DOD78: Gentle Parenting Versus... Not That

Transcript

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

0:00:31 Tom: To get home. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:33 Thomas: Oh boy. Heyo!

0:00:38 Eli: We had such - vastly, I refuse to say hello to that. We had such a vastly different childhoods that - that's from a horror movie, that statement just - so you know for me that's a horror movie I

0:00:47 Tom: I can't identify with it

0:00:46 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. - it was from a horror movie for us, too! It's not - okay, I say us. It's, not like it was fun for us. We fucking hated it. Are you kidding? It's the worst! We just lived in a horror, movie Eli! We did -

0:00:49 Tom: Either. Yeah.

0:01:02 Eli: Just too late to rename the podcast. Two of us lived in a horror, because honestly I think that's gonna be - be a lot clearer than Dear Old Dad. I think we say fuck way more than a podcast with dads in the title should but we If I think We Lived in a Horror Movie will really let everybody know where where we're at. Yeah.

0:01:05 Tom: So I thought

0:01:07 Thomas: I'll check. Yeah. Yeah... Yeah. Yeah. No. That'll do it that'll do it, but Keep the same cover art.

0:01:23 Eli: Absolutely. Yeah, reverse

0:01:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:01:25 Tom: Kind of intro this topic a little bit. Would be good to start off with. I'm sure you guys are familiar with like the four basic styles of parenting. The four main parenting styles being authoritarian. Authoritarian.

0:01:36 Eli: Cowgirl, see like we're a podcast with dads and the title that absolutely shouldn't have happened on this book - on the podcast with this title that's

0:01:41 Tom: This is all right.

0:01:41 Thomas: Oh, it should, that's why that's why we're the best, I

0:01:47 Eli: Why we're here

0:01:48 Tom: So this, this comes from the AAP. So I thought this was just like a good, like starting point, just as something to kind of like have a jump off. So the four main parenting styles are authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved, so and they are

0:02:02 Thomas: Thought you were starting a bit where you're just gonna say authoritarian, authoritative authority, authority, a thoris, it's like, yeah, no that was that was what I had, I love how just - no, normal cowgirl, it's only reverse. Okay, um

0:02:07 Eli: Reverse cowgirl

0:02:17 Tom: And so Think, Thomas, your dad - uh, dad authoritarian, was your household authoritarian? What about your mom? Yeah.

0:02:22 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's just zero - I, I mean, look, is - I don't even know that it took a whole lot of dictating, you know, it was just like, they've - we're already in submission, basically, there's no, it's, Yes, that's what I'm going for. But but they had to impose it to start. And so I guess I would count that as yes. But they got us to a point where it was like there - we didn't even try. We barely even tried to do anything ever, like we didn't even - I wouldn't even say we got in trouble much because we were already kind of beaten into submission a little bit, not - not literally figuratively

0:02:31 Eli: An a self -imposed dictatorship yeah that

0:02:52 Tom: But as far as parenting style, where you're- I guess what I'm trying to ask, ask is, were your mom and dad on the same page?

0:02:53 Thomas: Uh I mean, it was definitely easier with with like, you would you know we were more scared of our dad, but like she was pretty good at just kind of keeping in line with what he would want, and wouldn't rely on getting different answers from her, because if he found out about it, it'd be hell for all of us. So it was like we didn't you know what I mean? So I think if it it was just her, yeah, like if she if my dad had died a lot earlier or something, yes, it would have changed quite a bit, but it didn't really matter, good, sure gosh

0:03:20 Tom: All right, well, let me define the terms real quick for our audience. So authoritarian is a focus on obedience and punishment over discipline. Authoritative, create positive relationships and enforce rules. Permissive, don't enforce rules, kids will be kids. And uninvolved, provide little guidance, nurturing, or attention. Attention. So I don't think any of us had uninvolved parents. I think that's, yeah.

0:03:43 Thomas: There's well yeah In some ways, I think it's got to be like, in certain things that would have been uninvolved, but not in others, I - I don't know.

0:03:54 Eli: One, I think Tom actually was authoritative, but it's, it's funnier if we say authoritarian, so I'm going with that one.

0:03:54 Tom: And dad?

0:04:01 Eli: No, you're dead.

0:04:02 Thomas: Oh.

0:04:02 Tom: Oh, my dad? No, my Dad was an authoritarian. He had a focus on obedience.

0:04:05 Eli: Great, excellent, good, right into the bit. Nice, I appreciate this.

0:04:06 Thomas: Okay.

0:04:10 Tom: But yeah, I mean, that was a pretty standard practice and that was actually what was preached.

0:04:12 Eli: Yeah, trains ran on time. I get it.

0:04:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:14 Tom: Yeah. For, for boomers, that's what the parenting books really emphasize. So if you were following the best advice of the day and you were born in 1947, like my dad, and you Were parenting, you know, in the seventies and eighties and nineties, you would have been an authoritarian parents. If you were following the Best advice that was generally available on offer in the, in the seventys and eightys. So like, yeah, my dad was definitely, he definitely had a focus on obedience and punishment over discipline for sure. We parent totally differently.

0:04:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

0:04:44 Thomas: So what's the punishment over discipline? I'm not sure I understand that. What do you think that exactly, like, would mean in terms of examples?

0:04:50 Tom: I've thought about this a bit today in prep for our conversation. So my kids here, I'm an authoritative parent. I am not an authoritarian at all, at all. And neither is Haley. And very intentionally and thoughtfully not that way. Our kids, for example, have reached the age of 17 and they've never been punished at all? Not once in 17 years. None of of my kids have actually ever been punished because we don't really believe in punishment. It doesn't mean we don'T believe in consequences, right? So punishment is like when I grew up, I'll give you an example of a punishment. When I grew up, if I lied to my dad, right, if I lied to my dad, I was going to be punished. And that is not the same as being disciplined. Discipline is generally natural consequences for an action, along with some like Like punishment is right.

0:05:10 Thomas: Oh. Wow. Huh. Ah.

0:05:42 Eli: Right. Punishment is intentional suffering as still

0:05:47 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, I don'T think my parents really did that, actually. But they were just really intensely...

0:05:50 Tom: So like if you were grounded for excessive periods of time.

0:05:54 Thomas: No, well, again, permanent life was grounded, there wasn't anything to be grounded from, like we've covered, this, there's no, yeah, yeah,

0:06:00 Tom: Yeah. So then you weren't grounded. Yeah. You weren't crowded because you weren'T like, so like for me, I was grounded. So we had, my dad had a rule that I wasn'T allowed to bring home a C. So if my grades weren'T A's or B's, then I was groundED until I got a B or better. So I was GROUNDED for all of sixth grade, the summer between sixth and seventh grade and the first semester of seventh grade because I couldn't get my math grade up.

0:06:07 Thomas: Same, same, yeah, yes, same, exact thing, and eighth grade and high school and for

0:06:25 Tom: No, I was grounded for a full year because I struggled in algebra. So I had a struggle in algebra. He hired a tutor, every day I came home and I worked with a tutor from three o'clock to six o'clock, Monday through Friday. I just struggled with algebra until one day I didn't.

0:06:26 Thomas: Me anyway. Yeah. Yeah. You

0:06:28 Eli: Technically grounded.

0:06:42 Thomas: Finally solved for x, and then it was never looked back.

0:06:44 Eli: You

0:06:44 Tom: That's punishment, right? So that is a punishment, it's intended to correct a behavior through negative you know, to

0:06:45 Thomas: Oh, I see, and it's not directly related to like, you know, it did not, not watching TV doesn't really make you any better at math, basically. That Okay.

0:06:54 Tom: The behavior, it has no connection to the math, right? Yeah.

0:07:00 Thomas: Then yes, because, I, what, we were not allowed to watch TV ever because I brought home a C, so yeah.

0:07:00 Tom: Yeah Yeah.

0:07:06 Eli: Funny, Tom. You've told that story before on air, and something I wanted to mention at the time, the first time you told it, is that it's very interesting the parallels, because almost at exactly the same time, sixth grade, I started to fail math, right? My parents also had a rule of not bringing home a C, although, you know, fuck if I know what rules mean based on the fucking North Korea you all resided in, but there was a suggestion that I not bring home bad grades. And, and I think it's really interesting because our dads are very similar in some ways. But I think that like branching timeline, sliding doors, of how they treated my struggling with math versus how you're struggling with math sort of like exponentially increased on itself. I just think it is like a super duper fascinating parallel.

0:07:29 Tom: Well, my

0:07:29 Thomas: That

0:07:55 Tom: Believe strongly that my dad, because this is what he said, and I, I don't think my dad's ever lied to me, like Like, no, he, he, he was convinced that I smart enough to do it, and that the reason I wasn't doing this, I wasn't applying myself, which is a standard line from that time period. Right. Like, that's a line that like all of my friends have heard at some point. You know, you're just not applying yourself. And so my dad was like, well, I'll get him to apply himself. He won't have any other distractions. He'll come home. He'll work for every day with a tutor from the time he walks in the door to the time I walk in the door. And that was what I did until, and then one day just math clicked and I was fine at math, but like punishment or like, I know we've said before, like my dad would have us write like long essays or repetitive things. Like, I will not lie.

0:08:01 Thomas: It hurt him more than it hurt you, oof.

0:08:44 Thomas: See,

0:08:44 Tom: I will not lie a thousand times, you know, or, you know, things like that.

0:08:46 Thomas: I my parents never would have done anything even close to that, so that's why I feel like, not the same as Tom's dad, but also yeah, I mean, I guess like it was, it was that one thing of do get well, good grades, or else you don't get to do your watch TV or play Nintendo. Home,

0:09:01 Tom: What about if you did something bad? Like you, you missed, you, you disobeyed, like, let's say you were home late. Let's say you had a curfew and you were were home late.

0:09:07 Thomas: From, what? There's nothing, I

0:09:09 Tom: I don't know. You never went out with your girlfriend or anything.

0:09:10 Thomas: Couldn't go anywhere. Not, not in a way that I would have had the ability to not come home. I mean, again, it's, it's just different when you live in the middle of fucking nowhere, you know, it's like, oh, I'll wander off into the forest.

0:09:16 Tom: Okay. Right. Okay. So it just doesn't translate to your, yeah.

0:09:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:23 Eli: You threw let's say this. You threw juice on the floor.

0:09:23 Tom: Right?

0:09:28 Thomas: I never did that. I don't know.

0:09:30 Eli: OK. I'm sorry. Sorry, I was attempting to find imagination. I don't understand. What is juice? I didn't have it.

0:09:34 Thomas: I, yeah, I, I wasn't, no, I did.

0:09:34 Tom: Yeah.

0:09:38 Eli: What flavor?

0:09:38 Thomas: Well, okay. But here's the thing. I don't know if this is a result of my, my parents or not, but like, I wasn't a disobedient, I'm trying to think of a thing I would have done that would have been bad. Like there's not much I can think of, you know, there was like, oh, okay. I'll tell you the thing I got disciplined for the most was like hitting my sister, was when we were little we would fight all the time like just so badly, and so that was a thing where like, yeah, I would have to go to my room for fucking ever for a year because I hit my sister, and then they would talk in the most horrendous like ways about it, which would obviously totally help, and I felt really good after that, and I was like, wow, you're right, family, I will never hit my my sister again, because you demeaned me in the most like humiliating ways that that'll help. So that was what happened. It's not, you know, that's the closest thing I can come up with.

0:10:25 Tom: So that's authoritarian. So authoritarian is, so another way to think about this is that authoritative parents will teach children how to make better choices. Authoritarian parents will try to make kids feel Sorry for their mistakes. So if the, yeah.

0:10:39 Eli: Or afraid of the consequences.

0:10:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:42 Tom: So, if the intention is to make you feel regret, then that would be an authoritarian mindset.

0:10:42 Eli: Yeah. It

0:10:46 Thomas: Well, yeah, I think there's, I'll do a little carve out for my parents were fucking annoying boomers who they probably might've intended that to fix the problem, but they just didn't know how to like with the school stuff. They were, you Know, head in the sand, like a lot of boomers about ADHD. PhD and if they had actually done, it was true that I wasn't performing in school because I had those problems. Like because they saw that my test scores were through the roof, but I couldn't do homework. And they thought, okay, we want to fix that. Here's how we'll fix that. We'll take away everything in the world so that he has to do his homework. So they were trying to fix the problem, I guess is what I'm saying, but they just didn't know how or they didn't.

0:11:10 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, and again, like, just for clarity, like I'm not actually trying to, I'm intentionally trying not to pass any judgment on authoritarian parents versus, because I think, I think like we grow up knowing what we know, right?

0:11:24 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Oh, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:11:36 Tom: Right. And like, we don't know the shit that we don'T. And I think like we're, I think, to some degree is trying to use the tools they have at their disposal. And that comes with what are the tools your parents had at their disposals? So I'm more just kind of giving some definitions.

0:11:48 Thomas: I'll be honest. I'm just grappling with it because when you describe the writing repetitive thing to me, that feels so fundamentally like, oh my god, my parents never would have done that. But I guess still they would be classified similarly to your dad for other reasons, but it just feels a lot different than how my parents were, I guess, is all.

0:11:58 Tom: Right.

0:12:06 Eli: Is a different form of punishment. Yeah.

0:12:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:12:07 Tom: Right, yeah, that's that's all that is. Yeah. So, yeah. Like if I was supposed to be home at six o'clock. Right? So my dad had a rule that I had to come home for dinner every night. So I had be home with dinner at six o'clock every night for dinner. So if I was at my friend's house and I came home at 6:15, I was going to be in trouble, right? Because I was late. I had to be home at six.

I couldn't be home. It's 6:05 or 6:10 or 6:15 or seven. Like on time is on time. Late is late. If you're late, you're in trouble. And that's an authoritarian mindset, right, because the rules are sacrosanct in an authoritarian household. In an authoritative household, you might say like, all right, it's 6:15. Why were you late? Well, and I just lost track of time. Well, let me help you. You know, let me see your phone. You know, it might be something that we might do in our house, right? Like, if I cared about 15 minutes I wouldn't, but you know what I mean? Like, I say, oh, let me see your phone, I'll help you. Here's how you set an alarm. It takes you 15 minutes to walk back, so you should set an alarm a half hour before you have to leave. That way you can say your goodbyes, wrap up what you're doing, and have plenty of time to walk and

0:12:45 Thomas: I'll be honest. I think my parents were more authoritative than maybe than maybe maybe you'd think, you

0:13:14 Tom: So that's great, yeah, that's the ideal, right? That's that's the ideal

0:13:16 Thomas: Well, but they were very dumb about how to do that. I think I would put in more.

0:13:17 Tom: Yeah. They might not have been skilled at it, right? Yeah.

0:13:20 Thomas: Yeah. They, they didn't understand how to actually get better behavior, but they weren't like, you know, very vindictive at all, or they weren't trying to make me feel bad for the most part. You know, like it was a lot of also, they just honestly took away. How do you classify this? Taking away virtually every opportunity to misbehave, like in a horrible way, you know, like does that count as, I don't know.

0:13:40 Tom: I don't

0:13:41 Eli: Feel like that's authoritarian.

0:13:41 Thomas: Yeah

0:13:41 Tom: Think that's a parenting style. I think that's just something, yeah.

0:13:44 Eli: It's how we describe. We don't describe North Korea as attentive or whatever the fuck it is.

0:13:48 Tom: Eli.

0:13:49 Eli: Right. Authoritative.

0:13:44 Thomas: They're authoritative yeah well the dictator just wants better, you know, behavior out of his subjects. You know, it's just

0:13:53 Eli: Right. Kim Jong-un is hoping you live up to those expectations. I think he, I think he's working with what he has, you know, yeah.

0:14:01 Thomas: Anyway

0:14:02 Tom: What were your parents like? Were they both on the side, I guess, what I'm curious too, Eli, is were your parents both on the same page, mom and dad?

0:14:07 Eli: I, you know, honestly, I think it was probably authoritarian, right? Because I definitely got punished, I definitely got in trouble, there were definitely rules sometimes instead of principles, but that all got easier as I got older. I think it was a combination of the fact that my dad was dealing with coming from just a absolutely, I mean, not terrible, but but a very bad dad, right? A dad who hit him to harm him, right, on occasion.

0:14:40 Eli: And was just, you know what I'm saying, though? Like, not the like, hey, kid, I'm home drunk, and like, not the beginning of a lifetime movie, just like of that generation where everyone sucked, right. Where just everybody was the worst possible person, and we barely discovered humanity in 1992, right. And so I think my dad was somewhere between like, he knew he didn't want to hit me, but he, he wasn't quite to the just like, you know, Miss Rachel fucking me and my wife, like, hey buddy, big feelings as you gouged my eyeball out just now, huh, uh.

0:14:39 Thomas: Terrible that sounds pretty terrible, uh yeah

0:15:19 Eli: I think he wasn't quite there, he was also just worried because I was, it's interesting as a non-disabled person, because because a lot of the time, people now, when they talk about being lazy as kids or not doing their homework, they have since been diagnosed with a mental illness that was the cause of all that. And it's really about like, hey, my disability was categorized as laziness, and it was really problematic and horrific for me. And you hear those stories a lot.

But here's a tale you don't hear often enough, which is, what if you're just a lazy piece of shit? And that's really what I was. And I cannot clarify this enough. I've been tested for ADD, ADHD, all those fucking things, I ain't got shit, my executive function is on point, baby, I can keep my attention on a single ball of string for nine years at a time, I just don't fucking wanna.

So I think that both of my parents genuinely, and I'm grateful for this as an adult, both of my parents recognized an essentially lazy, spoiled quality in me and and were like, if we do not keep this kid in line, he is going to absolutely suck. And to be fair, the four or five times in my life that I have been in control of my life, I have, in fact, absolutely sucked. So

0:16:34 Eli: What I'm saying is that they're authoritarians, not all bad. Sometimes you a dictator. Sometimes the train needs to run out of time.

0:16:34 Thomas: Yeah

0:16:40 Tom: No one of the things they say is like authoritarian parents do have kids that follow the rules. Like strict authoritarian parents will create children that follow the the rules. It works. It usually comes at some kind of a price, however. So there's usually some kind of a prize. So kids with authoritarian parents are generally speaking more likely to have issues with self-esteem. So those things go, they're concomitant, right? So go hand in hand. They also are frequently more aggressive or a little more hostile than parents who grew up in other households. And it's something, it's funny, I didn't really know these distinctions until much later in my life when I learned about them as part of my education as an educator, so I went to school to be a teacher, I didn't end up teaching, but you take a bunch of child psychology classes, you learn all this shit, um, order to do that work. And so, like, really even as a parent many years after learning this, I really had to consciously shake myself out of the idea that like, like, but the kids should feel bad if they've done something wrong.

0:16:49 Thomas: Yeah oh

0:17:46 Eli: Absolute. Dude, I'm dealing with it right Now, I am in it. I'm swimming in that swimming. I mean, I have a fucking fresh scratch on my forehead just fucking every three seconds it throbs with go upstairs to his room and elbow drop him and be like, this is because of earlier. Like, here's the thing they don't tell you about gentle parenting, right? And there's a lot of like gentle parenting is this jokes, right. So for those who aren't familiar, gentle parenting. It's new parenting. Maybe it works. Who the fuck knows? Go read a book from someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about. Out but basically what it means is you talk like me in a relationship argument but to a three-year-old who's scratching you which just here's the thing they don't say and I just need one this may hey guys I just found our new niche I'm gonna be the gentle parenting content creator who does that bullshit instruction and then is like and it's gonna fucking suck for you have I mentioned how much it's

0:17:52 Thomas: Yeah. Ooh. That's

0:18:02 Tom: Yeah.

0:18:39 Eli: Going to suck for your feelings will be hurt by a three year old because you cannot not healthfully express any of your goddamn emotions for the first 18 years of your life of their life because if you do they turn gay instantly the minute you show anger bam gay instantly you turn around there and reverse cowgirl on someone of their same gender I don't make the rules that's what gentle parenting promises

0:18:40 Thomas: A good idea What

0:18:51 Tom: No.

0:19:04 Thomas: I Thought We wanted Our Kids To be be gay together Eli, what's what what Gives

0:19:06 Eli: No. We want our kids to be gay together but I don't want them to want it we're doing a radical experiment. Look, there have been hundreds of thousands if not millions of children that have been forced to pretend to be straight. It's horrible. It's torture. It's bad for their brains. But have there been two little boys who have been forced to be gay with each other? I don't know. And we're gonna solve it here on this podcast you downloaded called Dear Old Dads nightmare.

0:19:08 Thomas: Yeah. That

0:19:12 Tom: What? So.

0:19:18 Thomas: Is

0:19:40 Tom: So I, I, I have this like recurring nightmare. I do. I have this recurring nightmare that that

0:19:51 Eli: Hi

0:19:51 Thomas: We let Eli talk unedited on our show and then we're all canceled Yeah. That's

0:19:54 Eli: Ceasel

0:19:53 Tom: Is Never gonna happen there is never gonna be a live show of fucking Dear Old Dads. I'll tell you that. No, I have this recurring nightmare with my kids and I've had it since I had kids. I, I have this recurring nightmare that they are doing something wrong and I am yelling at them. And here's the thing, I've never raised my voice to my kids. I don't yell at my kids. I've ever done it. 17 years I've gotten through 17 years I don't raise my voice. If I raise my voice voice very. My dad never raised his voice to me, not one time, ever in I'm 45 He's never done it.

0:20:15 Thomas: So hard to believe I yell at my kids 50 times a day. I don't understand this, Tom. Let me just ask you something Tom. Sorry to interrupt you and we'll, I'll let you get back to it. 100%. I got to know this. Does this never happen to you, that you just have to fucking be somewhere at a certain time and your kids are just not fucking getting in the car or doing anything you say? What do you do in those situations? I mean, I don't yell like full on like if I was in a fight, but like I got a raise my voice a bit to get them going. Like they just don't pay attention.

0:20:31 Tom: Yeah, no. But

0:20:48 Eli: Pick them up No. I talk in a whisper in like a nanny whisper the whole time like a crazy person

0:21:01 Thomas: You have one kid. It doesn't matter. It doesn'T even count. It's completely, when

0:21:03 Eli: Okay. Yeah, okay. To

0:21:04 Tom: But but Thomas but but Thomas, but

0:21:04 Eli: Be very no I I that's

0:21:05 Thomas: I had one kid, I just shoveled that kid into the car. It's easy. You don't, it's so, yeah.

0:21:08 Eli: What I do that's true what I doing

0:21:09 Tom: But let me, let me caveat this Thomas. I, only ever had one young kid at a time. Right. So my, my youngest kids are, you Finn, the, he's the 16 and Amon's nine. A huge gap. There was a huge fucking age gap. And I didn't get my bonus kids until, uh, was six and Amon was two. There was a four year gap there. And so, like, like, yeah, there was a time when I was trying to get like a seven-year-old and a three-year old to do a thing at the same time. But, you know, kind of the same thing. I'd walk over to the three-years-old, put them under my arm and then, you know, go deal with the, go deal with the seven -years old, you know, if that needed to happen. So,

0:21:09 Eli: Yeah.

0:21:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You do turn one of them into luggage. Got it. Okay. Yeah. I

0:21:50 Tom: Sure, for

0:21:50 Thomas: Do this. Yeah.

0:21:51 Eli: You Absolutely Turn it into luggage That's my policy ones

0:21:51 Tom: Sure. But

0:21:51 Thomas: Uh -huh. But when you have three, you can't, it's hard to turn two into luggage, okay. I'll see if I can figure that out.

0:21:56 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:21:57 Eli: Are well, you've got one that's luggage all the time. You're pre- you're permanently luggaged

0:21:59 Thomas: Carry on and, yeah,

0:22:00 Tom: You've got a luggage baby right now. You definitely have a carry -on baby right now, but do have this and I just want to get back to it because it It comes from, I think, being raised in an authoritarian household and struggling against that impulse, which I which I don't have to do as much consciously anymore as I did in the beginning. But I think I did a lot when the kids were younger. I have this dream, this where my kids are misbehaving and am mad as hell and I'm yelling at them and they're laughing at me and I'm just.

0:22:01 Thomas: Yep, yep.

0:22:01 Eli: Yeah. Oh,

0:22:27 Thomas: That's my every day. Yeah.

0:22:28 Tom: And it is

0:22:29 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:22:28 Eli: My reality you live you live in my reality is that your worst nightmare

0:22:31 Tom: Just this like and the thing that strikes me about that is that if you're an authoritarian, what you want is for your kids to feel bad when you're upset with them because the the underlying, the bedrock of authoritarianism is that if you've done wrong, the way that I have to teach you is to make you regret and to feel mad, and it's through that feeling bad that you will learn to avoid doing the things that I don't want you to do. And that's, it's so funny to even say that out loud because we know you don't train a dog that way, right? Everybody who's ever had a pet and ever read one book ever on how to get a pet, you can get a fucking cat to walk a tightrope if you have treats in a clicker, right? You don't punish them for not walking across the tightrobe. You only reward, you only ever reward. Andthat's actually how you build positive behaviors.

0:22:32 Eli: Yeah

0:22:39 Thomas: We that with our dog and it just did not fucking work. I'll be honest with you.

0:23:25 Tom: But like literally that's that's how they train lions. It's how they train everything, right? They don't punish things for being bad. That is a terrible way to create positive behaviors that you want. You actually should reward, you should reward things rather than, than, then seek to punish. But I have this dream, right. And so like I recognize that inside of me is this like, but you were bad, you were bad and you don't ever feel bad about it. And I grew up feeling bad all the time I'm about the bad things I did and like that's fucked up, right? That's fucked up because like the authoritative parenting has turned out so much better and the research always shows just it's like it's night and day, it shows like it turns out better so

0:23:37 Thomas: Yeah yeah two wolves well

0:23:58 Eli: It's

0:24:14 Thomas: At all separate the categories into when they've done something wrong, that's just like disobeying, you know, not a big deal versus when they're, they've like mortally wounded their sibling. Cause yeah, I do want them to feel bad when they've mortally wound their sibling intentionally. Should they not feel bad? Like, yeah.

0:24:29 Tom: They should feel bad because as a natural consequence of their action, not because of your anger, they should should feel bad As a way to teach them empathy. So the reason that they should feel bad. So that's a good distinction that should be drawn. They absolutely, my kids have regretted things. They felt bad and they felt sorrow and they've felt like they have made mistakes that they've regretted. That absolutely happens. But it's not as a result of my feelings toward them. It's a result, a natural consequence of their behavior. And part of what we do as parents, or we should do, is try to help them understand how their behavior has hurt someone and how that hurting impacts them

0:24:36 Eli: Because of the punishment right right

0:25:05 Thomas: Okay. That's important. Cause I was going to say like, they don't, when they're little, they get it. You have to take some process and it could be also, again, I'm dealing with kids with maybe they might have my focus issues. A lot of times you may look like trying to rub their nose in and get them to bad, but it's often just like, They don't even acknowledge what they've done a lot of of times, you know, they're like your sister, your brother's like crying in a heap and you're just like, don't, you didn't even notice, you Know, so it, it does in that moment, it feels a lot like, Hey, I need you to feel bad about this. You know what?

0:25:07 Tom: Right you have to explain it yeah yeah yeah right right

0:25:37 Eli: You're not supposed to, but it does feel that way for sure, yeah

0:25:39 Tom: Right well I

0:25:40 Thomas: You're not supposed to what?

0:25:41 Eli: In that moment. So I've done a ton of reading on this because I just, I am really struggling with the gentle parenting thing. The thing that is super counterintuitive is in the moment, when they do something bad, the impulse, especially if you were raised in authoritarian households like we were, is to be like, no, no, this thing right here is bad, I need you to see it and feel it in empathy right now. Look at daddy's big bald fucking forehead. Look at this big fucking gash you cut there, like Roroni Kenshin's girlfriend on her deathbed. Feel bad for this right now. This is what you need to do. You need to feel bad for it. What's interesting is that the science actually shows that does not do that. If anything, it makes the behavior worse and it makes them resent the situation. So instead of feeling empathy, young kids up until they're like nine, 10, 11 years old do not feel empathy in that moment, they feel um towards the victim of their actions but

0:25:46 Thomas: Sure. Hmm. Oh, okay. Once, do you mean, sorry, just to clarify, cause I need to know that I need the next part of this, but they feel resentment when When you do that or just naturally, like, are you saying the reaction to you saying, hey, feel bad is they feel resentment toward the victim or do they just feel that all the time? Like before you even interview when you dothat. OK, gotcha. Because they got in trouble and they blame the victim that they just punched.

0:26:56 Eli: No towards when you do that, right what and they blame the victim because they they they don't

0:27:07 Thomas: Yeah. No, that that totally resonates, actually. That is what happened.

0:27:10 Eli: Quite identify the victim as a thing yet. What's really interesting, and this is what I've been doing, and I I have a great experience to share with Max fucking cutting open my head and doing some brain surgery on me today. Later, when you're in a good and happy place, that's when you say like, hey, just, do you remember earlier when you, hit hitting hurts, right? And my son's pretty severely speech delayed, that is the chance for them to have an empathetic moment because it's not about their experience anymore. And I'll I'll use this example, right? So today me and the boy are in Target. He gets back from preschool. I put him down for his nap. Four seconds later, he throws everything out of the, that's his signal to me, throws everything out of the crib. And he's like, froggy, frog, frog is his lovey.

0:27:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

0:27:55 Eli: And he's Like, Oh, I'm fogging.

0:27:55 Thomas: I was saying foie gras. I was like, oh, that's a yeah.

0:27:57 Eli: Yeah. He, he wants frog raw. He called, he calls for his afternoon foie gras in hammock as, as always. Um, and I get in and of course, the minute I opened the door hashtag fig life hashtag forced to be a fig

0:28:05 Thomas: Hashtag

0:28:09 Tom: Eli's out in the backyard squeezing a fucking goose into a bottle like every

0:28:13 Eli: Exactly yeah no, I'm a vegan, but for him, for him, I choke a goose to death every afternoon

0:28:16 Thomas: His blood all animal blood all over him all the time even though speaking.

0:28:20 Eli: Yeah constantly constantly covered in animal blood again a better name for the podcast, constantly covered with animal blood, constantly covered in animal blood, just throwing it out there, um, he goes, he foggy, and I go in and I'm like, hey, and he goes, all done napping, and I'm like, yep, you're all done napping, yep, I figured, because he fucking tricked me into the room, that's his thing, and I'm like, all right, buddy, here we go, get him out of his sleep suit, he fucking narrates what he's gonna do because iPad time is the time that he gets right after nap, so he's narrating iPad, iPad, marbles, iPad get iPad, uh, what do you want for Christmas, iPad

0:28:21 Tom: Day with a new goose

0:28:49 Thomas: I love this stuff. Man, I

0:28:53 Eli: Pigeon

0:28:53 Thomas: Love this stuff so much.

0:28:54 Eli: Right he's just like fucking plant game, planning out the microseconds of iPad, iPad time, he's going to get, uh, while I change him and whatever, so we do iPad time, iPad head time is up. And I'm like, hey buddy. Right. We do our 10 minute. I feel like a fucking news producer. I'm like, we have four minutes to air. Mr. Bosnick. We have four moments to air, just so you know. Thank you for, thank you for, yes. We will be delivering gummies. If you do not lose your shit. Yes. Gummies. Yes, gummies will be delivered in gummies, so we do that. We go to Target. We're having a really good time. We are practicing our quiet hands as we're running around, Target is actually a really, like, fucking good time, and then quiet hands, because he's going through a hidden phase and it's just quiet

0:28:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:29:35 Thomas: Can you tell me what quiet hands is? What does that mean exactly.

0:29:38 Eli: Hands is where your kid clasps their hands in front of themselves like a fucking crazy person, but that's what you teach them to do when they're fucking slugging you in the eye, you go quiet hands, and they, and they laugh maniacally while they do it like they're praying to the dark god they've sated with your blood, um, and so we're practicing in quiet hands cause he's running around and he's like whacking stuff at target. Right. He's not damaging anything, but he's just like tapping it and looking at me being like, ah, I'm misbehaving. I can do that gentle parenting shit. Sure. It doesn't feel like it works. And I'm like, I know it doesn't feel like it worked.

So I'm Like, Hey buddy, quiet hands, quiet ends. And then he goes over and he starts to like, push the mannequins. And I'm like nobody, you can't do that. Right? And you are allowed to stop them from bad behavior and gentle parenting, which is something people don't talk about a lot, which Is that you can, you Can be like, Hey, I can't let you do that and And then you just take them away from that thing. You hold their hands. You do what you got to do. And he fucking loses it. You know what I think of all the time? You know that TikTok sound? And I know it's from a movie, but it's like, if you want

0:29:46 Thomas: Ah, okay.

0:30:09 Thomas: No,

0:30:36 Eli: To stop me, well, then maybe you'll know the movie quote, Dear Old Dads. There's a TikTok sound and the hip hop kids, the Gen Zers who love our show because of all the ass eating jokes we make, they are going to love this reference that I'm about to fucking fall off the dome. So there's a TikTok sound that's like, if you want to stop me, you're going to have to fucking kill me. And it's a lady saying it. That's what my son does. He's like we will fight to the death now. Right. And here's the thing. OK, here's The Thing. I'm a naturally angry person. We talked about this on the fighting

0:30:36 Thomas: Tom and I do not know that TikTok sound.

0:31:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:12 Eli: Episode. Like everyone, when they say like anger problems, they picture like you don't want to get Bruce Willis mad. But usually most people with anger problems are just like kind of dicks who had to do a bunch of therapy so that they're not the worst person everyone knows. And I'm still the worst person everyone does. I'm just not angry anymore. But like physical pain to me, incredibly triggering of the old ways. So he's just hailing on me. Right. And like, again, I'm holding his hands. I'm saying, hey, can't let you do that, buddy. Can't let you do that. Right? Let's take a deep breath. You know, let's make a better choice, blah, blah. I'm doing all the right things inside my head, the fucking bloody nine from The Blade Itself is like, let us come out and fight your child, and I'm like, no, you can't fist fight my child, bloody nine. Uh, so I'm just, he scratches me real good to to the moment where I do like a ha ha, and of course that he's like, ha ha, has a just a giant peel of laughter, and I'm like, I'm raising a fucking

0:32:12 Eli: Right I'm just raising a psychopath. Like, like, one day he's going to be sitting in an execution chamber, and the governor's going to stop everything to be like, I just want to clarify, it's that fat piece of shit's fault, right there. Who the fuck wouldn't slap their kid in the middle of Target, am I right? I think we can all agree that guy failed as a father. You, sir, you. And put him in the car. I put him into the car, we, I put him in the car, buckle him in. And he's like, bitch, he stinks. And I'm like, oh, absolutely. I'll happily give you your favorite treat at this moment where you just fucking bloodied me like a D &D villain. So we drive home. He's a little quiet. We get home. He's feeling a little better. We're playing. And now's the time, right? We're calm. We're not talking about it.

And I say, hey, buddy, do you remember earlier when you were mad about leaving Target and you hit daddy and you scratched daddy? Well, this is a boo -boo. This is a boo-boo right here. And he knows boobo. And I was like, boobu. And it hurts me when you scratched me. It actually hurt me. And it left this mark, and he looks real serious for a second, he goes, you want band-aid? And

0:32:12 Tom: And a peel of your skin hanging from his claw

0:32:35 Thomas: Can Yeah. Aw.

0:33:17 Eli: I was like, no, I don't, I don't need a band-aid. He was like, you need you band-aid boo-boo. And I was like, yeah, no, but boo -boos do get band-aids but like, this is why we don't hit. And here's the amazing thing, like, here's as much as I joke around about the bad feelings of gentle parenting, here's the amazing thing, we got to bed that night, he was getting a little rambunctious, and I said to him, hey, buddy, hitting hurts. And he looked at me and went like boo boo, and I was like, yeah, like fucking boo boo yeah and like immediately calmed down, he clasped his little hands like a nun in prayer and calmed down, and like, I got to see it work in the moment. Now again, this one story has a happy ending, this is not the 97 other times

0:33:24 Tom: Yeah yeah he learned something yeah

0:34:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:02 Eli: Where he's just been like, fuck you, old man. But but again, you books are hopefully not lying. And if they are, I'll wear like a fake mustache to his execution and be like, yeah, whoever that kid's dad is really fucked it up. Let me tell you, I hear his name is Thomas Smith. Thomas Smith, that's what I heard that kid'S dad's name is.

0:34:12 Thomas: Oh, man. You're in the hot dog suit. We're all looking for the guy who did this. Yeah.

0:34:24 Eli: Guy who fucked their kid up here.

0:34:26 Thomas: Yeah. I really need your help on this. Let's see. Let's, let's say one of my kids is beating the other kid for the 15th time of the day. I need to not, what do I need remember to do here?

0:34:34 Tom: So Of what I would suggest is not, and so this is something like I, that I mean I'm reading these books, but like this is somebody that has worked really well in our house, is not trying to solve a problem, it's what Eli was just describing, just phrasing it a different. The first thing to do is what not to do, and that's not to try to solve the problem during an emotionally charged moment.

So if one of your kids is hitting another kid and they're fighting, they're emotionally worked up, that is not the time where any good work is going to get done emotionally by that kid. So what you need to do in that moment is just separate the kids, like that's all. And that's all that you have to do. There's not, that is not the moment or that time to actually address the behavior.

You come back to the behavior, when the emotions aren't attached to it in such a strong way, they're going to be able to hear you and and empathize and learn that empathy differently, differently than if you address it in that moment. If you dress it in the moment, like Eli said, they're going to resent the other person for getting them in trouble or for being the object of their, you know, emotion, and they're also going to like resent you for stepping in. It's not, it's just, it's ineffective, um.

0:35:43 Eli: I can tell you what the books say. And again, if our kids end up co-serial killers, we could wear the same mustaches. So.

0:35:48 Thomas: Co -gay serial killers wow isn't there like there's like a bond movie that had that yeah

0:35:51 Eli: Oh, they'll never convict. Him. Are you kidding? They'd. Be canceled. In. An instant. Yeah, never die. Never, uh, I'm actually, guys, there's gonna be 45 minutes of silence while I think of a Bond slash gay. Serial killer fund. So. Do.

0:35:56 Thomas: Yeah never take your dick out of your boyfriend's

0:36:04 Eli: You guys, they. Get golden, uh, water sports. Dear Old Dads. Anyways. Uh.

0:36:12 Eli: Yeah, what you do is use gently, so gentle police, right, is the sort of term. Is like, like you're a friendly police, friendly guardian. I don't like the term police.

0:36:05 Thomas: No I

0:36:19 Eli: Because I'm not there to maintain the white ethnostate on my son.

0:36:19 Thomas: Was gonna say yeah I'm gonna instantly tase my kid

0:36:23 Tom: All. Parents Parents Are Bastards. Bastards.

0:36:24 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:36:25 Eli: But They say, like, friendly guardian, right, is the idea of, like, cheerfully, right? Like you're happy about what they're doing, but like it is not affecting you emotionally what they're doing. You just stop them from doing that. Then, and this is the part that feels the fucking worst, Thomas. First time you try this, you're going to come to my house and uppercut me through the ceiling. You validate their emotions so they're being A piece Of Shit Right That you come over, you quiet hands them, you put them in a fucking headlock or whatever you're supposed to, you don't actually put them in, but you stop them from doing the thing and you're like, you're so mad right now, you're so mad, uh, and then there's like a branching thing you can do, a choice chart. Max really likes the choice chart because you can just point at shit, um, chart is like take a deep breath, say I'm mad, count to 10, go to the sensory corner, reverse cowgirl, like whatever you want to put on your choice chart, you Can put on your choice chart I

0:36:25 Thomas: Yeah no I I do that yeah dude I gotta fucking work I don't have time for this full time job

0:37:16 Eli: Know I Am With you, I am with You Tamas I

0:37:19 Tom: Yeah, man.

0:37:18 Thomas: They fight 40 times a day and the whole separate them is okay then they'll unseparate the minute I'm not watching them the only real way to separate them is put them in prison I'm Not Supposed To Do That I Can't Put Them In A Lock Him In A Closet Like Harry Potter It's Not This Is Anyway

0:37:21 Eli: Know Yep I Know You Have I am completely empathetic because exact, I was exactly gonna say, and then right, you're like, I'm gonna stop him from doing the thing, do you want to make a choice chart. In the first 80 billion times you do that, at least according to my own lived personal experience, is your kid will be like, oh yeah, absolutely, I am done and I'm calm, and you'll be like, cool.

So anyways, and they'll be like, whap, got you, you mother fuck, you idiot, you fucking fool Why would you think I was done, and then you do the same thing over, right, again, you just do the same thing over and over again, but Eventually they stop because the time dimension moves forward, right, it's the year 3000, your child has decided to stop hitting, or stop hitting their sibling, you're calm in another moment, and that's when you bring it up, and that is supposed to create the most, like, effective, empathetic interaction. And can I say something against my own theory here, right? Here's the thing, I don't know how long this gentle parenting shit's been around, but it hasn't been around that long. Have we seen anyone grow up with this shit yet? Because I, I want to see some

0:37:58 Thomas: Yeah Yeah.

0:38:37 Eli: Harvard Scientists, right, like if they were like, oh actually, 90 of the graduating class from Harvard, they were all gentle parented

0:38:36 Tom: Well, yeah.

0:38:43 Thomas: No, actually, I think I did hear it was, okay, there was a kid in Kenosha who grew up with that. And gosh, who else?

0:38:50 Tom: Well I, I don't, I've

0:38:47 Eli: Good

0:38:51 Tom: Never read anything about the gentle.

0:38:52 Thomas: I think there was A Swimmer for Stanford. I'm pretty sure it was. Yeah.

0:38:54 Eli: Scores That kid poison

0:38:58 Tom: I, I don't know anything about the gentle parenting as like a philosophy or anything. Like, that's the first time I'm like hearing about it. But like, I will say that another thing that worked for my kid, um, and this was for Finn, this worked a lot for Fin, like it worked great. And they were really, there were really two things. Is that, um, taught him from a young age to be able to ask for a break, um, emotional break.

And then anytime he asked for a brake, I respected that break, right? This was for me, it was pretty little, because I, I did see Finn getting emotional, overwhelmed, upset, upset, angry, whenever that, like, whenever some kind of like big emotion was kind of threatening to overtake him, I would immediately stop engaging whatever it is I was trying to get done with him, whatever it was we were trying to work on. If he asked for a break, he got a break.

And that was fucking wildly inconvenient many times, right? Because he would be, he's a kid, he gets overwhelmed easily. You know, I saw this because he was a kid that got overwhelmed easily. But when he asked for a breakup, "I need a break," of a cool, we're done, done, that's cool." And then he would go off and he would take a break and he got to learn how to ask for a break. And that means that I don't press him anymore.

I'm not trying to get him anymore to do something. Maybe I'm going to be late for work, shit happens, what are you going to do? And I was late for work. But if he needed a break, he got to have a break and did not abuse that. I don't know what I would do if I had a kid that abused that to like be manipulative or whatever.

He wasn't that kid, so I don't, I'm not trying to like say that this would be universally applicable, but I will say it worked a charm. And we do use this with Aislinn to a different degree. Like we haven't, we don't use that same language with Aislinn, but Aislinn can get overwhelmed by her emotions. And as soon as you sense her getting overwhelmed by her emotions, we immediately disengage and stop pressing whatever it is that we're trying

0:40:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:41 Tom: To do or accomplish. Right. That's that's immediately over. And I think it's really useful to give kids that language of being able to ask for a break and step away. And then we get to come back and readdress whatever it is, because it does follow another thing that I think really strongly I didn't have as a kid growing up. And I've tried to give my kids, which is they always have a way out and they always have away to win. They always, always have away out. That doesn't mean you're in a wayout that that's not, I'm in trouble. You know, that's a way

0:40:41 Thomas: Yeah. I definitely do that. Yeah.

0:41:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:13 Tom: That's like, I get to apologize. I get try to fix it. I get empathize into the situation. Something. I think there's a lot of parents that don't give their kids away out, then their kids feel trapped. Then their kids are like, well, fuck it. I already did the thing I wasn't supposed to do. I'm already going to get punished. So why don't you eat my ass, motherfucker? And like, that's just how it is. And that's especially, I think, like as kids get older, it doesn't work. And then the thing I did for Finn, because again, he got real emotionally charged as a young guy a lot. And I'd be like, hey, man, we had this big emotional moment. You can have a reset. You can take a reset and what I taught him to do is just like have a little ritual. His ritual is to go take a shower. So I'd be like, go take a shower, wash the bad day away, right?

0:41:17 Thomas: Totally. Yep. Yep. Does not work. Yeah.

0:41:38 Eli: Shower.

0:41:58 Thomas: Smart. My kids stink. I got to get them everything. Four showers a day. Hey, you having any negative feelings whatsoever at all? Shower. Shower!

0:42:01 Tom: And he, he, him away.

0:42:08 Thomas: Shower, shower, shower.

0:42:05 Eli: The

0:42:08 Tom: You're like a fucking prune in there. Think like, like combining all of those tools and that sort of mindset has been for our family, at least has been really helpful because our kids don't feel trapped. They don't feel like they're in trouble for things. They feel like we're there to help them all the time. Even when they've fucked up, they feel like, okay. And they've fuck up, you know? And they, they feeling like, all right. My yeah. Dad's not going to be happy, like the consequences will be whatever the fuck up is. It's not gonna be like the consequences plus I'm grounded or plus I wrote a fucking six page essay on why I feel bad for doing this. Or plus I got, you know, six hours of extra chores this week or whatever the fucking fucking nonsense authoritarian garbage might be.

0:42:53 Eli: Can I get a little philosophical with you gentlemen, because, uh, answer to how I'm doing this is I'm in very intense therapy because what I realized that I was like really actually struggling with, with my anger issues around my son, and I was like, oh, this is, you're an adult, you shouldn't be angry at a two-year-old, go to.

0:43:09 Eli: Fucking first of all, he's three, learn what age he is. And then second of all, go to fuckin therapy. So I, I talked to my therapist about it, I was, okay, I'm mad at a three-year old. And he was like, yeah, it's not awesome. And so I'm reading this book about rational behavioral therapy and there was a sentence in there that fucking knocked me right the fuck out, and it's along of what the lines of what you're saying, Tom, which is if you were raised to believe that that the reason you exist has to be justified, right? You don't just get to be a person, right. The right to be. A person.

0:43:09 Tom: I'm already uncomfortable

0:43:40 Eli: Is Earned, right, forgiveness in that moment is extra hard because at some point an adult told you, hey, are they implied to you, right, because you relied relied on them for everything and they imply to you, hey, you're, am the reason you exist, right, you understand that as a really little kid, right, your entire existence depends on me and that is conditional on these sets of behaviors and you, we internalize that, right, we, we internalized what, what Albert Ellis calls these musts, right, things that must be in our lives.

And we're, we're afraid that if we don't give our children musts, they'll be pieces of shit and laugh at us in Tom's nightmares or in my reality. Right. And so that's been something really interesting is like, again, not to be the guy who constantly is like. And then I said to my therapist, but I was like, you know, I'm really worried he's going to turn out to be a shitty person. And he was like.

Have you ever heard of anyone like starting as a three year old and then going straight through? Or how often do you hear like them being overly punished and overly looked down on and experiencing violence.

0:43:41 Tom: Man

0:44:50 Thomas: Yeah,

0:44:50 Eli: Like. How. Many overly permissive serial, like, we made a joke about like serial killers, but like there's no overly permissible serial killer mothers. Right, there's. There's mothers who abuse their kids and those kids become violent and abusive, and overly, overly permissive mothers fucking create podcasters, like that's what fucking happens. And. The. Discomfort.

0:44:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well,

0:45:11 Tom: Well but I don't think you're permissive though like I don'T THINK YOU'RE SUGGESTING THAT

0:45:12 Eli: No. No, no, I. Uh. But. The, the. Fear I have is of being permissive, right? That's the fear is like, oh, no, is this, is this gentle assertiveness actually, um, like that, that's the fear. And I think that what the book said that at least appealed to me is like, the reason I have that fear is because deep down I justify my existence by a set of behaviors instead of accepting that I deserve to exist just as I am, no matter.

0:45:15 Tom: Okay yeah yeah

0:45:41 Thomas: Huh.

0:45:41 Eli: What I. Do or do not do. And by the way, I don't buy that shit yet, by the way, like, I read it in the book and I was like, you know, whatever, Jew, but like. I have read the. Sentence and agreed with it in theory.

0:45:41 Thomas: Huh?

0:45:48 Tom: Fuck no

0:45:58 Thomas: I don't know if, so the part, the story I was going to start, let's start the episode guys. Here, I got a story to start it.

0:46:03 Eli: All. Right. Here we go. Dear, welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast about reverse missionary and forced gay sons, forcing.

0:46:10 Thomas: The thing that this actually happened, It's.

0:46:11 Eli: Your. Son to. Be gay, right.

0:46:13 Thomas: So Lydia has trouble with, with the kids in the morning, cause it's impossible to have three kids and give them to do anything. Um, I'm helping out certain mornings. I do the, the drop off. Uh, I shouldn't say that, certain morning I do, but I am now, my work schedule is now 10 PM to 2 AM. So I'm not, it's just impossible. It's fucking impossible, man. So she's handling the mornings.

I get everything ready at night and I handle the night, except for one morning I have to handle it, and that sucks, but I just am tired for the rest of my life. It's okay. Anyway, in the mornings she can't get the kids going at all. And I don't know how to help her with that at all. And one morning they're, you know, being particularly kind of not cooperative. And Lydia asked him, asked Phoebe, she was like, why you guys don't do this?

Why don't you do this with your dad? And, and Phoebe said, well, cause dad gets mad at us. If we do, I was just like, well, I don't know how to feel about any of this. Like, I really don't, like, on.

0:47:04 Eli: Yes.

0:47:04 Thomas: One hand it's. Genuinely like my wife is having trouble with her job because she can't get the kids to do anything and get to work on time. Like that's, so like on one end, I don't want to be the, the known as the mad parent. Like I don't want that relationship with my kids, and don't get me wrong, I'm not like, I just get, you know, Phoebe is really responsive to anything. So I could literally look at her and she'll be like, you're like, oh my God, I'm like, I'm being too hard on her. Like, I mean, that's not even an exaggeration. So I don't know what, you know, I'm not yelling a throwing thing. I'm not doing anything like that. I'm just insistent. That's how I'd put it. I'm insistent. You know, like I just, okay, I'm going to, you telling you to get in the car because we have to go to school, until you do it. Whereas I don't know what Lydia does exactly, but somehow it's not that. And so I don't know. Like,

0:47:05 Eli: Yeah.

0:47:51 Eli: You have that moment where you're like, yeah, no, I mean, I hear everything you're saying, but also get in the fucking car. Get in. The fucking car, like, I don't know what I have to. The humans. Have.

0:47:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yes, we have to go.

0:48:01 Eli: To get in there, good. You haven't done a scientific study on what happens if they never get in a car, car, B.F. Skinner, hook a dog up to my house or a box and then have it never get in the fucking car. Like, here's what I want the parenting books to do, I want them to be like, and here's how messed up your kid will be, so that you can make those decisions.

0:48:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:21 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah, like informed consent. You know, I want to know.

0:48:21 Eli: Right. Exactly. Exactly, like if they were like, hey, and by the way, if you like scream at Max every third time he hits you, he'll do a little too much DMT in college, I'd be like, I'm willing to accept. That I. Have also, so I've. Done too many. Psychedelics. And. I'm, yeah,

0:48:37 Tom: Yeah. Well,

0:48:36 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. You just need to know the risk, you know, just quantify it.

0:48:43 Tom: I was trying to bring this up when I was asking if you guys were on the same page together, because what it sounds like is as far as like your overall parenting philosophy, you guys are on the the same page, but clearly in terms of like something, kids are sensing that there's a difference, right? The kids are sensing that there isn't.

0:48:57 Thomas: It's just a personality difference. It's not a philosophy difference. Lydia's

0:49:00 Tom: No, that's what I'm saying. I'd say you are on the same age in terms philosophy. Yeah, So but clearly in term of like, something the two of you do is different, like something it has to be like, they're picking up on something there. Right. Yeah. I wonder like, do you you have any sense of what that is? Like, are you just stricter about things?

0:49:01 Thomas: Really, yeah? Yeah, oh, yeah of course, yeah Well, that's why I respond the way I did it is I don't think you could even say it's something that we're doing. I think it is more. That's why I'm where I don't know how to fix it, because I think it's very core to our personalities. And it's something that I don't like. I really don't know. I was going to bring this up with the full knowledge that I have no fucking further information on this. Like, I don't know. All I know is I am more able to get them in the fucking car and we have to go like that's just and do think it's just I'm more insistent. Like I I don't really like mean, if you nag a kid enough, they'll do something. You don't have to, you know, I don't not mean to him. I just like yeah, okay, we gotta go.

0:49:36 Tom: It's like, yeah, no, I don't think anyone.

0:49:50 Thomas: Yeah, okay. We gotta go, we got to go. You know, whereas like maybe I don't know if my wife, you his kids, kids will come up with 47 excuses and things and oh, but I need to get this.

0:49:50 Tom: Yeah.

0:49:58 Eli: Just the dumbest shit.

0:49:59 Thomas: Oh, but I need and I think I'm the one who's more like no, sorry, we can't we're not doing that. You don'' 't have time to do that.

0:50:04 Eli: It's the middle sentence, the middle sense of death, right? Where you're like, okay, shoes on. And they'll be like, these are, these aren't my shoes, my friend Kelly. And they're like no, that's the sentence I'll kill you. I'll tell you for that set, that sentence of bullshit right there. I will eliminate from the populace. Absolutely. Can

0:50:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

0:50:17 Tom: Yeah, I, I wonder, and I don't know this, obviously, and it sounds like, it sounds, like it's, it's hard to sort of pull apart, but like, I wonder if, if it's the difference between asking the kids to do something and telling the kids to do it. Because that, Because that's actually a pretty important distinction for kids, right? If you ask kids to do something, then I've seen this, like, with all kinds of parents, like, if you, if you're the parent that asks them to do something versus the parent who's like, "Put your shoes on, I'll be outside," there's, they're just like, "Oh fuck, I'm putting my shoes on." You're not being an authoritarian in that moment, there's no discipline, there's no punishments, none of that stuff, it's just like, okay, I just, I'm put on my shoes, I'm getting my my shoes. But if

0:50:33 Thomas: Yeah, that might be it, honestly. Yeah.

0:50:55 Thomas: I think you might be right on, Tom. Yeah.

0:51:02 Tom: So I think maybe just some, some language shift and some tonal shift might actually make the difference there, because you don't want to have, and I think we, we started off this episode, like, I did purposely with my lead-in, like, what I don't think anybody wants is like, "Fuck, I'm the heavy," right? Like I don't want to be the heavy.

0:51:19 Thomas: Yeah, and that's what it feels like Honestly, it sucks. Yeah.

0:51:22 Tom: Right, and I think to avoid being the heavy is to use the same tactics and the same strategies and sometimes the same language as to parents. And like, that's something that, that is not going to happen naturally. That's something I think that has to happen. Like as parents saying, okay, literally tell me the words you use to get them in the car, because when you use those words, they work. And when I try to get him in the card, they don't work. So we're using different words or different tone or setting different expectations. I think it's gotta be that granular to avoid that kind of thing.

0:51:23 Thomas: Well, Well, you think there's room for, like, yeah, this just isn't something that Lydia's personality, you know, like, it just might be talking about division of labor kind of thing, it's almost that, know, I, I don't, it's hard, I don't, you know, analyze Lydia off when she's not here, but like, I, I, yeah.

0:52:07 Tom: And Right. Yeah. And

0:52:09 Eli: Like to analyze Lydia, if that's okay. I'm

0:52:11 Thomas: Very agreeable and doesn't want, she just doesn't like that kind of conflict at all, and I do not, that I like it, but it's, you know, it's just, it's, I worry that it's like that, it might be a personality difference. And then I wonder, how bad is it to be the heavy then? Maybe it's OK if she needs that support. I don't know. Maybe that's what we need to do, see what she says off air.

0:52:19 Eli: Fucking her husband. I We'll see, we'll see what makes it to air after the conversation I have with her about this conversation, Cecil.

0:52:45 Tom: I don't, I don't have that answer. I'm sorry. I donno. I think,

0:52:48 Thomas: No, yeah, I don't think there is one. Right on there, Tom, with the difference between telling and asking. I do think, I do think there's part of Lydia that, like, really, um, optimistic about just humanity in general, like, surely these children will, I mean, I've, I've asked them to, do you know, it's like, they get so distracted so easily.

0:52:59 Tom: Right?

0:53:05 Eli: You considered, and look, I, I don't know where you're and Lydia's dynamic is, but if you consider just, just like shooting her a text that just is like, "Get your shit together, okay, get it, get it together."

0:53:17 Tom: Well, I, Thomas, Thomas, I will say this. I, get different behavior from my kids than my ex gets from my kids and, and specifically Amen. And I've asked Finn, who's got a little bit of a bird's eye view cause he's, you know, 16, he can kind of see what's going on. I'm like, Hey man, why does Amen behave like a charm for me? And we never have any conflict. And like, I hear, you from you and from from, his mom that he behaves differently at his mom's house. He's I like, I don't know. We just, you you just tell us to do stuff. We just do it.

0:53:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:48 Tom: But I thought about that. And I think that the difference is like, I'm not asking, but also like the kids don't get in trouble. I'm like, oh, not yelling at him. They're not getting punishments. I'm just, I not smacking him. And neither are you.

0:53:53 Eli: Right.

0:53:52 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I think we'd better say, because we're going to get a million comments about this, that gender could be a component of this, you know, like I don't, I just don't know, it, it's interesting to try to think about, it's interesting to try to think about that. Like male anger is definitely a particular thing in our society, even when it's not really, like my kids have never seen me like fight someone. You know what I mean? Like there's no, no, they weren't there. They specifically weren't There. So to their minds, I've never fought anyone.

0:54:05 Tom: Sure.

0:54:08 Eli: No I don't think so. Well, if they had come to your hockey game, they would have I

0:54:30 Tom: But I, I, I wouldn't imagine that your kids have seen you angry. My kids have never seen me angry.

0:54:40 Thomas: Do you, of course they've, have seen me angry, I don't know what you're, I, I don't know, I I, we yeah

0:54:43 Eli: Have a clarifying question about that, do you mean my son has seen me angry and have expressed breast it, or my son has seen me, like, I just took a fucking vape of joker venom, but on the inside I am boiling with anger because the first one, no, the second one, every day of my goddamn life.

0:55:10 Eli: Before we go, what do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear. Oh,

0:55:16 Thomas: I Oh, my god, before we go to Patreon, I need to just offer it a figly olive brand, whatever, one of the some plant, whatever tree or plant, this will be, um, I had four million people tell me that actually Miraculous Ladybug fucking whatever Cat Noir is the best show ever, and I'm the worst 'cause it's a progressive show, or I don't, I don't fucking look, I, I mean, I'm, I don't know someone, they, people who know people, people, I love how they have to do that as their defense. You're in a, you're in

0:55:17 Tom: All

0:55:38 Eli: It's progressive. Oh, you done fucked up now, she's trans, or something, they're actually both, trans. Don't

0:55:50 Thomas: Mood today. Jeez.

0:55:52 Eli: Record with me at night. I'm a day player, man, this is comedy club o 'clock, this this is this is late night material Ladybug's

0:55:53 Tom: He just, Eli, Eli's got fucking six hours of sleep in five days. He doesn't give a shit who's in front of him right now.

0:55:53 Thomas: Yeah. This is not a normally normal recording. He's been punched and scratched by his kids so much. He's just fucking no. No, look, when I described the show that's shitty animation in five to six minute episodes, I actually wasn't talking about Ladybug and Cat Noir. I couldn't. Here's the thing. I can't think of what that fucking show is. I can'T remember. It's some fucking shit that sucks. They have two different poses. It's a, you know, it's, you get the sense that somebody animated it with a computer that just does everything now and they just click like, you Know, oh, this pose. And then they talk in this pose, so sorry, apologies to all the dedicated fucking Ladybug fans out there. I, I still, I don't like that show, but yeah, it wasn't that. I won't say that that's like,

0:56:41 Eli: Dad killed in 9/11, first responder, that's why she's a ladybug, where's his colors, but it's fine, whatever. Thomas, you don't, 11 was Ladybug's dad, that's okay, I'm putting that on, the those Wikipedias never monitor themselves, I'm puttin that on Wikipedia now, I know there's a Ladybug in Chat Noir, I'm doin' it, I'm doing it right now. Wiki I'm doin' it as we speak. Tom, you had a kid story.

0:57:10 Thomas: He's actually doing it. All right. And, and done with the normie. Here we go. Bonus story.

0:57:16 Eli: Oh,

0:57:20 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.

0:57:59 Tom: To Dear Old Dads. The podcast is just waiting for dad