How to Talk to a Child So They Listen the First Time

AVAnna Volchek

A person wants certainty, wants guarantees, wants to control life, wants to protect themselves and their child from negative factors. Which is, again, about certainty and controlling life. Essentially, they want to be someone they cannot be.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes.

AVAnna Volchek

But it is basically like programming. Can you imagine the colossal effort involved, not just in changing that programming, but even in beginning to recognize it?

AVAlexander Volchek

So, good luck to all parents.

AVAnna Volchek

Good luck to all parents. Why don't children listen to their parents? You know how often you tell your son, “Danila, do this or do that.” Or, taking my own family as an example, you very often hear adults say, “I've told her thirty times. She doesn't hear me. I've told her twenty times. She doesn't hear me.” Do your homework, clear your dishes, tidy your room, watch this, or read this particular book. The child does not respond at all, not even to shouting. Or they finally do something when you shout, but completely without awareness. How should a parent respond in those moments? How should you behave when your children don't hear you?

AVAlexander Volchek

Let's begin by looking at both sides: what is happening in the parents' perception, and what is happening in the child's perception. Let's start with the parent's perception. When you tell a child to tidy their room, take out the trash, do their homework, do their homework at ten o'clock, or when you have been telling them to do their homework for the past five years, what state does that come from? Why are you saying it? Are you saying it simply because it is your personal wish? Or because it is a reasonable action in terms of society, life, truth and the law of the Universe? Or are you telling them to do it because it is a rule you have agreed on with them, or a rule in your building, or a rule at their school? What is happening? It is always crucial to look at why I am taking this action. Otherwise, we move into abstractions. There are perfectly reasonable things, such as telling your child to mop the floor, asking them to mop it. They say, “Why should I mop the floor?” You say, “Well, because—I don't know—I did it today, Dad did it yesterday, your uncle did it the day before, and today it's your turn.”

For example, you seem to be saying this from a reasonable position. But imagine you say, “Mop the floor,” and the child says, “Why should I? I've already mopped it forty-eight times. I've done it four times today. Yesterday I did it twenty times, and the day before I did it fifteen times.” Different people will watch this video. It is very important that someone does not fall into self-deception. That this does not become self-deception, that we do not operate within false assumptions and false frameworks, you understand? We always need to recognize that there are different impulses inside us. That is why you smiled when I said, “Do your homework,” and that you have been saying it for five years. You smiled. What is happening? Why this action? Why, for example, do we tell our child to do their homework? Are we saying it from a perfectly reasonable position? School assigns homework, right? There is a rule at school about doing homework, and we tell them to do it because that is what they say there. Or do we tell them to do homework because we believe that doing homework is the right thing to do?

What I am saying may seem strange to some people, but it is very simple. I live in the States now, and at not a single parent meeting, not a single parent meeting, do I hear that doing homework is compulsory. Sometimes they say, “We won't assign homework,” or “We will assign homework, and you can look at it once a week,” for example. Some teachers say, “Make sure your child reads for forty minutes every day,” say. I have four children, so I have a broad range of experience. Some teachers give you no instructions at all, and essentially you have a certain freedom. I remember someone once—remember, we helped develop the Zhokhov system, and two of my daughters even studied under that system. I remember either Dima Mugenov or someone else saying to me, “Sasha, do you know why you shouldn't help children with their homework at home?” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because if you help with the homework and correct it, the teacher at school won't know whether the child did it or you did. How can the teacher teach them then?” That became such a fundamental part of my understanding that now, if any of my children gives me anything, I will never correct it. Even if I see a mistake, I will not correct it.

If a child comes to me and asks, “Dad, I really need to know: did I solve this correctly or not?” I had a situation like that recently, perhaps for the first time, I don't know. Maybe there have been two such situations in ten years with my daughter, Lanta, who is in tenth grade. She came to me and asked, “Dad, did I solve this correctly?” It was such a complicated math problem—actually, it was chemistry. I had no idea how to solve it. I scanned it into ChatGPT, compared the numbers and told her, “You solved the problem incorrectly.” She was angry, upset with herself, went off somewhere, walked around, then came back to me and said, “What's wrong with it? I've solved everything correctly.” It turned out that one time, when I checked in ChatGPT, I had asked incorrectly and given the measurements in the wrong units. The second time, it was something else. I operate from the position that I do not know how to explain things to a child properly, how to describe them properly. And I know that it is very important to follow the school's internal rules. You know perfectly well; you and I lived in Minsk, right?

You don't live in Minsk now. School rules there often say that you should sit with your child and do homework together, for example. I don't know whether that was the case at your school.

AVAnna Volchek

That wasn't the case for me, but it's common.

AVAlexander Volchek

It is common to be told that you should do homework together with your child.

AVAnna Volchek

Listen, I think it is less the school conveying that and more that society has already created—

AVAlexander Volchek

Society conveys it.

AVAnna Volchek

—that expectation.

AVAlexander Volchek

In this situation, I disagree that it should be that way, because I do not consider teaching a child properly or showing them how to do homework my responsibility or my area of expertise. Let's be honest: you need to know how to do that, right? You need to know how to explain things, how to look at them, and so on. Teachers should do that. So if I come home and tell my child to do their homework, for example, I will probably try, at the very beginning, try at the very beginning, to understand why I am saying it. There is a reason I am starting here. What do you do when children don't listen? First, you need to find your own reason. Because if I begin demanding that my child do homework because the teachers demand it, and the teacher matters more to me than my son or the true principles of life, and the most important thing to me is that, God forbid, the teacher should not say my child is doing poorly at school, because it would affect my reputation... Or other parents might find out that my child is doing poorly, and all of that matters more than the truth. What truth, for example?

Knowledge, the truth about my child. What is true about whether homework needs to be done, how much needs to be done, or whether it needs to be done at all. Perhaps my child doesn't do it because it takes them two minutes and they consider it completely pointless work. Or perhaps my child hasn't done the homework because every time they do it, the teacher scolds them and throws their school planner at them. I remember very clearly: throughout all the school years I can remember, I was convinced that I had problems with Russian, with essays, with literature, with everything, and with Belarusian. Because I was constantly scolded for my handwriting, had my school planner thrown at me, and was given twos, failing grades, for essays. Looking at me now, I hardly seem like someone who is incapable of writing an essay. I could write an essay on any topic, at any length. I have no limitations there. But back then, that belief had been instilled in me. If someone, my parents, came and said, “Why did you get a three on your essay?” the only thing they could do was ask me that question. I don't remember a single occasion in all my school years when anyone helped me understand what an essay was.

I never encountered a single person like that. So it is always a question of motivation: what is the impulse, what is it, what is it that prompts this? That is where I begin.

AVAnna Volchek

Let's return to the kind of impulse where a parent really does want their child to follow reasonable, genuine rules, take certain actions, respond to requests, but the child doesn't hear them. This is probably a very common situation that many people encounter. It is as if the child is in their own—

—world. They may even answer, agree, somehow promise to do something, but ultimately they really don't hear it. How should an adult respond in that situation?

AVAlexander Volchek

What you are saying is that you are asking the child to do reasonable things, but they don't do them.

That is what you're saying.

AVAnna Volchek

And they, they—

AVAlexander Volchek

That they simply don't hear you. Because when you say they don't hear—

AVAnna Volchek

I'm trying to explain.

AVAlexander Volchek

Do they have a hearing problem? Or what? Is there a problem with their ears? Is it a health problem, or what exactly?

AVAnna Volchek

No, well, perhaps they are just filtering out some information and not taking in what they're—

AVAlexander Volchek

In this case, you are saying that, essentially, the child does not want to listen to what you are telling them. But if you look at your life, at your colleagues, employees, managers, the people around you, relatives, friends and acquaintances, you will see just as many people who don't hear. They don't hear, don't want to hear, can't hear, don't have the strength to hear and take the right actions. An endless number. How are they different from this child? Do you know how they are different?

AVAnna Volchek

How?

AVAlexander Volchek

Your own child is perceived as your property. In different—

AVAnna Volchek

Or perhaps it is also because you see your child as someone who, because of their age, is obliged to obey.

AVAlexander Volchek

Including being obliged to obey. They are perceived as your property. We will also get to the question of energy, that aspect of it. This is a person you can influence. How else is a child perceived? Often, you don't care about other people. You know how it is when someone comes and says, “That person's daughter died.” How do you react? You may sincerely sympathize, direct love toward them, feel sad. But there is a strong chance that your system will not react at all. If your own child dies, though, it will be something significant that turns your whole world and everything around you upside down. Why does that happen? It is a very interesting question, a very interesting point in itself. What is that bond? Here, again, we come to something incredibly important. This is a very important point I am making. With children, I always give people a certain approach—not an instruction, but a recommendation about how to perceive their own children. I always say that one of a person's most important tasks is to learn to perceive other people's children the same way as their own. The idea makes many people nauseous; it makes them feel ill.

They don't even want to accept it, don't want to think about it. They want to say, “Listen, Volchek, take your idea back. I don't want to sit with it.” But it is worth thinking about what I mean by it. Why do I convey it this way? Because all children are children. They are people. A person's task is to treat other people equally, not single out or prioritize their own children over other people's children. Not single them out, not prioritize them. This is an incredibly big task. If you learn to—look, this does not mean treating everyone without emotion. Do you convey love to your child? Convey love to another child too. Can you convey love to your own child but not to another? There would be a big question about that love. Is it love, or is it some particular state?

AVAnna Volchek

Do you mean that if you don't love someone else's child, you don't love your own either?

AVAlexander Volchek

To some extent, yes. In terms of knowing love as the broadest possible energy, yes. Because with love as the broadest possible energy, you will convey it to everyone. You will not be able to choose just one person. That would be a different love, love in terms of attachment, love for a mother or a son at the level of a particular kind of energy. Of course, a particular kind of energy. But it is not all-encompassing human love. If we proceed from all-encompassing human love, then, of course, when you speak to your child and they don't hear you, they may not hear you just as any other person might not. They may simply block you out emotionally, block you at the level of energy. They may have innate energies that make them block out any perception of you from the outset. From the outset. For example, I have often seen descriptions in Vedic astrology saying that a child will have a poor relationship with their mother, that these children will quarrel with their mother throughout their life, while these others will not.

AVAnna Volchek

What does that depend on?

AVAlexander Volchek

There are many factors: the child's spiritual being, the parent's spiritual being, the freedom of their interaction, the heredity they are part of as well. So your task as a mother, or my task as a father, is to do everything we can to understand each particular situation, to understand what is happening. You know how many things people in our society are used to saying. I very often hear things about my own children from their grandmothers, for example. Someone says, “This one is cheeky, this one isn't, this one is smart, this one is a little less bright, this one understands design, this one understands math,” or whatever. That is putting someone in a box, imposing a particular stereotype on the way that person is perceived. Just as I was this tall until I was eighteen, and then suddenly grew this much. Or, until eighteen, I couldn't memorize a poem. I couldn't, I simply couldn't. It was hard for me. I did reasonably well in school, but I wasn't a straight-A student like you, for example. To me, you were a bookworm, while I did all right.

AVAnna Volchek

Though I wasn't a bookworm at all.

AVAlexander Volchek

Though you weren't a bookworm at all, right? I am talking about perception; it was simply my own inaccurate perception. Then, one year, something suddenly opened up for me. I began remembering a great deal of information, for example. Children change in exactly the same way. A child may currently be going through their own internal process, experiencing certain states, certain energies. You first need to understand those energies before drawing conclusions about why the child isn't doing certain things. And who said they want to do that particular thing at all? For example, there are some things I ask my wife not to do. I have asked her throughout our life together, and she keeps doing them, just as she always has. It is her right, her choice, her right. From a social standpoint, I don't like it. Most likely, my request makes no difference to her, because if it did, she would have done what I asked. But she doesn't. Is there a possibility that she will start doing it? There is. She may simply want to do it. Her inner state may change, her inner system may change, her system will simply change a little, and she will start doing it.

She will start doing certain things. Just as in the situation you describe: if you ask your son for something—here we need to move on to the next question, immediately move on to the next question and always look at both sides. On one side, there are things you ask a child to do and they don't do them. On the other side, on the other side, there are things you demand that a child do, things you desperately want the child to do.

AVAnna Volchek

Of course.

AVAlexander Volchek

Where you believe—

AVAnna Volchek

Because I think that is the better way.

AVAlexander Volchek

Because you think it is right.

AVAnna Volchek

Of course, one hundred percent.

AVAlexander Volchek

There is another side, look. You described one side, where it really—

AVAnna Volchek

That was my next question.

When we think, or a person generally thinks, that they know better than the child, know the right thing to do, know where to apply if we are talking about college, for example, or where to work, or whether to marry this person... In other words, because of my experience or my authority as a parent, I know better what my child needs. Or perhaps I am even fulfilling my own wishes through my child and believe I have the right to do that. I want to give them money for the very best, for example. But the child doesn't need it: not the money, not that university. They want to grow cucumbers on a small farm, for all I know. Very often, a parent imposes their idea of how to make things better, supposedly with the best of intentions, at least on one level. The children reject the situation and don't want to accept it. How do you deal with that contradiction? Never offer advice, never, even out of love, show some—

Not show what you see as the right next step, in your opinion?

AVAlexander Volchek

Well, I don't think we should approach this question in terms of “never” or “always,” right? We need to approach it very sensibly. Again, look at why you are suggesting that your child take a particular action. Or why, for example, you are suggesting that university.

AVAnna Volchek

Exactly, where is that—

AVAlexander Volchek

For example, you went to university. Was that one hundred percent your own choice in life?

AVAnna Volchek

Well, it wasn't my parents' choice, but a certain... Do you mean going—

—to university at all, or going to a particular university?

AVAlexander Volchek

Going to a particular university.

AVAnna Volchek

Going to that particular university was my choice.

AVAlexander Volchek

It was your choice.

And going to university at all?

AVAnna Volchek

Going to university as a particular step in life was a social model. That is how I see it now: a particular social model. I could not conceive of an alternative.

AVAlexander Volchek

Yes. You and I were raised in a family where we could not conceive of an alternative.

Including me.

We were raised that way and could not conceive of anything else. It wasn't even discussed with us. No one told us it could be different. Now I am in a different model: I have four children, and I understand that it can be different.

AVAnna Volchek

Yes, exactly.

AVAlexander Volchek

Absolutely. You are also within a model.

AVAnna Volchek

I also understand that it can be different.

AVAlexander Volchek

And you understand that it can be different.

Next, if we consider the best picture—there are always better pictures, worse pictures, all sorts of situations. We could sit here discussing different situations. What would the best circumstances look like? I might sit and think, “Well, perhaps my daughter would go to Harvard, Stanford or Berkeley.” Everything is nearby, too. You go to Stanford every day. Or she might go to Yale and choose some suitable major. What major would she choose? That is how I might think. You can think that way, right? You can also take it to another level: “No, Harvard alone isn't enough. She needs to get into Harvard and be among the top applicants. She needs to get into Harvard and be a top student. We need something else too, you understand? Before she gets into Harvard, she needs to win eight hundred and sixty-seven academic competitions. She mustn't just get into Harvard. She needs to be accepted by forty-eight universities, so that she can even choose which university to attend, rather than just Harvard.”

You can always keep building up different models, different scenarios. Always. You can also let everything go completely. I know people who let everything go, let go of the whole situation: whatever happens will happen. Some people let go without investing in it, discussing it or looking at it. That is relative too, look, relative too. What are they doing? They distance themselves from the situation, from their children, not knowing, not having the strength or not wanting to expend the strength, not wanting to invest in it, understand it, take a real interest in it, put something into it and really look at what is happening in schools and universities. They don't want to invest in it, right? They distance themselves and stand aside. That is not observation. What is crucial in all these situations is normal common sense in terms of the law of the Universe. Common sense. What follows from that? First, do not manipulate. Second, understand that another person's life belongs only to them, not to you, not to you as their parent. They chose to come into your family; you did not choose them.

As though they were your property, and you would let them go when you decided: “The law says after eighteen, after eighteen, so that is when I will let them go.” They have always been, and remain, a unique human being with a soul and spirit. This is very important. What difference does their age make? We discussed this recently, and you said, “All right, what if, after eighteen, your daughter decides to get married, move to another country and not go to university? What will you do?” And so on. Essentially, age has no bearing on my approach to discussing things with that person. It is important that I mean the discussion with that person: what I discuss with them, how I discuss it, how I look at their future, at what is happening in the world now, at what is happening with this person. Are they mistaken right now, is their judgment clouded, have they become caught up in something false? Or is it their genuine choice not to take a certain path right now, not to go to university, for example? If they go to a particular university, it will be a problem, something traumatic.

Is seeing this boy or girl, spending time with them, their genuine choice? Or is it a trauma? Honestly, Anna, I personally grew up in a situation where none of this was discussed with me at all. Not once did anyone really discuss my relationships with men or with women—with men in terms of acquaintances and women in terms of dating. It was never discussed in a normal atmosphere. Perhaps parents need some grounding, some approaches, some understanding of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, or simply to be people who—

AVAnna Volchek

Well, understand, simply know that it matters.

AVAlexander Volchek

Know that it matters.

AVAnna Volchek

I think that—

AVAlexander Volchek

Or generally kn—

AVAnna Volchek

Many people simply don't know that it matters.

AVAlexander Volchek

Bingo! Wanting to help and discuss it when you see that the person has a problem. I had problems. I certainly had problems communicating with girls, problems socially, with friends, and so on. Not that they were enormous. My mother would say now, “Oh, there you go again, complaining about your childhood or something else.” I am not complaining. There was a great deal of good in my life, but there were also many problems with my inner state, my feelings and everything else. Here, the parent's task is to act from something other than their own goals. Parents say, “I have a life too. I only act from my own goals.” But balance that. Balance it. For example, I have four children, and from time to time they want to attend activities, extra classes. We live in a society where children are generally expected to take classes in programming, sewing, design, jumping, biathlon, triathlon—

AVAnna Volchek

Swimming. English, math.

AVAlexander Volchek

English, English, English, programming, everything, while they are still in the womb. I mean, I think—

AVAnna Volchek

From the moment.

AVAlexander Volchek

I think so, from the moment. I think even before they are there at all. I would not be surprised if courses soon appeared on how to teach good English to your future child whom you don't even have yet. I really wouldn't be surprised. I think society is ready to consume that. In our family, we take it calmly, put all of that very much to one side and try to give a child a life, a childhood. Everyone has their own choice to make. Why am I telling this story? Because sometimes children ask for activities. They come to us; they want them too. They say, “Someone goes to this class, and we want to go too.” Polina, for example, says, “Let's sign them up. I'll drive them.” I say, “Wait, Polina. If you also drive the children to those activities, we will become tied to a schedule where, for example, we won't have a free day on the weekend to do anything spontaneously as a family: take an easy trip to the ocean, go to the park, watch a movie together, take a walk, go wipe down the pool.

“I don't know. Do anything calmly, anything calmly, without thinking about those activities.” In doing this, I am expressing a limitation of my own. I am setting a limit; she isn't. Yet at the same time, we now have three different schools. She drives them to three schools and says, “Damn, it's hard driving to three schools.” I think, how were you planning to drive them to eight activities? How did you want to drive them to eight activities? The crucial point, always crucial for a parent, is to understand clearly where I am going too far with my own interests and manipulating, and where I am being reasonable and responsible. It is like purchases in a family. I remember saving money as a child, purchases, savings. I would save up, put money aside, count it, although we lived quite comfortably at various times, right? But I would save something, look at something, and so on. That was my approach. My approach to raising children now is this: I know that putting money aside has no connection with managing money healthily. There is no correlation. Having a lot of money in childhood is not connected to having a lot or a little later.

And having no money is not connected to anything either. Here is what I know: I want my children to stay away from the energy of money for as long as possible. Everyone will learn to count money, just like everyone living in a city or in our families. They will learn to count. Everyone will learn to move pieces of paper around. My approach to purchases is this—I think you and I have raised this subject too. There are families where children want to buy something for five thousand dollars when their parents earn five hundred, and they save up for it. Is that reasonable? I think it is unreasonable. I think it is unreasonable. My position is: if you can afford it, go and buy it; if you can't, don't buy it. Even if you really want it, because there are many things you can really want.

Someone really wants a bag—what is that store? Hermès. Someone wants a Bottega Veneta bag, someone else doesn't, and someone wants to take a vacation with their children. A person has a choice, right? Go on vacation with the children, invite their parents to visit and pay for their tickets, or buy a Bottega Veneta bag. Or what else does Bottega Veneta have? Shoes and lots of other things, right? A coat. A coat, yes. A parent acts in the same way when interacting with their child, Anna. In every respect. What do you want? When you say, “I want my child to go to university,” what lies behind it? What is the basis for it? What is behind it? What is it? Anna, I am in no way saying that I do not want my child to go to university. There are difficult aspects. Some people never have to face them.

AVAnna Volchek

Listen, but—

AVAlexander Volchek

Our parents, for example, never had to face us saying, “We aren't going to university.” They never had to. They had children who did well at school and university, who wanted to pursue a dream, got an education at good institutions, continued to study well, then went to work. They never faced that. But there are situations where you do face it. Here is an important point, a difficult thought: just because you haven't faced it does not mean that, as a parent, you do not need to remain conscious in this area. Conscious, rather than afraid, you understand? Rather than afraid. I think our father would have felt fear if his two children had come to him in eleventh grade and said, “Dad, what university?” I think it would have been very hard for him. It would have been fear. This is very important, Anna. And, of course, there are your own wishes, your own wants. I once gave an example in a video, perhaps an earlier one, where people say, “What do you mean, you're leaving?

“You have to help your mother. What do you mean, you're leaving? You have to do these things. You have to make an effort.” I try to live within the following outlook. I have four children, and they live in Silicon Valley. I recently heard a good line: the greatest number of future billionaires are in Silicon Valley. There are simply endless numbers here. In this town, it seems to me, practically every window. They study at Stanford. Then came the correction: “Not at Stanford, but in high school in the Bay Area.” Ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades, in the area south of San Francisco. I thought, “Oh! My children—one of my daughters is already in high school, and my other children will study there too.” They have the same chances of earning, in five years, more than I have earned, am earning and will earn in the rest of my life. Excellent. I will be very happy if they want to help me. I will readily accept money from them. Not only that: I will gladly go to work with them again or help them with something. At the same time, is there a chance that I will support one of them financially for their whole life?

Is there? Of course there is. Perhaps I will support all of them financially. Is there a chance that all my children will work with me? There is. I would be incredibly happy if they worked for me or I worked for them. Why would I be happy? Because if you are able to work together, you probably have enough wisdom for that. And it isn't just you who has enough wisdom; the other person does too. Someone like me would hardly be able to work with his children without wisdom. Otherwise, we would eat each other alive, right? There is enough wisdom. That is how I look at it. But it doesn't mean I say, “Right, everyone, look at how Chinese children study. Their mothers were already preparing for them to learn math in the womb, to jump, dance, dive, or whatever else. So everyone is going to activities and spending fourteen hours in those classes.” I don't always understand things yet myself. What do you do when you don't understand? Let's discuss a very important point. What do you do when you don't understand the situation?

AVAnna Volchek

When I don't understand what?

AVAlexander Volchek

The situation. Imagine your son meets a girl and says, “Mom, I love her. We'll probably get married in a couple of years.” What does it mean not to understand the situation?

AVAnna Volchek

That I don't understand what it affects or what it means to him.

AVAlexander Volchek

That you don't understand what will really happen. You might resist it, but she will still become his wife. And that wife will know that “this woman”—she will certainly call you that, “this woman,” or “that grandmother,” or “that old lady”—was against us being together.

AVAnna Volchek

Or perhaps the opposite.

AVAlexander Volchek

I gave you an example: she was against us being together. If that has happened—I am talking about how you can act when you don't understand. What should you do? What should you do when you don't understand?

AVAnna Volchek

Think about the other person, what they need, their path, where they are heading and what it could mean to them. Support them. You can offer some advice if you see something, if they come to you for that advice.

AVAlexander Volchek

Try to understand.

Yes. What you are saying is exactly that: try to understand, because situations differ. You may also see that it is a false framework, that it doesn't work, right? Try to understand. Anna, a huge number of people come to me for consultations, coaching, support and mentoring. A great many. They study in different groups, in V100, in Life, and listen. A great many people ask questions. Anna, I give a huge number of recommendations. People do not take a huge number of those recommendations.

AVAnna Volchek

Because they need to understand?

AVAlexander Volchek

They don't take them. How do I react? Here is what I want to convey. There is a very interesting point: when I give a stranger a recommendation, that person remains a stranger to me. When I give my daughter a recommendation and she doesn't listen, for example, I understand that this will remain close to me. It is very important to notice that. What will remain close to me? You recently had a situation where you didn't know whether your son had gotten into university. You were worried; you had real bursts of anxiety about it. What were you truly worried about? I'll give you some options to choose from.

AVAnna Volchek

May I not choose?

AVAlexander Volchek

This is a very important point. Well, you can sit with it. It is a very important point. What were you truly worried about? You were worried—

AVAnna Volchek

About the uncertainty.

AVAlexander Volchek

Whose?

AVAnna Volchek

Because—mine and his.

AVAlexander Volchek

So, yours. Look—

AVAnna Volchek

Both mine and his, of course.

AVAlexander Volchek

When you say, “My uncertainty and his uncertainty,” it is all your uncertainty.

Because—

AVAnna Volchek

About my uncertainty.

AVAlexander Volchek

Because he could say to you, “Mom, I'm not worried about my uncertainty, so please leave me alone.” You were worried, look, about yourself.

You were worried about your own difficult state of being in that situation. You know, when someone is dying, why do people often want the person to die? When they are very seriously ill, near death, could die at any moment, but don't die for a month, then still don't die. Why do people want them to die?

AVAnna Volchek

So they can know.

AVAlexander Volchek

So there will be certainty. Essentially, you begin projecting this out of your own fear. People lose businesses this way, lose relationships this way. People start businesses for the wrong reasons this way. I think I recently explained somewhere what it means to start a business for the wrong reasons. People spend a long time unable to start a business, unable, unable, looking. Then anything at all comes along, and they say, “That's it. We're definitely starting this business.” You tell them, “You definitely shouldn't go into this. It's a one hundred percent loss.” But they start it so they can check the box, get it off their list and breathe out. We come to the most important thing in this discussion, the most important thing in this discussion: what actually triggers a genuine impulse in a person, a very strong impulse connected with another person, in this case their own child.

AVAnna Volchek

Good luck to all parents.