anything particularly unique or different, but I'm saying in a sequence that maybe if this resonates with you, you'll want to dig in deeper. Number one is, I think our job as parents is to reverse engineer who our children are supposed to be, to allow them space, to try lots of different things and not to be too hard on them when they fail or when they want to change their mind. So if my children want to play music, I'm like, let's support that, let's get lessons, let's rent the instruments. And if you want to go deeper and deeper, we'll continue on that journey with you. And if you want to stop, we'll let you stop. So it's not something that I want for you. It's like, what do you want for yourself? So as parents, I think instead of trying to hover over them and shape them into the person we should have been or we could have been living vicariously through them, what we should do instead is like, see what they gravitate towards and allow them to play. Both of my children are very creative, but they express their creativity in very different ways. And so I want to make sure throughout the house we have the resources, tools, and means to support whatever the interests are so they can explore it to whatever degree they want to take it. So my son wanted to play soccer for a little bit, and he was much smaller than the other kids by good margin. And he did it mostly because the other kids, his friends, were really into soccer. But I knew because he's afraid of the ball. Like every time the. The ball was coming to him, like, I'm on the sidelines, like, Matthias, go for it, go for it. You got this. And he would just kind of get smoked and they would just run past him. But if he enjoyed it, it didn't matter to me. But eventually I could tell because he did it mostly for companion, was to be around other people that he liked and cared about. But where we saw that he had great talents and interest was in drawing. So we'd always make sure he has all the art supplies and we would encourage him. And he wanted to make YouTube videos. So we showed him how we would, would set up things for him to make YouTube videos of him drawing those time lapse videos. And mom would bribe him a little bit. Every video you post, I'll do something for you, right? And just encourage him to help him set up those kinds of patterns. And it was great. And then he went out of that phase and he stopped. Otto on the other Hand loves music. And he would play piano nonstop, day and night. And we would just make sure that he has the piano he needs and he has the tutors and the mentorship that he needs and encourage him to make music. And so he started to write songs. And I was like, this is wonderful. You could do this for your life if you want to. But he's like, dad, I don't want to be a musician. It's not important work. And you know, he would have all these reasons. I'm okay, all right, just want to encourage you. And so they get to explore lots of different things. And I think that's our primary role, is to not try to make up for the mistakes and the missed opportunities that we've had and get our children to do that. You'll notice a lot of times parents who don't have a lot of education want their children to be super educated. Parents who didn't go into government, who have always wanted to do that, encouraged children to do that, who weren't doctors, lawyers or attorneys now want their children to do that because they're trying to fix their own life's mistakes. The message I have for parents here is you had your shot. For whatever reason, let's say your parents weren't as gracious, as giving and supportive and nurturing as you'd like them to be. And no parent really is, but you had your shot. Why inflict the same wound to your own children so that they have this repetition of inherited trauma or set of rules. And we'll refer to these rules as dogma. This is the way it's always been done. This is the way it always will be. What we realize is the times have changed so much even in my own lifetime, with the advent of the Internet, social media, and now with AI that a lot of the rules that we had just 30, 40, 50 years ago do not even apply anymore. The jobs that people used to do were high paying or we thought were irreplaceable or now easily replaced or no longer even exist. What we have to realize is within every generation, the way that technology and opportunities advance is you kind of have to throw out most of the rules, especially when it comes to career. I heard Brian Hayes, I think that's his name, he was being interviewed for MSNBC and he was talking about this new book he was writing and he described it as Attention Capitalist. That attention has become one of the most important things that we trade on because there's a finite amount of it. And those who can command attention will really be the Ones who are pulling the levers. He was citing the Elon Musk play to buy X and why that was such a bad financial decision, but a fantastic attention decision because he's positioned himself to elect who he thought he wanted to get into the presidency and to be right at the head of the table making decisions. So he's playing a game of chess that we're not even privy to that. Although the value of X has dropped by about 70% since he bought it, the amount of engagement and traffic and how people are hanging on X has more than 3x. The reason why I bring all this up is you have a set of rules. As a person who's grown up and has figured out things that work and things that don't, I think you should instill core values, create those boundaries, but don't try to shape them into a career. Because the things that were traditionally, historically very safe to get into in terms of a profession are being challenged today. Like it used to be. Like being an attorney was a really great respected profession. But with GPT, AI, automation, with legal zoom and those kinds of things, the value of being an attorney is much less than it used to be. Now, here's the ironic joke about this. I have cousins who are lawyers and they make less money as lawyers than I did as a designer. It's because the world was shifting and we cannot predict where it's going to go. Because if you can, you wouldn't be listening to this and you'd be very wealthy right now. So it's better for us to say, allow them to explore, encourage them to make decisions and to understand that every decision has consequence or every action has a reaction and give them the ability to own their own decisions. So they're always looking at you like, what should I do? Where should I go? It's like my time for making my decisions is over. This is your time, this is your moment, and you have a perspective that we don't have. You grew up with the Internet. You grew up with powerful devices called mobile phones that could do pretty much anything. You live in an interconnected world, and there's a level of awareness and sensitivity that you have that we didn't even have growing up. You even speak a different language. You have your own slang and vocabulary, and what you consider fashionable and what you have allegiance towards and affiliation towards is very different than just my own generation just 20, 30 years ahead of you. I don't want to tell you how to do things. I'll tell you something. Gary Vaynerchuk put Out this clip many, many years ago. And he's like, do you know how I know what companies to invest in? He's like, when I'm at the airport, I'm watching what the 13 year old girls are doing because they drive the decisions of tomorrow. So if they're using some kind of app or they're doing something, I want to pay attention to them, not as some creepo perv, but to see what they're using so that I know where the hockey puck is going. I think that's incredible insight that a guy who's successful and has been a very good entrepreneur is kind of going back to level one and saying, what are the kids doing today? Because that's going to be the greatest indicator of what's going to happen tomorrow. Let's not put all the blame on parents because you were also raised a certain way and you were raised to be fearful of the unknown. We would rather lose in a world that we know than to venture forth and have a big win in a world that we don't know. It's a reason why a lot of us stay within a 50 mile radius of where we were raised. It's why many of us haven't ever been on a plane, have never left the state, have never left the country. It's because we want to play it safe. We don't realize that's what's happening, but that's what we're doing. So we want to protect our own children from suffering from pain. So we're like, well, in my world this is what works. So let me try to create a new world for you that looks just like my world so that you can navigate it and not have those kind of failures. I'm going to give you one example here. I mentioned before a certain kind of helicopter parenting style. And I'm not often like Mr. Mom with my kids and every once in a while my wife has to do something when they're much younger. I think my oldest son at that point was like, probably not even one yet. And she goes, can you look after him for a little bit? I need to do something. I'm like, cool. But I'm in my work environment so I put my boy on the couch. He seems pretty stable. He's just sitting there drooling, doing what babies do, being adorable. I kind of look at him, I look away, I look at him, I look away. I go to get a book or something, I get out. And so he's out of my eyesight for like five seconds. And then all Of a sudden I hear this loud thump. I'm like, oh my God. The boy tumbled off the couch onto concrete floor, probably head first. So he starts wailing at the top of his lungs. And at this point we're living in a three story house and my wife's like, what's that? I'm like, oh, snap. I failed my one duty as a parent to watch after my kids. My wife comes down and she's like shooing him, kind of like comforting him and everything. He's crying and he's adorable, but he fell on his head. And she gives me just like this scornful look like I'll deal with you later kind of thing. And you know what? I was negligent. But I'll tell you something, he never fell off another couch after that. He just didn't. And he would always butt scoot his way down things and somebody was always there to catch him. I didn't want him to get hurt. I didn't want him to lose an eye or break a limb. But you know what? Sometimes we gotta get a little hurt. So we know. Every time I tell you, don't touch the fire, sometimes you gotta get a little burn on you before you realize there's some wisdom to those old people. But that's kind of what I mean. Parents today are so fearful of their kids making the wrong decisions, they wind up making all the decisions for them. And this leads to an inability to decide. The classic example, where do you want to eat? It's like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. You decide, you decide. Where do you guys want to go to? I don't know, I don't know. You decide, you decide. To me, that's just like, it boils my blood. Does anybody here have an opinion as inconsequential as that is? It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. Want to make the most of the opportunities coming your way this year? I'd like to invite you to join me inside the Future Pro membership. Your ace in the hole for 2024 poor. With expert guidance and a supportive community, the Future Pro membership was created as your ultimate business lifeline. And we have years testimonials from members to prove it. Check it out. TheFuture.comPro and Rebecca, welcome back to our conversation. So when I was seeing My family therapist, Dr. Joan Lightfoot, she would say to me, give your children the illusion that they're making decisions all the time. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, don't give them open ended questions like, where do you want to eat? Say things like, would you prefer to go to the salad bar or the all you can eat pasta place or whatever it is. Just give them two options. You guys want Chinese or pizza? And so you've already made the decision, it's going to be one of these two things and neither of them are bad. So when the kids say, I want pizza, like, great. Are we in agreement? Is everybody happy with that? And if we're not, we're going to say this thing that we can't always be happy, that sometimes we have to compromise to make the whole group happy. So this time you get to pick, next time you get to pick. So we're sharing the responsibility. We're making sure no one feels like their voice is invalidated, but we're not also trying to appease everyone at the exact same time. So we give them the illusion of choice. They make these little decisions and then what you do is you start to escalate things. And here's something else that my therapist told me about, my family therapist. She said that children feel safe when they know someone's in charge. That rocked my world because I was like, they feel safe when they know someone who's in charge. And then she would go on to explain kids who are raised by single parents, oftentimes the parent wants to be their friend. And so when you start calling mom or dad by their first name, that's because we want to be friends. And then the kids start to worry, like, who's in charge right now? If we are equals, who's in charge? And so this starts to create a lot of dysregulation in them. They don't know what's going on and they do not feel safe. And so I'm that kind of parent around certain things. I'm very authoritarian. Things where they can get hurt real bad. So here's what she told me, how to handle situations like this. So when we're out and about and we're in a parking lot or a parking structure, I always tell the kids, kids come here and they know when dad uses the dad voice. They just come and I reach out my hand, I hold both her hands and we walk together. Because you've seen these videos where the kid runs away and gets smacked, gets run over, bad things happen. And so my therapist said, just add this one thing. The next time you're out and you pull them to you and you see danger, what you do is bend down Pick both of them up, hold them in your arms, and show them your vantage point. So from their level, they cannot see that someone was getting in their car and about to start it up. From my level, as I'm scanning around the lot, I can see many more things than them, I said, and I picked them up. I did exactly as I was told because I'm a good student. So you see that person over there? I bet you couldn't have seen that down there. And so when you walk over there, because you're below what they can see, unless they have a backup camera, they're gonna run right over you. And my kids are like, oh, I do that because I need to demonstrate to them why you need to listen to dad. So oftentimes, if it's an open lot, they run around, and all I have to do is say, boys. I do that, and they just come right to me and we're good. And so my wife, who struggles with this too, because she's not applying the same rules, and so they kind of run around, she's like, boys, boys. And no one seems to understand that she's in control. And this manifests itself in some ways. And it's a. It's a point of frustration as two parents, like, why did they listen to you? Why don't they listen to me? And I'll tell you why. Because you're giving too many instructions all the time. So when there's one that's important, they think it's all the same, that it's not important, whereas I rarely give instructions. So when I give one, they know it's got to be important. And I've proven it to them using the parenting coaching that I have received and applying it consistently. So I'll give you an example. We're out in Utah. I think it's called Angel's Landing or Angel's Crest. It's actually quite dangerous to get out there. There's a part here where you kind of shimmy along a very shallow ledge and you hold onto a chain that's been bolted to a giant rock. So essentially, if you lose your footing, you have to hold on to that chain because you're going to slide down hundreds of feet and they're not going to find you. And every year, some people die. My kids are fairly young at this point, but we love hiking and backpacking. So my wife and my oldest go together. My youngest, he must have been like eight. We go together. At some point, they're shimming their way across, and they get really scared and so they now need to turn around because my oldest is panicking. I think he's panicking for good reason. And probably my wife is also a little scared. Like, what do we do here? So they're trying to go backwards now. There's more people going forward. And it's a one lane kind of freeway here. And so they have to shimmy above and below, above and below. And Matthias and I, we make it across, and we look at mom and my oldest and it's like, okay, we're gonna go to the top. And I'll tell you why. My youngest, who's much more scared than my oldest, the reason why he was able to make it was because he was borrowing on my confidence. And he knows who's in charge and he feels safe. And so we wind up going all the way up the ridge and to the top. And we would dangle our feet over and take pictures. And I would say to him, son, here's the deal. There's real danger if you are not paying attention. But I got you the whole time. If you're not paying attention, you can slip and you fall. There's nothing I can do. The chances of you surviving this fall are very low. And I cannot go home to mom and say, I've lost my child. So it's very important for me right now that you follow everything I tell you to do without question. Do you understand? He goes, yes, dad. And I said, are you scared? He's like, no, I'm not. And so we had this core memory together, being able to do this thing and coming back like an hour and a half later when it's nearly dark, my wife's like, you guys went to the top? Like, yeah, we did. Are you okay? Like, we are totally okay. And to this day, whenever there's danger, both those boys, unspoken, just start to hover closer to me because they know someone's in charge. So if you want your children to pay attention to what you're saying, just be more diligent about when you want them to pay attention, because otherwise it's overwhelming for them. Like, I don't care if you cook that food this way or sit by the TV two inches closer than we think you need to. I don't really care. But if I saw a snake shimmying across the floor, I'm like, boys, stand up right now. Everybody get up. They would just get right up without question. And there was things that I would say to them. And this is hilarious too, going back to this idea of, like, choice and food. One of the most stressful things for us to do as a family is to go out to eat. We'd get in the car and I would say to my wife, where do you want to eat? Because she's the parent, she's in charge and I want to make sure she's happy. And then she would then completely give away that choice to the kids. Kids, where do you want to eat? Go round and round and round and it's just a hot mess. So 10 minutes later, I don't know where to go. Let's contrast that with my style. We get in the car, where we going? Dad, we're going to eat. Where we're going to eat? Wherever. I decide. How come? Because I'm paying. Okay, everybody cool? We cool. Then we turn to my wife. Where do you want to eat? I've decided for us. And so sometimes we create situations too. And this is complicated here because there's a lot of nuance in here. My wife will ask where we want to eat and they'll make lots of suggestions, including me. And then my wife will make her own decision. And if you do that enough times, then no one wants to participate in a conversation because it never seems like our suggestions matter. And that's a different issue altogether. That's more of like my wife needing to verbally process what's going on as opposed to like genuinely asking everybody, where would they like to eat? Now she has a lot of concerns because she wants to make sure everybody's happy and everybody's content. But I'm okay with making those decisions, saying, you know, sometimes I gotta pull you out of your comfort zone for you to try something new. And trust me that it's going to be good. What we need to do as parents is to make a list of things that are non negotiable. And they should not be that many things. It should be less than one. What you have in one hand, like less than five things that are non negotiable. And then I say everything else, just let it go. Your need to control and dictate how things work. Rob your children of their own decision making powers. Rob them the ability to make mistakes when it's fairly inconsequential when they screw up as opposed to like later on in life when they are like investing in some swamp land somewhere and they lose all of their money. And I've seen this happen in a lot of different ways. I've been around people who have young children and I kind of see the children running around like wild animals. I'm sorry to describe it like that. I know it's very offensive for some parents to hear that, but I have friends that when they're talking the phone, their kids run over like, what are you doing? What's going on? And trying to grab the phone, other hand. I'm like, in what world is this okay? But I'm not going to say anything. It's not my job to raise your children. Or when one of these children spills milk or does something very typical of what children do, the parents rain down freaking hellfire on them. I'm like, over that. So we're getting really upset over things that don't matter. And then we're not getting upset over things that really do matter. So the expression I use is we're being hard when we need to be soft, and we're soft when we need to be hard. It's because we don't have our own internal rules. We've never sat down to say, what are my non negotiables? And this is not just about the parent child relationship, but this is the partner to partner relationship, the employee to employer, or vice versa. We don't know what the non negotiables are. And so we live in a world of gray and it's hard to navigate because we don't know how to decide. And that creates a lot of anxiety for us. So if you make that list and you communicate that to them and say there's a lot of things you can do and you're gonna make mistakes and it's okay to make mistakes. I make mistakes all the time too. But here are the two or three things that I really care about and I need you to listen to me. And when you break those rules, there are consequences. And if you set this up and they do break those rules, there have to be consequences. Because children are tricky. They will say, like, if you draw the line and you say you. You cross this line, bad things will happen. They'll inch their foot closer and closer to that line. And then you move the line, they'll inch it. And then eventually, like, there is no line. So you do have to follow through. So another warning is don't make empty threats. You have to be able to follow through. Therefore, don't make a lot of threats because you're not going to follow through. You're just not going to follow through with them. And they're going to learn. Sometimes mom and dad is serious, but most of the times they're full of bs. But, you know, maybe that's okay. Within this environment. But when they get into the real world, they're going to assume everybody operates under the same thing. And this gets into a lot of problems when you are not being serious. They're like, well, my teacher's not being serious. My boss is not that serious. I know they're just joking because there are no consequences to anything. My whole thing is I will feel if I failed as a human being, if my children go on and start to behave in ways that violate our core values, I've completely failed. I've also made sure that they understand this. This idea that whatever decisions they make in life are theirs to own and to reap the rewards and suffer the consequences. Tell you a little story here. One time, my children, I. We went with my wife too, we love to go to the art store, Blick's Art Store. We love going there because it's a world of possibilities. Every little thing that you can buy there can be turned into something, a work of art, something. And we go outside and there's a homeless lady kind of laying on the street, quite. Laying on the floor, face up, but laying on the floor. And her hand was peeking past her blanket open. My assumption was this is her form of asking for money without harassing anybody. So I reach in my pocket, I find some money, and I reach over and place in her hand, and she's, like, shocked. She's, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry. She's kind of yelling at me now. She's probably having some kind of, like, mental illness. And I interrupted what she was doing, and she just was shocked. So we walk away. My children are so scared, and they kind of run towards the wall, using us as a shield, which they've been trained to do. And they're kind of panicking. My youngest is like, dad, why didn't she take the money? Why'd she behave like that? And I had to say to him, son, this is my fault. She didn't ask for money. I made the assumption that she wanted money and I wanted to help her, but what I was doing was not helpful to her at all. And he says to me, so people want to be homeless. I said, some do, but many people have some mental illness and they're not. They're not quite sure what's going on right now. I wanted to teach him that lesson. Like, we made the assumption it is my fault. Her reaction, pretty normal, because I said, people also have self respect. They weren't asking for money. And you treated them like they're a Charity case. And some people have some problems with that. And I say that that could be an explanation. Lots of different things. Maybe she was in a deep sleep and I interrupted her and she felt unsafe and she was respons. Lots of different reasons. All I know is I shouldn't have done that because she didn't ask me. We get in the car, he feels safe, and the. The kind of stress level is going down. He goes, I guess I'm glad I'll never be homeless. And I turned to him, I say, why wouldn't you be? He goes, what do you mean, I'll just run your business? I said, that's a big assumption, that you can run my business and that I've offered it to you, which I've not. A lot of people make poor decisions in their life that could lead them to homelessness. And that's an option for you too, if you want to. So he had like a whole come to Jesus moment as a probably traumatized 8 year old. Like, oh my God, I could be homeless. But I just needed him to know this, that what you decide in your life is for you to take both good and bad. I'm not some parachute that gets you out of jail. Figuratively speaking. Whenever you run into trouble, your decisions have to carry weight. So later on, when they're more adjusted, they would joke, they're like, matthias, there's a good homeless spot for you right there. I was like, that's a good spot. Like, we would drive by the Beverly center or one of these, like, affluent neighborhoods, and he would pick a really big tree. He's like that. That would protect me from rain. And there's a shady spot so it won't get too hot, and it's not as crowded over there. So they would joke around like, let's figure out where we're gonna live if we can't make it. And sometimes my wife looks at me like, would you really let them be homeless? They need to believe that. I'm not sure if I would, but they need to believe that because I don't want them to use us as some kind of backup plan when they make really bad decisions. I'm going to land the plane, but I'm going to tell two stories. I'm 53 years old. I have a cousin who's similar age to me, and he came by the house. He started his family much later with his young child. And he's watching how my kids operate, and he's admiring them for, like, their initiative, how thoughtful they are and how well they're doing in both respects. Like, my oldest is going to Columbia, studying philosophy and writing. My youngest starting art center and in studying entertainment design. And he asked me this fairly kind of casual question. He says, how'd you get them to do their homework? I sense he's struggling through that himself right now with his own child, right? And I said to him, I've never checked on their homework. I've never even looked at the report card. I could care less if they even go to school. In fact, I've tried to bribe them to drop out of school. And he looked at me like, what kind of hippie, dippy, radical, anarchist style parenting is this? And I said to him, the children have done well. We've been very fortunate. We don't ask to see their homework. We don't even know what they're doing. And we want them to love school for their own reasons, not because we told them to. And if they didn't do well in school, we'd find another school for them. We don't think our children are bad if they don't do well in school. We just think the teachers are not good and the school is not a good fit for them. And so I think he walked away probably more confused than he had clarity. But it's very true. Both my kids do what they want to do in the way that they want because they've been trained or given the freedom to do that exact thing. So every decision, like, my son really wanted to get into an Ivy League school. He worked really hard. He didn't get into one initially, and he kept working at it, working on his essay, and transferred over to Columbia. And then he felt like he checked off a box. Never in my life did I say, it would be great if you went to an Ivy League school. I could care less. And Matthias, to my surprise, who's the younger of the two, who was for a good portion of their time growing up, felt like he wasn't learning as fast, not as confident, self assured, but he's a sleeper. One day, we're out about. And Otto asked Matthias some questions, like, wait, what? What is going on here? He goes, dad, do you know how much Matias, how much money he has? I'm like, like, he has money. He goes, yeah, he has over a hundred thousand dollars. I'm like, what? I thought he was playing video games, yelling at people like, give me a gun all the time. And what he was doing in between the video game sessions is he was being immersed in the digital age and the digital culture. He Started to do digital paintings and he was commissioned by people who were building different NFT projects and they, they would hire him and pay him. And so at some point he became a savvy trader himself, created his own digital wallet and traded in different kinds of cryptocurrency and invested and was actually advising his high school friends what they should be doing. I remember one time we were traveling together and he was like, dad, I need to finish this call. And the way he was talking like you, it's like a scene out of the Wolf of Wall Street. So when he hits this point, I need you to sell and you need to get out of that whatever xyz. He was talking about options and trading. I'm like, who does this kid think he is? And you know, when the market got cold, his friends were in trouble because it goes in cycles. It's hot and it's cold, right? And then months later he's like. I'm like, what's, what's going on? Like, what is a child got to who about? Like, what is so heavy off your chest today? My boy goes, dad, I finally got them out of the thread. They're all okay. I told them all to sell. They sold. I would never do that again. So there's a lot of things to pull away from this. Number one is if you don't reign your children in so much and you let them learn at the pace in which they can learn and let them get involved in the things they want to get involved in, wonderful things could happen. But I love that he had to learn a very important lesson. There's this expression that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So you're giving your friends advice on how to invest and the market takes a dump. So now you feel responsible, personally responsible, which I love that you now have to help your friends get out of this hole. So he stayed on it with them so that they can get back into the break even or into the black. Then he said, sell, and I'm no longer going to do that. Now imagine to tie this together with our conversation, if I was a helicopter in parent, I'm like, what are you doing with crypto? Why are you getting involved in NFTs and all this kind of stuff? That's a full. A world full of scammers. And I want to read the contracts and let's negotiate a better deal. What are they paying you? He can make his own mistakes. I just told him one time, are you getting paid to do this? He goes, yes. I said, have they Paid you yet? He goes, no. So do you realize this is what I teach strangers to do? Do you realize if you don't accept or get 50% up front, if you get burned, it's like, I can't even teach my own children. So let's work on this. Let's get paid 50% upfront, okay? He goes, okay. And so for the last couple of years, my wife has had to help him file his tax returns before he even turned 18. And I tell people this, I'm like, what is going on? So my son Matthias has made more money as a child than I did up until the time I finished school for a couple of years. So you know what he did when he graduated high school? He invited one of his best friends from school to go to Taiwan who couldn't afford it. So he paid for it and booked a hotel and took care of all the travel stuff himself. This was the little guy that I was worried about, who was afraid of making decisions and afraid of the world, who could not ask at a tender greens for refill for dad. That's the same boy. So I think the hypothesis thus far has proven to be pretty good. I can't say it is universally true for everybody. I just want to share my experience with all of you and hope that you get a different perspective and encourage you to let go of the reins because everything that you think is so important, that needs to be controlled, that has dire consequences, actually doesn't. Certain kinds of damage is irreversible, but it's very few and far between what those are. And to remember that what you want to do is to create an autonomous, independent, creative human being who's not afraid of making decisions because they understand that every decision they make has a benefit and a consequence. Allow them that freedom. Don't try to live vicariously through them and have them fix all of your mistakes. You had your shot. Might not have been a good shot, but you had your shot. Let them have their shot. And especially, whatever you do, become much more self aware about the patterns of behavior that you've inherited that you hold to be true. Even if you didn't like them, you're still repeating them to this day. You are kind of unconsciously giving to your children this horrible inheritance of unresolved childhood trauma. I think your job as a parent, I'm sorry to be so preachy on this part, your job as a parent is to stop the generational trauma. Let them live their lives within the context of giving children, like the autonomy and ability to fail every Once in a while, they do fall literally off the couch, but also fall far from where your expectations are. I want to share something with you to help you reframe how you might respond. I work a lot. Everybody, as you know, I will tell you, I work like a dog at D O G. And so that means I'm at the office a lot. And my wife is an incredible partner. We've divided up the responsibilities. I am the CEO of the company. She's the chief home officer. And basically everything happens within the household finances. Everything is under her control. So one night, I'm thinking, like, it's 8:30pm A pretty typical night for me. I come home kind of tired, worn down from the day, and I enter the house. My wife is standing at the kitchen countertop. We have this beautiful island. She's standing there kind of in a body language. I'm like, oh, something is funky. And she has this look on her face. I'm like, oh. And my first thought is, I hope I'm not in trouble. I don't think I've done anything. My God. And she looks down, gesturing towards the table. I'm like, oh, tiptoeing. What's going on? And she pushes something across the table, the countertop, and it's an envelope. What is this? Did I buy something I'm not supposed to? Credit card fraud. What are we dealing with here? So I pull it out, and it's my son's progress report in Latin. He's going to school for gifted kids, and he elected to take Latin. I'm like, what does this mean, hon? I glance at it, and it's like, eight. He got eight out of ten. Okay, so it's not ten out of ten. I mean, that's a solid B. She goes, it's not 8 out of 10. It's 8 out of a hundred. I'm like, oh, my God. Death levels. The failure. I can't even comprehend. My. My circuit is just fried at this point. I'm like, this is a really smart boy. But you know what? He tested into the school for the top 1% of kids who have that kind of intelligence. This is the school where. Where, like, the fictional Doobie Howser would have gone to. They have high school students that are attending Caltech or whatever. That's how smart these kids are. So the competition in school is tough. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, oh. And I could feel my dad's voice and anger kind of rising up in me, like, oh, my God, this is terrible. This is really bad. But then I'm also conflicted because, like, I just got home from work. My kids don't see me during the day. What am I supposed to be doing here? So I asked her, what do you want me to do? She goes, you need to go upstairs. You need to talk to your son right now. And she said that with, like, a lot of heat behind it. I said, how come you're so angry about this? Because. Can you believe it? I asked him earlier how he's doing in class, and he said, fine, mom. So she felt, like, doubly insulted at this point that he's not doing well in school and that in her mind, he lied to her or didn't tell her the truth. I was like, oh, God, I have to go upstairs and do something I don't want to do, but it's kind of necessary. So I was sitting there thinking, do think fast. Use all those persuasion, negotiation, communication skills that you pretend to have on tv. You freaking put them to use right now. Negotiate your way out of this one. I said to her, okay, I think he does need to be talked to. I can do that. But before I do that, let me ask you a couple of questions. She goes, yeah. I said, have you ever taken Latin before? And she's like, no. I said, I have in college. I did. It was really hard. It's a dead language for a reason. It's really hard. I don't understand conjugation rules, and there's very specific rules on how to use Latin. And we can punish him for making a big decision and failing, or maybe we don't need to do that. She's starting to calm down a little bit. I said, you know, like, is it important for you that he does well in school? I mean, we're both, like, art school grads. Like, we don't know anything. Look, we know Pantone colors and typefaces, but what do we know? And she's like, yeah, I guess. I guess it's not. I mean, is it important to you? She goes, no. So really, this was about him saying to you, he's doing fine. Maybe in his mind, he is doing fine. The last thing I would want to do as a parent is to discourage him from trying. Trying something really hard to do something very academic. Is it important for you to. For me to go up there and punish him for this? She goes, probably not. I said, there's another way to look at this. He got seven more right than we would. Because if I had to take that test, I don't Remember a single thing. So we would both score zero and be totally stressed out of our minds at this point. My wife's over, and she goes, okay, do whatever. Do whatever you want. I was like, walking away, like, yes, those skills do work. I got this. So I go upstairs, and I'm thinking, what am I going to say to my son? I had to deal with my wife, calm her down, tell her I understand and recalibrate what's important, and then go upstairs. I'm going to tell my son something. I need to tell him something. I go over to his door. It was closed. I knock on it. Knock, knock, knock. He goes, yeah, hey, buddy. I open the door, it's like, it's me, dad. How you doing? In Latin. He goes, I'm doing all right, Dad. I said, well, you keep it up, young man. You keep it up. And I closed the door and left. And you know what's really interesting here is I think what happens is we have these auto responses, reactions to things, because it's a template of what we've learned. I think my wife was reacting from a place where her parents would have rained down on her. And I saw that bubbling up inside of me, like, this is unacceptable. And I had to just take a quick pause and witness myself feeling this emotion, saying, well, wait, whose operating system is that? Is that my dad, or is that my own? Is that my mom, or is that my own? Like, I don't care what school he goes to. I don't even care if he goes to school. I just don't want to get arrested is all, for being negligent parents. And, you know, here's the real interesting thing. Otto stuck it out. He eventually got a different teacher, and he skyrocketed. Now he's doing 97, 98, and getting glowing notes from his new teacher. And that was one of these moments. And I want to share this with everybody. There's this movie, it's called Sliding Doors. It's with Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen. And the concept of the story is that Gwyneth Paltrow goes to get on a train. And in one story, she makes a train, and her life is one direction. In the other story, she misses the train, just barely, and goes back to her apartment with her artist boyfriend, who she then discovers is cheating on her. Her life is totally different. You catch the train, you miss the train. In that moment, there were probably more than one train option. But I had to decide, how am I going to respond to this? I could have rained down on him. I could have blamed him. I could have made him feel bad for trying something new. He might have given up. But I didn't get on that train. All I did was just encourage him. And it turns out it had nothing to do with him. It had a lot to do with the teacher he had. He had to find the right teacher who can teach him in a way that would excite him to make the material come to life. But our natural assumption, our default assumption is it's your fault. You're not doing homework, you're not paying attention, you're not a good student. I don't mean to call anybody out, but reflect on your own life and say, like, how many times have something like this happened, either to you or you've perpetrated where your assumption was, it must be my fault. It must be their fault. I know this is a different kind of piece of content, but one that I think needs to be shared with all of you. I know I talk a lot about business communication, sales, pricing, those kinds of things, but I think there's this whole other aspect I want to share with you. So if you like this kind of content, please let me know. Give it a like comment and I'll do more content like this. But especially if you have a specific question, please drop it in the comments and I'll do my best to factor them to future episodes. If this episode resonated with you in any deep way, whether you're the parent or the child who needed a better parent, I have another video I'm going to recommend that is a much deeper dive. It's called what you believe becomes your reality. It's 35 minutes. It was released in 2019, but I think you're going to love it. Go check it out. Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Future Podcast is hosted by Chris do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefuture.com and and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.