DOD32: Autonomy and Responsibility

Transcript

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

0:00:30 Tom: Its roommate as quickly as ditching its pants after work. I'm Tom Curry, joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:40 Thomas: I. Someone rang my doorbell and there's a bassinet and crying in there. One sec, BRB. Oh.

0:00:46 Eli: Tom Selleck!

0:00:48 Thomas: A reference to our amazing patron bonus for, I guess now, last month, probably, as you hear this. And want to put in a promo right away before I forget, because it was fucking hilarious. And if you're into the Dear Old Dads lore, lore, unfortunately you're going to be kind of missing some important lore of Tom's dad. If you don't catch that bonus

0:01:05 Eli: Yeah, there's

0:01:06 Tom: If you're not a patron, hey,

0:01:08 Thomas: Yes.

0:01:08 Eli: Important Tom's dad corrections. There's important Tom lore, right? So if you've ever wondered to yourself, what animals has Tom killed with his bare hands? You're only going to find that out over at patreon .com.

0:01:11 Thomas: Yes. Oh, live show bingo card. Tom tells us all the things he's murdered with his bare hands, and if you have the right ones in a row then you win. Would that work for a game? Oh.

0:01:31 Eli: Okay. Also, speaking of live shows, I have to give a shout out here to Chris. So Chris apparently collects collects these terrible, remember the terrible shirts, terrible shirts from a couple episodes ago. Chris apparently collects these shirts and sends them as a joke to his brother, because him and his brother Have like a toxic masculinity thing. So he sent me a Trevor, trove of these shirts, as well as links to buy them.

0:01:41 Tom: You oh Yeah. That is

0:01:41 Thomas: Yes. Yes. Oh, that's great, wait, like, sent you actual physical shirts? What?

0:01:57 Eli: Yes. He would know of, of like no pictures of the shirts. He sent me pictures with links to by them.

0:01:59 Tom: Amazing

0:01:58 Thomas: Oh Oh okay. Okay, I was gonna say, I want some fucking if anyone wants to send me those shirts, I'll give you an address to send you those shirts.

0:02:06 Eli: The, if we ever manage a live show, I have six or seven absolutely impossible shirts to present to our audience as as gifts and swag, so yeah, just uh, just be aware there's a lot of benefits to being a patron because

0:02:16 Tom: Also

0:02:14 Thomas: I cannot wait yep yep, said, um, link into the today's episode story, to, I don't know, how do we link into today's episode, uh, yes and doing and folding the shirt and ironing it yourself, maybe yeah

0:02:28 Eli: The autonomy of having a shirt about fucking your daughter is often is the responsibility, responsibility

0:02:40 Tom: So think we wanted to talk a little bit this episode, so I wrote a blog, um, about the relationship between autonomy and responsibility. It's a, this is an ongoing relationship that I just, I, I see it. Once I identified that it existed, I see it fucking everywhere, and I see it so much in these really important relational spaces with our kids, with loved ones, at work, just all over the place.

And I wanted to kind of describe what I see to you guys, see if you see the same thing, and then kind of talk about how we manage that relationally and what your thoughts are on it. So the general idea that I wrote about is that there is a direct relationship, relationship between the amount of autonomy that we seek and the amount of responsibility we have to take in, in order for us to have that autonomy.

When we're dealing with kids, they have essentially no responsibility at all when they're little. And as they get older and they begin to do more autonomy-seeking activity, I think it's only natural that as we grant them a certain level of autonomy, they also then have to take on a certain amount of responsibility that kind of marches in lockstep with their need for autonomy, so that we're not arriving at a place that is grossly imbalanced.

And I think I see all the time this imbalance in that structure between autonomy and responsibility, particularly where people want a tremendous amount of autonomy without accepting very much responsibility. And that causes a huge amount of problems and resentments and immaturities to be fostered. And I just think it's a fascinating relationship that once I saw it and I noted it, I see it at my workplace all the times. I see it in relationships all the time.

I see it in how the kids interact as they grow up and they get older and they sort of navigate that space where they're looking for more autonomy and they're pushing back on accepting some of that responsibility. And I'm just curious what you guys think of that idea.

0:04:47 Eli: Yeah, I, I really liked this blog, uh, and I agree with the, the central idea of it. In fact, I think it is a lot of the confusion that young people and old, I think that people have about the term freedom, right, is, I, as I think that people use autonomy and freedom, uh, a lot of the time, um, so therefore I think honing in on this idea of how important responsibility is when it comes to autonomy is a really important way to get people to think about the things you want to do. And I also think it's an important thing to think about as dads, it sort of enters into that like man cave, man space area as well, which I think is really interesting.

0:05:33 Thomas: I think the way you've set it up, it's, and almost mathematical, Tom, of always like a kind of a continuum, continuum where it's like the more you have of one, the less you can have of the other and vice versa kind of thing. I think that's really interesting. I Think it's really useful to think about and, and strikes me as, uh, accurate and plausible. I thinks that us, Eli and I being parents of much younger kids, I feel like we'll probably have less experience with it. I'm wondering if you have any, you know, examples that you're able to share general terms where, where, you know, this has kind of come up and has been a conflict. Cause I, I don't think, you know a little bit with Phoebe, but you know she's still so young.

0:05:42 Eli: Yeah

0:06:10 Tom: Young person. When I was growing up, I reached a certain age in my teenage years where I really felt like, hey, I got this shit, I'm, you know, 17, 18 years old, I'm an adult, I am, and I wanted this enormous amount of autonomy, I wanted all this, I wanted to see enormous amount freedom to make my own choices, to make decisions, and I wanted all this while still living at home with my dad, except, you know, like I didn't, I had not yet accepted full adult responsibilities, but I didn't understand that I was still a very dependent person that was at, the one hand, just absolutely screaming for my independence and my autonomy and didn't want anyone's, uh, so in my life and how I ran it, because by gum, I was a fucking grownup or whatever. But at the same time, no, I fucking wasn't. At the the same time, I am, I have offloaded a tremendous amount of, of responsibility onto my dad to continue to provide for me on a day-to-day basis. I wasn't self-sufficient. I wasn't actually autonomous.

I think having, I, a real Frank understanding of that and being able to sit down and say, look, I know that you want a certain amount of autonomy, but you don't live in your own home. You still live in this, you know, communal space with all the rest, rest of the family.

So you might want to wake up in the morning and do your own fucking thing and go off to school, and then go hang out with your friends and come home late at night and do whatever you want and never pitch in around the house. But that's not fair, because you don't live a fully autonomous life. You're not paying for this house. This isn't your space.

You have to pitch in and continue to be a part of the team, continue to being a part to the family in order for me to give you what you need. If my dad had understood that, we would have been able to have have a conversation that sounds more like what I just

0:06:44 Thomas: Yeah. Ah,

0:07:56 Tom: Described and I would have understood that, but instead there's that like perennial conflict that comes up. And again, once you see it you just see it all over the place. Men do this a lot with their wives, I see this all the time where they are less than 50 caregivers with their kids but they want to be 50 decision makers, and it's like no, no, that's not how that fucking works. This relationship, you can see it in so many places. It's fucking fascinating to watch, for once you see it, because there's so much conflict that comes from what I think of as a really entitled and inappropriate sense of demand for autonomy while refusing to accept responsibility. And when you refuse to accept accountability, you're asking that for you, you're saying, here, you do that work for me, I'm not doing it, but I still get to be

0:07:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I

0:08:51 Tom: A 50 decision maker and that's bullshit, pretty

0:08:51 Thomas: Have a list of demands. Yeah yeah. And the thing I was going to ask you, Tom, is everything I've heard about your dad, he strikes me, I was wondering what the conflict was because, you talked about your Dad being someone who wouldn't even give you his his opinion on anything unless you, or advice, unless you asked to, to a degree that is, you far even for me. And he strikes me as someone who would probably have wanted you to be autonomous and move out of the house at age, you know, seven and a half.

0:09:19 Thomas: So I, but those conflicts were around, like you weren't doing enough around the house. I was just wondering like what, how that came to a, so

0:09:10 Tom: Extreme Yeah. Yeah. My dad would get my dad would get grumpy because I would do exactly what I described. I thought when I was, when I was in, so 18 to 22, you know, I'm out of high school I'm in college, I'm living at home, I'm, I'm going to school full time, I'm working full time, I'm driving an hour to commute to each one. I've got a thousand things to do. And so I backburnered my family completely. So, you know, I wake up in the morning, and, you know, I'm also trying to have a social life, and so I had completely backburner all of my family responsibilities, I was basically not there at all

0:09:34 Thomas: Many tiles in the hallway that he just didn't.

0:09:59 Eli: And

0:10:00 Tom: Well, I didn't even hang out with them, you know I didn't hang out. I didn't Participate, participate. But also, yeah, I didn't do any work around the house. I didn't part- I- I would, you know, come home at- and I, I agree with my dad. I'd come home, it, you know, midnight, one o'clock in the morning, raid the fridge for whatever he had bought, and I wanted to eat, bring my friend over to hang out, you know, and offer nothing back to the system, offer nothing to the family. And, and that created tension between my dad, because my dad felt kind of fucking used, right?

0:10:03 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

0:10:18 Thomas: Yep. Yeah.

0:10:32 Tom: Like, hey, you don't hang out. We don't have a close connection because we're not spending time together. I'm providing everything for you, which is appropriate, but you're not feeding back into the system any help back to the family. Instead of being able to recognize the importance of that relationship and saying, hey, look, if you want this much autonomy, this is a fully adult level of autonomy. You get that when you're fully adult. You're not actually taking on those responsibilities of being a full adult. So you don't actually have full and complete autonomy. Instead, we just thought about it. Instead we just, we just clashed.

0:10:32 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:11:03 Thomas: Well, is because I was just going to say now you've you've think you've hit on the right concepts for autonomy, but then that switches into a pure conflict management problem. You mean, I guess understanding the conflict is part of that, but also Like in any conflict, I think being able to, especially your dad is being the more mature person and the parental figure, I, as people, just anybody in any relationship, need to be able to say, hey, here's what's going on, this is what, you know, like, here's my needs, here's how they're not being met or whatever, and here's why I think it's fair, and have a conversation, you know, and hear the other side of it, and hear like, okay, here's I think I can do, here's blah blah, instead it sounds like he took on kind of a passive aggressive tone to it, maybe, maybe.

0:11:17 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:11:47 Tom: Just don't think he fully understood what he was. I think, and I see, again, I, I see this, you to go back to the other example, I see this with dads who are maybe 20, 30% of the household work or household, like childcare and house and like interaction with the kids, but they want to be 50 -50 decision makers. And that creates problems, Right? Because they want to have a full say in something that they are a partial contributor to. And that is problematic. But most people, because they don't understand this relationship explicitly, they don't have this conversation in those same terms. And so everybody talks about what's fair for them rather than saying, look, this is a power dynamic that we just all have to figure out where we're comfortable landing together, right?

0:12:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:36 Eli: Think you both touched on something really important too, which is there, there comes a time, and Thomas, you put it so perfectly, where you do need to tell your children, hey, my needs aren't being met, because for the first however many years of your child's life, you don't have needs of your child, but as that autonomy responsibility, responsibility relationship grows closer and closer together, you do have needs of your child And and something that we've gotten a lot of emails about is sort of both sides of that relationship, right, we've got emails from parents saying, hey, I have an adult child living with me and I don't know how much freedom to give versus how much autonomy to give and what's the line to walk on that, and then we have people who are adult children living with parents that are like, hey, how do I have my freedom while respecting my responsibility to my parents?

So I think that is, I think this dynamic that you've set up, this idea of responsibility versus autonomy is so important and such a clean way to look at it that doesn't come with baggage, right? Right. Because so much of that often gets weighted down into like, well, you're being a baby, or you're being controlling, or, you know, I

0:13:01 Thomas: Yeah, especially an adult, you Or, or, yeah, as you say, being controlling. I know people who are on the other end of that, where as parents they're trying to exert too much control over an adult child even just because they live in the same house. It's like, yeah, okay, but if they're paying their rent and, or whatever, if they are contributing, you don't get to still micromanage them like they're a baby, you know.

0:14:05 Tom: Absolutely, I, yeah, think having the language to have this conversation changes our ability to have it, like, in a real meaningful way. I see this at my work all the time, it's something I've noticed that as at my, my work, as I've climbed up the food chain in the corporate world, I have so much more autonomy, so much more, but I have an immense amount more responsibility. This relationship doesn't change no matter what, how we relate to other people.

Anytime we relate to other people, I think this continues to be part of that dynamic. I was thinking the other day about my dad, my dad and, and I were talking, um, I hadn't called him, I, we've talked about this on the show before, I always, I'm the one that always calls my dad, I called my dad, and I haven't called my dad for several weeks, and I called mine just cause I got busy, and I called him, and I was like, hey, I was really sorry, I haven't, I haven't called in a while. And he said, hey, the phone works both ways, but I'm never sure when to call you because I know you're busy.

0:15:00 Tom: And I don't want to interrupt.

0:15:00 Thomas: Can we dig up my dad's corpse and have your dad tell him that the phone works both ways? Cause I don't, I don't think he ever knew. Maybe it was a technological issue. I don't think he knew that the phone worked both ways. Oh wait, no, he did know.

0:15:16 Tom: And I got one of those one-way phones

0:15:19 Thomas: He did know because he started calling my brother, his first born. He started calling him toward the end of his life. So I guess, guess he knew the phone worked both ways, but only with certain people, anyway, no, no grudge is there, uh,

0:15:18 Eli: Hey, you know, it's great vengeance for that. Read his diaries on a podcast for me to roast Thomas. Let's do this. I am how I think about, about it, 7 000 times a day I think about it seven thousand times a day the

0:15:36 Tom: But you've What

0:15:37 Thomas: Completely forgot again I completely forgot they existed, I've I think about the, the mind more than the, the papers I I need I know, I know the Kraken what is in oh man, that would be really fun if

0:15:51 Eli: Mine, sure the absolutely I

0:15:52 Tom: Is in that mind we can we do a dear old dad's field trip we've got it to the old, to the old Smith homestead

0:15:59 Thomas: You guys come to California, I'll show you all, yeah, all about it, and we can go die in a cave and become an urban legend

0:16:02 Eli: Will absolutely come to California come to California we check out the cave, I read the diaries, I hit your mom square in the stomach, it doesn't feel good, but later on we all agree it's a great idea hurt

0:16:06 Thomas: Sure oh oh no, my mom doesn't deserve, my mom is an abuse victim who you doesn't, she, she, she doesn't deserve all that sorry

0:16:18 Eli: People hurt people, look Not everyone wanted to join the Nazi party, Thomas.

0:16:27 Thomas: The phone works both ways, that's a very um, enlightened conversation that you had with your dad, and I, I, uh, wish I, I had that, that thing in my life.

0:16:30 Tom: And and I think I I think it reflects this power dynamic, right, is that my dad did not want the responsibility of calling me, and so he gives up the ability to communicate with me when he wants to as often as he would like, but it's, he's okay with it, he's, he gets it, I think, I think this, I saw it in that dynamic too, it's like, okay, yeah, I get it, like, if we don't want, want to take on. The same thing is true. I have a lot of friends where I will do the bulk of the heavy lifting and making plans and maintaining that connection.

That responsibility is on me, but then when I make plans, I make the plans I want us to have. If I'm making plans, I have the autonomy. I make plants then on my schedule when it's convenient for me and we do the things that I want. I'm okay with it because I've taken on that responsibility or that burden Of maintaining that friendship. This is like one of those relationships that I just find like fascinating and how clear it is and how frequent and how like deep this relationship continues to go.

And as my kids are starting to get older, Donovan, for example, is going to be turning 17 in a minute. My son, uh, Finnegan is going to be turning 16 in like three weeks and, you know, they want to do stuff, you know, they want to be more adult and we talk all the time and I don't explain this relationship outside of the blog, which of course I've written for them. Um, I don't explained this relationship. I don't, so I don't keep coming back. Well, you gotta read my blog, but, but I, I do,

0:16:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Oh

0:17:21 Eli: It's the best.

0:18:08 Tom: I DO talk to them all the the time about like all right well you know if you want to drive that's fine but you're not going to drive without taking on these other responsibilities related to driving you know.

0:18:18 Thomas: Man. I'm now just realizing, I think I'm going to make my kids become patrons in order to have conversations with me about anything important. Hey, if you want to know how I feel about this, son, patreon.com slash your old dad's, uh, this, yep.

0:18:30 Eli: It's little as a dollar an episode.

0:18:33 Thomas: Yep. This deep, meaningful conversation is the $3 tier by the way.

0:18:34 Eli: Tom, Tom, I was thinking about this the other day. At what age can we interview your sons? Because I would love their perspective on this dad

0:18:48 Tom: I just Oh, shit. On

0:18:52 Thomas: I want to interview his dad but

0:18:53 Tom: This or on, on, on me as a dad. I know

0:18:56 Eli: Will never say yes because dad's Hitler, right? I could crawl in the window

0:18:57 Thomas: We could trick him into it I think we could trick him into it

0:19:00 Eli: Right we could be

0:19:00 Tom: My I'm not telling my dad about this because you keep calling him Hitler and now I don't want him to listen to the show.

0:19:01 Eli: I mean

0:19:05 Thomas: No, I'm, I'm saying we we entirely just use deceit. Like, hey, we have a survey for the government. We have some questions. I don't know when would

0:19:06 Eli: Yeah we just, uh, yeah it's, me, I, your dad is definitely a long census guy. We could do that entire interview and, oh, well, no, that's what I, I said I would do a long sentence, so here I come on in. Don't sit on any of the chairs or I'll throw them over the fence. And then we just sit there. We could get it. But when can we interview your sons?

0:19:28 Tom: I have no idea.

0:19:32 Eli: Is it 18?

0:19:32 Tom: I don't know. If they would be open to it, I would be interested. I would, would be open

0:19:36 Eli: I'll be so.

0:19:36 Thomas: You let us interview Max. Eli, I'll put the question to you.

0:19:39 Eli: What? Can interview Max as soon as he can consent. You can't interview Max.

0:19:43 Thomas: Oh, okay, I, it was a gotcha question, but I guess not, not Eli's like, he's right here.

0:19:46 Eli: Oh, no, he got it. He's got enough to deal with with his dad.

0:19:49 Thomas: I'm putting him on mic right now. Ask him

0:19:46 Tom: To it. Right

0:19:50 Eli: Yeah, you know, a lot. Are you kidding? He'll love Dear Old Dads. He'll be like, oh, thank God. It's just Dear Old Dads. It's Just, I thought someone was going to ask about my dad's humor before 2010. But nope, nope. It's Just Dear Old Dads. It's Just Dear Old Dads.

0:19:51 Thomas: Uh nice.

0:19:53 Tom: Yeah I Wonder if they think, like, I just got a text. It's funny because I just got a text message this morning, or this early afternoon, from Finn, who, like, he wants to go buy some magic cards, so, but he doesn't want to run out of money. So what he texted me was whether or not he could do some extra chores this weekend to earn some extra scratch. So I think like he understands. And so does my son Donovan. Donovan also understands because he'll ask me the same thing. He'll say, Hey, I'm trying to save up to buy this thing for my girlfriend. Can we come up with some extra tours around the house to do? And say, I like that relationship that we have. I like, cause it, yeah, it feels right to

0:20:27 Thomas: God,

0:20:40 Eli: Great.

0:20:41 Thomas: Is great. I need to tell this just because it's so funny how many of the variables are the same but the actual, or the, like, the details are the same but the actual, like, dynamics are different. When I was in high, when, when I first got into magic, in, in high school, I had introduced to it earlier, but I never really played it. And then, as a senior, I had some friends who were good at it. So I was having fun.

Basically, it was a fun thing I got into with my friends, my theater friends, and so we're playing. And not only would it never occur to me in a million years to think I could get money from my parents for doing the slave labor that I had to do for them all the time, time, so not only was that just implied, that that's always slave labor, the only way I was able to buy some cards is by, my mom had been, uh, her old age, she used to make all our lunches, but I don't know how she did it, four fucking kids, in, in my older years, she would just give me five bucks for, to buy lunch at the high school thing, which actually was enough to buy lunch back then, I don't think anymore, and uh, so

0:21:38 Eli: Tell me you didn't just go hungry. Please tell me you didn't just go hungry.

0:21:42 Thomas: So the way I bought some magic cards was just not, not eating lunch.

0:21:42 Eli: Oh, God, it's so sad, Thomas. It's so sand.

0:21:47 Thomas: Yeah. Just, just

0:21:46 Tom: Oh, oh I would have no magic cards

0:21:49 Thomas: Found a way to get by not eating lunch. I don't know.

0:21:52 Eli: Can I say, let me say, your two tragedies are very different, because Tom's tragedies I never see coming, right? Tom would have been like, so it turned out there was a janitor who needed a tooth pulled, so I went down to the basement, and he had this whole police system head up.

0:22:07 Thomas: Yeah, you really don't know where the story is going to go with Tom. You really don t.

0:22:10 Eli: You never know where a Tom

0:22:11 Thomas: Yeah I

0:22:12 Eli: Story, and you always know where Tom's story is going. It's just an inevitable.

0:22:16 Thomas: Don t know. You didn't predict bag of cheeseburgers. You guys didn't predict bag of cheesburgers give

0:22:18 Tom: No, I did not

0:22:20 Eli: It's true, we did not predict Bag of Cheeseburgers.

0:22:20 Tom: Predict bag of cheeseburgers

0:22:21 Thomas: Me some you didn t predict dig a hole where the dog used to live. There's some there's some flair in there, there, but overall I agree. Yeah, no, my, yeah,

0:22:29 Tom: Yeah every once in a while it gets worse than we imagined and

0:22:32 Eli: Yeah.

0:22:32 Thomas: It was a bit of ingenuity because, as I have never been a morning person, I've talked about this. I struggled to go to school on time, like to just get up. My dad would just leave me. Oh, I didn't tell you about this.

Um, mom had to go to school cause she was a teacher at the school, she had to go to school at like fuck face in the morning, I don't even know, seven, so an hour that I was not going to exist at that hour, like she tried to get me to go with her, and by the way, my dad tried to get me to do that because then he wouldn't have to take the, you know, four minute drive that it took to take me to school, the one fucking thing he would have to do in that day, in which he did nothing because he just stayed at home and watched TV and did nothing, and so he would try to get me to that, but it was like, all right that wasn't going to happen, I couldn't get, get up that early, it was just impossible, and so he was taking me and my little sister to school and I just, I couldn't wake up, man, I couldn't do it, and so he started just leaving me at home and I had to run

0:23:27 Tom: What?

0:23:27 Thomas: Like miles to school.

0:23:29 Tom: Wait a minute. He didn't wake you up.

0:23:31 Thomas: He'd know he tried, he tried to wake this, this one's not really on him to be honest, but nah,

0:23:32 Eli: No. Oh. No, Thomas, so far, too far, it's definitely on him if he left you

0:23:40 Thomas: He, look, it was only, only like two miles to school and wouldn't get up, I wouldn't wake up, I don't know, I've got this one's at least a push, yeah.

0:23:48 Tom: I mean, if you just, okay. All right. If it would make me, I get the kids up in the morning I can't imagine if I just couldn't, it makes me crazy to wake them up in the morning when they're like having a Thomas day, like where they just won't move, but I like, there's no world where I wouldn't get them up, like I can imagine failing, failing Did

0:24:02 Thomas: Oh, I remember why I started this story, this

0:24:10 Tom: Your dad, not do ice cubes, wait a minute, did your dad not to ice cubes?

0:24:13 Thomas: Oh, Is this referencing the latest god awful movies, because that was, uh, that's a certain horror

0:24:13 Tom: No, My Dad, My dad would do, if, if I would not get up When I was at... when I was in high school, wait,

0:24:17 Thomas: Oh, my god, Eli,

0:24:17 Eli: Oh, my god, it's all happening, oh god, now we know where Vanilla Ice got the idea.

0:24:24 Tom: Wait, wait, what?

0:24:22 Thomas: Anyone Who's also listened

0:24:28 Tom: I don't even, I don't know, we're talking about, right, but

0:24:29 Thomas: Yeah, the latest got all the movies, anyone who's listened to that, um, this is, it's all coming together, this is this is insane, that's all it takes I

0:24:33 Tom: My my dad and I only did this once or twice but like because my dad didn't wake me up very much, like, we were supposed to get ourselves up, so my dad had to go to work, but if something, something, and my dad had to get us up and we just would not get up, he didn't make a fuss about it, he would just walk into the kitchen, grab an ice cube, put it down your shirt, and then boom, you were up, you were like, no problem, just grab some ice cubes, throw them down your skirt, and then there you go, he's woken you up in a second what

0:24:59 Thomas: Mean it's not no

0:24:58 Eli: Not as bad as Vanilla Ice but it's uh Vanilla

0:25:01 Thomas: Not as bad as Vanilla Ice also I'm curious oh, we can't talk about it on the air

0:25:02 Tom: If Vanilla Ice still?

0:25:04 Eli: In the latest scam we talk about, there's a scene where Vanilla Ice wakes a girl up by shoving an ice cube in her mouth, and I think about it every day. It's horrifying.

0:25:10 Tom: Jesus.

0:25:11 Thomas: It's it's even worse than that, but the reason I started this story was this desire to actually play Magic the Gathering was apparently so much, I took to preparing my own lunch either, and I probably, probably didn't get up in the morning, if I'm being honest, I probably like sneakily made like a peanut butter sandwich or some shit, uh, at night or like maybe real quick in the morning in order to be able to still eat, but have that five bucks to buy like one and a half packs of magic cards. So, uh... you know, innovation. Uh...

0:25:31 Eli: It's... Except for that one day when Dad weighed the peanut butter. Then we all had to go out to the butterfields and grind until the morning came.

0:25:46 Thomas: No. He I wanted to ask you guys though, and it's, it's related to this, I think it's not exactly, uh, identical, so if you don't, if you want to go down this road, it's, feel free to veto, but I watch a show called Better Things, do you guys know the show Better Things, oh, it's a show with Pam Adlan, she's, uh, you know, her voice, she's, has a really fun, but I love her voice acting, she's been a bunch of cartoons and stuff, Spinelli from Recess, and anyway, she actually, um, the show started because she was, uh, in Louis, with Louis CK, and so he kind of helped her create this show, and then like, there was a whole thing where, you know, she kind of had to distance, and anyway, the show took on a real life of its own, and essentially it's, she's a single mom with three daughters, and it's very autobiographical, I think, and she's very put upon, she's very, you know, struggling and all that, and the one thing that bothered, I love the show, the one thing that bothers me is how much she allows her daughters to completely disrespect her, but she kind of pushes back, but so much of it is, well, as the mom, it's, that's my role to be able to take all the shit in the world, and I want to know, it's related to this, I want to know at what point, and I'm curious your views on this, kind of balancing the fact that, yes, you are a parent, you are, you know, obviously my daughter Phoebe has meltdowns and screams, she hates us all the time, now it's a regular occurrence that, help happens, she goes to them, because for kids and toddlers, or whatever that age, that everything that happens that's wrong, like they don't get the dessert they want, is the, is the Holocaust, because they have no life

0:26:03 Eli: No.

0:26:03 Tom: No.

0:27:21 Thomas: Experience, and so they reach for, like, what's the most devastating thing, yeah, you've murdered my family, so therefore I hate you forever, you know, and so I get it, I'm, that's, you know, that doesn't really bother me.

0:27:25 Eli: They really do, it's the, the fucking worst I was at the, I was at Thanksgiving, one of my younger cousins, this is related, I promise, her mom was like, oh, can you just wait a second, and she said to her, you're not the mother I want because she's she's reaching teenage years and my, my sweet, sweet cousin was just like teenagers and I was like, fuck her, like it's my I Miles, I, I

0:27:43 Tom: Oh, ouch.

0:27:44 Thomas: What? Oh my God. Yeah, no, exactly. That's exactly, that's exactly what I want to talk about, because there's an age, obviously Phoebe's five, I think that's pretty much, I have to put up with whatever, now I, you know, I try to talk to her when she's being really mean to Lydia, especially like if Lydia does something nice to her and she has a meltdown as mean, I do talk to, I'm like, hey, you knows, your mom did this nice thing for you, I think it's, you know, those kinds of things, but by and large, like I get it, she doesn't have control over this stuff, whatever, when you're talking about a teenager, or let alone an adult kid, and they're disrespecting you in a serious way, I wonder how you guys think about that, like at what point do they, it's related, it's like, how much does the parent then get to transition into, hey, are my needs being met here, or you know, or is this a, the thing, like how much of that do you think is acceptable to take as a parent, and for how long, because what you just said, Eli, if a teenage kid said that to me, I'd be like, oh, well, you're fucking nothing, you get nothing now for it, no car, no, seriously, I'm not even joking, like that's not an okay, I have that mindset, which is when they are of a certain age, there will be things that are not okay to say, and by the way, because I'm their parent, because they're, they're a kid, I will absolutely forgive them the moment they're like, yeah, you're right, sorry, yeah, okay, move on, forgive, give them, that's fine, I'm not gonna hold a

0:29:07 Thomas: Grudge for it, but like, I want to, in the moment I will make clear, like, that's not okay, you now are losing the following privileges or whatever it is, because you can't tell me I'm the dad you want because I took too long to fucking pass you the potatoes or whatever the hell you're talking about, so how do you guys look at that kind of thing?

0:29:07 Eli: Would love some, because I don't know, and I, and, I don't know how and when you roast back, because that's my worry, is like, oh, you want to say mean shit, kid? Guess who, I just raised $400,000 for charity saying mean shit my son, come on in, you just stepped into the lion's den, I am the Mike Tyson of saying mean shit, and I've been here your whole fucking life, I'll go live on Instagram right now, I'll get a thousand likes on roasting you right fucking now, I'm on stage at your prom and do a tight 10 about how much you suck

0:29:41 Thomas: Oh wow poor Max was kind of kind of mad and said something, you know, in anger in a moment, and all of a sudden he's doxed and canceled online in front of millions of people. Yes.

0:30:05 Eli: That's My issue is like, so right now my policy is that I don't do any, and it needs to stop, because they do, I don't do any parenting, I just talk to Max. Like he's an asshole whole friend of mine.

0:30:18 Thomas: Okay.

0:30:21 Tom: Nope.

0:30:21 Eli: Yeah. So he'll be like, I'll be like, you want a juice pouch? And he'd be like. And I'll be like okay, you said you wanted a fucking juice pouch, dude. Like you don't want a juicy pouch. You don't have to have a fucking dude. I just walk away. So I need Tom. I need your guidance. I need your answers on this, especially

0:30:38 Tom: I, you know, It's funny because we, with the disrespect thing, I, I'm, I think it depends, and this is like, I know I give this answer a lot, it depends so much on who your kid is and where they're at and like your, but like, I, I think, I think that's a good thing, I think it's entirely reasonable to look at, like, I wouldn't look at Finn the same way and expect the same things from Finn that I would expect from, let's say, Aislinn, for example. And I don't know that I'll expect the same thing at the same age from Aislinn than I would expect from Finn. Because Finn, from a relatively young age, has had a pretty strong and kind of a precocious amount of emotional maturity.

Aislinn struggles and has struggled to have that same kind of emotional self-regulation and that's just part of the life that she is living in, and I think it would be a really fucked up thing to do to sort of like take that personally, or to not recognize that and say like, okay, look, her emotional self-regulation is something that is a challenge for her, that she doesn't like about herself. And if I am reactive

0:30:47 Thomas: Well Yeah Of course Yeah

0:31:43 Tom: To that, we aren't going to get any further. I'm not actually going to parent her. What I'm going to do is create a system of punishments for somebody who cannot control the behavior because they've not matured into that part of themselves yet. And then we're going to have conflict, and we're going to just have this really dysfunctional space together. So I don't do that. I don't do that. It can be very difficult. That's easy to say. It can be very difficult not to be reactive to disrespect, disrespect is like a huge trigger for me and my reactivity personally, and I have worked very, very hard on not showing that trigger, yeah

0:32:21 Thomas: Well This is interesting I think I maybe disagree, okay, I just realized, like, as I'm glad we're having this conversation, because it's something that I think I, my brain finally decided to like put into words as you were talking, I was like, oh, I think I know what I think about this, here's how I am approaching it, and as with all things I could could be fucking wrong. And I'm definitely open to like, maybe I'm wrong, I should change. But I am realizing that in this, in this kind of thing, even today, even with my kids at this age, I look at myself as, you know, that MMA dummy that they have. That's just the torso with the, you now like that rubber thing. I am that, but for, yeah,

0:32:53 Tom: Yeah Uh -huh

0:32:57 Eli: Sure. I thought you meant Joe Rogan until you said with the rubber until you said with the rubber you were describing Joe Rogan, yeah, just so you know, right

0:33:00 Tom: Same thing Yeah tomato tomato Eli tomato tomato right

0:33:02 Thomas: Same guy. No, an actual no I'm not, that I'm, I'm a, I'm a dummy, I'm a training dummy for interacting in the world, because that's what we're trying to, we're trying to help our kids be able to interact in the world, and so what I, here's how I look at it, and this is interesting because I think it's maybe different than what you're describing, even today, even with this young, but especially when they're older, I am, I will sit there as the emotional training dummy, and let's say Phoebe, even today, she'll do something crazy and say something that is insane, like, like, you're not my, you know, I hate you, you're the worst dad, whatever.

She goes to 100 instantly if we don't read the book she wanted. You know, it's just, obviously it's crazy talk. But what I don't do is ignore it and say, well, she's a kid. I'm a dad. Just totally ignore it. Here's how I look at it. I look At it as, all right, I'm your training dummy. I'm going to provide you a little bit of feedback of what this interaction would be if it was a real person. Just a littlebit. But with the understanding that like, it's not real, I'm not really like, wow, you insulted me on fucking leaving the house and driving. You know, it is like, hey, that

0:33:42 Tom: Right.

0:34:13 Thomas: Phoebe, yeah, I toss her over the fence with, oh no, it is a call forward, back, side. No, and I think as they get older, I think that is what I would do in that teen situation that you described. I would say, wow that is fucking inappropriate to tell me right now, even though I just delayed for one second. Go to your room or whatever, whatever. Like that's, I would provide that, but also with the recognition that I am a training dummy. I'm, that is not a, I'm not being a real other person in which if you said that to any random person, they'd be like, wow, fuck you and leave, you know, like, but

0:34:13 Eli: This relationship is over

0:34:48 Tom: Yeah,

0:34:48 Thomas: I want to give them a little bit of that feedback with the safety valve, the parachute of, I will instantly put my feelings aside the minute it feels like you're, you're hearing the message of this, and all is forgiven, and I love you, and, you know, trying to give them that, that's how I think of it, what do you think about that? Yeah.

0:34:49 Eli: Oh

0:35:08 Tom: I I think, I think that will depend in large part on who the kiddo turns out to be as a teenager. And I know I, because, because in a moment where everybody is emotional, she won't be prepared to hear that feedback in a way that's constructive when people.

And I also think that with young people particularly, and teenagers are not much different than toddlers in the sense that their emotional regulation is still very much forming, their frontal brain is still very much physically being formed, their impulse control is low. These are not like mini-adults, and they spend a huge amount of their day fronting a self, an appropriate self, to all these other people in their life. And then they come home.

And I'll tell you what, adults do this shit all the time, too, they come home. Because home is their safe space. At home, they feel much more comfortable. And I don't think it's right, but it's true. They feel much more comfortable lashing out or lessening their grip on that emotional self-regulation that they've struggled to maintain all day. So I think if you've got, like if you just have of like straight up, out of the blue, apropos of nothing disrespect, that's fucking wild shit, but I'd be honest

0:36:15 Thomas: Yeah

0:36:26 Tom: I've never seen it, I've literally never in my life seen it, but it was it apropo of nothing, just like everybody's eating cranberries and potatoes, and just like he's like clinks the glass and says, oh, I just want to make an announcement here, you're not the mother I wanted, or was there conflict leading up

0:36:26 Thomas: Well what Eli just described is that's what I was going off of, wow

0:36:38 Eli: Yeah oh man these the screaming the screaming of the teenagers in my family when I would say the stuff that I have witnessed teenagers saying to their parents in my community, I, I feel like the Curries would just like pack a single suitcase with a possum hammer and a duck and just walk off into

0:36:54 Thomas: Oh

0:37:02 Tom: Yeah

0:37:02 Thomas: The Smiths would have the Smits would have murdered them, they wouldn't be a lot, this was a very funny thing about growing up, as I did, when I would witness other families, the slightest disrespect toward a father figure in that way, we would just be like, oh, so that person's dead now and they're buried and no one even remembers that they were ever alive. That's what happened to them. Yeah, I don't know what the right answer is.

0:37:17 Tom: Same

0:37:22 Eli: Yeah also don't know what, because I, I know it wasn't allowed in my house right knew what the consequences were for me

0:37:28 Tom: Yeah

0:37:27 Thomas: Yeah. Oh yeah, that'S true. You said that if you ever disrespected your mom at all, your dad would, you go after you about that.

0:37:31 Eli: Yeah it was he would He would. He was absolutely zero tolerance about any of that kind of stuff. Because I remember being there once at Thanksgiving when my cousin called her mom a fucking bitch. And me just being like, well, I guess the house burns down now. Like, to me, you might as well, literally, if you had stood up and cut yourself in half with the carving knife, I would have been like, Well, at least she didn't call her mom fucking bitch, am I right? Like, at last she did something reasonable and normal. Now there's two of her.

0:37:35 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah really

0:37:46 Tom: Jesus Christ so But wait, oh, I gotta ask, and I don't, I'm not trying to dig too deep into someone else's dynamics, but like, I have a hard time believing that that behavior exists on its own, apropos of nothing, with like, so in other words, It's like my dad, I never yelled at my dad ever. I've never one time sworn at him or yelled at him, but also he's never yelled at me. He's never sworn at me. I know other people where their parents yell at them, their parents like, like yell, yell, like raise their voice and yell at them. Their parents belittle them or their parents curse at them. Right.

0:38:19 Thomas: Yeah that's every day what are you talking about hmm

0:38:42 Tom: And it's, if that's how you treat your kids, if confrontation is your style, then you should expect confrontation in return. Why in the world would you ever expect something different than what you model? That's insane. That's just genuinely Bad parenting and a bad understanding of human dynamics. So I don't believe that it is likely that this disrespect originates organically from this teenager in a household that does not contain it in other spaces. And if it does, then the thing to do is to take that kid to therapy because it makes no sense. I would immediately be like wow, this is insane.

0:38:52 Thomas: Yeah huh

0:39:21 Eli: Yeah

0:39:21 Thomas: This is so you're saying what were the parents wearing, basically, basically no interesting

0:39:27 Eli: Yeah

0:39:27 Tom: Yeah I am because yeah, what are you modeling, what

0:39:28 Eli: I mean I will say this in both cases, these are two of the gentlest parents in the history of time, and I know because the one child, the fucking bitch child, grew up to be the parent in the you're not the mom I want story, so I don't know, what there's something genetically happening, but oh

0:39:30 Thomas: Interesting ah yeah Tom, I think you're judging off a very specific experience that isn't oh

0:39:54 Tom: I'm saying is I would then take the kid to therapy if we're giving advice, which is what I think we're doing here. How would you handle it? I would say alright, well that's not behavior we model, that is not reasonable I would take you to therapy I wouldn't

0:39:55 Thomas: Oh well then I mean that's kind of what I'm saying then I don't know about that, I mean maybe therapy but like that's what I'm saying is, is I want to provide a reaction and here's actually my problem with the thing Eli described with his parents, I think that there's a bit of martyrdom maybe or or a weird like gender thing with with your daddy, like where I don't think it should be wrong to disrespect your mom because she's your mom, I think it should be wrong to disrespect your mom in the exact same way it should be wrong to disrespect your dad because they're a human being and I want to model that we need to treat all human beings with respect like

0:40:08 Tom: React to it

0:40:39 Eli: I'll be clear, my dad wasn't doing it for gender based reasons. My dad

0:40:42 Thomas: Sure

0:40:42 Eli: Did it because my mom was his favorite person in the world. And you just didn't talk to. Nobody in the world ever got to talk to Liz that way. It wasn't about like a philosophical thing. He was just like no one ever anywhere. Ever gets to be not nice to Liz. That's my philosophy. Everyone else. If I had been like stomping on a possum outside. He would have been like I don't know what that possum did.

0:40:50 Thomas: Sure but but how did he, how did he, um, treat that with himself? Like, how did he like, were you, did you disrespect him or if you did like, I guess I'm saying I disagree with the massive disparity in reaction for whatever reason, like of the double standard, you know what I mean? Like, that's all I'm saying.

0:41:19 Tom: Yeah.

0:41:19 Eli: Any double standard is definitely a bad idea. Yeah I mean he and I, he and I fought less than my mom and I fought, my mom and I fought a lot. When I was a teenager, and Tom's point, because I needed therapy, right, I was just a mentally ill kid in Just a tremendous amount of pain, and then they were, were like, "Hey, what if you took this pill every morning?" And I was like, "Oh, hey, Mom, I'm so sorry I was literally sobbing at you about the things you said that had nothing to, it turns out it has nothing to do with you, uh, I actually, I can do my math homework just fine, as I just kind of do, with you.

I'm just gonna take these pills every day forever, and then I won't sob about that anymore. Um, so yeah, like that was definitely a part of it, but yeah, my mom and I fought, fought when I was a, a teenager. And again, not like yell and scream fought, but we just said, I said, not she, I say this like my poor mother participated. I said incredibly nasty shit to my mom when I was a teenager.

0:41:28 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:34 Tom: Right.

0:42:15 Thomas: Interesting.

0:42:15 Eli: Uh, and once, once or twice to my dad in ways that I deeply, deeply regret. Um, yeah, no, they, they handled it. They well. My dad handled it better than my mom did, because my mom's like me in that, like, we are big feelers and didn't have, didn't have the same ability to put distance between those moments and herself in the way that I think would have been healthier for her. She, like, was, she was hearing and listening to me, like, my words mattered, and I think part of it is, you do need to be like, I do think part of this is, you do need to be able to be like, hey, teenagers are assholes, right? Just like four-year-olds are assholes, this is not something this person means, doesn't matter how erudite they are, doesn't care how well spoken they are, this is just brain wrinkles forming. And by the time we got around to Lily, who wasn't nearly as much of a jerk as I was, I think we had a handle on that much better, and so the fighting was much, much less of a thing. Oh,

0:42:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:10 Thomas: That's interesting I, because, can't tell where, if I'm different than you guys or not in what my approach is going to be, because I really, I think I will be modeling more of, like, here's what I think an objective reaction to your words would be in the real world kind of thing. Let's deal with a hypothetical just to, just to, like, be able to understand the approaches here, let's say, Tom, let's say it's whatever, we can't introduce the previous fight family dynamics, it's hard because I know the context matters a lot, but, like, let's say your teenage, uh, kid, let's say you did something as a parent, you did, you went out of your way to, I don't know, make your kid a meal or do something extra, you did, made some effort to to make your kid happy. And they did the proverbial or whatever, like typical looking a gift horse in the mouth. And like, oh, I hate them, you know, in a disrespectful, dismissive way. Do you look at it as, well? Teenagers, I'm just going to fucking, you know, they say stupid things.

0:43:40 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:43:55 Tom: No.

0:44:09 Thomas: I'll take.

0:44:09 Tom: I'm not saying I would let it go, yeah.

0:44:10 Thomas: Yeah. Whereas I would be like, OK, you really hurtful to me. I would weren't your parent, like I would never do a nice thing for you again because because of the way you treated me at that. I may, but not my mind, not put it that stark, but I would be, I would want to provide the feedback of like, hey, if somebody does something for you, like, I am really not going to want to do something nice for you again, based on that reaction you just had, you know, that's what I'm talking about. Like being that training dummy of like, hey, this is, that's really hurtful. Like what you just said. And I couldn't tell if you guys were saying, when you say like, oh, kids say bad thing, teenagers say bad things, how you meant meant that, like what that meant for your behavior.

0:44:11 Tom: Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

0:44:45 Tom: Well, so, what I, well, yeah, okay, so it's a great question, so, and I, I like the, the way you phrase it. So yeah, I'm, you and I are very, so let's say I, I mean, because we're getting to that age, like let's say I bought a kid a car and they grumbled about giving him the wrong car and he should have used car, whatever, right, I

0:45:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:02 Eli: It's like those TikTok videos.

0:45:03 Tom: Yeah, absolutely, I would be like, "Oh, I guess I didn't buy you a car then." So you don't have to worry about that actually, this.

0:45:07 Thomas: Yeah, I know. Like that's, I would, if it's that extreme, I'd be like, oh, this car doesn't exist anymore.

0:45:13 Tom: Be like, "You don't have to worry about that," and I guess I just have an extra car, car to drive around. Now, would I go like full my dad, which if I had ever dreamed of doing it, like my dad never bought me a car, but like if I hadn't done something like that, my dad would have been like neat and like immediately sold it. And that would have been the end of that conversation. We never would have revisited that conversation for all of time.

0:45:36 Tom: I would not do that. But would I withhold the car for a while until they came to me and we had an honest discussion about why that was rude? Absolutely. I would.

0:45:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. That's what I mean. Like you're giving, you're, you'll be in that training dummy. You're, you're given them the safety valve of I that's what want to do. I want to provide you a bit of what the real world reaction would be to your behavior, but with the safety parachute of, of, I love you, I'm your parent, I'm going to let you recover from this with full grace. Like I'm not gonna, oh, it reminds me of the time you fucking, you know, and I hold it against you forever. I'm gonna give you that grace of like, you had a bad reaction, but if you've come to turns with it, realize, you and that was a bad response, and apologize, here's your car.

0:45:45 Tom: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:46:15 Tom: And I also, I would just add, like, I try really hard not to meet a confrontational style or, or an emotional style with my own mirroring emotions. And, I, I am much better at that, um, I've gotten much better that, at that over the years. I try to maintain a very even temper, um regardless of how I'm feeling, I might be like, fuck you. What are you talking? You know, but inside I feel that way outside. I try never to do that. Cause I do think that kids learn a confrontational style from the style that their parents show them, um, in both how they confront each other, how they deal with problems interpersonally, and then how they manage conflict and what they see. I don't think it's always going to translate into, I will also do the same thing. But I do think that if you confront them with additional aggression or emotional immaturity, I'm the grownup.

0:46:22 Thomas: Mm -hmm, yes, mm

0:47:10 Tom: My job is to be emotionally stable. Can't expect my kids to be more emotionally stable than me. That's insane.

0:47:10 Thomas: -hmm.

0:47:11 Eli: Hmm. Okay. Well, That's too far, it's

0:47:20 Tom: That is insane.

0:47:20 Eli: Ridiculous.

0:47:21 Tom: That's just a crazy person thing to do.

0:47:21 Thomas: What do you think, Eli? What would you

0:47:22 Eli: On the out wait on the outside or on the inside side, because that's okay, that I can do, never mind with truth, because I'm a barely held together pile, remember the oogie boogie in Nightmare Before Christmas that was just full of bugs

0:47:26 Tom: Well, on the outside, you can feel whatever you want want to feel, but you don't demonstrate that. Right.

0:47:23 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, My kids are currently obsessed with that, that's so funny, yeah.

0:47:41 Eli: Yeah I'm that with mental illness, so I, but I could be held, like, what I'm thinking about right now as I say this, because I, all jokes aside, and, like, making my jokes with Max about his juice pouch pouch aside, like thinking about the way I fight with Anna, the way I argue with Anna. And I have never raised my voice to Anna. I probably never will raise my voice to Anna. I instead go into therapist mode or panda karate, as she will often call it, where I start doing the robot very slowly as I get very meta and talk about, well, these are my feelings, here's what I think you're feeling, blah blah blah So that is, I hear that and I want to do that, but I feel like, and again, my son's never told me he hates me, I don't know how, I guess I'll have to be able to do it when he'll be like, I hate you, I'll just robot, I'll just robot panda hands explain How?

0:47:45 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You have to you You have too, yeah. Oh.

0:48:34 Eli: But then do you go somewhere and cry, Tom? Like, what do you do with all your emotions, am I gonna have to take more pills, Tom, because I'm, I'm reaching a Chemical point, yeah.

0:48:38 Thomas: Men, I Maybe. So It's couple of times where it was actually, I'm trying to remember the details. Sometimes it's so obviously just hyperbolic. You're just like, all right, that doesn't affect me. She's doing a bit. She is doing her dramatic bit and it's kind of silly enough that you're like, I don't really take it. But there've been a few where the way she had a meltdown was like a little tough to deal with. Like, wow, that felt, or been a couple of times where it's been challenging and it's, it's hard. I've told you about the times where I had to get really mad at Arlo or I felt like I did cause I had no other fucking option and I'm a, flawed you person. And this was how I dealt with it at the time. Oh God, that might not have been a show story. I might've just told you that.

0:49:23 Thomas: Well, anyway, let it suffice to say I've had rough times. No, I think I told that on the show anyway, um, no, it's not easy, I think that that I, we also have to allow that we are, we're, we're not going to be able to be perfect robots who react perfectly in every day, adding together, being tired, being overworked, being, what, like, we're flawed people, we just need to be able to even, as parents

0:49:23 Eli: That's

0:49:37 Tom: No, but then if you're not Eli, you apologize, you know, then if You're not a lie, you apologize.

0:49:43 Thomas: Yeah. Come to to come to terms with that

0:49:45 Eli: Right oh what's that there's this little girl in the park who agrees with you, Tom, was this was this little girl on the ladybug, you'd like to agree with, Tom, you

0:49:55 Tom: I,

0:49:51 Thomas: But I also, thank, Eli, I, when Max gets to that age, I think there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, and I do this with Phoebe when she, she goes into her mode and she says, like, you're the worst parents, I hate you so much. And I say, Phoebe, that really hurts my feelings. Know, like, I feel like that's, that's, I'm not, I'm like being, I don't know, I'm, I've been, I haven't been, but I'm providing to her a little bit of here's how I think an objective human would react to this a little, but she's five. So I'm giving her just a little dose of like, Hey, that, that that's not okay.

0:50:23 Eli: Give him a little dose that's

0:50:25 Thomas: Don't you think I mean

0:50:25 Eli: Cool

0:50:25 Tom: Yeah. But that helps her build her empathy. That that's, That's empathy practice. I think that's important. The, the other thing I want to add, and I think this is a really important thing that I I always have to remember, even though I hate that this is true. I genuinely hate that this is true. It is still true that the closer we are with people, as a general rule, the more frequently people, and the more comfortable people will get being their less than best selves, being their most emotional selves, Right? This is true of all relationships, you know, like, people will snap at their spouse before they'll snap at their boss. They're still under the same amount of stress Stress.

0:50:26 Thomas: Yeah yeah right sure oh of course yeah yeah well

0:51:00 Tom: Well, that's a bullshit way to behave, right? So like, I want to call it like, that's a bullshit way to behave, but it's still true, right? We should treat all of the people that we respect with respect, but we all are guilty of letting our emotional self kind of run a little more rampant when we are closer to people Well,

0:51:20 Thomas: I yeah I don't know if I fully agree with that, just because I think this, like, in a transactional business boss, whatever, relationship, you don't have a lot of emotional skin in that game, it's easy to be like, all right, I'm a robot in this situation, whatever, you know, who cares. With, with people we love and we're vulnerable with, there's... there's high stakes there, you know, there's like that, it, it's no

0:51:42 Tom: I'm not talking about like when the stakes are high, I'm saying like people, people will be snappy.

0:51:45 Thomas: I mean I mean, just all the time, the emotional stakes of being in those relationships, the close intimate relationships, all the times stakes are higher because you've opened your heart more to them. And I think that, therefore, uh, and maybe I'm just speaking for the human race, Tom, if this is not resonating with you, I don't know, and therefore they're going to be able to hurt you more, way more than a boss could. Are you kidding me, like, yeah. And so therefore, I think

0:52:03 Tom: Oh yeah. Well, of course I don't, that's not at all what I was saying.

0:52:11 Thomas: Okay. I'm saying it would cause that discrepancy in in and behavior toward those two different people

0:52:15 Tom: I let, let me, let me make sure I'm being clear. Cause I know, I think we're, we're not saying the same thing. If I am with somebody, if I'm with my that I've known for 30 years, I might be much more comfortable being a little shitty. If I'm in a bad mood with my buddy of 30 years.

0:52:16 Thomas: Sure. Sure okay okay. Okay.

0:52:33 Tom: If I'm in a mad mood and I'm grumpy, I might be, and I actually try very hard not to ever be this way, but I see this all the time. If I am with my spouse and I am grumpy I might feel very comfortable being snappy or peevish or crabby because that's family. I see it all the time. We don't do that when we are in front of the barista. We don't do that with our friend we don't know very well. We do not do that shit when you are on your second date with somebody. The closer we get to people, as a general human rule, the closer we get with people, a lot of times the worse we treat people. We show them this emotional reactivity that oftentimes is unkind.

Is something that I think is problematic and like we should actually seek to not do, but it's true of kids the same way that it's through of adults, the same ways true of everyone I've ever met in my whole life. And I'm sure I'm guilty of the same thing. So I'm not excluding myself, but it's also something I'm deeply aware of and I try very hard to control for because I

0:52:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:39 Eli: Yeah.

0:53:39 Tom: Think it's wrong. I

0:53:39 Thomas: I

0:53:41 Eli: Agree, Tom, that's a great point, and um, know the races are all different in their innate intelligence, gentlemen, before we go, important question, I saw a microbiologist today, he was a lot bigger than I expected, that's

0:54:03 Tom: Oh, my

0:54:06 Thomas: All right, that's our show. I just wanted to jump in here with a little Patreon plug. If you go to patreon.com/dearolddads, we've just come out with our monthly bonus. I know it's a, you know, we tend to do it like the first week of the next month, but you know it still counts. Still good, still fresh. And we watched Three Men and a Baby and did a little review of it. And also we got some crucial Tom Tom Cannon.

Like, told some stories that are huge, huge, huge if true. Breaking news, the Tom Cannon has been altered. It's mind-blowing. It was so much fun. It's effing hilarious. So, go check out that monthly bonus for patrons only at the $2 level on patreon.com/dearolddads. And, of course, you'll also be one or two episodes ahead. So if you need more dads, that's where to get it. And as always, if you can't do it, don't want to, we totally understand. We get it, no hard feelings.

But if you enjoy the show, please share it with someone. Please, pretty please. It's such a tough podcast market out there these days. That's really the only way to get heard. And we love to reach more people and to build this little Dear Old Dads community, so thanks again so much for listening. Check out that Patreon. If not, we'll see you next time.

0:55:24 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 Law'd Awful 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.