The Matt Walsh Show - June 27, 2026


The Internet’s Defense of Bad Parenting Is Insane

Topics
mealtime and table manners
Hosted by
Matt Walsh
Mentioned
Gen X. Nobody Gen Xers Patrick Wayne Harris Stephanie
Ep. 1803 - New York Has Been Taken By The Communists. Your Town Might Be Next. The Real History of the Civil War

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

177.86

Word count

4,082

Sentence count

306

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

When did we stop teaching our kids life skills like table manners, table manners and how to use a fork and knife? And why are our kids getting so dumb that they can't even figure out how to brush their teeth?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30 Well, recently I commented on a video of the super nanny. 1.00
00:00:33 Apparently that's what she's called.
00:00:35 I've never really heard of her, but she made a good point about the way parents today raise
00:00:39 their kids or fail to.
00:00:40 I guess we'll play the video.
00:00:41 Here it is.
00:00:42 I'm going to say something that might make you uncomfortable.
00:00:47 So sit tight.
00:00:48 We are slowly disabling our children.
00:00:52 And I don't say that lightly.
00:00:54 I say that because I work with families continuously every day.
00:01:00 and I'm seeing a pattern that's growing. Children who are capable but not being taught. We're
00:01:06 pushing children along on bikes instead of teaching them how to ride them. We're keeping
00:01:12 children in strollers who should be walking, climbing, building strength. We've got four-year-olds
00:01:18 still using dummies when that was only ever meant to be a short-term aid. Seven-year-olds who can't
00:01:25 brush their teeth properly without an electric toothbrush. Eight-year-olds who can't sit at
00:01:30 table and use a knife and fork. Nine-year-olds who don't basically understand bathroom hygiene.
00:01:35 And I find myself asking, when did we stop teaching these life skills? When? And before you
00:01:45 get defensive, I understand modern life is busy. I do. But this isn't about time. It's about
00:01:52 intention because every time we step in and do it for them or avoid teaching because it's slower
00:02:00 messier or inconvenient we take away an opportunity for them to become capable and children want to
00:02:08 feel capable so we go back to basics parents we teach the bike riding with support then without
00:02:16 we remove the dummy when it's no longer needed we show them how to brush their teeth properly
00:02:22 not rely on this electric tool. We sit at the table and we teach them how to eat
00:02:26 properly. We guide, we repeat, we expect. Not perfectly, consistently. Because independence
00:02:34 isn't something that just happens. It's taught parents. And if we don't teach it,
00:02:40 we can't be surprised when it's missing. So that's what she said. I commented on that.
00:02:47 I said she's right. Of course, mealtime is a big part of the problem. Lots of parents
00:02:50 negotiate with their children, allow them to not eat what was served or just serve them chicken
00:02:54 nuggets or mac and cheese for every meal. They don't teach table manners. They don't require
00:02:57 that their children ask to be excused before leaving the table. They let their kids use
00:03:01 electronics at the table, et cetera. Complete disaster. And plenty of comments responded to
00:03:07 that. Plenty disagreeing or in some cases agreeing. So we'll go through some of the comments.
00:03:13 Stephanie says, I'm Gen X. Nobody taught me these life skills. We had to figure this out ourselves.
00:03:19 are kids getting too dumb to do this? 1.00
00:03:23 Nobody taught you life skills. 1.00
00:03:25 This is totally a Gen X thing, by the way. 1.00
00:03:28 They love to brag about not being parented. 0.90
00:03:31 Gen Xers love this. 1.00
00:03:33 There's not a lot we can say about Gen Xers
00:03:35 or that needs to be said,
00:03:37 but this is one thing about Gen X.
00:03:39 They love to brag.
00:03:40 They love to brag about not having any real parenting
00:03:43 as if that's something to be proud of.
00:03:45 Well,
00:03:46 if
00:03:48 If nobody taught you life skills, which is really like the whole job of a parent, that's basically your entire gig.
00:03:57 And if no one did that, I can guess two things about you. 0.99
00:04:00 One is your parents sucked. 0.99
00:04:02 Two, you probably don't actually have those life skills to the degree that you think you do. 0.99
00:04:12 And this is something you hear a lot from people.
00:04:14 where they'll say, well, you know, that's how I was raised and I turned out fine. I was raised that
00:04:21 way. Look at me. I turned out fine. And then you look at them and it's like, yeah, but no, you
00:04:25 didn't. Actually, you didn't turn out fine. It's always the most dysfunctional people with lives
00:04:33 of pure misery, lives that you look at them and you're plunged into despair just by looking at
00:04:40 them. And they're always the ones that go, I turned out, hey, I turned out fine. No, you totally did
00:04:45 not turn out fine. You actually turned out really poorly. Apparently no one's told you this, but
00:04:51 because you didn't have a parent to tell you. Let's see. Dwayne Harris says, to say that we're
00:05:02 more busy than our ancestors is wrong. They got up at 4 a.m. and worked till the sun went down
00:05:06 outside and then did chores inside till midnight. They didn't waste time with social media and
00:05:11 chit chat and TV. And somehow they found time to raise not one, not two, but average of seven
00:05:15 children, uh, had to wipe their own ass, have manners and respect elders by six years old. 0.99
00:05:20 It's us. We're too consumed with ourselves. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Um, 1.00
00:05:28 I think you're absolutely right. So when parents today try to use the excuse of, um,
00:05:33 or people in general are always using as an excuse. Oh, I'm too busy. I'm too busy.
00:05:40 First of all, you're not nearly as busy as you think you are. And that goes for all of us,
00:05:44 myself included. We all think that we're really busy. Some of us are more busy than others.
00:05:50 But in reality, if you were to just log the amount of time you spend a week,
00:05:56 simply staring at a screen that you don't have to, I'm not talking about for work,
00:06:00 um you would see that just there alone you you got more than enough time to do anything you want
00:06:08 with your life and it's just being consumed and that's part of the thing with the screen is that
00:06:12 it eats up your time in a way that you don't feel this is one of the issues with it it's got this
00:06:19 lobotomizing effect when you're staring at a screen so it could eat up like you could be
00:06:23 looking at a screen for 52 minutes and it feels like it was five and that's one of the reasons
00:06:28 why people think they're way busier than they are. Um, you know, they get home from work,
00:06:34 whatever they put the kids to bed, then they get out their phone and their stare at it. And they
00:06:39 look up at the clock and it's like, Oh, it's already bedtime. And you see, I had no time
00:06:43 between putting the kids to bed and now I have to go to bed because I got to get work in the
00:06:47 morning. Well, no, actually you had like three and a half hours, but you just spent it just like
00:06:51 doing this with your phone the whole time, and that's why. Patrick says, ah, yes, let's raise
00:07:00 more subservient order followers and permission slip seekers. What could go wrong? Well, this is
00:07:07 the dumbest thing. This is the dumbest thing. Yes, you want to raise children to follow your 1.00
00:07:16 orders and in many cases seek permission. Like, of course, of course you want to raise your kids
00:07:24 that way. That's called being obedient, being disciplined, being humble. You think the problem
00:07:31 is that kids today are too humble and too obedient? Is that, Patrick, is that what you think?
00:07:38 You think the problem we have in society today is that kids are too obedient, too well-behaved,
00:07:46 Um, they, they are, they are too, too prone to deferring to adults.
00:07:54 You actually think that's our problem.
00:08:00 You know something else?
00:08:01 Just, just so you know, every great man of history that you can name, if you can name
00:08:06 any, which you probably can't literally all of them, every single one was a man who respected
00:08:14 hierarchy and respected people in positions of legitimate authority and definitely, definitely
00:08:22 respected the authority of a parent over a child. Every single one. So this thing of,
00:08:32 no one's in charge of me. I don't have to listen to anybody. No great man has ever had
00:08:40 that attitude. Sorry. Acknowledging that there are people in the world who know more than you,
00:08:47 acknowledging that there are people who have authority that you do not have,
00:08:51 acknowledging that you owe respect to your superiors, to your elders, all of that is
00:08:57 necessary for to be not just a great person, but to be a functional person in society.
00:09:04 One of the strangest things we've accepted in modern life is the idea that complete strangers
00:09:08 should know everything about us.
00:09:10 People get upset if their neighbor glances over the fence.
00:09:13 They put blinds on their windows.
00:09:15 They lock their front doors.
00:09:16 But somehow they're perfectly comfortable
00:09:18 with internet companies, advertisers, data brokers,
00:09:20 and who knows else,
00:09:21 tracking what they do online all day long.
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00:10:25 These parents say, like, my parents did this to me
00:10:28 and I hated it, so I'm not gonna do this to my child.
00:10:31 That tells me they're not mature enough
00:10:32 to have kids. My parents forced me to eat what they made. I hated it as a kid, but as an adult,
00:10:39 understand why. Yeah, I agree. You hear this from adults. They say, well, my parents made me do that
00:10:44 and I really didn't like it. So I'm not going to make my kids do it. Have you not grown up at all?
00:10:52 Like, yeah, you're supposed to go through the phase as a child where your parents are telling
00:10:55 you to do something and you really hate that you have to do it. And so you say to yourself,
00:11:00 well, when I'm a parent and I have kids, I'm never going to make them clean their room.
00:11:05 This is so unfair. Yeah. When you're like 12, you might have that view, but by the time you're 32,
00:11:14 you should have grown out. Now, when you're 32, you should have gone through the evolution where
00:11:20 you realize that, oh no, actually like, of course you should clean your room. I'm glad my parents
00:11:26 made me do that. When I have kids or with my kids now, I'm definitely going to make them do those
00:11:32 things. You should be at that point when you're in your twenties and thirties and you've got a lot
00:11:38 of like grown adults who still have the mentality of 12 year olds. Um, as a parent, if you are not
00:11:45 making your kids do things that they don't want to do, then you're a terrible parent
00:11:50 because most of the basic duties and responsibilities around the house are things
00:11:55 that your kid is not going to want to do, because who would? They're not going to want to clean
00:11:59 their room. They're not going to want to obey your rules. They're not going to want to,
00:12:03 um, you know, have to forego eating ice cream whenever they want and on and on and on. Like
00:12:11 all the things, all the basic duties and responsibilities they're not going to want
00:12:15 to do. And, uh, if you're, if you as a parent are not making your kids do those things,
00:12:20 then you just are failing in the most basic way as a parent.
00:12:25 I mean, my parents tried to make me eat, but I was picky.
00:12:28 They say you can't leave the table till you eat.
00:12:30 I say, okay, and not eat.
00:12:31 And then they'd get up for bed and they'd make me what I want 0.69
00:12:35 because they can't not feed their child.
00:12:39 I will die on this hill after six kids.
00:12:43 There's no such thing as a picky eater.
00:12:45 Okay, that is a skill issue as a parent.
00:12:48 I know parents get upset when I say this. It's true. There's no such thing as a picky eater.
00:12:54 Unless your kid legitimately has some kind of mental issue, I guess there can be cases like
00:13:00 that. But putting those aside, if you have a sort of normal, mentally healthy child,
00:13:06 picky eater is a skill issue. That's a parenting issue. We don't have picky eaters in our house.
00:13:13 How did that happen? Six kids, we don't have picky eaters. How did we do that? We just got
00:13:17 lucky? No, it's really simple. You eat what's put in front of you. And if you don't eat that,
00:13:26 then you won't eat anything. Okay. And you hear these parents who say, well, I try that and my,
00:13:31 and my kid will just refuse to eat. How long is your kid going to go on this hunger strike before
00:13:37 they just eat what's put in front of them? Because I guarantee you what you're doing is you're
00:13:41 telling them eat, eat that or nothing. And then they refuse. And then like an hour later, you
00:13:46 feel bad because they're hungry. And so you make them chicken nuggets. That's what's happening.
00:13:51 What you have to be willing to do if you really have like a, if the picky, and really, if you do
00:13:56 this at a young age, you won't get to the picky eater phase. If you do get to that phase, then
00:14:01 you're going to have to probably get to a point where, okay, you're not going to eat any dinner
00:14:07 tonight. You're going to go to bed and you're going to be hungry. It'll be, you're not going
00:14:11 to die. Like your kid's not going to starve to death. That's not going to happen. But like,
00:14:15 you might have to get them to a point where they're actually really hungry. And, uh, and,
00:14:21 and they're begging you for a snack or like they're, you know, for, for what they want to eat.
00:14:25 And you just say, no, sorry, I know you're hungry, but you're not, here's your meal. Like we're not,
00:14:30 we're not depriving you of food. It's right here. A delicious, gorgeous meal. Please eat it.
00:14:36 Um, but you might have to get to that point. So, uh, and we've had, you know, we've had,
00:14:46 look, we, we, we've, we've gone through this with our kids, with a few of them in particular,
00:14:50 where they, um, where they try, they try it, they test it and they, you know, they test,
00:14:57 they try out being a picky eater. And, uh, and so the rule is like, you're not getting up from
00:15:03 the table until you eat your food. And we've had a few kids a time or two that have said, okay,
00:15:09 well, I'm not going to, it's like, okay, well, then you're going to sit there. An hour and a
00:15:13 half later, they're still sitting at the table. Okay. But you're not getting up until you eat
00:15:17 that. You want to sit here for another five hours? That's on you. And eventually they'll eat.
00:15:25 Another comment says, this is half right. There is no call for kids to ask to be excused from
00:15:30 the table. Do you ask to be excused? Is the table a prison? Bad ideas lead to worse ones.
00:15:37 Now I'm a big believer in having kids ask to be excused. Do I ask to be excused from my own table?
00:15:43 No, because it's my table. Because it's my table in my house with my food that I bought.
00:15:50 And so no, I don't, who am I going to ask? No, ask, see the kids ask me because I'm in charge
00:15:56 and this is all the stuff that I provided for them. Who am I going to ask? I don't have anybody
00:16:02 to ask. I don't have to ask. I don't have to ask to be excused. I can do whatever I want as far as
00:16:08 that goes. I'm not my child. See, I'm in charge. The child's not. And so we're big believers in
00:16:16 that. The kid should ask to be excused from the table. Is the table a prison? No, but my house is
00:16:20 not a prison and yet they can't just walk outside and go wherever they want without asking me.
00:16:25 or asking their mom
00:16:27 it's not a prison
00:16:29 it's not a prison but they like
00:16:31 my six year old can't just 0.85
00:16:33 disappear wherever she wants without 1.00
00:16:35 getting any permission obviously
00:16:37 does that make it a prison no it just
00:16:39 means we are the parents
00:16:41 we are in charge
00:16:42 you have rules to follow
00:16:45 that we don't have to follow because
00:16:47 we're the authority figures
00:16:49 um
00:16:51 so
00:16:54 So, and, and, you know, we, we didn't, I think for a while we didn't do the whole, like, you have to ask to be excused.
00:17:02 And I think probably 10 years ago, I, I, I would have felt like, eh, it's a little, you know, I don't know.
00:17:08 It's, it, it's a little unnecessary.
00:17:10 As the kids have gotten older, I've really, that's when we started to instate this rule because, um, you know, when, when a dinner is prepared, uh, and efforts been put into preparing this dinner.
00:17:21 No, you're not just going to sit there at the table silently for five minutes and then just disappear. Like, no, it's, it's, it's ungrateful. It's, it's, this is a family time. We're sitting at the table together and you can't, as a child, decide to just put a kibosh on family time and walk away from the table, not even saying thank you for the meal or anything. We're not going to allow that.
00:17:44 So, yeah
00:17:46 Nobody should ever be forced to eat something against their will
00:17:49 It's cruel and creates bad eating habits
00:17:51 That is insane
00:17:53 Some of these people
00:17:56 Nobody should be forced to eat something against their will
00:18:01 Okay, what's the other option?
00:18:03 What is the other option?
00:18:06 So you're just going to let your kid decide what their own diet is
00:18:09 You're going to let your four-year-old
00:18:11 So your four-year-old is going to be his own nutritionist, his own dietician. You let your
00:18:18 four-year-old decide every meal for himself. That's insane. You're being a bad parent.
00:18:24 You're being a bad parent because you're refusing to do the job.
00:18:29 Being a parent is making these decisions for your family in many cases, making decisions that are
00:18:35 right for your kid that they will not make because they don't know what's right and healthy for them.
00:18:40 You do. You're the parent. So you feed them, hopefully, a nice meal that has like protein and maybe some vegetables and stuff like that because they need it for their growing bodies. They don't know that they need that. And so you have to force that on them.
00:18:58 um this is just basic parenting
00:19:03 completely insane and it doesn't create bad eating habits it does exactly the opposite
00:19:11 all of my kids have like you know for kids have really good eating habits
00:19:16 and they all just eat we make a meal and they eat it whatever it is we make a healthy meal
00:19:21 and they eat it that's about as good a eating habit as you can have and um that's all it takes
00:19:28 I finally, uh, scrappy little Texan says, I agree, but I haven't figured out the magic trick to keep my five and seven year old seated at the dinner table.
00:19:36 It drives us crazy.
00:19:38 Yeah.
00:19:38 Well, look, um, seven years old, this should not be a problem anymore.
00:19:44 Uh, you know, five is a little bit on the, like two, I mean, really, um, once your kid starts eating solid foods and they're sort of at the dinner table at that point.
00:19:58 from that age until about, you know, maybe like three and a half, four can be a little rough
00:20:04 and you just have to get through it. By seven years old, they should certainly be at a point
00:20:11 where, um, where they can sit at the table, you know, politely and basically still and eat the
00:20:19 food. And at seven years old, if you can't get them to sit down and eat dinner, um, they should,
00:20:24 they should have that skill by now at seven. I mean, seven is late in the game. So the trick,
00:20:29 which is not magic, is just consequence. And I think this is where parents flinch.
00:20:36 This is where parents very often flinch. And you're at the point, you're long since at the
00:20:42 point, in my opinion, where the consequences should be pretty severe for the seven-year-old.
00:20:47 And that's, but by severe, all I mean is something as simple as, if you don't sit still at the table
00:20:53 and eat in a civilized way.
00:20:58 If you're bouncing all over the place,
00:21:00 you're not sitting down,
00:21:01 you're trying to make it all about you.
00:21:02 This is family dinner time.
00:21:03 It's not about you.
00:21:05 You're going to sit down
00:21:06 and you're going to be civilized and polite.
00:21:08 And if you're not going to do that,
00:21:10 then we're going to send you to bed without dinner.
00:21:13 And you actually have to do it.
00:21:15 You know, it's basically all the old fashioned stuff
00:21:16 that like our parents and grandparents did.
00:21:19 That was actually right.
00:21:20 You should be doing that.
00:21:21 Sending your kid to bed without dinner
00:21:23 should be a thing that you do sometimes if you need to. And I'm telling you right now,
00:21:27 especially at seven, like that'll make, that'll make an impression. And we've had to do that a
00:21:33 few times with our kids for various reasons. And, uh, not very often, but we've had a few kids where,
00:21:37 you know, it's like six o'clock and you're going to bed, you know, you're bed without dinner. Do
00:21:45 that a few times, makes an impression. And, um, and that's what consequences should be. They have
00:21:50 to be something that is unpleasant for the child, not going to hurt the child, uh, not anything like
00:21:56 that. They're perfectly safe, but it will make an impression and it will be really on, you know,
00:22:00 uncomfortable for them and, and, uh, they're not going to enjoy it. And that's what you have to do.
00:22:07 So I think, I, I think with your seven-year-old, you could break him of this habit
00:22:10 in the span of 12 hours. Just want, try it tonight. Give him a couple of warnings. I'm sure
00:22:19 you've already given him a million warnings if he's seven. And, uh, but if he doesn't listen
00:22:24 to that, okay, you're going to bed. You're not going to eat, go to bed. Something tells me the
00:22:29 next day he's going to be seated at the dinner table very politely and he's going to eat what's
00:22:34 put in front of him. That's the way kids work. It's not that hard. I mean, it's, you know what?
00:22:40 It is hard. Being a parent is hard. I'll, I'll, I'll backtrack. It is hard. It is difficult,
00:22:44 but it's simple, especially with young kids. It's simple. It's not complicated. It's not
00:22:49 complicated, even if it is hard to do. So that's it. Okay. Bye.