Valuetainment
"Parenting Has ZERO Influence" - Parenting Expert REVEALS Who REALLY Shapes Your Kids
26 Aug 2025
Chapter 1: What does the psychologist say about parenting's influence after age 15?
This is a gentleman speaking about why parenting has almost no effect, Tom, after age 15. Look at the way he breaks it down. Go ahead.
It's where you live. Why? Because out-of-home influences are more powerful in shaping the life course of your child than in-home influences are. And those out-of-home influences are peer groups, other adults, neighborhoods, resources, schools. and the larger community that you made available to this child. That is how you shape your child's life course.
The second biggest influence is also out of your hands, and that's genetics. And you don't get to determine that. But if you think parenting is so influential, let me give you two findings that have been replicated many times.
Chapter 2: Which external factors shape a child's life more than parenting?
When we follow up twins, we are able to calculate how much of their behavior is due to parenting within family environment. And here's what we find. The peak years of parental influence are below 7. From 7 on to 12, it drops dramatically. After 15, it's 6%. Six percent of the variation in a teenager's behavior is how their parents raise them.
That's it.
And after age 21, it's zero. There is no influence of parenting on any psychological trait after the age of 21. Now, do not mistake what I am saying. The knowledge your child possesses, what they know is clearly a function of exposure in the environment. But their traits, their abilities, their makeup, their personality is not.
Tom, do you agree with them?
I agree to a certain extent. I mean, remember, you're talking about this is the psychological environment and industry speaking, and it's based on their observations. However, there is truth in what he's saying is that you get really two bites at the apple. Bite number one is under age 13. Okay.
before puberty, because puberty brings emotions, hormones, and changes in behavior that we all experience ourselves. The second bite you get is between 13 and 18, when they leave the house. Now, the first bite is much bigger and more impact, but you do have a chance between 13 and 18.
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Chapter 3: How do genetics play a role in shaping a child's behavior?
And the angle that I chose, which was based on a lot of research, was I taught my daughters to reason and resist, to reason through the situations of life and resist the easy for the best. Resist the easy choices for the best. And I constantly pointed out perspectives. I didn't just stay in the echo chamber of our dinner table.
Chapter 4: What research findings challenge the idea of parental influence?
I pointed out, hey, did you see what happened to that kid at your school? Yeah. Do you see? Do you see this? Do you see? And so when you start pointing out things that are happening in their environment and you teach them to reason and resist, that's what you get the second bite of the apple. But he's correct in that. Look.
When the kids are young, you got to get them young on the things that you want them to respect, to do, and to have a natural inclination to. Because after puberty and all those hormones hit, it's really difficult. They're fighting two things. Structure you're putting around them and the natural hormonal zaniness, especially in young boys, it just happens to you. And then...
Chapter 5: What are the critical years for parental influence on children?
where do they spend most of their day? They spend most of their day in school. And so you need to know what is the makeup of the most influential kids at their school and what are those households looking like. And I've been fortunate that the households that the girls are being influenced by are well-structured and well-behaved households.
Yeah. You know, you watch this, and when he says, after 21 years old, the influence is zero, and he has zero. I don't agree with that. No. You know, where it's more about parents, the community more than it is the parents. Okay, fine.
Yes, I do believe that because purely the hours, number of spend with different people, it's important to put your kids in a school that's teaching the values that you agree with, and the risk is involved on parents. You know, somebody may disagree with this, Vinny, and they may say the following. They may say, well, I don't agree with this guy. Really? Yeah.
Yeah, because the influence is more on parents, and that is why. Tell me why the LGBTQ community is growing under kids. You think the parents are doing it? You think most parents are sitting there telling their kids to be gay? Forget about the Megan Foxes and forget about the Hollywood folks, the Dwayne Ways. Since my kid was three years old, he was a transgender, whatever.
I'm not talking about those guys. But who is doing this? School's doing this. Who is doing this? Communities are doing this. So there's a part of what he's saying is so true. Where if you build a community like the way we are when we're around each other, our values are similar. I don't mind if my kids are with Tom and I'm not there. He doesn't mind if his kids are with us and we're not there.
We don't have any problem there because we know what we're teaching, right? And neither one of us are undermining each other. Like I don't undermine Tom.
Yeah.
And Tom doesn't undermine me. You can have some other people that are around us and they take shots and you see the kids. When you see the kid disrespect you, the kid never disrespects me. The parents disrespect me in front of the kid for the kid to disrespect you. So never think it's the kid. It's not the kid. The parent is influencing that. So you're like, no problem if that's the case.
I'm not trying to get involved. It's your kid. You handle your thing. But on the part that I want to talk about here is respect. The info inside. The other night we're having dinner, okay? And we're at dinner, a restaurant we've never been to before. Some of you guys should check it out. It's called Casa de Angel. So we're having dinner at this place.
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Chapter 6: What strategies can parents use to influence their children before puberty?
You're there. We're in the car. You drove us home. We're in the car with the boys, right? We come home that night, and I sit down with me, Tico, Dylan, and Senna. I take out a piece of paper, okay? And I said, guys, let's play a game together. And this is the game that we played. We played the game. I said, tell me, you can see here what it looks like. I said, tell me, you're 30 years old, okay?
What would be four to five things that you would be proud of if you're 30 years old that you're doing? Okay. So I'd want to be a soccer player. Okay, great. What else? I want to run my own business, insurance. Okay, great. What else? I... I want to be a paleontologist. What is that?
The dinosaur person, Tom.
Paleontologist. Paleontologist.
Study of animal history.
Right. So, you know, that's what I want to do. Okay, great. What else? And I'm going through it. I'd want to... Okay, what else? Next one, I'd want to be the CEO of Valuetainment. What else? I want to be able to do this. I want to be able to make movies. I want to be able to write scripts and my characters actually become, you know, what else? I want to be able to have my own bakery.
I want to be able to do this. I want to be able to do that. And they're explaining all of these things, right? So I said, okay, what qualities do you need for this to become a reality? Leadership, determination, discipline, hard work, poise. They're giving me all the qualities. I'm not giving them. I said, so you need all those qualities to be this. Yes. All right. Fantastic.
What route do you need to take for each of these jobs? Which of these jobs do you need a degree? Do you need a degree to be a professional soccer player? No. Do you need a degree to be a business owner? No. Do you need a degree? So we're kind of going through it. Yes. I need a for penalty. All this other stuff. We're kind of going through it. Right. And then you know what I do?
I said, okay, great, let's play a game. What's the game? We're gonna play the imagination game. What's the imagination game? I said, let's go through it. So I said, I want you to think about, you're 30 years old, okay? You're 30 years old, and you're, you wanna set that aside, Adam, for a second? What are you doing? You're eating some chips and stuff?
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Chapter 7: How does the community impact children's development?
And I took it to this level. I've never seen anybody in my family make this kind of money. I wanted to go to this level. If you're going to go be a professional in anything, you got to take it to certain levels that I can't even take it. Yeah. But when you saw their faces, I said, notice you didn't react to that, but you reacted to this and you reacted to this.
So now it's going to come down to what you guys want to do with your life. But every one of them, Vinny, is different. This is why I'm convinced there are studies done about the fact that people are born with liberal tendencies and people are born with conservative tendencies. You're born that way.
And then some of it is family, environment, surroundings, all this other stuff that makes you that way. So to me, as we're going through this direction, there are people that hate passionately people like Trump. Passionately they hate people like Trump. And, you know, you're like, all right, that's who that person is.
But if we're going forward with this place and you're seeing that whole number you just showed, that's 2.1 million Democrats lost, Republicans lost 2.4 million. Why do you think Democrats lost 2.1 million and Republicans gained 2.4 million? Why do you think the reasons are?
border, economy.
No, think about them. So Democrats screwed up the border.
So they're losing voters.
Why did 2.4 million people flip to the Republican side?
Nobody's emotional or taken by the Democrat vision, what they're selling.
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