Lessons of a Divorced Father - AMA

I'm writing this in hopes that some people -- in similar situations to my own -- might benefit from my experience.  

So this was my situation. Married. Had two daughters. Divorced when they were toddlers. Rejected Islam. Soon after, the mother of my kids went AWAL, which was shocking and scary for me partly because I came from a culture that sees mothers as caretakers and fathers as mainly just bread-winners. I remember thinking "I HAVE TO RETHINK EVERTHING!!!"  

I knew that I didn't want my kids to have an educational experience like I did. I wanted to be the primary educator instead of expecting schools to do the job for me.  

My conception of education at the time was very rudimentary, but I did know that philosophy was very important. I also knew that I didn't know much about it. So I knew I had to first learn philosophy to be able to teach it. So I started searching for books. I found a book about homeschooling which recommended The Classical Education. It's the education that Western people provided to their children from as far back as Ancient Greece, and it's the education that produced the great minds of The Enlightenment like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and the founding fathers of the USA. These people were significant to me because I've always loved Physics and the USA, my home country. No longer surprising to me, The Classical Education agreed with me that philosophy was central -- the subject that all other subjects depend on.  

Shortly after consuming that homeschool book, I found the philosophy book The Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch. Almost immediately I learned that David Deutsch co-founded a parenting philosophy known as Taking Children Seriously, with primary co-founder Sarah Fitz-Claridge.  

I spent countless hours reading and reflecting. This led to huge improvement in the way I interacted with my kids. There were clear improvements early on, but it took many many many years for much of the improvement. My daughters are now teenagers and I think they're doing great. I recall my oldest telling me recently that she's noticed that our relationship is far better than the relationships between her friends and their parents. She noticed that all her friends lie and hide things from their parents, and that she doesn't do that with me. I already knew this but it was good to hear it from my daughter.  

I highly recommend everybody learn TCS, even if you don't have kids or never intend to have kids. TCS ideas apply to all types of relationships, not just the parent-child relationship. Read and ask questions. Sarah and David are very knowledgeable and very kind.  

AMA  

Disclaimers. I also have some disclaimers about following a parenting philosophy, whether TCS or anything else.  

First, you can't follow a parenting philosophy without creating a whole bunch of knowledge yourself, for your specific situation, knowledge that isn't found within the parenting philosophy. The parenting philosophy on its own cannot answer all your questions. Nor does it provide all the right questions that you should be asking. This is partly because the parenting philosophy does not contain knowledge about your specific situation, part of which is your current knowledge. Note also that even to understand the abstract ideas within a parenting philosophy, you could easily misunderstand them and misapply them, while believing that you're correctly following the parenting philosophy. It takes a great deal of knowledge-creation on your part just to avoid misunderstanding the abstract ideas and how to correctly apply them in concrete situations.  

Second, due to our current culture, many people think they can follow a parenting philosophy, like TCS, and ignore all previous parenting traditions, like from their own parents. This practice is based on the misconception that someone could start their life over from a blank-slate. This is impossible. Ignoring tradition is a bad idea. Not all of your parents' ideas are bad. Some of them are compatible with TCS and very useful, and without them you'd be harming yourself and your kids in ways that you could have avoided had you preserved the good knowledge from your parents.  

Third, some of the parenting traditions that are already within you are represented by your intuitions. This is to convey the idea that you should not ignore your intuitions, as they contain some good knowledge. You cannot follow a philosophy while ignoring your intuition. You have to integrate them -- resolve the conflicts between them, keeping the good ideas and rejecting the bad ones. This means that you will be updating your intuitions, possibly also updating the philosophy, or updating your understanding of the philosophy.  

Fourth, some of the traditions within our culture, which aren't directly explained by TCS, are useful and should not be ignored. For example, it's good to know lots of things from the field of Psychology, like what narcissism is, how to identify narcissistic behavior, and how to protect yourself from it.  

To be clear, these disclaimers are not excluded from TCS as far as I know. I may be wrong about this, and if you think so, I would greatly appreciate your detailed criticism designed to help me see how I'm wrong.  

Note: To protect my kids privacy, I won’t give answers that violate their privacy. I may ask them for permission to give certain answers on a case by case basis.