Roma Norriss Talks to Robin Grille

0:01 so I'm joined here by Robin Grill in Sydney Australia and Robin is one of my parenting Heroes he's author of The phenomenal books parenting for for a peaceful world and heart-to-heart parenting um and what inspires me so much about your work Robin is how hopeful your message

0:33 is and I think we really need to hear your voice right now in the UK given the recent shocking events um it's really understandable that parents are feeling frightened at the moment about the state of the world and what kind of world we're bringing our children into um and you know when these things happen so close to home it really feels

1:05 very Bleak and um yeah understandably you know many families have been affected by those who have been hurt or lost uh through these tragic events so um I'd really love to hear from you um I know in your book you make a WR case that globally now is the safest time we've ever lived in I'd we love to hear

1:37 more about that for sure Roma um I guess though first of all that what I want to acknowledge is that for the people who who just lost their lives in in London and Manchester and and and you know also people in places like Yemen in places like Syria right now and we're we're so senseless um you know for them the world really is

2:09 not feeling like a like a the safest a time and and my heart goes out to all of those people I'm I'm very sorry for what's happened and and what an outrage it is what a what a unexplainable horror yeah [Music] um for the victims and for the families of the victims to send someone you love away to to a concert or walking down the street and that they don't come home or that they don't come home

2:40 whole so you know I I want to acknowledge them very much first yeah and yeah I I I I do still hear it said by so many people people that you know there seems to be the impression a very shared impression that the world is becoming more and more violent and more and more violent and you know it's as if we wouldn't get that impression

3:12 when uh cameras everywhere and um the news really feeds off that in the news cycle and um we get closer and closer to and closer to the most graphic moments of atrocity yeah um it seems to be everywhere we look so you know initially it feels like counterintuitive to say that the world is becoming a less violent

3:42 place doesn't really look that way does it sure um but hard as it is to believe that's actually exactly what's going on um I want to qualify that by saying that is like an average around the world um now I'll just pause for a moment there R because the image froze was the yeah I just lost you again [Music] um go back to

4:15 um hard as it is to believe okay so hard it is as hard as it seems to believe uh yeah the world is actually becoming statistically speaking it's becoming a far less violent place um but I want to point out that that's an average so in terms of an average global statistic for all of the measures

4:45 of violence uh deaths and injuries caused by War um crime and domestic violence the rates of that on average are in freefall absolutely plummeting yeah um that's of course not true in an even way there are spots around the world where things seem to get worse in terms of violence yeah but when you when you average all out and and there's been

5:17 some very very methodical studies going on for decades and decades the world is becoming definitely far less human to human violence let's qualify it is becoming less even even the 20th century with the two world wars and the apocalyptic Weaponry that we seem to have developed even that um was a time which was already statistically less violent than previous centuries when uh so you can just imagine as horrific as it is now yeah with each

5:51 Century that you go back in time or even every 50 years it gets worse and worse and worse so it's been quite a life has been quite a blood bath for a lot of humanity humanity is in a sense in recovery from Millennia of unrelenting trauma unrelenting trauma and the Brain changes the the severe brain changes that that has causes that that causes yeah so

6:22 um you know I'll qualify that again by saying that our violence towards the natural environment towards the non human world is not getting better right we're endangering ourselves that way yeah but there's there there are dramatic changes in terms of humano human violence so um and some phenomenal mixing of of of of people that would have considered each other enemies before right so

6:53 um I I imagine that you'd want me to say something about what I think is driving those chain yeah yeah so what you know keeps me going as a parent and in the work that I do with parents is your extremely hopeful message about why the levels of violence have been reducing um yeah yeah please say more about that well if you put together a

7:23 synthesis which is what I did in my first book parenting for a peaceful world a synthesis of anthrop ology um the history of childhood which is called psychohistory and neuros pychology that looks at how the brain develops the human brain develops according to how we're treated in childhood and epigenetics which is the study of how childhood experiences change us at the level of our genetic expression yeah

7:53 that's absolutely wild that is such a game Cher really of understanding of what it these that drives the evolution and the everchanging nature of human society the the um inescapable and very very clear uh pattern that comes through is that childhood changes the world the way that we relate to Children uh on the whole um drives is is is the most powerful engine of what changes the

8:26 future so that as children start to be treated with less violence and less abuse in a large scale then uh inescapably the Next Generation becomes less and less and less violent yeah and there's definitely something that I call a children's Liberation movement going on around the world with no one particular leader no one particular Manifesto and a million different faces

8:57 most of most of the examples of this you'll never even find out about because it's too big yeah but it's quite thrilling in all of the key areas of you know child birth breastfeeding attachment um you know how we set boundaries with children uh over 50 countries now where it's against the law for a parent to smack a child it's it's legally termed as domestic violence in over 50 countries and there are further four or five countries that come online

9:28 with that prohibition every year so within your lifetime and mine if we live to a rold age it'll be the whole world it wouldn't surprise me if United States is not the the final country to to jump on board that's a whole other story um and so so it's been shown very very clearly that there's a causal link and a very powerful causal relationship between when when as

9:59 a nation moves forward in child rearing reform that Nation becomes more peaceful yeah and even more peaceful towards the the natural environment as well so crime goes down um health problems go down so many social indicators get better and better and better and there are a few countries that are at the at the um foreground of this that are leading the charge uh notably the Nordic country

10:30 yeah um you know I want to stress that it's not perfect over there it's not as if you're not going to find problems and Corruptions and violence in the Nordic countries it certainly got their share of problems depression all kinds of stuff but in evolutionary in Social evolutionary terms and in comparison where Australia and the UK are and the Us and other you know develop Vel So-Cal

11:01 democracies they are a shining example and a kind of a great uh very undeniable evidence that as you improve on childhood the whole world improves the whole nation improves which means that to say that we can have a war in which uh a world in which war no longer exists that is anything but idealistic yeah that is mely that's simply a very

11:32 humble uh uh thing to hope for yeah it's it's it's not just achievable it's it's almost um uh inevitable in terms of the direction in which we're going so I would say in in the lifetime of your children unless something comes into to change this uh rapidly accelerating pace of social evolution that's exactly the kind of world that your uh children will live in I would

12:04 not advise a career in the military because that um that's going to be to be shrinking um yeah beautiful thank you Robin Grill um so just to summarize that statistically we are reaching levels of safety on the planet that we have never experienced before and the work that you do as

12:35 parents really matters every five minutes that you spend responding to your child contributes towards peace and sustainability on the planet and those values are very much part of our mission statement at hand inhand parenting um so yeah thank you Robin for sharing your hopeful and peaceful message with parents of the UK Roma if I may just add a concluding remark yeah

13:08 which is to say that um my personal preference is not to leave it up to Hope because not not one of the things that I've just mentioned are guaranteed actually not really um that it's entirely conditional a world of peace and in harmony with the environment is completely conditional Upon Us continuing as many of us as possible continuing the work of child rearing reform which means to say all of us

13:40 doing our best to learn how to be uh attending to our children's emotional needs not just their physical needs and to become better listeners listeners of our children of what they say with their body language as well as what they say with their words you know listening to their hearts is the the main thing um and it's conditional upon us doing that so yeah I cannot promise we'll have a peaceful world what I can promise is

14:12 that it's up to you and me and therefore um and up to parents and up to uh schools and up to the communities that support parents because we can't do it without support yeah uh so that that's why to me you know my feeling is that the work of a parent a mother a father grandparents is is the most powerful form of social activism that there is because we are

14:45 literally the farmers of the empathy level of the empathy crop of the Next Generation yeah and so um it's really nice talking with you again R Great to great to see you again thanks so much really appreciate your words lots of love to the people that have been Hur by what happened in London and and Manchester yeah yeah