Boundless Parenting

Two years ago, I started reading Boundless Parenting shortly after hearing the heartbeat of what I now think of as my first son.

But we lost him in the seventh month due to a random cord incident. For a while, I said, "We lost the pregnancy," instead of, "I lost a child" -- maybe because I never saw his face. I stopped reading it, but nearly nine months ago, I picked it back up again, after discovering we had another one on the way. Becoming a new father is a page flip without equal to a new chapter of life, and I have a lot to learn, so finishing a thousand-page book on the topic seems smart!

I suppose this is the first of a lot of parenting content that you can expect from me, but those of you who have followed me for a while know I didn't start offering marriage advice until after I'd remained happily married for at least half a decade. Similarly, as long as I lack experience in the parenting department, I'll try to keep my content around the topic grounded in the authoritative experiences of others or sound scientific research.

Storytime: The elasticity of the protective impulse at the playground

Lately, I've been doing light workouts a few times a week at this park near my flat in Sofia that has one of those basic free weatherproof gyms next to the playground where you can do an assortment of bodyweight exercises. And there are almost always kids and young people there - one thing that makes me confident about raising a family here in Bulgaria is that the culture is relatively healthy here. Like the other day, I saw four young dudes (they looked like teenagers) there working out, and get this, none of them had smartphones. They were just hanging out, outside, exercising. I freakin' love to see that!

The other day, this little girl climbed up on the monkey bars where someone had hung a rubber exercise band, and basically she wanted to put one foot in the exercise band and then bounce up and down (which I'm sure is fun!) But she was small enough that she could slip and fall off the monkey bars with one foot in the band and really hurt herself. Her mom or grandmother was sitting a ways away and didn't really seem to be paying attention to her. And I don't really want to touch some random little girl helping safely bounce up and down with this band, so I just told her in Bulgarian, "This is dangerous!" And then I let her do whatever she wanted.

Later, I reflected and said to myself, "That was kind of a proto-parenting moment, wasn't it?" I had a protective impulse when I saw the kid doing something risky, so I had to intervene; ultimately, all I could do was tell her, "This is dangerous." I figured, if she fell and hurt herself, then she'll remember that some random guy warned her, and if she managed to balance on the bouncy exercise band, then she gets the confident boost that she did something "dangerous!" Which is probably a good thing. I've got about two decades of situations with that dilemma ahead of me...

An important point on the economics of information consumption.

This book is $55 in hardcover and $20 on Kindle. Some of you may be shaking your heads at the fact that digital books (a freakin' file!) cost this much these days, and perhaps you're thinking: I'll just listen to Ben Greenfield's podcasts about parenting - those are free! Only if your time is next to worthless! When your favorite podcasters put out books, it actually makes a lot of sense to buy and read those books even if you can get that information for free from their show, because as they are a refined distillation of their knowledge (especially if said podcasters insert an insane amount of audience-time-wasting midroll ads into their podcasts - like Ben!)

This book is written by (not just) Ben Greenfield but also...

37 parents ranging from single divorcees to grandparents to celebrities to entrepreneurs to pastors to teachers to survivalists and beyond. In each chapter, Ben Greenfield interviews a unique parent or set of parents about the highly specific, practical and personal details of their parenting journey, including the way they educate, discipline, manage time, develop presence, love and ultimately raise amazing, self-actualized and flourishing children.

In this book review, I'll try to give credit to them individually for the wisdom I borrow here. I'll start with my biggest takeaway from the book...

On family traditions

Ben Greenfield himself writes...

Simplicity is okay. Consistency is a must. Dependency is fantastic. Presence is crucial. Weaving these memories into family tradition is more consequential than you may think.

You made it so good that everybody wanted to stay. If you build your family upon the firm foundation of tradition, then you won’t need to worry at all about old-age abandonment, long distance, extended, torturous separation from loved ones, or rarely seeing your kids again after they move out.

Whether big or seemingly trivial, we get stability in our lives through traditions.

Dinner time - the cornerstone tradition

Joey and Berit Coleman have two fun ones.

Quiz bowl: Several nights per week we have a “quiz bowl” where we go around the table and ask trivia questions.

“Best, worst, weirdest”: Multiple times per week at dinner we ask the boys a three-part question: “What was the best part of your day?

Play cooperative board games, like Paul Chek, his children, and his wives do...

With cooperative board games, you work together to achieve an objective, and it’s great to see the kids working together.

Yes, I said wives; he has two wives. Which I thought wasn't legal, but apparently, he makes it work. Here's an excerpt from a podcast where he discusses this.

Jon and Missy Butcher describe dinner time trivia

a tradition started by Missy’s dad that involves the adults crafting a variety of questions across multiple subjects and genres to quiz the kids and test their knowledge. 

Isaac & Erica Jones describe and prescribe a family gratitude session

during which we ask the kids what they are grateful for that day. This forces them to focus daily on gratitude. At night during dinner, we all discuss the highlight of everyone’s day or something that was challenging.

Chris and Melissa Smith describe a Sunday Family Council

For our Sunday “family council” meetings, the whole family gathers to sit on the couch together and ask the following questions:

“What are you grateful for this week?”

“What kind thing did a family member do for you this week?”

“What’s on our calendar this week?”

“Does anyone have a challenge that they’d like some support with?”

Everyone has the opportunity to answer these questions, but no one is required to respond.

Parents Tim Corcoran & Jeannine Tidwell describe an "Ancestor supper"

we’ve worked diligently to connect our children with their ancestry. We believe that the extent to which you know about your ancestors’ suffering as well as their victories and joy is the same extent to which you are really living and grasping what it means to be alive. So we make a ritual for this by holding what we call “Ancestor Supper.” We consider this an educational endeavor—not just for ourselves, but for our children. We make the food and dishes our ancestors ate and labored to grow, forage, and hunt.

Hiking is hard to beat, according to Rich and Gaye Christiansen

We have also found that hiking provides dedicated time with our children—and this is one of the reasons we love it so much. Going on weekend hikes gives us hundreds of hours on a mountain peak where we end up with each kid for an hour or two, alternating between deep conversations and heavy breathing.

I know that my wife is going to be uber-paranoid about Lyme disease the first time I take our son hiking. Good news, apparently, Biohacker Anthony DiClementi has a 4-Hour Lyme Disease Cure.

On scheduling

Ben writes at the beginning of the book...

By far, the most common thread—appearing in nearly 70% of the parent chapters—is the practice of intentionally calendaring and spending one-on-one time with each child in a family.

I not only practice this strategy myself but also calendar everything using the app Busycal, which also syncs across all my devices and computers. Every single aspect of my life, including date nights, sex, meals, phone appointments, workouts, writing, naps, etc., is written and scheduled in a calendar that can be accessed at any time.

For example, Todd Tripp writes...

I am a very scheduled person. I usually spent time with my kids individually at bedtime most evenings. I would usually read a story or psalm to them before bed. I would then try to get them talking and I would just listen or ask questions, paying attention to not just what was being said, but also to what was not being said. I would also ask nonjudgmental questions to facilitate honest communication. One of my favorite phrases was “Help me understand why…”

I've already got a really good app for time tracking, Toggle, and I was curious if there was some clever AI-powered app for calendar optimization; I found Reclaim.ai, which auto-schedules your tasks, habits, meetings, and breaks into Google or Outlook Calendar, intentionally preserving focus time and breaking up back-to-back meetings. Also, Google's Gemini has some cool integrations with Gmail.

On the protective impulse

Ben writes...

As my sons grew, I very quickly learned that it’s good for a kid not to be excessively coddled or protected, to get a bit dirty, cut, or bruised when playing outside in the backyard, and to occasionally lick food off the kitchen floor. While I don’t think I made a huge mistake when it came to overprotecting my children, I have learned a lot about setting aside worries of “messing up kids” and encouraging more childhood resilience, things I wish I had known earlier as a parent.

Gary Greenfield (Ben Greenfield's dad) on ignoring his instincts and his daughter getting sexually assaulted...

The biggest parenting decision I ever had to make involved my daughter Natalie when she was a teenager. At the time, we were living in a mansion that had been built in the 1890s and required restoration. It was an ambitious project for me; consequently, I was always looking for people to help. At the same time, we were very involved with our local college community and would routinely invite students over for dinner or just to hang out in our living room. We were also housing several students, one of whom had agreed to help with the renovation project in exchange for room and board. Shortly after this student moved into our home, I noticed that he and my daughter were becoming closer—so close that, as a father, I felt uncomfortable about it. I instructed both of them to treat one another as brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend. Despite my discomfort about this student living in our home, my wife and daughter kept convincing me to let him stay. In spite of the assurances of all parties involved, I would lie awake at night concerned about my daughter, sometimes even lingering in the hallway near her room, hoping to catch this student sneaking into her bedroom. This went on for over a year. I felt I was losing my mind as my wife and daughter continued to assure me that everything was fine, but, in my heart I knew that something was amiss. Eventually, I put my foot down, listened to my intuition, and kicked him out. Two years later, my daughter told me that she had been sexually assaulted by this student for the duration of his stay with us. 

The main takeaway from my experience was that it is very important to listen to my gut, to follow my intuition, and to do what I felt was right, even if other family members disagreed.

Wow! This story blew my mind (and it raises a lot of questions...) On the protective impulse question, as a parent, I think I'm going to be a bit of a sexiest: let boys take risks, but bend over backward to keep girls safe.

The screen time issue

Is described by Tim Corcoran & Jeannine Tidwell

We can all recognize the potential negative and addictive nature of screens on kids today and we’ve taken a pretty nontraditional approach here: We don’t have televisions in our home and we significantly limit screen time. During the first 10 years of their lives, our sons had very little screen time. After that, we would allow them no more than two hours of screen time per week and always keep that a connective family experience with at least one parent being present. Now that they are older, they get more screen time but it’s still quite limited. We do our best to monitor the content they are consuming, recognizing that this has a significant impact on their psyche and well-being. We don’t allow screen time during the first hours of the morning or the last hours before bed. Several nights per week are screen-free; everyone in the family puts their screens (including phones) away. As parents, we do our best not to use phones and screens when we are with our sons. We’ve also always encouraged reading physical paper books.

But Judy Arnall explains the upside to screen time

I worried about issues around screen time while raising kids, but in retrospect, I know that kids move through developmental stages where they acquire self-control in normal, healthy families. In these situations, no matter how many hours of screen time a child has, they usually won’t develop an “addiction” or a problem with media. Alternatively, I have seen firsthand how kids can use screen time to further their careers, education, and connections with family and the world. There is great educational and interactive value in video gaming and posting an argument/debate on Reddit and other applications.

THIS is a good point: when I think back on my adolescence, there were a few computer games that were really mind-expanding for me: The Sim City style games, and there was a great strategy game where you would build Roman cities, which taught me about resource management and society. I also have to mention the revolutionary first-person role-playing game Deus Ex - this was a huge red pill that taught me about things like central banking and the technocratic dystopia that we are now living in.

The solution I'm going to go with is using screen time as a bribe: let's encourage mental health habits for them to "earn" screen time. Read daily to earn an extra hour a day of screen time. The Christiansens suggest something legalistic, yet effective.

write a contract stating that in order to get video game technology access, they’d have to agree to a set amount of play time. We all signed it and, after that, didn’t have any problems.

Kelly and Juliet Starrett actually made getting a smartphone a contractual issue with their teenage daughter.

We actually made her sign a social media contract, which was really more of an exercise meant to show her that we took it seriously and wanted her to understand the reality of being on social media

Set expectations; Scott Donnell explains

We also plan to set the expectation that when the kids eventually do get phones, they will surrender them before dinner each night.

Discipline

Discipline is for defiance, Todd Tripp explains...

I also would have liked to have had more insight into the differences between correction and discipline. Children do many things that require correction. Discipline must be saved for defiant behavior. For example, our three-year-old pushes over his 18-month-old sister and grabs her toy. As a parent, this is obviously upsetting to see; she is left crying, while he has selfishly taken her toy. But I am not going to discipline him for this. Instead, I am going to correct him. His behavior is not defiant toward parental authority; it is the impulsive action of a three-year-old. He sees something he wants and goes for it. I’m going to correct him like this: “No. No. You cannot take your sister’s toy. She was playing with that. It is wrong for you to take it from her. You must give it back.” Since children learn concepts and ideas by hearing them used appropriately in context, I am going to use the language of the heart in correcting him, with phrases such as, “You’re not being kind to your sister. You are not loving her; you are loving you. You are not serving her; you are serving yourself.” This conversation communicates that my concern deals with more than just his action of taking the toy; I am concerned about the indifference that he is showing toward his sister. If he gives the toy back, there is no need for discipline. If he refuses to give it back, discipline might be required. Making a distinction between correction and discipline is helpful. Children require correction all the time.

Allow the emotional cost to accrue to them.

It is a valuable form of discipline for a child to be able to experience the disappointment or sadness that a poor decision on their part brings to someone else’s life. You should actively seek out opportunities to expose your child to social, emotional, or personal consequences of poor decisions that they may make, not to intentionally embarrass them, but rather to help them fully realize the consequences of failures such as lack of preparedness or not telling the truth.

Joe [De Sena] takes away their phones and uses them as leverage. Have a bad attitude? You lose your phone.

regarding discipline and rules, I have two other tips for you: avoid immediate consequences and prioritize empathy.

So don't respond immediately with emotion or anger when my kid does something naughty.

Avoiding endless questioning

Our toddlers love to ask us over and over again if they can watch a show, eat candy, or do other activities. Our rule is that if they ask more than once for something, they lose that privilege. This rule means that they have to self-regulate and that, truly no means no.

Affirm behaviors, not outcomes

With our first son, Isaac, we would often affirm how smart he was; but we later learned that it is more important to affirm our children for the actions that lead to us thinking about how smart they are. So we started to affirm behaviors more than outcomes. This is important because as children grow older, they may not get the outcome they want—but if they practice specific behaviors, they will eventually achieve their goals. What gets rewarded gets conditioned. Our goal is to continue to reward and affirm the actions they take rather than the outcomes they get.

In the discipline department, my wife and I are committed to peaceful parenting, and I'll be reading Stefan Molyneux's book on the topic.

Edifying Education

Unschooling

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling whereby parents empower children to learn not through coerced curriculum but through self-directed play, projects, activities, and outings.

Send them to “Spy School.”

which is a program that teaches life skills in the context of spy-related topics like situational awareness, code-breaking, foreign languages, stealth movement, and different forms of written and signal communication. Spy School helps to emphasize that every situation is filled with choice and it is important to make good choices with the information that you have at any given time.

On the Love and Logic approach, Jessa Greenfield writes

The idea behind this approach is that if there’s a problem or decision, you present your kids with the pros and the cons, you educate them on basically everything around it, and then you allow them to make the decision on their own.

Explaining our actions before we do them has proven to be incredibly useful throughout our parenting journey. It is amazing how even the smallest of children can comprehend what we are saying, especially when it is spoken with love.

On the primacy of intentionality 

One of the best things that we do as parents is have a clear goal in mind and work intentionally toward achieving that. We created a list of the most important skills, values, and abilities that we would like our kids to learn by a certain age.

My wife and I do goal outlining around January 1st every year, and we could add to that outlining what we want to teach our kid.

On homeschooling

Homeschool gave us a lot more time together as a family than we would have had if we opted for a school outside of the home. For example, we were usually up for breakfast together and already dressed for the day. Each of the kids had an individual schedule and chart of what to accomplish in each subject for the particular day. These charts included science, math, music, art, geography, history, grammar, literature, writing, editing, vocabulary, and their other particular areas of interest. I made these charts weekly, based on their progress and mastery of subjects. It was normal in our home to have each child in different grades in different subjects, which I believe is one of the strengths of homeschooling: you can speed up when the kids have mastered a topic and slow down if they need more time. Choosing a good curriculum also really helped, and we preferred to pick and choose for each subject rather than use a full “done-for-you” curriculum from just one company or publisher. We were often able to finish the day’s studies hours before other schools were out, and this allowed time for our kids to pursue their specific natural interests. In short, this gave us a lot of creative freedom.

My wife and I are leaning toward homeschooling - I think it would be fun to spend at least a few hours a day being a teacher. AI will, no doubt, make homeschooling really easy.

On raising entrepreneurs

At age 16, our children create their own business and start to take accountability for their own futures. From that point forward, they pay for vacations, college, and their mission. Then, when they are 18, the business they created at 16 gets shut down and they give it all back to humanity, going to serve for two years in humble circumstances and learn a second language.

Katie Wells adds

Another noteworthy way that we teach our kids about learning from failure is through a nonnegotiable verbal contract that states that they need to have a successful (profitable) business for a year before they can get a car or a phone. Entrepreneurship, even on a small scale, teaches many of the core values that I want to impart to my kids in a hands-on way. Starting and managing their own business teaches them responsibility, attention to detail, and management of numbers.

On training divergent thinking

Once you have a more open-ended range of possibilities exploring terrain, problems, and decisions, you’ve entered the creative world of divergent thinking. You also move into divergent thinking as soon as you move away from conventional and orthodox approaches... I walked my 15-year-olds to school every day until high school. On 95% of their school days, during these walks I brought up questions that helped encourage divergent thinking.

Let them learn about failure

It’s crucial to let kids fail at home and let them fail gently. If children have difficulty with losing, put them in situations that will help them develop positive coping skills. Enroll them in a chess club or find other contexts in which they will frequently win and lose. Role-play what happens when they lose.

Here's a cool factoid from Danny Vega that I'll add to my SuperMemo flashcards...

The trivium is derived from the ancient Latin tres, tria (three), and via, which is a “way, path, or method.” It provides a threefold methodology for reaching the truth, involving grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The ancient trivium was also divided into three: knowledge (grammar), understanding (logic), and wisdom (rhetoric). In modern times, we can classify this as input, processing, and output.

Start early with chores

If we could go back and do it again, we would have them do more domestic chores at an even earlier age. Start preparing and cooking their own meals and doing more chores around the house. Encourage them to make their own beds, clean their rooms, and do their own laundry. Not judge how well they do it; just focus on their efforts, let them practice, and help them create habits.

Parenting psychology

Carl Jung wisely warned that all children are affected by their parents’ unfinished business, saying, “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.” It follows logically then that—as a parent—if you live a full life before your children, you are less likely to have this “pathology” of living vicariously through them.

I hope so because I lived a REALLY FULL life before becoming a parent.

Every son must “kill his father.”

This sounds harsh, but Rich has deliberately set it up this way and told his sons so. He gives them every opportunity to beat him, whether in sports or business or anything else. He doesn’t, of course, want them to literally kill him but, instead, to surpass him in excellence and get to the point of independence where they no longer need him.

The father must pass the torch to the son

The author [of Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul] argued that every young man needs to be able to pinpoint the moment when his father “passes the torch,” so to speak. If that never happens, it leads to the birth of a “false self,” which could manifest as the tough guy, the womanizer, the workaholic, the wimp, etc.

Did my dad do this? I'm not sure if he did, and I didn't end up too badly. 

A body language tip from Todd Kashdan

A lesson I have learned from my work as a clinical psychologist is that kids will often talk more when you are side by side with them.

Building character

Encouraging their individuality

Let them be a little weird

Honestly, the people whom we tend to admire in high school, the people for whom life comes easily, the cool kids and athletes, often end up having relatively uninteresting lives. It’s the weirdos, the innovators, and the creatives who end up having incredibly interesting careers and changing the world.

Let them struggle, Katie Wells explains...

One of the ways I can best nurture and create that is by following one simple rule: I don’t do anything for them that they’re capable of doing themselves. This means that by age four or five, they’re doing their own laundry, keeping their rooms clean, helping in the kitchen, and sometimes even cooking—because they are capable of it.

Give them the opportunity to struggle and learn, Jessica Lahey explains...

One aspect that I really screwed up was fostering learned helplessness in my kids when they were frustrated. As parents, we have the tendency to take over for our kids in these scenarios because we don’t like to see them frustrated or doubting their own abilities. I intervened too early, too often, and did too much for my kids. In doing so, I stole a lot of learning opportunities from them.

Scott Donnell asserts that...

A sense of a warm family team is the greatest predictor of kids’ success after they leave the house and encounter temptations (e.g., drugs, sex, etc.).

Is that true?

On allowances

We don’t do allowance, since JumpStart Coalition research shows that this is connected to lower levels of motivation and aversion to work. Our young kids use the Penny Method, which involves earning pennies, starting at three years old. These pennies can be earned by doing things around the house like cleaning, pulling weeds, sweeping the garage, doing dishes, picking up toys, or engaging in random acts of kindness. Once the kids have collected 10 pennies, they can earn things, starting with a small treat, a book, a show, or a toy from the store (1 penny = $1). Our three-year-old earned 32 pennies to get his first nerf gun to play with Dad. He even had four pennies left over and gave them to his older sister to buy a craft at the store.

Chad Willardson describes a "menu of opportunities" (that's kind of a boring name!) 

we’ve never paid any of them even one dollar of allowance, which is unusual. Instead, we created a “menu of opportunities,” which is a spreadsheet of work tasks and chores that they can choose from each week, with points assigned to each task based on the level of difficulty and time required to complete it.

I fully intend to bribe my kid to read books; when he's old enough, I'll start him with the children’s book series Unexplainable Adventures, the first fictional, character-based series of growth and development books geared specifically for children.

Travel-hacking parenting

Why travel with your kids

when I look back at my own life, I realize that some of the hardest things in my life made the greatest impact on who I am today. While I wouldn’t purposely make my children’s lives difficult to help develop their character, I don’t want to protect my kids from the normal and natural difficulties of life that serve as excellent teachers. This is one reason why we like traveling with the kids: travel presents a unique set of difficulties and circumstances and also offers beautiful learning opportunities.

Find kid trading partners

We also would sometimes “trade off” kids with a neighbor since we didn’t have grandparents around to watch them; when we wanted to go on our trips, we would leave our kids in the care of this family—and vice versa. Sometimes it could get crazy when we were watching their five kids: a house of 10 kids in total for a week! But then they would help with our kids while we were on vacation.

On apologizing 

Whenever I make a mistake and kind of blow up on the job, I ensure that my kids know it’s not because I hate my job. It’s because I made a mistake that day. I let them know, “Hey, I love what I do. I love helping people. Sometimes I’m a human and I get annoyed and I get upset. But please don’t think that I don’t love my job. I love what I do every day. It’s just that occasionally stuff goes south and I don’t respond the way that I should.” So I use it as a teaching moment.

Admit to errors

When we missed an opportunity to coach our children in the moment, we would always try to go back and tell them where we went wrong. There were certainly times when we handled a situation inappropriately or lost our temper, and those are the times when we would sit the kids down and say, “Let me tell you why my response was wrong.” We both think that this was something we did right as parents. 

On marriage

On presenting a unified front 

If we ever disagreed about aspects of parenting, we always discussed them privately; otherwise, the kids might try to divide and conquer us. We also avoided talking negatively about one another to our children.

On disagreements

This means that Liver Queen lets me remain the head of the house, she doesn’t challenge me in front of my boys, and she walks with me after dinner, hand in hand, barefoot. During this time, we talk and course-correct for the next dinner, if need be.

What is love?

Virgil Knyght on Love Languages AND Apology Languages

The love languages can easily be used for manipulating people. If you learn to type somebody in the first few seconds after meeting them, you can basically morph into their same style of communication so that you’re speaking their language; as a result, this skill can be used for effective persuasion or even manipulation. But it shouldn’t be. Instead, it should be used as a means of learning to communicate effectively and strengthen existing relationships—it should manifest as an apology language. While many people have heard of the five love languages, comparatively few have heard of the five apology languages.

The first is in my primary relationships (e.g., close family), for which I have a love and apology language night. You can do this as a family or just start as a couple. First, go online to FiveApologyLanguages.com and FiveLoveLanguages.com. Take the quick tests, each of which takes about 10 minutes to complete. Print out the results, exchange them with one another, and read the other person’s results out loud.

Katie Wellis describes unconditional love.

One thing I say to my kids every single day is “I love you unconditionally. There’s nothing you can ever do that will take away from that. And there’s nothing you ever need to do to earn that.” I think the fact of not having to earn it is key, because we don’t often hear that.

Do you believe in unconditional love? I don't have my mind made up on it. My wife and I love each other very much, but have always said it's not unconditional. 

On slowing down

Joseph Anew & EmilÍa Rún write

slowing down has been our main ingredient for quality time with our son. As parents, we should be asking ourselves, “Where can I slow down and enjoy more quality time with my child?”

This, I anticipate struggling with!

Make them feel like a priority

The best thing a father can do is to surprise the kids by making time for them when they think you are “very busy”; this enables you to show them the real order of importance of things in your life.

This reminds me of something Oren Klaff mentioned in his books about high-leverage negotiation and deal-making: sometimes, even with a big deal on the line, he will take a day off work to do things with his family - just to show them how much he cares.

Health and Biohacking

EMFs vs Kids

The problem is that children absorb far more of this EMF radiation than adults. This is not only because their body has a higher water content, which makes it more conductive to radiation, but also because they have thinner skulls, a growing brain, and rapidly dividing cells, making their neuromuscular system more susceptible to damage.

In my deep-dive book review of EMF*D by Dr. Mercola, I get really practical in the EMF-mitigation department...

EMF*D

 

5.0

Category: Book

Babies NEED boobies

bottle-fed babies have a higher incidence of oral-facial disorders, need for braces, facial distortion, malocclusion, and other types of chronic orthopedic issues compared to breastfed children; they also have a higher incidence of degeneration in the temporomandibular joint later in life. Baby formulas are also loaded with soy, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and glyphosate—things that are completely toxic to their small bodies and wipe out their microbiome. 

Dry milkers? 

Some of Paul’s [Chek's] research has shown that goats’ milk is the best substitute for babies

Boundless Parenting gets four stars from me. I think Ben may have read my criticisms of his Biohacking magnum opus, Boundless, because this one doesn't begin so braggadociously nor contain product pitches on nearly every page. Bravo, Ben!

Why doesn't it get five stars from me?

It seems more aimed at parents in the midst of their parenting journey, not at the beginning of it, like us. I was hoping for "Ben's Top 10 Biohacks for Brand New Babies" and did not get it. In fact, I expected that a Ben Greenfield book would really bring the goods in the Biohacking department, and this one was a bit light on the topic, frankly. I'm still looking for a comprehensive guide to optimizing my wife's (wife-hacking?) bountiful boobies for maximum milk production!