Homeschooling and Preparing Your Kids for the New World with Stephan Spencer & Orion Talmay

In this Episode

• [03:33]Orion highlights the challenges of homeschooling, including the time-intensive nature of creating curriculum, organizing field trips, and socializing the child.
• [07:35]Stephan discusses the historical context of the school system, tracing its roots to the Prussian Army’s methodology for indoctrinating children.
• [26:16]Stephan talks about the significance of intention and attention in parenting, emphasizing the need for parents to be present and engaged with their children.
• [30:52]Orion elaborates on the significance of spending quality time with the child, nurturing their curiosity, and fostering their interests.
• [40:14]Orion Talmay shares her three top tips for being a stellar parent: trusting intuition, teaching children to say no to unwanted interactions, and practicing gratitude.
• [41:33]Orion emphasizes the need for parents to heal themselves to positively impact their children, noting that the child’s well-being is closely linked to the parents’ emotional and spiritual health.
• [44:11]Stephan adds his three tips: expecting greatness, reading to the child throughout their life, and maintaining a growth mindset.

Jump to Links and Resources

About Today’s Show

In this interview, we’re just gonna have a conversation about the future of education for kids and how homeschooling brings about a viable, adaptable kid in this AI era.

Some kids grow up in the system and turn out amazing, with amazing lives. 

But it’s a system designed to make little worker bees. There are exceptions. Put a kid through Montessori or Waldorf, and you’ll have a more adaptable, more free-thinking, more independent kid, versus a public school system where they’re trained to stop whatever they’re doing, whatever creative work they’re in.

As soon as the bell rings, they’re being trained. Which is what it is. But when we, as parents, opt outta that program when it’s legal and allowed, we have to have our alternatives. And for us, for you and I, it’s homeschooling, which means that’s a lot of effort, especially on your part, ’cause you’re taking the helm on that finding curriculum, and field trips and homeschooling groups to be a part of.

It’s a full-time job. It’s not easy. It’s so much easier to just drop your kid off at 8 AM or 9 AM and come pick them up at 3 PM. Some people do six, but the average parent spends weekdays. About two hours a day with their kids because there is a lot of preparing them for school, and then school, and then a few hours.

Then they go to their afternoon activities for a few hours, and that’s it. Now, not everyone has decided to do so. It’s not for everyone, because you need dedication and time to invest in it.

It’s a big commitment. What are some of the things that you’ve had to do that you didn’t realize were so time-intensive investments?

One of the things we do as parents to help train our son to be more proactive, confident, and disciplined is to read the Way of the Warrior Kid book series to him multiple times.

Well, especially now that he is a little older and it’s not just like a little baby that you need to entertain, and there’s an actual curriculum to teach him. It takes more time and effort. Sometimes, in homeschooling, if you’re lucky, you get great groups of kids, but sometimes I have to travel to socialize him, and that takes up a lot of my time. 

That said, “Oh, and I’m homeschooling. I have control over who he’s hanging out with and control over him not being bullied.” A lot of kids are suffering from issues, especially among girls, like cattiness, comparison, and bullying. 

You’re not gonna hear about it ’cause the kid is too embarrassed, ashamed, afraid, whatever it is. They often don’t tell you what’s really going on—one of the things we do as parents to help train our son to be more proactive, confident, and disciplined is to read him the Way of the Warrior Kid book series multiple times. 

You do that. 

But you’ve read some of it to him, but I’m the main one who reads and rereads those books to him.

Why do you like those books? 

If you wanna teach your kid how to stand up to a bully in a safe way, to be situationally aware without feeling intimidated. This is a great role model. This fictional kid, Marc, is the hero in these books. He starts as a real Wimpy Kid in the first book, working his way up from not even being able to do a single pull-up, getting laughed at, ridiculed, and bullied, to being one of the strongest kids in the class. But it takes a lot for him and a lot of dedication. 

His uncle, who is a Navy SEAL, invests a lot of time in teaching this young kid to really step up. It’s a lot of, not just effort, but pushing beyond comfort zones, really, really pushed me on comfort zones. So teaching that to your kid in a story format where he’s rooting for the main character, and it’s not just you kind of preaching to your kid, like, “Hey, you need to step up, you need to say something, you need to whatever.”

Like, no, this is great storytelling from Jocko Willink, the author, who is a legit Navy SEAL and really built, jacked guy you don’t wanna mess with, and he’s weaving all these great stories into a book with lessons. Your kid ends up learning to become more disciplined, more proactive, more confident, stronger, more dedicated, and so forth, and to adopt a code—a warrior code —that is his or hers, potentially for life. 

This is really great stuff. I’m a big fan of those books. Nothing by chance, but I came across an interview with Mark Zuckerberg, whom I’m not a fan of—I just happened to come across an interview with him. He shared that this book series was transformational for his kid, and I thought this feels like a message for me. I don’t normally like hearing what Mark Zuckerberg has to say, but this felt like a message for me and our son. 

Let’s go deeper into homeschooling. What do you think? You mentioned that schools were made to create worker bees. Can you elaborate on that?

It all started 100-200 years ago, when the Prussian Army developed a methodology to indoctrinate kids. They’re very impressionable, of course, at a young age. So the sooner you can get them into a system—let’s say, to create soldiers or factory-line workers—you want to get them in early. And one dark thing, but it is what it is, so the women’s suffrage movement, way back in the day, when women didn’t have the right to vote, and then they did, actually, The Rockefeller Foundation funded a lot of the efforts to get women the right to vote. 

It wasn’t for a noble reason. It was so that women would be in the workforce and the children would be in the school system from a young age, in working families. Where’s the kid gonna go? They have to go to school from a young age, and then you program them. That’s a conspiracy theory, and that’s really dark and dystopian or whatever. But the fact of the matter is that’s what happened. All these women entered the workforce, and all these kids entered the school system, and they grew up to become factory workers, coal miners, and everything else. 

And when AI completely changes how kids get. I don’t know when the adults grow up —what jobs are gonna be left for humans when these are already taking all of them? You can’t use the standard school system anymore. The indoctrination that may have worked for the system a hundred years ago is gonna totally break down. It’s already starting to show its cracks.  

I’m going to indoctrinate him through AI. 

Who knows? So we’ve found a place where we can legally homeschool. We have paperwork we have to fill out. It’s not a slam dunk that you’ll get a yes from the government, but you have to apply, get approved, and then you get to teach your kids in a way that you think is gonna prepare them for this new world.

What do you think are the pros and the cons of homeschooling? Not all butterflies and rainbows. 

It’s important to have the positive expectancy that if you show up with a bulletproof vest on and the universe is looking for opportunities to use it, things are going to go well and that everything is for the best.

A song, it’s a Maroon 5 song. 

No, it is not. 

No, “it’s not easy.” But the good stuff in life isn’t easy, so what you get by investing all this time and effort in your child. 

Let’s start with the cons.  What’s not good about it? 

It’s super time-intensive. If you have two working parents, it seems impossible. So you’ve had to really drop your career business and sideline it to make room for all the time you invest in our son. So that’s a con, but I don’t know. That’s the main one. 

Another con is that when you are in school. You have those, like the school’s WhatsApp groups. It’s very local, and you can have, especially where we live, like tons of playdates.

That’s not a given. You have to work for that, just like you have to work for it. Doing this in a homeschooling environment.

But it’s much more accessible.

If you act as if you’re active in the PTA, the parent-teacher association in the local school district or something, you get on WhatsApp groups, make friends, and so forth, but it’s not a given that a kid will be a total loner at school. And you can be totally isolated, just beavering away at your business or at your job. I didn’t make time to be part of the community at that school. And it would be the same as far as the isolation that you’d feel by homeschooling. 

You have more accessibility, and then the kid is with other kids for hours on end, which has both pros and cons. 

Yeah, because then they’re the bullies and the social, they’re with the kids. They don’t like either. And these kids can be really bad influences. You get kids smoking and doing drugs at young ages, involved in crime, who knows? And it’s some of the best schools in the country, and it’s some of the best neighborhoods. You still have that, so you can’t completely shelter your child. 

Even with homeschooling, you can’t completely shelter your child; eventually, when they grow up. But they are. I feel like homeschooling kids is more—I don’t know—’cause I sometimes get new babysitters, and they always comment on how switched Tony is. I think it’s because we, you know, he hangs out with adults a lot as well. So he’s more, ’cause when kids learn just from kids—like they’re the same level—kids learn more from adults; they expand a little more. 

And it’s also the way that we show up for him. And the way we interact with him—we don’t treat him like a little kid. We treat him like this wise little being. 

Yeah, he knows, like he sits at a table and in a new environment, and he will just speak up and join a conversation, which is rare. Usually, kids are like, “Oh, the adults are talking.” But he sees himself.

You get what you expect out of not just your kid, but life. If you wish your kid to get bullied, you’ll probably have a kid who’s being bullied if you expect the best always to occur.

That’s sad, like it’s not always about expectations. ‘Cause you can have the greatest parent and the greatest kid and still gonna be bullied. Especially if the kid is a bright light, they’re like a bully magnet. Like, “Why are you like this? And I’m not like that.” 

Like a bug light, nonetheless, it’s important to have positive expectancy: if you show up with a bulletproof vest on and the universe is looking for opportunities to have that bulletproof vest used, things are going to go well, and everything is for the best. Ultimately, if you believe that’s how the creator has arranged this reality game that we play, then you’re gonna have a better outcome. Not just parenting and your kids’ lives, but in everything. 

To get your kid outside a lot is great.

Another positive thing about homeschooling is that I control the curriculum. I can share my values with him, meaning I can take him for many, many days in nature, connecting with animals and not being in touch with trees, but barefoot on the ground, and not just sitting in an air-conditioned classroom for hours and hours on end without moving. So, there’s more moving.

The fluorescent lights, which are bad for focus and health, are used for many things. To get your kid outside a lot is great. 

Now I see a lot of things in some schools, like synthetic playgrounds. I don’t like that at all. Kids do soccer on plastic grass, and then they inhale that plastic. It’s terrible.

Yes, the fake grass, the plastic. We get enough microplastics. It’s not good. AstroTurf. If you think about how you can foster curiosity in your kid—and that kid has a genuine interest in it—it’s not your interest; that’s overwhelming. The kid wanted to play in a band, but you never got to.

You’re really, really encouraging your kid to play the drums or something that’s your dream, not his or hers. So, be sure to separate that. But if they have a genuine interest, it’s something really —like an extracurricular, academic, or sports-related activity—it doesn’t matter. Foster it, encourage it, set up field trips, and create opportunities for them to really excel in that area. It doesn’t have to be something that you have any expertise in. 

You just bring them to the environments and to the people who have that expertise. If it’s ballet, if it’s a musical instrument, if it’s construction equipment or whatever, like you can set up field trips, you can introduce them to people who have construction equipment, or if it’s fire trucks or whatever, take ’em to the local fire station. Have them meet the fire chief. 

We do things like that. We went to check on the fire station. 

n to meet beekeepers and learn all about them. 

Not by learning about bees from a photo. Take them to the freaking beekeeper and show him how it’s done. 

Extract the honey from the hives so you can spin. There’s a spinning thing where you put the hive.

I don’t know what the slice of the hive into a machine that spins the honey out is, and I never knew that. It’s really cool that you learn stuff too. 

Oh, you learn a lot. When you’re taking your kid to these field trips, what I like is that a lot of time, like homeschooling moms, will come together. We’ll get like a private tour of this and a private tour of that, and those are different opportunities for your child that you probably wouldn’t find in a classroom—going to the museum, like 20-30 kids altogether walking around. But when you’re in a small group or with your own child, it’s a bigger opportunity to learn and experience.

They can actually go to the exact exhibits they care about and skip the ones they don’t.  Instead of 30 kids all going in a group from thing to thing to thing to thing, we went to a discovery museum today with our little one. 

They had a LEGO place. Touched the LEGO and the lava rock. Go on the Otter slide or watch the amazing movie about saving the oceans. 

Let’s talk a bit about how AI can — and cannot, or should — and should not —be used in the curriculum. We let our son use ChatGPT in voice mode to talk; it’s also dangerous. 

It’s very dangerous. He’s already talking to Alexa. He’s already talking to ChatGPT. But I’ll try with Siri. I’ll try to minimize that exposure. He’s still very young. I want him to be a kid. I don’t want him to rely on machines. How much time per week? A few minutes. 

Like 5-10 minutes a week. 

A week. 

Because what happens if they use it every day? 

It became a bigger authority than their parents, their teachers, and even their own critical minds. 

It speaks with such authority and such certainty. It’s easy to get fooled. What’s the stat about the hallucination rate? The lying is—15% to 30%, something like that.

You’ve got to use your brain; work that muscle, or you’re gonna lose it.

We had a conversation with ChatGPT about something, and it was obvious it was a lie. Obvious lies. And it just kept lying, lying, lying. It was me and our son. There was like, “Hmm.” And our son is like, “I think you’re lying.” 

It’s not that it’s intentionally misleading. It’s programmed to placate you. 

Not only that, when it comes to certain global narratives, it is programmed to seal some secrets and keep you thinking like the mainstream. 

It’s not encouraging critical thinking in ways outside the narrative.

Not only that, it’s actually gonna lie to protect the narrative. 

So anyway, this is for if you don’t like the angle of a conspiracy theory or whatever. Just know that it’s not good for your child’s mental health. It’s not good for anyone’s mental health. MIT researchers found that ChatGPT users showed lower brain activity and reduced blood flow to areas of the brain involved in critical thinking.

So you actually atrophy—lose critical thinking skills—as you turn off part of your brain and relegate the thinking to the machine. So don’t do that—still add stuff up in your head. Don’t just whip out your calculator or ask ChatGPT to answer everything for you. You gotta use your brain, like work that muscle or you’re gonna lose it, and that’s what your kid needs to learn this, ’cause if they’re following the school systems. 

Now, AI is inside the school systems, and they are gonna implement it a lot. And also lots of TV screens inside the school system. 

With lots of quick cuts, like not even three seconds go by, and it’s the next cut. Next cut. Next cut. It changes the visual so quickly that your brain is flooded with dopamine—addiction mode. And if you don’t get that variety. Then they get bored just watching a regular documentary if it doesn’t have all that quick-cut editing. It’s terrible. It’s awful for their mental health and terrible for their discipline.

If you can’t even stand in line at the grocery store for a couple of minutes without whipping out your phone, you’re modeling a really dangerous and deleterious habit to your kid.

You have to be okay with getting bored. You actually have to get bored. It’s good for your brain. The default mode network needs to come online, and you need to allow it to do so. If you’re feeding your brain something entertaining, all that spare time, there’s not a moment of boredom.

Sometimes when our son says, “I’m bored,” I’m like, “Oh, great. This is a great opportunity for you to be creative. It’s good to be bored.” It’s great to be bored. Because of boredom, he will be exhausted and then, all of a sudden, create something really unique out of boxes. Like, “Oh, I made a little hotel or, or a tower or a little city.” And so cool because he was bored. 

And we, as parents—you as the listener or viewer—have the responsibility to be good role models. Because kids watch how you behave. And if you’re watching shorts and you’re not letting yourself get bored, get into the default mode network, and do the stuff that’s not constantly giving you dopamine hits, they’re looking at that, and they’re gonna model that. But if you’re watching shorts, you can’t even stand in line at the grocery store for a couple of minutes without whipping out your phone; you’re modeling a really dangerous and deleterious habit to your kid. 

I saw another cartoon. It showed the parents on their phones, and the kids were just looking around or reading books. The kids are reading books, and the parents are on their cell phones. 

And of course, it’s only a matter of time before the kid’s gonna be on a cell phone too and modeling that same behavior.

Not only that, but kids’ short attention spans today are because they’re on screens all the time. They eat a lot of sugar, get short-tempered, and then the parents get mad at them for being short-tempered. You just put them on screens all the time. You give him lots of sugar. What do you expect? 

Ultra-processed food, as well, not just sugar. It’s all the chemicals, all the additives. It’s really bad for us. And all the microplastics. It’s everything. Even you think, “Oh, I won’t give plastic bottles with juice or liquid or whatever in them. I’ll give them aluminum cans.” That’s not aluminum cans, that’s plastic. The plastic coating inside they’re eating or drinking out of a little plastic bag. I’ve seen a video on YouTube or whatever of someone who caused aluminum to melt or dissolve through some chemical reaction.

And there was this bag left off—the coating. That’s on the inside because you cannot have that coating. It’s aluminum, so you need a plastic coating. They’re consuming that plastic coating. Everything is plastic, and we’re ending up with—I read somewhere that it’s like an average for an average person.

It’s about a credit card-sized amount of microplastic just in our brains. So even if that’s not accurate and it’s half that, or a fifth of that, or whatever, we still have a massive amount of microplastics in our bodies compared to someone 50 years ago. It’s an enormous amount, and we need to do what we can to mitigate it and reduce it for ourselves and our kids.

That’s very hard, especially now that we’re traveling and we do drink from plastic bottles.

It’s also more expensive to get the glass bottles, but it’s all a choice. Where are you gonna spend your money?

It’s not like we’re perfect. We do a lot of things we just shared that aren’t amazing, but we try to do less and less every day. And we have the intention and the attention on how to be better as people, as parents. You can’t be a hundred percent all the time. 

Instead of thinking about what you’re spending your time on—whether it’s with your kids, at work, or in the gym. It’s actually better to think of your spending, your intention, and your attention.

You think about this as a good model for life: instead of thinking about what you’re spending your time on—whether it’s with your kids, at work, in the gym, or whatever, it’s actually better to think of your spending, your intention, and your attention.

So, attention, you know, that’s where you’re putting your focus. You can pay partial attention to one thing and another. Of course, neither thing ends up working out so well. You get what Cal Newport refers to as ‘attention residue.’ You just check your phone for a second. Did you only take a second to do? No, it’s about 20 to 25 minutes of attention residue where your brain is partially occupied by the thing that you just looked at. So you saw the text. Your boss wants to talk to you about something, and now part of your brain is occupied for the next 25 minutes on that little text you just checked for 10 seconds. Was it worth it?

No. Don’t do it. So you got your attention. Give presence and 100% attention. That’s so much more important than just the time with the kid. Is it the attention that you give and the intention? You could have a really lame intention, or you could have a really powerful intention. Your intention, let’s say, is to take your kid and your family to a family reunion and see these family members for a whole year, some of them.

You are gonna go with just a regular old intention. Yeah, we’ll reconnect, have a nice meal, play some games on the lawn, in the park, or wherever, and then we’ll go home. That’s lame. An intention where there’s one family member with whom we don’t get along, I should apologize, share from my heart or tell them that I love them —I’ve never said that to them. That’s a whole different level of intention to tell somebody you’ve never said, ‘I love you’ and ‘your family,’ to them. And maybe it’s because they never said to you that, and so you didn’t want to tell them that, but it’s ’cause it’s really uncomfortable this time you’re gonna do it at this family reunion. What an intention. So, attention and intention. 

How do you apply that to our son? How are you more intentional in your parenting? 

I look at him as an equal. I don’t see him as a little kid that I’m having to train and educate. I see him as a teacher to me as much as I see myself as a teacher to him. So, my intention is for us to co-elevate.

Well, I look at him as an equal. I don’t see him as a little kid that I’m having to train and educate. I see him as a teacher to me as much as I see myself as a teacher to him. So, my intention is for us to co-elevate. 

But you’re still his dad, like you can’t always see him as an equal. 

I still have to tell him what to do when he’s not listening. 

Let me help you come to the table by taking your Legos away.

So if I need to help you focus, I’ll put it up on the shelf until after dinner.

So, that’s not equal. 

Okay. In that moment, I’m taking charge. But generally speaking, my frame of reference is that this kid is an amazing soul who I could learn from.

And what do you learn from him? 

Wow, so much. About how to show up in the world in a way that is full of positivity, joy, and fun, and making things more fun and just like looking for opportunities to create fun outta nothing outta nowhere, out of Amazon boxes. I love his joy, and his Joie de vivre means ‘joy of living’ in French.

As you get older, you get curmudgeonly. I don’t want to be that way. I want to be like, just have that Joie de vivre in everything that I do if it isn’t. Given that, then why am I even doing it? I mean, unless I absolutely have to. If you know you have to pay bills or whatever, you can set ’em up on autopay so you don’t have to spend much time on it. But things that you don’t get the, like, that don’t spark joy to use Marie Kondo’s terminology. Marie Kondo has a great book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. So if something doesn’t spark joy for you, why are you investing your intention and attention in it? 

But we do with the kids. They get so much joy out of the simplest things, and that’s because they are in the moment and they have so much imagination. That just inspires me too. Another thing that inspires me is that sometimes, as parents, we misbehave, and what inspires me is how quickly he forgives. How quickly he’s like, “Oh, I did something bad.” And if I do something bad, I will, 99% of the time, come and apologize, saying, “Hey, I shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have treated you that way. I should have said it differently. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

He just forgives so fast. I’m like, “Wow, if I were more forgiving like that, my life would be better.” It’s like it jumps back into this beautiful love, and positivity can be pushed down if they are in an environment that suppresses them. I saw a statistic that shows, like pre-K kids’ curiosity for learning, that 95% of kids’ curiosity for learning went down to 25% four or five years later. So if we can keep our kids in an environment that elevates them, that nurtures them, that allows their curiosity to be met and their needs to be met, and that allows them to explore places together. 

Or even just like looking in their eyes and listening to them, because you increase their self-confidence by letting them know that what they are saying is important. Now, when a kid is lost in a class of 2030, sometimes they are not heard. Sometimes they are more afraid to be heard. Yeah, sometimes the teachers don’t care as much as parents would. 

The system doesn’t support fostering creativity. If the kid has a particular interest in a subject, it doesn’t matter. Like when the bell rings, you get up and you leave. You go to the next class, and it could be horribly boring and useless, yet it’s treated equally. 

I wrote my best songs in math class because it was so boring. But I would like to stare and start writing.

What are some practical takeaways for our listeners or viewers so they can help their kids acclimate to this new AI-driven future, foster their creativity, take field trips and get subject matter experts in the areas they care about? 

So first, if your kid is in school and you’re listening to us and you’re thinking to yourself, “Oh, easy for them to say because they can afford it. I cannot afford it, whether it’s my job at an admin job or this or that.” It’s totally okay. But now you have the awareness, and I think what kids get at home will shape them the most. When you have time with your kid, make sure this is time with them. Look into their eyes, listen to them more, learn from them, nurture them, and even take some days off from school to visit museums together, on field trips. 

Nurture your mechanics, if they’re interested in cars and do special things with them, because they grow so fast, and you’re not going to get that opportunity back in the blink of an eye. He was a baby, and now he’s like this mature, beautiful young boy who surprises me every day with how much he’s growing. I am very happy that I had the intention of spending this pressure time with him. It’s time you’re not gonna get back. So, mind what they are watching? 

Limit the amount of TV or YouTube video watching they do, because anything more than, let’s say, a half hour a day is too much. 

And take your time, and go —I don’t know —play ball.

Read books to them. 

Read books. Go to the playground.

You could read the Way of the Warrior Kid books. There are five of them. You could make art together. There’s a whole bunch of The Tuttle Twins books that teach things like entrepreneurship, how the government works, how laws are made, and how incentives are baked into the system that aren’t aligned with your best interests, the consumer’s, or the constituents’ best interests. This is not stuff you’re gonna learn in school.  

Teach them the stuff they don’t learn in school, or at least let them know about it: Mindfulness, meditation. If my son is getting really emotional or frustrated, I will help him get back in his body, ’cause when we get all crazy and angry, we kind of almost leave our bodies, especially for young kids who have a harder time regulating their emotions. 

So I bring him back with mindfulness. He will be really upset, and I’m like, “Hey, where’s your toe? Do you feel your toe? Do you feel the pants on your legs? How’s the temperature? Is it cold? Is it hot?” It’s a pattern interrupt. Or like, “Why are you asking me those weird questions?” And I switch it up so it’s not the same. 

And then it’s mindfulness. It takes them from this place of like, “Hey, wait, I do have a body. I’m here. It’s not so bad. I’m gonna be okay.” And today he got a little upset because his little girlfriend came and knocked down his beautiful box hotel. He made this gorgeous box hotel and decorated it with shells. We had an excursion to the gemstone store; he bought some gems and felt their energy. That was a great experience for him.

He decorated this beautiful box tower, and she accidentally knocked it down, and he was so upset. So my first reaction was like, “Hey, don’t worry, you can just do another one.” But then I stopped myself, stepped closer to him, and kneeled, looking into his eyes. I’m like, “Why are you really, really upset about this tower that you made? It was really beautiful, and you really wanted to impress your friend with that. But hey, she saw it.” Just that moment of being with him, and maybe giving him a new idea, I’m like, “Maybe you and her can build something more beautiful together.” 

Instead of brushing it off and giving a band-aid solution, just acknowledge his feelings and how tough it was for him to have his beautiful creation destroyed. Just that brought him back to balance, and he was coming down real quickly, and then they built, instead of a tower, a hotel together. An American hotel. That’s what he said—building an American hotel. 

That’s funny. Alright, so any particular resource you want to recommend? YouTube channels? Books? 

There is a great YouTube channel. It’s called Homeschool Pop. Even if you’re not homeschooling, it is just funny, and it teaches them all sorts of things: math, science, and everything. I also recommend monitoring what they’re seeing and staying on top of it, ’cause if you just leave them alone with YouTube, they can go to places that aren’t so good for them. 

There’s YouTube Kids, which is a gated experience.

But even in the gated experience, you have to monitor. The biggest resource is to be resourceful. If your kid is interested in something, it means they’ve got a talent and a passion that add some fire to it and give them the resources to learn more about it and to excel in the things they love, not only in the things they should know.

Find subject matter experts in that thing. They have a passion for organizing field trips, even if it’s just you and the kid, and you have to take them outta school for the day. 

Spend time with your kid. Not just being in the same space, but actually spending time with him. Be present with them. 

Good stuff. You’re a Superman. 

Stop it. Continue. 

Alright, well, that was a good episode. What are your three top tips for living a stellar parent, let’s say for this one? 

Being a stellar parent. Trust your intuition. Trust your heart. You know the answers. Trust that when you have an instinct to do something, whether it is protecting your son.

Or to keep them away from something or somebody.

Yes. If that uncle doesn’t feel really good, or even that nice neighbor. Teach your kids that it’s okay not to let people touch them or share their things or their bodies with others. 

If somebody puts an adult’s hand out to shake the kid’s hand.

Shake their hand and touch you.  Don’t force them to feel their hair. Give them, “Oh, you’re so cute.” 

Had ’em on the top of the head. Your kid shouldn’t know how to say no to that if they don’t want that. They don’t have to extend the hand. They don’t have to shake somebody’s hand. 

Some people get really surprised. I remember when we went to a lawyer’s office, we had to fix something, and the lawyer wanted to shake our son’s hand, and he just was like, “Not, not, not.” He didn’t do. 

He would just look at him, without shaking, without extending his hand. And that’s totally okay. It’s totally okay. In fact, this is training him to trust his intuition from a young age, and every kid should be taught to do so. 

The third one is to really see them, being really appreciative of the fact that you are a parent, that you have so many people who are trying to be parents, and they can’t succeed. And if you have this treasure, just be so grateful, and sometimes it’s hard. Yes, absolutely. But I think actually the main thing is. I remember when, when, when our son was really tiny and I had some struggles. I would, I would go to a coach or a healer, and I was like, “Hey, can you send him healing? Hey, can you help him with this and this?” And something I kept hearing over and over again. It is like when you heal yourself; they get healed.

I heard it somewhere that your kid is con as a mom, your kid is connected to you. He or she is in your field until age 13. So whenever you’re healing yourself—whatever you’re healing in yourself, whatever work you do on yourself—that affects. Those that involve the lineage in general —the people who came before you and after you—but it also really shapes and changes your son, especially for moms, our cells and our kids’ cells are all like, we still like, he’s got some cells of mine. I still have some of his, because he grew up here.

So when you are healing yourself, you are healing him or her. And even if it’s, I think also energetically, even if it’s not your biological child, because you have created that field of nurture of, of parent-child dynamic, I still believe that that is true to also adopted kids where the parents’, mom or dad, when they heal themselves, when they become better person, when they behave better, when they’re happier, when they are calmer, obviously it, it affects the child. It can go even deeper on an energetic,  emotional and spiritual level as well. 

I love what you said about actually healing your ancestors and your lineage by healing yourself. To be true, you can actually change not just the future, but also the past, through your prayers, through your intention, through your. You’re elevating your consciousness. 

How about you? What are your three top tips to live in a stellar, alive way when it comes to parenting? 

Expect greatness. Your child is a spark of God. And if you expect greatness, not in a way like, “Hey, this better happen,” but in a way that has that knowingness: that this is a child of God, your child, but it’s also a child of God. And that means that he or she is capable of greatness; 

The spark of light in that child could illuminate an entire dark room or a dark city. 

Another is to read to your kid even into their teenage years. I started reading to our son when he was an infant, even before he came out. I read to him; I was talking to him; I was reading stories through her belly—and why not?

And so if you can continue that into adulthood, I’ve read on occasion—not very often—but I have adult kids from a previous marriage, and I read stories or books over Zoom, over FaceTime. Not often, but when I do, it’s really meaningful. It’s really connecting. And we also do book club things, where we read books separately and talk about them on Zoom. I have multiple daughters who will get on a weekly Zoom call. It’s a really powerful way to stay connected. 

And then the last one, I guess, would be to be an always learning.

Always a growth mindset, because you’re modeling that. And when you stagnate, you’re modeling stagnation. When you’re growing, when you’re curious, when you’re always learning and getting better at things, you’re trying new things—new foods, new tools with AI—and adapting, it’s not survival of the fittest. That’s a misnomer. Survival of the most adaptable. That’s what Charles Darwin had figured out. It’s the survival of the most adaptable, not the strongest, not the fittest. So, teach your kid to be adaptable. 

That’s a wrap. Thanks for listening.

Thank you so much.