Nathan Wallis: Inside The Developing Brain

Rocky: 00:00:18

Today I'm joined by someone whose name comes up almost in every conversation regarding a child development in New Zealand. Educator and speaker, Nathan Wallace. Kyoto, my friend Chi.

Nathan Wallis: 00:00:30

Good to be here, mate.

Rocky: 00:00:31

Thank you for joining. Have you been in any good films this year?

Nathan Wallis: 00:00:37

Have I seen any good films?

Rocky: 00:00:39

Have you been in any.

Nathan Wallis: 00:00:40

I've been in any. Really. I'm not in a lot of films. I've been in a documentary doco series called Scene.

Rocky: 00:00:46

Yes, yes. Me and the wife sat down and watched that the other. Well, a few weeks ago now.

Nathan Wallis: 00:00:51

Oh yeah? Yep.

Rocky: 00:00:52

How did that all come about?

Nathan Wallis: 00:00:54

Um, well, really Sam Jockle is the producer in Brisbane and she's just a passionate woman. You know, she started out as a. I think she went viral as a mum, posting online about just normal school kids stuff and got a huge following.

And then from that she started Parent tv. She thought parents are inundated with knowledge and she wanted them to know what's the, you know, the fake stuff and what's the real stuff.

That's backed up by research. So she'd only have on her site researchers and speakers who are backed by the evidence and backed by the research.

So the parents knew when they go into that site they're getting the real peer reviewed, proper research. And so there was a group of us she brought on and from that just to.

So many of the conversations you have around wellbeing go back to people having to explore their childhood.

So yeah, she just decided that's probably the core thing that we need to make a movie about, to make a documentary about that sparks off that conversation. It's all about healing people, I suppose. And part of that healing process is often looking back. It's not looking back and blaming your parents.

Cause your parents turn out just to be people as well with their own fallibilities. But really you can't go through life unexamined. So much of your early attachment style was four different attachment styles in research.

And so much of all of your relationships go back to whichever attachment style you had in the first place. So unpacking that, it's like the start of your story. And so as the foundation, it's hugely important.

Rocky: 00:02:17

Yeah, definitely started a conversation between me and my wife about how we sort of raise the kids. So we're a bit of a blended family. Our oldest is mine was someone else and the youngest is hers or someone else.

I definitely started a conversation about how we raised our kids, like completely different. And you can sort of see how through the years how they've sort of mirrored how we sort of taught them and our teaching style.

Nathan Wallis: 00:02:44

Yeah, absolutely.

Rocky: 00:02:46

And it was quite. It was very interesting. You sort of know, you sort of see it through them.

But until you watch a, watch a film like that or, or read about it or something like that, you start going, yeah, I can see. I can see and see how the, how they are. Like they are.

Nathan Wallis: 00:03:04

Yeah, I can see that. I've got three kids in there. The eldest is for like five before I had the other two. And they've got different mothers.

You know, the oldest one's got a different mother than the younger. But, yeah, I could sort of see the phase of life I was in by their personalities. Now the eldest one's a bit more of a hippie.

Cause I was a bit more of a. I was a bit more of a hippie stage in that stage. And, you know, the next one's very focused and career orientated and stuff because I was into a phase of my career then.

And yeah, I can definitely see how those early influences impacted who they are.

Rocky: 00:03:34

So I guess that sort of comes back to if anyone would look you up or find out about you. Is that. That first thousand days. That's sort of. That's sort of the one that pops up most when anyone looks you up. What's.

What's sort of the core idea? Yeah, what's sort of the core idea that parents or educators misunderstand? Like under.

Nathan Wallis: 00:03:55

y. It's basically that in the: 1990

years of the: 1990

And basically, out of 300 years worth of information, the most important thing that we learned was this concept of the first thousand days, that basically the human brain's like genetically biologically designed to interact with the environment in the first thousand days of its existence to see what sort of brain you're gonna need the rest of your life. Now, that doesn't mean that genes aren't important. Genes make up 50% of your outcomes. So it's kind of talking about the other 50%.

It means you're not just a blank slate. You can't get a newborn baby to learn to, you know, it's not a blank slate. The genes, half the genes are set.

50% of your outcomes can be predicted from birth. But the other half the sentence used by the literature is the human brain is designed to be molded by the environment.

So 50% of you set in your genes, the other 50% is gonna see the first thousand days from conception. So it includes all the pregnancy till a thousand days after conception. It's about two and a half. You're designed to interact with the environment.

Cause your brain kind of assumes whatever happens in the first thousand days, you're gonna have a lifetime full of that. So it gives you a brain ready for a lifetime full of whatever you're experiencing in the first thousand days in combination with your genes.

So just as a great gift to us as humans, it means we're incredibly adaptable. If you take a camel from the desert and shift it to Antarctica and try and raise it as in the first thousand days, it dies.

Cause camels are set in their genes. They've got very few transcription genes. Whereas human beings, we're designed to be moulded by the environment.

You can take a human being born of desert, parents, great grandparents, the.

The person's entire whakapapa, or genealogy, all the way back for thousands of years as being hot, you know, desert people, they are not set that way. You shift that child to a cold place, raise them in the snow and ice by the.

Not only do they live, but they actually flourish as, you know, as 50% of their genome effectively allows them to adapt to that environment. So human beings can live on any part of the planet that we're born on. We adapt to it.

Whereas animals are bound to the geographic, climatic location that they're born in or have evolved in. I mean, if you take an evolution lens, another way of thinking of this is because you can get a snow camel, right?

But it's gonna take thousands and thousands and thousands of years of adaption to achieve a snow camel. Effectively.

What humans can do, what would typically in nature would take thousands of years of adaption, the human brain does in the first thousand days of its existence. So a huge gift to us as humans. Just unfortunately that we live in a society that thinks babies are all driven by genes and it's all biological.

And as long as you change the inepi and feed them, it's not really impacting, you know, it's. Whereas actually the opposite of that is true.

Rocky: 00:06:43

Yeah. I think, like thinking back, how much do children retain or remember from their period of their life?

I guess, because actually, I'll refrain that sort of sort of question, because my first memory that I can obviously Remember is.

Nathan Wallis: 00:07:07

Yep.

Rocky: 00:07:07

Being in the backseat of my Dad's car, early 80s, I reckon I must have been three or four and driving. I was in the back seat. He was in the front with his, one of his mates. And I remember driving and he. Him just yelling out, just get on the ground.

And I was like, oh, what's going on? And you know, back then you didn't wear seat belts. It was quite easy. It was one of those bench seats.

So you just jump on the, just jumped on the floor. And I remember hearing this thing of like two tings on the side of the car. I was like, what's, what's that?

And he's like, it's just rocks just doing skids or whatever. And then I remember all the good presents that he used to get me for Christmas.

And obviously over time I realized that he was a criminal and these are the sort of things he was going through. And I remember the day that my mom left him. I remember exactly where I was standing when I, when she told me.

And then on the flip side of that, I guess my sort of history is law enforcement. You go to family violence jobs and you see the kids and the parents will always say, no, they're fine. They don't know what's going on.

But they can hear you arguing, they can hear your physical abuse of each other. How much for those people who don't understand, how much do children retain and remember from that sort of age period?

Nathan Wallis: 00:08:39

Yeah, I think people get like, there's different types of memory. And so the memory that people normally talk about is like you've said, your first memory is what sounds like gunfire hitting the car.

Doesn't surprise me that that's what you remember because you are what's called semantic memory, which is your feeling memory. So you can't remember the actual details, the details associated with the part of the brain, the hippocampus.

And that generally doesn't come online till around 18 months of age. So it's rare for people to remember before 18 months. Doesn't mean it's impossible. Because everything we know about humans we put onto a bell curve.

So we say 18 months. Cause that's the average in the center of the bell shape when you put it on a graph. But that means there'll be people that remember.

There's people that swear they remember being born. There's other people that don't remember things until they're nine years old is the earliest memory.

But in the middle of that bell curve, the average is 18 months. But you're born with your semantic memory already online. So semantic memory is your memory of feelings. So you don't need to know what's going on.

You don't need to remember about the rocks or the gunfire. You can just remember that you were scared. You just remember that something's up.

I don't know what it is, but this is all my senses are heightened, wherein you know, you sort of know you're endangered. So I've got a background working with sexually abused kids.

Cause when you work in trauma, didn't know this at the time, but the most common trauma that children experience is domestic violence. Like you've described, it's sexual abuse. So when you become a trauma therapist, that's sort of your bread and butter. What it means is that.

Cause unfortunately pedophiles sort of target children under one because they can't testify in court and stuff. So what it means is the child won't remember the event, who did it. You know, that he's in the library with the lead pipe.

You know, they don't remember the details, but they remember the feeling of being raped or the feeling of being beaten or the feeling of being scared. So you were old enough by that stage for your autobiographical memory and your more out there memory to be online as well.

So you can remember the details, but yeah, you tend to.

It's worse when your hippocampus isn't online because you remember the NA fear but you've got no idea what it's about or why you're triggered by the sound of rocks hitting the car or anything that sounds similar to that. And you go into a fear response but you don't understand it. Cause you don't have the explicit memory.

So yeah, your feeling memories to protect you is online straight away. So you'll just know to be scared of. I knew to be scared of my stepfather a long time before I understood why I should be scared of him.

Rocky: 00:11:12

Yeah, I haven't been a. Well, I'm a parent, but I haven't been had like any. A newborn or anything recently.

But there seems to be a lot more sort of parenting types than there was I guess when we were growing up or named or these parenting types were named instead of just, you know, the parent being who they are.

Nathan Wallis: 00:11:36

Yeah.

Rocky: 00:11:38

One that keeps popping up. And I don't know if it's just my. My universe or. But gentle, gentle parenting. I think people, if you're not doing it sort of.

It's the most talked about one in my universe anyway.

Nathan Wallis: 00:11:53

Okay, interesting.

Rocky: 00:11:55

Yeah. What's your Interpretation of gentle parenting, I guess, is the question.

Nathan Wallis: 00:12:02

Yeah, I think that understanding that stuff that I've said previously about we're adapting to the environment when you have gentle parenting. And I mean to me it's, we often treated kids as objects, so it was like, well, the baby's not gonna remember, so, you know, throw that nappy on.

Like, why don't we change a baby's nappy? In the same way that you would change your 90 year old mother who's got dementia and is now soiling herself and you love her deeply.

The way you would change her nappy would be so much more respectful. You wouldn't be, come on, quick mum, let's get that done. Let's throw her on her back and get it all done efficiently.

You'd be describing what you're going to do.

You'd be doing it, you'd be doing it like, even though she doesn't have her faculties about her and she's now got dementia, it's still your mother inside there. And so you change the nappy to that mother that you love and respect.

I think gentle parenting is recognizing that the baby might not be able to walk, talk, express themselves yet, but there's already a person in there. And so you are acknowledging that person and you're being gentle with the same way you would with your dementia mother.

I think it's just we're moving away from underthinking the baby's an object. We have very different ideas about childhood all the way through history.

And we had plenty of kids working in factories of five and stuff at some points in our history. So our concept of childhood has changed. And I think gentle parenting, it's just that it's just recognizing there's a soul in there.

You're born with a temperament. Like we know that through science. We say in human development, we say temperament plus experience equals personality.

So your personality changes quite a lot. You adapt to things. If I'm an early childhood teacher, as a full time job, I've gotta be responsive and slow paced and empathetic.

But then I change jobs and I become a prison guard on death row, I'm gonna have to change my personality a whole lot, get a whole lot more assertive, a whole lot more aggressive. But the temperament behind whether I'm an early childhood teach or whether I'm a prison guard remains the same.

Nathan's still Nathan, regardless of the environment. So I think it's recognizing there's already someone in there when they're born.

And I don't know if we ever used to do that, you know, like I say, I don't think the way we change a baby's nappy doesn't acknowledge there's a person in there that's, you know. So I think to me, I mean, there's no specific definition of gentle parenting, but that's what I think it is.

It's about recognizing the way you welcome that soul into the world is gonna be the foundation for their experience for a long time. So I don't want to think, oh, she'll be right and you know, be putting the baby into shock all the time by thinking and hardening them up.

But gentle parenting is about just recognizing there's a soul in there and you want a gentle place for them to land, a safe place. You know, you don't want that kid to be lying down on the backseat of the car, petrified for their life.

Cause that affects the quality and the vibration that you can have for the rest of your life. And it dictates a lot of that foundation stuff.

Whereas instead, gentle parenting welcomes that child and nurtures them and protects them and allows them to manifest more in a higher vibration, I suppose, than a threat and violence and fear. Vibration?

Rocky: 00:15:00

Yeah. Is it more of a connection sort of thing or.

Nathan Wallis: 00:15:03

Absolutely, absolutely more of a connection.

Rocky: 00:15:08

When you're saying that, yeah, we're just getting chucking the nappy on, is that sort of a disconnect from the child being an actual person or.

Nathan Wallis: 00:15:20

Yeah, yeah.

I think because we're so focused on the explicit things, the walking and the talking and stuff, we tended to treat people, our babies, like human becomings.

Someone who will become worthy of being treated with the respect like we respect our 90 year old mother when we're changing her nappy, they're gonna become worthy of being a human being. So they're a human becoming and at 18 they're allowed to vote. And so we just have this idea that you're part of a person.

And when you're a baby because you can't walk, talk, speak, express yourself, it's like, oh, you're not much yet. So there is a failure to connect. You know, you do it very differently.

You know, I'm a grandparent, so if changing my grandson's nappy, I would do it just like you do to your 90 year old dementia grandfather that you really love and really respect. I'm telling him what's gonna happen.

It might seem mental to other people that I'm from the day he's born saying, mate poa, poa's you know, ngi tahu word for granddad. Poa's gotta.

Poa's gotta put your legs in my hands and I'm gonna lift you up and I'm gonna slide your nappy out from underneath, just like I would with a dementia patient. Letting them know. Cause predictability calms the whole brain stem. And he won't know at one day old what I'm saying. Cause he's just arrived here.

But if I talk to him like that, by the time he's three months old, he is lifting his legs up and putting them in my hands. Cause he understands what's happening. Cause we've built this partnership. Whereas I don't think.

I think in the old days you hear a lot of dads say, oh, I'll talk when he's three, and he can already walk and talk and stuff, but you've actually already established most of who you're gonna be in this world by the age of three, by the time they can get to language and express themselves and stuff. So, yeah, I think connection is spot on. Rocky.

Rocky: 00:16:52

Yeah.

I think just obviously going back to the film and the conversation we had discussing how we raised our children, I think I was talking to our eldest like an adult, I guess, from. From when we brought him home. Yep. And it's sort of made him more. As he's growing up, he's more sociable than I ever was when I was coming up.

And yeah, he can talk to anyone who loves him. Cause he's just one of those types of people.

Nathan Wallis: 00:17:25

Yeah.

But do you think he was born that way or do you think it was because you treated him with, like he was worthy of respect straight away, that even though you might have raised your voice slightly because babies can't hear the deeper tones when you're born. So it's called purity. Go. But you're still talking to them like they're a person. You're explaining what's going on.

And so they feel right from the sense from the start that I'm safe, I'm connected, you know, Dad's got it, so of course he's gonna be more social and stuff. But like, I just don't think that stuff was just in his temperament.

I think it's because of that early relationship that you bring about that confidence.

Rocky: 00:17:58

Yeah. Is that why people talk in high pitched voices when they talk to babies?

Nathan Wallis: 00:18:02

Yeah, yeah. Cause literally the baby's hearing is not formed. And if you go, hello, baby. They can't hear that. Cause they can't hear the higher the Lower tone.

But literally, you just automatically go, gay, buddy. And you go up in a high voice. It is natural. Yeah.

Rocky: 00:18:15

Yeah. Okay. You often do speak a lot about consistency and responsive care in those early years. And you brought up early childhood educators.

Nathan Wallis: 00:18:28

Yep.

Rocky: 00:18:28

What's your stance on sort of using them before the age of three?

Nathan Wallis: 00:18:35

I think it's the reality of the world. Most children in New Zealand, most more children are in childcare or out of home care before the age of one than are at home.

So it's just the economic reality. I get in lots of trouble with this because I'm very aware of the research. And the research shows the best place for a baby is at home with the.

Not necessarily the mother. The best place is at home with the most interactive parent. Like, you know, the number one resiliency factor for any human being in the world.

You know, we're inundated with research now. We've all got Google in the lounge.

So there has to be one thing, one intervention you can do for a human being that's gonna lift all of these statistical outcomes more than any other single intervention that's got the most bang for buck.

And indisputably, across the world's research, the number one intervention you can do to improve a human being's outcomes is to have a parent stay at home in the first year of life. So that does not mean, however, that you wrecked your kid by putting them into childcare, which I think parent guilt takes people straight to.

When I'm trying to advocate for children saying the best place is at home, and yet most people didn't have their children at home for the entire year. Then they go to a guilty place and a defensive place. But my children will rent well at home for the first year either. It's not a have to be.

It's just that is the best scenario. What we say academically, it's because language is the major driver of cognition. So it's an academic way of saying cognition just means thinking.

Language is the major driver of your thinking. 50% of you is already set at birth. The other 50% is data gathering.

There has to be one piece of data that's more important than all the others, and that is language. Language is the thing that drives your brain development more than any other thing.

We can statistically predict how much money the kid's gonna be earning when they're 32 years old based on nothing else other than the number of words spoken to them per day by their main parent between the ages of 0 and 1. Statistically, another way of looking at that statistically.

So, yeah, the more you talk to them in the first year of life, the more money they're earning. At 32, it's a correlation.

But you also see that statistically, elder children tend to grow up and be more highly qualified and earn more money than the other kids, not just by a little bit. So large is the gap between how much the eldest child earns.

Not every time, obviously, but on average between our eldest child and all the other kids. In neuroscience, we don't even put the other kids into separate categories. You don't have second child, third child, fourth child.

Cause there really is statistically not much difference. There's really no difference between the outcomes for your children 2, 3, and 4. But there's such a big leap between one and all the other kids.

In neuroscience, there's only two birth orders. You're either a firstborn child or you're a not firstborn child.

And that's because the major driver of that is cause on average, we speak 20,000 words a day, roundabout to our firstborn child in the first year of life. All the other kids, we speak 15,000 words a day because, you know, it's the only time we only had one kid.

So if your kid's data gathering on the environment and the most important data is language, your eldest child probably got that, didn't have to share their parent with anybody else, probably gathered 20,000 units of data a day for how brainy they needed to be. All the other kids, no one gets the same genes. But even if they had the same genes, they're only gathering 15,000 words a day.

So their world isn't as complex because they're not spoken to as often. So their cognition isn't as complex.

So when you pay a parent to stay at home, like Scandinavian countries do, you know, mum often gets 100% of her salary to stay at home in the first. The first year of life. It's not just because baby's acute, because that baby's likely to be exposed to more language.

They'll bring online more of their brain than before. They'll be more intelligent, less likely to go to jail, less likely to commit suicide. All the best outcomes come from building a healthy brain.

And that's mainly the first year of life. But it doesn't mean that.

What I try and emphasize to people is that staying at home is because you're gonna talk more if you're at home and you're one of those parents who's on your cell phone the whole time and Looking at a screen and ignoring the baby. And that's called a fubber.

F U B B A Someone who looks at a screen all the time, someone who prefers to look at a screen rather than a person, is called a fubber. It's a German word.

So if you see two people in a cafe and one's got their phone and one has it and you time them and the person with their phone looked at their screen more than they looked at the person they're having coffee with, that's a fubber.

So if you're at home with a fubber who spends the whole time looking at the screen and not the baby, then you're not in an advantage to be at home with your parent in the first year of life. Cause you're gonna be only getting 5,000 words. So it's not the parent being at home is the parent interacting with the child equally.

I remember my daughter picking her up from care, you know, she was under one and the teacher started picking her up about four o' clock in the afternoon. And the teacher's saying, oh, she gets really tired about 2, 3. But we don't put her to sleep because we know she'll be awake for you all night.

And I said, I will stop doing that because I get her home, she's so tired, we give her tea, she has a bath, she goes straight to bed. And I've already been at work all day, there's no interaction, give her an afternoon sleep.

So when I get her home, she wouldn't go to bed till like 10 o' clock at night. I'd get 10 hours interaction.

So I think even though she was in care, with that little intervention and my ADHD, I'm pretty sure we still got up to 20,000 words a day even though she was in care. So I don't think she missed out. I just think that's understanding. Research is about the average person in the middle, not about the individual child.

So on average a child that stays at home is probably gonna hear more words from their parent than a child who goes to, than a parent who goes to work and a child that goes to daycare. But as a human, you're affected by so many things that daycare is just one of them. So under three, there's no advantage to daycare. There is no.

The benefit is to the economy for under three year olds. The benefits so both parents can go to work. There's no developmental benefits for the child whatsoever under three.

Those benefits kick in at the age of three with social skill development yeah.

Rocky: 00:23:52

So if there's. So if parents do have to send them to before the age of three to childcare, is there anything that parents should look out for? Any quality?

Nathan Wallis: 00:24:03

Yep. They want the intimacy of relationship. So you want.

So if my child's under three, I might try and find home based care where there's just one person looking after the babies. You don't have the same accountability as you do in a centre, so you have to trust that one person.

You might want to stick up with nanny cam, but one person for the baby to interact with.

The baby's going to get to know that person, they're going to get to predict that person, they're going to get to know how they change their nappy, how they talk to them, the pace they talk at, they're effectively going to build up that one on one relationship with the home based carer, that they'll get a lot of the benefits they would have got being at home with their parent. If you don't have home base and you go to a centre, Centres operate under two different models.

One is primary care, where, you know, say I go to the centre, you're the early childhood teacher, you're assigned as my son's primary carer.

That means 80% of the time you'll change his nappy, 80% of the time you'll give him a bottle, 80% of the time you'll put him to bed again, you're gonna get that intimate relationship where he knows you really well and you know him really well and again, he's gonna get a lot of the benefits he would have got from being at home.

The one to look out for is centers that operate under a roster system where you're rostered on nappies and used to change his nappy and then he said he needs a bottle, so you go and check the bottle and see who's rostered on bottles.

When we find out that you know Mary's roster on bottles, so you hand my son to Mary, she gives him a bottle, then goes, oh, you know, he needs, you know, whatever. The next thing is, sleep room, he needs to go to sleep. Who's on the sleep room? We go and check the roster and someone else is on the sleep room.

That baby that's being looked after by roster is having their physical needs met, having their nappy changed and getting a bottle and being put to sleep. But they're not getting that intimate human relationship.

So we measure cortisol, the stress hormone that babies release, and basically our job is to keep that hormone level as low as possible in the early years. Pretty much as a general guideline. The lower it is, the better the outcomes are for the rest of your life.

It's like effectively, if I summarized it, you have a tiny little bit of cortisol when you're home with your parent. Cause you have to have some. That's what regulates us as humans. Cortisol's what gets you out of bed in the morning to go to work and stuff.

So you need a little bit. So you have a little bit at home, Mum. You go to Nana's, you've only got a tiny little bit more. Not enough to cause any concern or damage.

Just to let us know. The baby would actually prefer to stay in that one on one dyadic, we call it. Dyad's just a word for that one on one relationship.

It's a small social group, two people. Because a baby forms that, that dyadic relationship will form the blueprint for all their future relationships.

So the baby would prefer to stay in that one on one main attachment person in the first year they go to Nanner, it goes up a little bit. Go to home based care. It's not much higher than being with Nana.

Go to a centre with primary care where one person primarily looks after your baby most of the time. And it goes up to here. It's when you get looked after in rostered care that we see the cortisol levels just skyrocket.

So I'd say to parents, you're not reckoning you could put them into a childcare centre. Just don't get them looked after by a roster when they're under three. Get them looked after by a relationship.

If Nana or granddad isn't retired and can't be at home to do it. Cause you don't need education in the sense of, you know, literacy and numeracy. You need love and attachment and connection in the first three years.

You need someone to, you know, the way a grandparent and a parent loves a child.

You need someone to think you're the most amazing human being that's ever been born before, you know, and you generally feel like that about your own babies and about your grandchildren. So that's what you need in the first three years. So anything that fosters that relationship is a good thing.

Rocky: 00:27:13

Yeah, just speaking on that.

I was speaking to someone who's children had gone to school in the Philippines and he was saying that there were a lot more, from what he can see, a lot more advanced than children. Well, they would go into, yeah, childcare under the age of 4, like preschool.

And he was saying they were a lot more advanced in regards to the learning and you know, they could do a lot more than children from Australia and New Zealand.

Nathan Wallis: 00:27:46

Yep. You're talking about young children.

Rocky: 00:27:48

Young children. So like preschool. So under the age of four, I guess.

And he was saying that he just thinks that they just play, the educators just play with the kids in Australia, New Zealand and miss out on all that. Are we. Is he? Well, what's.

Nathan Wallis: 00:28:09

To me.

Rocky: 00:28:10

Yeah, I guess the question is what's more important? Learning all that before you're four so you can write and do whatever, or are we missing something with the play aspect of those first two?

Nathan Wallis: 00:28:23

Definitely missing something.

That guy is assuming, like we have these cultural assumptions and he's assuming that it's a race, you know, that the kid who can read to 4 is going to be better off that the kid who doesn't learn to read till they're seven. And that's just not actually true. What we've always known in research is what we say cognitive results plateau at 8.

Cognition is reading, writing, colors, numbers, that stuff, the flashy stuff that you can put on a school report card at primary school, whether you learn to read at 4 or whether no one introduces reading until you're 7. By the age of 8, you've got the same reading age. So it's not really a race. You don't get more intelligent children by learning to read at 4.

What you get from learning to read at 4 is more for people who are statistically more likely to be depressed and have anxiety because depression and anxiety is black and white thinking.

When you interrupt play for a four year old and stop their play and get them down reading and writing with this illusion that you're helping them, you're basically getting them to be seven early. You do not get better adults by getting them to be seven early. You get better adults.

If at five you're meeting the needs of a five year old, at six you're meeting the needs of a six year old, and at seven you're meeting the needs of a seven year old.

When you introduce literacy and numeracy like this is a T, it has to be black and white thinking, this has to be a T, it has to always be a T. You can't say let's call that an S today to be creator because that screws up literacy. So black and white thinking is the basis of anxiety and depression.

So actually the earlier you learn to read, the more statistical chance there is you'll have anxiety and depression as a teenager. Play allows you to be creative, innovative.

Albert Einstein, actually he has a great quote about the fact when he was asked by the media all the time, why do you think you're considered one of the most intelligent people in the world? And he said, I've thought about that quite a lot. And I put it down to two main factors.

One is I played the violin my whole life so I could look at maths with the brain of an artist, whereas mathematicians are only looking at maths with the brain of a mathematician. We would say he's using his right brain activated through the violin as well as the left brain.

But his other reason was because the school thought he was retarded basically and sent him home again. So he didn't have to start schooling until he was seven. So he was left just to play with his imagination till he was 7.

A is really the thing that we have evolved to facilitate our higher intelligence, quite literally. The more hours a mammal spends playing in childhood, the more intelligent the mammal is.

So I can understand those Filipinos, that's who the four year old reading and writing and doing all their schoolwork. What you're gonna get is a nation of people that don't really invent things, aren't incredibly creative, have high rates of anxiety and depression.

They'll be good drone workers, you know, then you just want people to go into your factories and be drones and have no opinion, no real spirit, you know, it dampens their spirit and yeah, robotizes them.

So I think that's a problem that we face in the whole world is people are just not undigging that base assumption that the four year old who can read and write and count and do numbers and is ready for seven year old primary school curriculum is more intelligent. And they're not, they're dumber in many ways because they lack creativity, they lack innovation.

If you were following just what the neuroscience says in the first three years, you would just focus on making that baby feel in partnership. You probably wouldn't take them outside of your heart zone.

Your heart produces an electrical field that goes for up to 12ft for some people, but yet basically cause we measure language, but language is just a reflection of how often that baby's in partnership. So in the first three years I'd just make the baby feel in partnership with one person, never alone.

And then from three to seven it would be free play, not impoverished environments.

You need resources and stuff, but so you still need teachers, but the teachers aren't there to teach them to read and write the teachers are there to help facilitate that child feeling like a little scientist and giving them the resources that they need when they're stacking the tower. And you know that if they put one more block on it's gonna fall. You don't deny the kid the opportunity to learn that themselves.

Cause they're in charge of their learning. You hand them the block so they can put the one more block on. So they learn about cause and effect and they learn about height and dimensions.

You're not in charge of their learning. So it's still an important role for the teacher. But it's play based. You follow the child's play.

Play is something we've evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. And it knows much better what to do and how to develop that child's intelligence than the teacher or interviewers.

And to me tries to get that child to be 7 early. You just do not get a better 7 year old by starting practicing being 7 at 4.

Just like you aren't gonna be a better 90 year old by practicing with a zimmer frame now so that you're nice and ready for when you're 90. There'll be plenty of time when you're 89 to work out the zimmer frame.

You're gonna be wasting valuable time meeting the needs of a young man now by practicing with a zimmer frame. So it's the same when we get four year olds. So yes, you could probably tell I'm quite passionate about this.

But I can see why people using cultural assumptions and ignorance of how human development works thinks the four year old that can read write to me in lots of ways. You've wrecked that four year old.

Not wrecked and no one's wrecked, but you've destroyed so much of their potential by interrupting their play and not allowing them to develop creativity, innovation, concept of self. You just get so many amazing things from play. I don't encourage any of my kids to be learning to read and write before the age of seven.

I'm not trying to compete and make them. I know they'll all flash to the neighbours when they're four year old parade. And firstborn children often want to do that anyway.

You know, my firstborn granddaughter was 2 and her mother just spoke to her the whole time. So she would use bigger words than me at 2 and that made everyone think she was brainy and clever.

And my youngest daughter had so many older siblings cause I had stepchildren, she wanted to copy them so she wanted to read as free and things and she'd try and teach herself that, whereas I'm the parent, I'm discouraging her from that. I'm trying to pull her away from the reading and go, let's build a hut in the lounge with cushions.

And you know, because that creative open ended, no, right, wrong answer. That's what's best for the brain, you know, two to seven, naught. Literacy and numeracy.

The whole education system in the Western world is based on a guy called Piaget. Anyone that goes to teachers college learns about Piaget stages of cognitive development.

That's why schools in the Western world traditionally started at 6. Cause Piaget said you're ready for literacy and numeracy and formalised learning when you're seven, start at six.

So you will get one year to get used to the school, to build relationships with the teacher, to feel comfortable there so that by the time your formalised learning is ready to kick in. He called it the concrete operational stage. Between seven and eight you've already been at school for a year.

And then during the war there was a childcare shortage so they lowered the school starting age to five.

And then somewhere along the way politicians got more and more involved in deciding what happens in education rather than human development or human development theorists. And they just got this cultural idea and the earlier you'll be seven, the better off you'll be. So they kept the school age starting age of five.

Then they started changing the early childhood curriculum. Say you should be doing literacy and numeracy and getting them ready to be sent to.

And so New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, te whe it's called, was originally considered the singular best early childhood curriculum in the world.

And that was really just because our politicians still thought at that time that early childhood was shitty nappies and blowing noses and didn't matter. So the politicians kept their oar out of it and you left the actual academics to come up with an evidence based, research based curriculum document.

And that document did not focus on literacy and numeracy, it focused on relationships, connection, communication, a sense of belonging, what we call social emotional factors.

They're the things that actually lay the foundation for building this wonderful frontal cortex that's gonna have literacy and numeracy and critical thinking. And your brain's built from the base up and it is like building a house.

And when you teach a four year old to read, you're thinking I can just put in cardboard walls, I wanna hurry up and get to the flash roof. That's what the neighbors are gonna mainly see. Is the roof or the paint on the outside, and you're making it out of cardboard.

Skipping that stage, you have to build to build a brain, you've got to build a secure house. And that means foundations, wall and the roof. Everyone gets focused on the roof, the literacy and numeracy.

And I think what your mate is talking about in the Philippines is, yeah, they built the roof early, but those walls aren't going to hold a lot of weight. Then you're not gonna see a lot of innovation come out of the Philippines if that's their education system or creativity.

I mean, it's a massive population and 50% of you is there when you're born. So of course there will still be creative, innovative Filipino people. People.

But you're not gonna get the same number percentage wise as you will in a society that allows play right up to seven.

Rocky: 00:36:28

And I guess over there, there's a big divide between the haves and the have nots.

So I presume the haves are the ones that are going to school and learning all this stuff, and the have nots, so to speak, are the ones that are probably at home. Probably.

Nathan Wallis: 00:36:43

Well, in that situation, the have nots of actually building a better brain up until the age of seven, you see this with the kids in African villages that are never gonna go to school. They're the ones who get the best early childhood. They get the most creative minds, the most connection to nature and stuff.

It's just that then they don't get educated. They don't get the school system to validate that.

But yeah, I think it's interesting here, a lot of the stuff I see in the research, rich schools do have it. If you go to a rich private school, music is compulsory. You'll start learning music right from the start.

We can't afford it in the state system, so music is relegated to the choir, which is relegated to lunch time, which is not even part of the core curriculum. Music does amazing things to your brain.

It's no surprise to me that rich people know to have music as a core part of their education right from the start. You know, we have the haves and the haves nots right across the world.

And the have nots, you know, when your government is controlling your education, they just want workers. They don't care about your creativity, about your ability to think, about your ability to connect with other people.

In some ways, that actually makes you a bit more bloody argumentative and willing to resist back. So if I want to make you docile, then I want to curb all of that.

So we'll take out music or get you reading and writing as early as possible to try and turn you into a drone rather than a being.

Rocky: 00:38:01

Yeah. Music is so important even when you're older, it emotes so many different things. No matter. It's important to get the right sort of music. Yeah.

There's so many songs that change the way. That even change the way I feel during the day.

Nathan Wallis: 00:38:16

I can chuck it on me too.

Rocky: 00:38:18

Yeah. I can actually feel like I want to work out instead of not. And.

Nathan Wallis: 00:38:21

Yeah.

Rocky: 00:38:21

You know, when I'm. When I'm cooking, you know, I like to play music because it makes me feel a bit more artistic or.

Nathan Wallis: 00:38:27

Yeah, you can go and play the right song and it can lift your depression and you suddenly feel full of.

Rocky: 00:38:33

Hope or vice versa. I did, so.

Nathan Wallis: 00:38:35

Yeah.

Rocky: 00:38:38

Yeah. Are you afraid?

Nathan Wallis: 00:38:39

Language probably comes from music. Right? We probably created from music. We probably learned to go before we learned to speak so sensually. Language was born of music.

Music taps into the whole nervous system of a human being. Parasympathetic nervous system. It is an innate part of being a human. Music.

Rocky: 00:38:58

Yeah. I don't understand people who say they don't like music. There's something wrong. Something wrong deep inside. Are you a firstborn?

Nathan Wallis: 00:39:09

No, I'm in the middle. When I teach, I'm aware that I defy a lot of the things that I teach. I earn more money than everybody else, but I'm not. I'm the middle child.

But, you know, everyone has a complex history. I had a different father than my other. My mum was married, he died, so that's my older brother and sister. I was the mistake in the middle.

My father's from a different cultural group than all my other siblings and then remarried and had my two younger sisters, but I was the only one with ADHD and autism and I was a full on kid. So I was with my nanna a whole lot because they'd have to get one babysitter for the other four kids and one babysitter for me. So I was.

When they described me as difficult, I would just think I was kind of born an adult. I knew who I was and I wasn't being fucking spoken down to or treated like lesser than anybody else.

And I would use everything in my power, if I had to smash my head against the wall just to make her start bleeding before they'd listen to me, then I was prepared to do that. I just was not gonna be not listened to. And so I spent a lot of time then with My nana, who interacted with. In a very different way.

She treated me like a soul, whereas my. Yeah, my parents, my mother and stepfather. My stepfather treated me like an animal.

And my stepmother, you know, I mean, my mother was lovely, loving, but pissed most of the time. So not really available in prison and had these 70s ideas of kids are supposed to shut up and do as they're told.

I mean, to her credit, she worked out pretty early on that I was different from the other kids.

. And that didn't fit well in: 1970

Rocky: 00:40:53

No, no, no. It was different times back then. 70s and the 80s, like you said, it was more. Yeah.

For kids just to shut up and play in the corner and not to speak out and.

Nathan Wallis: 00:41:06

Exactly. True. They told me I had all these disorders and stuff. I really felt like everybody else had disorders. I was just fucking normal. This is how a person.

This is how a person responds. I thought everyone else had a disorder that thought they could shut up and they were damaged and they should be quiet. Weren't worthy.

That, to me, was more of a disorder than adhd.

Rocky: 00:41:26

Yeah.

Actually, speaking of disorders, I think when I was telling people I was having you on, a disorder was brought up to me that I wasn't aware that it was actually a disorder because it's not my world. But is it Oppositional Defiance disorder?

Nathan Wallis: 00:41:48

Yep, yep, yep.

Rocky: 00:41:50

I guess from someone with my background and like, law enforcement, so dealing with kids a lot, for me, that would seem like a free pass for kids just to act out and say it's something that it's. It's not my fault.

Nathan Wallis: 00:42:07

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Rocky: 00:42:09

Is this like a fixed disorder or is it. Are we more looking at it like a pattern of behavior that sort of points to stress or their environment that they're living in?

Nathan Wallis: 00:42:18

Yep, I think it's kind of both. I think usually they are.

A lot of those things have a genetic basis in your temperament, but then they're activated by needing it in the community and the environment that you're in.

See, I think, you know, I had a very abusive stepfather, so I just learned really early on that a good behavior pattern to keep me alive was do the exact opposite to what he tells me to do. He says it's a good idea, it's a stupid idea. So Adults are trying to hurt me.

And so the way to keep myself safe was to go, no, fuck off, you can't tell me what to do. I'm doing what I think to do. And that absolutely kept me alive, that I didn't listen to other people, I didn't trust other people. I trusted myself.

And then they called that oppositional defiance disorder. And I remember them telling me that I had oppositional defiance disorder.

And I was like, you pastors are just making this shit up because I won't blindly, like a docile, brainless little creature, do exactly as you fucking tell me to. Cause you're standing over me with your badge or your teeth conscious thing.

Because I won't recognize that I am your lesser and that I have an opinion. I'm not trying to be stand over you. I'm just going, no, this is where I'm coming from. You're going to call that oppositional defiance disorder.

Because I just won't compliantly do as I'm fucking told. Well, doing as I'm fucking told would have killed me up to this point.

So I've just learned from automatic behavior to yeah, but as you all get older, I don't now I have to be an extreme situation before that would be triggered in me. But I would still be able to have a familiar pattern of behavior that just goes, no, fuck off, I'm not listening to any of you.

I'm 100% gonna listen to my inner self, my higher self and follow that path and ignore all of you. And that might. I'd have to be in a life threatening situation. Now if a cop pulls me up, I'm gonna, I've trained police and stuff.

I'll think of them as friendly. I would be chatting and I would be compliant and stuff. Because as an adult I've had good experience with. Some of my best friends are police officers.

So I would approach them in that way.

But yeah, if I was 14 and I had the police officer treat me in a way that was standing over me and stuff, then yeah, that would trigger the get fucked cunt, which would then call oppositional defiance disorder. But it's really just a survival technique to stay safe.

Rocky: 00:44:27

Yeah, I guess a lot of. So talking to my father when he got older, obviously he had changed completely the opposite.

Helping out youths was teen suicide and got grants from the government and stuff like that to help after hours. And I'd sit on his porch for hours and just have a chat to him about him growing up. And we. Well, I've started writing a Book about his life.

It's very interesting. He's grown up.

He was, well, I guess, a child of the state, and him and his brothers were taken away from their parents and grew up in the foster system.

Nathan Wallis: 00:45:05

And.

Rocky: 00:45:06

Yeah, he grew up with a lot of abuse.

And just reading all the sort of drafts that he sent me for me to clean up and get ready for the book before he passed away, it makes me understand why he ended up the way he did. Just being abused for so long and having. Having that. Yeah, hatred towards police. Like he, He. He was abused for so long, he had axes in his head.

Went like, from Frost, from the foster parents. He's, you know, he was kicked into holes, you know, whatever you can imagine happened to him. And he grew up without fear, I guess, for all his life.

And just. He would. He would fight anyone. He wouldn't care who they were, police or whatever. And it's again, we're going back to the way you brought up and.

And the environment, I guess, sort of moulded who he was. And it took him a long time to sort of release himself from that world and become someone who helps the community. So, yeah, it's not impossible.

I guess it just takes a while.

Nathan Wallis: 00:46:17

Yeah, you have to unpack the decisions you make. As a child, I got a member of my family that hated police.

Just reacted as soon as the police and just got themselves in lots of trouble because they would just go mental and attack the police like they were a bloody child murderer or something. Something like.

d when the police come in the: 1970

e couldn't do anything in the: 1970

That there's a big baddie, evil. You're supposed to come and take the evil person away. And they didn't. They come and went, oh, well, not much we can do now.

I understand the laws were different then. It wasn't the policeman's fault. Their hands were tied. They couldn't even press charges back then. It had to be the Woman that pressed charges.

But your adult brain doesn't understand that. Your adult brain is just like, you bastards were supposed to rescue us and you didn't. You just turned around and walked away again.

So then there's hatred for the police.

That police officer would just be pulling up for a routine check and they would react because they were reacting to that childhood trauma where the police didn't save them and they ended out in their minds being blamed for what was happening to our mother.

Rocky: 00:47:39

Yeah.

Nathan Wallis: 00:47:40

So, yeah, I totally understand why. But then as you get older, you unpack that stuff and you realize that's why you haven't reaction. You realize that that's not what.

You've got an adult mind. You can understand it with more adult. But children just understand things emotionally. The policeman was supposed to rescue.

He's supposed to take away the bad guy and he didn't. So I hate him.

Rocky: 00:47:58

And now it's the opposite. You go and I guess the word rescue the family. And it's the complete opposite. Like, they're like, why are you taking my father away? Why?

And then the mum's like, why are you breaking up the family?

Nathan Wallis: 00:48:13

It's just. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's complex.

Rocky: 00:48:17

Yeah.

Nathan Wallis: 00:48:18

Addicted to my stepfather, you know, she was addicted. It wasn't love, it was addiction. It was. Couldn't live without him, was worthless without him. Like. Yeah, just mental stuff. Yeah.

Rocky: 00:48:28

They think they can't go on. They think they need them to be a person.

Nathan Wallis: 00:48:33

Yeah. Yeah. They don't have their lives. You were treated. Yeah, and you were treated like a bit of a suspect slapper. A single mother was not a good thing.

You know, like, I'm sorry. There was nothing in society that told you that's a good idea to get away. And. And it's the same with.

I've worked with lots of abusive relationships and it's often linked to addiction that allows you to. You're in love with the potential of that person. And the beatings and stuff is only happening 5% of the time.

So 95% of the time, they can be a wonderful person. I've got friends like that that are most of the time, who. Their true self. They're a beautiful, loving, gorgeous guy.

They get drunk and this evil comes over them. This trauma from childhood, this seemingly whole different personality. But it's getting them to realize. No, but that is their personality.

It's part of the package. You can't just separate and be in love with the 95% potential. You're getting the whole package with that person.

And if they carry that with them, you're gonna have a miserable time. You need to. If they're not gonna heal themselves, you need to cut them off. Even if it is only 1% of who they are, that 1%'s enough to kill you.

It's enough to kill that woman.

Rocky: 00:49:35

Yeah, they gave me flashbacks when I was growing up and I was a teenager. One of my exes told me the thought of being with me was way better than the reality. That still cuts me to today. It still hurts.

That was like 30 years ago and still hurts.

Nathan Wallis: 00:49:55

Yeah, yeah, that's probably true for every person though, isn't it? Our idealized, you know, thing is going to be better than the reality with the way the warts come out and that person's not perfect.

Rocky: 00:50:04

Oh, yeah, no, that still hurts me. Yep. So the brain still obviously is developing up until, what is it, mid-20s or around the.

Nathan Wallis: 00:50:15

Yeah, it can be later if you're trauma. I mean, females generally show an adult brain scan. 18 to 24.

Rocky: 00:50:20

Yep.

Nathan Wallis: 00:50:21

And then males, that's a wider range. It's anywhere from 22 to 32 is normal.

Rocky: 00:50:25

Okay.

Nathan Wallis: 00:50:26

So firstborn children's brains tend to come online faster. Girls brains come online faster. So if you're a girl who's the firstborn child, you probably reach an adult at 80.

If you're a girl who's not the firstborn, had to share your parent, you're probably closer to the 24 end of the spectrum. So same with guys. If the guy is the firstborn child, doesn't have to share his parent in the first year, probably reaches out on around 22.

But if you're like me, you're a guy who's not the firstborn, had to share your parent in the first year.

We don't reach adulthood till closer to 32, which means that we are way more vulnerable because we're gonna take 32 years before our brain that understands consequences, thinks of the future, has empathy for other people before that's fully online. So. So boys who are not the firstborn. Most prison inmates are boys who are not the firstborn.

Most people who commit suicide are boys who are not the firstborn. Most people who are the naughty kids of school were boys who are not the firstborn.

Most kids in the reading recovery class at school are boys who are not the firstborn. And because, yeah, their brain's gonna take 32 years.

So at 26, they're still often acting like 22 year olds and doing dumb wrist stuff and getting pissed and having no boundaries and Just drinking till they pass out. And a lot of people might do that at six to.

But a male who's the firstborn has probably always been a bit more mature, more likely to be head boy sort of thing. Because at seven he's still showing a little bit of maturity.

Cause he's literally only gonna take 22 years to have all four brains on to be a mature adult. Whereas a boy who's not the firstborn's gonna take 32 years. So we're gonna be slower, we're gonna be seven before we can really learn to read.

So they put us in a school of five and tell us to start learning to read. A firstborn girl can read at 4. So she gets to school, she's just told how brilliant and how clever and what a hard worker she is.

But really she's not. She's just a firstborn girl who's only gon 18 years. So she's already got access to her frontal cortex when she goes to school.

A boy who's not the firstborn is not going to have access till that, till he's seven. So he's going to spend the first two years of school being told he's lazy, he's not trying hard enough, he lacks focus, he's naughty.

So by the time he's seven, he basically is lazy, naughty and lacks focus.

Because he spent two years being told that if we just did, like Scandinavian countries do not introduce literacy until he's seven, he would learn it in six months and then he would think he was good and clever. But we kind of destroy a lot of boys. Cause again, we teach the middle of the balcony curve and the average age.

So yeah, there's lots of ramifications for being a boy who's not the firstborn. Your brain's gonna take 32 years. People are gonna have a lifetime of people telling you, you don't focus, you're immature, you're too emotional.

But actually you've just got the, you know, the brain of a boy who's not a firstborn at 25. It's probably the same as a firstborn girl at 16. So you're still gonna get lots of adolescent behavior. It's not about their weak character.

It's just about how long it takes to grow a brain when you're a boy. And you had to share your parent in the first year of life.

Rocky: 00:53:05

Right. So with that in mind, how. Well, obviously it's important what, I guess what is the sort of best parenting in terms of.

Nathan Wallis: 00:53:13

I think the best parenting is Children, who you are is really just a collection of the stories that you have about yourself. So, you know, so make sure the child has positive stories about themselves or my 26 year old boy.

My boys got raised knowing this stuff, so I'd be like, you know, like, come on, bloody roll on 32.

When you finally got as mature as your sister was at 21, so the message wasn't, you are useless and you lack focus and you're gonna go nowhere in life. The message was, oh, you're gonna take longer. I had a foster son who's got fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

So I saw his brain in the same way it was his. Gonna take longer, but your brain will eventually get there. But him being raised with the expectation, no, you will be able to learn to read one day.

Typically developing kids can CL about seven and a half when their brain lateralizes. Your brain's probably gonna take until you're 16, 17 to lateralize.

And I think he did learn to read at 16 or 17 because he had the expectation, whereas other people might have given up by the time he was 12. He can't learn read. You're never gonna read. You do. Just fulfill the stories you've got.

So make sure so many of us give our boy who's not the firstborn. Oh, you're bloody lazy. You're going nowhere in life.

All you're doing is going out partying, you've got no thoughts or responsibility, don't care about anyone but yourself. Well, that's the story you're giving him, that's who he will be.

Whereas instead I can have the same behavior but going, you know, I can celebrate that person.

God, it's fun having you in the family, you know, like, you know, older sister's all very mature and got even organised and as a mother of the family, but she's nowhere near as much fun at a party.

You with your impersonations and stuff, you know, like your creativity, your innovation, the way you can draw a whole room of people into you, you know, you celebrate and you take, it's called reframing, but you take the same story that your 26 year old is still acting like a. What's the word? A larrack? Is that the word?

You know, still acting like a bit of a dickhead and partying around and stuff instead of going, you're a dickhead and you're gonna go nowhere in life.

You should have had a mortgage and a job by now where you really just have a story of like, I love how creative you are and how innovative you are and how pioneering you are in the way that you see things. Like make the most of that.

Cause you're gonna get to 32 as well and your boring adult brain's gonna kick in there and you'll be able to balance the cheat book more and you'll be able to regulate your emotions better. So take advantage of all the play that you can do. Now it's just a different story. So I think we are just a collection of the stories we have.

So make sure your children have good stories. As a foster parent, I could literally just change this story. They'd come to my place and they'd be like, no, I can't do that.

Cause I can't focus my attention. So they've got a story that they can't focus their attention.

If they've got a story and a belief they can't focus their attention, they're not gonna be able to focus their attention. So I mean, that was a real common one. But then I'd be able to say, really? Cause I've just seen you play PlayStation for four hours straight.

So I don't think there's a problem with you focusing your attention. So then we changed that story to, oh, I can focus my attention when I want to. So we slowly change that story.

If I'm interested in something and it's engaging my holistic self, I can focus like a buddy, you know, like something that can focus really well. You know, I've got no problem with focusing when I'm engaged. So the story moves to I can't focus to.

I can only focus when I'm truly holistically engaged and I have passion with what I'm doing. That's a way better story to carry. It's incredible how much you can change kids stories.

If I watch my Sun Plan rugby, rugby and I'm there watching and I notice he only looks at the ball when it's within a few meters of him. Then as soon as it's out of his field, you know, away from a few meters, he starts chatting to his mates and he's off a malaland.

If he gets off the field and I go, mate, you're never going to get anywhere in rugby if you don't watch where the bloody ball is. You know, every time I looked at you, you're off on la la land. You're not watching. You're only watching what's in 2 meters.

You're never going to go anywhere. You need to try harder. Basically, he's just got a story. I'M the guy that doesn't look at the ball enough.

And so the next guy, he won't look at the ball. Cause that's his story. I can just observe the same behavior when he comes off the field. I can go, oh, well done, mate.

Every single time I looked at you, your eyes were on that bloody ball. Now one or two things happens. He either thinks, bloody hell, I fluked that.

Dad must have only been looking when I was looking at the ball because I don't look at the ball that much, or actually what happens 99% of the time is he believes you. His little brain goes to the couple of times the ball was on the other side of the field and he knew where it was.

And his brain pulls those three memories from the last half hour that were a second long each and goes, oh yeah, I was watching the ball all the time. He believes you because you're one of the authors of the story. Whether he believes you or whether he thinks you fluked it, the result's the same.

The next time he plays rugby, he's looking at the ball 3,000% more.

And it's because of how you responded, not because of his baby, because you gave him a story that he's the guy that looks at the ball rather than he's the guy that doesn't look at the ball. That's how powerful storytelling is. So yeah, just our kids are going to develop differently.

The 18 year old firstborn girl who's to have it all at school when she gets here, she can already write her name, she already knows the colors, already knows the numbers. It's going to be an adult by 18. It's going to be very mature, responsible and probably successful.

But she's also a bit prone to anxiety and depression. She's a bit prone to that personality type that has to get A pluses. A's aren't enough. So she's not probably going to have a happy life.

She doesn't have much creativity and innovation because she did all that stuff early. Yeah, but we need to equally celebrate the boy who's not the firstborn, who's more likely to be musical.

He's more likely to be the life and soul of the party.

He's more likely to be spiritual and have deep depth and understanding that he's still gonna be, but you just gotta give him good stories about himself. I think a lot of my success comes from the fact that I was in a family where other people didn't learn to read.

So I was told so early on how Brainy I was. I wonder if I was just average. I was just in a family of traumatized people who were not focused on learning.

And so in comparison everyone thought I was a fucking genius.

You know, if I'd gone to a family where my older brother was ducks of the school and my, you know, they're all academic and my father was a judge and my mother was a surgeon, I probably would have been told I was incredibly average. You know, and then I probably would be average and wouldn't have achieved what I've achieved. Cause I believe I was average.

You know, I still got, I got Bs at school, not A's, you know, I was coming from a lot of trauma. I didn't go to school a lot, I just turned up for the exam. So I was clever cause I could do nothing and turn up and get good results.

But saying I wasn't just an A plus student or way I was a beast. I know people who got better grades than me that think they're not intelligent and so they don't have as successful careers as I do.

To me, the degree and stuff just gets a ticket through the door. It's who you are as a person and how you bring that information to life.

There's people that know more about the brain than me, there's people that know more about human development than me. But there's fuck all people that can explain it as well as I can and make it meaningful.

And so it's not about having to be the brainiest, it's about who you are as a person and it's about the stories that you hold. I was really lucky that I had grandmothers. My grandmother wasn't actually any relation to me.

She was the old lady on the corner who saw my mother was not coping and felt a connection with me as a four month old baby and just become my nana for my whole life. And I think a lot of my success comes from her that she treated me like I was something really special.

Whereas my, my nickname at home was Major because of the way I behaved. Mum was like getting pregnant with you in the first place was a major fucking disaster.

Then when you were born you had all these ADHD and all that sort of stuff and you continued to be a major fucking disaster. So my nickname was Major at home, but my nana treated me like I was a king.

Rocky: 01:00:10

Yeah, so we're speaking on that how she wasn't your biological grandmother and like the Mori and Pacifica communities is obviously communal caregivers and that's. And for that culture, for those cultures, it's normal and healthy. Do you see? How do you see that sort of. How do you see?

Well, any culture sort of shaping a child's early brain development.

Nathan Wallis: 01:00:37

Yeah. I mean, when we say it takes a village to raise a child, it does take a village when we look at the whole childhood.

But in the first year of life, you need mainly one relationship. So it doesn't mean that mum gives birth to the baby, hands it out the tent and says, there you go.

Everyone in the village have a day each with my newborn baby. That's gonna screw the kid up. You need a consistent relationship.

But clearly, biologically, human beings are not born with a program to attach to their mother. They're not born with a program to attach to their biological mother or even the person that breastfeeds me.

They're attached with a program to say, attached to the person who's going to talk to me the most. Because language is what drives interaction. So they don't have to be biologically related. They don't have to be a female.

They just have to be a person that really cares about you. So, yeah, the village being there, mums might be postnatally depressed. They might be dealing with their own addiction issues and stuff.

You know, my mother was a beautiful woman who just come from a really traumatic childhood herself and, you know, in traumatic times and responded to that through addiction. And so addiction took over a lot of her life. But as a base person, she was lovely.

But she was never gonna provide me with the environment that my nana did, who didn't have to deal with those issues and was. So, yeah, I think it's like, I do support the village being involved, but it's gotta be consistent relationships.

It's not like the foster care system where you get fostered to that person and then they're uplifted without any warning, and then you're taken to another city and given to a whole new family. And children in the foster care system have on average eight families. So of course, you're gonna be fucked up when you grow up with eight families.

You know, that's why 84% of people that go to prison come from the foster care system. They haven't had that consistent relationship. So, yes, it takes a village, but the village was a consistent group of people.

I think a lot of my blessing was I'm in Milton now, whereas I live in my hometown. I think a lot of. I had four different foster placements growing up, but they're all within this little town of 2,000 people.

So I was never separated from my mother. I could go and visit my mother whenever I wanted. It was a walk a few blocks away. I think it would have been so different if I'd been.

Cause I wasn't officially in the system until my last foster placement. The first three were like whang, like you know, my nana and just, you know, and friends I'd make at school, they would.

I'd just stay at their house and live at their house for three or four years. But the last one was official. But yeah, if I'd been in the foster care system and they ripped me out of my family.

Cause I desperately loved my mother. I knew she was useless and I knew she was pissed and stuff.

That just made me desperately love her more and want to look after her like lots of foster kids.

So if you'd ripped me away from that and taken me up to Auckland where I had no means to get back down here, that would have been so traumatic and would have screwed me. I'm so lucky that I stay in Milton and I could just work out, go and visit mum on Monday to Wednesday because she was usually sober then.

My stepfather was at work and I could conjure up a positive relationship then and get the good stuff from Mum Monday to Wednesday while the stepfathers at work. But you wouldn't have had that power if I'd just been thrown into Auckland and then delivered down here for a two week visitation and stuff.

So yes, it takes a village. But the village is aunties and uncles, not random bloody strangers.

You know, I wish we had a foster care system that you were just given a foster family so that if you know you're going back to your parents, but that there's these three sets of people who will always be your foster carers. If you have to go into foster care, one of them has to take you. So you've got returning relationships.

Some kids get that they get to go back to the original foster family. But we operate our foster care system in such a systemized way it's like oh no, they're already full up with other kids.

Now the next person on the roster is you're gonna go to these people. And it's just about health and safety and keeping the kid alive. Not about continu relationships.

So we need that continuity of relationships in the village.

My daughter came up with this in the car cause we had foster kids and I didn't have foster kids anymore cause I moved lots for work and she said they should have a system where you could volunteer to be A foster uncle. You can't be a foster dad now because you go away from work all the time and you're away for days and a foster kid would need stability.

But you could be a foster uncle where someone else is fostering the kid. But you have them in the holidays, you can have them for a couple of days or the parents get sick, you can have them.

Because I thought, yeah, that's brilliant, that is what we need. And then the kid that's in and out of foster care comes back to me as their foster uncle.

And it might be permanent sometimes, you know, but other times it's just respite care and stuff. But yeah, I think that's what you need, this ongoing relationships, that's what's important.

Rocky: 01:04:52

So it's stable. Yeah, the stable relationship at least. Yeah, at least one.

Nathan Wallis: 01:04:57

Yeah, absolutely.

Rocky: 01:04:59

So I'm in Australia at the moment so I try and keep up with the news back home as much as I can. So without getting too political, I've just been reading about how like over a thousand schools have sort of defied the government and I'm so proud.

And I, and I, and I keeping sort of, you know, TDL in the, in the schools. So in that regards, how are we? I think it's. Yeah. Being over here, you see how far ahead. I know people in New Zealand don't think this but.

Well, some don't. But how far ahead New Zealand is in regards to acknowledging history and their actual culture.

And I love seeing my nieces and nephews learning their culture and I love, you know, people who aren't Mori learning the culture.

I mean, New Zealand's just full of different people and half of them could probably speak Mori better than a lot of the older people that live in New Zealand.

Nathan Wallis: 01:06:06

Yep, yep.

Rocky: 01:06:08

I guess. How does, how does, how does early exposure to sort of languages and sort of that influence, sort of belonging to that emotional security.

Nathan Wallis: 01:06:17

Yeah, yeah.

I mean that thing about teachers, you know, the government, because we have the swing between a Trump type government and then a Liberal government and we've got a Trump type government at the moment.

Rocky: 01:06:26

Right.

Nathan Wallis: 01:06:26

So they'll get rid of all married things. Not because there's any research to show that it does any damage. It benefits everybody.

But you just get the vote of the old redneck racists who see, oh, Maori's are caused and all the problems and they ignore all the statistics and make up. Mori are getting the easy ride and stuff and so they tampered into that. So we're currently in that swing of the pendulum.

I was just so proud that New Zealand schools have got that more than half of them have gone. No, the treaty is so important and the wellbeing of Mori Whnau is just as important as everybody else's. We're not doing it.

We're defying the government and we're gonna keep teaching Te Reo Mori. That was honestly just made me so proud to be a New Zealander, to be a Mori.

I had sent out a post previously saying, cause I don't try and get political very much. I just try and give the research based information.

But I sent out a post going out of all the things that make you resilient in the research, I've already told you, number one, if you've got risk factors, risk factors, parents go to jail in foster care, parents hit you, there's all these risk factors. And if you end up with enough of those risk factors, then you go to jail and you've got negative outcomes, resiliency factors.

All the things the research tells us leads to good outcomes where you don't go to jail, you're a loving, caring, connected person with good mental health. Number one is to have a parents to at home in the first year of life. Number two is to be bilingual.

Being bilingual changes the whole structure of your brain, strengthens the parts of the brain not only associated with higher intelligence but associated with resilience, the ability to persevere, to focus your attention for a longer period of time. It's indisputable that being bilingual is really, really good for the brain and it's better to be exposed to it under the age of seven.

But there's never any point in your life where it becomes not, not a benefit. If you're alive and breathing, it's beneficial.

So yeah, and you only have to have about 60 words, research indicates, in the second language for your brain to start recognizing those two languages and to start getting those benefits. So then a lot of people like, oh, I didn't grow up speaking any Te Reo Mori. I wasn't around my Mori father growing up.

I always knew I was Mori and had a very strong Kanina that was blamed for a lot of my behavior. So I had the identity, but it was a very urbanized, mongrel type identity, not connected to Whenua and Tekanga and Te Reo and stuff.

It was just, you know, and I hang out with the other Mori kids, kids in Milton, you know, and actually Milton's so small, it wasn't even the Americas, the Samoan kids, it was just them Non white kids hung out together and I was white skinned but just thought very much like them and just naturally gravitated. I didn't even know I was doing that. Other people had to point out to me that I hung up with all the black kids.

I was like, no, I don't just hang out with Vanessa and Nathan and Alistair, all the other black cats. Yeah, I lost my trail of thought there. Some good memories.

Rocky: 01:08:58

Yeah.

Nathan Wallis: 01:08:59

Well, I guess I wanted to raise my kids around te reo mori. And I wasn't a mori speaker. So I enrolled at university. That's the first time I got to learn te reo mori. There was none of it at school.

It's the first time I had access to it. I enrolled in it. But my kids got raised just talking about the wharee Paku.

Probably like lots of Australians who are not connected to their marae and stuff cause they're in Australia. But they still use puku for stomach and they still use whnau for family.

They still use whadipaku for toilet and they still say O E for oh my God and stuff, you know. But the kids, you only have to have 60 words in that language for the kids to start getting those benefits. So I found that really encouraging.

That's like three waiata. I sing these three waiata to my grandchildren, my mokupuna all the time. If I speak no other mori.

I mean I do, I try and kre mori anaki to my grandchildren. So they're immersed in it.

But if I only sung those three songs, they'd be getting 60 words and their brains would start to recognize as a second language, would start to change their brain structure to give them all those benefits. So you don't have to be a fluent speaker speaker. You don't have to get it right either. People get worried about pronunciation and stuff.

But you don't learn language by saying nothing and then pronouncing it correctly. Even in English, no baby just suddenly says, can I have a drink please mother? You know, they start out mispronouncing it.

They start out going dink dink. And if you said to the baby in English, they said dink dink. You're bastardizing the language. If you can't speak it properly, don't speak it at all.

The kid would not learn at all. You take his dink dink and you go, oh, you want a drink baby? You want to drink? You just model back the correct answer.

So I always encourage people, don't worry about your pronunciation being wrong. I've got friends that grew up in Australia. Mozzies, we call them, you know, Mori Aussies.

They're some mozzies and they feel like they're disconnected from New Zealand and the culture. Cause the only time they come home is tatangi.

And they see all the other kids at the marae or cousins knowing each other and they assume that everyone lives like that. But actually that's just the Tangi. Those kids go back to the urbanised environment. You can be just as Mori in Australia.

I know one guy who's his grandparents who raised him in Brisbane, and they only spoke Te Reo Mori to him. He's a fluent Te Reo Mori speaker. But he still didn't feel Mori enough. Cause he wasn't like the cousins in Whangarei.

And he really did think that what he saw when he went home for a Tangi was how they lived the whole time. He didn't realize they went back to their colonized life and their colonized school and stuff when the Tangi was over.

And that Papatuanuku, the Earth mother, is the whole earth. She ain't just New Zealand. I really think you can be just as Mori living in Australia with your only 60 words in te Reo mad.

But you could still be completely connected to that. And, you know, Mori are incredible.

And I think this thing of them rising up and not just Mori pkeh who have said, no, we're gonna keep teaching the treaty in schools. I think that just shows how strong we are. So, yeah, I can see why, you know, Aboriginal people.

I mean, Australia is the what South Africa of the Pacific is about as racist as you can get, you know, so in comparison to how Aboriginal people are treated, who are only 1% of the population, given no regard whatsoever, however treated like animals, of course, then Mori look good. But Mori have nowhere near equality. You know, we are still fighting to have the basics of our language taught a school.

Yeah, I can see it's in comparison to some of the Aboriginals and lots of indigenous people around the world. Because we were one of the last to be colonized. We're at the bottom of the world. Mori had seen what had happened in the rest of the world.

They insisted on a treaty. There had to be a treaty. The King of England had already recognised Mori as an independent nation.

So legally they had to get a treaty everywhere else. They just discovered by FAI flag, stuck a flag in the ground and went, oh, we've discovered this doesn't matter about you guys.

But they had to have a treaty because The King of England had already recognized our declaration of independence five years prior to the treaty. And that's put us in a much stronger position. Still don't have language that's compulsory enough schools.

Still have the language that's dying, still have mori, still are the ones that have all the worst statistics, that go to jail, most that die the earliest, that own the least, that are the least educated, all the negative statistics. So.

But we're doing better than other countries because we have that treaty and it's hard for our government to completely try and wipe us out, like the Australian government spent so many years, you know, trying to do to Aboriginal people. But we're never gonna be happy until we get equality. It's just like, women, women. When do women get the vote?

And I don't remember what year that was, but, you know, when they got the vote, they didn't go, oh, yeah, finally, we've got to vote. Oh, well, that's our lot. We'll just take our lot now. We'll still be treated as second best. We still earn less money than men.

We're still not allowed to own land, that we're allowed to vote. We'll settle for that. No, they don't, don't. They will keep going until they've got equality.

And I think you find indigenous people are going to do the same too. So, yeah, Marty might have it better than others, but we're still not happy.

Rocky: 01:13:26

We want more that'll get them going. We want equality.

Nathan Wallis: 01:13:32

It's not that bloody strange, really.

Rocky: 01:13:37

Just two things from that. Yeah, it took me to, I guess, 13.

So were you looking at: 1993

Like, I went to uni, studied it. Um, since being over here, it's. It's. I've lost it a bit because I don't have really anyone to speak to over here.

But you never really lose it, though.

Nathan Wallis: 01:14:21

Rocky. It's in there.

Rocky: 01:14:22

Oh, no.

Nathan Wallis: 01:14:22

Yeah, it'll come back.

Rocky: 01:14:23

Yeah, I was. Someone tried to speak to me a few months ago and I was like, I can understand you, but I'm gonna have to respond in English.

So I can understand someone talking to me, but, yeah, finding the words. So, yeah, it took like, 13 up until then. I was kind of like.

Nathan Wallis: 01:14:38

Like.

Rocky: 01:14:41

I don't know, owned is sort of a weird word, but not owned by any sort of group, I guess.

And it was then when I started learning mi I started learning M because I started playing league with the boys and obviously the predominantly is Pacifica sort of sport. Y I went to New Ploys High School, which is a predominantly rugby. Rugby school. But it wasn't until I started learning to.

Until I started becoming proud and I felt like I belonged somewhere so important. And then the other one, if so if a child did come out and started speaking perfect English, I'd be finding somewhere to put it back into. So.

Yeah, I understand what you mean. Like, I see a lot of people putting people down because they don't pronounce yay title correctly.

But if they're not trying to and then you know there's gonna be no progress if we don't allow them to try. Is there anything you want to promote or anything you need to tell people before we.

Nathan Wallis: 01:15:44

I think we've had a very rich conversation. There's lots in this conversation for people to unpack. Yeah, I just, I think what's on top for me, I mean, I could promote my own stuff.

Go to brainy babies and brainy parenting. I sell talks online. That's the salesman promotion part.

But what I'm really left with is the idea of Moris being out there, being raised in Australia, being raised in another country and feeling like you're not Mori enough. Just understand that it's. Cause I felt that way as well.

Although when I started studying Mori culture at 18, I just thought, oh, this is just a culture of Nathan's. This is how I thought inside. Anyway, you know, I always.

I didn't call it karakiya and stuff, but I always had thought in terms of energies and I always sort of talked to my ancestors, but I just called it intuition and. And guides and stuff. You know, I just found it wasn't new.

I'd been Mori a whole lot, even though I was white skinned, even though I didn't grow up around my Mori parent, even though I didn't go to my marae and I didn't speak my language. You're intrinsically Mori. Although just then I validated those things by learning to call it a Mori, by learning to stand up on the pai pai.

But it just validated who I already was.

I just would want every person with whakapapa who's mori to know you are Mori enough, regardless of how white you are, regardless of, you know, that's all stuff imposed by the colonies that you're not black enough to be Mori. You didn't live around your tribal area to be mori. You don't speak the language to be Mori. All of those things just diminish.

Whereas if you're mori, you're mori. So just own it and get that sense of pride without necessarily having to go and learn.

If the real comes and the language comes and the marae protocol comes, great. But you're already mori enough without it. That's the thing that's on top for me.

Rocky: 01:17:18

Yeah. Our granddaughter was born last year over here in Australia and I guess she's. She's lucky that she's got like all her sort of grandparents over here.

Nathan Wallis: 01:17:30

Yep.

Rocky: 01:17:32

I'm oldie and my son's mum, which is. Yeah. Her grandmother is also Mori, so she's got that. Still here, even though she's in a different country. And I don't. I doubt.

Yeah, I doubt her grandmother is going to let her to even forget who she is. So.

Nathan Wallis: 01:17:53

Yeah, love it.

Rocky: 01:17:55

Definitely important. And you're just on Nathan Wallace on all social medias. People can find you there.

Nathan Wallis: 01:18:00

Yep. I'm on Facebook and Instagram and you. All social medias. Really?

Rocky: 01:18:04

Y. Yeah. Okay, cool. Again, appreciate the time. It's been an amazing chat. Yeah, it's been really good.

It's been insightful and yeah, I've really enjoyed this chat with you.

Nathan Wallis: 01:18:17

Oh, me too.

Rocky: 01:18:18

Yeah.

Nathan Wallis: 01:18:18

Thanks.

Rocky: 01:18:18

I'll speak to you next time.

Nathan Wallis: 01:18:20

Okay. I'm open to it anytime you want to talk Rocky.

Rocky: 01:18:23

Awesome. I'll be in touch.

Nathan Wallis: 01:18:24

Okay. Cheers, mate.