DOD84: Potty Train, CHOO CHOO

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: To Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's taking the piss and hopefully even in the right place. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:38 Eli: Right, today's episode is about sex with our wives, um, uh, no judgment, we're just gonna go in, uh, so Thomas like I think he's

0:00:42 Thomas: This one yeah this one's really important to Tom, he's been really gunning for this one for a while

0:00:52 Eli: Been asking for this one for a while, he said yeah, he finally did Pussy Talk with Cecil, um, we're happy to say, uh, it turns out Cecil had an an ejector seat under his chair the whole time and, um, yeah got to dust that bad boy off

0:00:52 Tom: This is My golden episode, guys. This my golden episode, oh

0:00:52 Thomas: Uh oh man

0:01:05 Tom: Yeah

0:01:08 Thomas: Yeah he's he's he's like that guy with all the balloon, what was that, like, balloon kid, what am I remembering, some fucking thing, remember that yeah, no, there's a news story where it was like, didn't they think a kid yeah

0:01:14 Eli: Up up

0:01:19 Tom: Yeah, it was a false story, yeah, like they fake, they faked a kid that got lost

0:01:21 Thomas: Yeah

0:01:21 Eli: They faked it and then the kid blew up their spot on television, and we were all like, I think culture's bad, and we're like, don't think about it, everybody, we cannot, hey, everyone, we cannot address the implications of this right now, we can't do it as a nation, all right, none of us coped properly with 9-11, we're not doing it, oh

0:01:23 Tom: Yeah, uh-huh yeah yeah and

0:01:23 Thomas: They fake to get yeah that's funny yeah

0:01:42 Tom: How

0:01:43 Thomas: Of taking the piss, can we do another of the vacation episode because we're trying to not have to work this whole trip, and Jesus Christ, I'm back to my policy of maybe working during trips is just easier, I can't, it's so hard we're We're going to be gone like a fuck, like a week or a week and a half, which is the record for us. Like that's the longest thing we ever do. And I'm trying to get all everything recorded. I'm just, I'm up on every night working up all night. Like I can't even keep up with it. It's impossible. How does anyone do it? Can't be done.

0:01:56 Tom: Long are you gonna be gone yeah

0:02:16 Eli: They're, they're not the only bread makers in their bakery, is how they do it, Thomas. Let me, uh, let me peel back the curtain of me and my therapist conversation every day for the last 27 years, uh, if you own a bakery and you make all the bread, you eventually get tired, it's crazy. Right you gotta hire someone else to make the bread

0:02:35 Thomas: Yeah that's that's fair that's there and then we're preparing to leave, oh And actually I had a good, it was like I was doing a mini best of our show but in my life, you know, because then we're prepared to leave, and, uh, a leak in the sink, the, the faucet, the, the kitchen faucet. And mind you, her parents are coming. Lydia's parents are come to like, you know, they live in our house with the kids while we're gone, which is amazing. Her parents are the best. It's the only reason we can do anything.

0:02:40 Eli: Yes

0:03:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:02:59 Tom: That's Outstanding daycare for them.

0:03:02 Thomas: And I'm thinking, okay, there's a little leak, I'm looking at it, not so bad, you know, believe, normal me is like drop everything and buy a new kitchen and do the whole thing, but I was like, no, I got to get my work done, I have to do it, so I was, like, it's not so bad, it was just a little leaky, a little bit of a leak. And then I like cut to, obviously, you know, a few days later, I'm like, okay, it's a little wet down there, and then it's just fucking soaked. I'm like, God, it's too much leaking, I can't leave that for her parents, like, there's no way. And so in the midst of all this, I was like, I'm not going to do anything major, I just got to replace the faucet. And then everything turns into a fucking half a day project, you know, so it's like the middle of that, I got to do the construction episode of D Old Dads, well, you know, before the vacation episode of Dear Old Dads, they

0:03:02 Tom: Holy shit.

0:03:44 Eli: Hey, Thomas, you know the only thing worse than discovering a leaky sink right before you're about to leave your children alone for a week? The auto ads, that's right, the auto ads the leaky sync of podcasting, they slowly drip, drip, drip ever so slightly into your hearts until they fill the fondness you might have for us as art creators into pure white hot hatred, but there's a way to keep our love forever, forever together, and that of course is by signing up to be a patron over at patreon.com/dearolddads, where you'll get not only a bonus parenting story at the end of every single episode, you also get a monthly bonus episode and a commercial-free version of every single show that you can play on any podcast player. You got Podcacher, Pocket Pods, Pod Trapper, Pod, Pod

0:03:52 Thomas: Leak into your show pod

0:04:40 Eli: Pod, but Pod Pod Pod? Pod Sluts?

0:04:43 Tom: Trapper keeper.

0:04:44 Eli: Actually, if you have Pod Slutes, do not try to install our RSS feed on it. It, um, it's gonna do some real damage in there. But yeah, uh, yeah, check it out over at patreon.com/dearolddads.

0:04:41 Thomas: Slut pod sluts too taking

0:04:58 Tom: All one of the best things about buying a brand new house, I think I mentioned this to you guys before I, I have a new construction house that we just moved into, uh, back in June. And one of The things I said to Haley, when we moved in, I was like, you know, this house, nobody has pissed or shit in the wrong place.

0:05:16 Eli: Yeah.

0:05:16 Tom: All of the piss and all of the shit has gone only where it's supposed to go. And we are at a place in our our lives now where the youngest is is nine, so there's a fairly high likelihood that until I become incontinent, most if not all of the piss and shit will be, you know, limited to the toiletular regions of the house which is the first time in 16 years that I will live in a house that I can't look around and be like, I remember in every room where somebody shit or pissed in the wrong place.

0:05:14 Thomas: A shit yeah she seems a little braggy wow yeah

0:05:37 Eli: You can hope.

0:05:47 Eli: Yep. Stays with you. It stays with You.

0:05:47 Thomas: I don't even, yeah I can't keep track of it anymore. It's like the, I'm so haunted. It would be like being haunted by 70 ghosts in every room where you're like, guys, this isn't scary anymore. There's like, there's too many of you.

0:05:58 Eli: Right. It's that house of a thousand corpses,

0:06:00 Thomas: Like, oh, boo. Oh, I am a Victorian child. Yeah, man. I can't even see. I cannot hear you. Come on. Speak up. Hey, no, I can not. Yeah. That is like, that

0:05:58 Tom: Know

0:06:00 Eli: Right? Where he's just like, it's just overwhelming. Yeah. You're one of six dozen Victorian children, man. I don't know what to tell you.

0:06:11 Thomas: All died in here somehow.

0:06:13 Eli: Yeah, I don't Know how you all managed to fall into the same. Well, I feel like they put a pet fence around it at something at some point, right.

0:06:19 Thomas: They were pretty Pretty hardcore back then.

0:06:19 Eli: You are all Magnetized to this. Well, were they having well-diving parties here? None of this makes sense to me. Oh,

0:06:26 Tom: So, Are of course talking today about potty training, uh, because, uh, Eli, you told me you are, you guys are just about to embark upon the fresh hell that is potty training with Max, so Where are you at with it?

0:06:29 Eli: Yeah, that Is Tom, that is correct, uh, Have not yet begun, um, as you know, my favorite thing to do on this podcast is to talk a bunch of shit about what I think is going to happen and then rue my miserable failures in future episodes and

0:06:50 Tom: Yeah, real quick, before you jump, I have, you read extensively, like, like 115 of the most liberal yeah, I I am

0:07:01 Eli: Books Tom six potty training books, six pot training books, one online potty training course, in case anyone's wondering about the research I've done on this one, um, honestly, like, that's part of what I'm really psyched to talk about today is not necessarily the process, although we'll get to the process when it actually happens, but just how much disagreement there is in something so old and so universal, right?

0:07:06 Tom: Not surprised

0:07:08 Thomas: That's good.

0:07:29 Thomas: No, I'm pretty sure kids didn't start shitting until like the 1950s. I'm Pretty Sure.

0:07:33 Eli: Tom, when did the first shit get, get taken was it FDR did FDR like hoist himself up from the wheelchair and say, like, hey, everybody, check out this

0:07:35 Thomas: Yeah, you were there.

0:07:34 Tom: Okay, all right all right you know this is this is funnier when it's Noah that you're making fun of for being old.

0:07:47 Thomas: Cut to Tom trying to get us to take on an older coho. Hey, we need a fourth dad. Oh,

0:07:49 Tom: Oh,

0:07:49 Eli: Um But exactly, uh, the amount of disagreement over how to make your kid pee and poop in the spot where everyone else pees and poops, not even mentioning, like, when you have a kid who is a different brain, like, has a neurospicy condition, which is a whole new thing, right? The amount of people who look you dead in your eyes, the windows to your soul, and are like, "Just so you know, this is the way to do this thing and anything else is abuse," and will be considered the most vile form of child torture in 10 years, is because what I think is interesting, right, is it's sort of parenting generally, I think, suffers from the sort of all-or-nothing fallacy that a lot of pseudoscience, um, for, right, which is like when you're trying to tell someone that homeopathy doesn't work, they'll be like, "Yeah, but doctors used to drill holes in your head."

0:08:00 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah Really?

0:08:43 Eli: And I think a lot the time parenting sort of takes that same approach, which is, you'll be, hey, like, I think no matter what, like, either of these three potty training methods are probably fine. It probably depends on your kid. And they're like, oh yeah, they used to think hitting your kids is okay. And I was like, and not everybody. I mean, we weren't universally hitting our kids. Some people liked their kids in history. I do know there were a couple.

0:08:58 Tom: Yeah

0:09:13 Eli: Obsessions that I've had is, do you guys know about Dr. Spock? Yeah,

0:09:11 Thomas: Huh, news to me, uh,

0:09:17 Tom: Absolutely yeah yeah I mean wrote one of the, I mean, he was like one of the most famous like writers of uh, kids development books, like, back in the 70s and 80s, right? Yeah.

0:09:18 Thomas: The character from Star Trek oh yeah well

0:09:18 Eli: Yeah yeah He's one of the first, um, like, I would call him, like, pop psy books about raising kids, right, and it wasn't a particularly popular thing, um, you also have to remember how different the advice was for parents, um, like at our grandparents' generation, um,

0:09:45 Thomas: They didn't even give a shit, they're like, why would I care to learn about how to raise a kid, it's just gonna oh

0:09:50 Eli: Not not just that, my grandmother kept, this is actually my mother's mother, kept and would sometimes show us a pamphlet called "No Kisses for Baby," um, and it was, it was what she got instead of the don't-shake-your-baby thing that we all got, and it was literally, don't kiss your baby because they'll, you'll spoil them, don't spoil the baby by kissing them too much, this is a real thing, and and secondarily, like, they can get a bunch of communicable diseases which we don't have fucking vaccines for yet, so course, yeah, no, of course, but they don't fucking and know that, so this pamphlet, and she used to show it to us all the time, but Spock is a really interesting figure for me in, like, the history of parenting, because, one, he's one of the first people to be like, I think kids are just like little people who have souls, and everyone was like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude, are you gay, you sound gay, I want to be clear, by the way, that was their actual response, I'm not doing a bit, like, their actual response was, we think he's a homosexual, and

0:09:59 Thomas: My god yikes yeah but the opposite is true, you want them to get the, yeah, man that's amazing

0:10:53 Tom: Jesus

0:10:53 Eli: That's why he thinks these things it fucking rules like, I again, I don't know that it would be funny enough for a Citation Needed episode, but I have long wanted to do a Citation need an episode on the many and varied attempts to take away or otherwise attack Dr. Spock as he just was like, maybe just be nice to your kid, just like treat him like a person, and they're just like, you're doing crazy talk right now, that's true yeah no, that's truth that's the requirements

0:10:53 Tom: Christ Eli

0:10:55 Thomas: Oh my god, I

0:11:16 Tom: If we can do a whole episode on New Coke, I, I think you can venture out out on this one yeah, uh, -huh, you've, yeah, got the room, the requirements here are pretty low.

0:11:23 Eli: I wanted to ask, before I go into the many, any readings that I have done and in the, the, uh, high expertise from which I will be brought, low, I wanted to ask, obviously, Tom, your kids are all potty trained, I'd love to hear about that experience, Thomas.

0:11:30 Tom: I mean, that's a hell of an assumption, actually.

0:11:36 Thomas: Know, yeah, the

0:11:35 Eli: Yeah I know, that's true, that's truth, uh, Thomas, are any of your kids potty-trained yet?

0:11:42 Thomas: Of them, they're somehow yeah Remy takes a shit in the toilet, he just pops right on there, no, Remy's not even close to, the he can't even walk.

0:11:42 Tom: Remy's potty trained yeah I know, I'm messing with you

0:11:50 Thomas: But, but yeah, all the ones, all that you would think have been potty trained for a while. I Phoebe obviously is, I mean, Phoebe's the complete stereotype. She potty-trained us actually. We weren't, we didn't, I didn't know how to go shit. And she was like, hey, no, man, you've been doing this wrong. So I was like fuck, okay, yeah, got some pointers. She

0:12:01 Eli: Right

0:12:06 Tom: Like, dad, you got to put your legs up on the squatty potty, you put your colon in a better position is less straining on your assholes

0:12:09 Eli: Exactly what

0:12:10 Thomas: I was like, I don'T go in the top part of the toilet? Jesus, the whole time I've been been doing this wrong. She's like, no, it's definitely not the top part. Here's the thing. I thought Arlo, I was all prepared for Arlo to be like a little slower. Cause it's been a little lower with everything, you know? And my, our feeling has been like, you could just you wear pull -ups. We're not stressing too much about it. It's, you know, obviously this is one that's better to have my wife on. Cause I can't remember dates that anything happened, but it was, so we, we started to probably train Arlo. He did have some challenges, challenges, but he got it. And then my feeling was, well, nighttime's impossible. That's just so hard. Like can just wear a pull -up forever. Cause whatever, who cares? They'll

0:12:13 Eli: Are you talking about Phoebe yeah

0:12:47 Tom: Goes

0:12:47 Thomas: Figure it out.

0:12:47 Tom: To college with pull -ups and everything

0:12:48 Thomas: Yeah. Why do I care?

0:12:48 Eli: Hmm what you don't wake up with shit in your pants some mornings it happens, Tom. Um, so

0:12:53 Thomas: But He just, after like a little bit, he just was like, I don't want to wear that. And we're like, fucking, are you sure, man? Cause like, it's sometimes wet in the morning. He's like, yeah, I don't want to wear it. And then he just was fine, just figure it out, both my kids were just completely fine, I don't know, we've had like a couple accidents, maybe it's been perfect, I don't know, not my doing

0:13:15 Tom: Oh you're very lucky, I did not have that experience.

0:13:15 Thomas: Uh

0:13:19 Eli: All right, Tom, IM ready for the horror stories, let's hear it. Let's hear it.

0:13:21 Tom: Experience. Well, Eamon so was by far the more difficult of the two to potty train. So I, by the time I met Aislinn and Donovan, obviously they were already potty trained. Although Haley and I have talked about like that experience for both of them. Cause it just, you know, chit chat about your kids and whatever.

But Finn, I don't remember being terribly difficult to pot potty train, he was, it was one of those things where it was like, all right, we're just gonna do that, it's like you're at an age, it's just gonna happen, we're gonna just potty train you now.

And like, I don't think he would have like led that on his own, but like he was pretty happy to be led, as his Fin, like Fin is just like, yeah, whatever's whatever we're doing, you want me to be at this developmental age, I'll just be there, it's, I'm pretty people pleasing, Amen, you know, like kids.

So like kids, when they go to take a shit, every kid I've ever met like does like kind of like some signal, and they, they give you some signal, like they start to like get uncomfortable, they go hide behind the same couch area, or they do something, and they kind of give you some clue that they are going to go take a dump.

And then you can respond to that by like watching them and intervening and bringing them over to the potty, and like putting them on the potty, like having a, you know, continuing this process for them. Amen, I swear to God, I'm not not exaggerating. Never once did I catch that kid taking a shit. He fucking stealth shit at every single time. Every

0:14:41 Tom: Time his whole life, you

0:14:41 Thomas: It, like in the house or like went to the toy.

0:14:44 Tom: Just be like, fuck it stinks. And like, you're like, what? And he just had shit his diaper. And you're Like, what the fuck is happening? Like every other kid I've ever met would be like grunting in the corner or they'd get like kind of fidgety or they like, they'd have some indication. Amen would just you just be like so whoa what the shit Oh god What

0:14:46 Eli: He's Yep.

0:14:48 Thomas: Oh, right. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is important, Tom. You bring up a very valuable point. I don't think if you're a non -parent, like, uh, let's say Heath, Heath is often my hypothetical audience for a lot of what I'm talking about. I don't think you perhaps realize how disgusting human shit really is. Like, like really, like be. Like one of our kids went back when they used to do this, we'll take a shit in a diaper and it's like, well, someone is dead and we're selling the house. I can't, you know what I mean? Like there's no way it could be as stinky as it is. What must life have been like before like sewer technology? I can't even imagine.

0:15:27 Tom: Yeah Yeah Is an unbelievable horror that extended for for Amen like it extended far beyond Like I don't remember exactly when he finally stopped shitting himself secretly like a fucking shit ninja but like that wore a pull-up until he was six. I mean, he did, because at nighttime, he would just like every night, like every night. And this is a moment where step-parenting kind of comes into play, too, is that when you're a step-parent, and like myself, you're the part-time parent. So I had him every other weekend and on Tuesday nights. Don't get to lead that process. That process is just happening. And,

0:15:39 Eli: Yeah Right

0:15:42 Thomas: It's so much easy

0:16:16 Eli: Quite

0:16:16 Tom: You know, I'm just sort of like in the background, you know, because Monday through Friday, I don't have him. So, you know I don't get to sort of like be involved. I get to find out maybe a text message here or there about like how is it going or what they're doing over at the other house, but kid like holy shit like shit took forever. That shit took forever and it was very frustrating because I couldn't help but think man man, if you were here, I would just lock down, dedicate some time. We would fucking fix this problem. But I think it was much more loosey goosey over at his mom's house in terms of like, yeah, like very.

0:16:51 Thomas: For you to say. Yeah.

0:16:54 Tom: I don't think there was a lot of effort or assistance or intervention that was being offered. So it kind of just dragged on forever. And like that kid's bed, like we threw all of his bedding and mattress away at one point because I was just like, It just smells like just a hamster cage.

0:16:51 Eli: Literally

0:17:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:09 Tom: Yeah, this is a hamester cage. This is just like he would just come over to the house, and he would smell like pee. He'd be like, dude, what just happened, my guy? Let's get in the tub. Let's let's get you cleaned up. But Now he's nine, and I don't know exactly when that kind of faded off. At one point, I was just like, we're done buying pull-ups. I'm just not doing it anymore. You're actually literally getting too big for me to buy these things anymore. I'm just not doing it for you. Like we're not, you need to be done with this process. Love.

0:17:08 Eli: There's no escaping from this.

0:17:16 Thomas: Oh God. Thanks.

0:17:19 Eli: Yeah.

0:17:37 Thomas: Yeah

0:17:37 Eli: So, that the in case you're wondering what the modern take is on potty training, there's sort of the of the six books I've read, four of them have been this, this Potty Training in Three Days method, right? That's essentially what the Potty Training in Three Days method is, it is you're just like, hey, we're done with diapers, you take all the diapers, you throw them away, you take all the pull-ups, you throw him away, and then you just watch your kid like a hawk for three days and Yeah.

0:17:58 Tom: It that's What Hayley did, that's

0:18:02 Thomas: Yeah yeah yep

0:18:04 Tom: What Haylee did with, with her kids. She just took, she took the diaper off, everything, the kids just fucking ass naked like Winnie the Pooh, and around and then she'd be like, "Yep, boom, here."

0:18:09 Thomas: Yeah that's that's what we did oh

0:18:13 Eli: That is Well, I'm glad to hear that it has worked, uh, multiple times. That is what we're going to attempt. So four of the books I've read have been the three potty training methods, and two of the books I've read are like, "So you failed in Three Day Potty Trading" books, and

0:18:30 Thomas: I hope it's by the same publisher or whatever. They're like acknowledging that they're like, we're going to kill in this market because we'll sell everybody on that first one. Nobody can fucking do it.

0:18:32 Eli: I'm for sure and then we'll sell Well,

0:18:39 Thomas: And then we sell it. We've given them the disease. Now let's sell them the cure.

0:18:43 Eli: That's the thing, right, is I think that most parents don't have my anxieties, so they were like, um, we checked our audience, and four out of 10 parents are what we call Bosnick buyers, which is, they'll Buy the book on the instructions and then they'll by the what to do if your instructions fail book. So we can just sell them both books. He's going to buy them both, even though the first one works. Same thing happened with transitioning to the big boy bed for Max. This month, I think I told this when we talked about the diagnosis, he switched to a big kid bed the exact same day as we got his diagnosis, because he fucking did a front flip out of his crib and Anna was just like, "Nope, big kid bed."

So just took the front off his crib, he's been in a toddler bed ever since, I of course, immediately read 97 articles and one Kindle ebook about transitioning kids to, eat, to big kid beds, reading all the, like, you know, and of course, if your child uses the extension cords in his room to fashion a lasso so that they can strangle you the minute you walk in, in the morning, here's a good self-defense technique, to sweep the leg. And of course, as has always happened with every change in Max's life, we were like, "Hey man, big kid bed," uh, come out of your room, and he was like, "You got it, can I leaf through these books over and over again?" And we were like, you can't actually do that, and he was like, "Say no more, fam, say

0:18:55 Thomas: Oh, it's so cute. Really? Yeah.

0:20:03 Eli: No more." Because

0:20:04 Thomas: I I didn't even think of that as a thing you could buy a book about. Like I just, We just switched them over the bed. I had to message Lydia. So I now have the, you know, I have the potty training details, everybody. I don't want to claim that I remembered them. But the big kid bed one is funny too, because I'll always remember when we switched Phoebe over to her big kid bad. It was actually, don't I know if you know this, but our kids are pretty close together because we had a tendency to have kids pretty fast. And so Arlo, I

0:20:30 Eli: Condoms, feel weird, yeah, I just, I never want a new listener to come in and be like, like, oh, those beautiful baby. No, it's because doesn't autonomous, like, condoms. Let's just be clear why you have three children one year apart.

0:20:39 Thomas: Mean, look, You're, you're accidentally right, but okay, but that's not, no, um, so I remember, because Arlo, uh, newborn, so I was sleeping in, in room below Phoebe, actually, in the guest room, and I'll never forget it's a sound that's burned into my mind forever, and it's this weird, like, kind of happy, but I'd, like, my heart hurts, but it's also one of those, like, oh, kind of, like, like, you know, milestone things. Because I just remember, in the middle of the night, after installing, know, giving her the big kid bed, I just hear this upstairs, ba-dum, ah!

0:20:44 Tom: It's not okay,

0:21:15 Thomas: And then I hear, like, get back in the bed, go to sleep fine. And I was just, like – I felt so bad. I was like, oh, do I need to go up? But then she figured it out. It was, you now, nine inches off the ground. It was like right down to the ground, but like she had just, like, rolled over. And I had put a bunch of pillows, you know, like where she could possibly roll.

0:21:28 Tom: Right.

0:21:32 Thomas: But it was still just so, it, like, hurt my heart to hear this little, like, she was kind of sad about it, but then I hear just kind of pick herself up, get back in bed, right back to sleep, it was the sweetest little thing.

0:21:20 Eli: Right, exactly. Of course, yeah.

0:21:45 Tom: I'm curious, Eli, in the books about potty training, if they tell you, like, the three days, take the diaper off, let them run ass naked, like, what you know, two questions for you. One, if they have an accident, do you rub their nose in it, or not rub their noses in it, I don't remember I which, and are you still going to bring him to Target, are, to Winnie the Pooh his way through Target, wait,

0:22:00 Eli: No,

0:21:58 Thomas: Oh, No, you have to stay in the house.

0:22:05 Eli: So you that's got to do three days just like locked in at home, right? Right. That's that's the whole key to the method is like three days with no activities where accident equals go to the potty right away. Now, all of my books say you don't really do bare naked with boys just because They've got a wider spray volume, if you will, and they, they have as noticeable an experience with underwear as they might if they were naked, because feel it getting like wet right there, um,

0:22:05 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Huh. Interesting.

0:22:31 Thomas: Right

0:22:33 Tom: What, wouldn't feel her vagina getting getting wet if she was peeing like her?

0:22:35 Eli: No, No, So, well, basically they say that girls, it's much more obvious to them if you go full-on bare bottoms, right?

0:22:42 Thomas: Right, Right, whereas dudes, they might just fucking take a leak and not notice as much.

0:22:46 Eli: Boys are just like, "Nice, got it, got everywhere" and

0:22:48 Thomas: Yeah, that makes sense. I didn't know that. I we did bare ass with both of them.

0:22:53 Eli: They just, just peed and pooped wherever they

0:22:55 Thomas: I don't remember anybody pooping in the wrong place. Yeah.

0:22:57 Tom: So this this is a point where obviously you're going to rent an Airbnb though, right? For three days, I'm not, that's the thing about this method, it's like, it's, you're gonna have, like, somebody is gonna shit on your carpet, like they're, that's the thing that, like, people have to, audience, at some point somebody in your home is just gonna shit right on your car, and that's just something you have to be okay with, and I am just like deeply not okay with that, I, like, already went through it, but I'm just like, no, no,

0:23:04 Eli: Nice,

0:23:04 Thomas: Yeah, because

0:23:11 Eli: Yep, Tom, that that is such a brilliant idea, I wish I was as bad a person as I pretend to be because I just having Anna set up a Airbnb account for our one, one star review, and then taking our house ourselves to someone's shitty fucking investment property, and just being like, my kids shouldn't piss all over your Airbnb, here's your $150 cleaning fee, which, for the first time in this website's history, makes sense. Like, I wish I was as bad a person as I often pretend to be, because that's going to be so much easier than the truly just epic amounts of urine I'll be cleaning up from my home, my

0:23:29 Thomas: Oh, no. No, it's a bad idea, you

0:23:37 Tom: Yes.

0:23:43 Thomas: Well for One, do it in an area where it's not carpet, that's for damn sure, if you have that, that's a, good we

0:24:10 Eli: Whole house is carpet, I'm in my kitchen my, could keep my child in my kitchen

0:24:14 Tom: Yeah I was

0:24:10 Thomas: Kept oh man, there's no tile at all, even the kitchen is carpet we actually kept your kitchen but your kitchen is a hazard for many reasons, um, the cupboards

0:24:16 Tom: Y'

0:24:16 Eli: Yeah yeah he'll get locked in a cupboard, Thomas, think, damn, it

0:24:20 Tom: All, yeah,

0:24:21 Thomas: Yeah oh, I wish he could get locked in a cupboard, but no, there's no way anyone could get, get locked in a cupboard in your house, because they will never be closed. Anyway, so downstairs, back then, that was the, the, you kitchen was, yeah, it was all kind of just like the hardwood, fake hardwood, whatever, so it had a lot of room to do that. But the only problem with the, I love the joking about the Airbnb, but unless my kids are different than every other kids, the one thing you don't want to do is put them in a different environment to learn something, then they, that will just not work, yeah.

0:24:24 Eli: Sure

0:24:27 Tom: Right right oh,

0:24:52 Eli: Yeah. Because then they get home and they're like, was, other rules, them's with other times. It's funny, we wanted to do it, um, like this coming weekend, but a couple weekends from now, and our preschool was like, no, we would prefer you do it on a longer break, and I was like, oh, no, is this body training in three days, and they were like, yeah, no, we are familiar with those books, um, go ahead and take a longer time to sort of work out the kinks before you send your kid with underwear full of shit to our building, if you don't mind.

0:24:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah

0:25:15 Tom: You

0:25:22 Thomas: Well that ties in perfectly because now that I have the uh the dates and the facts I got went to Wikipedia, Lydia, my kids, they um, so Phoebe, it's even, it's even more obnoxious, because you know, Phoebe being precocious child, she was ready to go before two, like she wanted, she wanted to stop having diapers before two years old, but the preschool was literally like, or the daycare was like, well, the only problem is that the room we have for kids below two, there's no toilet. So you can't, you actually can't.

0:25:22 Eli: Right.

0:25:54 Eli: She Literally

0:25:55 Thomas: So they actually taught, We, we waited until like the minute she turned two and could go in the bigger kid class, and we potty trained and it took three days and she was a hundred percent accuracy, she's the most obnoxious uh precocious child, and again, on my memory, and this is another, you know, I really think it's possible that, you know, I'm kind of unfair to Arlo and really, I have too high expectations because of Phoebe, um, which is something I do worry about because I'm looking at what Lydia sent me, Arlo, she was like, oh yeah, Arlo was a bit later, I was like, yeah, that's my memory too, and she's like, yeah, it was like, you know, 28 months, so so like four months

0:25:55 Eli: Can't Not have Diapers Yeah.

0:26:31 Thomas: Later than then Phoebe, which is, I mean, I guess four months is a long time in kid years, but like, yeah, he still was two and a third and he got it done. You know, he got, he's a little harder. Yeah, no, I, I might, my kids are a little rock stars. I'm really proud of them.

0:26:45 Tom: I, I'm sitting here and I'm trying desperately to think of like, and I'm generally really good with remembering the dates and how old the kids were when they did these things, and I am drawing a Blank On How Old Finn was and, but but I think I know why, Thomas, I Thing I know why, because the experience is so fucking traumatic That if you were to remember it, nobody would have a second kid It's Like, you know, it's like, it's like when you get like really fucking hurt and then like later you remember like, yeah That hurt You Know, but you're just sort of Like vaguely Attached To The idea Of The pain, and you're just like, yeah, I can't, you remember, I had meningitis for a week and I couldn't Like stand up, but I'm just like, yeah, I remember that, that's a thing that happened in the book called Tom, but like, I don't remember what it felt like, you know, I, I

0:26:54 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Was me too. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't remember pain that way. Yeah? Oof.

0:27:05 Eli: Car Accidents Yeah. Yeah, it's

0:27:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:29 Tom: Think, think, fucking potty training is that, it's so awful and it's

0:27:32 Eli: The car accident of parenting

0:27:34 Tom: It's Just, yeah, your fucking house is totaled and enjoy, an insurance adjuster comes out and they just click their tongue like, yeah, I think we're just gonna have to write the whole thing off, now pal And It's, that's it, that's that, it, it's that bad, that's the reason you can't fucking remember, because It's The Worst Here It's a total loss there, I don't know, just

0:27:34 Eli: Yep.

0:27:43 Thomas: I Should Write You a Check For your whole house, god Do you have any uh special potties, tell me about that, Eli, you've got to have like 900 different gadgets you bought, right? Like Different

0:27:58 Tom: How Many Frog Shitters do you Have You've got, can't, can we talk real quick about how, how all of those are made. So you shit right in its mouth. That seems like setting a kid up.

0:27:59 Thomas: Yeah. There's

0:27:59 Eli: I Did Of Them They're All, there are 100 of You can't Buy I went on Amazon And I was like, children's potty that doesn't train my child to be a pervert,, and they were like, no result Zero, right?

0:28:07 Thomas: There's Some fucking Sicko No

0:28:17 Tom: Yes.

0:28:17 Thomas: Sorry, the Only, there's only one guy in the industry and he's a fucking pervert creep that wants to start a trend. And so he's like, nope, this is all of them. Literally all of them will be this.

0:28:18 Tom: Yeah. Couldn't be anything weirder unless it like shit on it. And it like rubbed it on its chest or something, you know, like what the fuck?

0:28:31 Eli: Exactly.

0:28:32 Thomas: And you got to pay very close attention to the expression of the cartoon frog because often there's some real good comedy there. Like they can't make him.

0:28:38 Eli: He's Psyched, yeah, all

0:28:37 Tom: Well, a lot of them look surprised. A lot of have a surprise look like.

0:28:42 Eli: Of Them look Surprised

0:28:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, they can paint a single tier. They're not allowed to paint a singleteer, which is, you know, more accurate, but they'll, they'll get, they're like, oh, there's a little crook of the mouth out there that he knows, he knows what's up, he knows What's happening

0:28:54 Eli: He Knows What's up, he regrets it, he, he has a, he has a feeling About it

0:28:57 Thomas: He's Like, look, Uh, the economy, man, it's, you got to take the work where It is.

0:28:58 Eli: Yeah, I Don't know why they all come with those like activated things where a man in a German accent says, "Oh, yeah." Like, I know it's supposed to be a positive reinforcement thing, but I just think it's, um, I think it's weird. Weird. Well, look, we'll talk potties in a second because I have a tale of pottys and buying associated pottries. But one of the things that I am worried about the most is all the books, right? Because they want to sell you the book early, are like, "Hey, make sure you potty train early. Make sure you putty train earlier.

You potty training too late, they'll ship their pants for the rest of their lives." They're shit their pants. For the rest. Of their lives and Max's. Like a little over three now. So this This is, you know, a little bit late in the process. And so I think he just started showing readiness signs because he was always kind of interested in the potty. But like he now sits on the potting. He's peed in the potty a couple of times. And more importantly, he started taking his diaper off when it's wet because he doesn't like the feeling of it.

0:29:55 Eli: So, yeah.

0:29:56 Tom: That's good.

0:29:57 Eli: So I feel like now we've reached The readiness things. But every book I open is like, hey, did you already fail your kid? Ah,

0:29:31 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, Ah, That's Big yeah

0:29:57 Tom: Yeah, that's a good sign. Yeah.

0:30:05 Eli: Well, this might be a little tougher.

0:30:06 Thomas: You know, there's An old Simpsons joke that was one of my favorites in the world, and does the rule of threes, you know? Where Homer will just be like, in some random situation, he'll just be like, "Man, I could really go for a hot dog right now." And Marge is like, "Why would there be a hotdog?" And then a guy goes, "Hotdogs! Here, getcha!" And he's got a hotdogs card. And they do rule of threes. By the time, the last one, I think they're at a funeral. And he is like, "God, I can really go over a hotdog." Marge's like, "It's a funeral!" And the guy's like, "Hotdog!" Getcha!

0:30:33 Tom: Not that I remember this

0:30:34 Thomas: Then she's like do you just follow my husband husband around? And he was like He's like, ladies, he's putting my kids through college. The point is, Eli, there's this, but with the book that shames and makes you afraid of your kid. There's some guy, book that's going to make you scared. Yeah, get your book that'S going to MAKE YOU SCARED that just follows Eli around. And he's like should I be nervous about that thing? And he, like, types into chat GPT, like fucking write me up a book real quick about how, you know, if you didn't do this certain thing, your kid's going be whatever. I think that's what's happening. It's actually me and I'm making a killing off of it. So I shouldn't have

0:30:34 Tom: One. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ho, ha -ha -ha.

0:30:49 Eli: Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

0:31:10 Eli: And, Good.

0:31:10 Thomas: Revealed my secrets right now.

0:31:11 Eli: Hey, I'm glad it's working for someone. And, and, you know what, I think it might just be whoever has to listen to me talking to my poor wife every night, right, during our check-ins, where I'm like, well, you know, obviously he dumped that thing of toys out twice. And I'm just really worried that's a stim for him. And should we write the doctor a seven-page email about it and maybe send a video and also put it onto the internet and ask 13Doc? And she's just like, I don't know, man, maybe you just like dumping the basket out. And that guy, meanwhile, is under my couch taking notes. Have you ruined your child by basket dumping?

0:31:15 Tom: Ha, he -he -he.

0:31:33 Tom: Ha, huh. Ha, hu -ha, ha ha -huh.

0:31:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:44 Tom: Ha, Uh-huh, ha!

0:31:45 Eli: Something, um, this is the biggest sacrifice I've ever made as a parent. Get ready, everybody, get those tissues out, um, this one's a real tearjerker. Uh, of the greatest gifts I ever got from the one, the only, the Child List, he said, right, was a Toto, uh, bidet, which is a very fancy toilet seat that sprays your tush with like lukewarm, you can choose the temperature of the water and they're like, where do you want it, right? They show you, there's like a fucking AI computer that targets exactly your b-hole. It's, it's really nice. Um, I'm not a bidet guy because I don't like having my ass eaten, uh, but I understand that some people do, and so that's cool for them. Uh, get it how you gotta get it, right? If, if I could make an excuse about like a toilet paper roll that sucked my dick, I would absolutely have that in my bathroom. So, so no judgment on the butt perverts out there who have bidets because it's cleaner.

0:32:02 Thomas: Oh, God, I need to get this.

0:32:02 Tom: Yes. Yes. We have this. Yes.

0:32:44 Thomas: I just saw a tweet the other day that was like, it's funny how if you got shit on any other part of your body, there's no way you'd be like, well, I wiped a little piece of paper on it. Now it's fine. Like there's only one place where that's somehow okay.

0:32:58 Eli: So like, all get it. Look, I'm not judging you perverts, right? Because here's the thing, right. You all started with a good enough argument. We've seen bidets, right, it's the French toilet looking thing and it's just like sploosh and that's if you want to get it clean. But you naughty boys, girls, and non -binary friends were like, but could it do a gentle right on my tushy tush tush? And I'm like, okay, this is some guy who saw a market and got into it. Again, no judgment. My wife loves it. It's not for me, but it's fine. Anyways, we've had it in the downstairs bathroom for a couple of years now. The problem is, of the four different potty seats I have bought, none of them fit on top top of the Toto, so sadly we have had to replace the beautiful sphincter-tickling Toto with a shitty normal toilet seat that has a little one for kids to pull down for a potty seat in it. It's terrible, it's the worst, it's the whole time.

0:33:20 Tom: Oh no oh no oh that's fucking tragic that's fucking tragic

0:34:00 Eli: I was just making hard eye contact with my son, just, okay, this is the sack, of this is just yet another sacrifice daddy is making, look at this, I'm not even attaching this thing to the plumbing, Max, there's no plumbing attached to this thing at all. Yes.

0:34:00 Tom: Tragic.

0:34:13 Tom: Oh no. Oh God. We have that. We ha I think, I think Heath actually got that. Cause I sent him the link for the one that we have. Yeah.

0:34:20 Eli: You you recommended it, and that's the one he got.

0:34:21 Thomas: No

0:34:22 Tom: Yeah, that thing is outstanding.

0:34:22 Eli: Yeah.

0:34:22 Thomas: One's bought anything for my my asshole. I feel left out. Yeah. So my toilet gadget story was going to be, I saw my brother when, you know, cause he has kids and they're older. He had him obviously earlier, he's six years older than me. And Um, I saw they had the little toilet seat combo. That's like, yeah, big seat and the little kid seat that you can pull up and down out of it. And I was like, yeah, I was Like, Oh, that's great. Cause they didn't have those that long, you Know, not too long ago, that was crazy. Cause I think they were just like, why would we make something that makes a kid's life easier? Why, why Would we ever do that?

0:34:44 Eli: That's What I've Got, yeah, yeah.

0:34:55 Eli: In Tom's day, they didn't even have toilets. So He Gets it. Yep.

0:34:58 Tom: Yeah but

0:34:57 Thomas: And so when I saw that, I was like, well, we're definitely doing that, that fucking rules. So once Phoebe was of age, I got replaced all the seats in the house, like literally every single one. I was Like, why not? Fuck it. Doesn't It do anything to me. Worst case, I have to pull up one little little tiny kid seat. And I get to think, oh, that's adorable while I do it. And to very quickly.

I don't know if your kids are like this, but my kids, they, always want to just be adults. And so, you Phoebe was not fucking two and a half when she decided, oh I don't need that seat anymore. She just wouldn't use it. She's so tiny, she's going to to need that fucking thing until she's 16. But decided when she's two, no, I don't need that little kid seat anymore.

So instead what she does is every single time she pulls that up, she gets the thing that I've conveniently installed, pulls it out of the way and uses the adult seat and just suspends herself over it the whole time. And I'm like, dude, you don't, this is a lot of work that you're doing for nothing. And she's like, no, no, I don't need it. I don'T want to use that seat. And you cannot talk my kid out of any of that. We're So just like, all right, fucking Jesus Christ. Are you sure? Yep. Nope. Can't do it. And then because she was doing that, you year later when Arlo started, whenever that was, body training, he does that too. So I have a house full of these amazing, convenient seats that have a little kid toilet seat in them. Not a single one of my fucking kids uses them.

0:35:48 Tom: The,

0:36:20 Eli: No.

0:36:21 Tom: How, how awesome is it, Thomas, to get rid of one more stupid fucking plastic piece of shit that serves only one function? Like That's The, the horror of, like, one of the many horrors of having kids is all of the single use Plastic shit that You end up, like, filling your house, like a goddamn landfill with. Like, you just have all this, just it's, and it's all just trash. Nobody wants or needs or likes any of it.

0:36:30 Thomas: Oh God. Yep. Yep. Yep.

0:36:47 Tom: It's a, oh, it's a Bumbo, it's a little seated baby prison thing you stick them in Like, oh, what's it, and it's good for seven minutes and then, like, they don't need it anymore because they've grown out of the fucking thing. I loved getting rid of the fucking frog that you shit in his mouth and the little fucking duck that you piss in his eye or whatever it all was.

0:37:03 Tom: Like I love Throwing all that stuff away, like, so much. Like, I want to go buy more so I can throw it away.

0:37:03 Thomas: I Yeah, and it's not stuff that you can re -gift. You're not like, does anyone need this thing my kid shat in its mouth?

0:37:12 Tom: Yeah. Right. I want It, throw it, throw It. Okay.

0:37:16 Eli: That's That's Actually the number one thing on parenting groups is like, does anyone want this old shit covered frog and books. God, the book giveaways are the fucking saddest.

0:37:27 Thomas: The kid also shat on for some reason? Yeah.

0:37:30 Eli: Yeah, hey, my kid used to really be into Inspector Einstein, so we have the full 175 book series, but now he doesn't want to talk to me anymore and he's interested in Ashley in his social studies class. Would anyone like these and would anyone like to watch me cry in my garage and open the door if it seems like I might be getting brave? Rave. Oh,

0:37:51 Thomas: That old reference, Eli, that you'll definitely know, which is the saddest story? Chick one kid's something never worn, what is that? You know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

0:37:59 Eli: Yeah, the one sentence tragic stories. But baby shoes never worn. Never,

0:38:03 Thomas: Baby, Shoes never worn, which babies don't really usually wear shoes, so it's whatever. But um, Remy for example does not, he's never worn shoes and he's nine months old. But point is, um, my version of that, baby kid, toilet never shat on.

0:38:16 Tom: Yeah, no, no. It's, it's actual shit when you buy it. Like it's shit that you buy for them to shit and then they don't shit.

0:38:16 Eli: Shat in, Yeah, yeah.

0:38:23 Tom: And it's just some shit you had.

0:38:21 Thomas: Yeah, Oh, No, I Know I'm Saying Yeah, mine, mine never shat in, but no, Tom, you're totally right. I am like literally, I would be imprisoned if people found out how much, like, I'm gonna, doorbell's gonna ring one day, I'm going to answer the door and Greta Thunberg's gonna just kick me in the groin as hard as she can for like 10 minutes, I'll be like, yeah, no, yeah, I deserve it, I deserve. Yep. By the way, a lot of conservatives would pay good money for that, for that service.

0:38:45 Tom: The other Great thing? I mean, it really can't be overstated how wonderful it is about when your kids finally start using the toilet properly is you can stop saying the fucking word potty. I that word is like nails on a fucking chalkboard. It's like rubbing sandpaper on my teeth. I hate that fucking word so much. And like, there's a, comes a point in your life where you just say, Hey man, do you have to go to the bathroom? And you're like, Oh, the word potty is forever gone. And then you

0:38:48 Eli: They're Super interested. Oh,

0:39:01 Thomas: Oh, thank you.

0:39:19 Tom: Meet that adult once in a while, you ever meet the adult who's like a grown ass person and there's no other kids around. They're like I got to go potty. And I'm like, we'll never talk again.

0:39:20 Eli: That Sounds Amazing Yeah

0:39:23 Thomas: Still uses it. Yep.

0:39:28 Tom: Like we are never, you're

0:39:28 Thomas: You're one of Tom's

0:39:28 Eli: No, that's mean I me

0:39:29 Thomas: Exes. I knew it.

0:39:30 Tom: Yep. You're trash to me forever.

0:39:31 Eli: And Anna were alone the other day and I was like, "I'm gonna go to the potty," and she was like, "You actually don't have to tell me because he's not here." And I was like, "You've been subsumed by parenthood."

0:39:41 Tom: Yeah.

0:39:42 Thomas: God, Tom, Tom you, you are speaking my language. I can't, I forgot. I actually forgot about that. I'm so glad you reminded me of my true roots because I was not raised with the word potty. My parents did not use that, and if you weren't raised with that word, you hear people use it, and you're like, fucking what? What are we talking about? It sounds so obnoxious, and I've been just beating over the head with it so much that I've started to sometimes use it. And part of it is because, like anything, once my adorable kid says it, I can't not repeat it. Lydia introduced the word potty to them, obviously, or somebody, or culture did. And, you know, so they're like Like, oh, I have to go potty. And so that's cute. And I repeat it. But I'm so glad you just reminded me. Like, I'm shaking off, the like, fucking scale of time. And I've remembered that I don't use that fucking

0:39:52 Tom: I don't remember ever using that word. Yeah.

0:40:28 Tom: Right.

0:40:28 Thomas: Word. I detest that word. And I cannot wait to get back to not using it for some weird reason. I don'T know why.

0:40:32 Tom: Yes. The joy of my life is that that word is no longer uttered in this house. Like I just never, never have to do it. I never have to do it like we're getting ready to go on a car trip. Everyone use the bathroom. Yep. Great. Awesome. I still have to check with you. I start to fucking check to make sure like at fucking 10 years old, or 12 years old that like, okay, we're gonna leave the house and you probably should like evacuate yourself. But like, Okay, fine. We don't have to to use the word potty and that is a joy oh

0:40:37 Thomas: It's such a weird word.

0:40:50 Thomas: Yeah, that'll never end. So good.

0:41:05 Eli: All right, gentlemen, we all know that kids have all sorts of stuff to help them go potty, but how do old people do it? Yeah.

0:41:15 Tom: My

0:41:16 Thomas: Nice.

0:41:22 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.

0:42:01 Tom: It stinks. And