No Strollers! Socratic educator Michael Strong with father Ryan Nohea Garcia

Hola. No problem. Did you listen in on my conversation with Alana on no strollers?

You know, I didn't. I walked around the corner and was on the phone just so she has her own space and she can make sure she can say what she really means.

Well, good, good. So then before comparing her ideas with yours, do you want to tell us a little bit about your no strollers philosophy?

Yeah, I call it a theory more so than a philosophy because that's how parenting is, right? You're born, or the kids are born, and you have to start picking theories because there's no pause button and none of us truly know what we're doing. Um, one of my theories that my wife and I have done with zero exception for me and with one small exception for her is we don't use strollers. Um, we're fortunate to have our health and to have healthy children. Someone doesn't have one of those, I got nothing to say to them about strollers. But if you have your health and your kids are healthy, my theory is that less strollers is more. It came about from a conversation I had with some women in Fiji long before I had children. It seemed to make intuitive sense to me. I observed, as a result of that conversation, strollers everywhere I went for the next decade. And determined not to ever use them.

So tell us more about the conversation in Fiji that got this started.

So some women in Fiji were asking me about life in Hawaii. What's it like? What do you have there? You know, it's very different than Fiji, so I was telling them, and one of the women asked if the women in Hawaii push the children in the baby carts. I laughed and said, "Sure, everybody uses strollers," and they just had a laugh. They They couldn't imagine having so little to do that you could sequester yourself behind a cart and push a child who in most cases could be walking. They thought it was funny that people would choose to use a stroller. You know, the woman said that it's a very special thing to carry your child as much as possible. She said that the more you carry them, the more you have to put them down and the sooner they walk and run. She said that carrying a baby close to your ear makes them quiet. And helps them listen because they're always hearing your voice. So that all made sense. I go back and tell my sister who just had a baby, "Why don't you get rid of your stroller? You're doing it wrong." And she told me to, you know, in certain terms, to hold my tongue until I raised a kid for 5 or 6 years without a stroller. So now I've done that and I can talk about strollers.

Excellent, excellent. So what do you see as the principal benefits of the no-stroller approach to child rearing?

Okay, so in hindsight, after almost 7 years of not using a stroller, the principal benefit is that the children develop more physical endurance, they develop more emotional endurance and emotional maturity, and third, the parent becomes, in my experience, a lot closer to the child, has a better understanding of their aptitude, their interests, their capabilities than you otherwise would. I've seen that now with both my children. Logan is 3 and a half. We're seeing that, that gap starting to widen the way it did with Alana and her peers, with Logan and his age group peers, as to his physical endurance, which is the least of the benefits. The emotional maturity is probably the greatest of the benefits, and secondly, close second would be just me as a parent selfishly having a closer relationship than I think I would otherwise.

So Alana specified, you know, the exercise, and, you know, she was very clear about that. And then her number 2 was a closer relationship with her parents, interacting with her parents more. She said she was very articulate about the exercise, but also articulate about, you know, if you're being carried, then you're talking to your parents more. And if you're in a— or if you're walking, you're talking to your parents and other kids more. And so whereas in a stroller, it's more kind of isolating. So she was really articulate about those two points. The emotional resilience did not quite come through as clearly for her, and I even tried to give her leading questions about, are some kids— do some kids give up too easily and that sort of thing? Alana has a very good opinion of her peers. She said, oh no, most kids are like me. I don't think that's true. She's very smart. But because she did a good job on the exercise and the human interaction side, but she could not articulate the emotional resilience side. You know, naively, what on earth does not having a stroller have to do with, you know, kind of emotional resilience? Can you spell that out more clearly for us?

Sure. Well, what it boils down to is that Alana, unlike her peers, doesn't have this idea in her head that anytime she may be fatigued or mentally tired or want to just not climb a hill or have something ailing her, that she can or should be immediately insulated from that, immediately in full at someone else's expense, which is what strollers tend to do. I see children, they're too hot, they crawl in, they have shade. They're thirsty, here's the water. You want food, here's a bag. Don't want to climb up the hill, ride. Tired, sleep. It meets every one of their needs so immediately that I feel that not having it, you know, and I didn't expect this going in, but what I realized is that my kids just don't have this thing in their head that says that any time that they're tired, someone else is going to push. You know, they just, they're a little bit more resilient. It's resulted in more maturity, I think, than her peers, and it's made all the difference.

That makes sense to me. One of the— so just to spell it out, so for instance, Alana seems exceptional with respect to resilience in jiu-jitsu competitions and with respect to reading and with respect to, you know, any kind of— I mean, she seems exceptionally resilient in a lot of things. You would attribute all of this or much of this or part of this to the no strollers policy?

That's a good question. I attribute some. There's a lot of really talented, tough kids in jiu-jitsu in Southern California, and I'm sure some of them were in strollers, right? So, like, it's not the reason why— I mean, her hard work on the mats up to 13 hours a week is the reason why she's got such— she's so good at jiu-jitsu. But when she stepped on the mats at 4 and a half, she had more endurance, physical endurance than her peers. The strollers thing kind of boils down to, I don't think, like what it does is that it gives the kids more time on the ground, more miles on their feet, more seasoning, more experience. They have many more authentic human interactions at a young age than their peers do because they're standing there next to me or they're in my arms They are in the stream of life. They're not apart in the stroller. When a kid's in a stroller, I, as an adult, I don't feel the obligation to like greet the child necessarily. Child is standing next to someone who I'm interacting with or they're carrying them, I'm gonna look them in the eye. Alana has a lot more experience on the ground, on a sidewalk, on the street, talking with people, listening to adult conversations than her peers. And a big portion of that It's just the greater experience she has on the stream of life because she's always been there.

Makes a lot of sense. I would expect that in some ways as well, your no strollers policy is reflective of a broader attitude you and your wife have towards child rearing, which is cultivating independence. So is it accurate that you probably have a similar sort of approach to cultivating independence outside the realm of stroller, no stroller?

We do. I mean, we want our children to be fiercely independent. We want them to be strong and resilient. We want them to be exposed to information that they need at the earliest age possible so they can make the best choices in life. That's our philosophy. You know, we don't hit them, we feed them healthy, we show them lots of love, and we don't use strollers, right? And part of that is that they have to We were at a minor league baseball game in Spokane a couple nights ago with my nieces. And someone had a— it wasn't a heart attack. He collapsed on the ground. My wife's a nurse. So she runs over and she's rendering care. And both my kids ran over and they were standing there watching her. And I'm sure a lot of people would have thought, hey, get the kids out. Get them out. And I left them there as long as they could until other people moved them away because I want them to see it. Watch mom in action. See what life is like. You know, that's part of our philosophy too, is that they got to see it. How else are they going to learn?

Yeah, I suspected that your philosophy is pervasive, which is, I think, a really wonderful thing, and it's helpful to articulate that. One other sort of side issue, when Ilana and I were talking about strollers, she actually made a concession. She said at one point, okay, if you're going to be in a stroller, no electronics. And I thought that was interesting that on her own she's willing to make a concession to strollers every once in a while, but even then she said no electronics because you're not interacting in the environment, that sort of thing. What sorts of conversations have you had with her around electronics? Where does she get these notions?

So we love electronics. We have an iPad for them. I'm pro-app. Alana has spent a lot of time, as has her brother playing apps. There's a couple of apps, I'll give a shout out to one called Leo's Pad from Kidaptive. It's an amazing app, I think it's worth more than kindergarten and every child should play it. So we're pro-app. But in public, if we're out doing something, the extent possible, we want to be interacting, we want to be immersive, we want to understand. Why would we go to the zoo and then you play the iPad at the zoo? That's crazy. You can go play the iPad and I'll go back to work. I mean, we talk about it in those terms. And I see it all the time, whether it's at the dinner table or, you know, I mean, we all see it. It's everywhere. It's just normal that you just give kids electronics. Again, there's so much they can learn from it. I'm not trying to knock electronics. And if anything, I'm the hypocrite because I'm always on my phone and they never are, right? I'm always thinking, always working, always consuming information. But I do want them to learn how to interact with people and to to make their own fun and to enjoy something where they're at.

So that makes a lot of sense to me. And I want to wrap it up and keep these short because you and I have a lot to talk about, about educational philosophy and child rearing. But I do want to point out that I'm very impressed when anybody, but especially somebody as young as Lana, spontaneously makes new distinctions. So the fact that, you know, my whole line of questioning is questioning was around strollers, no strollers, and the fact that she spontaneously, you know, she's thinking through the whole interaction thing, articulate, much as you are about this, and that she can articulate that if you're going to be in a stroller, stay off the app, was delightfully mind-blowing for me. So, right, thanks.

Now, at the risk of going long, I gotta address a couple criticisms because anyone listening to this is gonna be pulling out their hair. My mom thinks I'm out of my mind. She thinks the stroller's got nothing to do with it. Correlation isn't causation, and why not enjoy the convenience now and then? And I totally disagree with her. What Alana being on the ground, Alana and Logan just not using strollers with me and just having more life experience has allowed them to, I think, meet their potential in terms of what good behavior or critical thinking or human interaction or speaking skills can be for their age group. It hasn't done something super. I just think other children are being held back. I think that they've just been able to hit their, their potential in the same way that eating healthy food allows a child to reach the maximum height potential, given what nature says they can be. That's what I think Nostralis is doing, and I don't think it's a big deal if you're in the country or if you're involved in some activity where you're learning these things, surfing, You know, you learn a lot of grit and endurance during that. But if you're not, you're in the city like most people and you're healthy, get rid of the strollers.

No, I completely agree. One of the things I like about your approach to child rearing is that for me, um, it's not about this policy or that educational, this app or that school. It's none of that. It's what is the kind of totality of experience And the way both you and Alana think and talk about the no strollers is it's about the totality of experience. You know, certainly the exercise, but the human interaction piece, and just both of you observing that you're interacting a lot more with parents and with students, with peers and with the environment. And I look at how we— who we become is made up of millions, countless moment-by-moment-by-moment interactions. And so this is why I'm a fanatic about let's focus on the habits and attitudes we're cultivating, what we give attention to and what not. And gradually, I think that's how you raise extraordinary young people. So I'm totally on board with you. And again, for me, it's this— No Strollers is a nice, concise encapsulation of a broader philosophy, and it's a simple kind of methodology to introduce one, I think. But one of my big pet peeves is I think most American kids are raised to be way too dependent. And that's why I focus on independence. And I see this as kind of a simple life hack for developing far more independent young people physically, intellectually, emotionally, and so forth.

Yeah, and it gives you a good workout too. People ask if it's hard not to use strollers. And that's not the word that I choose to use, but you do pay some dues. Like at that baseball game that I referenced, I carried a 37-pound sack of rocks for the better part of 3 hours. Because that's how it goes. You pay some dues. You talk enough smack about strollers, you pay some dues.

All right. Well, we'll check in over the week about topics for next week.

Sounds good.

But thanks for the no stroller policy, Ryan.

Hey, take care. Thank you, Michael.