How to Help Your Child Be Happy and Amazing

You doing?

You know, he's doing really great. He's walking now, um, uh, very confident. And he's got that— you know how when babies first start walking, they really get to express self-determination? They get to go where they want to for the first time, like everyone else. Yeah, he's got that big, you know, grin on his face as he wanders around like a little zombie. It's, it's a lot of fun.

He's making a lot of eye contact. He's very kind of alert and on the ball and tracking me.

Yeah, you know, and he makes a lot of noises. You know, he's not talking by any means or anything, but he sure makes a lot of noise. And he's louder than his sister was. Maybe it's because it's harder to get a word in edgewise around here with, you know, him being number 4. But very loud, very strong, very sweet. He just wants attention, you know. He's never thrown a real fit. He just wants attention.

Yeah, yeah. And I assume he demands it from Alana as well as from You and Marlo?

Yeah, he's just so big enough now where he started harassing Alana. He'll go up and pull her hair. He doesn't really realize that he's not being gentle and whatnot. So Alana sometimes sits on the other side of the room, but she's a great sister and she loves him a lot. And, you know, very soon I think he's just going to be talking and communicating.

Well, he's clearly communicating already. I mean, he's saying something with that pen.

Yeah, he's showing you his pen. It really is something. We're lucky we have two healthy kids, you know, and the longer I'm a parent, the more I realize how difficult it would be if your children aren't healthy or if you got—

Oh yeah.

We're just so lucky.

I've often said that, you know, before I was a parent, I would read a novel in which the child died and then go, "That's sad." And after a parent, you know, if a novel has a child dying, I have to put out the book, put down the book and stop.

It's just— Yeah.

Such a horrifying thought.

Absolutely. I thought Hollywood was really overplaying the whole parental-child bond. Turns out they weren't.

Right. So how's Alana? What's news with Alana?

News with Alana is that she's progressing a lot. Yesterday she told a joke. She saw my shirt here. It says stout. And she goes, stout, stoote. And I was like, well, that's not correct. She goes, Dad, I was making a joke. So like she's really grasping humor. I think we talked about that last time too, but she's asking questions. Why is that funny? Why are you laughing? But she's doing great.

So she's asking you and Marlo about humor and why, or adults in general, about why they're laughing?

Yeah, like if we're watching a show or a podcast or something on the TV or radio, or I'm talking with Marlo and one of us laughs, she says, why are you laughing? So mom, Mommy made a joke. What was the joke? What's a joke? Joke is when you say something that's funny. You know, and she kind of had a hard time and she's like, well, does that mean it's not true? Because we've taught her, you know, what BS is and not to accept, like if she knows things, if someone tells her something that she knows not to be true, she doesn't have to accept it. We're trying to really reinforce that. Yeah.

You know?

So.

No, it's fabulous. Magat was reading a book on brain plasticity and I realized I've sort of taken for granted, but it's great to read about it. And the fact that I think in the 19th century people were aware of brain plasticity. Certainly William James was, but now modern brain scientists are all big on it. But you know, there's this whole notion of what you're developing and what you're not, which neurons that fire together and so forth. And you know, I think of, there's this common, why all the time, and people sometimes just talk about it as annoying. But I think, you know, the fact that you guys have made it so okay to ask why, because again, children are naturally exploring. And, you know, the way I'm thinking about it right now is many parents inadvertently deliberately stop their children from learning. Children are natural learning machines. And what you guys are doing is you're kind of, you know, adding, adding, you know, water and fertilizer to the learning machine, to mix metaphors a little bit. So Alana's mind is just There's a biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson called Mind on Fire. I often think of, you know, my mind is just on fire with thought all the time. Alana is just this learning machine, and I think it's so great that, you know, she asks about humor and you guys explain it. I know that you are endlessly patient, and I assume Marlo is as well.

Marlo has the patience of a saint. I'm getting better. You know, I was actually pretty patient with her because I'm trying to be very cautious of not You know, I guess it's just being patient, being open-minded. Yeah, we're doing with Alana is that we're really trying to emphasize that if she's into something or wants to learn about something, that there's a process. There's a, there's a, you know, we don't want her to just come to Daddy and say, oh, I want to learn how to do a martial art, or I want to shoot a bow and arrow. And then like, I don't want to pretend like I'm the expert. We go to, we go to YouTube, we go to meetup.com and see if there's meetups. Like, we found an archery meetup. She wants to get into bows and arrows because I've been watching hunting videos with her on YouTube. But I'm trying to get her to understand that there's a process to learning. You know, go straight to an expert if at all possible. Don't try and do it on yourself.

So you're deliberately training her to be an autodidact very explicitly.

Yeah, I mean, and then, you know, she'll say, "Dad, you know, it's whatever, can I watch a show?" I said, "No, how about you read a book?" She says, "Why?" And I go, "'Cause there's so much to learn." And she's kind of adopted that. And so she tells Logan, "Logan, there's so much to learn." It's kind of our thing. But speaking of, uh, your wife, we were watching Poverty, Inc., um, the other day, um, at night. And it's, you know, Alana doesn't get a lot of the content there. She's not, you know, well-versed in porn trade, but we're watching it. And I said, I said, Alana, do you know that Daddy has met that woman? And she thought I was pulling her leg. She goes, you met someone on Netflix? No. So I told her, "I do." I said, "That's Mr. Strong's wife." She goes, "Really? You know her?" And I went up in her estimation because I knew someone on Netflix.

Well, very cool. When Ilana's up, we'll have to have her talk to Magat directly.

Oh yeah, she'd love that.

You know, it is funny. Obviously, I know Magat well, but the first time I saw Poverty, Inc. in a theater on the big screen, there is something really different about seeing even somebody you know intimately On a big screen, there is this sort of weird magic that happens.

Yeah. So something else that's come up is that we've been applying to more and more charter schools just as backups, because we have, you know, we've talked to parents here that say they have like a 1 in 12 chance of getting the schools that you want. And we found a lot of charter schools that emphasize homeschool and distance learning and project learning.

Oh, excellent.

Just applying to all of them. You know, and so that's kind of where we're at with that. And next fall is— I'm trying to gather a cohort of people to do something creative with.

Yeah.

I've got a couple now. One of Alana's friends, that's her age. So I've got maybe 2 or 3 people interested in doing a creative learning, personalized education cohort. I met a family from Estonia here that just moved here the other day. They're also interested, but the daughter's a little bit younger. We're still looking because, you know, Alana learns a lot on her own. She learns so much. Yeah. I don't want to deprive her of that.

Have you set up a meetup or something like that so where you can be the center of this kind of energy?

Well, no, I haven't done anything that formal yet. I've been just reaching out to people that we know.

Yeah. It might be worth— when I started school here in Austin, one of the first things we do is set up, uh, did was set up a meetup on alternative education. And if nothing else, we met a lot of interesting people, um, because the kind of people that are pursuing this, you know, um, are usually pretty aligned, right?

No, that's true. And, um, we found that a lot of the charters— I mean, we found a Jewish charter school. We thought it was kind of interesting. There's one that, you know, he likes talking.

Hey Logan, hey Logan, Logan, how are you?

Can you wait?

Logan, Logan, Logan.

Yeah, when I'm talking, he wants to talk.

Okay.

I love it, you know. But so we're, you know, we've got, I guess we got 6 months before Alana's in school or before school starts next, this year, so.

So you'll get the best, on the one hand there's the charter school options, on the other hand there's something build it yourself. Are there, are there interesting private alternative school options?

I'm sure there are. I mean, we'd love to do Montessori. It's financially a little bit beyond us at the moment.

Got it.

You know, just $10,000 or $12,000 a year is a lot of money.

It's a chunk. It's a chunk. Yeah.

But that would probably be our first option.

So it's only a 1 in 12 chance of getting into a charter school?

That's what a mom told me. I don't know if that's true exactly, but I've heard parents say that they applied to 6 or 8 or 10 different schools and got into 1, got into 2, which isn't real reassuring. I mean, there's a couple that we would pull out our teeth for her to go to because they just seem awesome. There's others that would be lukewarm at best, would certainly push us towards a personalized option or a full-time personalized option. So it's not like we're not going to personalize her education.

Right. If you had a community of like-minded parents, do you think it'd work for you to kind of create a sort of an unschooling co-op or something like that?

Absolutely, absolutely. And I need to get more involved on Meetup. I'm sure there's a lot of people out there. A while ago when I was Googling around, seemed like a lot of the homeschool cohorts and whatnot were Christian-based or had some kind of religious bent. And I'm not interested in that, but you know.

Might also be worth checking out like health food stores and see if there's a bulletin board at the health food store, you know, old-fashioned physical bulletin board.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, you know, just, you know, there is, I bet there are people out there and it's a needle in the haystack problem. It's finding them.

Yeah, well, there's Jordan Shatter too, he's here. We've hung out several times now. His son's great, Odin.

And I'm sure they'd be very, very sympathetic.

Yeah, so go ahead.

So yeah, I would say, you know, it's, it's probably good to, good to kind of go in parallel and try to cultivate a community even as you're looking at the charter schools. If she gets into a great charter school, done. But if not, you've got a great Plan B.

Yeah, absolutely. And all I know is that Alana can read and she's got a love for learning, so I'm not worried anymore.

Right, right. No, really, is there a social— you know, both the social environment and it sounds like almost as a matter of kind of pride and status, she wants to do a school thing of some kind. So, you know, you guys—

But that could quickly pass too. She's now figuring out how a lot of children can be mean at times, you know. Right. She's always shocked by it. Alana's a really nice kid.

Yeah.

And she looks like, wow, she's playing with some girl, and girl would walk up to her and say, I don't want to play with you anymore.

Yeah.

Walk away. And like, she gets really hurt by that stuff. So, you know, I mean, she's got to learn to be tough and learn to— but putting her in a poor school environment would be, I think, a very hard thing for her.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, um, because Logan is maybe reaching his end. Um, let's, let's wind up for this week, but I look forward to talking next week and, uh, figuring out— Logan, bye-bye!

Adios, adios! Wave!

Adios, adios!

Wave!

Bye-bye!

Bye, Michael!

Have a good week. Bye-bye!