Chapter 1: What do parents feel when they have children?
People say when you have kids, you don't know the meaning of love until you have kids. I didn't know the meaning of fear until I had kids. I think most of the reasons that people struggle in life is because they're not taught how to live it. We've got a good thing going, right?
We're in love, it's good, we've got a couple kids, but there's a huge difference between everything that you just said and this, which is all of those things, me and you, against that thing out there.
what's up this is john and welcome to off the record this is an additional drop for the dr john deloney show where i bring in folks from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, people that I think are cool, people that I know I disagree with people that I know are going to challenge me. And I bring them in for people that I just love.
Um, and we sit down and have a great conversation today. I'm super hyped. Um, this is what it's a long time coming. And, um, I brought him on as a response to one of the most common conversations people ask me to talk about, and that is relationships and technology, technology and kids, technology and interrupting adult relationships.
I brought in, he's known to the world as the quote-unquote healthy gamer. He's known as Dr. K. His name is Alec Kanogia. He is awesome. I'll call him Dr. K for the rest. That's how he goes. That's how he introduced himself. He is the best. He's a super kind guy, very relatable. And in this episode, he nailed me to the wall. He's a psychiatrist.
He still practices, but he also has written great books and talks at length on tons of different media platforms about the dangers of technology and the good stuff about technology. and how to integrate those things into a healthy home. It's an awesome conversation. Kelly says it's her favorite conversation I've ever had. And I think that's because he nailed me to the wall.
And I walked away from this conversation literally changing the way I do things inside my own house. And so buckle up for my conversation with Dr. K. All right, so you've – I've got two kids. You've got two kids. Yep. If you and I are just sitting down having nachos – no, we're having papasitos because we're back in Houston. Okay. Which is the best.
We're sitting there sharing chips and queso. Okay. What is – as you look ahead, what's the thing that makes you the most, like, nervous? As you look at – or the thing you're most worried about that your two kids are going to – Oh, that's such a great question.
So I'll start by saying this. You know, people say when you have kids, you don't know the meaning of love until you have kids. I think what they don't advertise, I didn't know the meaning of fear until I had kids. Yeah. I still remember there was one time that my kid was jumping on a trampoline and she fell off. She had a trajectory where she was going to be off of the trampoline.
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Chapter 2: How does technology impact parenting and relationships?
She's a pediatrician. And so isn't it hard to like deal with sick kids and like, you know, kids who get hurt? And I remember one day I went with her on Christmas Day. I went with her to the hospital and she had a patient who had been run over by a tractor.
Yeah.
And so I was like, isn't that like impossible to deal with? Because these are like, you know, kids that have been just so grievously wounded. And she was like, no, it's actually like easier if you're a pediatrician because kids heal. Right. So even if a kid has some neurological problem or something like that, like there's still there's a lot of neuroplasticity.
There's a lot of like stem cell activation and like kids heal. And I think human beings, you know, that really struck me. And then what I've learned is human beings are incredibly resilient. And I think as long as we understand kind of who we are and how our physiology works, how our brain works, a touch of spirituality thrown in like.
You know, I think my kids have taught me that they're going to live their life no matter what plans I have.
Oh, man. You know? Yeah, that's the one constant is I've been wrong every time. Like, you should. Nah, it's not going to work that way. I hadn't thought about that. But you have the benefit of seeing somebody in a challenging moment, whether psychiatrically, physically, or whatever. And you've got a well of people that you've seen on the other side of that. Oh, absolutely.
That they're well or they're whole or they're as well as they're gonna be and they're living full lives, right?
Yeah, so I think, you know, people think that like, and I'm sure you've seen this too, you know, I mean, I can see that you're speaking from experience with the people that you've worked with. But I think a lot of times, you know, we think that helping people may be hard from a medical perspective, from a therapy perspective. But once you start to see success stories, right?
Once you start to see what human beings are truly capable of. And for me, the biggest thing is, I think most of the reasons that people struggle in life is because they're not taught how to live it. Right. So we have so much formal education in like mathematics and chemistry. We have zero formal education in emotions. We have zero formal education in the ego.
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Chapter 3: What are the emotional challenges of parenting?
And they have these pseudo-off-ramps. And nowadays, they don't even have to leave the room. They can just plug right in and they have these pseudo-sexual encounters all day, every day. And... The root of that cancer is I got a lonely 19-year-old or I've got a desperately alone, like frantically alone 18-year-old that's been unplugged from everything and just dropped into a box.
And that humanized that kid that I had reduced to – You don't need to stop having so much unsafe sex or you don't need to stop all the alcohol consumption instead of going, oh, no, no, that makes sense. I guess my responsibility as somebody who's working with college students is I've got to get y'all connected ASAP or I got to re-examine what are we doing to these poor kids, right?
And so loneliness, to answer your question, is a root that I keep seeing come up over and over.
I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, I think when we're talking about addictions, There's the behavior itself. So a lot of parents, especially if we're talking about things like technology and stuff like that, I mean, I hear this all the time where, you know, how do I get my kid off of the iPad or less time on the computer or PlayStation or whatever?
And to understand that any behavior, if you just try to take it away, there's gonna be a lot of friction, a lot of resistance. It's like kicking somebody's crutch out from underneath them.
Absolutely. Is that a good?
Yeah, so I think, yeah, I think a crutch is a little bit different because I think you really need the crutch.
That's fair, that's fair.
Like if you've got a broken leg or something, but yeah, absolutely. I think the key thing that I think most professionals who work with humans stumble into is there's a fuel that's driving the addiction. Yeah. And if you really want the addiction to melt away, if you want it to kind of expire of its own accord, it's really about understanding what is the fuel that's driving it.
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Chapter 4: How can we better communicate our needs in relationships?
Because here's the thing, talking about OnlyFans and talking about just social media, we're here. It's not mainstream yet, but we're here where there will be a indistinguishable AI companion pornographically that... We don't have the psychology. We don't have the neurochemistry for what we got now. What's coming is going to be rough.
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I think we're seeing pornography addiction is skyrocketing. The really scary statistic of that is about 5% of men under the age of 30 used to have erectile dysfunction.
Yeah.
Now about 30% of men under the age of 30 have erectile dysfunction. And it's probably due to pornography or almost certainly due to pornography usage. So the use is skyrocketing. And I think that what a lot of people miss about that, so a lot of people think that pornography addiction is about Yeah. But it really isn't.
So so the number of people when you sit down and work with these people, there's a lot of like passive pornography consumption. So people will be like working on Excel on one monitor and there'll be like pornography on the other monitor for hours at a time. So people don't realize what it kind of really is doing.
And in order to understand what it does, we have to understand that, you know, the way that our organism is designed, it's to be able to procreate and then support our offspring so that they can procreate, right? So if you sort of think about it, like, the prime reason to exist as a person is to engage in a sexual act. Like, that's what it's all about. Because if we stop doing that, no more kids.
Yeah, we're done, right? So... We're working to get there. So... Birth rates are on the decline. Yeah. And so what happens is sexual activity has a really interesting effect on the brain, which is that it shuts everything else off.
So especially in men, and this is a little bit different for men and women, but if you kind of think about, you know, there are lots of jokes about, you know, when a dude feels frisky, you know, I know you're married, I'm married. When we feel frisky, It's easy to ignore a lot of other stuff.
And then if you look at the physiology and neuroscience of the sexual act, when we're engaged in that act, we're not feeling anxious, we're not afraid, unless the anxiety is so overpowering that we are not able to engage in the act, which absolutely happens. But generally speaking, it shuts down all of our negative emotional circuitry.
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Chapter 5: What emotional labor do men excel at that women are not socialized to do?
Of course. Right? So we've all had probably male friends who will just absolutely be out of control. And we're like, bro, it's okay.
Right?
I can hold that. You can be falling apart. And like, it's like, I can handle that. So even I remember when my dad passed away, the way that, you know, when someone cries and, They end up on a man's shoulder. Right, right, right, right. Right? So I, as a psychiatrist, have held people who are crying on my couch. I cannot think of a single of my female colleagues who has ever done that.
So the ability to hold emotions and contain them, because we're really good at suppressing. So you can send it my way. I'll hold it for you. I can hang on to it for you. I can suppress it. I'll shove it down. I know how to bury that. I'm good at that. And oftentimes women don't do that kind of emotional labor nearly as much as men do. That's our day in and day out.
So what can actually happen is if you're a dude... And you go from zero to 100, that is oftentimes too much for someone to handle, right? Especially your female partner. And it kind of gives them the ick.
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Chapter 6: How can emotional vulnerability affect relationships?
I hear this a lot with like dating where, you know, now like men are trying to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable and stuff like that. And just think about it, right? If you're a woman listening to this, if your husband showed up and just started crying at like 100%, and did that like six days in a row, right? How would that make you feel? Would you be like, is this okay?
I don't know what the fuck is going on.
Let's go, let's go, let's go. I don't know how to handle it.
And that's also why one of the worst things I think you can ever do is confess your love. So when you confess your love, you're going, you've had all this love that's been piling up, right? You're confessing. So I'm falling more and more and more and more in love. And then I suddenly dump all of that on you.
Chapter 7: What are effective strategies for parenting in a digital age?
So I go from zero to 100, The other person is like, where is this coming from? And if you think about the way that organic, I don't know what happened with you and your relationship, but, you know, I would guess that most people out there, even if you kind of go from zero to 100, you don't show them zero to 100. Right? You fall for them real quick in the back of your mind.
You can't get them out of your head. But you're kind of playing it cool, and there's this graduated— I was going to say, the old line was, dude, be cool.
Yeah, right? Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are reasons why these things are the old line, right? So there are reasons that we offer this kind of advice. Yeah. Because if you go from zero to 100 and the other person can't handle it, they're going to pull away.
They're going to bury them. Huh.
dude we could talk for five hours on this one topic we need to set that up next time in houston we're gonna get together all right i want to switch gears um i need you to i need your parenting coaching me now okay okay we're gonna televise this but i we're gonna record it but i'm literally asking for your input okay okay you are a gamer okay like right you're like yeah you're like yeah an outstanding gamer from what i understand like you're good at it
I'm a gamer. Okay, okay. So I have hit the bell, the pendulum so far that I have, in the words of the great Homer Simpson, the best part about having kids is to teach them to hate the things that you hate, right? So I have passed along to my son, I'll use him, he's 15. this over sensationalized danger of all things, screens, all things like whatever, go outside, go be active.
In fact, I got him a new climbing stand for we're in the middle of hunting season here in Nashville.
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Chapter 8: How can parents model healthy relationships with technology?
And he was this morning before the sun came up, practicing with it up a tree, right? Okay. Hit it so far. And, uh, I also have begun to have, like he got his first smartphone in eighth grade, but we took off cameras, we took off the internet. There's no way, it's basically a texting device, right? Okay. And to this day, 15 still doesn't have that stuff. No Snapchat, none of those things.
Part of that is a response to me doing a bunch of sexual assault investigations where everything was in Snapchat over and over and over and over again, right? And just constantly living in the data about social media.
Sure.
Have I hit... Have I gone too far to the point where I'm messing this poor kid up? Playing defense. And if I haven't yet, what is a way that... He's now two and a half years from walking out of my front door into the wild, wild west. Okay. How would I...
begin to integrate into him responsibility while at the same time saying you're still a kid man and these these the tech ecosystem is simply better than us it's better than us help me okay sure so let's start with a couple of questions okay what happens next like where where is your plan going to lead you like so what what happens next well it's plan is a a
So a couple years ago, he does have some video games, and he plays them with his friends. And he brought it to us and said, hey, we live out here in the country. When I walk out of my schoolhouse, you have isolated me from every human being on the planet. I was like, that's actually a fair call.
And so if there's a couple of these games that have closed groups that I know, what I don't want is strangers coming in, et cetera, et cetera. It's a ton of extra work on my part, but it was a fair call. Sure. So, you gotta be able to talk to your friends on the phone and just talk noise and trash and make jokes after school and whatever. That's fine.
And if y'all are doing it playing Minecraft, so be it. But I have to come up with some sort of healthy integration because the day you walk out of my house... That's the ecosystem you're in.
Okay. So, so right. So I, I think, I think, so it sounds like y'all hunt.
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