How do we teach our kids responsibility? What’s the energy? Whats the impact of not teaching our kids responsibility? Are you really helping them by helping them?
The speaker sets the scene by describing a family trip to Santa Barbara and visiting a school as part of considering his daughter for UC Santa Barbara. This short intro explains why he’s talking from that location.
He recounts a TikTok joke of a teen relying on her dad to pick up after her and frames it as an example of a wider mentality. This segment introduces the parenting issue that motivates the rest of the talk.
The speaker explains his practical approach: if his daughter leaves dirty dishes, he moves them to her room to enforce responsibility rather than cleaning up for her. He also notes balancing firmness with occasional help out of love so she learns independence.
He expands the point to criticize how parents enabling their children creates adults who lack basic life skills, especially young men labeled as 'man babies.' He argues this outcome comes from systems of over-helping rather than innate incapacity.
He urges parents to 'hold their feet to the fire' in a respectful way, suggests putting unclean dishes in a child’s room as a quick corrective, and closes with a warm weekend sign-off. This offers a clear takeaway and brief farewell.
All right. Hello, country sphere. Here I am in Santa Barbara, having just visited a school for my daughter, considering her attending the University of California, Santa Barbara, not next year, but the year after. So we came as a family, came up from Los Angeles, had a great visit. But earlier this week I saw a TikTok and I know it was just a joke of a TikTok for the most part, but it showed like this young girl, 15, 16, and she would be like, she was gonna pick up her jacket, but then she's like, why should I pick up my jacket?
I got a dad. She was gonna put her dishes away. Why should I put my dishes away? I got a dad and all that sort of stuff, right? But there's a larger mentality And I talk about this a lot because I think it really matters. Between my wife and I, we have really tried to strike a balance of what we support our daughter in. And literally just yesterday, I put her dirty dishes that she didn't clean in her room because it's a very clear expectation that she's responsible for certain things, and if she doesn't do those things she's responsible for, I'm not gonna clean her dirty dishes.
I'm not gonna do the things that she's supposed to do. I'm not gonna pick up after her. There are far too many parents who pick up after their kids, who do for their kids what their kids should be doing for themselves. They're being nice. They think they're being helpful. They think they're being good parents. But I think a lot of the time, they just don't want to engage with their kids. They don't want the conflict with their kids. They don't want to have to deal with their kids asking their kids to do it and then not doing it.
And you know what? The thing is, that parenting is about making tough decisions and having tough conversations for the larger benefit down the road. And that's the key. That's the philosophy for me. That's what I really strive to do. So, and I'm not saying I'm right, but I'm saying it's what works for me because I'm just not gonna, I'm not gonna pick up after my daughter and I'm not gonna keep asking her to do stuff. Now, here's the cool thing. This has been going on a very long time. It doesn't happen that often.
We don't need to do that. And then guess what? Sometimes I do. do things for her that she should do for herself, just to have some balance, to be a loving parent. So it's not one or the other, but for me, it definitely skews toward supporting her and being able to be responsible, supporting her and being able to be responsible for herself so that she has the tools she needs when she leaves here. And you want to talk about guys. How many parents talk about their sons and how their sons are not capable of doing something for themselves at a certain point, at a certain age, they go to college and they still can't do this and they go to college.
How do you think that happened? How did that come about? That came about because they're like genetically incapable of doing those things or did it come about because They more than likely had parents who never showed them how to do it, never held their feet to the fire to do it, and always did it for them. So you can't look at this phenomenon of young men who are unable to take care of themselves and look like they're unable to do some of the basic things. You can't look at that and there's no way that doesn't exist within a system that enabled the shit out of them.
And so who ultimately, who ultimately benefited then? Who ultimately did not benefit? And it does get me a little bit frustrated, a little bit upset because it's like, man, we put a lot on these young guys and we judge them and we talk about them being man babies and we talk about them this and that. And it's like, that wasn't created in a vacuum. It was not created in a vacuum. So when you got kids, You want to hold their feet to the fire? Hold their feet to the fire in a loving way, in a respectful way.
If it's about cleaning the dishes, guess what? You can start putting the dishes in their room that they're not cleaning. Watch how quickly it changes. All right, cadre. Another conscious cadre. This is Dan. God, it's another beautiful day here in sunny California, and I wish you all a wonderful weekend and
