DOD18: Should We Push Our Kids Through Discomfort?

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast hosted by bad winners and sore losers. I'm Tom Curry, and I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Afternoon, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Eli: Hello, Tom.

0:00:39 Thomas: I take great exception to that. You know what, Tom? It's too bad you don't play sports, because I feel like you and I would be the same. I'm an extremely graceful loser, believe it or not. I pride myself, not always as a kid, you know, whatever as a kid you kind of got the emotions and the anger and you can't control everything as much because, you now, humans.

0:01:01 Tom: Yeah, because you can't emotionally self-regulate like an adult when you're not an adult.

0:01:04 Thomas: Yeah. But I pride my self now because I play hockey three nights a week, and I lose most nights because I'm playing on shitty teams, I don't know why, and I pride myself on like getting back, like the minute we've lost, getting back up, getting that handshake line, shaking hands, you whatever, we're fucking adults drinking, you know, we're not professional hockey players. And also, it's it's funny because a lot of people try to do the gracious winner thing at the end after they've won, and that's when they decide like, oh, I'm super gracious, you know, after they, and you can totally tell those people, like, Like they're complete dicks the whole time on the ice if they're losing. And then if they win, they're like, ah, greatest friend, you know, like they're so nice. And it's really funny to me. It's transparent as hell.

0:01:05 Tom: Yeah.

0:01:44 Tom: I've never done a competitive sport. I guess the only competitive sport I've done, I did CrossFit, and I did do competitions in CrossFit. Um, but I did them as a fully grown adult, and I will say the the level of like high quality sportsmanship in CrossFit is shockingly high. Like it is, un it's actually one of the things that like really drew me, like that experience, because it was just, it's like everybody's a good sport, everybody cheers on the last guy, everybody shakes hands, everybody knows like you're one bad day away from that being you. It's a really, like, like in a good situation, like, I I'm sure that like every gym is a little differently, but the gyms that I went to and the competitions I attended were super high quality sportsmanship. Like, had two, I one, I came in third, and the other one, I did two competitions and I had virtually the same social experience even though I did really well in one really poorly in another I

0:02:36 Thomas: Well, yeah, I think it varies on the sport because those it's not like you're face to face with somebody. Isn't it just like a solo thing that you do? What is the competition? Well, Eli will hang up if we talk about this. But yeah,

0:02:45 Tom: Yeah I know

0:02:47 Eli: No, I am actually

0:02:47 Tom: I know I know I don't want to talk about CrossFit because everyone hates it so

0:02:49 Eli: Fascinated by how... I don't understand why everyone hates CrossFit. Like, if you want to throw out your back, I'll watch.

0:02:55 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah

0:02:56 Tom: I know look

0:02:56 Thomas: If you want to get seven hernias a day, like that

0:02:59 Tom: If I tear my shoulders, damage my knees, and blow up my discs, that's on me. All right

0:03:04 Eli: Yeah.

0:03:04 Thomas: Is between you and your non-consenting body parts that actually don't want. No, but here's reason I find it to be kind of an interesting issue, is it's not just about like, oh, you're polite and you're whatever when you're winning or losing. To me, what's always, and I've I've said this before, and it's a product of my dad, and it may be both be a good quality and the reason I'm depressed all the time, is I'm not capable of lying to myself. And it's so funny when I'll be on sports teams where we lose and the, you know, the fucking refs, they they fucking in the third period, they do the, and for me, I'm just like, well, I mean, but that team was just better than us. Like, it's not, and you know how fucking unpopular

0:03:07 Tom: No oh

0:03:45 Thomas: As a kid that made me, I'd be like, oh yeah, no, they are, they're actually faster and um, we're not as good as them is the reason we lost

0:03:51 Eli: Thomas, Thomas, you have to promise me to coach Arlo in sports. Sports, it's just half time in the locker room. All right, everybody, they are better at this than us, nothing we can do, everything's luck, roll the dice and

0:03:57 Tom: My god that would be so great

0:04:05 Thomas: Yeah look at you guys, you you're terrible, you got nothing, yeah, no but it's actually, it's It's actually better, though, because if you turn the competition into focusing on what you can actually control and what you can do, you can be like, you can be comfortable with your performance. I think that's actually, as much as you're making a joke, I actually think if we talk about kids doing sports, it's the way I would want my kids to approach sports, which is you try your ass off and you train and you do whatever.

And then as long as you believe that you did your best, like truly, like you performed as well as you could, the fact is we're constrained by our fucking bodies, like where I'm not LeBron James, like I'm never gonna go, I'm never gonna try to play somebody in basketball that's 6'5" and lose and be like, god damn it, I can't move, like I'll just be like, yeah, man, I tried, whatever, I did about as good as I could do with my, you know, 5'11" body, like I don't, whatever, you know, like I think it's actually the healthy way to

0:04:09 Tom: Yeah right Right.

0:05:01 Eli: And that's part of the structure, that's why I'm so excited to talk about sports today, is because the structure of sports is fucking insane for children, right, because it's all meant to be a professional pipeline, which we don't do with any other activity, right? Like imagine walking around my first art class and the teacher being like, all right. And when you're at your first gallery show, everybody, Jimmy, stop eating the paste. Anyways, when you write your first gallery show, you do want to make sure you get some large buyers.

0:05:29 Eli: We're going to support you on an ongoing going big

0:05:07 Thomas: It yeah yeah yeah yeah the caviar fork is this little one, everybody, pick up your caviar

0:05:32 Eli: Yeah

0:05:33 Tom: Yeah, You know, it's funny because I I have looked at, none of my kids are into sports, and I'm like, we've tried, we've we've actually, we've offered, we've gently pushed, because I think Haley and I both feel like there's some value to that, like be a part of a team, that seems like an experience people should have. Also, like move your body and like learn this sort of like physicality of interacting with the world, I think there's a lot to be learned, even though I didn't do it, I think there's a lot to be learned and a lot to gain from playing sports.

None of our kids at all were were willing at all to to sort of engage, and I I will admit, I'm, though we pushed it, I'm not gonna lie, I'm fucking relieved, I cannot tell you how fucking relieved I am that none of them want to do this. Like clubs, sports, travel, spend all of your weekends forever, shitting money, money, like fucking crazy, and driving to, you know, Cincinnati, Ohio, to watch your kid play a totally fucking inconsequential game that they don't really understand is inconseoquential. Because like none of them are going to get a scholarship, none of them are gonna, like statistically, like I mean, it'd be like saying, alright let's all go outside and hold fucking umbrellas in the air and wait for lightning to strike us, and that's how we're gonna pay for college.

It's a fucking insane way to like look at planning for the world unless you happen to be just spectacularly gifted. And so I will admit, like, although we tried, like we did the, you know, hey, you want to do a sport, what sport can I enroll you, like we really try to like push them, push and push them, when they all to a person refuse, I was like, oh thank god, I never wanted to do this, I don't

0:05:56 Thomas: Yeah oh yeah yeah

0:07:19 Tom: Know anything about sports, I don't want to learn, now I'm not going to be able to feign interest, oh my god, the sense of fucking palpable relief you cannot understand

0:07:29 Eli: Yeah, you don't have to watch your baby lose, right? That's the thing about sports that I can never get my head around, and the reason why I hated doing them is this grand declaration of loss for this fucking game, right, the game, there's a big buzzer and then everyone looks at a giant sign, it's like a hell dimension in a sci-fi, everyone turn your eyes to the board, board of score. Oh, your board of score is lower than their board of score. A five-year-old with By definition, you are worse than these other children. Carry this with you forever.

0:07:58 Thomas: Obsolescent

0:08:05 Eli: Remember, this is all ours.

0:08:05 Thomas: Open the trap

0:08:06 Tom: Now I I'm not saying you're less than, but we actually quantified it and that's the point of the entire thing, and you are less than, you have less of the points that you needed oh wait I did, do I have a funny sports story, I forgot I did sports, I did sport, I forgot

0:08:06 Thomas: Door, oh god that's so funny uh that's, I just don't that's so funny oh

0:08:15 Eli: Yeah.

0:08:25 Eli: Is this the wrestling team that you weren't allowed to compete in? The most tragic story on our podcast so far.

0:08:26 Tom: No I I shut up

0:08:28 Thomas: Yeah I love that story that is one of my, it's I'm more sad about that than the dead monkey, like honestly, yeah

0:08:35 Eli: I'm I'm more sad about that than the fact that she didn't rescue you from the fire because if she, if you had died in the fire you would have gotten off easy, it's

0:08:39 Tom: No I

0:08:39 Thomas: Yeah poor little Tom poor little Tyrannosaurus Rex Tom probably was a great wrestler, would have been amazing at it, just the coach is like hey bud

0:08:47 Tom: I think I would have really been good at Wrestling, I think I would've been good at wrestling, like, I, I'm fairly aggressive, I think it would've been fun. But no, I, I did, my dad, I totally forgot about this until right now, I did one year of Little League, and like my dad signed me up for the church Little League team, and I did did not watch or play baseball ever until I was signed up.

And so I had no idea how to throw a ball, catch a ball or hit a ball, or where the positions were or what they were supposed to do. I didn't know anything about baseball. I was not on my radar of a sport to do, but my dad, I don't even remember why he signed me up for the church Little League team, along with like this other family that like we were close with or what have you.

And so we would go into church Little League basement, and the coach, would have this big whiteboard, and and he would draw the positions and he would say, "All right, the ball gets hit here, who do you throw it to? The ball get sit here, who did throw?" And so he's teaching us like the the mechanics of it, and I fucking loved that part. I was like, "Oh, ball goes here, you throw it here, try to

0:08:49 Thomas: Ah

0:09:51 Tom: Get that guy," like I knew all that. Then they put you out on the field and I was so mind-numbingly bored by the entire thing, I was the kid that like

0:10:01 Thomas: It's So Boring. It's the most boring fucking sport imaginable. I

0:10:03 Tom: Oh, Oh, oh, my God, I

0:10:05 Eli: Only is it boring, it's literally a punishment that the ancient Aztecs used to do to fornicators, they literally

0:10:12 Tom: Thought that was basketball, they had that, that basketball hoop

0:10:14 Eli: No,

0:10:15 Thomas: No, it's uh yeah what is that called

0:10:18 Tom: Thing

0:10:17 Eli: That that was a game that at least they enjoyed. No, they just like stand in the sun and wait for us to throw something at you, and we'll all be mad like Jesus.

0:10:18 Thomas: Yeah, God, I Oh, I don't understand baseball. I know I say it a lot, I argue with Andrew on this. Precisely two people at any given time are... are fucking doing anything in baseball. Two goddamn people. And one of them is also just waiting, which is the batter, but at least you're interested in hitting. The pitcher, it's just one guy. The whole sport, hey, let's all go out and watch the one fucking guy. It's like some narcissist who likes to throw a ball Create a sport. It's out there at the pitcher's mound, we all have to watch him. Wait on him. He's just taking his time. Oh, he's got to get a little chalk on his hands. Taking his time, getting ready. He's the one fucking guy doing anything out there, and we're all just at his mercy of like, "God, fucking, all right, throw the ball."

0:10:28 Tom: Yo, Yup.

0:11:10 Thomas: God, it's so boring.

0:11:10 Tom: Yeah,

0:11:11 Eli: Let me throw out a controversial hot take about baseball, I think batters are guessing. I'm going to say it right?

0:11:17 Tom: What do you mean They're Guessing?

0:11:19 Eli: A baseball flies at a hundred miles an hour, there's no way that you're fucking looking at that thing and being like, "I wonder where to place the bat."

0:11:26 Thomas: So you guys know nothing about sports, you think you're doing a hot take, but that's actually just how it works. You actually are just trying to guess the...

0:11:35 Eli: There you go see

0:11:36 Tom: Are You really see, now this explains a lot, because I will tell you that in the entire year of Little League, and I'm not exaggerating at all, we went to batting cages, we did practice, and we had games, I never one time ever hit the ball. Not ever once, even by accident, did I hit the fucking ball. I have to this day never used a baseball bat to strike a ball in any way, shape or form. One time in the entire season, one time the ball was hit toward me, I was inexplicably second baseman, and so I just fucking stood there doing nothing all the time, and I hated it, and one time the ball was hit toward me, I wasn't paying attention, it was a ground ball, I caught it in my hat, and despite all of the practice of like, and I Tom was the best one of like, "If it gets hit here and there's one guy on, you throw it there." I threw it to the home plate. I was like, I don't, I just

0:11:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:49 Thomas: It's so hard.

0:12:03 Thomas: What?

0:12:34 Thomas: Yeah,

0:12:34 Tom: Threw it right. I was like, I don't know what to do. I just fucking panicked. So in the entire season, not one time did I strike the ball with the bat. And one time the ball was hit toward me. The entire rest of the game was spent getting a sunburn. That is what I did. I got a sunburn And I got mosquito bites.

0:12:34 Thomas: The pressure.

0:12:51 Tom: And I wore a stupid fucking outfit. Oh, how

0:12:48 Eli: Yep. Yep. Just waiting for orange slices.

0:12:51 Thomas: Well, and it's it's a psychological torture for kids with ADHD too, because, okay, here's the funny thing that you guys either maybe I've said this before, you might not know, I, as you know, I fucking love sports, I've said a bunch of times, I guarantee you that whatever your experience with sports was as a small kid, I had it 800 times worse, I had just non-stop, stop sucking dick at it, crying, not knowing what to fucking do, I was too small, I was too nervous all the time, they wouldn't, my family would joke about that, when they made me play soccer, another sport they fucking hate, that I would just run behind everybody like, just like kind of follow the the crowd, like, to look like I was doing something but never kick the ball.

I had the worst experiences and I think what might be interesting to talk about is, even though from a parent's perspective, if we, you and I saw our kids doing what I was doing, which is just fucking hating it and just sucking, we'd probably be like, all right, we should just don't make him do sports. He should never do sports, and yet now it's my favorite thing, like, it's literally my favorite thing. It required me, it

0:13:28 Tom: Did that transformation take place though. I

0:13:59 Thomas: I had to get a little big. I was just a slow, you developer, like in terms of height, you you know, I just was really skinny and small until like high school. I finally like started getting muscle and getting taller and not even like freshman year. It was like actually specifically like after freshman year, I, cause freshman year I still tried to try out for basketball and I was tiny and they're like, no, you can't do it. Sorry.

And I like, I was actually pretty good at it, but it didn't matter. And, once I started actually getting good at it in high school, um, started liking sports and then in college doing intramurals, like I I realized I just have a real gift for the coordination required in athletics. Like, I don't know what it is like the spatial awareness part.

Like there's the physical aspect obviously, but what I love about sports is they say like what Wayne Gretzky was so good at, like Wayne Gretsky was the best of in a sport, like better than everybody else to a degree that perhaps has never been equaled in sport, like better Than everybody else at the time, like his records to this day are impossible.

0:14:57 Thomas: And they say, and he wasn't big, he wasn't fast, he wasn't any of the things that you would think a hockey player would have to be, he somehow just had a sense of where everybody was and how the the would develop, and there's, can't even put it into words, but like that feeling when your brain does a thing like almost faster than you can even conceive of it, it's like that area between reaction and thinking, like somewhere in the mix where you're like, oh, that's there, and your brain just, it just clicks of like that passes right there, and I, can, you know, it's just so fucking satisfying, I love it so much.

0:15:27 Tom: Can't describe to you enough how much I have never had the experience you've just relayed there is like

0:15:32 Eli: Thank you. Thank you, Tom. That, you might as well be like, you know when you squeeze your butt cheeks together hard enough and you just start to levitate a little bit off your chair? Right? You're not like full -on flying, but you're like six to eight inches off the ground. Ah, love it.

0:15:35 Tom: Yeah thank you, there's I have ever even by accident done one physical thing right without like, like you cannot not

0:15:53 Eli: No.

0:15:53 Thomas: Well, it's the kind of thing that only comes with like tons and tons of practice, that's why I mean, you have to break through to that, no,

0:15:57 Tom: I well I I let me, let me rate, let me relate this back then to give you an example of how different we are. I did CrossFit, which again, I know nobody, nobody wants to listen to, but like I did CrossFit for like like almost 10 years, so I did that like fairly regularly for almost, I think, eight years, and when I say fairly regularly, it was at least three days a week, often five, sometimes, sometimes about five was the most. And sometimes I'd go more than once, especially in like 2016, 2017. So, that involves all these. And what I really liked doing were the Olympic lifts. So that was like, you know, deadlifts and cleans and, you know, and things along those lines, the end of my lifting career or whatever. I never performed any of those lifts in anything, anything approaching the proper way

0:16:06 Thomas: I I'm here for it all day. Oh, wow yikes yeah

0:16:44 Tom: At all ever. Like it was, it was like everyone who coached me was like, that is what is even happening. They're like, your feet are in the wrong spot. You're moving every piece of my body mechanics. And I would set up this very intentional focused and the, and it was always, it got worse over time. That's how physically inept I am. I got worse worse over time. The only reason any weight ever, you know, ascended from the ground is I was just like, what if I just brooded it up and did it wrong and

0:16:45 Thomas: Yeah oh man Man,

0:17:16 Tom: Was like, and then it was, it was awful. I was bad to the point of extremity at all of that for almost a decade, despite very intentional focused practice.

0:17:28 Thomas: You had to become like the mountain from Game of Thrones to be able to lift like, you know, last place where your form is so bad.

0:17:31 Tom: I seriously, like for way, the weight that I actually could move versus is what I should have been able to move if I had good form, it probably could have been 30, I don't think that's an exaggeration, probably move 30 more weight.

0:17:35 Thomas: Oh,

0:17:44 Eli: Don't want to say it's the most Tom thing in the universe to be told, hey man, you're actually doing that wrong and if you do it right you'll be able to, and then for 10 years to be like, no, I deadlift using my butt cheeks, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

0:17:44 Tom: Yeah. Okay. It's so I would try though, guys, I would cry, that's the thing I wanted to like express to you, Thomas, is like, I would try so hard to get it right and my body and I are just not friends. Like it's like we said on the show before, you throw, if, if we, you were gonna go like on a road trip and you're like, hey man, you drive, and you threw me your keys, I wouldn't even try to catch them, I would just let them bounce off my chest and I would pick them up off the ground because

0:18:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that is. Yeah.

0:18:23 Thomas: And then we'd see you try to pick them up off the ground and set up in your form for like the clean and jerk.

0:18:26 Eli: In a perfect Deadlift.

0:18:27 Thomas: Yeah. And then as you lifted it, it would be all wrong. And then you'd throw out your back.

0:18:28 Eli: Yeah, okay. No,

0:18:32 Tom: Right just, oh God, yeah, there's just nothing intuitive about moving my body through space and there just never has been.

0:18:39 Thomas: So what's funny, this is not interesting, but 'cause it's two seconds, the only time I ever had that exact thing, Tom, was because I tried to do a sport. This will actually, this will relate to Eli a little bit. I was always a golfer, 'cause my dad, like we, we played golf, except my dad was such an idiot, he, uh, never looked up or learned how to do anything correctly.

So he taught me terribly and I had the worst fucking swing in the world, but I was still naturally pretty good. So I was like, okay at golf, but golf is so hard, you really have to like do it right. And so I would try to play golf in high school until I started doing theater and wanted to do theater.

And the was during the season of the golf team, and I was, you know, I was like, I would have been on the varsity team, but like, you know, one toward like, there's six guys on the team and I, I would have been like number six or like the alternate, like struggling in in that range, but I still would have loved it, but I told him I was like, well, I gotta do this play, can we like do half and half, Seas, you know, like I'll practice whatever days a week and I'll do the play whatever days, a and they were just like, no, they

0:19:38 Tom: Jesus.

0:19:39 Thomas: Probably they're like, no, you can't, what are you talking about, you have to be here every single practice, I waslike what the fuck does that matter, I'll be there for at least a practice and the match, like there's like a match every week on a, I don't know know, Friday or Thursday or something, I was like, I'll, I'll be there for those, and they're like, nah, so I just was like, okay, I fucked that, I guess I'll do the show, and then I, because I love sports and I wanted to do sport, I waslike can, is there some sport that'll let me fucking do this, like just, you know, a couple days a week, and I got on the track team because my little sister was a freshman when I was a senior, and she was actually pretty good at some track events, and I got on the Track Team, I've always been a really amazing jumper weirdly enough, and I was like, okay, I'll try to to do this, is the jumping one, the triple jump, long jump, high jump, and I tried to do high jump, but with almost no practice, this was

0:19:40 Eli: Yeah.

0:20:25 Thomas: Senior year, so like this was just the last year of high school, never having done it, I tried to do high jump, and Tom, I cannot tell you how much I relate to your description of that, high jump was the one fucking thing I never figured out, I only got a few practices at it, but I would do meets where I got, I jumped like, I can't remember what my highest height was, I think it was like around my height, like 5'11 or so, I don't think I ever got above Yeah, but I was doing it like a fucking idiot, I was so good at jumping that I felt like I was doing high jump, and then the, I would see people looking at just like, what the fuck, man? Like I was literally jumping with my butt lowest.

0:20:46 Tom: Yeah. Yes.

0:21:00 Thomas: Like I was jumping like in a seated position over the bar. And I had a guy, I had another coach One time, that wasn't my coach, but like my dad had ended up talking to like one of the other coaches. And he was like, man, if you could do the fucking technique you would just be, you would be you're getting like six five, like I was like, I, I'm trying, I don't understand how you do it, you have to flip your back in a reverse art, I can't do it

0:21:04 Tom: Oh, I feel you right now, so hard, you'd be so good, did

0:21:22 Eli: Yeah. Cause the high jump is like some ancient ninja shit. You like plunge where Waldo's dick into the ground and then you bend it backwards and turn yourself into a straw. And then you spit in the eye of God.

0:21:31 Thomas: Could never figure it out and

0:21:35 Eli: So he forgets gravity for a second and you do a reverse pike dive into the sky. And then yeah, End up over

0:21:35 Tom: Oh,

0:21:41 Thomas: Can I tell you, can I tells you, Eli, to this day for no reason, I want to figure it, like I just, I never, it's the one fucking thing I never figured out sports wise, I I want to like practice high jump so I can at least do one that looked like the fucking Fosbury, Fosbury, whatever the guy who invented it back.

0:21:44 Eli: Never

0:21:55 Tom: Did you think you were doing it right though because I a lot of times

0:21:59 Thomas: Yes, I thought I was doing it right until somebody.

0:22:01 Tom: Yeah man dude I would get, okay, so like they're like, I, there's a lift that I used to think I was going, it's a clean, right, a power clean, so like, and and I would, I would set up and I'd be thinking I'd be like, okay, do this, do that, get under the bar, there's like this whole technique, it's not dissimilar to a golf swing, like it's this full body motion, it's got spin, I would be like, wham, and I like hit this thing and I look over at my coach and I would be like grinning because I would be like, that was fucking good, and she would have the video cam, she'd have her phone out, and she'd just be shaking her head like back and forth, and she's like, that was worse than last time, like, like how, and then she's showing me the video, and everything she'd coached me through, I did the opposite, but somehow like upside down and like one leg, like it was horror.

0:22:02 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:22:46 Thomas: It's crazy.

0:22:47 Tom: The more it felt right, the worse it was sometimes, and I was like, I never got any of that shit even remotely close to accidentally right, it was, I mean it was a horror, it was an absolute horror, I am lucky, I, I didn't break more parts of me than I did.

0:23:05 Thomas: So I wonder, I guess, Tom, you've already answered. Your kids just aren't interested and you're happy about it. Eli, what about Maxie boy? You doing any?

0:23:11 Eli: Never, and I will, let me tell you why, first of all, 99 of the sports he can't do are because he might hurt himself, and if there's anything, are you kidding, the center of the universe is gonna fucking hurt himself playing fucking soccer, no, absolutely, oh well, we had to win the game against Clemson, I'll kill everyone on the team and their families, are you getting me, so there's the first thing, the first thing is he can't get hurt, which leaves like two sports left. Right. And then the other thing is like, I just, I need, I cannot bear the idea of my boy looking at the board of score and being like, well, I guess I'm bad now.

0:23:14 Thomas: Oh.

0:23:20 Tom: Oh my god oh my God,

0:23:59 Eli: I can't, I do not want him to deal with that. That is crazy. I hate it, no fail failure is for failures, he does not need to fail that's

0:23:59 Tom: Eli, you

0:24:00 Thomas: What are you talking about, that's

0:24:06 Tom: Are crazy you're gonna shield him from all failures, so he doesn't right

0:24:15 Thomas: Yeah famously the those who never try at all are the those are the ones we revere, the ones who never tried anything, and so they're there for perfect record perfect record that

0:24:20 Eli: If you're never put in a position to fail you never fail you can only succeed

0:24:26 Tom: The the best way to get it good at something is to be either immediately naturally great at it or not do it at all, that is, I I mean, that's standard. Everyone knows that. I don't even know why I said it out loud.

0:24:35 Thomas: Doesn't exist for anything

0:24:28 Eli: Yeah Tom. The Eli Bosnick story, truly everything in my life, I'll be like, oh, am I good at this, nope, no thank you, well,

0:24:36 Thomas: Oh

0:24:43 Tom: Other than jumping, were you a natural? Because there is actually one thing that I am, actually. I'm a pretty natural trap shooter. Like, I can shoot. I have terrible hand -eye coordination, but for whatever reason, I shoot trap very well. Are there any other things that you're like naturally good at? Eli,

0:24:52 Thomas: Nice I Just, just coordination, I just love throwing shit and catching shit, it's the most pleasing thing to my brain, I- don't, don't understand, I could just, like, if somebody, any, my brother, somebody was like, hey, let's go play catch with a football, I can do that for as long as my arm lasted, it's so fun, I don't understand, it is the weirdest thing, it feels very, like evolutionary to me, but I guess it's not, I do not know, it just feels like, yeah, I should be fucking throwing a thing and catching a thing so pleasurable. Oh-

0:25:03 Tom: Ugh.

0:25:24 Eli: See, it's interesting, you guys had had the opposite experience in sports to me, which is that like, I have done a bunch of activities as a kid, and still as an adult, I do things until basically you have to take them seriously, right? So, like, as- a kid, I love to target shoot, right, I had an air rifle, and then my dad would take me to like actually target shoot, and I got like pretty good at it, and so dad was like, hey, do you actually want to like learn how to do this? So I got the, you know, weird Robocop goggle, and there was, you, you know, an adult who I'm sure thinks that laws don't exist, right? Who like started to show me how to actually learn to target shoot. And I was like, eh, this seems like it's going to be hard. I'm going to stop, right.

0:25:40 Thomas: I-

0:26:04 Eli: I was on the football team, loved practicing, right, loved hanging out with my friends, running back and forth, got tackled the first time by a 49 year old. I know I've told this story before, made the noise of a pig as it is slaughtered. And I wasn't, like, nope, not doing that again, right, practicing. Wrestling was pretty good. Technically at wrestling, got to the matches, made me feel bad, nope, don't do that, I only do the, and keep in mind, I'm good at one thing, I'm good at one thing, which is being funny, and I've pretty much just done that, and occasionally I wander off and I'm like, hey, am I good at this thing? And the universe is like, man, you shouldn't try that. And I was like, ah-

0:26:04 Thomas: I- hate that so much. Yeah, that

0:26:39 Eli: God, sorry, I was, yuck, all right, back to the jokes, I don't know what the fuck- I- was thinking, I-

0:26:44 Thomas: Is so interesting. I-

0:26:46 Tom: Are you serious, though, about, like, I know you're goofing around, but are you- serious- I-

0:26:49 Thomas: The long pause, so, like, but really, so-

0:26:51 Tom: I, no, I, I can't, you're, are you really gonna shield Max from opportunities to fail? Like, is- that an- yeah.

0:26:57 Eli: Here's my issue with failure, right? Jokes aside, jokes out of the room for- just a moment. My issue with failure is that you can't control the fallout of failure.

0:27:02 Tom: Yeah.

0:27:12 Eli: You're like, yeah, it's important for kids to fail. They got to learn and grow. And then 10 years later, they're like... Well, the heroin helps me forget the time I missed in T -Ball. And you're like I but you they said it was for learning and growing. Didn't know you were supposed to be learning.

0:27:28 Thomas: You're envisioning everyone turning into Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite, coach- put me in, fourth quarter, we've taken- state, that- that guy is my entire high- high school town, like the whole, everywhere I'm from is that guy, though, like- totally.

0:27:29 Eli: Right. Exactly, you're- Exactly. I-

0:27:42 Tom: Yeah.

0:27:43 Eli: Other thing is, like, sports for the most part, right, my son does the arts, I kind of know the people that are in the arts, and I could be peripheral to the people, there are a lot of people with bad ideas about the world, and bad ideas is about how they're allowed to treat children in sports, that I can't intercede with, right, because I look back on, like, practices and stuff, and again, I had relatively good experiences, but just, like, my coaches were super duper problematic, had a bunch of weird stuff to say, a- bunch weird agendas-

0:28:16 Thomas: Oh- yeah, god, now- that I think about it-

0:28:18 Eli: Right, that just got woven into the fabric of my life, and, like, that's fine, but, like, I think there's a lot of dangerous grown-ups involved in sports. And I'm very worried about exposing my son to those grown-ups, especially in positions of power. Yes.

0:28:19 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I- gotta say, though, that I mean that does exist, I think you're, you're saying that you would have more, I don't know what, wherewithal or access, if it was in the arts, because there's a lot of, a lot of abusive people in the arts as well, um,

0:28:46 Eli: But I, I know that world super- well-

0:28:48 Tom: Yeah.

0:28:49 Thomas: So you- think you'd be able to, like, recognize it easier, or- I-

0:28:50 Eli: Right. I can- I can recognize it, um, you- can have-

0:28:54 Tom: You can be a better shepherd.

0:28:56 Thomas: Will tell you, Eli, like, you were a hundred percent correct. I actually, I actually do worry about this a lot, because you have to have, it's, it's, I talked about this with jobs too. There's a certain amount of, in order to get by in the world, like, if I was just instructing someone of how to get by, I would say, like, yeah, your boss is your fucking, but you got to do whatever the fuck they say, 'cause, like, this is the capitalist nightmare we live in. You, you have the, you know, and same thing actually applies in sport. There's a huge, huge problem with that in sports and youth sports of, like, yeah, you gotta fucking suck the coach's dick, not literally, well, hopefully not literally, but you figure, hopefully- just figuratively.

0:28:56 Eli: Right.

0:29:30 Eli: That's the issue, right? Is it your, yeah,

0:29:32 Thomas: Suck the coaches dick, and they're in charge, they're god, and they're like fucking in charge of everything, and the parents have to go along with it because they want their kid to get the playing time, you know. There's some fucking you unemployable, you peaked in high school jock is the code, the fucking baseball coach or whatever, and you got everybody's gotta like fucking suck his dick and in the hope that he gives your kid playing time. That part does suck, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that.

0:29:41 Tom: Yeah.

0:29:55 Eli: There's a lot of that stuff, makes me super duper nervous. I have a very hard time dealing with conflict, and sports by definition creates conflict, right? You know, little league dads, right? Like the stereotype of the little league tag, who's like, come on, ref, like, get this kid out of here, like- I'd be like, do I kill him? What do we do in this scenario? I don't have a Barack, I'd have to, like, take a vote, I'd had to turn around and be like, hey, I'm so sorry, this guy is yelling. Societally, what do we do? Because I don't know, I know what I, I do, which is I order my knights to take him to a field and cut him into little pieces. Maybe I eat one piece because that's how I gain his- memories.

0:30:07 Thomas: Yeah, the- idea- that- you just need to know what the norms are, like, you're either like, do I shake his hand, or do I have him killed by a sniper? I- don't know. Just- tell me, I'll do- whichever-

0:30:40 Eli: Right. Because, because I have, that's the thing. I have no idea. And none of them make sense. Right. Every time someone's talked to me about sports, they've never been like, and I've been like, oh, wow, well, that makes sense, yeah, no, this is a healthy construction that we've all come up with together, I really like this. No, it's always like, well, no, know, on the fourth down, the seventh inning is when we all- stretch, but then on the fourth down, that's when everyone turns backwards in their chair and praise to Allah, and I'm just like, oh, okay, I guess this is a part of it, if it isn't for you- or I think that I kill- the guy, and I're not supposed to, there's just, there's so much, also- I

0:30:42 Thomas: Yeah- yeah- you're- worried that you should have killed the guy, and they're gonna be like, god, did you- see Eli- I- love- the idea- of you being the pariah for, like, not having killed the dad- like he would, that- that- was- his- guy- that- that- was your god, oh my god, this- fuck-

0:31:24 Tom: Right. I thought somebody was going to kill that guy.

0:31:28 Eli: Just- look- we did Max's preschool, if where they did like the hello meeting, right, and- we all did- it, and the entire time I was just standing there pouring sweat in this perfectly air-conditioned room going, don't say fuck, don't say fuck- just don't stay fucked, all you have to do is not say fuck. Would you like to know what the second word I said to my son's preschool teacher was? It was fucking, it was fuckin, because it's become a replacement for um in my mind, so I was like, what's the fucking, and then I just watched this lovely lemon's- face just transformed, because I had said, what's the fucking to her, in front of a room of two-year-olds, and what I meant was, what are the allergy rules? That was the sentence I was- looking, I was- searching- for- what- are the allergy policies of this thing you're telling me that my beautiful little boy is going to be heartbroken because he's just lost the foosball game or whatever, he's going to come to me, tears in his eyes, and I'm going to know the societally appropriate reaction to that? See,

0:31:28 Thomas: Oh- yeah- yeah- yeah- well-

0:32:13 Tom: Pretty- much- the- same- thing-

0:32:29 Thomas: It sounds like you'll be more suited for the sports world, actually, the cursing. You more acceptable in sports than, you know, in the, in

0:32:37 Eli: I've told this story before, but my cursing has reached a new level now where it doesn't fit general human swearing anymore. And the best example of this is, of course, Anna swears as much as I do.

And when she was giving birth to our son, uh, swore, and she was like, "Oh, I'm sorry," and the nurse was like, "Oh, you can say whatever you want, honey, we've heard it all." And my wife let forth a screed of the most, nothing problematic, but just the most vile, a twisted imagery, the darkest Lovecraftian nightmare of swears the next time she was in pain, that the nurse was like, "That's, that's enough, that's a, that's another, you don't have to, I didn't know you were gonna say all that," so like, I even that, I feel like I would do wrong, right? I feel like they'd be like the ref would call a strike when he was supposed to call a ball, and I'd be like, "Oh, rough, I'll fuck your dad, I'll fuck your dead right in the fucking eye and everyone would be like what are you doing man and I'll be like what we say we could swear you

0:33:39 Eli: Promised we could swear

0:33:32 Thomas: Yep. Yep, yep,

0:33:38 Tom: We're: in on this this is how we do it do one thing I I want to say too about about and like its relationship to school is that I fucking resent sports in school just straight out fucking resent the shit out of it and I resent it because a huge part of the reason that the kids especially in high school have to wake up despite all of the science saying Don't do this at the ass crack of dawn at fucking six, five 30. My kids get up between five and five 30 in the morning to get on a school bus between six 30 and six 20, depending on which kid I'm talking about. So they can get to school at seven. And all of that is so that there can be after school sports practice.

0:33:40 Thomas: Yep.

0:33:40 Eli: Yeah yeah

0:34:08 Thomas: Jesus christ oh

0:34:21 Tom: And you've Got a tiny percentage all told you've Got a small percentage at the kids that are in sports and all the other kids have to eat shit and wake up even though like all the science about teenage brains say that they need to be sleeping in they need to be getting more sleep and later sleep all the sciences that's a bad idea but sports drives our schools sports controls that Shit: I.

0:34:21 Thomas: Is that it Okay: wow really is that really true because I feel like even schools that don't have sports fucking do this I thought it was just our you bullshit and I we've recently done serious inquiries only on the morning person night person thing because I'm just such a night person and kids are naturally they need that extra your sleep as you say and I feel like it's just our bullshit fucking protestant work ethic whatever nonsense like you have to be up if you're up at the crack of dawn then you're a better person than if you wake up at 10 but you fucking work 12 hours oh

0:35:14 Tom: Don't want to say this is universal but everything that I've read suggests that the big shift, because there's a big seismic shift when the kids go to high school, they go way earlier than all the elementary school. It gets, it gets earlier as they get older. And that is, and so now that the kids are, yeah, I mean the, the middle, like I wake up in the morning and I get a middle schooler off to school and I Get a high school or off to school and my high schooler is an hour earlier than my middle school.

0:35:24 Thomas: Yeah jesus jesus

0:35:26 Eli: Mm

0:35:42 Tom: And, and that is the case and elementary is even later than that like if I

0:35:42 Eli: -hmm

0:35:41 Thomas: Christ can I: opt out of that Can: I just can I: make my kids be like no I'm not doing this somehow with the school because Because fuck that.

0:35:49 Tom: Why it's not like nine to five I have no fucking idea Nine: to four Five: would make more sense

0:35:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Nine to five the hours that we have to be at work anyway so that our kids are taken care of for that time. That would be nice.

0:35:55 Tom: Right right but then you'd be talking about having sports practice from five to seven instead of from three to five or 230 to 430

0:36:05 Thomas: Just make sports the last two periods of fucking school. I don't know.

0:36:08 Tom: Just make sports The early Thing: if

0:36:10 Thomas: That too.

0:36:10 Tom: You're like that fucking like but we don't do it and so And there are many other ways that sports in many schools and school districts drives up a lot of funding that could be used for academics and other things. I in schools, I got to tell you, I fucking resent the shit out of sports so much because they control so many other aspects of the educational infrastructure and bureaucracy in ways that aren't good for the majority of the kids. They're good forthe kids that take advantage of it and everybody else eats the sports kids shit right

0:36:21 Eli: Exactly yes

0:36:11 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. This is often just one sport though. Like it's often. I know I'm defending sports. But like it's oftentimes just the fucking football program or some shit. You know there will be like mainly the football program and the basketball program. There's a lot of sports that are just. Like, I did cross country. You know, it's like there was no money in it. It doesn't take any money.

0:37:04 Thomas: And it was just a coach that, like, had a passion for it, wanted to run with the kids after the school. Yeah, I think it really varies depending on the sport. Football is the worst because, A, it is killing our kids' brains, and it takes insane amounts of money to buy all the fucking gear and stuff that they need.

0:37:01 Tom: Yeah right Absolutely. That's

0:37:12 Eli: Yeah, I was gonna say at the. Yeah. Also fails the kids a lot of the time, right? Because of the scholarship system, system, and the college football system, right? You have kids who's truly their education gets sacrificed because they are good at a sport, right. And you know, they're more, um, reporters have like talked about this stuff, but you know you think you end up talking about these things like kids who are taking quote unquote Swahili right at the college level, but they're not learning anything. They don't know any Swahilli. They just like get A's and B's sort of randomly assigned so they can play in college. And of course course colleges are making tons of money off of these kids because most college athletes are literally forbidden to be paid, even though

0:37:23 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It

0:37:55 Eli: The schools are making a ton of money off them. So yeah, I mean, there's... there's so many problematic things. One of the reasons why Anna and I actually moved to New Jersey is that New Jersey has, um, start laws in place which basically allow you to opt your children's education so that they can start later in the day with minimal extra work.

0:37:55 Thomas: Is slave labor. It is insane. It is absolutely insane. Saying that's

0:38:14 Tom: Awesome.

0:38:16 Eli: Right so there's

0:38:16 Thomas: One good thing about New Jersey.

0:38:17 Eli: Yeah

0:38:18 Thomas: Wow.

0:38:18 Eli: Least least school shootings and late start laws, are. Yeah.

0:38:21 Thomas: It's actually a paradise over there, but nobody wants to go live over there. What? The wow, yeah.

0:38:23 Tom: That's That's Tremendous. I

0:38:23 Eli: You try to navigate the traffic into New Jersey, it's like, it's fine, you can wake up at 5:30, it's mine, I know, because well, Max is officially starting preschool, and so we got a big, like, packet from the state because it's an officially licensed thing, and even starting at preschool they're like, hey, just so you know, you're entitled to this, this, this, your kid can come in at this time, and they can't be punished for it, right? They're supposed to navigate the schedule around the kid, or at the very least, they're supposed to provide them other opportunities to make up that work.

0:38:31 Thomas: You know California is a progressive state, I'm gonna, like, fucking track down, I bet you there's advocacy going on here for that, or there's a bill, I don't know about, because fuck, we got to do that that is, that's something I would genuinely put some time and effort and money into, is like trying to make that happen, but

0:39:03 Tom: Would hope so throw as a fellow non-sportser, like, raising a kid that will, I guess, be aggressively non-esportsing, do you worry about, like, because we talked about this a little bit on the masculinity episode, like, sports is a, is a sort of, like, masculinity masking tool, it's like, it's a way for, like, and and that is something that I don't have, and that ist, occasionally I've actually got a whole technique where most people can't tell, I don't know anymore, but it's taken me a long time to kind of get it, but, like, do you worry about that with the kit, with Max, about not being able to sort of, like, connect or fit in socially, masculine wise with, like, male peers as

0:39:27 Eli: Not Not masculinity. I do worry about socialization. So like, already socialization is super duper important to us, and I spend a tremendous amount of time and energy making sure that Max has healthy social networks, right? We have baby friends and people we hang out with and classes and activities, we do in communities, and I'm sort of going to let him lead the way, right? Because basically I consider it my job to serve him a little taste of all the different healthy communities, right? Kid, you like art, you like music, you like this, you like that, right? Just Right, well, I mean, except for sports, because I don't think that's a healthy community, right?

0:40:23 Thomas: Sports.

0:40:29 Eli: That's not a

0:40:29 Tom: Opposed to the arts, no, heroin and in music and the arts

0:40:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:40:30 Eli: Exactly Nothing but psychologically pure folks there in the arts, but

0:40:38 Thomas: Not doing sports. There's bad people involved. Anyway, time for your acting lessons with Kevin Spacey. I've got, I booked it. It's really, he knows his stuff.

0:40:42 Eli: Exactly. Harvey Weinstein He's a big producer son and remember your boss is your boss just yeah just like uncle Thomas told you but yeah, like offering those samples of stuff, because I found that, right, like so for me, and I had a really hard time with this as a kid, because my dad was a man's man, a state wrestling champion, right, a full scholarship football um athlete, like held, until like literally until like seven or eight years ago, he held the record at East Carolina University for most interceptions in a game.

0:40:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:48 Tom: Now you're going to want to do whatever he says to impress him to

0:40:52 Thomas: Whatever he says.

0:41:21 Thomas: Oh,

0:41:21 Eli: Like he was a, he was, uh, linebacker.

0:41:21 Thomas: Was he cornerback or what? Safety? What does he play? You don't know. You don't now, do you? Oh, middle linebacker? Okay.

0:41:28 Eli: Yeah. Like, he was an incredible athlete and he was very good at all that stuff. And so I had that very like, Oh God, I have to be good at this. I have to do this stuff. I Have to, you know, I want to be like my dad. So I tried to do all these things. And then of course, when I found theater and found the things that I was good at and the things that I loved, um, You know, I realize that the that you pursue don't have to be hard, right? Know, as much as we joke about like failure being important, and it is, right, I don't want this to be like a counter argument to failure being important because failure is important. But as much As we talk about that, sometimes people can't tell the difference between like, it's supposed to be Hard and this is not for you. Right. And so when I got into the arts and I started doing theater and comedy and stuff, and And it became so easy and so fun.

0:42:16 Eli: And challenge was a delight to overcome. Challenge felt amazing to try and push myself harder and be better, right? The way that you, like, love sports, Thomas, right. Like, there are moments that are hard in that, but it doesn't feel hard, right, it feels like pushing yourself and getting better.

0:42:32 Thomas: I think one problem here, Eli, is that I know often I'm just totally blowing smoke up your ass, but I don't think you realize how gifted you are at the thing you're good at. And I don't think this is going to apply to 97 of people like not even me. I think you are far better at what you do than I am at any sport I play, and I'm very good at sports. Like, doesn't feel that easy, you, not effortless. And I worry I'm actually just, I'm, it's, I'm really interested in this particular point here of like how much should you push your kids, how much is failure okay. Part of me, the answer to all this, often when we talk, is like, well, I think your kid is gonna drive a lot of it, you know, unless you're a fucking John Benet Ramsey's mom or whatever. You're, you're, uh, you're, what do they call those, the dance moms, or

0:42:44 Tom: Most people, yeah, yeah,

0:43:12 Eli: Sure, yeah. Murderers.

0:43:19 Thomas: Whatever, yeah, a pageant, pageant moms or whatever. Or, and I shouldn't just, you know, gender It's also the dad, the sports dads are like making their kid do, yeah, stage parents, either way. And And, unless you're doing that, but like for the most part, the kid's going to drive it.

But I'm just really interested because one thing that's been, I'll be honest, it's kind of frustrating to me, and I've had to learn over the course of my adulthood to just fucking let it go and not care, is anytime I try to teach anyone to do anything, like if any of my friends want to play a sport with me or do a whatever, I just start in, I'm like, okay, here's, especially golf, because everyone, a lot of people want to try playing golf, but nobody wants to actually do whatever you'd have to do to be any good at it.

But furthermore, they also expect they should be good at it for no reason. And one of those things can't be like, you either got to be like, oh, no, I literally don't give a shit, I'll just come swing at a ball, that's fine, whatever, that's fine, I'm going to actually try and get good at it.

0:43:19 Tom: Yeah, yeah,

0:43:27 Eli: Right, stage parents, of course.

0:44:14 Thomas: But you can't do both. You can't both be like no, I will be good and not have to actually have tried. And then you're just going to be mad and throwing clubs and shit. It's been eternally frustrating to me. Whenever I play any game, like I'll be like trying to get, you know, play fucking Crokinole with somebody who's not good. And I'll be like, okay, here's what you should do, start like, you know, and like people just don't have the capacity to sit there and like figure out what you have to do to be good at something. It drives me nuts. And they don't realize that when you're especially something like golf, but any technical sport, anything like that, you are going to spend a period of time sucking at it, and the things you have to do to do it well will feel like the wrong things at first, otherwise it would be fucking easy and anyone would do it.

0:44:54 Eli: Hmm. Yeah.

0:44:57 Thomas: If a golf swing was just whatever feels good, it would be an easy game. It's the opposite of that. It's a and

0:44:57 Eli: That's how you end up lifting weights like Tom. Well,

0:45:05 Tom: For it yeah,

0:45:05 Thomas: Like you have. It's frustrated me to know, and I don't know what it is about me or other people or whatever, and I didn't figure this out for a while, but just the ability to say, if I want to, if I want to become good at a thing, which is fine if you don't, like it's totally fucking fine, but like if I wanted to to get good at a thing, approaching it the way you would have to do to get good at it, like you have to be disciplined, like take feedback, look at what you're doing. And where that comes from, if it's really that valuable, or if it, if you can be like Eli and just only do the thing you're insanely good at.

0:45:06 Tom: Yeah, but I Gotta, I

0:45:37 Eli: I think right.

0:45:39 Thomas: Go

0:45:39 Tom: Gotta add to that, like, I, I, because I have, I have this, it's funny, Thomas, you were saying that, I, I literally wrote the same note, and it's, I think it's a really important note and something we, we brought up in another episode. I want to come back to a little bit, um, is there is a problem of talent, where I think talented people, like yourself, Eli, um, that your kids will also be talented, and that it's just a matter of finding what they're talented at. But many, many people just aren't talented in any specific focused, focused direction, that is unusual. I think it's really, really unusual. I think we have this like, oh, we just got to like nurture our kids to find the thing that they're passionate about. A lot of people just aren't really passionate about anything either.

0:46:28 Tom: Most of what we become good at for most people is what we just spend time doing. And I think to borrow a phrase that has not done well for me, with our kids, this will come down to kind of reading the room as to what they enjoy doing. Most of us are not going to be naturally gifted and passionate about any one specific thing. I really don't see that in the world at large. I see that in a really small group of highly motivated, naturally gifted, naturally talented people that I happen to know.

0:47:10 Thomas: Add to that, it's, I think it's the case for a lot of people, maybe most people that to be any good at something and for it to become a fun hobby where you're, you know, pretty good at it, whatever it might be. Eli, who can naturally do a lot of this, like being funny acting type stuff, it will be something where you have to feel like shit and fail at it a lot.

0:47:29 Tom: Absolutely. Yeah.

0:47:29 Thomas: And like for, for the average person to be able to even have the thing that you're talking about, Eli, I'm wondering if they do have to go through this failure period and it it doesn't actually feel good and it kind of sucks, but you just have to have a desire to do it. And I, my biggest fear is that my kids won't have something like that. That's actually the biggest thing I'm afraid of. I've so interested in so many different things that I can't wait, whatever they are into. I can'T wait to get into it really like truly.

0:47:30 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:47:55 Eli: I can't wait to be the biggest fan

0:47:57 Thomas: Well, yeah, I will fucking whatever they start fucking, you embroidery. I'll be like, okay, I got you the latest and greatest, whatever the fuck you do embroidery with. I don't even care, but what will kill me is if they're just not interested in anything that I truly don't know how I will handle.

0:47:57 Eli: Right it's so much fun right well and also it's fear of how does one motivate interest, right? How does one motivate a natural curiosity and passion if it's not there, right?

0:48:12 Tom: Well,

0:48:18 Thomas: Yeah. And even can you, I don'T know.

0:48:24 Tom: And I'll tell you, if you guys come up with that answer, I have got four kids that are that they're oldest stepson, Donovan, is, I think, passionate about computers. I think he really is. I think he has a talent, I don't like to use the word gift, but I think he has talent there and he's happy to spend many, many dozens of hours on his own pursuing those interests. Other three left to their own devices, if I gave all the other three the fig life, you know, the hammocks and figs life, they would all be thrilled to spend their time watching YouTube and eating figs because that's what they're passionate

0:48:35 Thomas: That's awesome.

0:48:58 Thomas: Hashtag fig life. Yeah.

0:48:58 Eli: Hashtag fig life no

0:49:06 Thomas: Yeah. I was about to ask you if it was like, oh, or is it just that they're interested in something you're not recognizing as a thing like video games or whatever? Cause I'll even go for video. Like if my kids are super into gaming, I'll be like, yeah, fuck, fuck it, let's fucking be professional gamers, okay, if they're just into watching Pewdiepie, I'm gonna kill myself, I can't yeah

0:49:12 Eli: No

0:49:12 Tom: About. They're no no my no no no not to the not to that sort of like like my stepdaughter yeah man like, like my stepdaughter is naturally very gifted at many things, but she's not deeply passionate about any of them. She can pick up, she's preternaturally good at all kinds of stuff, she can just pick up virtually anything with like no effort and be better than most people who've been doing it for a while. But it is pulling fucking teeth to try to get her to do any of those things.

0:49:24 Thomas: Yeah yeah well

0:49:49 Tom: Things. My son Finnegan is good, not great, at a number of things and he flips and flip -flops interest, but he doesn't get deeply interested in anything at all really, like he'll play video games for a while and then he'll pay magic cards for a little bit and then hell, you know, fuck around and ride his bike. But like, you know, he's just a guy, like, and I don't say that in a bad way, I say that like in a, in a loving, gentle way that like recognizes who Finn is.

0:49:49 Eli: Yeah right

0:50:16 Thomas: I think it's okay to come for that, to come on late, you know, like I don't, I don't know that as a kid I had much figured out, like I liked doing sports and getting good at sports and I was really, I like, I don't think I worked independently at much as a kid. I think it took until later to really, AND and then in my adult life I became incredibly good, for whatever reason, at picking a thing and working very hard at it, and I don't know why. And so I wonder, like, is it the right answer, Tom, do you, do you think you should be trying to like push your kids into different interests, or even though it's like, like you said, it's like pulling teeth, do you feel like you should keep trying to do it just because maybe over over the course of time.

0:50:56 Tom: I, I think to a certain, yeah,

0:50:58 Thomas: Yeah. Good.

0:50:59 Tom: Man, I Think to a Certain Degree, we have to keep pushing, but it's also, I will tell you that you can only push so hard before you start to create resentments and, and you don't want to do that either because then that, that breaks, that damages your relationship and then no new relationship to this thing is going to develop. So, yeah.

0:51:06 Thomas: Yeah, right. Right. Right, yeah, yeah. True.

0:51:08 Eli: Exactly. And Kids become afraid to tell you about interests, right? Right, if you dive every time they show a slight interest in something, you're like, "Great, I'm signing up for archaeology classes." They're like, "Fuck, okay, well you know what, I'll never

0:51:21 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah I said I liked a bone once. Yeah I ever tell you that Phoebe when we we told her about dinosaur bones and stuff like that? She was like, can you tell them to not find all of them so that I can find some of them? I was like that's that's so cute. Yeah Oh, you know what? Yeah, and that's the kind of thing that these days I'm like, yeah yeah, I'll tell them that I will tell them that, you know, fuck it. She'll

0:51:48 Eli: Hey, I've

0:51:43 Tom: That's adorable. Yeah, I'll make that call.

0:51:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:51:49 Eli: Got I've got some good news for Phoebe. All change revealing a ton of dinosaur bones. Truly, there's never been a better time. They just found like a, the biggest dinosaur ever in Europe, and it's because of climate change. So, you know, tell her like, honey, you know, I know that the oceans will rise and you'll, you know, be traveling through the wastelands fighting people to the death for water, but you know what, there's going to be a fuck ton, kiddo, of fossils. That's right, all for you, kiddo. You make yourself a little. No,

0:51:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:14 Thomas: Oh my God. I'm so sorry. Do you mind if I do a two second story? Cause I'll just forget about it and never say it again. Uh, uh, 'Cause I've told you that Phoebe just asked these mind blowing fucking questions from time to time. And I was, I think I was like cleaning my, like, our master bathroom. And she follows us up, you know, meanwhile, Arlo just fucking loafs. He'll just watch whatever. It doesn't care, but Phoebe will follow, yeah, she likes to be around people a little bit. She follows me up and I'm cleaning and she just says, she's, are the days gonna just keep going? I was like, what, what what do you mean, are the day's, I, know, and my first, so my first instinct is she probably means some kid thing, like, oh, like the weekend, I don't know. Maybe she means, who the fuck knows. I'm like, what do you, what do mean exactly? She's, are they, are they just gonna keep going?

0:52:19 Tom: No, do it.

0:52:20 Eli: Do it, No, you

0:52:44 Tom: That is a little early for that question, kiddo.

0:52:59 Thomas: I was I was like, yeah, I was like, well, and then I I'm just fucking I give her the answers because I fuck it. I'm like, Well, they will until the sun explodes and I was like, but yeah, I was like, I was like but it's a long long long long long long time from now. The sun will eventually explode, but it is way after we will be around. Yeah, she was fine with it. She was she was totally fine with it.

0:53:07 Eli: Can't, you can do that. No, no, do not yeah,

0:53:18 Tom: Good for you. Yes. Nurture her nihilism. Yes .

0:53:21 Eli: Heroin heroin and

0:53:24 Thomas: She asked me if the days would just keep going. I told you the one where she asked me the first day, right? Did I tell you that one?

0:53:27 Eli: The answer is yes, no.

0:53:34 Thomas: The answer is yes. Yes, forever. It'll be great for and happy for. No, I think because I really want her to get interested in science. So I try to give her the most scientific answer to everything. And maybe it'll backfire. She'll be like, fuck, everything's so boring.

0:53:33 Tom: No,

0:53:34 Eli: Yeah,

0:53:45 Tom: I would answer the same way, Thomas, I would, I would answer the same way.

0:53:46 Eli: John, John Green has an amazing story about telling his daughter, where she was like, something, something, you know, will the earth be here forever? And he was like, no, you know, the sun is gonna eventually envelop the earth. It'll, it'll become a ghost, supernova, and it'll be enveloped by the sun. But don't worry, that won't happen until long after you and me and everyone we know are dead.

0:54:07 Eli: Yeah, and the kid was like, and he was like, right, you do not have the, you, me, and everyone we know, our dead wrinkles in the, the brain yet.

0:54:06 Thomas: Yeah, well, that's basically exactly what I said.

0:54:18 Thomas: Oh, she did also recently ask, like, dad, when are you going to die? I was like, yeah, it's like she's tapping a wrist like, dad, are you gonna die? I was Like, yeah. I'm with you. I don't know.

0:54:19 Eli: Yeah,

0:54:25 Tom: Maybe you could hurry it up. All right, like, what do you got you guys anything Thursday? Well,

0:54:30 Eli: You and me both, kid, you and me both. And

0:54:36 Thomas: Yeah, Those I'm just like, oh, hopefully not for a very long, you know, that I give the kid answer for those ones, you know, whatever, yeah. But they start learning these things and you're, it's, you know, it is a little, yeah.

0:54:41 Eli: Gotta, you gotta

0:54:46 Tom: They're wondering them anyway. You gotta ask, you gotta answer them, because they're, it, like, they're, they're more complex than we give them credit for sometimes. So, like, giving them, like, bullshit answers, like, I don't, like, I'm not a fan of that stuff.

0:54:47 Thomas: Yeah, that's

0:54:55 Eli: Oh, I'm All bullshit answer until someone is ready to handle it. I'm also all about bullshit answers. When do we die? We don't actually, you will live forever. You will live forever and We will talk about that again in fifth grade. Fifth grade is when we're gonna have the whether or not you're going to die question.

0:55:05 Tom: That's from what fifth grade so

0:55:12 Thomas: Incredible.

0:55:12 Eli: How long is daddy going to live? Also forever. Yep. We have a magic juice in the backyard. I dig it up every 25 years. Everyone takes a sip. It's impossible for any of us to die. I want To get back to the idea of talent though. Because you know, I, I had sort of a, uh, I teach a lot of really talented kids. So the places that I teach, in sort of my side gig, it's all super duper talented kids, right? Right, it's performing arts high schools. It's like fancy schmancy colleges where there are kids that have oodles and oodles of talent. And I had a teacher who was sort of my whiplash teacher back in the day, Jamie, who said something that I deeply believe, which is that talent is common. Taste is rare. Think that talent is something that lots and lots of people have, have lots of people have little bits of talent, um, and, and that what we actually are looking at when we see someone who we call talented is someone who has developed their taste, right?

0:55:16 Thomas: Yeah, Hmm, yeah, yeah,

0:55:21 Tom: Can

0:56:06 Eli: Who has honed

0:56:06 Thomas: I told, I completely agree with that, yeah.

0:56:08 Eli: Right, who is honed that, um, natural gift into a passion, right? And the reason is, so many of the kids that I teach, right, and I would never say this to any of them, but a lot of the kids that that I teach do not want to be actors. Do not want to be performing artists. It is the thing that they were good at when they were three, and they have done nothing else since then, and they hate being on stage. You know, one of my students a couple years ago, incredibly talented young lady, but stage fright to the extent that she would spend the entire time before, during, and after a show vomiting in terror.

0:56:09 Thomas: Huh, interesting. Can

0:56:48 Tom: Shit.

0:56:49 Eli: Yeah, and so I said to her, like, hey, do you, you like this? And she was like, no. And I was like, well, there's our answer. Like,

0:56:49 Tom: Horrible.

0:56:57 Thomas: I tell you though, I, I'm that kid. Not to quite that extreme, but I'm, told you, like, how stressful live shows are for me. When only done two or three OA live shows, and before each one, the week before, I'd be like, fuck, I'm, I'm sick, I came down with something, I'd say I'm sick, I just be like, I have all these symptoms, I'm like dying, I like fucking can't move, I am, all this stuff.

And then we get done with the show and the next morning I'd wake up like, oh, I'm, what, I'm fucking I feel great like what the hell and after the second time I was like, oh, I'm just anxious out of my mind about having to like do this live show and like fucking a lot of those live shows. I feel like is on my shoulders because of the production and the the, and I just really, really, even though we're talking to, you know, 84 people in person, somehow that's infinitely more important than the tens of thousands of people we talk to twice a week. Somehow that doesn't matter. Like it's just, if two of them are looking at me, then it's like, oh my God, I'm going to die.

0:57:25 Eli: I'm I'm cured.

0:57:56 Eli: See, and I, I feel the, the opposite. I love live shows, and, and sort of, come, I am so unafraid that for those who have attended a live show, or have been witness, Tom has, unfortunate, and both of you, you have been terrible, terrible, terrifying witnesses. I come out nearly naked, or almost naked, to every live show because of how not scared I am.

0:58:14 Tom: Horrible.

0:58:17 Thomas: Part's fine. It's the, what's weird is it's the stress of of being prepared is what I, I actually don't like, I get nervous beyond stage. Once I'm I'm on stage, I feel great. It's everything. So you don't get the stress of like, oh, have I thought of enough funny jokes? Have I, whatever, you don'T get any of that Eli.

0:58:28 Tom: I

0:58:32 Eli: I try to prepare as little as possible. I try that truly just, right,

0:58:35 Thomas: Well, but you, you write out all your fucking scripts and everything. Oh,

0:58:38 Eli: Yeah, but I try use them way less than I would for other GAM shows. For instance, I almost always work off a phone rather than a laptop so that I'm moving around and depending on it less and that kind of stuff. And again, that's the idea. You know, the one place that I do understand flow state, which is that thing about like the throwing and catching and the body doing it is is that I think taste leads you to flow state. Right.

0:58:46 Thomas: Right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Oh that's interesting. Yeah yeah.

0:59:03 Eli: Is I think I think flow state is something that has developed through repetition reinforcement of of joy. I'm going to try not to sound too crazy hippy dippy but like one but of the things that I talk to about kids all the time is like the first week of my half semester class when I'm dealing with young actors and I'm specifically talking to them about how to do the industry. The first week of my class is just talking about the art they love and the art they want to be in. And an incredibly radical experience because often they are seniors.

Often they are singers who are only seeing me because I'm about to do their big industry workshop where they meet agents and managers. So it's one of the most intense periods of their already very intense arts education. And so in that moment, watching the transformation that takes place and kids when their mindset goes from what they have to do to be accepted to what they want is super duper radical and the changes I see in their work just when their mindset goes from God I hope I get it to um what do I want to do, right? You know, and again, I I use such hippy terms in my classroom, it's like vomit worthy, but one

0:59:03 Tom: Interesting Yeah

0:59:10 Thomas: Yeah I Hmm.

1:00:17 Eli: Of the things I talk about all the time is like give the gift of you, right? Knocking down doors who deserves you right now, when I talk about this stuff and when I shift that mindset in young artists, um, difference and the flow and and would be perceived as talent like ratchets up 10, 11 fold

1:00:34 Tom: I I I Wanna just, and I'm not trying to like fight you on this at all, but like I do feel compelled to point out that an enormous amount of your experience is working with artists and That is such a subset of a subset of a people and that's not most everybody out there and

1:00:35 Eli: Yes Exactly And I'm working at fancy schman's art schools too, right? Right. So it's not, I'm not going to a regular like state school and their drama department. I tend to go to like fancy schmance schools.

1:01:02 Thomas: Yeah. Well, the way I was actually going to tie it all together with, with the, with anxiety thing is after a live show. And I've gotten to this point too, where I'm like, I don't want to do that again. That was so fucking stressful. I feel like shit. It's a massive thing. And then like a couple months go by and I'm Like, we should do a live Show, you know?

And I, I, and, and with our kids really trying to tie It all together and, And confront Eli with his opinions that are terrible is I don't know that it's as simple as if your kid says, I don't like it, then never fucking do it. You know, I, cause there's a lot of things that I do that I don't that are unpleasant at the time that are stressful to go through, but that in the end, I'm so fucking glad I did them, you know?

And, and I, I think it's tough. I don't know that there's going to be an easy answer, but I'm very curious what the right answer there is with my kids. Like, how much do I push them when it seems like, you know, maybe

1:01:57 Tom: Oh.

1:01:57 Thomas: They're having a tough time, but maybe they like it. I don't know.

1:01:59 Eli: Right. Well, the importance of good stress, I mean, that's it's that's its own episode in so many ways, because because we're also straddling a very interesting generational divide with our kids. Right. Which is that we were raised that like all stress is good stress. It toughens you up and makes you strong. And like we now recognize a lot of that is toxic. But we also see a younger generation, and certainly I know I see it, a younger generation that genuinely doesn't know the difference between feeling bad and harm, right?

1:02:04 Tom: Yeah. We should talk about that.

1:02:27 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

1:02:29 Eli: So, like, for whom being confronted by that positive stress often feels like harm, and not associate it with toxicity or an ism or an ist, right, And so how we help our kids navigate, not the toxic, you know, stress that we grew up with, but also positive stress that makes you better, that encourages you, that makes you stronger, I think is such an important thing. Yeah, that's its own, you know, sure.

1:02:56 Tom: That's So funny because that feels like that feels adjacent at least to your like worries about failure about teaching the kid, like, because I mean, what are we stressed about? You know, we're stressed about, we're stressed about like the prospect of failure, at least in part. And and so, so that's, I would, I would love to have that as a longer conversation because it feels adjacent very much to your concerns about like making sure that Max doesn't experience certain kinds of failure that are sort of outside your locus of control.

1:03:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:29 Thomas: I wonder if we should pause it and, you later. Need to do SAC update. We could do the bonus story for everybody this week. We could just be like, everybody gets the bonus Story and it's SAC Update. What do you think?

1:03:39 Tom: Yeah, you want to do that?

1:03:40 Thomas: Could do that. But you were going to say something, Tom, well.

1:03:40 Tom: Yeah.

1:03:41 Eli: We're going to give everybody the sack update.

1:03:44 Thomas: We, they all, they all got part one of the sack hide

1:03:45 Eli: See, I was thinking we could hide it behind the patron wall, make them earn it, make them earn the sack date.

1:03:49 Thomas: Your sack, but

1:03:50 Tom: Hydrate. This would be the first time you've ever hidden your sack.

1:03:52 Eli: Oh

1:03:51 Thomas: They already got the so you already gave them the scare everybody away from a fucking oh

1:03:56 Eli: And it's getting it's about to get worse it's about to getting worse kids buckle in

1:03:58 Thomas: No oh no you want to hide it behind the Patron, okay? We could do that too, okay?

1:04:02 Eli: Absolutely hide it behind the wall right, gentlemen, before we go, an important question. Why don't Mexican magicians do things on the count of three so they can disappear without a trace?

1:04:03 Thomas: Okay okay

1:04:21 Tom: My god oh actually pretty good

1:04:25 Thomas: Doesn't make sense, like, there's got to be a better way to word the setup of that. I don't know.

1:04:28 Eli: I spent a lot of time on it, and I want you to know that that's the best I came up with.

1:04:31 Thomas: It's it's good it's good I love it. There's, we'll workshop it.

1:04:35 Eli: That's the the joke from now on is I'm just doing that joke every week, different iterations until it's ready

1:04:36 Thomas: Yeah you know what Eli, that was a failure. She'll never try telling jokes again because that was a failure and you can't

1:04:43 Tom: That's it you're

1:04:43 Eli: Exactly yep and you know what, it didn't feel super good, so I'm hanging up the Zencaster call and, uh, I'm retiring from podcasting forever, um

1:04:44 Tom: Done you're done

1:04:44 Thomas: Yeah retiring from podcasting oh And that's all the time we have. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, if you're a patron on patreon.com/dearolddads, you already heard the preview. It's a Sackwatch update. You know, if you're keenly interested in the goings on in Eli Bosnick's sack, I mean, you have to be a patron. Let's face it. Of course, patrons are a week ahead. The third thing is the bonus content, the monthly bonus. We've got a good one planned for you. For September. It'll be out soon. All great reasons to support the show. But hey, we get it. Not everyone can. Not anyone wants to. That's totally cool. We love you anyway. Hope you keep enjoying the show, hit us up on Facebook, you know, email, whatever it is, keep in touch and we'll see you next time.

1:05:39 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 in 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.