November 17, 2020 • 40 mins
Dr. Harvey Karp is one of America's most-trusted pediatricians and child development experts. He is also the founder and CEO of Happiest Baby, a smart-tech and parenting solutions company.
Having practiced pediatrics in Los Angeles for over 25 years, his landmark discoveries and unique ability to translate complex science into effective techniques have empowered parents and revolutionized our understanding of young children's needs.
Harvey's highly innovative and celebrated books and videos, The Happiest Baby on the Block and The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep, have been translated into dozens of languages and made him one of the world's most renowned baby and sleep experts.
He joins us to talk about the fourth trimester, his vision for a world full of SNOO smart sleepers, well-rested parents, and the importance of your child's early relationships, especially in a post-pandemic world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with Dr Harvey carp. Harvey is one of America's most
trusted pediatricians and child development experts. He's also the founder
and CEO of Happiest Baby, a smart tech parenting solutions company,
and the inventor of the snow. Having practice pediatrics in
(00:41):
Los Angeles for over twenty five years, his landmark discoveries
and unique ability to translate complex science into effective techniques
have empowered parents and revolutionized our understanding of young children's needs.
Harvey's highly innovative and celebrated books and videos, The Happiest
Baby on the Block and The Happiest Baby Guide to
Great Sleep, have been translated into dozens of languages and
(01:02):
made him one of the world's most renowned baby and
sleep experts. He joins us to talk about the fourth trimester.
His vision of a world full of snooze smart sleepers,
well rested parents, and the importance of your child's early relationships,
especially in a post pandemic world. So please enjoy my
conversation with Dr Harvey carp Harvey, thank you so much
(01:25):
for being on the podcast. Really appreciate you joining us.
I'm so happy to be with you, Jeff, Thanks so
much for asking. It's such a pleasure. You're one of
these people that I'm so thankful for knowing, and you've
had such a tremendous impact on my health and happiness
and well being in my family. So I just got
to start out by saying, thank you man for all
your work. Oh my, listen, it's so fun to know
(01:47):
that we were introduced by a little baby basically, I mean,
it's it's your son, River who really really brought us together.
So we have him to thank well. And we had
a mutual friend introduced us who I know you had
also been invaluable too for you know her her, you know,
child rearing experience. You know, it's got to be amazing
for you because this goes back decades, right, like you've
(02:10):
been doing this for a really long time. I often
I would yeah, I practice pediatrics for almost thirty years
out here in Los Angeles. I trained in New York,
originally a New Yorker, but I've been out here for
a long long time. And I would always joke with
my patients that my job was being a doctor and
(02:30):
being a grandmother, because half of what you do, or
more than that as a pediatrician these days, is just
passing on the ancient wisdom and helping people understand, you know,
just the separate the common sense from all the noise
that you get on the internet and from from friends,
and just help them find their path. Well, I'll be
(02:51):
honest with you, I don't think a lot of us
have that experience anymore with our doctors, even you know,
those of us that can afford, you know, the best
care we could find in a city like Los Angeles.
You know, we still have a pretty fast food medical
experience a lot of us with our deliveries and our
medical professionals. And I recall my wife tried to ask
(03:12):
the doctor a question. You know, dude rolls his eyes
and it's like just you know, rushing to the next room.
And so you're talking about ancient wisdom. I don't know
that it's like just about that because that sounds something
unique to your perspective. I was pretty lucky, I have
to say, in pediatrics number one, I was really practicing
before all the p p o s and the insurance
(03:34):
companies took over so many practices, so I wasn't under
their thumb for most of the years that was practicing.
And I studied besides pediatrics. I I spent a couple
of years studying child development, so that it was really
interesting for every child was like new and different and
interesting in their personality. It wasn't just looking for diseases.
And I have to say doctors today, and pediatricians especially,
(03:58):
they have a tough tough job because they do have
to run from room to room just to pay the
bills because everything has gotten so expensive, and their reimbursement is.
Pediatricians of the lowest reimbursed doctors of any doctor, so
it becomes a real challenge to kind of be able
to make a living and do what you enjoy. I
was lucky back in the day that I was able
(04:19):
to just spend half hour with all my visits and
get to know the families. And it wasn't quite the
days when they would give you a chicken for coming
to the office is in this exchange. But I did
have to really get to know my family's Well that's fantastic.
And what is some of that ancient wisdom that you
would impart on those new parents, Well, you know, a
big part of it is the perspective you have on
(04:42):
young children. I only what your job is. So when
it comes to babies, the key perspective that I like
to teach is that in those first four months or
five months of life, your baby is really still a fetus,
and you, my friend, are a big walking uterus. But um,
in all seriousness, we used to teach parents, you know,
just let your child cry and they have to learn
(05:03):
to tough it up and whatnot. But now we understand
that the more you respond to your baby's needs, you're
building something that's called attachment or really trust, confident security,
those bedrock parts of your personality that will really be
there through thick and thin and help you get through
all the travails of life. And so rather than letting
(05:26):
children cry and learned that they can't quote unquote manipulate you,
our goal is to meet our child's needs and respond
to their crying and to do that in a very
specific way, and that's really There's a book and a
video that I made called Happiest Baby on the Block,
which kind of introduced a new concept, which is the
fourth trimester that your job is a new parent is
(05:49):
to imitate the rhythms of the womb. Everybody concentrates on
feeding babies, you know, given the calories, given the breastfeeding,
and of course that's super important, but it turns out
at rhythmic holding and rocking and shishing are as nurturing
two babies as calories as the nutrition that they eat.
(06:09):
Do you remember the old studies by Harry Harlow with
the terry cloth monkey. Did you ever hear about that? Well,
listen in in the early part of the nineteen hundreds,
there were studies done on what they call foundling homes
or orphanages. At the time, these orphanages were filled, I
mean with you know, scores and scores and scores of babies,
(06:31):
and they just discovered artificial formula is a way of
feeding these babies was the only way that they could
keep them alive. And they didn't have enough nurses to
go around, so they would prop up bottles of formula
in these babies mouths, and they didn't even have enough
people to pick up the baby and hold them. And
they thought that, you know, given formula was enough, that's
what else does a baby need to grow? But it
(06:53):
turns out that if the babies were not picked up
and held, even if they were given calories, they didn't thrive.
Bay bees need the holding and the rocking and the
shushing and the nurturing and the skin to skin as
much as they need the calories. Harry Harlow did this
study where he took monkeys. He built mother monkeys for
(07:13):
these baby monkeys, but they were artificial monkeys. One was
a wire monkey that had a bottle of milk attached
to it, and the other was a wire monkey that
didn't have milk, but it had terry cloth wrapping around it,
so it was more comforting to hang onto. And this
monkey would run over to the wire monkey to get
a feeding, and as soon as the milk was gone,
(07:35):
would run back to the terry cloth monkey for the
cuddling and the softness that the baby needs just as
much as the calories. So that's something that you know,
it's kind of the ancient wisdom that I like to
teach parents about, at least for for newborn babies. And
it feels to me like the five s is as
ancient wisdom. This must have been, you know, an observation
through the best practices that you had seen in the space. Yes,
(07:57):
when you when you put that together for the happiest
bay me. Yeah. So. So the five s is are
five ways to imitate the experience babies happen before they're born.
Inside the womb. It's not quiet and still, it's dynamic.
It's a symphony of sensations. There is sound that's a
rumbling sound that's louder than a vacuum cleaner. There's constant
(08:19):
giggle emotion. Imagine when a woman is walking, you know,
all the bouncy emotion. The baby hasn't even when she's
just sitting there or or asleep. Every time she breathes,
she's rocking her baby. And the baby is cuddled in
this velvet lined womb. And so they're constantly being touched
and rubbed. And then they're born and we put them
flat on the back. They've never been on the back before.
(08:39):
We take away sound, we take away emotion, and we
say and we take away the holding you know, we
unswallowed the babies, and then we wonder why the baby
isn't sleeping better, because dude, you've taken away everything that
the baby knew before they were born. And so it
was in a way discovering the ancient wisdom to recognize
(09:00):
these five steps that imitate the wound. The five s
is are critical, and there are things that we just
kind of forgot about and walked away from. And if
you're listening and you're about to have a baby, or
in the future are going to have a baby, please
do yourself a favor and watch the DVD or read
the book and just understand the five s is because
(09:22):
it really did, you know, save us to a great degree.
I mean, like we didn't know what we were doing.
We had, to that point, never had a baby before.
And I think that that was just like, out of
all of the sort of like information that we took
in our books we read, it was just the most
hyper practical and easy to follow and then you get
these you know, almost miraculous results. Hearing you say it,
it almost sounds kind of obvious. It's like, yeah, you
(09:43):
shish the baby, you rock the baby. They need to suck,
they need to be swaddled tightly because that imitates the wound.
But it's not obvious to a lot of people. No,
it's actually it's actually counterintuitive because you think you've got
to be gentle and if you shush loude you know,
you feel like you're saying shut up or its rude.
In fact, the thing that was tricky about this is
(10:05):
that it works by turning on a reflex. You know,
when you buy a computer, it's got all this software
preloaded on it so that you can use the computer
right on the first day. Well, babies have lots of
software that's preloaded in their brains. We called them reflexes,
neonatal reflexes. So you don't teach your baby to suck
or to swallow, or to blink, or to breathe or
(10:27):
to cry. They're born with those capabilities. And what wasn't
known we really was kind of described in in my
book for the first time, was that they have a
reflex that's like an off switch for crying in an
on switch for sleep, called the calming reflex. But like
like your knee reflex, you can't just whack the knee
and have a reflex happen. You got to hit it
exactly in the right place and exactly hard enough. There's
(10:50):
a little specificity to it, and same thing for these
five ass You gotta swallow right, you gotta shish right,
you gotta jiggle them in the right way, and then
the magic happens. So it is a technique. And actually
because of that, the happiest baby is is it's a
good book. It's got anthropology in it, in different science
and stuff like that. But to really learn these techniques,
(11:10):
I don't even recommend reading the book. I recommend this
little thirty minute video because you kind of learn it
best by watching, just like learning how to tell your shoelaces. Well,
speaking of which your entrepreneurial endeavors, so you are a writer,
you produced the videos, you were a professor, You sit
on a number of different boards and advisory boards on
(11:31):
these topics. Snow is another piece of the symphony of
the work that you've done for children and families. I'd
love for you to tell us about Snow, but I
also want to know, like, is that the beginning of
your entrepreneurial journey or did you have other like startups
that didn't work out? Was there a rattle that you know,
we never saw that didn't make it out of the
(11:51):
laboratory or tell the ones that blew up. Well, you know,
being a being a doctor, uh and building a practice
is very entrepreneurial. And I've built other businesses with my wife,
who's my co founder. There'd be no company without her.
She's just brilliant and has been such a co partner.
And everything that I've done and doing the videos really
(12:12):
was as you said, entrepreneur. I mean, millions of people
have seen this video and and used it. We it's
translated into the books, are translated to thirty languages and
used in nations around the world and stuff. So it's
been quite a long process from the educational point of view.
But then Snow is really a responsive baby bed that
imitates the womb and keeps baby safer and teaches them
(12:35):
to be better sleepers. And it's kind of interesting thing
because I was teaching the five s is forever lecturing
around the world, and and yet I wasn't seeing what
I had hoped to see, which was a reduction in
postport and depression and child abuse and parents feeling happier
and more competent because they could do the five S
is all day long, but what do you do all
(12:56):
night long? You know, they were still struggling with sleep
upper asition being the number one stress on parents. And
like I said, not just a stress. It leads to
marital stress and divorce. It leads to breastfeeding failure. Thousands
of babies die because their parents are so tired they
fall asleep with them in bed with them, or they
put the baby on the stomach because it's the only
(13:17):
way the baby will stop crying. And so I thought,
you know, maybe there could be a way that I
could make a difference and build a bed that gave
babies these womb sensations while they were sleeping. And so
I partnered up with one of the guys who was
now he's the head of the M I T Media Lab,
with one of America's leading industrial designers, and we created
(13:39):
this bed and then tested it out on hundreds and
hundreds of babies. And and it's kind of funny because
we've now used it. I mean, we've measured well over
a hundred million hours of infant sleep, So it's the
it's the largest infant studies that have ever been done,
and we've proven that we add one to two hours
to a baby's sleep every night starting in the first
(14:00):
week or two of life, which was never even thought possible.
And yet what's so crazy about that is that everyone
knew it was possible, because when your baby cries a
lot and they didn't sleep well, you'd be told, we'll
go drive your kid in the car. And if you
drove your child all night in the car, they would
fall asleep for an extra hour or two. It's so
and you would as well if you were in the
(14:21):
backseat of the car. And so it was really taking
something that was kind of known and kind of recognized,
and yet we had a blind spot and we thought, well,
well that's in a car, but you can't really do
that in your bedroom. And now we've created this beautiful
little and it's beautiful. It's in six museums, it's in
the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. It's one more awards
(14:43):
than any baby product in history. So we're super proud
about the way it looks, in the way it works.
We're in seventy hospitals now using it for babies withdrawing
from drugs, and using it for premature babies, and and
as you mentioned, for for the prevention of postportum depression,
and so it's it's just been a very exciting entrepreneurial ride,
(15:04):
having an idea, building it, manufacturing it, and getting it
out in the world. We'll be back with more out
of the Hustle after the break. You said you partnered
with the now a head of m I T Media Lab,
(15:25):
and and I believe it was. It was a Eve
Bihar was the industrial designer. Yah, wonderful, wonderful guy, amazing designer.
So how did you did you do? These guys just
like say, hey, we love you, Harvey and and Nina
and we're we're in. We'll we'll just do it, you know,
on the come and you let us know. Or did
you raise money? Did you spend it yourself? How did
you get the thing off the ground? Well, you know,
(15:45):
we bootstrapped it in the beginning, and we were I
was so lucky that Eve and deb Roy out of
m T. We're both fans of the Five s Is.
They had used it for their little kids and raising
their kids, so they knew my book and my work already,
and so they were excited at the idea of building
something that was really breakthrough. I mean, you know, we
(16:06):
always talk about disruptive technologies. That's the buzzword. But when
you think about it, if when you look in front
of you, you know, your computer, your phone, whatever, even
your pen, the baby you're writing on, almost everything in
front of you has been innovated on in the last
ten twenty thirty years. The baby bed hasn't changed in
three thousand years. So it was really exciting at the
(16:27):
at the prospect of how do we catapult the baby
bed into the twenty one century? And so they were
on board because it was such an interesting challenge and
because they knew the five s is and how did
you guys take it to market? Was it difficult to
introduce something so novel? I remember from me when I
first was like, wait a minute, is it? Is it
a robotic crib? Or like how did you help people
(16:49):
get over that first hump when they were introduced to
this you know concept? Well, you know, that's a never
ending struggle because you have to educate people to something
that they never even knew existed or or thought could
be done. So, which is really part of the fun
of it. We've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
articles written in every language you can imagine because people
(17:10):
are fascinated by babies and they're fascinated by controversy, and
so people go, oh, no, this is a dystopian robotic bed.
Now parents will never touch their babies. It's really just
it's just a smart swing in a certain sense that's safe.
It rocks them, it responds when the baby cries, It
rocks and trishes them more. It's got this great app
(17:33):
so you can get your download of how your baby
has been sleeping for the last day and week and month,
and you can watch the progress what it really is.
And this sounds odd, but it's really your older sister, Jeff.
It's like one of the greatest problems that faces our culture,
in our society is the ending of the extended family.
(17:54):
Everyone thinks it's the normal family is, you know, two
parents and a child, maybe a dog. In the US
people think that, well, you know, even outside the US,
the whole extended family structure is falling apart everywhere, as
as other cultures followed the Western model, and so people
move into the cities, they move away from their extended family,
and they think that they're liberating themselves. You know, when
(18:16):
you're twenty and you moved to New York and you're going, now,
I'm free, man, you know, I'm out of my little
town or whatever. It's exciting when you're twenty, but we
really should be like salmon. You know. We have to
swim back upstream and get back to that familiar neighborhood
when we have babies, because that's when your parents and
your cousins and your uncle and aunt and the neighborhood
(18:37):
that you know become so comforting and so important. But
instead we get stuck in these cities and we don't
know our neighbors and we don't have any outdoor space,
and we think that's normal, and then you have a
baby or toddler and you go, oh jeez, I mean,
this is the hardest work I've ever done. And even
though parents sitay are smarter, more book learned than any
(18:59):
generation in history, many parents have never even touched a
baby before they have their own baby that never existed
in the entire you know, history and prehistory of civilization
or humanity. Point it's a pretty weird time. And so
Snow really turns out to be a caregiver. It is
an assistant. It is robotic in a certain sense, and
(19:20):
that it kind of works just push a button and
it it imitates human behavior, So it imitates the best
caregiver that you could have, or if your grandma, your
older sister moved in with you. But then what it
does is it gives you that extra time to fix dinner,
to take a shower, to get some sleep, which is priceless, yeah,
and which you need. I mean, it's really you deserve it.
(19:42):
As a new parent, you're working so hard, you know,
you deserve a little bit of help. Well, and if
you're a mother, you just went through like you literally
just had an organ leave your body and become a
sentient being. So it's like you probably should sleep a
little extra if you can. And uh, I'm so fascinated
by your path. Clearly, you know, whatever you and your
wife focus on expands, But you know, I imagine there
(20:04):
we are some hard learnings to just from a leadership perspective.
What were some of the areas that you know you
really skinned your knees on. Yeah, I mean it's obviously
it's a constant learning process. I learned a lot through
the whole process of writing books and lecturing and developing
educational programs. So you know, thank god I married the
(20:25):
right woman that there would be no Snoo, there would
be no company if I didn't have this brilliant woman
by my side who found our factory in China and
found our factory in India and hired our executive team
and raised millions of dollars. And then, of course that
just is the beginning. Right then you've got to build
the right team, and you make mistakes along the way,
and you've got to fire people and hire people and
(20:47):
make some quick decisions, and and you know, your constant
when you start a new business, you're just trying to
make as few terrible mistakes as possible, but you know
you're going to make mistakes and and run into walls
and then you just have to have to pivot. And
so we've had tons of issues and problems and manufacturing issues.
You're constantly working through the bugs and and what was
(21:08):
fun with SNeW, of course, is that it was something
no one ever thought about or knew could even be done.
And so it's been a lot of fun, you know,
just just talking about it and you see parents eyes
open wide the possibility that they can get an extra
hour or two of sleep. I have to tell you
that one of the things I'm looking forward to next.
You know, this is just the beginning of the ride
(21:30):
helping parents with their new babies. But as a pediatrician,
my goal is really to help guide parents through those
first you know, five, six, seven years of life um
which are the most formative and foundation setting for the
child the rest of the child's life. And so what
I'm really excited about now is talking to people more
about toddlers, kids over eight months of age and the
(21:52):
things you can do. There's a whole Happiest Toddler on
the block book and video that I did, but these
are not so much the ancient with them as new
wisdom in terms of how you speak, so you can
build emotional resilience and strength and help children become more
resilient and confident and patient and communicative and trusting, able
(22:16):
to build intimacy skills. All of these things that people
are struggling with in our culture are things that parents
of young children from eight months on can really learn
to do better. And what's fun about this and interesting
is that some of these things are completely the opposite
of the way you think you should be speaking with
your child or raising your child. So that's really a
(22:38):
big fun part of what I'm starting to do now well,
and into that regard, I just you know, I'm curious
because I was, you know, rereading your background in history,
and I know that you've spent a fair amount of
time working with, as you said, like kids that you
know had coming from harder situations. I'm curious, like, what
are some of the things when when children have gone
through trauma that you know you've seen help them come
(22:59):
out the other side. What I always found is that
it's the way you frame the problem that really presents
you with the answer. And so if you understand that
babies are born four months too soon, then you understand
why you have to bounce and jiggle and cuddle and
imitate the wound for twelve hours a day. For toddlers,
the key concept is that toddlers are not little children.
(23:21):
Toddlers are cave men, their primitives. They are unfreaking civilized,
and that's fun. You know. They they'll enjoy the ice
cream and their whole face will be covered by ice cream.
But they are not always the best roommates. You know.
They don't pick up after themselves or wash the dishes,
and they can spit and scratch and throw things at
your head. And and so it turns out if you
(23:44):
understand that they're uncivilized, then you understand your job is
to civilize them. You know, then that's going to take
you years to teach them to say please and thank you,
wait in line to share their toys. But the cool
thing about that and about helping them overcome traumas you know,
to your question, we are all born with a built
(24:04):
in life preserver that allows us to endure difficulties and
frustrations and shameful situations and to get to the other
side and be healthier and stronger and better. And that
inborn capability is called our emotions. When we're sad, we cry,
when we're happy, we laugh. And after you express your emotions,
(24:26):
you actually feel better, You feel like you can think better.
But only if you can express those emotions in a
loving and accepting environment. That's the trick. And so it's
really teaching parents how they can signal to their young
children that they respect and care for their feelings. They
want to understand their feelings, not that they're gonna change that.
(24:50):
You can keep your child from having difficult they're gonna
scrape their knees, they're going to be insulted. They're gonna
feel picked upon and bullied, and that's not the worst
thing in the world. You know, you will toughen up
when you go through those difficult situations, but you need
to have a parent and people who love you who
can listen to those feelings without trying to save you,
(25:11):
but also without trying to make you get over it
too quickly. And it turns out they're very specific techniques
that you know as an adult that work to help
someone feel heard, Like like with your best friend. When
your best friend is upset and said says, Jeff, you're
not gonna believe what this guy did to me. You
don't immediately say, well, wait a second, let me tell
(25:33):
you what happened to me. Right. You don't compete with them,
for sure, you encourage them to tell you you know
what they experience, and you don't encourage them by saying,
that's very interesting, tell me how that was for you. Right,
You use a very primitive type of language. I call
it toddlerries, which is three steps, short phrases, repetition, and
(25:56):
mirroring a third of their emotion in your tone of
voice and Jeff true. So for your friend, you might
go what what what? What? What? What? Tell me? Tell me,
I want to know what happened. Tell me what happened.
You repeat yourself, which sounds kind of inane, and you
use a little emotion in your voice that signals that
you're genuinely interested with children today, too often parents think
(26:19):
they're acknowledging feelings by saying, honey, mommy knows you're upset.
That was very frustrating for you. But that's that same
pseudo psychiatrist voice that really is so distant from feelings
that it makes the child feel like the parent doesn't
really get it and doesn't even really want to entertain
their feelings. So you're saying, instead, we should mirror the
(26:41):
feelings back to them. We should speak back to them
in the same emotional register as like they're presenting to us. Actually, no,
I'm not saying that, And I'm glad you said that,
because I made that mistake in the first edition of
my book, and I had to rewrite parts of my
book because I said, you mirror the feelings, you don't.
You mirror about a third of the feelings. And this
(27:02):
is super important. When they're screaming, you don't scream, you're
not a mirror. You might raise your voice and put
some empathy into your voice when they're sad. You don't
cry along with them. You don't want to take the
attention away from them. They have the spotlight, but you
want to show them that. Am I getting it right? Honey?
Is are you feeling? You look like you're so frustrated.
(27:25):
You're trying, You're trying, and you were trying to open
that bottle. And I saw you you were trying, and
you were trying to open that That kind of repetition
and and um kind of empathy without actually mirroring the
level of empathy they of emotion they have, which would
otherwise be taking the attention on yourself. It sounds a
(27:48):
lot like, you know, some of the principles of like
thinking fast and slow, or we have like these emotional
needs on the bottom floor of the house and that
lets us get to the more, you know, intellectual conversation
on the top floor. If we don't feel seen and
heard and appreciated, then we really can't be negotiating in
a meaningful way. So I kind of feel like, as
(28:08):
my toddler is in his full caveman staying, he's actually
a tremendously tough negotiator. The guy gets what he wants.
I mean, it's amazing. I really can't lose. Like I mean,
I know he's gonna take me to the mat if
it's important to him. It's either happening or I'm going
to distract him, or you know, like, uh, We're gonna
go toe to toe for half an hour before he's
(28:29):
going to give it up. River has nothing to do
all day but to engage you in that wrestling match. Well,
you've got to do things you have to do. And actually,
you know, it's important that parents recognize that even though
it sounds so simple to just acknowledge feelings in those
three steps, it's not simple when you are stressed and
someone screaming at you or just spit in your face,
(28:50):
or you know, we have our feelings as well, and
as parents, we oftentimes have to just you know, take
a breath, put our feelings aside, and um allow the
child's situation to really take center stage until we can
get them to calm down and taking things back to snow.
I imagine that this is going worldwide. You ask, You're
(29:10):
taking this to every hospital and family around the planet. Yeah,
I mean, we we certainly hope that this will be
used by by hospitals across the country and around the world.
We're now in US, Canada, Australia, UK, EU. You will
end up getting this all around the world because parents
need this. I've been through different businesses and and being
(29:32):
a professional, and we started this business not because we're
looking to make a fortune. This is really a mission.
This is something that is odd as it sounds, Jeff,
I mean, I couldn't. I still don't believe that. Why
doesn't everyone just obviously know these things, and yet for
some reason, we have a blind spot to exactly what
we're supposed to do with babies and toddlers. And so yeah,
(29:54):
I've got this big job of just educating people and
getting the word out and it's a pretty fun roller coaster.
Art of the hustle will be right back after this
short break. If I'm an entrepreneur and I want to
build products that are in this space, what are some
(30:15):
of the things that you think I should keep in
mind or some of the needs that still need to
be addressed. Oh gosh, that's a tough one. I mean,
you have to know your audience. I mean, interesting thing
about technology is that so many of us get enamored
with it for technology's sake. Let's just measure this and
we can measure that, But what are you going to
do with that information? You need to solve problems as
(30:37):
well as you know, measure things. Measuring is only good
if it's going to be used for solving problems. So
I would say the most important thing for entrepreneurs who
have an idea is to really work on the product
consumer fit and make sure that you're really solving a
problem that is pressing and and there's a need for
being that we are in this really really unique time.
(30:59):
We're not going to do school out the gate here,
and perhaps that's extreme. I'm just curious, like, are you
thoughtful or do you have some some things that you've
seen that you believe are probably pretty common that a
lot of our children are dealing with. Well, I mean
there's there's tons and tons of things we're learning, but
tons of things that we know already. Um, you know,
(31:19):
just staying healthy, you know, getting sleep, eating well, taking
extra vitamin d um which is a good vitamin for
your immune system for respiratory diseases, you know, and of
course good hygiene and social distancing all those things. So
that's the very beginning of it. But you need in
young kids especially, they need social contact and so getting
(31:40):
a dog for example. You know, if you can't get
out and be with other get your kid with other kids.
At least you can have them have a relationship with
a pet. And that's something that can be incredibly fulfilling
for a child and be doable for for families who
otherwise are isolated. Forming a pod, you know, one other
(32:01):
family so that you can share responsibilities. I mean, if
you if you can trust each other and you're really
kind of keeping to the rule of social isolation or
social distancing, then you can enrich your your life and
enrich your child's life with that type of very small
intimate exposure. Um. A lot of people have moved out
of the cities, you know, to go back to family,
(32:23):
back to areas where they can be out in nature
and get out of the house. It's so hard when
you're stuck in an apartment. If you have that opportunity,
that's something that's useful. Listen, we've really have not handled
this well in the United States. We've spent so much money,
yet so many people have died and we still have
so much of this disease. If everyone stayed indoors for
(32:46):
two weeks, this epidemic would be gone. This virus can't
last more than two weeks, two and a half weeks
at the most. And so literally, if we bit the
bullet and we did that, this it would be gone.
It would be over. Economy would be back, and everybody
would be healthy and back to restaurants and bars and
schools and everything like that. We need leadership. We need
leaders who who can convince us and can lead us
(33:10):
into following the rules that that are the oldest rules
in the world for reducing epidemics and infectious diseases. We
know how to do it, we just have to do it,
and we need the leaders who bring us to those
actions totally. And you mentioned some of those other countries
and how they're they're they're dealing with it. Have there
been or are there like things that you admire in
(33:32):
terms of toddlers and babies and family building and just
the space that you've dedicated your life too. What are
some of the things, because we talked about that ancient wisdom,
are are there things that you think are practiced on
a more ongoing basis and child rearing in different places
that most Americans aren't necessarily aware of that we should be. Um, well,
I think we've learned, we've learned more. We've learned a
(33:53):
lot from those cultures. So baby wearing, for example, nobody
used a carrier like thirty years ago. It was just
really starting at that time. Oh yeah, you had strollers
and plastic seats and things like that. But baby wearing
really has come about in the last thirty years. Of course,
the sling. The baby sling may well be the very first,
(34:13):
one of the very first tools that humankind ever invented,
because they needed their hands free while they were carrying
their babies. The biggest thing for us to learn or
remember from other cultures in terms of raising children is
to give them that social exposure. There's a guy, brilliant
guy in Texas, Bruce Perry, psychologist, who has helped so
(34:37):
many families and so many children in crisis. He was
the guy who was they brought into Columbine when these
kids were killed there, or at the bombing in Oklahoma
City or the Branch Davidian catastrophe in Waco to help
these kids recover from trauma. And what he said, I
think is is so right on which is about the
(34:57):
poverty in the United States, not the nomic poverty. Economic
poverty is actually not the biggest problem. Social poverty is
the biggest problem. If you have, you know, a family
with two parents and a child, how many relationships can
that child have. They can have a relationship with themselves.
That's one with the mother. That's two with the father.
That's three with both parents together, that's four. That's it.
(35:22):
If you have two parents, four kids, a dog, your cousins,
your grandparents, the next door, neighbors coming over all the time.
Suddenly you have hundreds of potential relationships. You have a nourishing,
mixed diet of all sorts of different opportunities. You can
learn from the older kids, you can teach the younger kids.
(35:42):
You can watch different adults how they handle things, and
all of that is what human beings always had up
until a hundred years ago. We've ripped all of that away,
and now we're raising children. No wonder everyone's turning to
social media because at least they have some social exposure
and an otherwise boring and century deprived world. That's why
(36:04):
people turn to television. So if we could learn something
from our mistakes and our missteps. It's really to enrich
or social environment in any ways we can. And if
that means just getting a dog, then get a dog.
I love that. My My grandfather is motto is a
large extended family is the greatest luxury in life. And
(36:24):
I had always thought about that in terms of like
the friendships that you have, the family that you choose,
but I hadn't thought about it in terms of just
that diversity of inputs creates the complexity of outputs and
the people that we care about the most. Yeah, and
that's how you learn to be a complex person. That's
how you learn to deal with complex relationships. That's how
you learn to not only think of yourself, because when
(36:47):
it's just you sitting there, of course you're going to
think of yourself. And so it leads to people being
more you know, ecocentric and and lacking in compassion. It
truly is one of the great challenge pages that our
culture faces to break down these barriers. Listen, I'm a
big believer in in universal conscription. I think everyone should
(37:08):
have to serve the country, whether it's in the army
or in peace corps or teach for America or some
type of program where you have to give where you're
not just thinking about yourself, and where you're working on
a team with people from all across the country to
see we're all Americans, were all privileged to be in
this country, and we all have a deep debt that
(37:29):
we need to repay to our our fellow Americans. We
inherited so much from our parents and grandparents. We've got
to give that back totally. Well, Harvey, thank you again, man.
We really appreciate you being on the show. This is
so so amazing just to hear your thoughts and your
wisdom on you know, how to grow what's most important
(37:51):
to all of us that have children. You know, it's
it's a pretty quick process for them to become the
center of our universes. And you know, your story with
snooist unbelievable and and it's such a great product, it's
such a great company. It's something that I've certainly gotten
an incredible amount of value out of. I love it.
And you know what, Jeff, Jeff, our goal with this
is that everyone gets a free snoop. That's what we're
(38:14):
working towards. We want your right now. Many corporations will
will rent snooze and give them to their employees for
six months use like Google, Facebook, Welcome, Snapchat, Hulu. They're
all under armour or I didn't know that. Yeah, So
then we're going to get insurance companies in the government
subsidizing it because they're going to save so much money
(38:36):
by preventing the illnesses that happen when parents are stressed
and overwhelmed. That this will be something. I mean, that's
what we're working towards. That everyone will get a free
snoop and they'll be able to have the helper in
the family that they you know, that they should have
had to begin with. I never thought about that. So
you guys doing some outcomes research around that right now
on the health implications and just the true cost savings. Sure,
(38:59):
and we have we have about a dozen studies underway.
We published our first study last year. The FDA recognized
US as a breakthrough device. So we're hoping that by
one we'll be able to have FDA approval as the
world's first since prevention bed and prevent thousands of deaths
a year in the United States and then prevent postpartum depression,
(39:20):
which we know is triggered by exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed
as a new parent, and we know that SNOW can
give you more sleep and more peace of mind and
and make you feel more competent. So yeah, I know
we're super excited at the opportunity to take this one,
you know, one little intervention and use it to help
millions and millions of families. Well you are, and thank
(39:43):
you again for your service and your work and your
thought leadership and your friendship. I love you, Harvey. Thank
you again for me on the podcast, and thank you
so much Jeff for everything you do with some at
You are the ultimate entrepreneur and trying to make the
world a better place. So hats off to you, my friend.
Well I appreciate it. Thank you guys for listening as
to Art of the Hustle, and thank you Harvey carp
And to check out more on SNOW and all of
(40:05):
Harvey's work, go to the Happiest Baby dot com for
(40:25):
more podcasts. For my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
(00:21):
I'm your host Jeff Rosenthal, co founder of Summit, and
today on the show, I had the pleasure of chatting
with Dr Harvey carp. Harvey is one of America's most
trusted pediatricians and child development experts. He's also the founder
and CEO of Happiest Baby, a smart tech parenting solutions company,
and the inventor of the snow. Having practice pediatrics in
(00:41):
Los Angeles for over twenty five years, his landmark discoveries
and unique ability to translate complex science into effective techniques
have empowered parents and revolutionized our understanding of young children's needs.
Harvey's highly innovative and celebrated books and videos, The Happiest
Baby on the Block and The Happiest Baby Guide to
Great Sleep, have been translated into dozens of languages and
(01:02):
made him one of the world's most renowned baby and
sleep experts. He joins us to talk about the fourth trimester.
His vision of a world full of snooze smart sleepers,
well rested parents, and the importance of your child's early relationships,
especially in a post pandemic world. So please enjoy my
conversation with Dr Harvey carp Harvey, thank you so much
(01:25):
for being on the podcast. Really appreciate you joining us.
I'm so happy to be with you, Jeff, Thanks so
much for asking. It's such a pleasure. You're one of
these people that I'm so thankful for knowing, and you've
had such a tremendous impact on my health and happiness
and well being in my family. So I just got
to start out by saying, thank you man for all
your work. Oh my, listen, it's so fun to know
(01:47):
that we were introduced by a little baby basically, I mean,
it's it's your son, River who really really brought us together.
So we have him to thank well. And we had
a mutual friend introduced us who I know you had
also been invaluable too for you know her her, you know,
child rearing experience. You know, it's got to be amazing
for you because this goes back decades, right, like you've
(02:10):
been doing this for a really long time. I often
I would yeah, I practice pediatrics for almost thirty years
out here in Los Angeles. I trained in New York,
originally a New Yorker, but I've been out here for
a long long time. And I would always joke with
my patients that my job was being a doctor and
(02:30):
being a grandmother, because half of what you do, or
more than that as a pediatrician these days, is just
passing on the ancient wisdom and helping people understand, you know,
just the separate the common sense from all the noise
that you get on the internet and from from friends,
and just help them find their path. Well, I'll be
(02:51):
honest with you, I don't think a lot of us
have that experience anymore with our doctors, even you know,
those of us that can afford, you know, the best
care we could find in a city like Los Angeles.
You know, we still have a pretty fast food medical
experience a lot of us with our deliveries and our
medical professionals. And I recall my wife tried to ask
(03:12):
the doctor a question. You know, dude rolls his eyes
and it's like just you know, rushing to the next room.
And so you're talking about ancient wisdom. I don't know
that it's like just about that because that sounds something
unique to your perspective. I was pretty lucky, I have
to say, in pediatrics number one, I was really practicing
before all the p p o s and the insurance
(03:34):
companies took over so many practices, so I wasn't under
their thumb for most of the years that was practicing.
And I studied besides pediatrics. I I spent a couple
of years studying child development, so that it was really
interesting for every child was like new and different and
interesting in their personality. It wasn't just looking for diseases.
And I have to say doctors today, and pediatricians especially,
(03:58):
they have a tough tough job because they do have
to run from room to room just to pay the
bills because everything has gotten so expensive, and their reimbursement is.
Pediatricians of the lowest reimbursed doctors of any doctor, so
it becomes a real challenge to kind of be able
to make a living and do what you enjoy. I
was lucky back in the day that I was able
(04:19):
to just spend half hour with all my visits and
get to know the families. And it wasn't quite the
days when they would give you a chicken for coming
to the office is in this exchange. But I did
have to really get to know my family's Well that's fantastic.
And what is some of that ancient wisdom that you
would impart on those new parents, Well, you know, a
big part of it is the perspective you have on
(04:42):
young children. I only what your job is. So when
it comes to babies, the key perspective that I like
to teach is that in those first four months or
five months of life, your baby is really still a fetus,
and you, my friend, are a big walking uterus. But um,
in all seriousness, we used to teach parents, you know,
just let your child cry and they have to learn
(05:03):
to tough it up and whatnot. But now we understand
that the more you respond to your baby's needs, you're
building something that's called attachment or really trust, confident security,
those bedrock parts of your personality that will really be
there through thick and thin and help you get through
all the travails of life. And so rather than letting
(05:26):
children cry and learned that they can't quote unquote manipulate you,
our goal is to meet our child's needs and respond
to their crying and to do that in a very
specific way, and that's really There's a book and a
video that I made called Happiest Baby on the Block,
which kind of introduced a new concept, which is the
fourth trimester that your job is a new parent is
(05:49):
to imitate the rhythms of the womb. Everybody concentrates on
feeding babies, you know, given the calories, given the breastfeeding,
and of course that's super important, but it turns out
at rhythmic holding and rocking and shishing are as nurturing
two babies as calories as the nutrition that they eat.
(06:09):
Do you remember the old studies by Harry Harlow with
the terry cloth monkey. Did you ever hear about that? Well,
listen in in the early part of the nineteen hundreds,
there were studies done on what they call foundling homes
or orphanages. At the time, these orphanages were filled, I
mean with you know, scores and scores and scores of babies,
(06:31):
and they just discovered artificial formula is a way of
feeding these babies was the only way that they could
keep them alive. And they didn't have enough nurses to
go around, so they would prop up bottles of formula
in these babies mouths, and they didn't even have enough
people to pick up the baby and hold them. And
they thought that, you know, given formula was enough, that's
what else does a baby need to grow? But it
(06:53):
turns out that if the babies were not picked up
and held, even if they were given calories, they didn't thrive.
Bay bees need the holding and the rocking and the
shushing and the nurturing and the skin to skin as
much as they need the calories. Harry Harlow did this
study where he took monkeys. He built mother monkeys for
(07:13):
these baby monkeys, but they were artificial monkeys. One was
a wire monkey that had a bottle of milk attached
to it, and the other was a wire monkey that
didn't have milk, but it had terry cloth wrapping around it,
so it was more comforting to hang onto. And this
monkey would run over to the wire monkey to get
a feeding, and as soon as the milk was gone,
(07:35):
would run back to the terry cloth monkey for the
cuddling and the softness that the baby needs just as
much as the calories. So that's something that you know,
it's kind of the ancient wisdom that I like to
teach parents about, at least for for newborn babies. And
it feels to me like the five s is as
ancient wisdom. This must have been, you know, an observation
through the best practices that you had seen in the space. Yes,
(07:57):
when you when you put that together for the happiest
bay me. Yeah. So. So the five s is are
five ways to imitate the experience babies happen before they're born.
Inside the womb. It's not quiet and still, it's dynamic.
It's a symphony of sensations. There is sound that's a
rumbling sound that's louder than a vacuum cleaner. There's constant
(08:19):
giggle emotion. Imagine when a woman is walking, you know,
all the bouncy emotion. The baby hasn't even when she's
just sitting there or or asleep. Every time she breathes,
she's rocking her baby. And the baby is cuddled in
this velvet lined womb. And so they're constantly being touched
and rubbed. And then they're born and we put them
flat on the back. They've never been on the back before.
(08:39):
We take away sound, we take away emotion, and we
say and we take away the holding you know, we
unswallowed the babies, and then we wonder why the baby
isn't sleeping better, because dude, you've taken away everything that
the baby knew before they were born. And so it
was in a way discovering the ancient wisdom to recognize
(09:00):
these five steps that imitate the wound. The five s
is are critical, and there are things that we just
kind of forgot about and walked away from. And if
you're listening and you're about to have a baby, or
in the future are going to have a baby, please
do yourself a favor and watch the DVD or read
the book and just understand the five s is because
(09:22):
it really did, you know, save us to a great degree.
I mean, like we didn't know what we were doing.
We had, to that point, never had a baby before.
And I think that that was just like, out of
all of the sort of like information that we took
in our books we read, it was just the most
hyper practical and easy to follow and then you get
these you know, almost miraculous results. Hearing you say it,
it almost sounds kind of obvious. It's like, yeah, you
(09:43):
shish the baby, you rock the baby. They need to suck,
they need to be swaddled tightly because that imitates the wound.
But it's not obvious to a lot of people. No,
it's actually it's actually counterintuitive because you think you've got
to be gentle and if you shush loude you know,
you feel like you're saying shut up or its rude.
In fact, the thing that was tricky about this is
(10:05):
that it works by turning on a reflex. You know,
when you buy a computer, it's got all this software
preloaded on it so that you can use the computer
right on the first day. Well, babies have lots of
software that's preloaded in their brains. We called them reflexes,
neonatal reflexes. So you don't teach your baby to suck
or to swallow, or to blink, or to breathe or
(10:27):
to cry. They're born with those capabilities. And what wasn't
known we really was kind of described in in my
book for the first time, was that they have a
reflex that's like an off switch for crying in an
on switch for sleep, called the calming reflex. But like
like your knee reflex, you can't just whack the knee
and have a reflex happen. You got to hit it
exactly in the right place and exactly hard enough. There's
(10:50):
a little specificity to it, and same thing for these
five ass You gotta swallow right, you gotta shish right,
you gotta jiggle them in the right way, and then
the magic happens. So it is a technique. And actually
because of that, the happiest baby is is it's a
good book. It's got anthropology in it, in different science
and stuff like that. But to really learn these techniques,
(11:10):
I don't even recommend reading the book. I recommend this
little thirty minute video because you kind of learn it
best by watching, just like learning how to tell your shoelaces. Well,
speaking of which your entrepreneurial endeavors, so you are a writer,
you produced the videos, you were a professor, You sit
on a number of different boards and advisory boards on
(11:31):
these topics. Snow is another piece of the symphony of
the work that you've done for children and families. I'd
love for you to tell us about Snow, but I
also want to know, like, is that the beginning of
your entrepreneurial journey or did you have other like startups
that didn't work out? Was there a rattle that you know,
we never saw that didn't make it out of the
(11:51):
laboratory or tell the ones that blew up. Well, you know,
being a being a doctor, uh and building a practice
is very entrepreneurial. And I've built other businesses with my wife,
who's my co founder. There'd be no company without her.
She's just brilliant and has been such a co partner.
And everything that I've done and doing the videos really
(12:12):
was as you said, entrepreneur. I mean, millions of people
have seen this video and and used it. We it's
translated into the books, are translated to thirty languages and
used in nations around the world and stuff. So it's
been quite a long process from the educational point of view.
But then Snow is really a responsive baby bed that
imitates the womb and keeps baby safer and teaches them
(12:35):
to be better sleepers. And it's kind of interesting thing
because I was teaching the five s is forever lecturing
around the world, and and yet I wasn't seeing what
I had hoped to see, which was a reduction in
postport and depression and child abuse and parents feeling happier
and more competent because they could do the five S
is all day long, but what do you do all
(12:56):
night long? You know, they were still struggling with sleep
upper asition being the number one stress on parents. And
like I said, not just a stress. It leads to
marital stress and divorce. It leads to breastfeeding failure. Thousands
of babies die because their parents are so tired they
fall asleep with them in bed with them, or they
put the baby on the stomach because it's the only
(13:17):
way the baby will stop crying. And so I thought,
you know, maybe there could be a way that I
could make a difference and build a bed that gave
babies these womb sensations while they were sleeping. And so
I partnered up with one of the guys who was
now he's the head of the M I T Media Lab,
with one of America's leading industrial designers, and we created
(13:39):
this bed and then tested it out on hundreds and
hundreds of babies. And and it's kind of funny because
we've now used it. I mean, we've measured well over
a hundred million hours of infant sleep, So it's the
it's the largest infant studies that have ever been done,
and we've proven that we add one to two hours
to a baby's sleep every night starting in the first
(14:00):
week or two of life, which was never even thought possible.
And yet what's so crazy about that is that everyone
knew it was possible, because when your baby cries a
lot and they didn't sleep well, you'd be told, we'll
go drive your kid in the car. And if you
drove your child all night in the car, they would
fall asleep for an extra hour or two. It's so
and you would as well if you were in the
(14:21):
backseat of the car. And so it was really taking
something that was kind of known and kind of recognized,
and yet we had a blind spot and we thought, well,
well that's in a car, but you can't really do
that in your bedroom. And now we've created this beautiful
little and it's beautiful. It's in six museums, it's in
the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. It's one more awards
(14:43):
than any baby product in history. So we're super proud
about the way it looks, in the way it works.
We're in seventy hospitals now using it for babies withdrawing
from drugs, and using it for premature babies, and and
as you mentioned, for for the prevention of postportum depression,
and so it's it's just been a very exciting entrepreneurial ride,
(15:04):
having an idea, building it, manufacturing it, and getting it
out in the world. We'll be back with more out
of the Hustle after the break. You said you partnered
with the now a head of m I T Media Lab,
(15:25):
and and I believe it was. It was a Eve
Bihar was the industrial designer. Yah, wonderful, wonderful guy, amazing designer.
So how did you did you do? These guys just
like say, hey, we love you, Harvey and and Nina
and we're we're in. We'll we'll just do it, you know,
on the come and you let us know. Or did
you raise money? Did you spend it yourself? How did
you get the thing off the ground? Well, you know,
(15:45):
we bootstrapped it in the beginning, and we were I
was so lucky that Eve and deb Roy out of
m T. We're both fans of the Five s Is.
They had used it for their little kids and raising
their kids, so they knew my book and my work already,
and so they were excited at the idea of building
something that was really breakthrough. I mean, you know, we
(16:06):
always talk about disruptive technologies. That's the buzzword. But when
you think about it, if when you look in front
of you, you know, your computer, your phone, whatever, even
your pen, the baby you're writing on, almost everything in
front of you has been innovated on in the last
ten twenty thirty years. The baby bed hasn't changed in
three thousand years. So it was really exciting at the
(16:27):
at the prospect of how do we catapult the baby
bed into the twenty one century? And so they were
on board because it was such an interesting challenge and
because they knew the five s is and how did
you guys take it to market? Was it difficult to
introduce something so novel? I remember from me when I
first was like, wait a minute, is it? Is it
a robotic crib? Or like how did you help people
(16:49):
get over that first hump when they were introduced to
this you know concept? Well, you know, that's a never
ending struggle because you have to educate people to something
that they never even knew existed or or thought could
be done. So, which is really part of the fun
of it. We've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
articles written in every language you can imagine because people
(17:10):
are fascinated by babies and they're fascinated by controversy, and
so people go, oh, no, this is a dystopian robotic bed.
Now parents will never touch their babies. It's really just
it's just a smart swing in a certain sense that's safe.
It rocks them, it responds when the baby cries, It
rocks and trishes them more. It's got this great app
(17:33):
so you can get your download of how your baby
has been sleeping for the last day and week and month,
and you can watch the progress what it really is.
And this sounds odd, but it's really your older sister, Jeff.
It's like one of the greatest problems that faces our culture,
in our society is the ending of the extended family.
(17:54):
Everyone thinks it's the normal family is, you know, two
parents and a child, maybe a dog. In the US
people think that, well, you know, even outside the US,
the whole extended family structure is falling apart everywhere, as
as other cultures followed the Western model, and so people
move into the cities, they move away from their extended family,
and they think that they're liberating themselves. You know, when
(18:16):
you're twenty and you moved to New York and you're going, now,
I'm free, man, you know, I'm out of my little
town or whatever. It's exciting when you're twenty, but we
really should be like salmon. You know. We have to
swim back upstream and get back to that familiar neighborhood
when we have babies, because that's when your parents and
your cousins and your uncle and aunt and the neighborhood
(18:37):
that you know become so comforting and so important. But
instead we get stuck in these cities and we don't
know our neighbors and we don't have any outdoor space,
and we think that's normal, and then you have a
baby or toddler and you go, oh jeez, I mean,
this is the hardest work I've ever done. And even
though parents sitay are smarter, more book learned than any
(18:59):
generation in history, many parents have never even touched a
baby before they have their own baby that never existed
in the entire you know, history and prehistory of civilization
or humanity. Point it's a pretty weird time. And so
Snow really turns out to be a caregiver. It is
an assistant. It is robotic in a certain sense, and
(19:20):
that it kind of works just push a button and
it it imitates human behavior, So it imitates the best
caregiver that you could have, or if your grandma, your
older sister moved in with you. But then what it
does is it gives you that extra time to fix dinner,
to take a shower, to get some sleep, which is priceless, yeah,
and which you need. I mean, it's really you deserve it.
(19:42):
As a new parent, you're working so hard, you know,
you deserve a little bit of help. Well, and if
you're a mother, you just went through like you literally
just had an organ leave your body and become a
sentient being. So it's like you probably should sleep a
little extra if you can. And uh, I'm so fascinated
by your path. Clearly, you know, whatever you and your
wife focus on expands, But you know, I imagine there
(20:04):
we are some hard learnings to just from a leadership perspective.
What were some of the areas that you know you
really skinned your knees on. Yeah, I mean it's obviously
it's a constant learning process. I learned a lot through
the whole process of writing books and lecturing and developing
educational programs. So you know, thank god I married the
(20:25):
right woman that there would be no Snoo, there would
be no company if I didn't have this brilliant woman
by my side who found our factory in China and
found our factory in India and hired our executive team
and raised millions of dollars. And then, of course that
just is the beginning. Right then you've got to build
the right team, and you make mistakes along the way,
and you've got to fire people and hire people and
(20:47):
make some quick decisions, and and you know, your constant
when you start a new business, you're just trying to
make as few terrible mistakes as possible, but you know
you're going to make mistakes and and run into walls
and then you just have to have to pivot. And
so we've had tons of issues and problems and manufacturing issues.
You're constantly working through the bugs and and what was
(21:08):
fun with SNeW, of course, is that it was something
no one ever thought about or knew could even be done.
And so it's been a lot of fun, you know,
just just talking about it and you see parents eyes
open wide the possibility that they can get an extra
hour or two of sleep. I have to tell you
that one of the things I'm looking forward to next.
You know, this is just the beginning of the ride
(21:30):
helping parents with their new babies. But as a pediatrician,
my goal is really to help guide parents through those
first you know, five, six, seven years of life um
which are the most formative and foundation setting for the
child the rest of the child's life. And so what
I'm really excited about now is talking to people more
about toddlers, kids over eight months of age and the
(21:52):
things you can do. There's a whole Happiest Toddler on
the block book and video that I did, but these
are not so much the ancient with them as new
wisdom in terms of how you speak, so you can
build emotional resilience and strength and help children become more
resilient and confident and patient and communicative and trusting, able
(22:16):
to build intimacy skills. All of these things that people
are struggling with in our culture are things that parents
of young children from eight months on can really learn
to do better. And what's fun about this and interesting
is that some of these things are completely the opposite
of the way you think you should be speaking with
your child or raising your child. So that's really a
(22:38):
big fun part of what I'm starting to do now well,
and into that regard, I just you know, I'm curious
because I was, you know, rereading your background in history,
and I know that you've spent a fair amount of
time working with, as you said, like kids that you
know had coming from harder situations. I'm curious, like, what
are some of the things when when children have gone
through trauma that you know you've seen help them come
(22:59):
out the other side. What I always found is that
it's the way you frame the problem that really presents
you with the answer. And so if you understand that
babies are born four months too soon, then you understand
why you have to bounce and jiggle and cuddle and
imitate the wound for twelve hours a day. For toddlers,
the key concept is that toddlers are not little children.
(23:21):
Toddlers are cave men, their primitives. They are unfreaking civilized,
and that's fun. You know. They they'll enjoy the ice
cream and their whole face will be covered by ice cream.
But they are not always the best roommates. You know.
They don't pick up after themselves or wash the dishes,
and they can spit and scratch and throw things at
your head. And and so it turns out if you
(23:44):
understand that they're uncivilized, then you understand your job is
to civilize them. You know, then that's going to take
you years to teach them to say please and thank you,
wait in line to share their toys. But the cool
thing about that and about helping them overcome traumas you know,
to your question, we are all born with a built
(24:04):
in life preserver that allows us to endure difficulties and
frustrations and shameful situations and to get to the other
side and be healthier and stronger and better. And that
inborn capability is called our emotions. When we're sad, we cry,
when we're happy, we laugh. And after you express your emotions,
(24:26):
you actually feel better, You feel like you can think better.
But only if you can express those emotions in a
loving and accepting environment. That's the trick. And so it's
really teaching parents how they can signal to their young
children that they respect and care for their feelings. They
want to understand their feelings, not that they're gonna change that.
(24:50):
You can keep your child from having difficult they're gonna
scrape their knees, they're going to be insulted. They're gonna
feel picked upon and bullied, and that's not the worst
thing in the world. You know, you will toughen up
when you go through those difficult situations, but you need
to have a parent and people who love you who
can listen to those feelings without trying to save you,
(25:11):
but also without trying to make you get over it
too quickly. And it turns out they're very specific techniques
that you know as an adult that work to help
someone feel heard, Like like with your best friend. When
your best friend is upset and said says, Jeff, you're
not gonna believe what this guy did to me. You
don't immediately say, well, wait a second, let me tell
(25:33):
you what happened to me. Right. You don't compete with them,
for sure, you encourage them to tell you you know
what they experience, and you don't encourage them by saying,
that's very interesting, tell me how that was for you. Right,
You use a very primitive type of language. I call
it toddlerries, which is three steps, short phrases, repetition, and
(25:56):
mirroring a third of their emotion in your tone of
voice and Jeff true. So for your friend, you might
go what what what? What? What? What? Tell me? Tell me,
I want to know what happened. Tell me what happened.
You repeat yourself, which sounds kind of inane, and you
use a little emotion in your voice that signals that
you're genuinely interested with children today, too often parents think
(26:19):
they're acknowledging feelings by saying, honey, mommy knows you're upset.
That was very frustrating for you. But that's that same
pseudo psychiatrist voice that really is so distant from feelings
that it makes the child feel like the parent doesn't
really get it and doesn't even really want to entertain
their feelings. So you're saying, instead, we should mirror the
(26:41):
feelings back to them. We should speak back to them
in the same emotional register as like they're presenting to us. Actually, no,
I'm not saying that, And I'm glad you said that,
because I made that mistake in the first edition of
my book, and I had to rewrite parts of my
book because I said, you mirror the feelings, you don't.
You mirror about a third of the feelings. And this
(27:02):
is super important. When they're screaming, you don't scream, you're
not a mirror. You might raise your voice and put
some empathy into your voice when they're sad. You don't
cry along with them. You don't want to take the
attention away from them. They have the spotlight, but you
want to show them that. Am I getting it right? Honey?
Is are you feeling? You look like you're so frustrated.
(27:25):
You're trying, You're trying, and you were trying to open
that bottle. And I saw you you were trying, and
you were trying to open that That kind of repetition
and and um kind of empathy without actually mirroring the
level of empathy they of emotion they have, which would
otherwise be taking the attention on yourself. It sounds a
(27:48):
lot like, you know, some of the principles of like
thinking fast and slow, or we have like these emotional
needs on the bottom floor of the house and that
lets us get to the more, you know, intellectual conversation
on the top floor. If we don't feel seen and
heard and appreciated, then we really can't be negotiating in
a meaningful way. So I kind of feel like, as
(28:08):
my toddler is in his full caveman staying, he's actually
a tremendously tough negotiator. The guy gets what he wants.
I mean, it's amazing. I really can't lose. Like I mean,
I know he's gonna take me to the mat if
it's important to him. It's either happening or I'm going
to distract him, or you know, like, uh, We're gonna
go toe to toe for half an hour before he's
(28:29):
going to give it up. River has nothing to do
all day but to engage you in that wrestling match. Well,
you've got to do things you have to do. And actually,
you know, it's important that parents recognize that even though
it sounds so simple to just acknowledge feelings in those
three steps, it's not simple when you are stressed and
someone screaming at you or just spit in your face,
(28:50):
or you know, we have our feelings as well, and
as parents, we oftentimes have to just you know, take
a breath, put our feelings aside, and um allow the
child's situation to really take center stage until we can
get them to calm down and taking things back to snow.
I imagine that this is going worldwide. You ask, You're
(29:10):
taking this to every hospital and family around the planet. Yeah,
I mean, we we certainly hope that this will be
used by by hospitals across the country and around the world.
We're now in US, Canada, Australia, UK, EU. You will
end up getting this all around the world because parents
need this. I've been through different businesses and and being
(29:32):
a professional, and we started this business not because we're
looking to make a fortune. This is really a mission.
This is something that is odd as it sounds, Jeff,
I mean, I couldn't. I still don't believe that. Why
doesn't everyone just obviously know these things, and yet for
some reason, we have a blind spot to exactly what
we're supposed to do with babies and toddlers. And so yeah,
(29:54):
I've got this big job of just educating people and
getting the word out and it's a pretty fun roller coaster.
Art of the hustle will be right back after this
short break. If I'm an entrepreneur and I want to
build products that are in this space, what are some
(30:15):
of the things that you think I should keep in
mind or some of the needs that still need to
be addressed. Oh gosh, that's a tough one. I mean,
you have to know your audience. I mean, interesting thing
about technology is that so many of us get enamored
with it for technology's sake. Let's just measure this and
we can measure that, But what are you going to
do with that information? You need to solve problems as
(30:37):
well as you know, measure things. Measuring is only good
if it's going to be used for solving problems. So
I would say the most important thing for entrepreneurs who
have an idea is to really work on the product
consumer fit and make sure that you're really solving a
problem that is pressing and and there's a need for
being that we are in this really really unique time.
(30:59):
We're not going to do school out the gate here,
and perhaps that's extreme. I'm just curious, like, are you
thoughtful or do you have some some things that you've
seen that you believe are probably pretty common that a
lot of our children are dealing with. Well, I mean
there's there's tons and tons of things we're learning, but
tons of things that we know already. Um, you know,
(31:19):
just staying healthy, you know, getting sleep, eating well, taking
extra vitamin d um which is a good vitamin for
your immune system for respiratory diseases, you know, and of
course good hygiene and social distancing all those things. So
that's the very beginning of it. But you need in
young kids especially, they need social contact and so getting
(31:40):
a dog for example. You know, if you can't get
out and be with other get your kid with other kids.
At least you can have them have a relationship with
a pet. And that's something that can be incredibly fulfilling
for a child and be doable for for families who
otherwise are isolated. Forming a pod, you know, one other
(32:01):
family so that you can share responsibilities. I mean, if
you if you can trust each other and you're really
kind of keeping to the rule of social isolation or
social distancing, then you can enrich your your life and
enrich your child's life with that type of very small
intimate exposure. Um. A lot of people have moved out
of the cities, you know, to go back to family,
(32:23):
back to areas where they can be out in nature
and get out of the house. It's so hard when
you're stuck in an apartment. If you have that opportunity,
that's something that's useful. Listen, we've really have not handled
this well in the United States. We've spent so much money,
yet so many people have died and we still have
so much of this disease. If everyone stayed indoors for
(32:46):
two weeks, this epidemic would be gone. This virus can't
last more than two weeks, two and a half weeks
at the most. And so literally, if we bit the
bullet and we did that, this it would be gone.
It would be over. Economy would be back, and everybody
would be healthy and back to restaurants and bars and
schools and everything like that. We need leadership. We need
leaders who who can convince us and can lead us
(33:10):
into following the rules that that are the oldest rules
in the world for reducing epidemics and infectious diseases. We
know how to do it, we just have to do it,
and we need the leaders who bring us to those
actions totally. And you mentioned some of those other countries
and how they're they're they're dealing with it. Have there
been or are there like things that you admire in
(33:32):
terms of toddlers and babies and family building and just
the space that you've dedicated your life too. What are
some of the things, because we talked about that ancient wisdom,
are are there things that you think are practiced on
a more ongoing basis and child rearing in different places
that most Americans aren't necessarily aware of that we should be. Um, well,
I think we've learned, we've learned more. We've learned a
(33:53):
lot from those cultures. So baby wearing, for example, nobody
used a carrier like thirty years ago. It was just
really starting at that time. Oh yeah, you had strollers
and plastic seats and things like that. But baby wearing
really has come about in the last thirty years. Of course,
the sling. The baby sling may well be the very first,
(34:13):
one of the very first tools that humankind ever invented,
because they needed their hands free while they were carrying
their babies. The biggest thing for us to learn or
remember from other cultures in terms of raising children is
to give them that social exposure. There's a guy, brilliant
guy in Texas, Bruce Perry, psychologist, who has helped so
(34:37):
many families and so many children in crisis. He was
the guy who was they brought into Columbine when these
kids were killed there, or at the bombing in Oklahoma
City or the Branch Davidian catastrophe in Waco to help
these kids recover from trauma. And what he said, I
think is is so right on which is about the
(34:57):
poverty in the United States, not the nomic poverty. Economic
poverty is actually not the biggest problem. Social poverty is
the biggest problem. If you have, you know, a family
with two parents and a child, how many relationships can
that child have. They can have a relationship with themselves.
That's one with the mother. That's two with the father.
That's three with both parents together, that's four. That's it.
(35:22):
If you have two parents, four kids, a dog, your cousins,
your grandparents, the next door, neighbors coming over all the time.
Suddenly you have hundreds of potential relationships. You have a nourishing,
mixed diet of all sorts of different opportunities. You can
learn from the older kids, you can teach the younger kids.
(35:42):
You can watch different adults how they handle things, and
all of that is what human beings always had up
until a hundred years ago. We've ripped all of that away,
and now we're raising children. No wonder everyone's turning to
social media because at least they have some social exposure
and an otherwise boring and century deprived world. That's why
(36:04):
people turn to television. So if we could learn something
from our mistakes and our missteps. It's really to enrich
or social environment in any ways we can. And if
that means just getting a dog, then get a dog.
I love that. My My grandfather is motto is a
large extended family is the greatest luxury in life. And
(36:24):
I had always thought about that in terms of like
the friendships that you have, the family that you choose,
but I hadn't thought about it in terms of just
that diversity of inputs creates the complexity of outputs and
the people that we care about the most. Yeah, and
that's how you learn to be a complex person. That's
how you learn to deal with complex relationships. That's how
you learn to not only think of yourself, because when
(36:47):
it's just you sitting there, of course you're going to
think of yourself. And so it leads to people being
more you know, ecocentric and and lacking in compassion. It
truly is one of the great challenge pages that our
culture faces to break down these barriers. Listen, I'm a
big believer in in universal conscription. I think everyone should
(37:08):
have to serve the country, whether it's in the army
or in peace corps or teach for America or some
type of program where you have to give where you're
not just thinking about yourself, and where you're working on
a team with people from all across the country to
see we're all Americans, were all privileged to be in
this country, and we all have a deep debt that
(37:29):
we need to repay to our our fellow Americans. We
inherited so much from our parents and grandparents. We've got
to give that back totally. Well, Harvey, thank you again, man.
We really appreciate you being on the show. This is
so so amazing just to hear your thoughts and your
wisdom on you know, how to grow what's most important
(37:51):
to all of us that have children. You know, it's
it's a pretty quick process for them to become the
center of our universes. And you know, your story with
snooist unbelievable and and it's such a great product, it's
such a great company. It's something that I've certainly gotten
an incredible amount of value out of. I love it.
And you know what, Jeff, Jeff, our goal with this
is that everyone gets a free snoop. That's what we're
(38:14):
working towards. We want your right now. Many corporations will
will rent snooze and give them to their employees for
six months use like Google, Facebook, Welcome, Snapchat, Hulu. They're
all under armour or I didn't know that. Yeah, So
then we're going to get insurance companies in the government
subsidizing it because they're going to save so much money
(38:36):
by preventing the illnesses that happen when parents are stressed
and overwhelmed. That this will be something. I mean, that's
what we're working towards. That everyone will get a free
snoop and they'll be able to have the helper in
the family that they you know, that they should have
had to begin with. I never thought about that. So
you guys doing some outcomes research around that right now
on the health implications and just the true cost savings. Sure,
(38:59):
and we have we have about a dozen studies underway.
We published our first study last year. The FDA recognized
US as a breakthrough device. So we're hoping that by
one we'll be able to have FDA approval as the
world's first since prevention bed and prevent thousands of deaths
a year in the United States and then prevent postpartum depression,
(39:20):
which we know is triggered by exhaustion and feeling overwhelmed
as a new parent, and we know that SNOW can
give you more sleep and more peace of mind and
and make you feel more competent. So yeah, I know
we're super excited at the opportunity to take this one,
you know, one little intervention and use it to help
millions and millions of families. Well you are, and thank
(39:43):
you again for your service and your work and your
thought leadership and your friendship. I love you, Harvey. Thank
you again for me on the podcast, and thank you
so much Jeff for everything you do with some at
You are the ultimate entrepreneur and trying to make the
world a better place. So hats off to you, my friend.
Well I appreciate it. Thank you guys for listening as
to Art of the Hustle, and thank you Harvey carp
And to check out more on SNOW and all of
(40:05):
Harvey's work, go to the Happiest Baby dot com for
(40:25):
more podcasts. For my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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