You have undoubtedly seen this cautionary tale around you: A “good kid” who was heavily sheltered by the whole family, whose every exam paper and extracurricular activity was meticulously arranged by their parents. Then, when it comes time to choose a college major or look for a job after graduation, you anxiously ask them: “What do you actually like? What do you want to do in the future?” They just look at you with a blank stare: “I don’t know. Whatever. You guys decide.”
In that moment, many frustrated parents feel this is evasiveness, laziness, or proof of a spoiled generation.
But Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman, who gained fame as the scientific advisor for Westworld, would tell you with absolute clinical coldness: It’s not that they don’t want to choose; they literally cannot. Because inside that brain, which has been developing for 18 years, there are simply no blueprints or building blocks to assemble a “future.”
Eagleman has a profoundly shocking, almost startling insight in the field of neuroscience.
For centuries, we parents have assumed that “memory” is for nostalgia—for remembering the joy of catching crabs at the beach when you were four, or for memorizing multiplication tables.
But neuroscientists, using fMRI scanners, have uncovered a massive secret in the evolutionary history of the brain—a point Eagleman repeatedly emphasizes in his book: In the human brain, the hippocampus region responsible for “recalling the past” and the region responsible for “imagining the future out of thin air”—are the exact same, completely overlapping physiological zone.
Translated into plain terms, the implications are fatal:
It means that humans are fundamentally incapable of “imagining out of thin air” choices they have never experienced. When you are agonizing over “whether to take a new job and move the whole family to a new city,” your brain is not drawing a brand-new blueprint. It is brute-forcing its way into your memory vault, extracting places you’ve lived, people you’ve met, the setbacks you’ve faced when making independent decisions in the past, and your narrow survivals. Then, like Lego blocks, it forcibly pieces these “old components” together into several “simulations of the future.”
If your subconscious feels grounded by this assembled blueprint, you will have the courage to take the job and move.
Now, let us turn our horrified gaze back to that four-year-old daughter who fights you tooth and nail over whether to wear a princess dress or rainboots out the door.
If you find her too dawdling, and from age 3 to 18, you forcibly dress her every day; if you dictate whether she paints or goes to the amusement park on weekends based on “utility”; if the hundred bucks she gets from her grandmother is immediately confiscated and put into the bank by you.
Then, when she turns 18 or 22 and finally stands independently at life’s first major crossroads without her parents by her side, her brain will frantically try to open the memory vault to “simulate the future,” only to discover in despair that there isn’t a single straw to grasp.
Without the experience of making hundreds of micro-choices herself, there are no “bearing the consequences of failure” Lego blocks. Without the chest-pounding regret of crying over choosing the wrong toy, her brain will be absolutely incapable of assembling any future defense map to help her avoid massive pitfalls.
Naturally, she will just act like a factory-reset AI robot and blankly say, “Whatever.”
Childhood memories are not just for taking cute photos. Memory is the “future construction material” the brain prepares for a child. If you deprive her of the raw materials of making mistakes and poor choices today, her skyscraper tomorrow will collapse entirely.
Beyond this, Eagleman ruthlessly exposes the direct reason why we, as parents, suffer daily breakdowns.
Your brain, and your four-year-old child’s brain, are not unified entities. They are extremely noisy, constantly bickering “neural parliaments.”
Inside, they are split into two fundamentally incompatible factions. One faction is the “Instant Gratification Party” (I want another ice cream right now! Immediately! I want to watch PAW Patrol!). The other faction is the “Long-Term Interest Party” (You have a cough, no cold food! You’re getting nearsighted, no TV!).
In your four-year-old daughter’s highly underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, the “Instant Gratification Party” is a fully armed, raging giant. Because during ancient human evolution, we were hardwired with a code called “Time Discounting”—a three-year-old’s brain innately and absolutely believes: “The joy of the candy in my hand right now is worth ten thousand times more than the payoff of your promise to take me to the amusement park tomorrow.”
You yell every night at home about “turning off the TV” or “putting away toys” because you are attempting to use your highly mature adult “Long-Term Interest Party” to naively and head-on clash with the instinctual monster currently ruling her brain.
This kind of confrontation—relying on adult yelling or forcing a child to use “willpower”—is doomed to result in mutually assured destruction.
For this deadlock, Eagleman prescribes an extremely hardcore antidote from human history, named after a Greek myth from over two millennia ago: The Ulysses Contract.
According to legend, the hero Ulysses had to sail his ship through the terrifying waters of the Sirens. The Sirens’ song was so mesmerizing that any sailor who heard it would go mad, throw themselves into the sea, and be eaten.
Ulysses wanted to live, yet he greedily wanted to hear this legendary song.
What did he do? He didn’t arrogantly try to resist the temptation by “silently vowing” or intensely training his willpower. Instead, before the ship entered those waters, while he was still highly rational and lucid, he chose to order his men to bind him tightly to the mast using the thickest sailor’s rope. And he sealed all of his sailors’ ears shut with hot wax.
He issued a military decree: When the singing starts, no matter how frantically I struggle, beg, command, or even curse you under the pathological hallucination of the Siren’s song, you absolutely must not untie me!
This is the “Ulysses Contract”: Brutally acknowledging that you will inevitably collapse in the face of temptation (or a child’s crying and complaining), and therefore, while you are still clear-headed, setting up an “irreversible physical structure” in advance to firmly lock down your future self who will succumb to weakness or frenzy.
Truly high-level smart people never place blind faith in willpower.
Raising a four-year-old at home, if you want to win those emotional wars that erupt every night, stop engaging in highly anemic preaching and immediately start signing your “Ulysses Contracts.”
- Do not expect her to “obediently turn off the iPad after watching just one last episode of cartoons.” Through iPad screen time limits, directly set up a 20-minute physical power-off and a passcode lock that only you know. The moment the screen goes black, she will likely break down crying or even roll on the floor—at this point, you do not need to compromise or extend the time, but you do need to crouch down and gently tell her: “Time is up. You can watch more tomorrow.” The rules are cold, but your attitude can be warm.
- Do not expect yourself to “absolutely not yell at the child tonight.” Before dinner, agree on a calm-down signal with your spouse (e.g., tapping the table lightly three times): as soon as one person’s pitch starts to rise, the other uses this signal as a reminder. The person reminded actively leaves the room, goes to pour a glass of water, and gives themselves five minutes to cool off.
If you want to win in this wildly patience-draining trench of parenting, never test the temperament of an exhausted mother, nor test the self-discipline of a four-year-old child. Use utterly cold, physical rule structures to take over your brains.
Do not place too much trust in your future self who will break down tomorrow night. While you are in a good mood today, go find the rope.
—— Decision-making can be practiced.
