How to Be a Parent (Without Messing Everything Up) | Joe Hudson and Nathan Baschez

Messing up and making repairs, showing them how that's done, showing them that we're all human and that we get to love our mistakes and that we get to own them, and then that lets us grow. I think that's just as important as being a perfect parent, and that opportunity only comes because we will undoubtedly fuck up our kids in some way. Hey everybody, it's Joe Hudson. And today we have a unique experience for you. Brett is not with us, unfortunately, but Nathan Baschez is with us. Nathan, let's tell them a little bit about you and then how this situation came to be, like how we're sitting here talking.

Sure. Yeah. So I saw a tweet of yours that really caught my eye because I'm also a dad and I have two kids now. I had one kid at the time when we tweeted about this and then my second one was born. But you tweeted, a question I often get asked is how I raised my two daughters. People who meet them are impressed and want to know what technique we used. The answer is that there was no time where my wife and, or I ever punished them. And if we ever shamed them, we apologized immediately, which I thought was amazing. So I replied, would read 5K words on this. And then you said, hey, you could come on our podcast and ask questions if that's appealing. And here I am. It is appealing. It sounds amazing.

Awesome. Nathan's gonna ask me questions about parenting. I'm gonna answer.

Maybe to start, just like, can you take me back to— you're in a similar spot as me. Your first child is kind of like getting into the toddler years and you all of a sudden the problems become a little more complicated.

Yeah.

Did you always kind of feel like you knew basically the approach you wanted to take or did you have— you had to come to it over time?

Yeah.

I'm curious to hear the story.

Yeah. So the story is I did not get blessed with great parents. I mean, they loved me. And they cared, but they had no idea what they were doing. You know, when our first daughter was born, for example, my mom recommended that we have a schedule to change the diaper on because the baby needed to learn how to poop on our schedule. And, and, and then told us that they kind of enjoy sitting in poop. It's like a mud bath, I think the quote was, right? And so like everybody, when I had a kid, I started parenting the way that I was parented. Like, that's the automatic thing to do. And I was rather horrible at it, frankly. But my wife is a researcher, and so she also was not raised in the best possible way, but had some really good infant experiences. And so she started researching and she found hand-in-hand parenting. And we had some people in our community who were doing hand-in-hand parenting, which is Patty Whiffler's book, Listen. And that's the organization.

And you said to check out the book, which I did. My wife and I, we have had a couple of different, like, long drives. And so we listened to the audiobook together and would, like, frequently pause and talk about it and stuff like that, which is an amazing experience.

I can't tell you how many people I have recommended to who aren't parents who have taken a huge amount from the book.

Totally.

And on a personal level, something that's important for me to say is that it is one of the most important practices of my life as far as a spiritual or self-development practice is the stay listening and the play listening part of Hand in Hand has changed my life dramatically and deeply informs the work that we do, particularly the work that we do in live week-long intensives. Incredibly important part of our work.

I'm intimately familiar with that now after reading the book, and I'm really excited to learn about yours and what you what you kind of taken from that and then what also you would add.

So I was wrestling her with hand-in-hand parenting. I'm like, we're letting the kid cry. Like, what's happening? And she found it when Esme was probably about a year and a half, maybe 2 years old. Yeah, our oldest. And she was right. You know, she started doing the tools. I was not supportive. She was 100% correct. I saw that she was correct. And so 2 things changed. One, I became a huge fan of hand-in-hand parenting. The other thing that happened was I, at this point, I was like, okay, babe, you're the CEO of the house and your decision is what stands from now on. I am going to do whatever you suggest. Yeah. Which also was an incredibly good choice for us. That's how I ran into Hand in Hand Parenting. And the end of that story was when I started doing Hand in Hand Parenting and part of the the thought process was, you know, you let them have their big emotions. As I sat with their big emotions, I had to sit with the emotions that I was not allowed. And now today, when I'm teaching, I'll say something like, if you want to know who wasn't allowed to cry, just wait for a baby crying on a plane, stand up and look at all the faces. And whoever is really freaking agitated were the people who weren't allowed to cry.

Yeah.

When I felt how my life was changing because of the way that I was parenting, then I was completely hooked.

Amazing. Well, I'm curious, what are kind of like the main ideas? What were the big pillars of your— how you approached it?

You said earlier, like, it gets more complex, right? To me, the only added complexity is the 2 to 7 range is connection. So it's like, are they Are they thirsty? Are they tired? And those three things. And then do they feel connected?

Yeah.

And if they don't feel connected, then they need to have a big emotional release. They need to be loved in that. And then they get back to connection. I don't know if you've experienced this, but my second, when she needed connection, she'd literally sit on my lap, grab my face, and point my face to her face and force eye contact. You know, or you see little kids, if your nervous system is dysregulated, you'll see them say, I love you, Daddy, some way to like, hey, let's get back into connection.

Yeah.

And so to me, it's as simple as that. And then the other pillars, which are more about the map or the path, the thing that Waldorf taught me was just the age appropriateness of certain things. I'm not supposed to logically talk to my 7-year-old. When you see parents go, okay, well, let me logically explain to you why you shouldn't cross the street or something like that. The kid, you see the kid, they're responding to the emotionalness of the parent. So oftentimes when parents go into logic, they kind of settle down a little bit, get a little grounded, and then they're just describing something. But they could literally be talking about the sun and the stars. And if they hit that same quality of emotion and nervous system regulation, you'll see the kids settle as well. I actually did that experiment a couple of times. That was a huge pillar, was how do I actually approach them at 6? How do I actually approach them at 7? How do I— and define the big changes. There's a huge change that happens between 7 and 8. More of their will comes online, more of them wanting to be away from the parents. You know, the first one's kind of 2 and a half, 3, what they call the terrible twos, is the first force of will. They kind of leave mom's, you know, energetic field or nervous system field. And then the next one's at 7, 8, in that area. In Waldorf education, they say that's when you start teaching them intellectual stuff. Before that, you're teaching them how to use their will.

Yeah.

And that one, I remember that moment, you know, when our kids were 7 or 8 and my sister's kids knew 3 languages and our kids knew 1 and hadn't really learned how to read yet. But I remember talking to somebody and saying, oh, you know, they don't speak these languages. And my friend said to me, I love this. Changed my life. He said, you know, you can hire someone to speak a language for you, but you can't hire someone to have your will. And I just went through all the CEOs I know, and I was like, yep, absolutely. The thing that makes them successful is not a skill set. It's the way that they are in the world. Yeah. And then they can develop the skill set, or you can hire the skill set. And it totally put me at peace. Piece to really understand that the first 8 years are all about them learning about their will, learning how to be in their body. And then the second one, which isn't just 0 to 8 years old, this pillar was so important to us, and it was their job isn't to listen to us. Their job is to listen to themselves.

Hmm.

I do not want my child to do what I say. I want my child to learn how to listen to themselves and say, oh, that feels good. That doesn't feel good. That feels right. That doesn't feel right. And that was critical. And it took weird things to do. And this was Tara who first introduced the idea. So, for instance, if they do a great thing, we don't say good job. We'll say, oh, how does that feel?

Hmm.

Oh, I see that. That makes you feel great inside. That's cool. Constantly reflecting back to them their internal state so that they listen. And behind that is a theory that kids are just basically good. The humans are basically good. And if they listen to themselves, we have an inherent goodness in us that if we're listening, we're going to do. And, and if you look at the people who are more likely, say, to get addicted or more likely to be in a job for 40 years and hate it. Those are people who haven't really learned how to listen to themselves.

Yeah.

You know, and so that was, that was another huge pillar for us.

That's so fascinating. How did you approach— I mean, let's say it's the classic grocery store, right? I want this, I want that, I want the other thing. The thing that I didn't know before reading the book Listen was What that's really about is definitely not the thing they think they want or they say they want.

Right.

It's just a feeling of disconnection. That's it. And it actually might be that the whole point of this exercise that they're doing is not to get the thing, it's to trigger you. Because any form of connection, even if it's you yelling at them, is better than disconnection. Because disconnection means abandonment, and abandonment is death for a child. And so just keeping you close any way they can is kind of like what they're doing. And they're actually doing it in a very smart way because likely I mean, I wouldn't have paid attention to them. I think when parents, myself at least, often are like, I'd like you to listen to me, it's, I'd like you to behave in such a way that allows us to do basic things kind of quickly, you know, like let's get out the door, let's brush your teeth at night and get to bed. All those kind of things that parents, I think, are probably one of the most common struggles. How did you approach that, especially keeping in mind this so interesting thing that you said of like, the goal is not to get them to listen to me?

Yeah, that's a great question. So I have a classic story. And I've heard this story before, but then it actually happened to me. I was in a Whole Foods. I'm in my hometown. There are people I know in the store because it's a small town where we live. And she starts wanting something and starts throwing a fit. And I sit in the aisle of the store and I had made the logical choice. My reputation is not as important as my child's upbringing.

Mm.

So whatever, I'm going to sit here and do this thing. And we were like 6 minutes in, she's yelling, I'm containing her so that she's not hurting herself or me or the groceries. And we live in a kind of hippie town. And this old hippie lady comes over and is like, are you okay, dear? And my daughter, just from screaming, stops and goes, I'm just having my emotions. And then she goes back to screaming.

I'm sure the hippie lady respected that.

She was definitely trying to figure out if I was fucking up as a parent. There's no doubt that's what was going down.

Is this man bothering you?

Exactly. And that was when I realized, oh, like you said, there's some cognition underneath it that they know something that I did not think that she understood what was happening at that level. Yeah. And so at the same time, without a doubt, there was moments where I just knew I didn't have it in me. My day was X, Y, and Z. I was surprised by how inconsistent I could be and still get great results. Meaning, yeah, the job is to be patient with them as they're having a big emotion. I would say it's to sit in loving attention. Like, if you can't be in loving attention, then get your wife, have her be in loving attention. And if you just can't do it at all, then it's also okay to say to a kid, like, I just can't be in loving attention with you right now. We just got to leave the store.

Yeah.

And that's totally fine. They'll understand that, which is interesting. So for me, it was more important to be in loving attention than it was to be consistent.

Yeah. That is a very important distinction because I do think in the book she does a good job making it clear, but it's easy to imagine misinterpreting like, well, you just need to sit there with them. For me personally, I know my limits as of today. I would not be able to be in loving attention in a grocery store for 5 minutes, which sounds like it's easy to just say real quick. That's an eternity, you know, like even 30 seconds and it's an eternity.

Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, yeah.

And you learn so much by doing it. Yeah, you learn so much by doing it. There's a couple of things that I realized in the process that relate to self-development of adults. One is the quality of my listening to you is going to affect the conversation that we have. It's going to affect how connected you feel as an adult. And this is the same with a kid. So that was one of the things that it taught me. The other thing that it taught me was that kids' excitement is as bothersome to some people as kids crying. Yeah, it's like, oh wait, the emotions that we're having, it's not just the negative ones that people have problems with, it's the positive ones. Settle down, Johnny. You know, like, it's something you hear all the time. So that was another to see that, oh, some people are going to be annoyed with my kid because they're happy, because they're squealing in joy. Like, whoa. What's up with that? Yeah, that was an interesting one. And then the last one that really struck me about this was that, like, many limiting beliefs have the same emotional cycle, and that emotional cycle comes from a little kid trying to get attunement. You as a little kid, how do I get attunement? So if I get the attunement by fighting with you, by making a ruckus, then I'm going to grow up making a ruckus to get that connection from my wife and from my husband. And from— if I grew up being sad and that got the attention, then I'm going to be sad in these different situations or whatever it is. And so there's this recognition that these moments of attunement, how do they get our attention? Like, that's what you're teaching them. And then that emotional cycle basically underlies so much, yeah, of the limiting beliefs that they'll have in the rest of their lives. The things that hold them back for the rest of their lives will be attached to that emotional cycle.

It is interesting just reflecting on my own childhood. Like, I do kind of feel like I have this emotional cycle of sitting at a desk coloring on some paper. Going to my mom being like, look at what I did. And my mom's personality is to be very, oh my gosh, that's amazing, you know. And it's kind of funny because I mean, I'm still today, instead of coloring and, you know, at my desk, I'm, you know, at whatever VS Code or tweeting about it, hoping that people tell me, oh, Nathan, that's amazing, you know, giving me lots of likes and retweets on Twitter. Right. Then I go back to the drawing board and Do you ever get the feeling of just like how you kind of feel like you're doing a job, but also it's a terrifying responsibility to be like someone else's pattern is kind of— it's going to be shaped by me and like my wife and the other— because it feels impossible to not have some way.

Oh, it is impossible. There's no way you're not going to fuck up your kids, you know. There's just no way. But what I have— I have a story about that recently. So, so like I said, Esme was older when we started doing hand-in-hand parenting and I was not a great parent at the beginning by any stretch. My attachment style with her was to, you know, if she had big emotions, was to not go into loving attention. It was either getting frustrated or removing myself. And she was a teenager. She's 16, 17 years old. She has a boyfriend, and she's in this problem with the boyfriend. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was an attachment issue. And I literally said to her, that's not his fault. That's not your fault. That's me. I taught you that attachment thing. Like, that was what I did when you were a kid. And I'm so sorry. I still get misty thinking about it. And, and she cried and I cried and we just sat there and cried together. She knew it was true. I knew it was true.. And it was just— that was it. It was just done. That pattern in her life was done. That's all that was required. She was either young enough or like, that moment of connection just allowed that thing to fall. And the relationship with her boyfriend went to the next level. And I remember thinking, I kind of wish I would have fucked her up more. I want more of those moments. So, yeah, which is another big tenet for us. One of the ways that I looked at, especially the young kids, was eventually I looked at it was, am I treating them with the same respect that I'm treating an adult? Yeah. Now I have to teach them, so I get that. But I can teach them in a respectful way. I can teach them in a disrespectful way. And so part of that, oh, I'm going to treat them with the respect, was that if I did something like shame them, I would apologize. I would say, oh, I'm like, that's not how I want to be with you.

Yeah.

And that repair is just as important as getting it right. If there's— if you get it perfect and you never make repair, I don't think that's as good for a kid as messing up and making repair, showing them how that's done, showing them that we're all human and that we get to love our mistakes and that we get to own them. And then that lets us grow. I think that's just as important as being a perfect parent. And that opportunity only comes because we will undoubtedly fuck up our kids in some way. So for me, that's just as important.

I think that that brings to mind two things. One really quick is just the deep wisdom of the Buddhist principle of don't resist things. It's hard to express, but it's like you said, an opportunity that creates a lot of beauty and also is super important because no one in this world is perfect. And so to model what to do with our imperfections is important. The second thing it reminds me of is, um, is the idea that the emotional connection and repair leads to transformation. Yeah, I have noticed a change, a noticeable change in behavior in certain moments. Oh yeah, where it just— she feels a little calmer. Yeah, it's so apparent to me in a way that it had never was before I was a parent, that like the default for a human being is really very sweet and very good.

Yeah.

And there are moments where we get out of whack with that. Everybody gets out of whack. But that's the default. That's the baseline. And that was like, what an amazing thing to learn.

That part is really critical. That lesson for me in Hand in Hand Parenting informed formed the way that we do our work and the way that I related to myself so deeply. Because most people have this incredibly critical voice in their head that goes off all the time. Yeah, there's all sorts of ways that this presents. All of it assumes that you're not good. Yeah, all of it assumes that you're not going to evolve naturally, that you're not here to learn, that you're not in an evolutionary state, but you're essence is good. Like, and when I saw that, when I saw, oh, all she needs is connection, and then her expression in the world is so much goodness, I was like, oh, like, that's where The Connection Course came from.

Yeah.

Which is just like, oh, if people can feel connected, the goodness just happens naturally. If people feel connected with themselves, the goodness just happens naturally. And I see it all the time. That doesn't mean nice. It means good. Like compassionate. Yeah. Good to themselves.

Yeah, totally. And the thing that this connects to that you said earlier too, is it is an intelligent and adaptive thing to do when you're feeling disconnected to trigger loving attention in whatever way you need to or can. There's a huge frame shift of like, my child screwing up. To like, oh, my child's making it obvious to me, who I probably could have noticed earlier if I was paying closer attention, right, what she needs right now.

Yeah.

And I think that has helped me a ton. And I never ever thought about it before that, oh wow, but it's a lot easier to be in loving attention when you have that reframe.

And what you're doing in that moment is you're teaching her this self-talk. Of, oh, you're smart, you're adaptive, you're trying to get to connection. That's a good thing. Instead of, oh, see, when you're angry, you're wrong, you're fucked up, you're making a mistake. How long is it going to be till you make that mistake again? And if what I'm saying sounds to a listener's voice in the head, that's because your mom said that to you or your dad said that to you. Like, that's how that shit goes down. Yeah. And so that reframing you isn't just reframing it for you to make it easier to be compassionate to them. It's reframing it for them so they can be more compassionate to themselves.

And that is— that just got me really misty because my daughter, I don't remember what happened, but I only feel like maybe this was like one or maybe two times where I was like, why are you crying like that? And she's only 2 and a half. She's echoed back to me several times after she cried, why was I crying like that?

Yeah.

Oh my God. The self-talk that I just gave her.

Yeah.

It makes it very real to me when I hear my daughter, who's so young, say back to me the things that I've said to her in those moments. And it's like, I said that to you once or twice and it really stuck with you. You really remembered that. It made a big imprint.

Yeah. It's amazing how that works. Yeah. Yeah. I can— I want to just point one thing out for parents who are like, no, you got to shame your kid. I'll just say the following. Notice that everything you shame your kid for hasn't changed. Yeah, it doesn't fucking change. You shame your kid for something, I guarantee they'll be 16 years old still doing it.

It's weird because it's almost like you could at a distance look at it like pasture-raised hens with like their eggs or whatever. It's like, ah, it's more expensive, but like you should do it this way because it's like healthier or better for the environment or for the child or whatever, right? No, it's like as if those eggs were somehow cheaper. Like way cheaper.

The biggest investment is it's like a savings account. If you put $10,000 in when you're 1 year old and when you're 18, it's better than putting $100,000, depending on the interest rate, but whatever, $50,000 in when you're 16. I have a great relationship with my teenagers. I, I love them. I love hanging out with them. Yeah. I don't have any of the teenage issues that all the other parents I know had, like my college-age daughter came home and was like, how do we get alone time? And we went up to our cabin in the woods. And so it just— the amount of time that you have to spend after 8 years old is so much less than everybody else I've ever seen. There is absolutely an upfront thing, but you're right, even in the upfront investment that feels like, oh my God, I'm taking extra time, it even makes those days easier. Yeah, because you're not fighting with yourself. Because we have that inherent goodness, there is something in all of us when we're shaming our kid that doesn't feel good. I've never met somebody who's shaming their kid and then they're like, I feel great about that. You know, like, oh my God, did you see me shame that kid? That was awesome. I'm such a good parent for shaming that kid.

Like, yeah, it feels like a failure.

Yeah, people feel like shit when they do that kind of thing.

Like So yeah, if there's one thing I could airdrop, like, everyone, it really might be this. Like, this might be the single most crucial intervention point to, like, improve society broadly, because it's the old saying, like, hurt people hurt people kind of a thing.

Yeah, I couldn't think of a better change agent on the planet. Yeah, if everybody raised their kids with that deep attunement and attachment and prioritizing connection, our world would be extremely different in 25 years.

It would. Yeah, it really does tangibly feel like it would, and it does feel incredibly rare. Like, it feels like this kind of thing that you learn it, it has very low cost, very big benefit even in the short run, really huge benefit in the long run, privately and publicly for society. It's one of those things that just sort of feels like an important thing culturally You mentioned something that I think would be cool to touch on is—

call it listening, call it connection, call it stay listening, whatever you want to call it— it changes adults' behavior just as quickly. If you're in a fight with your wife and all of a sudden they feel deeply listened to, the fight changes. If you are in a fight with your employee and they feel deeply listened to, then the fight changes. This isn't a skill set just for kids. And my whole life is so much less dramatic and so much easier and so much less conflict. And everywhere where there's still some semblance of like, it's because there's a way in which people aren't feeling listened to. It's an amazing skill set and it's so simple. Hand in Hand has these 5 tools: stay listening, play listening, and one of them is gentle but firm boundaries.

Yeah.

And what I notice is that if you don't boundary a kid, it's a really bad thing. Like, and you said, like, it's even sometimes like twisting the knife of like, oh yeah, I see that you want that cookie. You can't have that cookie. That boundary. Oftentimes what humans seem to do is they think, oh, I can be loving, but that means I have to be nice. Right. And nice equals not being boundaried.

Yeah.

If you want to have great relationships with people, it's about being very boundaried. And I have a whole episode on boundaries. But boundaries isn't saying no. Boundaries is saying what I'm going to do. Boundaries isn't cutting off love. Boundaries is saying, this is what I have to do so that I can stay with an open heart with you.

In the book, there's not a lot of time spent on how parents can do this together that are married. Yeah, it seems like a lot of it is from the perspective of a single parent with a child. And then the core pillars are stay listening, play listening, setting gentle but firm limits. And then the other one is having a listening partner who is specifically not your spouse. Because the spouse, there's like stakes. We all need support structures beyond our immediate spouse, but For sure. The husband and wife or spousal relationship is like so crucial to this. And I'm curious kind of what you would add on that front.

Yeah. So a couple tricks that Tara and I had. One is that we helped each other see the moments when we weren't able, when we weren't capable. And so that was a really important thing to be able to have an agreement of, oh, if I say this word, you walk away and I walk in.

Yeah.

Because sometimes when you're out of your nervous system, when you're dysregulated, it's hard to see that you're not being useful. The other thing that was incredibly useful was Tara and I made parenting a self-development practice or spiritual practice, and to have someone to talk to about that on a regular basis was huge. So it is, oh, this is what I'm learning. This is what I want to take away. Here's how I want to parent. This is how I want to take the lessons of parenting into the world. This is how I've grown. This is how it's changed for me. That was an incredibly useful part, and it kept us on point with the parenting, but more importantly, it kept us growing and developing as humans. Your kids are going to change you. There's this cool thing that my wife has been reading about recently, and she basically says that the way that it's supposed to go is that a parent is supposed to be putting all their caretaking towards the kid, and the kid is not supposed to be caretaking the parent. They're not supposed to be doing that. And that a lot of the pain that adults have is because they caretake their parents. I'm going to do X, Y, and Z so that Mom is happy. I'm going to take care of Dad's depression or whatever. When the caretaking goes the other way, that creates a lot of problems in adult life. It prevents us from attuning to ourselves. It prevents us from being able to actually be in connection with ourself. There's a whole bunch of stuff there. So when you start taking the parenting as a practice, as something that you get to learn and grow from, because what's actually happening is though all the need all the caretaking is going towards the kid. Both of you are growing. There's a huge amount of development that happens. There's nobody who's walked away from parenting and said, I haven't changed a bit. It doesn't happen. And so having that conscious partner to work with about how you're going to allow parenting to change you and how you're going to just surrender to it the way that I finally approached it. I remember people used to ask me when our kids were a little bit younger, you know, tell me about parenting. And I would say parenting is like a deep tissue massage. If you resist it, you're fucked.

That's a great one. That actually reminds me of— I love sitting and watching Bluey with my daughter occasionally, not too much. And we watch it together. It's a connecting thing for us. And there's an episode where the dad— it's a cartoon, right? It's set in Australia. They're like dogs or whatever. But the dad is like, I got to go to work, blah, blah, blah. The kids want to play. My dad basically is like, all right. And so they play for a little bit and they're playing with— specifically, they have all these elaborate imaginative rituals. And the whole idea of imaginative play is a whole other episode that we could probably do. But, um, the, the marker is basically like, they have all these markers that are different colors and they pretend they're like bananas or whatever. They had a good play, they played for a little while, and then the parting gift from the daughter to the dad is like wrapped up in a little piece of paper or whatever. And he goes and he's talking to his wife and he opens it up And his wife goes, what did she give you? And he opens it and it's the marker. And he looks at it and he's like, everything. And it's just like, yeah, what did our kids give us? Everything.

Everything.

It's so hard to explain that.

Yeah.

Of like what that means. Because it's like, well, how did they give you everything? It's just— but you've changed entirely.

Entirely.

The world is different. You're different. Everything's transformed.

That feels like a great place to stop.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Pleasure.

Amazing to get the chance to chat with you about this and ask you questions, and really beautiful to see a picture of what it looks like down the road. All right, big thanks to Nathan Bachez for joining Joe on the podcast and for reaching out in the first place. And you can reach out to us too. I am @airkistler on X, and Joe is @fu_ Joe Hudson. Let us know what you want to hear about next. The Art of Accomplishment is usually hosted by myself, Brett Kistler, and Joe Hudson, and Monyi Kelly is our production coordinator. Reasonable Volume edited this episode. See you next time. But yeah, so if you're resisting, your fuck is a thing.

Yeah.