Name: Dr. Gabor Maté Doesn't Believe in Parent Blaming
Uploaded: 2024-10-16T18:46:11.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. Gabor Maté Doesn't Believe in Parent Blaming' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. Gabor Maté Doesn't Believe in Parent Blaming' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-16. Transcript available.

you talk also about not parent blaming which i think is really important yeah
um can you tell
me a little bit about that yeah but look i mean your story right there about
your mother gave you
away because it was the yeah i mean imagine the terror the pain in her of like
yeah the only thing
the most loving thing i can do is put my child somewhere else away from me
right now for its own
safety that's exactly right right well all parents we're born with a caring
instinct you know like
we're born with certain emotional systems in our brain play is one of them
curiosity seeking the
dopamine circuit is another one caring loving is another one we're just born
with that
it's instinctual all mammals are born with it oh yeah no mammal infant would
survive without it
right you know so i don't i never doubt that parents love their kids or that
there's at least an
impulse in them to do so but the love that the parent feels is not that the
love what the parent child
receives what the child receives is the quality of the parents presence are
they calm are they attuned
are they emotionally present are they preoccupied stressed depressed traumatized
overworked whatever
any of those conditions the child does not experience the love
in its whole sense right so even though you might know that your mother loved
you and i'm
sure she did in her own way and she did her very best but she was not able to
give you
those qualities that you would really in your heart experiences love yeah you
know and so in this
society where as you said earlier parents have to go to work just to put bread
on the table
and where so many people economically insecure with so much stress so much
division so much angst so much
aggression so much suspicion um what's it like to be a parent it's really
really difficult and don't forget
we didn't evolve in nuclear families we've evolved in groups where kids around
nurturing adults the whole
day including their parents but not only their parents yeah so in today's
society parenting has become an almost
an impossible task why would i blame any plan blame any parent and i'll even
say this and i'm not
trying to excuse anything because there's no excuse that's not the point but if
you look at parents
who abuse their kids what happened to them as kids they were abused it's multi-generational
it's not that
they grow up it's not that they decide i'm going to abuse my kids they just act
out what happened to them
yeah so i think blame now responsibility is one thing blame is another um i
think blame is totally
unscientific it's cruel and it's totally inappropriate so as much as i point
out the impact of early
experience there's absolutely no room for blaming parents and theo what's
really interesting to me is
after i wrote my book on addiction occasionally some strange person will come
up to me and said my
child died of an overdose and i thank you for writing the book and i always
find that a bit startling
because in the book i'm saying that it's childhood experience and trauma that
ultimately result in
the addiction and they say you know what because i finally get it i finally
understand what happened and i get
it as multi-generational that it's nobody's fault there's nobody to be blamed
here you know the
question is in each generation can we take responsibility so we don't pass it
on to the next one but blame
there's no room for it yeah and uh robert sapolsky the scientist i quoted he
said there's just no room for blame
yeah it's not it's not yeah you can have you can have discussions about
responsibility and things like
that and share hey i think you could have been more responsible about this or
seeing something that
was somebody's responsibility but yeah and you can even be angry right without
be angry without blaming
right because why wouldn't you be angry yeah when those things happen to you so
it's not a question of
telling people don't be angry but having anger and owning it is not the same as
saying you did
something deliberately that you shouldn't have done and you should have known
better and you know
you said terrible you know it's so there's anger healthy anger necessary anger
and then there is
the expectation that people take responsibility yeah each for ourselves and
then there's blame which is a
whole other bag of monkeys yeah we don't it's a zoo we don't we don't need to
be involved in no we don't
need that and this has been studied quite extensively how it didn't indigenous
people or tribal peoples
close to the land rear their kids that's exactly how they wear their kids like
they they gave their
children a deep sense of acceptance they hold them they carry them everywhere
oh yeah all the paintings
you see of native americans they all somebody's got a kid on them they got them
in a knapsack
they got them right they got them and they tend not to hit their kids yeah you
know yeah you've never
seen a movie about a native american beating his children i don't think yeah
yeah so i mean so what
you're describing is actually how we evolved and part of the toxicity in my
view of our culture
is we've gone so we've gone so far away from our nature when it comes to how we
rear children and
again not because of lack of parental devotion but because of so much parental
stress yeah oh yeah i think
that was it my mom couldn't see us because she had other things she had to see
first yeah and you know
and uh yeah and not just me but so many people it's like yeah we've created a
society or our
society has created a way of life where um now it's like both parents work in
so many cases
so yeah and that alone just feels like it just shouldn't be that way it's like
well if you look
at throughout evolution through millions of years and hundreds of thousands of
years of human evolution
children were always with their parents that's how nature designed it yeah now
if that's not possible
in today's society at least they may have to compensate for it but we've
forgotten that
children need that yeah so now when they send them to daycares and schools it's
all about behavior
and it's all about um fitting in not about accepting the child and nurturing
the child innate
sense of who they are so we all end up disconnected from ourselves then we get
to a certain stage in life
we're wondering whose life am i leading anyway yeah wow yeah and it's funny you
say like fitting in it's
like yeah like you're like your child's not fitting in because the the it's two
puzzle pieces are the
parents you know yeah or the family that's and not to say it shouldn't be able
to spend time with other
children and being and that that our schools are bad or anything but it's the
fact that um they need to fit in
there first and then i think it's probably easier for children to fit in in
other places in the world
well that's um but the fitting in happens naturally when you're right when you're
accepted yeah when
you yeah and your children just look into them pour into them what you want out
of them you know
yeah pour into them as much as you can and yes some some you kids don't know
how to feel sometimes you
have to also talk them about their feelings no you don't they know exactly how
to feel they don't have
the words for so you right they know how to feel it's our job to give them
words for their feelings
right it's right it's our job to give them words for their feelings right yeah
so yeah if your child
if you're not doing that it's it's not a judgment and i don't have any children
yeah but that's what i
i could have used when i was young it was like how do you feel let me help you
with this or not even
how you feel you're really angry with daddy right now because you wanted a
cookie before dinner and
daddy said no cookie so now you're really angry aren't you yeah you know so it's
not even we don't
have to tell them how to feel they they're feeling creatures we have to accept
their feelings okay
that doesn't mean we give them the cookie yeah but it means that we do
understand why hey hey i
understand i understand you want that cookie yeah you right right now you're
really mad at daddy okay
i get it i get it yeah you know that's all yeah that doesn't mean you're
allowed to hate your brother
but i get that you're angry so so we we're not about permissive parenting um we're
talking about
authoritative parenting not authoritarian authoritative where the child is
understood and held and guided
and we give them words for their feelings but we don't ask them to suppress
themselves
we may not accept certain behaviors or put limits but we know how to do that if
the child trusts you
and is looking to you like natives the indigenous people like we said earlier
never had to never hit
their kids because the kids trusted the adults for guidance right yeah you know
so which all comes from
connection a hundred percent and now we're learning so many things we learn
them like
you know through a youtube video or through we we learn so i mean now most
people learn about sex
through pornography it's just like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah we need each other
to yeah we need each other
Thank you.