DOD119: Model Role Models

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's definitely not measuring up or measuring at all. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined as sometimes by Eli Bosnick, as always I should say by Eli Bosnick, but not this time, alas, alack, by Thomas Smith.

0:00:38 Eli: By Thomas Smith, but we promise, to our knowledge, he is fine. He just wasn't able to make it to this record, and well or do I just add this to my stick now I say to the patrons, hey, you get the extended version when, when wants to show up and you get the regular version when Thomas wants to show up.

0:00:56 Tom: I feel like, does this give me a get out of didn't show up once to feel like I know you well enough when Thomas wants to show up

0:01:14 Eli: I am the stalwart. I am here for you, podcast listener, in a way that none of them.

0:01:15 Tom: Look you ever think you would be the lighthouse, like that you would be the beacon in the dark, Eli Bosnick

0:01:21 Eli: I never did. Got to tell you, man, I went to a roast with some friends at a work party and it's been a long and winding road. I just going to sell magic thumbs and be an actor. But here we are. Here we are and And Tom, you know the only thing worse than your two podcast co-hosts recording a show without you because, damn it, they've got a schedule to keep? Why, it's the auto ads. The auto ads, hey, podcast listener, Thomas, Thomas isn't here, so I can just talk as much shit about the auto adds as I want. You know what, this episode, Tom, forget that intro, we're talking shit about auto ads today. Day just

0:01:38 Tom: Yes sir this this is for 40 minutes we're just blasting auto ads

0:02:04 Eli: It's still interrupted by auto ads. It's, it's a very, yeah, it's our own Schenectady, New York here. But yeah, um, only thing worse than that is hell, the Christian hell specifically, but you can avoid that by accepting Christ as your lord and savior. Oh, but you can avoid the auto ads. See, I'm doing both of my things that I, by accepting us as your, your lord and penny saver over at patreon.com/dearolddads. As little as a dollar, you get a bonus episode every month-ish. You get the equivalent of a monthly bonus episode you it averages over 12 months, you will receive 12 bonus episodes, which have an extended parenting story at the end when Tom feels like it. Patreon.com/dearolddads, I

0:02:23 Tom: Right by accepting Patreon as your lord and savior, Xavier.

0:02:40 Tom: It averages out over a 12 month period as well. Yeah. Right.

0:02:55 Tom: So, you know, I had an interesting conversation with Finn this week, and it kind of brought us to this topic that we want to cover today. So this week I got this text message from Finn. Finn is a junior in high school. He's been through kind of the ringer in his academic career. So he was in Montessori for a while, put him in Montossori when he was an elementary school, pretty early on, because he was struggling with the weight of the responsibility of early homework. So that just that just didn't fly with him. And

0:03:23 Eli: Remember you telling us the story of him lying down and just weeping at the end of the day, yeah oh

0:03:29 Tom: Yeah, it was rough, man. He would just like he walked through my backyard, get to the little like patio brick wall thing that we had, and he would just lay there with his little backpack on and everything and just cry instead of coming in the through patio door. So and my discredit, I did not know how to engage the educational system well enough to reach out to his teachers and say, hey, we're not doing homework like that's not something we're going to do because I grew up in such a rules focused household. I was a very rules focused person. So I was like, well, the solution to this is to change the entire environment.

0:03:41 Eli: Right yeah are, dad wouldn't have even let you cry on the back patio. He would have been like, you're, you're ruining the stain. Yeah, you do that on the grass crying more tiling yeah exactly to

0:04:05 Tom: Can't do that while sucking it up at the same time. Rub some dirt in your homework. I moved him to Montessori. He did Montessor for a while. And then when he transitioned into middle school, I moved him out of Montessori and into public middle school. Which is a tough transition. Um, just cause everything about it was different. You know, it went from a class of like, you know, a school of maybe 35, 40 people to all of a sudden hundreds of people and different expectations. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fast forward, now he's in high school. It's his junior year. He's doing great.

He, this is his year, like he is flourishing. In the middle of that flourishing, I get this message this week from him, and he wants to know how I was as a student and like what my experience of high school was like. And it was this back and forth that he and I had that felt very comparative imperative for him, I think, in a way that led me to worry that he was seeing me as, as not just a role model in the positive sense that a role model can be, but a role module in this sort of like, will I live up to

0:04:34 Eli: A class with 35 people yes

0:05:14 Tom: It sense um, not to say that I'm, I'm some great paragon that should be lived up to, but I think in Finn's mind, there, there's elements of, of my success or personality or whatever that he saw, that he felt this deep internal pressure, um, that he was expressing to me to, to live up to. And it was, I handled it the best I could in this sort of like textual moment. Um, but it's something that I've been sitting with all week that, um, how do we handle the contrast between being role models, which we do want to be, without setting up this sort of, you need to be as good as me in these areas that I happen to be good at, you know, know without having to set up this comparative space for our kids, right

0:05:15 Eli: Yeah exactly Yeah, and and as someone who has been on the receiving end, that's why I really wanted to have this conversation, is because I put my dad, still do, on this incredible pedestal and think all the time about aspiring to what he was, and that has been variously good and bad, right? Like a lot of things in life, right, trying to live up to this image that you have of your your parents is wonderful in some ways and in other ways is really harmful. And like, like you said, he's a junior in high school, right, he doesn't have the brain wrinkles yet to sort of have the like perspective of what it means to be a 16 year old trying to live up to a 40 something year old man, right?

0:06:38 Eli: Is something you really don't understand until you are that adult, right, and you have all your own secrets, right, because you run with the background mode of, yeah, but one time I tried to cling onto a car and almost died, right? And those are stories you probably haven't shared with Finn yet. But even if you have, they're exciting adventures you survived, right, and it's hard to talk to your kids, because my dad used to tell me stories of him messing up and making mistakes, but they were a hero's journey. In many ways, they were worse for that, because when I would mess up, rather than it being this epic story of triumph and overcoming. I was just a loser who made a mistake. Right.

And so a lot of the time, even when our parents tried to to set our expectations lower through like establishing, like, Oh, we, we had struggles as well because you're already at the top of the mountain. I, as the kid, I'm like, and it was hard to get up the mountain, it wasn't even easy to get to the top where I should Be. Right? And so that, and that's really the struggle that they, that, that I have experienced, and that I think a lot of kids with good parents experience, is this feeling of inferiority and this feeling of, and, and, you know, know, it's been a while since we talked about REBT, but you know I've been doing some this year and reading some, but like, this very early message that gets instilled in us as kids is, you have to earn love. Love. You have to deserve love.

And one of the messages that we take away from that that is never said is, are you worthy of my love? And especially as we get older, when we don't live up to our parents' expectations, when we misbehave, when we make mistakes, when we fall short, which is all a part of growing up, right, is a part of us that has been trained to say, say, perhaps right now I am unworthy of love, right?

We, and again, like, there's not even a lot that we can reaffirm in that moment to try to help, right, because when you tell your kids, and I've done this with my sister over the years, but I do this with the young people who I mentor for as well, when you tell people like, hey, I love you, right, like, you with my whole heart, in many ways it reinforces the message that we are mistaken to love them, right, which is the pain that they're experiencing, that the deep down fear that they are unworthy of a love they're still getting is terrifying, especially when you're a late teen and you're establishing the adult you're about to be, right.

0:06:38 Tom: Right yeah yeah right yeah, man, I have so many, like, as you're talking, one thing that I'm like realizing or wondering is like, you told Finn some of the stories of my misadventures of my youth. Right. But I realize as I'm talking is that I do, sometimes not sometimes, I do exclusively and always paint those stories in a funny way that kind of have like a moral, even if the moral at the end of the tale is like, don't be a fucking idiot like I was.

Right wonder if by painting that as like, and the moral of the story is the implication for a young mind is that like, I already have figured it out, and you should too, right rather than, hey, I realized that that was a silly, wildly dangerous, dumb, immature, foolish thing to do years after I did it. For many years after I did most of the dumb, foolish, dangerous shit, it was cool shit. That was cool stuff I did in my mind. And it only became fantastically dangerous with the benefit of adult hindsight. But when I paint the story as something that kind of has a moral at the end of the tale, like it's fucking Thomas the Tank Engine or some shit,

0:09:34 Eli: Sure. Yeah. Right. Right. Right

0:10:17 Tom: I wonder if I'm exacerbating that problem or exacerbating that sort of like comparative ideology or morality for the kid and for kids in general, and I don't think that I'm not doing that to some degree, right. And it's hard because you want to paint, you want relay real lived experiences that you had, and then you do want to tell them like, and don't do that shit, because what you don't want to do is the full opposite on the other end of the spectrum, which you've seen, which is where, you know, somebody, somebody peaked in high school and they're relaying all the cool shit that they did in high school with no insight into the problematic side of their behavior.

Right. Cause that's also no bueno, right? Like, oh yeah, you know, I did a ton of drugs and it was awesome. You oh shit. Okay. Maybe I should do a ton of drugs. It sounds awesome, right? I also wonder, Eli, cause you've read a lot of the blogs that I've written, wonder if some of the, some thought process or kind of the take that I have, broadly speaking, top down, doesn't also reinforce that idea that like, hey, we have to earn who we are in the world.

0:10:56 Eli: Yeah. Sure.

0:11:20 Tom: Um, that messaging is too strong for a young mind. Do you know what, I mean?

0:11:20 Eli: Well, I think those messages can be healthy in the larger sense, and I think that when Finn is 35 and 36, he's going to treasure those the way that we treasure those messages from our parents in perspective, um, but probably didn't at the time, right? The way that you are able to recognize how much of your dad's strictness was about keeping you safe and well, right, now that you never could have at eight or 10.

0:11:25 Tom: Right, no, and I didn't, I resented it at the time. Yeah, you're right.

0:11:52 Eli: Right, right. It resented it. But, and I think that the blog, and also just stories in general, right, are a bad way to think about life and the world, because they have a beginning and a middle and an end and most experience doesn't have that, right? ? You can't imagine sitting Finn down and being like, yeah, so I was just a lonely a lot of the time. When? Oh, a lot. Just most of my life, sort of lonely.

0:11:53 Tom: Yeah, oh my god, yes.

0:12:19 Eli: Real, just aching for kindness. And it just didn't come. Um, so you want to watch TV or what are you thinking for like, you can't do it. There's no way to share that with your kids without being psychotic. So when we tell our kids stories, we present them versions of us that by definition are wrapped neatly in a bow and they don't feel wrapped neatly and a bow, which makes them feel broken, right? They don' have great conclusions to the things they're struggling with. They haven't overcome. I mean, you're 16, you haven't finished yet, there's no end to your story, because your story is in the first eighth of its existence, right, depending on how

0:12:17 Tom: Yes yeah yeah yeah you can't no right yeah right yeah

0:13:00 Eli: Long people live, so it's, it's really tough to be a at least in many ways fully grown adult person with lots of feelings about that kind of stuff. Um,

0:13:10 Tom: Man, you, you, you said something that like really grabbed me too, and it's something that has fucked with me my whole life, and I, like, me, you might be able able to identify with this more than most. So I was a huge, huge reader, two I things which conspired to kind of not be great when I was young person. And I think they've informed a lot of my life in ways that have been, you know, I think good, but also not good.

I was a very lonely person, for sure. You're exactly right about that. Like, I was fairly isolated, and I was pretty lonely, and didn't have a lot of the same normal social connections that most my peers had, and most of the same experiences most of our peers had. But at the same time that that was true, I was a almost psychotically voracious reader, and I came to understand the world through stories, and I think in many ways, I, a lot, lot of insight from that.

But I think I also developed a worldview that was wrapped up in the idea of narrative arc, and that was wrap up in the idea, a certain level of, for lack of a better term, romanticism that books and stories and plays all rely on in order for them to have emotional weight. And I think lived my life understanding people and understanding my own life as a story that was being told, um, than an experience being had. Does that make sense?

0:14:35 Eli: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that is not just common of, um, lot of us, I think it's common of most of us. Right. I think it is like incredibly common for most people to frame ourselves in terms of a grander narrative. Right? I forget who the writer is, but someone said, your life isn't a story, it's an explosion, right? And that's a really fucking hard thing to learn, right. It starts and then you're like, ah, sort of outwards from that cause. Right. And what does or does not happen to you along the way, we ascribe these grandiose meanings to when a lot of the time there are no grandiose meetings. I mean, I cannot tell you how many of the worst moments in in my life, I spent many, many years of my life thinking of as a thing I deserved, as a thing I had done, as the thing I earned that now as an adult, I realize was just bad luck. Right.

0:15:32 Eli: It was just a thing that happened and it can have as much or as little power over me as I give it.

0:15:02 Tom: Right. Yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah I, I think that that's, I that, very much had a very, very similar path. And so I I look look Finn and I'm thinking, how do I give him the best parts of that experience and give him the best parts of that role modeling and avoid sort of of comparisons, especially when they're comparisons that aren't fair or reasonable for him to make. He said something in the car and I just remembered it. So he said something in the card when we were on our way back from the magic conference that the other day. And was really feeling good. He's really feeling himself.

And you was really feeling like, finally school was clicking and finally, physically he was starting to feel feel you really kind of in control and strong and like you just know again like feeling a sense of who he was and his power as a person and he said in the car that like he didn't really care how things sorted out in his life in terms of money or other success what he wanted and what he thought his idea and he kind of set it up in almost these terms what his idea of like being a good man was was to grow up to be strong and smart and then he said, "And have a commanding voice," and I didn't think much of it except for that I was proud of him for being in this sort of self space that he's kind of now coming into and I think like what he's saying is like, "Dad, my idea of what a man is is exclusively you and"

0:16:00 Eli: Right.

0:17:01 Eli: Or is, is influenced by you.

0:17:04 Tom: And and I worry now a little bit it cause he, you know, the text message exchange we had, I think he was fretting very much that, man, this was, these things were easy for my dad, or I perceived that they were easy for my dad. And some of these things aren't as easy for me. I less than my, my dad?

And like, I tried to explain to him like, no, like we of all, things weren't as easy for as I may have given the impression for, you I struggled with certain things and I was in good these ways and I was bad in these other ways and you will be good in some things and bad in other things and that's fine. You are not supposed to be a carbon cut out of who or what I am. I have no idea if I expressed that to him well because Finn, I love the boy, but he starts a conversation and then he'll just leave it in the middle. He'll just, leave it, Eli! He'll stop having the a conversation and he doesn't live here. So I can't like go knock on his door and be like, hey man, let's finish this. So, I at least have some closure around what you're thinking so I can adjust my parenting behavior properly.

0:17:44 Eli: Yes. He's gone.

0:18:11 Tom: Instead, he just ghosts the fucking conversation. Conversation, right.

0:18:10 Eli: Right, and and You don't know if it's, "Hey, I need to digest this, I'm gonna think about this over the next week," or was playing Nintendo. Like those two things are equal for a kid that age as to reasons why they may or may not be participating in the textbook and also like that kind of conversation is so delicate, something where you want to pick up cues super hard so someone doesn't respond, and when you're an empathetic person, especially when it's your kid who you care about so much, you're like, oh my God, I said the wrong thing, now like despairing, and he's in like this cycle of self destruction and he is feeling so abandoned and left out, I should have said this, I should have said that, the other thing, meanwhile he's on the other end being like, "Mario Kart, Mario Kart here

0:18:23 Tom: A Hundred percent man, yeah.

0:18:56 Tom: I Know

0:18:56 Eli: Comes Mario, and his cart," like, and there's no way to know, there's no fucking way to know, worse still, still, because teenagers are so uh-washy about what they care about at any given moment, right, because and this is totally natural, a teenager may deeply care about this thing one day and then it might not bother them so much the next when you do get your hands on them and you're like, hey, like let's have that conversation, they're like, nah, I'm okay, yeah.

0:18:57 Tom: Right. Right. I Know Yeah. Yeah. Man, and and I will say like when you're, when are co-parenting and you are not the primary custodial parent, it can be a couple of weeks depending on how things shake out. So custodian arrangement is I have them every other weekend and I have them on Tuesday nights, but I will say 90 of Tuesdays they've stopped coming over because homework and school, just during the school year, it's just not practical.

0:19:42 Eli: Of Course.

0:19:43 Tom: So it can easily be two weeks from a conversation to a conversation depending on like what the meat is that we actually get to see each other and physically like read each other's body language and cues and all of that stuff, so it's like, yeah, I don't know if you like fucking worked this shit out over the last two weeks or if it's just squirreled away in another part of his brain that he's like completely like moved on from because he's 16, you know, I have no idea.

So when I see him next, Eli, will probably spend more time fretting about this than he will, or he will fret about this so much more than I'll ever know, I don't know that I'll like get to have that middle ground where I really know what he thinks and feels. I, I think sometimes like in this conversation, this comparative conversation, I think sometimes about, you know, obviously my own dad and like how my dad's version of masculinity and fatherhood and adulthood so heavily informed my own versions, because I was thinking like, why is it that in my mind my idea and we've talked about this on the show before, that my idea of masculinity and manhood and what it means to be a man is so tied up in the idea of competence, I

0:19:43 Eli: Right. Right. Mm. Hmm.

0:20:59 Tom: Can't extricate those things and it's very obvious to me that like I look at my dad and in my mind he's just so fucking competent at everything. Right, can call my dad up and say, "Hey, tomorrow kids are going to get on an airplane that are yours, and you're going to be a full-time custodial parent." My dad will say, "Great, I'll be at the airport. He'll be there, and he'll be there early. By later that afternoon, we will have clothes and toys and coats. Never seem bothered by any of it.

0:21:01 Eli: Right. Yeah. Right, right.

0:21:29 Tom: The other thing. My Dad, if he ever had a moment of real real stress and worry and anxiety and fear. I never saw it. So all I saw from my dad was this deep, deep level of sort of easy competence. And I think that that, that has so heavily informed my idea of like, yeah, yeah, that's what, that'S what men are, right? Meet their responsibilities. They, you know, like they do all, and it's not stoicism, it's different, but it's this deep level of real competence.

0:21:59 Tom: And think that that comes from any source other than just like, that's what I admired my whole life growing up.

0:21:59 Eli: Yeah, yeah. And go to back to that idea of like, being deserving of love, right, when you have one parent who sends you away, which at the time, and probably still to a certain extent felt like you are unworthy of love. Right. Even as an adult where you sort of have this intellectual framework for what your mom was and wasn't able to handle. And she was too busy following Voldemort on his quest to conquer the wizarding world. Like that stuff is in your head. But emotionally, the little boy that you were felt unlovable. And when you showed up and an adult unrequitedly gave you this love and demonstrated it through competence, right?

Though your dad never said like, and boys, before you settle down for this first night, just a reminder that if you don't end up like this, daddy doesn't love you, right, he never said that and probably feels the opposite, but what you saw someone give you, right, it's sort of that, I forget what the lyric is, but it's like the way you break first is the way break always, right. And I think that is true of how we are healed first as well, right? First way we are shown tremendous love, the first way we are showing the human potential for our connection, which comes from our parents, is what we seek, is what we go after forever, right. I mean, you

0:22:09 Tom: Right. Right. Of course. Right. Right.

0:23:20 Eli: Know, not to bring it into a yucky place, but like, you know, I often think about like daddy issues trope that comes Up and it's often used derivatively about women, but it's also used about men with mommy issues. But like, I think a lot of the time the truth to that, if there is any truth, is like the way we learn to love, the way love is modeled for us, is what we seek. And often we seek what our parents modeled for us. Yes.

0:23:27 Tom: Right.

0:23:45 Tom: Well, funny because like, I think that's Also what we perform when we perform love. Do it's simultaneously the thing we seek and it's also the thing that we perform outwardly. And at least as you're talking like I'm like, yeah, and that's also very much like like I am going to show love in all the ways that I have sought love. Right. Because that are my definitions of what love means, you a topic I've thought a lot about, and I've tried to be not objective, but I've tried to Be thoughtful about that topic or that subject. And it funny because as you're talking, I'm like, yeah, but 100%, like had a set of lived experiences that absolutely taught me that this means. This is what fatherhood means. This is What love means. These are the things I sought as a person in my life. These will also be, that I guess, outwardly in the way that I perform love outward to other people.

0:23:51 Eli: Right.

0:24:14 Eli: And

0:24:38 Tom: Be like, hey, here's what I was missing, or here's What I Saw, but it will be heavily influenced. Does that an emotional conversation that happens internally.

0:24:47 Eli: And Especially when you have two parents, and not to not tell stories out of turn, but like, when you have two parents, one of whom might not show up in some very specific and needed ways, you might go to that parent who is showing up and say, hey, that person over there who I'm spending a lot more time with, they're not making me feel especially loved, right?

0:24:56 Tom: Right. Mm hmm.

0:25:10 Eli: I living up to the thing that makes you love me? Right. Because maybe I've internalized and dealt with why I'm not getting love from that person. Right. The way that you dealt with your avec your mom. But like it means a lot more when you come to the stable person and you need to check in with them and say, hey, am I worthy of your love? You

0:25:28 Tom: Eli, you had a pedestalized father. I'm curious about that pedestalization and how that pedestaling kind of impacted your view of fatherhood. And like, was that was that the not the right thing to do? But is pedestalizing a healthy way to interact emotionally with that idea of of masculinity and fatherhood in your view?

0:25:30 Eli: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:25:51 Eli: I mean, you know, there's that expression when you're a kid, your parents are heroes. When you're a teen they're villains, um, when you'm an adult they were babies, right? Realize now, my dad, when I was born, was four years younger than I am. I know, 32 year olds, I don't trust a fucking one of them, not one. I cannot point you to a single, single 32-year-old who I would let carry an egg across a kitchen. And yet, like, Yep, but hey, you'll, you go ahead and name a competent 32-year-old. You go ahead, name one. You're going to have to go back to the 15th century to an old timey explorer, some, some motherfucker who mapped Azerbaijan or something. But like, I am simultaneously aware that the hero I have in my, my mind, the pedestal that I have modeled, again, like you said, my idea of manhood, my idea of adulthood and heroism on, is and was someone who I probably would have been like, that guy doesn't quite have it together. Right. And

0:26:12 Tom: Right. Right.

0:26:26 Tom: That's rough, man.

0:26:58 Tom: Right?

0:26:59 Eli: Here's a part of pedestaling, because, because there are bent sides, and I can speak about the positive sides, but one of the things that comes up with pedestaling that I, I have learned the hard way, is flaws end up on the, the pedestal too, right?

0:27:11 Tom: Oh, what do you mean by that?

0:27:13 Eli: I've talked before on this show that my dad was overly generous and, um, had ADD and was not great at focusing, and so was very, very bad with money. Very, very bad. Very bad with money, right. And there have been times in my life where I, uh, I don't know why I'm speaking, saying, in the past tense, I am also very bad with money. The difference is I have put safeguards into my life, and I know I've talked about this on this show before.

0:27:37 Tom: Right. Oh, yeah. You're not allowed to, like, look at money, right? Like, you can't drive near an ATM or whatever.

0:27:43 Eli: I've I'm not allowed to look at money I can't go near ATL, yeah, exactly, all that kind of stuff, right. I have sweep accounts, right, so the people who have sweep accounts in the United States are people who hold child support, or they will go to jail, and me, right, those are the people who called the bank, you can't even set it up online, you have to call, and the woman's like, "A?", and you're like, Edelman, they know it's in the system under M, and what it does is it literally, the check comes in and my bank account automatically moves money away, because if that does not happen, I'll be like, what are you talking about, I have five dollars, there's five dollars right here in my bank, ago, swipe, it's gone, right.

It isn't just that like I am clumsy, and I kind of sort of inherited that from my dad, I saw that, and I turned it into to a good thing, because I did not have the maturity to go, wow, you know, I really love my dad, this is something he struggles with, I should be wary of it, this is a bad thing about my dad.

And I'll tell you how severe it is, I still don't really think it's a bad day, like, know how bad my dad's financial troubles were, I know how much pain they caused him and his loved ones and me directly, I used to do imitations of debt collector calls for my family to make them laugh because of how often they would end up on our message machine, and I still haven't really internalized being bad with money is bad, right.

Even the way that I talk about it is like, kind of a bit, I'm a lovable rogue who just can't, as opposed to like, I'M A DANGER TO MY FAMILY, I HAVE A THREE

0:29:21 Tom: Hmm.

0:29:21 Eli: YEAR OLD, RIGHT? Like, I wouldn't do this if my weakness was hitting. I wouldn'T be like, and you know me, I'm like, up to the moon, Max, right? Like, but because of that pedestal, internalize right, these flaws and they become our flaws even when they wouldn'T necessarily have been the flaws. Interrupt this conversation for a special announcement, one, Thomas Bethesda Cranberry Smith is in the pod.

0:29:21 Tom: Right. Right?

0:29:49 Thomas: A new. One.

0:29:50 Eli: Thomas Smith, welcome to the pod! But wait, listeners at home, it gets more exciting than that. It gets more excited than that, because Thomas, look, as you can imagine, Tom and I were generous and kind about you at the beginning. We were sweet. Tweet, we spoke only highly of you, and I, I think I can say for sure that I meant all the things I said there. Um, here's what I will say, fun twist on the formula, for those of you who sat there at the beginning judging Thomas like me, it was actually me and Tom's fault, we forgot to check our Slack chat, and Thomas had told us we were recording an hour late today, so should we blame Thomas? Yes. Do we blame Thomas? Also yes, but he's here now, we've caught him up, and

0:30:20 Tom: Entirely.

0:30:33 Thomas: It. Weird that you didn't check the place. That's okay, no, do you guys not use your uh ovens to wake up? I use my, see, I use my oven clock as my, you, my alarm clock. And So it doesn't you know, this daylight savings, there's got to be a way around that, you know, like if only there was some source of time that automatically updated, is all I'm saying. Yeah.

0:30:42 Eli: Exactly. Is.

0:30:43 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:30:52 Eli: Yeah. Uh.

0:30:53 Thomas: There's no better idea though, the oven clock is just, I hook it right up to the bedroom, and that's just my alarm clock.

0:30:53 Eli: Look. We. Here, I think it's weird that you start your oven every night and then open it, um, but you know, I'm not here to judge anyone. Else's.

0:31:05 Tom: That's it. It's pre -heat to wake. It is pre - heat to wake, which is great.

0:31:06 Eli: Yes.

0:31:06 Thomas: Yeah. Look. For religious reasons I don't observe this change of the clock, and I, you know, that's, you need to accommodate my religion of hating daylight fucking savings time. Um, actually, you guys covered the serious stuff, let's just talk daylight savings time, uh, we, I believe we, we now have the technology here, this controversial take, controversy, we have the tech, technology to where we could just adjust that shit a few minutes a day or whatever. Like, what difference would that make? Every single clock except your oven and your car. No, not even your car, most of them, like the new cars, will automatically update too. What if at 1am every day it up, a minute?

0:31:08 Eli: Sure.

0:31:20 Eli: There.

0:31:43 Eli: Just an extra minute

0:31:44 Thomas: Yeah. Whatever it is. Like we'd never notice that

0:31:44 Eli: And then two months later you were good yeah

0:31:46 Tom: Just never adjust anything at all.

0:31:48 Thomas: Too.

0:31:48 Tom: Like, Like, this is not the calendar, nothing needs to be changed. We could just have this be time, Just the same way Mexico has no daylight savings time.

0:31:49 Thomas: That's also fine. I know, know, but you Yeah.

0:31:49 Eli: Yeah

0:31:57 Tom: Like they just, they're just like, yeah, we're not doing that.

0:31:58 Thomas: And look what happened to that.

0:31:59 Eli: There, this is how it started, and they're all streaming over here to take our daylight savings time, they're coming here they're taking our hours, they're bringing them back to to Mexico, that's the thing, they don't tell you, they bring our extra hour back to Mexico yeah, exactly, that's

0:32:03 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:32:06 Thomas: They're coming for our clocks. They send them back the hour. Yeah, man, it's hell on our economy.

0:32:17 Eli: You guys felt like we have less time lately, it's because Mexicans come here and take our time.

0:32:24 Tom: It's just a time asylees.

0:32:25 Thomas: I really do do love, uh, this topic though, because I saw Tom, your, your with your son. First of all, that's more words than my dad ever exchanged with me. No, that'S not true. On one hand, on one hand, it's like my dad did pontificate for lengths of time in a way that like, I couldn't, I couldn't always keep up with, you know? And I always like felt bad that I couldn'T quite do it because you know, God knows what the fuck he was talking about, but, also somehow didn'T say enough things like that. You know what I mean? Like the things that you said were, really wondered when you, when you sent that, I Really wondered like, man, how would I have reacted to that? You a dose of like honesty that I just have no experience with as a kid. You Know, I just Have no idea. And I wonder, like, I, I I really am interested in kind of the ongoing story of, of your son takes that, message, you

0:32:35 Eli: Ever spoke to you well I, I, I can lend interesting perspective here, because me and my dad talked about this quite a bit, right? I often felt like I was not living, living up to his expectations, or even expectations I imposed on him. Think I I've talked about fighting a little bit when we did the fighting episode. But like one of the really early things that was like a huge point of shame for me is that I was not a fighter. Right, so something fighty would happen around me or to me, and I would cry and apologize because I am a drama kid, and then I would be like

0:33:30 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Right. Classic.

0:33:33 Tom: Yeah.

0:33:51 Thomas: So you didn't do like fake stage combat? Cause that would have been probably better than what you did.

0:33:52 Eli: Right. Exactly, I would try and like I'd be like No, you're supposed to, you're to do a nap, you accidentally got me, you're suppose to do nap, face up, stage, but like I would often come to my dad and be like, I'm so sorry, and he'd be, why are you sorry, like, and so one of the comforts that I want to lend in this situation, Thomas, is like, I think even if our dads do their utmost, and even if are dad sort of take this bull by the horns, which my dad definitely did, and say, hey, look, you do not want to be me, you have strength that I don't have, a lot of the stuff that Tom said, uh asleep, pussy, you were napping for that extra hour you need in liberal California to recover from all the analingus a stranger performed on you last night

0:34:24 Thomas: Wait, wait. I don't remember him saying that though. Oh.

0:34:38 Thomas: I got a UPS box and wherever in Arizona they don't do daylight savings, just so I could not be wrong in this argument about who wrong, so wait, I think that still doesn't work because it probably, they just did, they go back to normal now anyway fuck there's no way I'm not wrong, god damn it, find a way, find a way, I'm not wrong, please, yeah

0:34:39 Eli: Right Exactly, yeah, it's important I don't know, I don' know good space space, you gotta go to space IMS is exempt from all time shit, it's been a problem, they've had legal shit, it was actually funny, um, there was a treaty that expired between two countries that were on the IMS at one time, and so the two countries, I don't remember what it is, one of the nerds in our audience will remember it, but the two counties that were involved, like, were technically a war all of a sudden, and so they just spent the day ignoring each other because they're not in a fucking war

0:34:58 Thomas: Yeah

0:34:58 Tom: I

0:35:22 Thomas: What

0:35:23 Tom: Kind of wish they had to play rock 'em sock 'em robots up there like okay we have to be at war but we you know

0:35:24 Eli: Yeah well

0:35:27 Thomas: A better world if that was, if we had passive-aggressive wars between countries, what a good, better world, you know what I mean

0:35:33 Eli: What's so funny, and again, I'm getting all the details of this wrong, so everyone looking

0:35:36 Thomas: I think this is entirely made up but yeah it's fine

0:35:36 Eli: Yeah look in the comments for the nerd who will be like, I don't know what the fuck he's talking about, maybe he means this, that's what I mean, but I'm not, I'm not responsible for the thoughts that come into my head, and Thomas isn't responsible for the time dimension these These are the rules, I don't make them up. But one of the funny things is, like, there was a project they were working on together. And one the of The Russians had to come over and be like, guys, we cannot. You have to measure the potatoes. I don't understand what's happening. I need you guys to look. I'm from Russia. Okay? I get it. We have to ignore what is happening down there on the Earth. But we gotta, we GOTTO OVERCOME THIS.

0:35:48 Tom: I'm

0:36:08 Thomas: Russia somehow has like 27 time zones, they have more than there are even time zones, it's amazing But, but what you're saying is, sorry, you, saying if you had received that message anyway, it it, almost doesn't matter because you've self -imposed all

0:36:13 Eli: DO. WELL, YOU KNOW, THE SUN NEVER SETS.

0:36:22 Eli: RIGHT. I'M TELLING YOU, I RECEIVED THAT MESSAGE AND IT MADE IT WORSE. Right? When my dad was like, I'm imperfect.

0:36:24 Thomas: These things. Yeah. Hear that, Tom? You're doing bad parenting. Just letting you know. Yeah, shock

0:36:30 Eli: Yeah. Well, I,

0:36:31 Tom: Bad parenting. I got it. Yeah, no, yeah. I'm, I'm writing it on my shame list. It's

0:36:33 Eli: Yeah. I think as an adult, I look back and thank you.

0:36:36 Thomas: Your balls better. Her Wait.

0:36:39 Eli: I, I think is an adult. I look and I see the efforts my dad made for me not to repeat the mistakes he made. Um, it was really admirable, but at a certain point, like there are things that your kids got to go through. Right. Like one of the things I think about all the time, and we still haven't done the sleep training episode. But Um, like one of the best pieces of, have we done it?

0:36:39 Tom: Right.

0:36:57 Thomas: I thought we did didn't we? I think we

0:36:59 Eli: I don't think we have. All we'll.

0:36:59 Thomas: Did we? Did. Yeah, whatever it

0:37:01 Eli: All right. We'll refer to the sleep trading episode where I hope I said this, but one, it was the daylight savings time episode.

0:37:02 Thomas: Was daylight savings time. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.

0:37:07 Eli: Yeah. Uh, one of things that I heard best that really helped me for sleep training is like, your kid's going to cry, right? Your kid's gonna cry. Cause their heart gets broken. Their kid's got to cry, cause they lose the big football game, and your kid is going to cry because they need to teach themselves to learn to sleep.

I think that's also the case here, which is like, your kid is going to put you on a pedestal, and they're going to learn that you're a human being, and that's going to break their heart, and that is a universal, unpreventable experience. What we can do is we can handle those moments well.

And, and the reason why I'm so glad that Thomas is part of the conversation is like, I think the difference between Tom's dad or Tom and your dad is that like when that moment broke between you and your dad, he could have checked in. Right. And been like, what am I wrong about? Or how can I learn from my son, who has had these experiences I haven't had, has developed this empathy that I haven't developed, is mentally well in ways that I am not mentally well. And how can I grow from those things? And instead, he doubled down and alienated you and it destroyed your relationship. Relationship. The

0:38:12 Thomas: I think that for one, I, I just really admired, uh, Tom was doing there, because I think it's such, I don't know if you talked about this in the, un, uh, old, dads, which uh, yeah, you will be seeing me in court for, but but, um, think it's such a, yeah.

0:38:21 Tom: The unauthorized prequel.

0:38:22 Eli: The raw dog version heavily redacted, Thomas, come on, when would that ever end up in court? Relax, a lawsuit over a podcast? Okay, yeah.

0:38:32 Thomas: It's, it's a podcast, there's no way but

0:38:38 Tom: Ridiculous.

0:38:39 Eli: Silly, I'm

0:38:40 Thomas: Um, I think it's such an easy male impulse, especially, and then honestly probably, probably applies to both parents, but we're dads. I don't know, I think there's an easy, uh, impulse to feed into, that is to just embrace the idea that you're the fucking god king of a dad, and you get, like, it's such easy, you to earn in a way that I really appreciate and respected, Tom, just being like, oh, no, no, I, you don't understand, son, I fucking sucked, man.

0:38:56 Tom: Yeah, for sure.

0:39:04 Eli: Right.

0:39:06 Thomas: Did I suck. Holy shit, I, I suck dicks. And, and I don't know that that'll work, but it's interesting. And at the same time, still, I'm this is the less interesting part. My dad wasn't boastful or anything in a way. There was something about, it'll be hard to describe anyone else who kind of grew up with like a bit of a narcissistic parent. Maybe we'll understand. It's not like he, he you know how Trump is overt narcissist. So he's the, like, I'm the best, everything, blah, blah. My my dad was covert narcissist. So he was very self -deprecating in certain ways, but still somehow the overall narcissism, narcissism package meant that like the overall takeaway message was still that he was right about everything kind of thing. I'm not sure how it worked, I but guess an example of how it's not always about the literal, words we're saying, you know, I think that's a challenge.

0:39:11 Tom: Sure.

0:39:50 Eli: And something that you voiced quite a bit that is very typical of narcissists is like sometimes the way that manifests is putting everyone else down, rather than boosting themselves up, and I know that's an experience that you've spoken about quite a bit, um, we saw Tom do in that conversation that I think was so helpful is like maintain the praise for Finn and demonstrate humility without shaming Finn for the emotion in the first place, um, because, because, again, I wasn't there for your experience, but you've spoken about it quite a bit. Like, one of the big problems that came up with your dad that you've spoken about is, like, everything was a mean joke on you. And so there could be no, like, earnest conversation about someone else going through a thing.

0:39:58 Thomas: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

0:40:37 Thomas: Yeah, no, I think that's right. I think that is the way that it ends up. He he could self -deprecate as long as he was deprecating everyone else more probably is what it is, what it amounts to just mathematically, like the math still works. And I do think like didn't need to go after like Barack Obama so much in the message and be like, he wasn't born here.

0:40:45 Eli: Right.

0:40:54 Thomas: He wasn't, it was weird that he took The time to go after someone. And again, Barack Obama, I mean, great president personally. I don't know what Tom's talking about born in this country. I, I think, but Tom disagrees. Anyway, you see the messages yeah It's fine, no,

0:41:02 Tom: Know Debatable. All Right, let's see. Then you

0:40:54 Eli: I did think it was weird. I thought it was. Weird. Yeah. Fantastic president. My favorite president. I'll say right now. No. No. Come on. Let's go crazy, Thomas. Thomas. The majority of Dear Old Dads does not believe. Hey, uh, everyone at home, that's a joke. That was a, it was a comedy joke on the comedy show. I don't actually feel that way. And what's funny, sorry, Thomas, I have to do that. What's funny about it is that because I don'T feel that way, I'm drawing a comparison between me who doesn't feel thatway and a person who did. That's actually what most of the original minutes is, is, It's just that I actually have a running Subtract if you take out your right earphone You can only hear me Explaining jokes Uh humorless mean spirited People

0:41:08 Tom: Know, I'll

0:41:28 Thomas: Is Wait, can why don't you just do this part while I wasn't here, yeah, most of it was man where

0:41:44 Eli: So yeah it's

0:41:45 Thomas: I am really struggling with this right now, and my kids are still little, so it's, you know, I don't think it's quite the same. But every time I'm trying to do anything with Phoebe, or not even me trying, like, she just decided I, I, her do piano for a bit. I don't know if I talked about it, but she, she, okay, but just ended up kind of wanting to get it out.

And because, because she did enough lessons when she said like, yeah, I don't want to do it anymore. I was like, all right, that's fair enough. You tried enough. I'm not going to, you know, you, you try it. But um, I've been trying to get her to do music, cause I, I think she's going to be pretty gifted at it if, if, she wants to be. And so the other day I was playing guitar, and the other day she wanted to get her guitar.

So I bought them a little, like, kid guitar a while back. And it was like, I don't know why I did this. They, they can't do anything. Like, kids at that age cannot do, I mean, I'm sure there's some, obviously some virtuoso kids somewhere that can fucking play guitar way better than I can at the age of four, but my kids can't doing anything. So I bought that, and I was like, why did I buy this?

They can't, they can do it, but eventually maybe they'll be able to. And she's like, oh, I want to play. And so she grabbed it, and I was like, all right, let me show you one chord. Like, I'll show you the easiest chord.

0:41:45 Eli: Oh you fool you

0:42:51 Thomas: Yeah. That David played and it pleased the Lord and you don't even care for music, dude. No, was I like, I'll just show you the easiest one. Her little tiny fingers can barely do it. Is just one example. I have this constantly where I'm like, yeah, and do it that way, you know, and just work on that for now. And dann she's instantly mad that she can't make the guitar sound like I can make the guitars sound

0:42:52 Eli: Fool Right she wants To play L ish fucking stairway to heaven

0:43:11 Tom: Right. Right.

0:43:12 Thomas: Immediately. And I'm just like, I don't know how much to say this, that like I go into the mode of, you now how much I practiced guitar back in the day, like so much, but then I also don't want to like overwhelm her, but it's this feeling of like, I want to both say, hey, in order to get to any level of skill at anything, like you've got to practice a lot, but also in, say like, yeah, when I first started, I, couldn't I do it either.

Like I, you know, whatever, like I started from not knowing as well. And it's just so hard to get that message to a kid because their kid brain, all they see is you doing something regardless of what it is, guitar, basketball, sports, whatever, and they see like, oh, when they do it, it they, like, can do it. And when I try to do it because I'm a little kid, none of my limbs go the way that they're supposed to and then you can't, it's hard to tell them like, you, I can't tell you the amount of hours that went into this stupid thing, you know? Yeah.

0:43:58 Tom: Well

0:43:57 Eli: Right well we make the problem Worse because the way that they experience experience most things is they try it. They can do it. And we're like, oh my gosh, you did it. You took your first steps. You crawled. You raised your head. You ate the carrot stick, right? There's just praise, praise, prize. And that's good, right? That's how we're supposed to parent. But then they hit this wall of shit where we're, like, yeah, no, I mean, you're going to be bad at that for seven years. But, then, then you'll be medium, huh? Huh? You want to be medium?

0:44:14 Thomas: Yeah exactly

0:44:30 Tom: And Other thing too, is like, you, like, everybody has the same interest and like tenacity and capacity for work and natural skills. So like your kids may never be as good as you. And I, like I'll give you an example from my, like, my dad is a naturally, naturally, not naturally good, but he is a woodworker, right. And we've talked about this before, he but my dad

0:44:52 Eli: A masterly gifted dictator.

0:44:50 Thomas: Naturally gifted authoritarian yeah you should see how he tramples the rights of those underneath him he

0:44:57 Eli: You should see his sex tape.

0:44:59 Tom: Just is, oh my god, but like, my, my dad, my dad can build anything and he, yeah, he's homemade

0:45:04 Thomas: Can fuck yeah

0:45:06 Eli: That sex wing that he's using in that tape, that's him.

0:45:08 Thomas: Is he yeah would it's all

0:45:11 Tom: Homemade and not, and not a bit of slack in it either, I mean it's, it's rigged up there, but like, my dad can build and fix anything at all. And he's been been like that as long as I've known him. So the fact that there was a time in his life where he wasn't like that was never visible to me. All I see is the, to your point, Thomas, all I see is the result of all of those years of experience. And that to me is what I'm trying to emulate from a position of zero. And that's what all kids do.

So that's not like bad, but like no matter how much work I poured into trying to be good at like remodeling and construction projects and and woodworking. And I poured in hundreds of hours. I never got to be very good at it. I do not have good spatial, like my spatial reasoning isn't as bad. Like I don't have good mental images. I can't do the kind of work he can do in his mind the same way. So I poured a ton of time into trying to be good at it. And then I just was never good

0:45:13 Eli: No splinters. Not a single splinter.

0:45:18 Thomas: Yeah yeah here

0:46:08 Tom: At those things. I was mediocrely, maybe a little bit. Okay. Right? Like I could retile the bathroom, but you might want want to redo it later kind of a thing you

0:46:17 Eli: Right.

0:46:16 Thomas: Or never because fuck it but yeah but, and it's also, it's, it's kind of a two-way street because at the same time, one thing that bothers me about parents and myself, I say this not as judgy, but like, it's a hard thing for parents to do is, how do you properly judge what you were fucking like back then, you know?

0:46:20 Tom: Yeah well

0:46:35 Eli: Right.

0:46:35 Thomas: You don't know it's impossible I I always think back when, when there are times that I'm struggling just with anything, you know, any of the daily struggles of kids of like trying to get them to do certain things. Oh, can they clean up something for the love of God? Can they clean up one fucking thing? And of me is like, well, what was I like? And then I can't even finish the sentence. Cause I'm like, oh yeah, I don't even have memories from when they were some in some of these examples. You know, I'm like, why would I expect that? Like, they're going to be able to handle things when I can't even remember that time in my life. That must mean my brain wasn't that put together, you

0:46:35 Tom: You can't yeah you have no frame of reference yeah right

0:47:07 Eli: Yes.

0:47:07 Thomas: Know? And

0:47:08 Eli: And this is a battle that Anna and I go through because she does a lot of music gigs, which is lovely. And she, when she was young, but not as young as Max, would go to gigs with her parents. So she'll be like, oh, I've got this gig. It's in Gahoinkaboink, Wisconsin. And, you know, me and my brother, we used to sleep underneath the tables and we would listen to the music and we would eat the food that was at the side. So fun. And I was like, yeah, you were like eight or nine. That is a very developmentally different place.

But she wants to share, those were wonderful shared experiences and so that's sort of the other side of it, is that sometimes you've got to be like, hey, like, you're not at this experience yet, but you can be if you want to be. And that is such a weird offering to give to kids that comes out of nowhere, right? Not a day where we sit them down where we're like, Arlo, Phoebe, whatever your name is, uh, when you reach this age, this is when daddy will no longer be sure whether or not you're good at things and whether or not you should do them long-term, Lynn.

0:47:32 Tom: Well

0:47:33 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Mm-hmm.

0:48:05 Tom: And also like kid memory has a tendency to blur discrete experiences into this broad gestalt that we think is true where we're like, when I was a kid, I was like this, and it's like, all right, well, that doesn't mean anything. What were you like in February of, you were six, you know, because in February you were different when you're six, then you will be six months later because time works differently. Experiences work differently. So I feel the same way. I'm like, I look back and I was like, yeah, well, when I moved in with my dad, like I could load and unload the dishwasher. And I believe that I could do that competently when I was six, but maybe one, I wasn't six. Maybe I'm misremembering and I Was six and a half, or maybe I was seven or seven and a Half. I don't really have a good good frame of reference for that.

0:48:09 Thomas: Yeah yep yep 100 % yeah.

0:48:28 Thomas: Oh yeah mm -hm.

0:48:52 Tom: And like, maybe I wasn't competent at it. Maybe I did a bad job and my dad every night came back and put everything in the right place and just never said anything. Right. Cause that's something I would do.

0:49:01 Thomas: In his refractory period smoking after the sex tape. Hey cut the tape I gotta fix the dishwasher.

0:49:02 Tom: Right. I never should have told you guys that I never should have taught you that,

0:49:08 Thomas: Yeah no

0:49:08 Eli: Pull the plug out of the wall, and I'm not, I'm, about the camera, absolutely.

0:49:09 Thomas: One no one should have told anyone about that. No earth.

0:49:10 Tom: But A lot of times we're wrong about own childhood when we look back at our memories, so when we relay stories back to our kids about what we were like, or we have expectations, or we develop this sort of like role modeling experience or role with them, I think we can fuck that up very inadvertently with nothing but the best intentions, you know, because we can be like, oh yeah, well, when I was a kid I already knew how to do that, and it's like, did you, did you already know how, or is the part that you're remembering the part where you knew how, and the part that you can't remember is all the times you didn't know how, right?

0:49:40 Eli: Yeah.

0:49:48 Thomas: Yeah. And here's the other thing. There's yes. And there's a sense I have now, and I don't remember when this happened, but at a certain point in my life and a lot of these struggles are, you know, growing up with ADHD and kind of how not knowing it and how I was, there was a certain part of my life where where I got to the point and your point, I'm actually, even as in, though, this was when I was older, I still don't remember when it exactly, it was like, it's hard to pin down. Was I 17? Was I 24? I don't know.

There was a time when I got To a point where, when I decided to work on something, no matter what it was, I was able to practice really hard and work incredibly hard at at it, um, with a goal in mind and get better at it. Actually And was really good and still am really good at not caring that I suck at something at first, because, you know, that's a hard thing to learn. And maybe it came later for me than other, I don't know. But I guess what I'm saying is I also don't Know what went into that. Like, however,

0:49:49 Eli: Right.

0:50:14 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:50:43 Thomas: I was at 10. I don't think I was good at that. I But when we re trying to prepare our kids for things, part of it, too, is like, well, what will it look like now, even in a good case scenario where maybe I m preparing them for when they re, I don't know, 16 to be able to do stuff better? What does that look like now?

0:50:59 Eli: Right.

0:51:00 Tom: Yep.

0:51:00 Thomas: What s the now version of that? And it s so hard to know.

0:51:02 Eli: How do we set those expectations in a way that's healthy, right? Because you don't want to ask a four-year-old to have the patience of a 16 -year old and the work ethic of a a 16 year old, those are right. Those are unhealthy, bad expectations to have, but you do need to establish that it is a good expectation to have.

0:51:09 Thomas: Yeah, it s impossible. Possible. You're an idiot if you do that, yeah.

0:51:16 Tom: Yeah.

0:51:21 Eli: But you need to communicate it while not having it.

0:51:20 Thomas: And what the, yeah, or, or here's my biggest fear, Eli, and I don't know if you share this, maybe Tom shares this, what about, could it be that I only developed a skill like that later in life because I had hard expectations put on me early? That's what I fear, you, that necessary, yeah.

0:51:28 Eli: Bees.

0:51:38 Tom: And So then do you worry if I don't have hard expectations, the kids won't develop those skills?

0:51:41 Thomas: Yeah. Like, if I'm too, well, oh, oh, maybe I'm being too nice and patient to these fucking loser kids who can't do anything. I don't know.

0:51:43 Tom: Right?

0:51:48 Eli: Yeah. Perfect example. Right? Donovan didn't take the SATs and I believe he's now in his third methadone clinic. Like, I don't know. I mean, I believe it's his third.

0:51:55 Tom: Yeah,

0:51:57 Thomas: No, he took them. He just put all C's, right? Or no, did I mix it up?

0:52:01 Eli: He Actually stole the SATs from his school recently

0:52:01 Tom: He put he put all C's and then he is this summer taking classes at the community college. So he's he's failing out miserably. But like, yeah.

0:52:04 Eli: Yeah. Oh, gosh. What a terrible scenario. My sympathies are with you, Donovan.

0:52:13 Tom: You look back at trying like to encapsulate and communicate what your own childhood was, he does have straight A's.

0:52:17 Eli: Got straight A's. This is the joke I'm doing. I forgot. I don't think you all realized, because I think, I think Tom just told me that, but Donovan has straight A's. That's that bit that's the bit I was doing.

0:52:24 Tom: Yeah, yeah, donovan's an excellent student, yeah, that's

0:52:25 Eli: Everybody

0:52:20 Thomas: Oh, I actually missed that. Yeah, yeah. I thought he was just an asshole.

0:52:26 Tom: The but like

0:52:26 Eli: Yeah, God, how amazing. Would that be - well, you didn't hear Hayley slowly strangling me from behind, so I think that's our first clue, although let's be honest, if the things I said resulted in my stranglings from Hayley long ago is What about a two -man podcast other than today?

0:52:30 Tom: Assume that every time

0:52:31 Thomas: Yeah, I know. Yeah. But it's sort of like Trump

0:52:39 Tom: Oh, yeah, he'd be gone a long time ago. Yeah, yeah,

0:52:47 Eli: Everyone's

0:52:47 Thomas: Where it's like everyone's waiting. Everyone's waiting for when it's going to, you know, they know.

0:52:50 Eli: Waiting for Hayley does. Yeah.

0:52:52 Thomas: And Eli's getting a little cocky about it. He's like, hey, we can't get me in. That'll be the time, you knows, sometime down the lane.

0:52:52 Tom: Right, Yeah.

0:52:57 Eli: Goal Hayley will come and strangle me. Tom, why are you putting one dollar? Why are you putting one dollar on the Patreon, right?

0:53:02 Thomas: Anyway, Tom. Yeah.

0:53:07 Tom: Think, too, that one of the things that when I look back at my own childhood, and I have to be careful about this when I represent myself to my kids, is that I'm aware that I may confuse in relaying my own story. I may confuse what my intentions were with the results. Right. So I may have and I see this with the kids, too, where like they'll be like, I worked really hard. And I'm like, well, actually, you know, my brain, I'm thinking objectively, you spent 15 minutes on this.

0:53:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:34 Eli: Exactly.

0:53:34 Tom: Right, They are confusing how it feels for them, what their intention is. They're confusing their intention with the objective result. And I think that when I look back and I think about my journey into growing up and in through adolescence and all of that, I always accurately what my feelings and intentions were. And I think that maybe there are times where if I'm being objective, I'm like, yeah, but the results didn't match my intentions. So especially in interpersonal relationships, right? So there were times when I think like, look, I always try to behave with the best of intentions for other people. But then I'm like, yeah, but like, you still did the wrong

0:53:34 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:53:34 Eli: That

0:54:11 Tom: Thing. Like you still didn't do right.

0:54:12 Thomas: Like that time when you beat up that hockey dad for no reason. Yeah, I agree.

0:54:15 Tom: No, that was definitely bad intentions. I had bad, I'm, that Was bad intentions

0:54:18 Thomas: No, I

0:54:17 Eli: Was no I think that was I think it was bad intentions and a good result. Yeah.

0:54:21 Thomas: Just realized I have, this is another, again, life with ADHD, I just realize I have a fully fledged narrative I could write into book form about my dad in a story and doing exactly this, and I so politely let you guys talk at the beginning for like, I don't know, it was like 20-25 minutes, I was just didn't even interrupt once, so I'm realizing I might take this the time because this is exactly on point, it's something I remembered the other day, so the other day, I remembered that you guys can go, uh, to take the nap that I was able to get.

0:54:37 Eli: Auger like you not to, no, thank you we'll leave early and Thomas does the parenting story by himself how

0:54:52 Tom: Dimensions. Thomas just does it.

0:54:51 Thomas: Yeah. It's a good, yeah, yeah. No, this this is isn't, I think it'll be a good microcosm of like actually an example that I remember vividly of how my dad did stuff. And it might, you Eli's jokes better in the future. So, but I'm sorry, make Eli jokes more accurate in the the future. And so he can really cut to my core. He can really just slice my soul in half. It'll be great.

0:54:56 Tom: Yeah,

0:55:06 Eli: Dare you, how dare ya you it's the only lacking of my jokes is more material to harm people with that's what I've always said

0:55:21 Thomas: It's fair. I actually kind of agree with that. One time, one thing my dad was into, he was into golf forever. I golfed with my dad forever. You guys know that. But boy, did he suck dick at golf. But what he actually was pretty good at, age in before I was really aware, wear much, was tennis. So he and my mom played tennis, they played doubles, you know, they play, they, it was back when he, I think there was a time in the early nineties before his mental illness really took over that I unfortunately didn't get to see much of, you know, I was like six, seven, eight, nine, and I barely remember it.

And then by the time I got to be about, I don't know, 11, 12, he just shut down, you know, and it really sucked. But in that time he was pretty good at tennis. Understand I it, I don't know. Like I always been naturally really athletic and that must've come from somewhere. So I think he actually would a good athlete. Um, and so he actually cared about tennis and he knew, he knew something about it is the point.

And we had these old shitty rackets around the house, you know, that he, from the fucking seventies, like the, the, uh, the McEnroe era. Oh, you guys don't now anything. You know, McEnro, right? Right? Here we go.

0:55:23 Eli: Pubic

0:55:30 Tom: It's canon.

0:56:24 Eli: Hair on the grip full

0:56:28 Tom: I think

0:56:28 Thomas: Kind of, they're wooden. Literally we had wooden rackets. Like we had the just wooden ones sitting around and we would, John

0:56:30 Eli: Bush yeah yeah

0:56:35 Tom: That's ping pong. You're talking about ping pong, right?

0:56:36 Thomas: McEnroe.

0:56:37 Tom: Just confused. You don't know much about sports, I don't think.

0:56:37 Eli: God I don't want to to interrupt his super long, boring story. Yeah. Sorry.

0:56:41 Tom: That's ping pong you're talking, listeners.

0:56:43 Eli: So Thomas.

0:56:43 Tom: I apologize. He's this is another ping pong story and

0:56:44 Eli: Yeah, so

0:56:45 Thomas: Yeah. Sorry. Getting fact -checked in real time. This is another ping pong story.

0:56:49 Tom: I swear to god, if you email me and call it table tennis, I'll find you by your IP address and kill you. It's not, it's ping pong.

0:56:53 Thomas: Oh boy.

0:56:54 Eli: Yeah? We don't threaten to kill our audience enough. And I know this is the first time Thomas is keeping this in the podcast when I say it, but I meant it before, too.

0:56:57 Tom: We'll

0:56:59 Thomas: Yeah, seeing I I would from time to time hit the tennis ball a little bit against the garage door, classic 80s 90s kid thing, there was fucking nothing to do, so hitting the ball against the garbage door, uh, on the patio, boy, that was, that was fun. That I could do that honestly today for an hour. Just something about it, something about sports has always clicked in my mind, just for, for myself

0:57:23 Tom: Have to whittle you up a tennis racket.

0:57:24 Thomas: Yeah Oh, your dad, your dad would have made me the best wooden tennis racket in the world. Anyway, um, one time when I was, I guess, a little bit older, so I do that when I'm as little, and you know, I don't think my dad took note or gave a shit, but one time I was a little bit older, I would guess, and this is the part I wish I knew, I would guess 10, 11, I have been high school, I, you know, that middle period where you're not, not quite, I guess maybe, maybe it's middle school where you're not. Yeah. In high school, you can kind of, for some intents and purposes, be like an adult in ways, you know, like you just, in terms of your parents getting you to do stuff, I don't know, you're kind of competent in some ways.

0:57:26 Eli: Yeah.

0:57:50 Eli: Middle school?

0:58:01 Eli: Sexual

0:58:01 Thomas: And then of course, yeah, together. No, but like, there's a period when you're in fourth or fifth grade where you'RE useless, you KNOW, and then there's that like sixth, seventh, eighth grade, you Know, you'RE like somewhere in between, like sometime.

0:58:01 Eli: Maturity?

0:58:14 Thomas: And I imagine, yeah exactly.

0:58:13 Eli: Yeah, it sucks. It's the worst.

0:58:15 Thomas: I imagine it's a weird time

0:58:15 Eli: It is. Why middle school is the worst. Because you the amounts of little kid and adult that are poured into the cauldron at that point are fucking random. You're like, I'm doing math as good as I'll ever do it the rest of my life, but I cry when a dog is on TV though.

0:58:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:58:27 Thomas: Well, You you still do that, but um,

0:58:32 Eli: Yeah, those things are all true of me now, so I guess, I guess what I'm saying is I've never left middle school, I

0:58:36 Thomas: Are you in middle school right now? So

0:58:38 Eli: Got fatter. I did get fatter, I promise. Yep.

0:58:41 Thomas: I was hitting the tennis ball against the the garage door, but I was young enough that I was still doing, you know, those dumb like just little like games you play as a kid with yourself where, like, look, I know people have a forehand and a backhand. I can just do forehand with both hands. So I was, like, hitting it with my right hand, and then I was going over my left hand, and I was hitting the ball with the left hand.

And I'm just a dumb kid who's like, that's cool. I bet other people can't do this, even though it's one would do that. Like, it's just dumb. You just use a backhanded because it's better. But I'm a kid. I don't know that. And so for some reason on this particular day, and this was very rare, so I remember it, it. My dad happened to see and came and was like, oh, okay.

Maybe I'm the age where he can try to actually show me how something works, you know? So he starts, he like, oh yeah. Hey, what are you doing there? Hey, let me, let let me show you kind of how it's done a little bit tennis wise. And you he knew how to play tennis. So he was showing me some stuff and I was like, yeah, cool.

And um, then I told him my, my amazing thing I invented where I'm like, yeah, and I don't need to do a backhand. I just do two forehands. And after my dad had, you know, know spent a minute or two showing me some stuff and he said, well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. And then he just left and went about

0:58:41 Tom: Oh, oh.

0:59:49 Thomas: His business and then, what's, what's good about this story is later on when I was actually an adult, so I think probably 19, I was home for the summer from college, 19-20, and I was starting to play tennis with a friend with of mine, and he was one of those friends that Eli has where he's like, this guy fucking sucks, but for for some reason, I was still, because we played tennis, I think was, I was like friends with him, but just fucking suck.

0:59:49 Tom: My God. Right

0:59:51 Eli: So Many of those Yeah, Yeah.

1:00:13 Thomas: And he was, this guy was this kid that I was frenemies with, was good at tennis. And I was playing. He was kicking my ass, but it was fun. I actually don't mind getting my ass kicked. Love it because sports is fun and that's how you get better. And so I was praying. And what happened was we had like a total cats in the cradle moment where my dad was like, oh, yeah, maybe I could show you some things, things. I was like, oh no, no, he already showed me. And there was not an ounce of ill will in my mind at all by the way, like this was just like

1:00:36 Tom: You're just like, yeah, I don't want to engage with you on this, right?

1:00:38 Thomas: Um, Not even that, it was more like, oh, I don't, you know, I already know this, like, he already show this, my friend showed me Yeah, because, because I'm trying to describe how it works, because the relationship had always been so transactional in a way, for this moment it was like, well, I already have the thing you're offering in this transaction. And it wasn't like I was, I wasn't mad, I wasn't upset, keep in mind I still liked my dad at this point, it was just like, oh, I, I already know that. And I, I sort of, in retrospect, I don't know when it clicked to me some years later maybe, that like, oh, I think he was trying to have an interaction with me because he was a little persistent at it, you know, he was like, oh, well, you

1:00:42 Eli: I don't want to inconvenience you, yeah.

1:01:13 Eli: Yeah

1:01:13 Thomas: Know, maybe he made it, made a joke, like, oh, maybe that, maybe he showed you the wrong way to do it because he wants to beat you kind of thing, I was like, yeah, he didn't, you know, he showed me the right way to do it, like, said he gave me a couple grips, I was like, yeah, I already know how to grip the racket.

1:01:25 Eli: Yeah.

1:01:25 Thomas: And it was, point of the story is you can't shortcut to the part where it's more convenient for you as a parent. You can't be like, hey, I know when I'll actually, you know, you have patience and try. It's when the kid is no longer a pain in the ass and just is old enough to do stuff. Cause once you've done that, then your kid's gonna get cats in the cradle. They don't, they're like, oh, okay, you, I already, whatever, I don't really need you for this because you know you weren't there helping me ever, so I figured out how to do everything on my own is what really happened. Yep.

1:01:25 Eli: Yes, Yep.

1:01:53 Eli: Fucking Self-reliance, man, is a real, and then you're like, why, Dennis Brager, why don't they write me on Christmas? And it's like, because you, you shouldn't have sucked so fucking hard. It's so funny, Thomas, and I'll be interested if you have any thoughts on this when you're editing the episode, I almost interrupted you when you were talking about the forehand forehand thing. Cause I don't think you consciously did it, but you shat on the idea of a forehand forehand thing for like a minute. And I think you did it totally unconsciously. You were like, I was like, oh, I was playing this fun game for it. And for it, I'm like, oh, I got it. And you were like, stupid fucking idea, that it is that piece of shit, and motherfuck. And and I was like, there it is. There's the internalized self-hate.

1:02:02 Thomas: Oh.

1:02:35 Thomas: No, because it, no, but it actually is like, no tennis player would ever, I think they're like, I've heard of one virally that did it, yeah.

1:02:40 Eli: No, I know it's wrong, man. I just, just your dad shouldn't have talked to you that way. And now you shouldn't talk to yourself that way, you could

1:02:42 Thomas: Oh, No.

1:02:44 Tom: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like you could, you games any way you want to play games, like Like everything doesn't have to be like, like,

1:02:51 Eli: Just be a kid and have a fun thing. You

1:02:53 Thomas: Yeah. I, I'm saying it's dumb now, yeah. No, I get it, I get, I wouldn't if my kid was doing that. I would found a way to to either not have the argument or try to patiently explain, okay, but look at how they do it here in a way. And my dad just, he like, it's actually comical to me to think of now that fast he noped out of it. Like the minute it was any effort. And I get it, you know, it is hard to get, like, I try to get Phoebe to do the slightest thing on guitar and she just starts crying hysterically because does not instantly sound like me. And it's like, it's so, it's hard, but, but

1:02:55 Eli: -max and

1:02:56 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, so

1:03:26 Eli: Eat

1:03:26 Tom: Does

1:03:27 Thomas: No, no, I

1:03:27 Tom: That make you not want to like play in front of her? Do you worry that like you playing and playing well in front of she'll make her be like oh, way I can't do that, you know.

1:03:35 Thomas: Definitely don't do it intentionally. So I didn't like once, once she was having a hard time, I didn't pull it out and be like, look at this, you know, I, but like, I also think that she's six, and I think long-term, sort of like how maybe it sounds like Anna had the experience of just being around music and hearing your parents enjoy music, I think that'll ultimately, you me enjoy something and be good at it, I think ultimately will do more good in the long run, even if in the short term it might be frustrating to her. So, no, I don't do that.

1:03:43 Eli: It. You

1:04:06 Tom: Well, also like you've got to, like as parents, especially if it's something that like like we love and we're passionate about, I think that it can be maybe a little difficult to recognize that like, and this isn't the case like Phoebe, but like I'm thinking of like the tennis thing, then, you know, not all play has to be practice, right?

1:04:19 Thomas: Mm-hmm. -hmm. Yeah.

1:04:23 Tom: Play can just be like, yeah, I'm doing this because it's fun. I enjoy Doing it this way. I'm not practicing to get better, even though this is something that like if I practiced that I would get better. There's But a differentiation between like just doing something because you're a kid. And you have the infinite span of time stretching out in front of you to play with in a way that adults like I don't have the luxury of that. Right.

1:04:25 Thomas: Mm -hm. Mm-hmm.

1:04:45 Tom: Like I don't think you guys have the luxury of that

1:04:46 Eli: Ride your bike like a little lad with a giant lollipop and your streamers coming out of the handlebars.

1:04:49 Thomas: Oh,

1:04:47 Tom: Yeah but it's a good point like Eli I won't go on a ride if I don't think that that ride is a training ride that will accomplish something for me right if I only have 30 minutes I won't go.

1:04:57 Thomas: My God, Tom, 100%.

1:04:59 Eli: Alright, well, that's fucking psychotic.

1:05:00 Tom: Yeah

1:05:00 Thomas: We We have no time. We have No Tom and I have no Time anymore. I totally relate to this. It sucks.

1:05:05 Tom: So all of the like efforts that I put in toward things and it's a hard mindset to get out of but it's like I put an effort toward things in order to improve at them right so like I would not put an effort in just because it's fun to put the effort in right but kids do that

1:05:15 Thomas: Yes. 100%. Why Would you do Exactly I

1:05:20 Eli: Okay, this is not three bears, this is the fucking two bears and the one guy slowly backing away from the two bears. Why would you do anything that is not for the greater good of the fucking Harkonnens over here?

1:05:31 Thomas: Know I know I'm the same way I don't I have a hard time oh just being competitive because that's also part of it but also like Tom saying the waste of time like if I don't want to do something if I'm not trying at it you know and then it's like people can do things and not try hard and I don't get it like what is the point oh

1:05:35 Tom: God

1:05:59 Eli: Well, gentlemen, all that said, I told my son today, if he ever comes out as non-binary, he'll never see me again, you know why? Because then I'll be transparent. I

1:06:14 Tom: That's that's literally terrible. Oh.

1:06:21 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.

1:07:02 Tom: Oh yeah, you know, I did a ton of drugs and it was awesome. You

1:07:05 Eli: Don't threaten to kill our audience enough. And I Mario Kart, Mario Kart, here comes Mario and his cart, like