9 Rules for Parents by Dr. Jordan Peterson #2025

You have little kids for four years, and if you miss it, it's done. That's it. That period between zero and four, zero and five, there's something about it that's really... It's like a peak experience in life. And it isn't much of your life, you know, because you think of it as a long time. It's not that long, man. Four years goes by so fast you can't believe it. And if you miss it, it's gone. When you have children, you have to encourage them. You have to encourage them to take risks. Because they have to grow up and take their place in the world. You can't protect them too much, because if you do, you destroy them. That's the motif of Hansel and Gretel. Like two kids lost in the woods, they find the gingerbread house. That's a little bit too good to be true, right? It's not only shelter when you need it, but it's candy. What lives inside the house that's too good to be true? The witch that devours you, right? That's excess compassion. So you don't want your mother to do everything for you, that's for sure. There's a rule if you're dealing with the elderly in extended care homes. Don't do anything for your clients that they can do themselves. Because you undermine their autonomy. And so there's a certain amount of harshness that goes along with that, just as there is if you're a good mother. Because you have to separate yourself from your child and allow them to make hurtful mistakes. I mean, it's very difficult if you're a compassionate person to stand back far enough to let your children take necessary risks. Children used to have multiple siblings. And siblings toughen you up. Because there's tremendous competition in families among siblings. And they had younger parents who had fewer resources. Now parents are older, first of all. And second, they're more resource-rich. And so they're more likely to schedule their children to death, in some sense, to provide them with all the opportunities that they feel would be useful. And that's understandable. The notion that children are somehow a burden. What are they interfering with? What have you got to do that's so important? You're going to drink 2,000 less 26's of vodka with your idiot friends at the bar. That's your brilliant alternative to growing up? And I do believe it's very hard for people to grow up if they don't have children. And people hate it when I say that. Because there are other ways of growing up. But it's very hard. And the reason it's hard is because you are not mature until someone else clearly matters more than you do. And if you aren't narcissistic beyond redemption, that definitely happens to you when you have children. And then you're an adult. Even if you're not that good at it. And as long as that other person is now something you would die for, and really, or something that you would live for, then you're an adult. Your job as a parent is to make your child socially desirable by the age of four. You want to burn that into your brain. Because people don't know that. That's your job. And here's why. It's easy if you think about it carefully. So imagine you've got a three-year-old child, so sort of halfway through that initial period of socialization, and you take that child out in public. Okay. What do you want for the child? Who cares about you? What do you want for the child? You want the child to be able to interact with other children and adults so that the children are welcoming and smile and want to play with him or her. And so the adults are happy to see the child and treat him or her properly. And if your child's a horrible little monster because you're afraid of disciplining them or you don't know how to do that properly, then what they're going to do is they're going to experience nothing but rejection from other children and false smiles from other parents and adults. So then you're throwing the child out there into a world where every single face that they see is either hostile or lying. And that's not something that's going to be particularly conducive to the mental health or the well-being of your child. If your child can learn a couple simple rules of behavior, like don't interrupt adults when they're talking too much and pay attention and try not to hit the other kids over the head with the truck any more than is absolutely necessary, and share and play properly, then when they meet other kids, the kids are going to try out a few little play routines on them, and that's going to go well. And then they're going to go off and socialize each other for the rest of their lives. Because that's what happens is that from four years old onwards, the primary socialization with children takes place among other children. And so if the kids don't get in on that early, they don't move into that developmental spiral upwards and they're left behind. Children are now mostly produced by older couples, so who are more intent on doing everything right for them, but they also don't have enough siblings. So they're not getting sort of, you know, they're like puppies that haven't had enough rough and tumble play with other puppies. So I would say two kids minimum because, well, then you have kids and they can amuse each other and maybe three is nice. But one is, I do not believe that one is easier than two. I don't believe that. If you interfere with the maternal relationship between rats and their pups, because rat children are called pups, that you can see the detrimental effects of that disruption three generations later. Wow. Right. Yeah. So, you know, you disrupt those early bonds, you disrupt the familial structure that echoes. It takes a it's like an oral tradition in some sense, you know, because being a good mother is not just something that you're taught. It's something that you kind of have in your bones. If you were mothered properly, like my father was an excellent father, especially when I was a little kid, he really spent a lot of time with me. And I used to love it when he came home. And like I have a natural affinity for little kids. And I do believe it's it's in large part. That's why it's because I just know how to react with them. And it's me. I do believe it's because of the way that I was treated when I was a little kid. You disrupt that. It's like lots of people don't trust themselves as parents, say because they were hurt or they didn't have good role models or they don't trust the familial structure. And you got to distinguish between kinds of trust. There is naive trust. That's the trust you have when you're naive. Surprisingly, when you don't think that anyone is ever out to hurt you. And if you're naive and you get hurt, then you get traumatized in proportion to the hurt and the naivety. Not advisable. You don't raise your children to be naive in Sleeping Beauty in the Disney film. Yeah. The king and queen. They're older. They've been trying to have a child. They finally have one Aurora, like she's everything to them. They have a christening party for her. They don't invite the evil queen. You think, well, of course they don't. Who invites the evil queen to the birthday party? It's like you got to invite the evil queen to your kid's life because otherwise they don't know that life is hard and they don't know that they can prevail through that. And so what happens to Sleeping Beauty is the first time she's disappointed. As soon as she grows up, so she hits 16, pricks her finger, a little bit of blood. She wants to be unconscious because she can't tolerate it. She's been so protected. She can't tolerate life. Your kid to be a good sport. You say, don't, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose. It matters how you play the game. Okay. So I've been unpacking that in my lectures because it's really, really complicated. It's like you tell your kid that, and they look at you and they think, well, what do you mean by that? Aren't I supposed to try to win? It's a soccer game. I'm trying, I'm supposed to win. And you say, well, yeah, you're supposed to win, but it doesn't matter whether you win or lose. It matters how you play the game. You know that that's right, but you don't know how to explain it to your kid. You say, well, you want to be a good sport. And so what you're actually trying to train your son to do is to be a contender in the entire series. And the way you do that is by helping him develop his character. And the character is actually the strategy that would enable him to win the largest number of games across the largest possible span of time. And one way you do that if you're a kid is like, well, what do you want to do with your kid? You don't want to teach him to win. You want to teach him to play well with others. And that's to be reciprocal. So that means to try to win, but also to pay attention to developing the other people around him and not to put winning the game above everything at all times. So then he's fun to play with. And this is absolutely crucial. You can help your kid become fun to play with between the ages of two and the age of four. If your kid is fun to play with, then what happens? Kids line up to play with him. And adults line up to teach him. And if kids line up to play with him, then he'll have friends his whole life and he'll be socialized and he'll be invited to many games, some of which he'll win, all of which he'll be able to participate in. And if he's fun to play with, then adults will teach him things and then he wins at life. And so when you say to your kid, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, matters how you play the game. What you're saying is don't forget, kid, that what you're trying to do here is to do well at life. And you need to practice the strategies that enable you to do well at life while you're in any specific game. And you never want to compromise your ability to do well at life for the sake of winning a single game. And there's a deep ethic in that. And it's the ethic of reciprocity in games. The person we really admire as an athlete isn't only the person who wins. We don't like the narcissistic winners. They're winners and that's a plus. But if they're narcissistic, they're not good team players. They're only out for themselves. Then we think, well, you're a winner in the narrow sense, but your character is suspect. You're no role model, even though you're a winner. And it's because we're looking for something deeper. We're looking for that, the manifestation of character that allows you to win across the set of possible games. And that's a real thing. That's a real ethic. It's a fundamental ethic. It's really useful to play physically with your kids because that's how they learn what doesn't hurt and what does hurt, you know, because I've played with little boys who haven't had a father and they're often awkward in their play. They don't know how to react to me first. So they're intimidated. And so one of the things you do with a father is like, you stretch your kid out and you, you know, you tap them and poke them so that they, they know what play is and they know what, what hurts and what doesn't, and you let them hit and wrestle with you so they can figure out that they shouldn't put their thumb in your eye. And it's kind of how they learn to dance to get coordinated. And so fathers really like to play with their children. And mothers are often somewhat apprehensive about that because the guys generally will play rougher with the kids than the, than the women will. That's a generalization for all of you who think I'm being sexist, but it's the behavioral data is pretty clear. But it puts the kid in their body and gives them a kind of confidence. And then when they're out on the playground and they've got that play circuit already activated, a new kid will come up who's like that and they can just make a gesture at each other and bang they're off playing. The kids who don't have that, it's like other kids will come up, make a play gesture to nothing happens. They leave and go find a different kid.