Summary
Joe Hudson joins Nathan Baschez to discuss his parenting philosophy, rooted in Hand in Hand Parenting (Patty Whifler’s book Listen). Joe shares how he initially parented the way he was parented—poorly—until his wife’s research led them to a connection-based approach. The core insight: children’s misbehavior is almost always a bid for connection, not defiance. When kids feel connected, their natural goodness emerges effortlessly.
Joe outlines key pillars: meeting children’s needs (food, sleep, connection), understanding age-appropriate development (will before intellect in the first 8 years), and helping children build self-referencing rather than external validation. He emphasizes that repair after mistakes is just as valuable as getting it right, and that parenting is itself a profound self-development practice—“a deep tissue massage: if you resist it, you’re fucked.”
The conversation also covers the spousal dynamic in parenting, the importance of loving attention over consistency, and how the attunement patterns children learn become the emotional cycles that shape their adult lives. Joe argues that shame never changes behavior, while connection transforms everything.
Key Concepts
- Connection is the core of parenting
- Repair is as important as getting it right
- Children’s misbehavior is a bid for connection, not defiance
- Teaching children to reference themselves builds internal compass
- Loving attention matters more than consistency
- Parenting is a profound self-development practice
- Attunement patterns in childhood become adult emotional cycles
- Shame never changes the behavior it targets
Key Quotes
“If you want to know who wasn’t allowed to cry just wait for a baby crying on a plane—stand up and look at all the faces and whoever is really freaking agitated were the people who weren’t allowed to cry.”
“I do not want my child to do what I say. I want my child to learn how to listen to themselves.”
“You can hire someone to speak a language for you but you can’t hire someone to have your will.”
“Parenting is like a deep tissue massage—if you resist it, you’re fucked.”
“Notice that everything you shame your kid for hasn’t changed. It doesn’t change. You shame your kid for something, I guarantee they’ll be 16 years old still doing it.”
“If people can feel connected, the goodness just happens naturally.”
Transcript
messing up and making repair showing them how that’s done showing them that we’re all human and that we get to love our mistakes and that we get to own them and then that lets us grow I think that’s just as important as being a perfect parent and that opportunity only comes because we will undoubtedly fuck up our kids in some way hey everybody it’s Joe Hudson and today we have a unique experience for you Brett is not with us unfortunately but Nathan Baschez is with us and Nathan let’s tell them a little bit about you and then how this situation came to be like how how we’re sitting here talking I saw a tweet of yours that really caught my eye because I have I’m also a dad and I have two kids now I had one kid at the time when we tweeted about this and then my second one was born but you tweeted a question I often get asked is how I raised my two daughters people who meet them are impressed and want to know what technique we used the answer is that there was no time where my wife and or I ever punished them and if we ever shamed them we apologized immediately which I thought was amazing so I replied would read 5K words on this and then you said hey you could come on our podcast and ask questions if that’s appealing and here I am it is appealing it sounds amazing yeah awesome so all right that’s the story that’s what we’re set up here to do Nathan’s going to ask me questions about parenting I’m going to answer maybe to start just like can you take me back to you’re in a similar spot as me your first child is kind of like getting into the toddler years and and you all of a sudden the problems become a little more complicated did you always kind of feel like you knew basically the approach you wanted to take or did you you had to come to it over time yeah I’m curious to hear the story yeah so the story is I was not I did not get blessed with great parents and they loved me and they cared but they had no idea what they were doing you know when our first daughter was born for example my mom recommended that we have a schedule to change the diaper on because they the baby needed to learn how to poop on our schedule and and and then told us that they kind of enjoy sitting in poop so it’s like a mud bath I think the quote was right and so like everybody when I had a kid I started parenting the way that I was parented like that’s the automatic thing to do and so I I was rather horrible at it frankly but my wife had is a researcher and so she also was not raised in the best possible way but had some really good infant experiences and so she started researching and she did she found hand-in-hand parenting and we had some people in our community who had who were doing hand in hand parenting which is Patty Whifler book Listen and that’s the organization my wife and I actually listen we have had a couple different like long drives and so we listen to the audiobook together and we like frequently pause and talk about it and stuff like that which is an amazing experience great way to do it I can’t tell you how many people I have recommended to who aren’t parents who have taken a huge amount from the book and totally and and on a personal level something that’s important for me to say is that it is one of the most important practices of my life as far as a spiritual or self-development practice is the stay listening and the play listening part of hand in hand has has changed my life dramatically and deeply informs the work that we do particularly the work that we do in live in live like week long intensives it’s incredibly important part of our work and I’m really excited to learn about yours and what you what you kind of taken from that and then what what also you would add so I was wrestling with hand in hand parenting I’m like what like we’re letting the kid cry like what’s happening and she found it when Esme was probably about a year and a half maybe two years old yeah our oldest and she was right you know she started doing the tools I was not supportive she was 100% correct I saw that she was correct and so two things changed one I became a huge fan of hand in hand parenting and the other thing that happened was I at this point I was like okay babe you’re the CEO of the house and your decision is what stands from now on I am going to do whatever you suggest yeah which also was an incredibly good choice for us but that’s how I that’s how I ran into hand-in-hand parenting and the the tag the end of that story was when I started doing hand and hand parenting part of the thought process was you know you let them have their big emotions as I sat with their big emotions I had to sit with the emotions that I was not allowed and so and now today when I’m teaching I’ll say something like if you want to know who wasn’t allowed to cry just wait for a baby crying on a plane stand up and look at all the faces and whoever is really freaking agitated were the the people who weren’t allowed to cry yeah and so that was the that and when I saw that when I was when I felt how my life was changing because of the way that I was parenting then I was completely hooked amazing well I’m curious what are kind of like the main the main ideas so big pillars were I wouldn’t even say letting them cry so how I would say it is it is you said earlier like it gets more complex right and to me the only added complexity is at the like the two to seven range is connection so it’s like are they well fed are they thirsty are they you know are they tired and those three things and then are do they feel connected yeah and if they don’t feel connected then they need to have a big emotion have a big emotional release they need to be loved in that and then they get back to connection I don’t know if you’ve experienced this but my my second when she needed connection she’d literally sit on my lap grab my face and point my face to her face and force eye contact you know or you see little kids if you’re disregulated your nervous system is disregulated you’ll see them say I love you Daddy some way to like hey let’s get back into connection yeah and so to me it’s as simple as that and then the other pillars which are more about the map or the path that I would say well the thing that Waldorf taught me was just the age appropriateness of certain things I’m not supposed to logically talk to my seven-year-old when you see parents go okay well let me logically explain to you why you shouldn’t cross the street or something like that the kid you see the kid they’re responding to the emotional nature of the parent so oftentimes when parents go into logic they kind of settle down a little bit get a little grounded and then they’re just describing something but they could literally be talking about the sun and the stars and if they hit that same quality of emotion and and nervous system regulation the kid you’ll see the kid settle as well and I used to I actually did that experiment a couple times so that was a huge one that was a huge pillar was what are they what how do I actually approach them at six how do I actually approach them at seven how do I and define the big changes there’s a huge change that happens between seven and 8 more of their will comes online more of the wanting to be away from the parents you know the first one’s kind of two and a half three what they call the terrible twos yeah is a first force of will they kind of leave mom’s you know energetic field or or nervous system field and then there’s the next one’s at 7 8 in that area and in Waldorf education they say that’s when you start teaching them intellectual stuff before that you’re teaching them how to how to use their will yeah and and that one I remember that moment you know when our kids were seven or eight and my sister’s kids knew knew three languages and our kids knew one and hadn’t really learned how to read yet but but I remember talking to somebody and saying oh you know they don’t speak these languages and my friend said to me I love this changed my life he said you know you can hire someone to speak a language for you but you can’t hire someone to have your will and I just like went through all the CEOs I know and I was like yep that like absolutely the thing that makes them successful is not a skill set it’s the way that they are in the world yeah and then they can develop the skill set or you can hire the skill set and it totally put me at peace so so that that was the that piece to really understand that the first eight years are all about them learning about their will learning how to be in their body and then the second one which isn’t just 0 to 8 years old this pillar was so important to us and it was their job isn’t to listen to us their job is to listen to themselves I do not want my child to do what I say I want my child to learn how to listen to themselves and say oh that feels good that doesn’t feel good that feels right that doesn’t feel right and that was critical and and it took weird things to do and this was Tara who first introduced the idea of so for instance if they do a great great thing we don’t say good job we’ll say oh how does that feel oh I see that that makes you feel great inside that’s cool constantly reflecting back to them their internal state so that they listen and and behind that is a theory that kids are just basically good the humans are basically good and if they listen to themselves we have an inherent morality for lack of a better word we have an inherent goodness in us that if we’re listening we’re going to do and and if you look at the people who are more likely say to get addicted or more likely to be in a job for 40 years and hate it those are people who haven’t really learned how to listen to themselves yeah you know and so that was that was another huge pillar for us that’s so fascinating how did you approach I mean cuz let’s say it’s you know the classic grocery store right I want this I want that I want the other thing the thing that I didn’t know before reading the book Listen was what that’s really about is definitely not the thing they think they want or they say they want right it’s just a feeling of disconnection and it actually might be that the whole point of this exercise that they’re doing is not to get the thing it’s to trigger you because any form of connection even if it’s you yelling at them is better than disconnection because disconnection is abandonment and abandonment is is death for a child and so just keeping you close any way they can is kind of like what they’re doing and they’re actually doing it in a very smart way because likely you wouldn’t have I mean I wouldn’t have paid attention to them I think when parents myself at least often are like I’d like you to listen to me it’s I’d like you to behave in such a way that allows us to do basic things kind of quickly you know like let’s get out the door let’s brush your teeth at night and get to bed all those kind of things that parents I think are probably one of the most common struggles how did you approach that especially keeping in mind this so interesting thing that you said of like the goal is not to get them to listen to me right yeah yeah so yeah it’s a great question so I have a classic story and I’ve heard the story before but then it actually happened to me I was in a Whole Foods she starts wanting something and starts throwing a fit and I sit in the aisle of the store and I had made the logical choice my reputation is not as important as my child’s upbringing so I don’t whatever I’m going to sit here and do this thing and it was like we were like 6 minutes in she’s yelling I’m containing her so that she’s not hurting herself or me or the groceries and this old lady we live in a kind of hippie town and this old hippie lady comes over and is like are you okay dear and my daughter just from screaming stops and goes I’m just having my emotions and then she goes back to screaming I’m sure the hippie lady respected that she was definitely trying to figure out if I was messing up as a parent there’s no doubt that’s what was going down is this man bothering you exactly and that was when I realized oh there’s some like you said there’s some cognition underneath it that they know something that I I did not think that she understood what was happening at that level yeah at the same time without a doubt there was moments where I just knew I didn’t have it in me my day was X Y and Z I did I was surprised by how inconsistent I could be and still get great results meaning yeah the job is to be patient with them as they’re having a big emotion I would say it’s to sit in loving attention like if you can’t be in loving attention then get your wife have her be in loving attention and if you just can’t do it at all then it’s also okay to say to a kid like I just can’t be in loving attention with you right now we’re just got to we just got to leave the store yeah and that’s totally fine they they’ll understand that which is interesting but the so for me it was more important to be in loving attention than it was to be consistent yeah that is a very important distinction because I do think in the book it’s kind of she does a good job making it clear but it’s easy to imagine misinterpreting like well you just need to sit there with them for me personally I know my limits as of today I would not be able to be in loving attention in a grocery store for five minutes which sounds like it’s easy to just say it real quick that’s an eternity you know like even 30 seconds and it’s an eternity yeah yeah yeah and you learn so much by doing it there’s a couple things that I realize in the process that relate to self-development of adults one is you know the quality of my listening to you is going to affect the conversation that we have it’s going to affect how connected you feel as an adult and this is the same with a kid so that was one of the things that it taught me the other thing that it taught me was that kids excitement is as bothersome to some people as kids crying yeah it’s like oh wait the emotions that we’re having it’s not just the negative ones that people have problems with it’s the positive ones settle down Johnny you know it’s something you hear all the time so that was another to see that oh some people are going to be annoyed with my kid because they’re happy because they’re squealing in joy like whoa what’s up with that yeah so that was that was an interesting one like many limiting beliefs have the same cycle and that emotional cycle comes from a little kid trying to get attunement you as a little kid how do I get attunement so if I get the attunement by fighting with you by making a ruckus then I’m going to grow up making a ruckus to get that connection from my wife and from my husband and from if I grew up being sad and that got the attention then I’m going to be sad in these different situations or whatever it is and so there’s this recognition that these moments of attunement how how do they get our attention like that’s what you’re teaching them and then that cycle basically underlies so much yeah of the limiting beliefs that they’ll have in the rest of their lives the things that hold them back for the rest of their lives will be attached to that emotional cycle it is interesting just reflecting on my own childhood like I do kind of feel like I have this emotional cycle of sitting at a desk coloring on some paper going to my mom being like look at what I did and my mom’s personality is to be very oh my gosh that’s amazing you know right and it’s kind of funny because I mean I’m still today instead of coloring and at my desk I’m at whatever VS Code right tweeting about it hoping that people tell me oh Nathan that’s amazing you know right giving me lots of likes and retweets on Twitter and you know then then I go back to the drawing board do you ever get the feeling of just like how you kind of feel like you’re doing a job but also it’s a terrifying responsibility to be like someone else’s pattern is kind of going to be shaped by me and like my wife and the other because it feels impossible to not have some way of oh it is impossible there’s no way you’re not going to mess up your kids you know there’s just no way and but what I have I have a story about that recently so so like I said Esme was older when we started doing hand in hand parenting and I was not a great parent at the beginning by any stretch my attachment style with her was to you know if she had big emotions was to not go into loving attention it was either getting frustrated or removing myself and she was teenager she’s 16 17 years old and she has a a boyfriend and she’s in this problem with the boyfriend and I can’t remember exactly what it was but it was an attachment issue and I literally said to her oh that’s not his fault that’s not your fault that’s me I taught you that attachment thing like that was what I did when you were a kid and I am so sorry I still get misty thinking about it and she cried and I cried and we just sat there and cried together she knew it was true I knew it was true and it was just that was it it was just done that pattern in her life was done that’s all that was required she was either young enough or like that moment of connection just allowed that thing to fall and the relationship with her boyfriend went to the next level and I remember thinking kind of wish I would have messed her up more I want more of those moments so which is another big tenant for us you know one of the ways that I looked at especially the young kids was eventually I looked at it was am I treating them with the same respect that I’m treating an adult yeah now I have to teach them so I get that but I can teach them in a respectful way I can teach them in a disrespectful way and so part of that oh I’m going to treat them with the respect was that if I did something like shame them I would apologize I would say oh I’m like that’s not how I want to be with you yeah and that repair is just as important as getting it right if there’s if you get it perfect and you never make repair I don’t think that’s as good for a kid as messing up and making repair showing them how that’s done showing them that we’re all human and that we get to love our mistakes and that we get to own them and then that lets us grow I think that’s just as important as being a perfect parent and that so for me that’s just as important I think that that well brings someone two things one really quick is just the deep wisdom of the Buddhist like principle of don’t resist things yeah like it’s hard to express but it’s like you said an opportunity that creates a lot of beauty and also is super important because no one in this world is perfect and so to model what to do with our imperfections is important the the second thing I reminds me of is the idea that the emotional connection and repair leads to transformation yeah I have noticed even after just literally weeks of and I was not horrible about this before so it’s not like we’re going from zero to one I’m going from more like 50% to maybe 80% or something like that yeah I have noticed a change a noticeable change in behavior in certain moments oh yeah where it just she feels a little calmer yeah like it’s so apparent to me from in a way that it had never was before I was a parent that like the default for a human being is really very sweet and very good yeah and there are moments where we get out of whack with that everybody gets out of whack but that’s the default that’s the baseline and that was like what an amazing thing to learn that part is really critical that that part like that lesson for me in hand in hand parenting informed the way that we do our work and the way that I relate it to myself so deeply because most people have this incredibly critical voice in their head that goes off all the time right there’s all sorts of ways that this presents all of it assumes that you’re not good yeah all of it assumes that you’re not going to evolve naturally that you’re not here to learn that you’re not in an evolutionary state but your essence is good like and when I saw that when I saw oh all she needs is connection and then her expression in the world is so much goodness I was like oh like that where the connection course came from yeah which is just like oh this is this is if people can feel connected the goodness just happens naturally if people feel connected with themselves the goodness just happens naturally and I see it all the time and that doesn’t mean nice it means good like compassionate yeah good to themselves yeah totally and and the thing that this connects to that you said earlier too is like it is an intelligent and adaptive thing to do when you’re feeling disconnected to trigger loving attention in whatever way you need to or can and so there’s a huge frame shift of like my child screwing up to like oh my child’s making it obvious to me who I probably could have noticed earlier if I was paying closer attention right what she needs right now yeah and I think that has helped me a ton and I never ever thought about it before it’s much easier not not easy always but it’s a lot easier to be in loving attention when you have that reframe and what you’re doing in that moment is is you’re teaching her this self talk of oh you’re smart you’re adaptive you’re trying to get to connection that’s a good thing instead of oh see when you’re angry you’re wrong you’re messing up you’re making a mistake how long is it going to be till you make that mistake again and if what I’m saying sounds to a listener’s voice in the head that’s because your mom said that to you or your dad said that to you like that’s how that goes down yeah and so that reframing isn’t just reframing it for you to make it easier to be compassionate to them it’s reframing it for them so they can be more compassionate to themselves and that just got me really misty because my daughter I don’t remember what happened but I only feel like maybe this was like one or maybe two times where I was like why are you crying like that and she’s only two and a half she’s echoed back to me several times after she cried why was I crying like that oh my God the self talk that I just gave her yeah it makes it very real to me when I hear my daughter who’s so young say back to me the things that I’ve said to her in those moments and it’s like I said that to you once or twice and it really stuck with you you really remembered that it made a big imprint yeah it’s amazing how that works yeah yeah yeah I want to just point one thing out for parents who are like no you got to shame your kid I’ll just say the following notice that everything you shame your kid for hasn’t changed yeah it doesn’t change you shame your kid for something I guarantee they’ll be 16 years old still doing it you could at a distance look at it like you know pasture raised hens with like their eggs or whatever it’s like ah it’s more expensive but like you should do it this way because it’s like healthier or better for the environment or for the child or whatever right like no it’s like as if those eggs were somehow cheaper like way cheaper the biggest investment is it’s like a savings account if you put $10,000 in when you’re one years old and when you’re 18 it’s better than putting $100,000 well depending on the interest rate but whatever $50,000 in when you’re 16 the you know I have a great relationship with my teenagers I I love them I love hanging out with them yeah I don’t have any of the teenage issues that all the other parents I know had like my college age daughter came home and was like how do we get alone time and we went up to our cabin in the woods and so it just the the amount of time that you have to spend after 8 years old is so much less than everybody else I’ve ever seen there is there is absolutely an upfront thing but you’re right even in the upfront investment that feels like oh my God I’m taking extra time it even makes those days easier yeah because you’re not fighting with yourself yeah yeah I don’t because we have that inherent goodness there’s something in all of us when we’re shaming our kid that doesn’t feel good I’ve never met somebody who’s shaming their kid and then they’re like I feel great about that you know like oh my god did you see me shame that kid that was awesome I’m such a good parent for shaming that kid like it feels yeah people feel terrible when they when they do that kind of thing like so yeah yeah if there’s one thing I could airdrop like everyone it really might be this like this might be the single most crucial intervention point to like improve society broadly because it’s it’s the old saying like hurt people hurt people kind of a thing I couldn’t think of a better change engine on the planet yeah if everybody raised their kids with that deep attunement and attachment and prioritizing connection our world would be extremely different in 25 years it really does tangibly feel like it would and it does feel incredibly rare like feels like this kind of thing that you learn it it has very low cost very big benefit even in the short run really huge benefit in the long run privately and publicly for society it’s one of those things that just sort of feels like an important an important thing culturally you mentioned something that I think would be cool to touch on is call it listening call it connection you know call it stay listening whatever you want to call it like it changes adults behavior just as quickly if somebody feels deeply listened to if you’re in a fight with your wife and all of a sudden they feel deeply listened to the fight changes if you are in a fight with your employee and they feel deeply listened to then the fight changes it’s this is not a skill set just for kids and my whole life is so much less dramatic and so much easier and so much less conflict and everywhere where there’s still some semblance of like it’s because there’s a way in which people aren’t feeling listened to it’s an amazing skill set and it’s so simple so you know hand in hand has these five tools stay listening play listening and one of them is you know gentle but firm boundaries yeah and what I notice is that you know if I’m if you don’t boundary a kid it’s a really bad thing right like and you said like it’s even sometimes like twisting the knife of like oh yeah I see that you want that cookie you can’t have that cookie that that boundary often times what humans seem to do is they think oh I can be loving but that means I have to be nice right and nice equals not being boundaried yeah and that is such it’s actually oh no it’s it’s a very boundaried if you want to have great relationships with people it’s it’s about being very boundaried and I have a whole episode on boundaries but boundaries isn’t saying no boundaries is saying what I’m going to do boundaries isn’t cutting off love boundaries is saying this is what I have to do so that I can stay with an open heart with you in the book there’s not a lot of time spent on how parents can do this together that are married yeah it’s it seems like a lot of it is from the perspective of a single parent with a child and and the core pillars are stay listening play listening setting gentle but firm limits and then the other one is having a listening partner who is specifically not your spouse who because the spouse there’s like stakes we all need support structures beyond our immediate spouse but the the husband and wife or or spousal relationship is like so crucial to this and I’m curious kind of you know what you would add on that front yeah so couple tricks that Tara and I had one is that we had a we helped each other see the moments when we weren’t able and when we weren’t capable and so that was a really important thing to be able to have an agreement of oh if I say this word you you walk away and I walk in yeah you know that was a really important to help because sometimes when you’re out of your nervous system when you’re disregulated it’s hard to see that you’re not being useful so that’s one thing that I think is really useful the other thing that’s was incredibly useful was Tara and I made parenting a self-development practice or a spiritual practice and and to have someone to talk to about that on a regular basis was huge so it is oh this is what I’m learning this is what I want to take away here’s how I want to parent this is how I want to take the lessons of parenting into the world this is how I’ve grown this is how it’s changed for me that was an incredibly useful part and it kept us on point with the parenting but it more importantly it kept us growing and developing as humans that your kids are going to change you there’s this cool thing that my wife has been reading about recently and she basically says that the way that it’s supposed to go is that a parent is supposed to be putting all their caretaking towards the kid and the kid is not supposed to be caretaking the parent they’re not supposed to be doing that and that a lot of the pain that adults have is because they caretook their parents I’m going to do X Y and Z so that Mom is happy I’m going to take care of Dad’s depression or whatever when that when the caretaking goes the other way that creates a lot of problems in adult life it prevents us from attuning to ourselves it prevents us from being able to actually be in connection with ourselves there’s a whole bunch of stuff there and when you start taking the parenting as a practice as something that you get to learn and grow from because what’s actually happening is though all the caretaking is going towards the kid both of you are growing there’s a huge amount of development that happens there’s nobody who’s walked away from parenting and said I haven’t changed a bit like it it doesn’t happen and so having that conscious partner to work with about how you’re going to allow parenting to change you and how you’re going to just surrender to it I think is the way that I finally approached it I remember people used to ask me when when our kids were a little bit younger you know tell me about parenting and I would say parenting is like a deep tissue massage if you resist it you’re fucked that’s a great one that actually reminds me of one of the things we do is I love sitting and watching Bluey with my daughter occasionally not too much and we watch it together and there’s an episode where the dad it’s a cartoon right it’s set in Australia they’re like dogs or whatever but the dad is like ah I got to go to work blah blah blah the kids want to play the dad like basically is like all right and so they play for a little bit and they’re playing with specifically they have all these elaborate imaginative rituals and the whole idea of imaginative play is a whole other episode that we could probably do but the the marker is basically like they have all these markers that are different colors and they pretend they’re like bananas or whatever so the dad’s finally kind of like they they had a good play they played for a little while and then the parting gift from the daughter to the dad is like wrapped up in a little piece of paper or whatever and he goes and he’s talking to his wife and he opens it up and his wife goes what did she give you and he opens it and it’s the marker and he looks he’s like everything and it’s just like yeah what what did our kids give us everything it’s so it’s so hard to explain that yeah of like what that means because it’s like well how did they give you everything it’s just but you’ve changed entirely the world is different you’re different everything’s transformed and I think you’re explaining it really really well right now yeah but yeah so the resistance if you’re if you’re resisting you’re fucked is a thing but if you go with it it totally changes everything yeah yeah exactly thank you so much for having me on amazing to get the chance to chat with you about this and ask you questions and really really beautiful to see a picture of what it looks like down the road that’s a beautiful picture yeah man it’s total pleasure