DOD2: Your Kids Should Not Be Scared of You

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Hello, and welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that isn't afraid to wear Crocs while recording.

0:00:33 Thomas: Oh,

0:00:34 Tom: I'm joined by Thomas Smith, Eli Bosnick, I'm Tom Curry, and guys, welcome to the show.

0:00:38 Thomas: Thanks for welcoming us to our own show. I appreciate that.

0:00:40 Tom: To your own show. Welcome to your own Show, guys.

0:00:42 Eli: I wear Crocs to formal events, Tom. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

0:00:45 Thomas: Did we decide, is this a a formal Croc record or do we...

0:00:50 Tom: I'm a Crocs-when-you-mow-the-lawn guy, or at least I was, because then you don't care how you emerge from that fucking disaster. Disaster like it's, plus you're already mowing your lawn, you're just in full fucking suburban dad mode at that point, so no one's looking at you looking like, "I'm gonna fuck that guy later." That is a hundred percent not happening when you're out there on the fucking lawnmower.

0:01:09 Thomas: Unintentionally we've just stumbled upon 15 minutes of lawn talk that we need to do I'm new lawn

0:01:14 Tom: We Gotta Have a section called lawn talk.

0:01:15 Thomas: Yeah lawn talk this show should just be called lawn talk get on our lawn yeah I don't know uh this uh I'm a new lawn owner and I don't, I'm in california so I'm anti-lawn and but the house we just moved into already had some lawns but it was like you know, we moved in sort of the fall winter month. So I was like, oh, we'll just let it sit. And then I'm going to replace it with something. I don't know what, but in the meantime, parts of it just grew out of control. And so I was in this weird like state of like, I don't, I'm not going to buy a fucking lawnmower. Cause I don't want a lawn. I'm not going to buy lawnmowers. But it got so big, you know, I lost some of my kids in it. I think we, I have two, I, I started with some number greater than that. I don't know how much I'll find them later. And so

0:01:23 Eli: Yeah. I had four.

0:01:57 Thomas: I borrowed a lawn mower.

0:01:58 Tom: There's A fucking Cheetah, when you part the grass, like just like staring back at you like fucking yellow eyes, it

0:02:00 Thomas: Yeah. Several rattlesnakes. It's just, it's not good.

0:02:06 Eli: We accidentally did a real Stephen King book, guys. I'm sorry. We actually, that's a real Stephen King book.

0:02:10 Thomas: Bart along more, uh, since I'm new to the whole being a dad doing the, you know, time-honored dad thing of mowing a lawn, uh didn't realize the shoe thing. Maybe I'll have to buy a pair Paracrocs for that, Tom. This is good dad advice. My nice, tennis shoes that I wear everywhere are now green. So it's a leprechaun.

0:02:27 Eli: Bright

0:02:24 Tom: Is Yeah. They're fucking ruined Yeah. Dude, you shamrocked them, man.

0:02:29 Thomas: They're a lebrechaun theme. Yeah.

0:02:31 Tom: Yeah. You fucking shamrock your shoes, you can't, that the only viable use. Like, two people can wear fucking Crocs. You can wear Crocs when you're mowing the lawn because you can just hose that shit off, or you can wearing Crocs and you're a nurse. That's it. Otherwise, 100%, Eli, do you have fucking Crocs?

0:02:28 Eli: Fucking green. Oh,

0:02:32 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:02:45 Eli: I Have bright pink Crocs that my wife vetoed, um, like most people don't see me, you guys have actually seen me in person, so you know I dress like, as my mother put it, like I'm not participating in culture.

0:02:58 Tom: Jesus.

0:02:59 Eli: I dress almost exclusively in Christmas sweaters and pajama pants, all the time, my friend, Rachel once described me as, I dressed like I was released from the hospital, not because I was better, but because they needed the bed, but my Crocs got vetoed. I was walking around in them for like three days, and then it was like, that's my line, man, that's my line, you're gonna be the Croc guy, like, no,

0:03:16 Thomas: My Oh, Yeah.

0:03:19 Tom: That every woman's line, I, nobody has ever put on Crocs and gotten laid that same week. It's never happened, never, absolutely not.

0:03:32 Thomas: I don't have much self-esteem so I can get into that pattern too, but there is a line where I'm like, I don't want my wife to look like she fucks this guy. You know what I mean? Like there's a line of like laziness where I'm like, just for her image, you know, like I don't want her to be like, she fucks this like lump of old clothes that doesn't, you know, like, yeah. Hey,

0:03:50 Eli: No, I believe me, I understand that, we, me and Anna, we go on date nights and I take tons of pictures of her because I love her and she's beautiful, and a couple years ago she was like, hey man, we don't have any fucking pictures of you because you just take pictures of me, there, I have no pictures of you from 2017, where the fuck were you, so I've started taking pictures of us, and it always looks like my wife is doing some kind of rabbinical make-a-wish, like, oh yes, Moishi Nussbaum has cancer of the gefilte fish and so he's allowed to go on a date with this beautiful woman. Oh,

0:04:16 Tom: Oh,

0:04:23 Thomas: Pictures, good transition, what?

0:04:24 Tom: So We're looking over at Reddit, and there was a Reddit advice, I don't remember where it was, parenting advice, Ask Reddit, some other nonsense, but it was, what parenting trend do you strongly disagree with, there's some fucking gems in here.

0:04:36 Thomas: Yeah, This is seasons 1 through 11 of our show is this, and

0:04:40 Tom: It's just, all gonna be one of them popped up, and I thought this was real interesting, um, was posting your kid's whole life on your social media, so and this is interesting to me because, um, you know, my kids are significantly older than your kids, so my my oldest boy is 15, and I just the other day went to an event with him, and you know, I took a picture of us at the right right fuck you it's my my Friendster, okay, you guys, God damn it, I'm so old, but he's 15, so he can object, right, so like I take a picture, he looks at the picture, and he can abject, at this point I would respect that, but my little guy, like, no ways fucking seven, I take his picture, I do what I want with it, and I'm curious, like, what your thoughts are about, like, putting your kids all over social media.

0:04:58 Thomas: You put it on their myspace that you still keep going to this day

0:05:00 Eli: Chio City's bitch, yeah I Think it's the age, is so tricky, right, because the age is definitely the part of it, like the fact that we have, there are four, my parents adored me but my parents did not take a lot of, it there are four pictures of me as a child, and they're at an event. There is always, like, look, the Mickelson's house was on fire and I'm in the foreground being like, Merry Christmas, so like, that, that's what it was like to be a kid in the 80s.

I love how many pictures there are of my son, uh, I understand that he will go through a period of his life where he is embarrassed by those pictures and does not want them publicly available, when that time comes I will move those pictures to private, but then I will open them back up again when he's not an asshole anymore, because that's the problem, is if you turn to a 15 year old and you're like, hey, here we are at Disneyland for the first time, do you want me to share these pictures where you and me wrote on Space Mountain and you said, Dad, I had such a great time, I love you, they'd be like, no, God, Stephanie Gunderson might see that, but then you're gonna fucking die and they're gonna be 30 and they'll be like, oh, why did I say no to that, I sucked

0:05:37 Thomas: Again Yeah, yeah.

0:06:29 Eli: For 15 years, and like, so you just, that's the best thing about social media is you can be like, yeah, no, they're gone, and then the minute they're not an asshole anymore you can be like, hey, are you, you done being an asshole, can I put these baby pictures back up, and they'd be like, absolutely, and just unprivate, yeah.

0:06:45 Thomas: Well, here's something that I think is the constant perennial battle of getting older because I am constantly trying to, and I don't know if I'll be successful. I'm trying to predict what it will be like because what we're doing, what us old fucks doing is we're always applying our lives, our experiences, and then imagining like, okay, how would I feel about this thing given my experience? I... we live in a world where online is just fucking that's every social media is just their lives. I so it's entirely possible that there will never be a phase where any of our kids will give a fuck that pictures of them are online because that's just the norm. They'll be like, "Yeah, that's my whole life. I can literally, I can look up my whole life every day of my life forever that happened because I'm a kid and it's 2022" or whatever, you know, like so maybe that won't be, be a concern. I don't know.

0:07:09 Tom: Yep, Yeah, I, yeah, a pic, I'm, now I'm curious, if you take a picture, because maybe our relationships with social media are just different, but like, if I take a picture of like myself and my wife, I won't post that if I don't show it to her first, like I would never post a public picture of myself with someone else without like kind of double checking, you know, like, hey, do you like the way you look in this picture, etc., like, get it, but it feels like

0:07:51 Thomas: That's true, yes,

0:07:58 Eli: Also public figures though, so that's like, like, like, I don't think most people deal with people being like, who's a fucking, you're going to fuck that, you have no feet, you have no feets. Like, I don't think people listening to this have to deal with that.

0:07:58 Tom: Yeah,

0:08:07 Thomas: No,

0:08:09 Tom: That's that's fair, but I, to be fair, though, I eliminated everybody I've never eaten a meal with, from my Facebook.

0:08:13 Eli: I

0:08:16 Thomas: No, Tom, Is 100% right though, unless you, you have some pre-arrangement, you don't want to post pictures of your wife without her knowing what they are, and that, she you know, because people can they be sensitive about that if they haven't vetted a picture and you post it, even if you're not, you world famous podcasters like Eli, and okay.

0:08:17 Tom: Yeah,

0:08:34 Eli: Post pictures of my wife all the time. Does she secretly hate it? Am I about to go upstairs and be like, hey, do you like those pictures? And she's going to, yeah.

0:08:36 Thomas: I that's no, not let me let me

0:08:36 Tom: Just, no, everybody's got a different, everyone's got a different

0:08:41 Thomas: Be very clear let me being very clear, I'm not saying a hundred percent of people have a problem with it, I'm saying it's a thing where unless you know it's okay, you you ought to be careful with it at first, but, you know, Eli, it sounds like you know that's okay, and it doesn't give a shit? You Yeah.

0:08:56 Eli: I also, I should point out, just to be clear, I have two Facebooks now. I have a Facebook that is public facing that people can see. And then there's a private Facebook with literally a fake person and a different name that I've friended all of my family with. Where I post normal, just like, hey, it's Max running his face into a door without someone being like, wow, your silence on doors is really loud. Right. And I'm just like I'm like, Hey, my guys, right.

0:09:02 Thomas: Same.

0:09:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:27 Tom: Maybe

0:09:27 Thomas: Without somebody posting it to Reddit, parenting trends I hate, kids running into doors. Look at this guy.

0:09:32 Tom: If you would put a safety first latch on that door, you're kidding. Okay. All right. Thanks.

0:09:35 Eli: Maybe if you had Feet, your door child face. Sorry.

0:09:38 Thomas: Are you telling me you didn't install the standard child safety fake door in front of all your normal doors that's a padded door?

0:09:45 Eli: Yeah.

0:09:47 Tom: It's funny though, because like, I look back at like my my Facebook memories and I have, I'm terrible about taking pictures and I'm even worse about storing them, so like I'm not the guy who's gonna ever take a fucking picture and put it in an album and sort and organize and I'M NOT GONNA DO THIS WITH DIGITAL PHOTOS, I'M not going to do this period.

So like the advantage to social media is it does a lot of that work for you, so to just pop up in your memory like, hey, you took a cool picture of your kid, and I'm like, oh, that's the time I took a snow day, and you took us no day, we went and built a fucking snowman, that's really cool, and now I have that picture. So as a parent, I fucking love it. I love putting, I do. I love it as a apparent, it serves a huge purpose for me, but I do Thomas to your point. I wonder what our kids are going to think of that. You know, are they going to appreciate, Hey, if you put these pictures up, I don't want them. Yeah. No,

0:10:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they'll give a shit, honestly.

0:10:35 Tom: I feel like we don't own those pictures. Like they're not just ours. Like just there are kids, but like we don't own them, you know?

0:10:35 Eli: But

0:10:38 Thomas: I agree. I agree. Yeah. Well, It's interesting. The age is key, as Eli, I think, Eli led off with. That's the interesting point, or maybe it was Tom. Sorry, I don't remember. But like, there is an age where it's like, all right, we got a new baby. You're going to fucking post pictures. Like, let's be real. I mean, at least we are. We're post pictures of our new baby. They're just coming to age. I don't know what age that is where it's like, yeah, maybe you got to check with them. Like, hey, is it okay if I post this? And I don't know what age that is. What do you guys think?

0:11:02 Eli: There's also, and this really comes to it when it comes to like posting about your kid's life, is like, I see a lot of parents sharing their kids' struggles on social media, and that I really don't believe in. I think that can be really, really harmful, especially as someone who was a young person with very severe mental illness. Like, if my mom had been like, "Eli still fucking sad," I'd be like, hey man, I need you to not post that on fucking Instagram, or I need you not to make a TikTok of me crying, and

0:11:10 Tom: Oh, fuck that.

0:11:30 Thomas: Man, yeah.

0:11:33 Tom: Yep. Or like hashtag and then like whatever your struggle is or like hashtag like this kind of dad, you Know, like a depression dad, like, you know, support kids with that. I could not possibly agree more. Like when kids are you don't, you those people. Like those are separate, entirely separate people. Post Like a picture of your baby. You're going to do it. But like when your kids are going through something or something's private, like I sharing that is not. And I know that people say, Oh, do it to try to raise awareness or I do it to trying to, you gain access to, to other resources. But I that feels icky to me. It feels like leveraging something.

0:11:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:10 Eli: You're not raising, like, you're you're if

0:12:11 Tom: You're not raising awareness, like, that's a bullshit term. I don't buy that term.

0:12:14 Eli: Your kid eventually wants to talk about their struggle, that is their story to tell.

0:12:15 Tom: Yes.

0:12:19 Thomas: Do You think there's also, again, an age threshold though, because, like, if you know, oh, I got, it's a common post that I imagine, I've done, I actually don't remember, but like, I can imagine posting essentially a help post, like, oh, you know, my kid's got a Lego stuck his ass, or yeah, whatever. It is, I don't know, something that a toddler goes through, "my toddler won't stop eating Legos," I that's a struggle gold, but like, I don't know, yeah.

0:12:41 Eli: That's For me, that's fine, for it's just about, like, the very private things, and again, when they're 15, they're gonna be like, "Dad, put the butthole Lego post away," and you just, you just private that shit, and and when they're 40, they'll be like, "that's very funny, please, please bring that back public," you'd be like, already did it, my dude, all good, I'm more talking about, like, the genuine, not the struggles of the parent, because that, if your kid has a Lego in their ass, that is your struggle, but

0:12:41 Thomas: Yeah. That's a classic Oh, I want to emphasize that that was a joke example that I now regret using, it's not real, yeah.

0:13:12 Eli: Like, there, there are, are lifetime struggles around kids, and there are, big, there, hard parts of life that I think get blown into the spotlight, and I, I think our kids very much listen to the stories we tell about them, and so as much as I think a lot of people are like, "I'm raising awareness, I'm reaching out to my community," and I'm like, I totally get it, I think a lot of the time a kid will see those posts, or at least be aware of those posts, and be like, "okay, I am this thing," that can be really hard, especially if you're dealing with a young pre-teen or a teenager.

0:13:20 Thomas: So

0:13:27 Tom: Absolutely.

0:13:43 Tom: Yeah, because you start writing their narrative for them before they've even had an opportunity to sort of flesh that shit out themselves, and I, I think that's, that can, at the very, at the very best, that can confuse and cloud the issue for kids. I'm not sure because they're going to have access, presumably, your social media, where they're labeled, and then your semi-private but mostly public thoughts are out there.

0:14:05 Thomas: You're definitely talking about an older kid then, I mean, because I like

0:14:06 Tom: Yeah.

0:14:07 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. No. I think toddlers and young kids, that's still, that's still your struggle, I don't think they have a struggle in that particularly young age. To use, a like, what I think is a very obvious example, is I have a friend who's a kick-ass mom whose kid just came out as trans, and she's been super supportive, and they do all sorts of, you know, stuff together, and they do like gender affirming activities together, which is wonderful. I also have friends who I no longer friended on Facebook and no longer are parts of my life who have trans kids, who all they posted about their trans kids was how hard it was for them.

0:14:08 Thomas: Yeah okay yeah yeah

0:14:43 Tom: And lot of places where, around parenting, and I think we, I think we need to be real careful about the kind of public messages we display, because kids will come back, I would, kids will come back, and they'll go ahead and they'll read your diary, I mean, let's be honest about what you're so your social media is a publicly available micro diary.

0:15:04 Eli: Absolutely.

0:15:05 Tom: That you've put out there. If I had an opportunity to read my dad's fucking micro diary at some point in my life, I would do it. And I'm going to go back through, and I'm going to see him bitching about me and And complaining about the things that, like, I put him through. I don't think I'd feel good about that.

0:14:59 Thomas: Let me just clarify, clarify something. So you didn't constantly have your parents bitching about you in the third person all the time while you were in the room. Is this not, I wish I was joking.

0:15:27 Eli: Yeah.

0:15:30 Tom: My dad never one time ever complained about us. Not once.

0:15:31 Thomas: No, wow.

0:15:35 Eli: Yeah.

0:15:35 Tom: Not once, nope.

0:15:35 Thomas: Okay. You know, ongoing, get the scoreboard out. Is Tom's dad Hitler or not Hitler ongoing segment? That is a strong, not Hitler vibe.

0:15:36 Eli: Yeah. No.

0:15:44 Tom: Nope, my dad never complained. He never raised his voice and he never complained I've never heard my dad complain about anything. My dad put a nail with a nail gun through his thumb. Through his thumb accidentally.

0:15:46 Thomas: Holy wow. That's incredible.

0:15:54 Tom: He's holding a piece of wood. It goes through his thumb, he holds his thumb up, he goes, and I said, Dad, are you okay? Said, nope. And he wrapped a rag around it and he stood up and walked away and that was it.

0:15:48 Eli: You're Losing him the point

0:15:59 Thomas: This is fine. Yeah.

0:16:04 Eli: See he was He was gonna get the don't complaining about your kids points, but now we know he just doesn't know how to complain. He's physically incapable of it.

0:16:12 Tom: It. Just does not complain.

0:16:14 Thomas: That's true. He has a pathological inability to complain.

0:16:15 Eli: Right. We're gonna take him to a therapist as is our season finale, and the first thing he's gonna say out of the room, he's like, I, I hate you, Tom. I hate so much.

0:16:18 Thomas: Yeah. He's finally given me the language to say, I don't like you very much.

0:16:30 Tom: Nope.

0:16:31 Thomas: No, that's amazing. I will. But like, as a serious point, when you talk about that, Tom, that resonates with me because that is something I'm already very conscious of myself because it's a bad habit that I don't think I have, but I'm very worried about having from my parents, is talking about your kids when they are possibly an earshot, or even right in fucking front of them, in a way that's going to, I I guess infantilize is not maybe not the right word, but kind of infantilized. Like, even if you infantilizing a four year old, it's still demeaning to a four years old.

There's, you still a person and my parents very much did not treat us with much dignity as kids. Like there wasn't a whole lot of that there, there was, we were a pain in the ass and they could complain about us in front of our faces and that's us. But like there's a social media aspect of that. And then even now with, with my kids being four and Arlo's almost three, I will say something occasionally and realize like, oh, that was about a kid. I shouldn't talk about them when they're, you just shouldn't do it. And I think this applies there as well.

0:17:00 Tom: Right. Well.

0:17:29 Tom: I think like one of the things that happens with kids, and it, changes as they, they grow. But kids have a tendency to romanticize their relationship their parents have to them. And that breaking of the veil is not good for kids until they've reached a certain age. Like, I understand now as an adult that my dad probably did not love parenting every day of his life? But did I not and would not have understood that as a young person. I would not have appreciated that message as a young person, as a pre-adolescent, probably as an early adolescent, because we romanticize that relationship as kids that our parents have with the act of parenting. And I do wonder sometimes about the relationship social media has, because there is a break in that romanticization. There's a shattering of that wall that will become available to your kids, and all of a sudden your kids are going say, holy shit, my dad didn't like parenting me sometimes.

0:17:45 Eli: Absolutely. Yeah.

0:18:10 Thomas: Wow. Wow.

0:18:23 Tom: My dad would rather have slept. I, I ruined my dad's vacation. All of these things we didn't have to deal with because we got to hold on to that sort of false reality if our parents let us have it, and I know some parents didn't let you have it.

0:18:37 Thomas: I was going to say, I know I'm likely an extreme in some ways, but like, I feel like I can't be the only one where the kid, you know, even if it's not like, I'm not talking about outright evil shit, but they're just like casual complaining about like, yeah.

0:18:48 Eli: No, I think it's very common, and I think it's common and damaging, right? The standard parent conversation is like, these fucking kids, and one of the things that I loved about my father is that as tough as he was, right, because my father was very strict, even though he was very loving, my father never bad-mouthed me, not in front of anybody. You know, if anyone asked about me, he was all praise, all the biggest fan in the world. And when I would ask him about what it was like to be my parent, it was all praise and the biggest van in the World. Again, that didn't mean that he wasn't strict, but I think that is such a valuable thing. And it's something that I'm, I'm not good at because I'm roasty by nature, right? I roast people that I love and I joke around with people that that I love.

And so something that I have had to learn very, very purposefully is to always speak to my son positively, right? Is that like my son doesn't get, another great example, my friend Rachel, we talk about a lot. She loves my pug and she's not that into babies. And I've had to explain to her, she can't do a bit where she likes my pug, but not my baby.

0:18:58 Thomas: Yeah. Wow.

0:19:58 Eli: Cause my baby isn't like, oh, I get it. You're doing an ironic thing. My baby is like, you're being negative to me and it's making my brain bad. So there's been a couple of times where I've been like, great bit, love it. Solid. Triple A plus. You have to be nice to my baby.

0:20:13 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a very conscious effort I've made. Like, again, talking about our backstories, like that is a major thing that I've really tried to, you come around on and come around. It's the right word, but just make it's funny. Like there's so many things and I don't know how much you guys have to struggle with this, because it sounds like, I guess, Tom wasn't brought up by Hitler and I'm the only one with a Hitler dad. Dad.

0:20:36 Eli: I think dad just doesn't know the words for complaining. I'm, I'm putting that in the middle column. If there's a Venn diagram we're using.

0:20:42 Tom: Yeah.

0:20:41 Thomas: But it's, it's because my parenting life and indeed my entire life is a lot. Oftentimes it is my first impulse is an asshole. My first impulse ist my dad. A lot of times is like, okay, here's An asshole thing that I, my impulse is that. And I just have to be like, yeah, but no, and it's often, you it is not even what I feel. It is just like the language, the internalized language from being raised this way, you know what I mean, and it's very Constant Kind of struggle.

0:20:44 Tom: Yeah.

0:21:09 Tom: A Hundred Percent, wait,

0:21:08 Eli: Absolutely. My mom has weird superstitions. One of the things that's part of Jewish superstition is that if you say something nice about your kid, you're supposed to say something negative because it scares away the evil eye and I know. I there's there's so much to dig down into.

0:21:23 Tom: What Wait, what so What,

0:21:28 Eli: There, yeah, so, but My mom genuinely has a verbal tick that we have had to stop her from doing around Max, because my, when I was growing up, my mother, if she was praising me, would say like, but his room's a mess or something at the end, and it was always something small. And And it was always just to keep away the evil eye, you know, just in case. It wasn't serious. But at

0:21:23 Thomas: God, and If you give your kid a lollipop, you also have to slap them open-handed on the face.

0:21:33 Tom: What's the craziest shit, that's

0:21:54 Thomas: Yeah,

0:21:54 Eli: The same time, she like, would be like, oh, he's the most beautiful boy. But, you Know, he doesn't pick up his toys. And I'd have to be like hey, mom, we are all good against the evil. I hear I really appreciate it.

0:22:00 Thomas: I guess

0:22:01 Tom: Not helping I, feel your point though about, the initial reaction when you're a parent, like mimicking the way that you were parented. Like, I, I find like my dad was a very, my dad wasn't authoritarian, right? My dad, rules were 100 in force all the time. And And they were not, there was no room for conversation about a rule. Like a rule is a rule, you break the rule, there were severe consequences, and that's that. You don't break the rules, everybody's happy. There are like lines in the sand that I find I have that are totally bizarre and irrational because my dad had them.

So Like, if I tell a kid to do something and I get any kind of sass back at all, like even a little bit, it, it took me years to condition myself not to just be furious because sass back or any kind of talk back, any kind of anything, any response other than no problem was just unacceptable, just plainly unacceptable, and so I never even occurred to me that that any kid ever would would do any, if I was like, go brush your teeth, and a kid doesn't immediately get up and go brush their teeth, I would get mad, I would get like angry. Yeah,

0:22:39 Thomas: Man.

0:22:50 Thomas: Yeah, This, it. Yeah, Tom, that is really interesting can of worms. Not sure, I mean, it could be a whole nother hour on that, at least, because I constantly have this reaction, and I'm not sure if shared this with you guys, but there was an article recently that Lydia and I both saw independently and read and appreciated. I think it might have been the New York Times, but it was something about like, your kid acting out is a sign that they're in a safe, good household. And that was mind blowing to me because as I reflect on what you're saying, Tom, and the fact that I have a similar impulse, although maybe not in exactly the same way I do, I have an instant confused reaction as to why isn't this thing that I'm way bigger than when I say Arlo go, cause Arlo just doesn't fucking listen. Like Phoebe can, Phoebe listens a little bit. Uh, and there we go. I'm doing the thing I shouldn't have done. Kids don't listen to the show. Um, I don't want to talk. Arlo has listening problems.

0:23:31 Eli: Yes. Yes.

0:23:59 Eli: No, they won't listen to the show about what it was like to parent them. Don't worry.

0:24:02 Thomas: Yeah. Um. And I I'm often like, you know, if I'm asking him, he's not listening. I'm like, buddy, go brush your teeth, whatever it is, get dressed or whatever the thing is. And he just doesn't do anything. My brain, my lizard dad brain is like, I, I'm pretty sure I could kick this kid's ass. No, I am 800 feet tall to this kid. I am a giant loud thing to this kid. And it doesn't care. Like, it's just as like, what? Yeah, yeah, no, I don't care. And then I've, I've realized like, that's good, you know, because there was no zero of any of that in my, if, if our dad told us to do something, there was no thought, no thought that we weren't going to do it. We, and it's weird to relate to seeing other parents, like as a kid, I would see other parents or kids would like, kind of talk back or at least like joke with their parents in a way that was like, oh my God, I could never do that.

0:24:04 Tom: Right.

0:24:55 Thomas: Like joke in a way that would in any way undermine their authority. Like my dad was very funny and we joked all the time, but nothing, never when he was serious, never when it was like he was mad about a thing. There was no, no joke, you know, like that was deadly serious to everybody because of his volatile kind of personality. And so that. I think it's so good. If my kid is not scared of me, that is actually a good thing. Yeah.

0:25:19 Eli: Yeah. Yeah, so again, this is like backed up. I don't, we're not experts and I don'T to pretend to know science, but like from the toddler books that I've read, it shows that like kids who feel comfortable pushing on boundaries eventually respect them better, right? Right? Because they feel safe pushing on them in young places. They are able to discover for themselves what boundaries they do and don't respect. And there are healthy ways to establish, the term that I use all the time is like red light behaviors, yellow light behaviors and green light behaviors. So like go brush your teeth and you get a sassy response. That's yellow light behavior. Go brush your tooth and they start to drink some bleach. That is a red red light behavior where you need to like intervene right away. Um, my son very similarly does not listen and actually sort of gleefully disobeys. Right.

0:25:59 Thomas: Yep. That's Arlo.

0:26:08 Eli: So he'll like flap it. My son flaps a ton. He'll flap his arms with glee and then like really quickly start to do the thing I'm telling him not to do. Um. He knows when it's, for instance, when it'S bedtime, he goes over and sits down with one of his books and opens it and gets like very busy. Like he's very clearly doing Like, one second, I'm just right in the middle of, I gotta find out if there's a monster at the end of this book. There could be a monster at the End of This Book, Dad. Let's take this seriously. And one of the things that I've understood through the reading that I'm done is, like, that is actually a good thing, and that the part of my brain that tells me it's not a good think is bad culture.

0:26:28 Thomas: That's Awesome. Yeah.

0:26:46 Thomas: Oh.

0:26:46 Eli: Bad old, you 70-year-old culture about what it meant to be a parent.

0:26:49 Tom: Yeah. It's funny because, um, I've got four kids. They're all very, very different. Two biological, two step kids. And Haley has made me, I think I was a pretty good dad to my oldest, my son Finnegan. He and I just clicked. We just clicked immediately, day one, but he's a very compliant kid just by nature. That's just who he is. He's a people pleaser. And struck me very much as how I grew up. I was very much a people pleaser. So I moved in with my dad in the middle of first grade, in February of first grade. And I knew my dad, in the sense that my dad would come visit sometimes, but I, I had never lived with my dad as a sort of conscious or sentient person, cause my parents got divorced when I was two and I lived with my mom and my stepdad, and then, right.

0:27:35 Thomas: So He wasn't just like roofied all the time? Okay, so yeah, I

0:27:39 Tom: But I just, I was scared because I didn't know him very well. So I got on an airplane one day and I flew over to, you know, from Florida to Chicago. And now I lived in Chicago with my dad who I didn't know very well, and my dad was, was fairly strict, and my mom and my stepdad, they were both alcoholics. They had no rules. They were too busy being alcoholics. So it was a huge shift for me to adjust to. What I think is interesting, though, is my brother never gave a fuck. My brother was not a people pleaser. My dad laid down rules. They were strict. There were consequences for those rules not being followed. He expected those rules to be followed. And my brother never gave a fuck about those rules. It's just who he was. And what I have come to understand is that this idea of like, this is how I parent this Is how I discipline. Discipline, you got to do what works for every kid.

0:28:30 Eli: Yeah.

0:28:31 Tom: Way I discipline Finn is way different than the way I would discipline Eamon because I can just turn to Finn and say, really, buddy? And he'll cry. I think I could do that to him now. He's 15. He would cry.

0:28:31 Thomas: God That's Phoebe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no.

0:28:43 Tom: If I did the same thing to EamON, he would just flip me off. And he's seven. He doesn't care. He is more like my brother.

0:28:43 Thomas: That's totally, you're totally right about that. I gotta ask, is there any portion of this though that's salvageable? Like, is there anything that's in which your kid, and maybe it's that red light stuff you're talking about, Eli, like is, because I do love the fact that my kids aren't scared of me. I don't want them to be scared of me. And if they ever are, I instantly pick up on it. I'm like, oh, that sucks. I don'T like that. That'S not fun for me personally, just my emotionally. But like, there is a sense in which I worry, know, they need to be able to respond. We're out in traffic. We are in situations where you're like, you need your kid to do the thing you're telling them for their safety very quickly. Is there any amount of that? Like, should they be at least 1%? You like, I don't know if scared is the right word, Know, should but Should they be willing

0:29:32 Tom: How do you give him a respect for authority?

0:29:33 Thomas: –

0:29:34 Eli: Yeah, I mean, I think those are things that naturally grow as they get older, so like I'll give you an example of what I've done with Max, and you know, if, if we ever have a very special episode where I explain that he wandered out into traffic for spite, well, no it didn't work, but like I just, I, when he is older and can be reasoned with will be the time for that. My wife has a story about this that that is famous in her family, so her father was a sit down and explain everything, never hit them, never yelled, never raised his voice, except for traffic. They live on a very busy road in Washington state where they are.

0:29:47 Tom: Fuck.

0:30:08 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:30:09 Eli: And when Johnny, her older brother, um, who she adores, was little, he started to run out into the road, and the dad picks him up and shakes him, and he says, don't you ever run out to the road like that, don't you ever do it, and he cries, and he holds him, he's, I'm so sorry, and I'll never do it again, he's absolutely. So when Anna gets to be that age, she starts to run out into the road. He picks her up. He shakes her. He says, don't you ever do that. Don't you never do that? And Anna goes, we do it again.

Daddy, it really is just the kid, and when Max will be at an age where he can be reasoned with. And the way that I deal with red light behaviors now is that I am just constant hockey goalie. Like we go on walks as a family and my wife knows that like my toddler is not the kind of toddler that can just walk with you, we are holding hands at all time, all my judgment, you see leash parents when I wasn't a parent and I was like, look at these people, they got their kid on a leash, like

0:30:34 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:05 Eli: A dog.

0:31:05 Thomas: So demeaning.

0:31:06 Eli: So demeaning, I. First of all, I would leash Keith in a second, let alone my son. I would get one leash for each limb, and then when he's old enough to not die, I'd be like, these leashes are gone, my child.

0:31:23 Tom: I It's funny because you, I've got kids that are more willful than other kids, and I do worry about that, like I don't worry about like the running out into the street, my kids are old enough to not do that at this point, um, but there's can't, there's some kids, like, you can't reason past their desire to do something, like kids are not very rational, and especially kids, if they have any kind of emotional regulation issues, like reason is not a great tool, it's just not. Reason is a great tool for reasonable people, but kids are NOT hyper reasonable people. Physically, their brains have not developed those bits yet.

0:31:57 Eli: Right.

0:31:57 Tom: So reason works kind of, and it works sometimes, but

0:32:00 Thomas: Don't you think it's important to always give them that – because I very much love that description of, what was it, Anna's dad? I think that's a good way to be. I think explaining, even after the fact, if it is that someone runs out into traffic and you have to grab them really fast – I'm a big fan of treating your kids as though they are adults in some way, at least in, you know, as much as you can. And and being like, here's why you can't eat the fucking ice cream for dinner. Like, you just can't do it.

0:32:08 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:23 Tom: When they get a little older is where I'm kind of coming from is it doesn't work very well. I'll give you An example. Cannot reason my 16-year-old son into brushing his teeth. It cannot be done. I have explained and explained and explained. The dentist has explained and explain. I've shown him pictures. We have talked about it. I know in very clear terms why brushing your teeth is just an important thing that you should do at least once a day. But every minute of his life, he's got away brushing his teeth against playing a game. And every minute of his life, he's going to choose playing a game against brushing his teeth because he's making a moment-by-moment decision because he has a 16-year-old kid who doesn't have a sense of his own long-term consequences. So reason is the wrong tool to get him to brush his teeth. It's not an effective tool anymore.

0:32:31 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah, Right. Yeah. Sure. I think the tool would be then does he really have access to a game 24/7 that he can play at any time? Is that the world we live in now? God, I

0:33:26 Tom: Yeah, that's 100% the world we live in. Yeah. Kids have just...

0:33:29 Thomas: Had access to a game like once in a harvest moon at the man.

0:33:31 Eli: Yeah. So,

0:33:35 Tom: Yeah, man. I mean, he's got a computer. He's got a computer, he needs a computer for...

0:33:39 Thomas: Do do you try the like, all right, taking the fucking taking that away? Do you try? Yeah.

0:33:42 Tom: Absolutely. Yeah, certainly. But that's not reason, yeah.

0:33:46 Thomas: Oh, no, No. Totally. So I guess the point I was making is, I least now, my plan is, and not that I know fucking everything about how I'm going to parent forever, ever. But like, my plan is now that I want my kids to always know the reason I am doing something, that's that very different than saying, yeah, yeah.

0:33:58 Tom: Yes, that's essential. That's different. That's essential,

0:34:01 Thomas: Okay. That was the point I was making. Like I did.

0:34:01 Tom: Yes. The reason is different than reasoning. I'm sorry, I was not clear, and that's my fault.

0:34:04 Thomas: Yes, totally. Totally. No, no, no. I think both things are interesting to talk about though.

0:34:09 Eli: For the 16-year-old, when you have those conversations, does he disagree or

0:34:13 Tom: No. Not at all. The problem is that, yeah,

0:34:16 Thomas: He's like, I hear you, dad. I wish I could brush my teeth. I'm right there with you. I'm hoping I'll brush my tooth too. Not going to.

0:34:23 Tom: Yeah. It's, it's really not any different than like, Hey, did you work out today? You should work out. You should work out every day. Cause it's good for you. But it's like, fuck, I actually don't want to work out Today because I'd rather watch a movie with my wife. Right. So kids are, kids are especially bad at making long-term decisions where they have to prioritize something they don't Want to do. Yeah. Right that's.

0:34:30 Thomas: Right.

0:34:36 Eli: Right.

0:34:44 Thomas: Shit. Everyone's bad at that. Yeah. Everyone listening

0:34:47 Tom: And that's why I use an example.

0:34:47 Thomas: Is bad at that.

0:34:48 Tom: That's like a real like relatable a adult example, and that is even bigger for kids, so we have to create different kinds of you once you start parenting kids that are that are sort of have that level of autonomy, you have to great these sort of artificial structures because the natural structures don't exist to force them to do the things that they have to do so

0:35:03 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:07 Eli: Yeah. It's it's the because I said so. It's How, because I said so, evolves, because especially through the lens of our own memories, because I said so was always unfair. Um, but one of the great examples from my childhood is that when I was about two years old, I decided I wanted to climb into my oven, like that all I wanted to do from the age of two to about three, according to my mother, was climb inside her oven, and she'd be like, it's hot in there.

0:35:09 Tom: Right?

0:35:25 Tom: Wait, what?

0:35:34 Eli: Honey, you can't climb inside the oven and I would just be like, no, I want to climb inside of oven, she'd like, I'd be hot, it's not hot all the time, and she's She'd be like, okay, but it, it sometimes gets hot. Like I don't have a good enough control over when it gets hot for you to climb in there. I'd be late. Look, we'll take the trays out. We'll make sure it's not too hot. I'll climb inside. You'll close the door. It'll be great. And it just came down to like a, no, you can't do this.

0:35:34 Tom: Is that a euphemism? That feels like a euphemism.

0:36:00 Tom: Right.

0:36:00 Eli: I don't know. We can not, there is nothing you can say to change. And I was making a case, man. I had like a little briefcase. I had a PowerPoint, like ovens and your son, why they are awesome and cool.

0:36:01 Tom: I

0:36:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, here's a pie chart of how often you're baking pies in the oven. Yeah

0:36:17 Eli: But yeah, that's that's where the because-I-said-so evolves, you know, when I think about my own teenage years. And God, this is this is so cringy, um, because my parents had a very passionate um and deep relationship. Like, their their love was a big part of my life. Um, and how much they all

0:36:33 Thomas: What the.

0:36:35 Tom: Don't understand that at all.

0:36:36 Eli: Right

0:36:35 Thomas: Yeah, Tom can't

0:36:36 Eli: I know. I mean, trust me, there's one or two audience members

0:36:38 Thomas: Do Tom and I have to be here for this. I can't.

0:36:44 Eli: I modeled all of my relationships forever on how I saw my dad treat my mom, which is how I saw a husband treat a wife who he loved very much. And so there were times, and my mom repeats this back to me terribly, that I would be like talking about my seventh grade girlfriend and they'd be like, okay, well you can't go out with her tonight and go get bubble tea. And I'd be like, you need to respect my relationship the way that I respect yours and dad's. And there was no, there were no words where they could be like, your, this doesn't matter, this none of this matters, right? And what go

0:37:18 Tom: Oh, that's amazing.

0:37:18 Thomas: Oh, I can't wait for that later topic. Definitely. To bring it back to the social media topic, I think there's two components. There's the privacy of your kids, which we can talk about. There is also the, and this is another later topic that we can get into, but like how much of your life should your kids be? And part of that is your outward presentation, especially people like us, if we have any sort of public thing, you like how much of our personality should be our kids. You know, that's, I think that's another angle, to it

0:37:51 Tom: Available to our kids or how much of our personality should be our kids

0:37:52 Thomas: No no I mean us a case of like someone has a kid, someone has a new relationship, whatever the thing is, and then that's their entire timeline forever is just just that thing, or like their Wordle scores, or like that, you know, like how much of your posting should be your kid? Is there a healthy amount of like, keep in mind that you used to be a person before you were just a parent of a kid kind of thing. I think that's also an interesting topic.

0:38:06 Tom: Yeah

0:38:16 Eli: Yeah

0:38:17 Tom: When you become a parent, and we talked about this in the last episode, but there's that honeymoon period and it's very much like falling in love or like entering a new relationship, because it's very much what it is. But if that, then it will 100% change your life and it will reorganize all of the other relationships in your life, just like falling in and being in a relationship will. But it, your kids are going to move out, like your, your kids are going to grow up, they're going to turn into adults, and they are going to go have their own lives the same way we all have our own lives.

0:38:44 Thomas: Not if we ruin the housing market, not the boomers.

0:38:47 Eli: The boomers just wanted us to stay home, yeah.

0:38:51 Thomas: Yeah. Except they didn't. They.

0:38:51 Tom: And I feel real strongly like you've got to have relationships with yourself, with your spouse, with your work exist that that are entirely independent, entirely independent from your relationship with your kids. Because at some point, your kids are going to grow up, they're going to have their own lives, they'll be less interested in you and spending time with you. And that happens before they move out. That happens in their teenage years while they're still living under your roof. And you've got to have something that's still you. You've got have like thoughts and interests and you cannot revolve around them. You can't. Well,

0:39:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:20 Eli: Yeah. No, it's true and it well, it sucks, especially, I mean, we're talking from the perspective of dads here, but it sucks particularly for women because having and doing those things is often shamed when women do it. Right, so, like my wife has started playing music again now that things are opening up and no one

0:39:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Yeah, she's not watching Max, huh? She has

0:39:43 Eli: Exactly, No, but, like like, everything built,

0:39:47 Tom: You're babysitting when that happens, right? You're babies

0:39:48 Thomas: Max climbed into the oven. He is, he, in the oven right now, yeah.

0:39:49 Eli: Exactly, but like, that language that gets used all has like really deep shame factors around it, and Tom, you nailed it right on the head, which is that constantly, if I am somewhere with my son when Anna has a gig, oh, what a good daddy, you're babysitting, like, daddy's, is it a daddy Sunday? And I'm just like, God, is it the fifties? I guess my, it's my kid.

0:40:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:13 Tom: Yep. No, I'm just, just hanging out with my kid because I'm not, you know, fucking disinterested, that's what I'm doing. What,

0:40:20 Eli: Right. But, but I think Tom, you also bring up the super important part of, like, how important it is to have a life outside your children, and how important it is for them to know that, and that for it to be okay, you that part of the world that they need to learn is a world where adults who adore you and love you with their whole hearts also go out and have date nights, also go out and do board game night, right? Because they, they will parent that, but they will also learn that, like, and I'm gonna get super hippy dippy, but, like, they will also learn the nature of found family, which I think is really important and a relatively new cultural concept. Well, it's, a it's a very old cultural concept that was destroyed and is and is coming back.

0:41:02 Thomas: It's a retro Yeah, it is

0:41:05 Tom: The hell is found family?

0:41:06 Eli: It's the notion that, like, that the family, the family structure as we know it, can also be made up of people you choose to have in your life as opposed so

0:41:06 Tom: Oh, Okay, okay, yeah.

0:41:16 Thomas: Man, I got zero percent of that as per last episode, I barely got the fam, like, the family was not even a guarantee, yeah.

0:41:18 Eli: I, yeah, you so I was, very, like, know what we should call the show, we should called the show. Eli was very lucky because

0:41:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:25 Tom: Well, what? Well, wait, a minute, are you talking about friends here? Is that primarily, primarily what you're referring to is, is, is friendships?

0:41:29 Thomas: It sounds Like something more

0:41:35 Tom: And the way friends, Oh, like adults.

0:41:31 Eli: Uh, friends of the family would become my babysitters, uh, adults. Yeah.

0:41:36 Thomas: Than that Ah, Yeah.

0:41:43 Tom: Oh, I got it. Okay. Oh yeah.

0:41:45 Thomas: I didn't have any of that as a kid. I'm, it's not a punchline, that's just real.

0:41:45 Tom: No, I, No saying, yeah, my, we were very isolated. Um, my dad had friends, but, um, we were raised oftentimes when my dad was working by other families that would babysit us, but it was never good. It was a lot of times like put us in some very weird situations, situations, very weird situations, but like I was always, cause I didn't have a mom growing up and I always wanted a mom. And so I was that kid who was always trying to make my friend's mom be my mom. Um, and so like, I'd go to like my buddy's house and like, I'd kind of want to hang out with like Debbie, you know, like I'd be like, Hey, what's going on, Debbie?

0:42:22 Tom: You know, I'm going to help you with something. Cause I was like, are you so subconscious? Wanted a mom was like a mom seemed like something the other kids have, like, that'd be cool.

0:42:22 Thomas: Freud got up from his grave, and it's like, I need to, I gotta, need to be alive again, to

0:42:33 Eli: Just want to fix these notes real quick, get off me, get off me, Hitler, come on, I said I'll be back in a second, I'm in hell, like,

0:42:34 Tom: And But but it's funny because, like, I, I do look back at it and, like, there were no takers, you know what I mean? Like, there are no fucking takers, and I laugh when I think about that, it's like, of course not, because nobody else wants more kids that aren't theirs, like, like, it there were no takers I'm

0:42:54 Eli: Well, again, I hate I hate to be this guy, but, like, I was genuinely raised by my town, right? Like, I would go to, I would get, I would

0:43:03 Tom: Gonna, where, send me your fucking address, I'm going to go to your, I'm to beat the, this shit out of you just so you can feel some pain once in a while.

0:43:04 Thomas: Well, yeah, there's a statue of you in

0:43:09 Tom: What,

0:43:09 Thomas: The town square, like, like, Janesville. It's

0:43:11 Eli: Yeah, there was just constant people around who wanted me, that I would wander, like, neighbor's houses, and the sleepover, and people would feed me and take care of me. It was a very communal thing. The other thing was, might explain it.

0:43:20 Tom: I

0:43:26 Thomas: Almost like you didn't get raised in the middle of meth country on the top of a hill with nobody around, like, I did

0:43:32 Eli: Yeah, no, that helps. That helps. But the other thing was like, my father was a mentor to so many people and a helper to so many people that that it was obvious that you wanted to be part of that, quote, unquote, family, right? Everybody, my father, very much like me, actually, sort of collected people, which is what I do, is I grab people and I'm like, you're in my life now. Like, you're here, you're, you're a friend, and you're taken care of. Like, you're, you're, under the umbrella of me-ness. Um, and that includes sort of being part of the family structure. And so, you know, I had, you know, my father's really good friends would be babysitters, and also their children were my friends, it just, it's, um, something that I've tried to pass on to Max, and that we've actually, I think, done a pretty good job of passing on to Max, um, is that he feels loved from all directions.

0:43:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:24 Tom: Yeah, I grew up exactly the same, pretty oh, fucking shit, you

0:44:26 Thomas: Did I ever tell you about the time my dad got the Congressional Medal of Honor, and there was a ceremony and everybody sat me on there. Yeah, no.

0:44:36 Tom: Know,

0:44:37 Eli: Eli loses his friendships, that's the new name of this podcast. Hey, there Thomas, welcome to every therapy session I've ever had, yup.

0:44:41 Thomas: Yeah, because eventually we're going to be like, Eli, why aren't you better than you are? You know, like at least we have excuses in

0:44:56 Tom: Like, listening to this, I'm like, how are you mentally, oh, why, why do you have no problems, everything's fine, yep,

0:44:58 Thomas: Yeah. In some ways, Tom and I have it easier because we have plenty of things to blame. Like, oh, God, no, I can blame my dad for everything. It's nice. Anything that goes wrong.

0:45:01 Eli: Yeah, sounds awesome, sounds great. He

0:45:11 Tom: But it's, weren't, we weren't raised by a fucking community or whatever, just cuz my dad worked three jobs, so, like, he didn't have a lot of time for friendships. He was, he, he drove a bus in the morning, she's up at 4:30, he left the house and drove a school bus in a morning, and then he went to work and worked his full-time job, and then he was a janitor in the evening. So, like, there was no time, I didn't do all three all the time, but he almost always did two jobs at a time, I mean, as far as I can remember, so, like, when that man didn't have time to take a shit, I'd no idea how he would have had time to, like, build a rich social life, yeah.

0:45:44 Eli: Would take one shitty year on Christmas.

0:45:45 Thomas: Didn't even have time to take a nail out of his thumb, apparently. He just went on. Does he still?

0:45:46 Eli: No, it's still there now.

0:45:52 Thomas: Is it still there? Oh, my

0:45:51 Tom: He It's still, but

0:45:52 Eli: That's why, why Tom's baby didn't like, we

0:45:55 Tom: But Yeah, I, I didn't, didn't have, like, a I would not say my dad has, like, a rich social life, that we were tapped into.

0:46:03 Eli: Gotta get your dad on the show, Tom, he is a mystery. Wracked in an enigma.

0:46:07 Thomas: God.

0:46:08 Tom: He's terrific, he just, he's just a hard-working, no,

0:46:11 Thomas: Literally zero friends, Tom. My dad had literally zero friends.

0:46:14 Tom: Oh, my dad had some, my dad hadson, but not, yeah, they weren't close, god damn, god damn, your dad had no friends. Did your mom have friends though? What about your mom?

0:46:22 Eli: Like,

0:46:16 Thomas: Zero. That's the worst. Agoraphobic. My mom had a few friends, but she also didn't have a lot of time, time, because, so she was picking up a lot of slack and working, but, so she had, you know, a little bit, my, and my dad got worse as he got older, like, I got some amount of, he would do the, like, peewee coaching stuff, like, he did some of that stuff, he, like, had a good run in the early 90s, I think, of, like, trying to be a human.

I, so, I hear and then, uh, I'm not gonna go other yeah, I was not gonna go there, it would have been more dignified than, yeah, than um, yeah, my dad wishes, no, yeah, but I think he really, as his mental illness got worse, he just, that there's just nothing, like, but toward, toward the, like, my fucking high and high school years were just so depressing, you don't even want to know, but once again, to go back to social media, I did want to, like, just chime in with the, like, I did create the separate feed for the kids, the separate Instagram for the kids. And I mostly post stuff there, except I forget about it every so several months. And then I'm like, oh, shit, I haven't posted anything. I do love that we live in a day and age, as you were saying, Tom, where I have all this stuff in my phone, mostly

0:46:46 Eli: David Keratin

0:46:48 Tom: Did your dad die of an auto-erotic asphyxiation is that, that yeah,

0:46:57 Eli: Would have been better.

0:47:10 Eli: Yeah.

0:47:33 Tom: Yeah.

0:47:33 Thomas: Dick pics, but it's but also no, I'm just kidding. I have all this stuff on my phone, like memories and all this stuff that I even if I don't put it anywhere, Google and Mark, you Zuckerberg has access to it and he, you know, from time to time he's like, oh, cool dick pic dude, that kind of thing, nobody, and then you could be like, remember this dick pic From three years ago.

0:47:52 Thomas: Remember When your dick Was only yay high. Yeah.

0:47:50 Eli: No. It's Genuinely The Best part of one of the best parts of my day is my phone gives me an alert once A day for like this day one year ago, two years ago, three years ago, but it's now like 12 years old because I've I've just been using iPhone for however many years. I have stuff from when I was like 15, 16 years old in my phone now.

0:47:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:08 Thomas: Jesus. Christ.

0:48:15 Eli: It's it's The fucking bee's knees. The, the other thing is, um, my uncle, and this is gonna sound like such a weird thing to say, but it relates to the social media thing, my uncle was like a save all the pictures digitally guy before it was cool and And that's why my family has literally like, uh, tape recordings of my great-great-grandfather. Yeah.

0:48:16 Thomas: Ah. Oh. That's Awesome. Oh.

0:48:37 Eli: We have, we have like recordings and videos and stuff. I've videos of my dad at like 25, home from College, just looking like a complete doofus with a picked out afro. Like, it's wonderful. And so I'm very aware of That. And so every year when I see him, because I see them for Thanksgiving, I'm like, hey, what are we doing? I'm doing, this is there anything, anything else I'm supposed to be doing? And he's like, yeah, man, you got to get a Dropbox and you got an automatic backup your phone to your Dropbox. And so like once a year, my, my memory obsessed uncle will be like, this is how we're preserving eternity. And I'm like, nice, man. Excellent. I'm signing up.

0:48:43 Thomas: Man, man. Wow.

0:49:08 Tom: I I don't have two social medias, but I don't, don't, I don't friend anyone like show-related anymore. Like I actually eliminated all that. So like my friends list on social media is only people I've had dinner With. That's The rule That I've Applied So I've, that's

0:49:23 Thomas: Fuck. I got to change. Oh, thank God. Okay. I made the, I was just about to check like Tom. Am I?

0:49:29 Tom: It

0:49:28 Eli: Oh no, it's gone. It's all gone. I

0:49:30 Tom: No, And And that's, I like that though, because it's, let me, it's post whatever I want to post without having to have that sort of, but I, it's funny because I think about this a lot, like I'm not connected on social media. I'm not connected on Facebook. My son doesn't have Facebook. My 15 year old son does not have Facebook. He has Instagram, which I don't use, but I have Instagram and I look at his Instagram. I think I have like six pictures on it and I'll look at his Instagram. I don't know that I would connect with him on Facebook.

0:50:00 Thomas: Well, Facebook is for old people. You realize there are kids aren't going to have Facebook.

0:50:03 Tom: If he wanted to, just to see what I had posted, I don'T think because it would feel too much like really like to go back to an analogy. It would feel Too much like giving him access to a part of my life that

0:50:06 Thomas: Right. Well, that's a good question. Actually. I want to ask you guys that like, should there be some mystery to you as a parent? Thought I of it too, with Eli's weird archivist uncle that has footage of, I think me as well. He's got footage of everything. He got footage of all of us.

0:50:15 Tom: Yeah.

0:50:24 Eli: Mean, I'm Sure, Sure, They

0:50:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:28 Tom: Your question. I think kids should not have Like remember we were talking before That you should have parts of your life That are just yours I think you should Have parts of Your life That your kids Don't have access to Like

0:50:28 Thomas: Should, And we're all deciding this show is that by the way, right? Like, no, like, like I actually kind of semi-seriously, like I, not that I don't think my kids are ever going to listen to anything I've ever done because they don't, they won't actually give a shit, but like, yeah, no.

0:50:39 Tom: Yeah

0:50:40 Eli: Will,

0:50:51 Thomas: Maybe when they're 40. Oh.

0:50:49 Eli: Though? They will. I- I- So, I will tell you, and again, it is just me, one person, I have gone through my father's old laptop, I have read every email he sent, every email he read every piece of notes from his university class, like, like, they're going to, I'm telling you, man, they're going to read it all. You're the best. You're their favorite. They're going listen to it all they're gonna hear it all

0:51:01 Thomas: God. Oh. Jesus Christ. I just put my laptop in an incinerator. Whoopsie daisy, whoopsies daisy.

0:51:20 Thomas: Okay. Tom, this is- this is nuts, right? Can you- can you back me up on this? This is not real.

0:51:25 Tom: Yeah there's... there's no way my kids are gonna I Fuck

0:51:27 Thomas: No, they don't care. Oh,

0:51:28 Eli: Phoebe. You're like 20 right now. Will you text your dad and tell him you're listening to this episode right now?

0:51:32 Thomas: My God, if I get a text, real talk, that would be the sweetest thing in that's ever happened. If I get a text 16 years from now, that's like, I just heard when Eli said to text you, I will probably like die of crying. Like I will just be like, that is how he died.

0:51:38 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. I want you to come to my grave old and weathered as it will be at that point.

0:51:53 Thomas: But I feel like knowing you, Eli, there's going to be several of these throughout our lives of like the thing you set up 10 years ago, 30 years ago for a prank for later. We're going to, it's going to be fun. All kinds of traps.

0:52:01 Eli: Absolutely. Absolutely. And what will be sitting on my grave? Simpal Cindy. Just the head popping out of the grave with my voice on the voice box. Hello, Thomas. I see you've received the text from Phoebe.

0:52:09 Tom: That

0:52:21 Thomas: Got me, you fucker. I avoided. I thought I had you for 20 years. Oh,

0:52:34 Eli: Gentlemen, before we go, important question, question. What do you call a pencil with two erasers? I'll sit here in perfect silence for the rest of the goddamn year. I don't care. I'll Get us. Pointless.

0:52:43 Thomas: Double Eraser Pencil So

0:52:47 Tom: All right. We got to do something about this segment.

0:52:53 Thomas: So much, and if you are not a Patron yet, allow me a minute to sell you on it. A little bit more. First off, you get that extended episode every time. And in this week's extended episode, I tell one of my favorite stories about Phoebe. It literally had me crying on the spot. It was something that restored my faith in humanity. It was the cutest thing in the world, the most adorable thing that I've ever witnessed. I tell that story in the extended cut, patreon.com/dearolddads. And will also get instant access to the next episode because patrons will We'll always be one episode ahead. And in episode three, have an extended conversation. It's a big one. We go long. We talk about bullying and bullies and what it was like for us and what it might be like for our kids.

0:53:38 Thomas: You can get that right now on Patreon. Just something extra we wanted to do for our patrons. Keep, if you're thirsting for a little more dilf content, pull the trigger on that Patreon, get over there. You get an extra episode. And if you didn't hear me plug it last week, you get access to the monthly bonus. This month is the Newlywed Game with all our wives and guest host, host Cecil. It was so much fun. Find out if our marriages survived. It, that's available on Patreon right now. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next episode.

0:54:13 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com, or better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.