DOD148: Becoming the Black Sheep

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast the other shows on your playlist won't associate with. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:39 Eli: Hello! Greetings from Las Vegas, Nevada.

0:00:45 Tom: How are your showgirl tryouts going?

0:00:47 Eli: Okay, so obviously I was eliminated pretty quickly, but I sort of did the dead cat who doesn't want to get in the box thing on the stage and they said well the cops can't move you because you're covered in your own shit so you I

0:00:59 Thomas: And

0:00:56 Tom: Nice. Yeah. Now, can you get the tassels moving in opposite directions from one another, or are you...

0:01:06 Eli: The crying really helped it was sort of like a water wheel effect and um yeah so I was there for callbacks I mean uh I have been tased a lot of times in the last 24 hours but the joke's on them because now I can charge my cell phone by holding it so So, yeah,

0:01:23 Thomas: You can wake up Tom by yeah touching his sack which he wanted to do anyway so hey got nothing interesting to say.

0:01:23 Tom: And it wakes you right up.

0:01:27 Eli: Can nestle underneath Tom's balls and he'll earn his rest.

0:01:37 Thomas: I'm not in Las Vegas uh

0:01:38 Eli: Ah,

0:01:39 Tom: Get such a cheat because I just write the intro and then I don't have to vamp. I just sort of like force you to vamp, in you the moment.

0:01:41 Thomas: You don't have to just completely

0:01:44 Eli: Do you know the only thing worse than the thought of me in a showgirl costume covered in my own shit being slowly tased out of the building one at a time? Why, it's the auto ads, the taser of podcasting. They appear suddenly, they hurt, and dear god you wish they would stop. But my friends, you can end the tasing of your podcast experience by giving us as little as a dollar over at patreon.com/dearolddads. So you'll get a commercial-free extended version of every single episode, a little parenting story at the end. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, Tom shows up for that part of the show. You also get bonus episodes. We just finished up. No, we didn't finish it. We got like two questions away from the end, We

0:02:22 Tom: Just, God damn it.

0:02:29 Thomas: Thought we were finishing it

0:02:29 Tom: We should have finished.

0:02:31 Eli: Q&A, and we're going to post a new one of those soon, so you can ask us the questions that have been burning ever so deep inside you. And you can get all of it over at patreon.com/dearolddads. And as we say in Las Vegas, rip into it.

0:02:52 Tom: We should take out one of those drive around billboards in Las Vegas for Dear Old Dads. You know, when you're in Vegas, you see those trucks that just drive around in our billboards, mostly mostly for escort services. Yeah, we should do that for dear ol' dads.

0:03:00 Eli: Yeah, for escort services? Mm -hmm. Yeah.

0:03:04 Thomas: Are We is our demographic like Las Vegas-y, like maybe just deadbeat dads that we're trying to cure? Yeah, did you just find out you had a child?

0:03:09 Tom: No, not at all.

0:03:14 Eli: Do you have no money and not the courage to kill yourself? Dear Old Dads, rip Into It.

0:03:20 Thomas: I did, did say from the get-go that's who I wanted to target with this, but it has evolved since then.

0:03:25 Eli: Yeah. No, I mean, look, anytime you're targeting fathers, you are targeting men. That's a circle inside a circle, not a Venn diagram.

0:03:32 Tom: All So, you guys, I wanted to talk a little bit this week about the idea of black sheep, like the black sheep of the family, um, this is a topic that kind of occurs to me a little bit because, um, is in a unique position in our house to be significantly the youngest youngest, and the kid in the household who is significantly younger than the next youngest kid. I think it's real easy for Eamon to sort of live on the outskirts of a lot of this sort of like family activity, this sort of like space the other kids occupy. So Eamon is 10, Aislinn is 13, and that's a huge, I know it's only three years, but it's a huge difference.

0:04:02 Eli: No,

0:04:15 Tom: And then, you know, boys are 17 and 18, and so Eamon is still at 10, he's still such like a little kid, like he's just like a little kid, and so he still has little kid interests and little kid desires and little Kids toys. You he's know going into fourth grade and Aislinn is going into eighth grade, so that gulf there is just kind of growing every year. Somehow they get significantly further further apart. Um, so what I think sort of happens is like he's not as mature, he's, he's more vocal, he's a little more chaotic, he's more like little kid, and what I see happening, and and which I'm working to to sort of like swim upstream against, is that he kind of is the outsider, you know, in the family. You know, we all want to do, I think naturally what the group sort of is evolving to do, these teenage people, and, you know, as teenagers move closer to that sort of adult adjacent sphere, it's easier and easier to do more and more things that feel more grown up.

0:04:14 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's massive. Well,

0:04:15 Eli: It's giant, yeah.

0:05:15 Tom: And then you've got Amen. And super keenly aware of that difference. And I just kind of want to talk about and talk through that idea of the black sheep in the family and sort of how we navigate not doing that to our kids when it's so easy. And, like, like, I'm curious if you guys had black sheep or were black sheep in your family, or what your thoughts are.

0:05:36 Thomas: I want to clarify, a black sheep is, Eli, a black sheep right is the person in the family who's, every everyone else is a normie and then you've got an Eli, black sheep isn't just somebody who's, you know, a little bit younger, and you're right, or do you think there's more to it just yeah, sure, sure.

0:05:49 Tom: Well, I guess I mean, like, it's anybody who's on the outside. Yeah,

0:05:45 Eli: Yeah, yeah, and

0:05:53 Tom: I think it's just like anybody that feels like maybe not part of the crowd.

0:05:56 Thomas: I kind of want to just make sure, Tom, like, it isn't as though, is there an additional like alienation happening, or is it just the age thing, do you think, right?

0:06:03 Tom: I think the age thing is the reason that there's the other things, right? So like, yeah, he's more chaotic. He's louder. He's more immature. He's not interested or can't do the same things that the other kids do. He's messier, yeah, yeah, so

0:06:07 Thomas: Sure, sure, okay,

0:06:08 Eli: Yeah

0:06:15 Thomas: So Eli, you're right, sorry, I apologize, you're right, yeah,

0:06:17 Eli: And I'll also say that like in those situations where where someone is much younger, that dynamic often carries into adulthood, right? Becomes an expectation of behavior, right. And that's where I think the really malicious black sheeping comes in, right, not even on the siblings' parts, right, because it's not their responsibility, but, like, Tom is sort of in the worst possible position, right, which is where you have teens and tweens desperately reaching for adulthood, and what you need them to do and what they really can't is sort of meet their younger where they are, which is the opposite of what you want to do when you're 16, 17, or 13, right? Hearing, hey, I need you to get down to Eamon's level and play Legos, right, for the 16 and 17-year-olds who are incredibly generous of spirit, don't like, have the parts of them that you do that yet, right. The being nice to little kids part of you, I mean, you can be nice to, like, really little babies, and sometimes toddlers.

But you have to get pretty much into full-on adulthood before you are able to put the focus away from yourself that you can be where a nine or a 10-year-old are. And what I have seen in my life, not with me, but what I've seen in my life, is that younger sibling dynamic carries much longer into life. And then all of a sudden, the sibling who is a little bit chaotic,

0:06:18 Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

0:06:51 Thomas: Yeah,

0:07:39 Eli: A little little bit more high energy, a little more immature, that mythos still exists about them when they're 20, 25, 30, and it becomes a self -fulfilling prophecy.

0:07:46 Tom: Dude, yes, that is the thing that I am most keenly aware of and deeply afraid of for Amen, because, like, when there's these age gaps, what is just a straight truth is that there's never going to be a scenario that is fair to everybody. There's no way to create fairness. And so I think a lot of the sort of like requirement to be better necessarily goes to the older kids, because they're at a maturity level where you can actually ask them to sort of step up to things. Right.

0:08:04 Thomas: Oh,

0:08:18 Eli: Right, exactly.

0:08:19 Tom: The family dynamic, I will say that there's a sort of explicit stated understanding, like, like, have, like, a little nickname for Amen, and, like, it explicitly puts him and keeps him. I've got rid of the nickname, but, like, they had one, and it was sort of like this understanding that everybody was really explicit about, that Amon is the outsider, that Amin is the sort of chaotic one. And Amin started to sort of take that on and refer to himself by that nickname of, of sort, otherness that was not unkind but also wasn't inclusive, that sort of spoke to the chaotic nature. And I'm like, we, we want to ask Eamon to step up and to grow and to mature and to be more, and which we do, like, we've got to create a scenario and a family structure for him where, like, challenged to grow up into and not sort accept his otherness and be sort of this feral wild person.

0:09:16 Tom: And like, I don't want that shit to like continue into adolescence and adulthood. I don't think it's it's people like that black sheeping, that otherness, that sort of outsider status in a family, no matter what causes it seems like a real problematic dynamic.

0:09:33 Eli: Book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and How to Talk So Little Kids Will listen?

0:09:36 Tom: No.

0:09:37 Thomas: I think so, but I think it's been a minute, yeah,

0:09:39 Tom: Is it just increasingly louder? Like the words get bigger.

0:09:40 Eli: Yeah, it's just loud. It's volume. It was just volume and smaller words, but he says something in there that I think is so brilliant because he talks kids identifying as bad right,

0:09:43 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:44 Tom: Yes, that's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:52 Eli: As kids get older, they stop identifying by who tell them they are, which is very infrequent, and they start identifying but what we tell them we do, right? For instance, like, we, our kids are very young, we might tell them like, you were loved, we love you, you're the baby, you're so beautiful, you're amazing, right? But then as they, they mature, we take that praise away, right? And it's not like a malicious thing, it's just something that happens. We take that phrase away and we start talking about the things that they're doing that we don't like, right?

You are loud, you aren't noisy, you are so wild, you are so hyper, right, we start identifying with those behaviors, right It's not like we sit our kid down before bedtime each night and we go, well, today you were hyper and I was disappointed and this is who you are. And I hope you're identifying with it strongly. But we forget to check in with those early parts of their identity. And so kids start to identify as the behavior we have to talk about. Thomas, I know you've talked about this, that Arlo will often repeat, like, I am the good kid and Phoebe's the the problem. And you're like, Arlo, fucking shut the

0:10:35 Tom: Mm -hmm.

0:11:07 Eli: Fuck up.

0:11:06 Thomas: He Fortunately, that was pretty short-lived, he kind of got over that, but this is something I am think very worried about, because I both saw it in my family, because obviously my you parents, my dad and my mom, were the most like label-y labelers of late. It's just like, wow, you're a piece of shit kid. Not in those words, but essentially, oh yeah, you're a bad kid. That's a good kid.

You're about like very value driven, you stuff that like, and they always talk about those studies, especially with like, racial um, gaps where gender gaps, if you tell a bunch of girls are bad at math, they will they, perform worse at the test. I you worry a lot about that kind of thing. I think that it can become self-fulfilling really quickly if you label your kid as the trouble Kid or the whatever, and you know, and and worry about that a lot, especially because I definitely have a trouble kid, that's the biggest to deal with, and I don't want that to consume them. I mean, it's it's, I have two of them actually, we'll see, we'll see how it goes, but uh yeah

0:11:46 Tom: Yeah.

0:12:00 Eli: They're in competition for hardest kid.

0:12:02 Tom: Right.

0:12:02 Thomas: They Are, because yeah, I I update, Remy is still impossible, uh, it's absolutely killing us, I can't believe it, he just, he won't talk, he's like got a couple of things that are starting to be words, and every single time he needs something he screams, and that imagine if every time a kid was gonna talk, which is a lot, he screams, it's mean, there's times where he's playing with his siblings and he's fine, but then the minute he wants something he can't communicate it, he screams, I hope he learns to talk, I sincerely think that that will get better.

Um, but then there's like the Phoebe angle too, which is, you she's really still struggling with control issues and very quickly flying off the handle in like a second if a, if something isn't exactly how she wants it. And I'm, I'm trying really hard to fight against that and to to just treat, things in the moment, you know, and also to Make sure she always knows she's, you loved and cared about. Like, for example, actually, I think yesterday, in fact, Lydia was just telling me last night that Phoebe, Lydia was saying that Phoebe is like being really mean to her, which is true, and saying, saying mean things. And then after she'll say mean things, Phoebe will go like, you don't like me, think huh?

She's having this first reaction of like turmoil is happening in her brain is making her say things that she doesn't mean because she just lashes out. She'll know, she lashed out at a wall one time. It's like, who put this wall there? You know? It's, like, she just instantly gets really, really upset about things. And she'll say really mean things to both of us, then I think she'll kick in that, like. Oh, wait. That's. I don't actually mean that.

0:12:51 Eli: Right.

0:13:37 Thomas: And then she's afraid that we don't like her anymore. We're going to be mad at her. And it's like it's so she's doing it herself. She's almost self -labeling on her own of like, I'm you know, I'm not a good kid. And like, we have to like try to be like, no, it's you're a good kid. It's fine. You know, like you just yeah.

0:13:45 Tom: Yeah.

0:13:51 Eli: And then you worry about creating the cycle of abuse comfort, another right? Problem that people with mental illness deal with, right, which is if you are a naturally sort of abusive speaker to the people around you, when you are done, you seek reassurance. Like, I Know that there been family members who are no longer in my life who, after they would do something particularly egregious, would be like, well, you know, I love you, right? And I think there's a lot of toxic parents that listeners have certainly spoken about where that comes in. And those habits, like, form early. And I mean, Phoebe is incredibly lucky in that you are presenting those firm and natural boundaries she needs to learn to stop behaving that way in a place that is safe without developing the habit of labeling. But, you know, born a generation earlier to a different family. Yeah, that's where that toxicity comes in, you know?

0:14:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:46 Thomas: Yeah. I was just reading something online about like, I do kind of wonder a lot about a lot of these either mental illnesses or neurodiversity things like ADHD, I mean, I always of these are genetic. And then I wonder like, but also, and there's research about this, a component of it is, way you act as a parent because of having the thing also can lead to certain things, you know, not, not like It creates, you you know, mental illness out of whole cloth, but well,

0:15:07 Eli: Yes. Yeah, create a narrative, right? We created, I'm the bad kid. I'm the mean kid. My mom never liked me. I'm the baby. Of

0:15:15 Tom: Yeah.

0:15:18 Thomas: An anxiety, like if somebody's, if you have an anxious parent, you might not just be a matter of like, Oh, you're passing genes on. It's also like the way that you are as a parent obviously causes certain things in, in your children.

0:15:30 Eli: Course, yeah.

0:15:31 Thomas: And it's, it's kind of a similar thing where it's like worrying about how much this this labeling or, or Or any of this stuff is going to reinforce things that might be already there.

0:15:41 Eli: I think there is, again, give Tylenol. We're and I'm definitely not an expert, but one of the things that has fascinated me in reading about neurodivergence is where chemistry and environment meet, Right. Because I think we often think of neurodivergence as purely a chemical thing, right? A baby is born with ADHD. And that is, of course, to a certain extent true. But as we learn more and more about the mind, we also learn how environment affects that brain chemistry and how there may be people who were born with the brain chemicals of ADD whose symptoms are much less profound because they were raised in this way instead of that way, right?

0:15:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:31 Thomas: It's always a complex interaction of genetics and environment. Every time.

0:16:32 Eli: Right, exactly. And, and, and I think often we're, we're afraid to talk about that, especially as like science minded parents, because we're worried we sound like anti -science loons or like, there's no such thing as ADD. You just need to hit your kid harder or whatever, you know that, that they would be, but like, I'll give you a really interesting example that I'm experiencing. Right. Max is autistic. Max has an autism diagnosis, diagnosis. But because he has speech therapy and OT therapy and all the bajillion things that me and Anna do to make his life easier, one of the piece of feedback that we're getting that is very interesting on the the receiving end of is, oh, he doesn't seem autistic, right?

And this is meant for people lovingly, right, these are people who are saying, wow, I'm really noticing your kid is thriving, your kid reminds me a lot of mine, you know, he seems very similar to his classmates, they mean it in a good way, But I think that is very much speaks to this. Right. Right. Which is that, like, the way we label our kids is very much what they go, go forward with. I mean, I know I've talked about this a billion times on the show, but one of the things that I say to everyone who is ever in a caretaking position with Max is, Max is a very happy kid. Right. I mean that because, one, I want them to know how joyful my son is and what a joy he is to be around. But also, will, like, notice if he's unhappy, right?

0:17:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:26 Tom: Right.

0:17:58 Eli: This is not a typical kid who sort of, yeah, yeah.

0:17:59 Thomas: It sounds more like a threat when Eli says it. Max is a very happy kid.

0:18:06 Eli: I'd a very happy child, right. And my

0:18:07 Tom: And he will stay that way. Lock eyes. Lock eyes do not make me rip into it.

0:18:08 Thomas: He strokes a blade, a hidden blade under his coat.

0:18:16 Eli: Flag when it has come to parenting moments so far is people who have been like, well, you know, he it do when this. And I'm like, oh, well you should find a way for him to like it then, right? They're like giving a shot. I'm be better at your job. Signed him up for a social skills class, or we were going, sorry, we didn't actually get to the signing up. We were going to sign him up for a social skills class, um, the lady was like, well, the parents aren't allowed to be there, and I was like, why, and she was like, um, sometimes, you know, they tantrum when we make them do things they don't want to do, and we find that parents can be very enabling of that, and I was like, cool, cool.

0:18:56 Thomas: Yeah. Can I send Remy to this? Cause yeah.

0:18:58 Eli: Cool, I'm Right. So

0:18:58 Tom: Wait, that parentins parents enabled a tantruming.

0:19:03 Eli: This social skills class is like meant for kids with autism or on the spectrum, um, Like socialize them, right, so they get better playing with each other. And, and look, I am not an expert, and this lady was, so maybe she meant it in a totally different way, but it really felt like, I'm gonna smush your kid's face into another kid's space and they'll scream, but their voice voice goes away eventually, right?

0:19:07 Tom: Sure.

0:19:24 Thomas: Or, I mean, honestly, it might be the kind of thing where hopefully they're doing the, by the book thing, which is you're supposed to not acknowledge it or give them a reaction. It's what, it's what I guess would need to be done with Remy, but it's like, it'S a matter of scale. I mean I, it's impossible to do that in a day. Like, Like, so our new cleaning person who also is doing a little bit of like watching the kids for a minute, you know, if we go out, she, it's great. He's shiny and very lint free now.

0:19:33 Eli: Yeah. She Arlo twice a day, yeah. Yeah.

0:19:56 Thomas: The first time I came back, she was like, yeah, gets what he wants every time. And said, oh, it's hard, you know, when he screams at you, it's pretty hard, and she's like, yeah, I also mean with the big kids too, like, he's like, screams, and they give him what he wants, and it's, there's, I took it a little bit like, okay, she's suggesting I'm enabling him, which, look, it's, I sort of like, if, if, one hand I want to, uh, I and approach it the best way I can, on the other hand it's like, if a guy walks into a bank with a tommy gun, and he's That's only going to encourage him, though, to like, Rob, you know, let's let's let him shoot us. And then several hundred banks later, he might not ask like that.

0:20:27 Eli: Let's Can we Just Give Me All your money Please, right.

0:20:27 Tom: That's only going to enable more bank robbers. Yeah. To go too far afield here, but does Remy go to daycare? Does he go to a child care?

0:20:41 Thomas: Yes. And he does pretty much 100 percent fine. There's... there's some spicy going on in terms of the focus. I think I think because he gets bored so quickly that the thing he wants becomes immensely important. But at daycare, he doesn't get bored because there's like a bunch of kids. There's a bunch of, know, you people are going to read him books.

0:20:44 Tom: Okay. Yeah, bet he doesn't scream the same way, Right, at daycare. Yeah.

0:20:59 Thomas: Yeah. I don't think he does. I mean, maybe occasionally, but yeah.

0:21:04 Tom: Right, so I I will say that like know Hayley had the same experience with Aislinn, I had the same experience with Eamon, Eamon had the same thing. Amon didn't speak until Amon was a little older, older than two. I mean, maybe 10, 12 words. Not a lot. Very limited, limited vocabulary. Barely used the vocabulary that he did have until well after two.

0:21:22 Thomas: And then he learned the word sonic, and it was all.

0:21:24 Eli: You

0:21:24 Tom: And that's it. So once he got the hedgehog, but I think what made what made a difference and Aislinn was a late talker, too. And I think with both of them and didn't have to speak. They could get their brother or sister to get them food. They were able to sort of communicate in other ways, which were loud, but nonverbal. And eventually what really made the difference for Amon was going to and receiving services from the state. The I early intervention services. Going to preschool. And with Aislinn, it was going to daycare where, you know, the other kids do that work for them. Right. The other kids won't won't actually do that work and won't tolerate it the same way. So I think you may account for some of the real difference that you see between the home behavior and the behavior at school. That's not really uncommon, actually. That'S like a very common behavioral change.

0:21:27 Thomas: Oh, Yeah, it's just the level of extreme that that really is hard to communicate that makes it truly agonizing. But yeah, it is hard thing where, and we got off on this because of, sorry Eli if I interrupted your story, but I do think that a parent might have a hard time, and I'll just speak for myself, it ist harder as a parent to completely not respond to a screaming child than it might be for somebody who's trained as to say, hey, you need to not acknowledge this and then go from there kind of thing. So that's all.

0:22:14 Tom: Right, for

0:22:23 Eli: Did Thank you for your apology right

0:22:32 Tom: Sure.

0:22:38 Eli: Or has a whole team at preschool and can be like but You just have the puss get in here, it's your turn, right?

0:22:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And can tase Remy and put him in a straitjacket. Yeah exactly.

0:22:46 Eli: And take, yeah. Exactly, put him in the baby straight check, adorable little straight jacket, so

0:22:47 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, they're so cute.

0:22:47 Tom: Right. I want to return real quick to the idea, because I think it's really important, the idea of when and how we label our kids, and really also how the rest of the family labels our kids. Because this is something that I became really aware of as I've been thinking through this and working through this with Eamon a little bit, is that it's one thing for me to reject labeling Amon in these sort of othering ways. I don't use the little family nickname. I don't like it. But I also recognize I've got to put a stop to everybody else doing this. It's not just that I can't do it or that I can't model it or it can't be of it. Because what was very quickly happening was that Amon was incorporating that otherness into their personality and into their behaviors and really embodying that stuff in a way that because it got them attention, right, and I don't think kids a lot of times are really good at differentiating between good attention and negative attention, especially when they're young. I think that kind of all attention is useful. Yeah.

0:23:23 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:23:56 Thomas: Eamon's like, all PR is good PR.

0:23:58 Tom: For real like it, like they're little, they're Trumps in that regard, like you know, like they just want, yeah, anyone who's talking about me. But, you know, so I had to really talk to the whole family and talk to our nanny, as a matter of fact, and be like, hey, you Know, we want to make sure that nothing

0:23:59 Eli: Literally. Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:01 Thomas: Hey, they are talking about me.

0:24:12 Thomas: That many people were calling him shit for brains? That is, oh man.

0:24:14 Eli: I think it's weird weird.

0:24:16 Tom: Overheard. No, it was like, it Was a nickname that like, I just don't want to repeat it. But it was Like, it's like a nickname That wasn't meant to be malicious.

0:24:19 Thomas: No, yeah, I just read

0:24:21 Eli: People are going to think it's a slur, Tom, the way you're not saying it.

0:24:24 Thomas: Huck

0:24:25 Tom: It wasn't, It wasn't, it wasn't something meant to be malicious. But there were a lot instances where his sort of otherness was sort of like amplified by the family for jokes, and not even like mean jokes. But what I saw it doing is it did two things simultaneously, which weren't good. One, it didn't challenge him to rise up and to mature and to grow and to meet a certain level that he really needs to be challenged to do. And we're working on that. But it also kept him on on the outside. And it kept that sort of like aggressively little kid behavior, because he behaves a little too immaturely for a 10

0:24:27 Thomas: Finn and I have

0:25:06 Eli: Right.

0:25:06 Tom: Year old. Like, right? His behavior, I've noticed that his like behavior as a 10-year-old is more like the behavior you would expect maybe from an eight-year old. I think part of that is because as long as he's engaging in those sort of like little kid behaviors, he gets more attention. And that attention is a way for him to communicate and to like integrate into the family in a way that everybody understands, even if it's not positive.

0:25:29 Eli: Well, and the oldest kids in the family, they always set the bar for maturity, right? Which is deeply unfair when you are young. So you're sort of forced to create your own bars for maturity, which is you're like, well, I'm not where Donovan is. I'm I'm not where Finn is, so I guess I'm wherever I want to be, right?

0:25:47 Tom: Right.

0:25:48 Eli: Whereas your oldest kid, they are always modeling on mom and dad, goal, right, what they are striving for is I want you to be mom and dad. Younger kids are often modeling on the older siblings, but when we reinforce to them, hey, you are the baby, you're immature, you are so loud, you so annoying, all right, of the sudden, we become the one who self-labels, right, and part of that labeling becomes immaturity and being annoying and uh not being able to keep up with others, right, tell ourselves a story about ourselves until it's true, right?

0:26:22 Tom: Yeah. That's exactly the right way to phrase it. I think that that's exactly like the nail on the head perfectly. And I will say, raising my hand, that, you, because Eamon was the baby for, and such a clear difference between him and the other kids, that was real easy for me to sort of mentally keep him in that space. And it wasn't until, and this is totally stupid and arbitrary and I recognize that, but Hayley and I've talked about this, it wasn't until all of a sudden he turned 10 just a few weeks ago that we're like, holy shit, he's 10, he's ten. It feels different. I know it's arbitrary nothingness, I get that, but it was like, fucking hell, he's 10, and and in my brain I'm like, but he's still like a little kid. But but like, when my other kids were 10, we had these sort of sets of expectations around their maturity and their behavior. And I don't want to suggest that he's, he's poorly very, behaved. He's actually not poorly behaved, but he's immaturely behaved. And so there's a big difference.

Um, I think that it's real easy when there's that big age gap too, to be like, well, that's the baby, you know, like we don't expect as much from the baby. You, you know, especially when there's that huge space between them and Aislinn being a 13, but also a very precocious 13, doesn't like kind of help, because she's, she's sort of like is aging closer in toward that 17. You know what I mean? Like she's, I'm a teenager now. You know, she likes being a teenager now, so she's

0:26:52 Eli: Yeah. And

0:27:44 Tom: Creating more of that space and distance where before when they were both younger, I think they were working to sort of bridge that gap.

0:27:52 Eli: And it's so hard not to make comparisons, right, because when there are that many kids in the household, because you've now got four kids in the household, there is so much competition for time and attention that being, if being the baby is what gets you that attention in a house of four fucking kids, right? I mean, there's three of us on this podcast and we're like, guys, you know, if

0:28:03 Tom: Oh, my God.

0:28:17 Thomas: To scream whenever you guys aren't listening to me enough. Laugh at my jokes.

0:28:19 Eli: Exactly. Um, exactly. The nanny finishes. She's like, Thomas really gets what he wants.

0:28:47 Tom: And I hate it is they want to exchange the knowing glance where it's like, like this shit again, because I hate that. Not because like I don't sympathize with it, because I actually do. Right. What I, what I know is that it is reinforcing his otherness in the family. It's reinforcing the difference between us and him and, you continuing to sort of subtly keep him as the outsider. When the reality is like he is just a part of the family and that's simultaneously true and he's the most difficult part of the family because not he's difficult but because emotionally maturity wise he's in this entirely different space with an entirely different set of needs you

0:28:52 Eli: We go again. Right.

0:29:28 Eli: And people

0:29:28 Tom: Know

0:29:28 Eli: Notice too. I mean, I think that, that is another thing is like, I think we, especially when we are in the family dynamic, I mean it's, it's gone a little bit viral, but that post about, you and fathers exchanging knowing looks, uh, will not save her from the fact that she'll eventually be her mother. That's a, a loose paraphrase, but, but there's a something like that going along this idea of sort of othering the member of the family and I think what it speaks to really well is that we often tell ourselves that we are hiding things that we're not. Yeah.

0:29:30 Tom: Yeah

0:29:45 Thomas: Jesus.

0:30:02 Tom: I'm guilty of that

0:30:02 Thomas: And we don't realize how much kids pick up on. Yeah, they pick up on everything. Yeah.

0:30:03 Tom: Yeah right -hmm right

0:30:07 Eli: Only do they notice but it becomes the fact that it is a secret really matters. Right.

0:30:14 Thomas: Like makes it seem like a deeper truth or something

0:30:15 Tom: Yeah Yeah.

0:30:16 Eli: So There's this guy, there's, and he's a crazy con man in a lot of ways who writes about ADD and he was actually in one of our bullshit, um, awful movies which is how it was introduced to him. He was in one our like anti-science documentaries and I was like, huh, I think I've read some of this guy's stuff and he wasn't full of. And he's full of shit about certain stuff. But one of the things that he has written about that I think is really interesting is he talks about a child is completely self-centered. There is no way to communicate to a child. You will never communicate to a child that anything that to them isn't their fault, right?

0:30:51 Tom: Hmm.

0:30:52 Eli: Right? Because their of the world is everything is about me and because of me, right? If the adults in your life have a secret, right, have a knowing glance, even though it's not really about them, right? It's really about a moment of connection with that other family member, right. When Max wants to put the puzzle together for the 97th time and And me and Anna do like a, all right, here we go again, right?

0:31:16 Eli: There's no way at this age, at this point in his development, or really until he is much, much older to communicate, this is about me and your mom having a connection, not this is About How We Feel About You.

0:30:52 Tom: Yeah. Mm hmm.

0:31:29 Thomas: Honestly, Max is probably like, "Yeah, here we go again." I agree. Fantastic. Oh.

0:31:33 Eli: Yeah.

0:31:35 Tom: And, you know, there's, I just want to, I just want to recognize, too, that there, like, are many other ways that kids are otherized in a family, you know, like, it's not just an age gap thing that just happens to be the example that we have here in our house. But, you You know, there could be religious differences which otherize somebody, you and know, there could be, you know, differences. If you've got like three boys and a girl, you, it's very easy for there to be.

So there's lots of ways for somebody in a family to sort of be otherized or to become, you know, the the sheep of the family. And it's something I think like I've become very, very aware of in our house. Just, it happens to be an age gap, but the age gap means so many other things, you know, it could be, you, an achievement gap, you know, you could have a family where, you know, it's a family of high achievers and then one of the kids is not as much of a high achiever, or a family of people who all have a natural love of sports and then a kid that doesn't have that same, like, love of physical activity. There's

0:32:32 Eli: Mm-hmm.

0:32:33 Tom: So many ways that, like, people can be otherized. Black sheeped.

0:32:36 Thomas: Man I want to confess to being a piece of shit accidentally.

0:32:36 Tom: No. No.

0:32:39 Thomas: Oh, I off 100, nothing resonates with me more. I mean, it's not exactly the same, but that quote you said, said, Eli, um, my poor mom. God, my poor mom. Because obviously, obviously my dad would just fucking, you make know, fun of her constantly. And then my sisters, everybody would, would in the jokes. And then that became like, you I, can you imagine doing that to your wife? Can you fucking imagine basically like just cyber bullying your, your wife in front of your, you 4chan of your your kids, you know, can you fucking imagine? I can't fucking imagine it. And yet it's in the situations where it's bad. It's bad and it's commonplace. You know, it's not it's if if in a family situation where that happens, it's horrible and constant kind

0:33:02 Eli: Mm -hm. Yeah.

0:33:24 Eli: By the way, I found it, is Bonnie Burstow, and it says, "Often father and daughter look down on mother woman together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not as bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This conclusion does not save the daughter from the mother's fate." Yeah.

0:33:43 Thomas: I really think that's

0:33:44 Tom: Yeah. I think that's, that's a great quote. Yeah. Know what the counter to this is, except for to be explicitly aware of it and to try to like call it out in ourselves and like amongst our family when one who is sort of being, and the thing is, like anybody can take the place at any time of the one whose being othered. That's something too, that in a big family, I recognize, like, we're it all together as a family, you, is the only little girl. So there are ways that she might feel like on the outside sometimes when she's surrounded by boys. And sometimes it's Eamon, because he's the youngest, you know, and, you know, sometimes it might be somebody else based on kind of the circumstances. And I think we just have to be really careful not to overreact to it, but to see sort of like, like the patterns of behavior in our household that might

0:33:44 Thomas: True. Yeah, so

0:33:51 Eli: Mm. -Hmm. Mm.

0:34:29 Tom: Create these kinds of labels or these kinds of moments where somebody is feeling on the outside, where somebody's not feeling like really embraced and one of the family, but instead just like something the family has to deal with. You

0:34:29 Eli: -Mm. Yeah.

0:34:44 Thomas: On the topic of labeling, I want to name shame myself, because maybe part of it is to try to find the redeeming nature of my screen son, Remy, but I think Remy is a sports kid. I forget if I said that to you, just, you guys are to the show, he is showing a very natural proclivity for sports, like, already I can't explain it except that you, I'm pretty into sports, and the way he already, like, just, you handles a ball, like, looks more natural, like he's actually doing, I don't know if he's mimicking me or what, but he's like, he's doing more technically good looking things with it versus the kid, he already can like track a ball a little better, her, which, yeah. Yeah.

0:35:20 Tom: A Globetrotters, general situation.

0:35:22 Thomas: He's like spinning on his fingers and the other kids are running, can't even get it, and I, stupid idiot me

0:35:22 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,

0:35:23 Eli: He Stiffed Armed the babysitter, so good

0:35:28 Tom: Right.

0:35:27 Thomas: Yeah And then she was gonna tackle him, and then he just screamed at her, she's like, "Fine, god, okay, touchdown." No, I, stupid idiot me, the other day, just said, we were all kind of playing the mini by the, the mini basketball hoop that, that the kids love, and that, you know, is fun to play with, sometimes we were all playing, and I just stupidly was looking at Remy, who's just like mimicking, he's doing like a jump shot.

Like, he can't jump, but he's doing like the actions of a jumpshot in a way that's just like crazy how normal it looks. Um, and I was just like, "Oh, here's my sports kid." And I was like, "Oh, you fucking idiot, the other kids are doing sports right now." I just Said, "Here's my sports kid." Kind of a fucking asshole says that. And I, I try to make up for it and, and just like, you some way to make it make sense. And, and also, you know, focus on what the the bigger kids were doing. But it's just like, it's so easy to accidentally like say something like that. And it's like, I can only hope that that smoothed over, okay, and I didn't just like give them a complex, give a Phoebe and Arlo a complex.

0:36:03 Tom: Right.

0:36:24 Tom: When it's hard to because there's probably a lot of truth there. Right. Like because like There's there's totally truth there, it's just we see these things, and we have to recognize them, and I think to some degree we also, like, there might come a point where you're like, "All right, well, we're going to take Remy a little further with sports, because there is a natural proclivity there." Right, and so we want to encourage the natural proclivities and desires and like talents that our kids have, and they're not going to be equal all the time, but you've got to sort of like find a way to do it without attaching labels and things to it.

0:36:24 Thomas: Oh, there's definitely truth to it, yeah. Yeah.

0:36:55 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:56 Tom: Like, "Oh, he's good at this, he's my good one," or "my sports one," or whatever. Yeah. Who

0:36:56 Thomas: Especially Because to make matters worse, Phoebe has come such a long way, and is, and is, I think, probably an athlete in her own right, but it was just like a little bit, yeah, it's a little, it was a little rockier, for a little more unnatural, but she's come an enormous way and has actually kind of listened to me on some technique stuff that takes, it takes a few tries. I think at first kids, you well, when it comes to playing basketball, our just anytime there's a ball, he just goes nuts. Like he just wants to play it all the time. Phoebe, because she's gotten some positive feedback out of like listening to me a little bit.

And I just do like, Oh, Hey, suggestion. And then I don't even pursue. I just like, we'll one time be like, Hey, maybe try this. And Then I, I know how kids are. So I don't, I just like give it a one time And then she'll be like, I want to do it my way. I'm like, great, awesome. But then what she'll do is like over time, she does like kind of listen. She's it's funny how they're just like these egomaniacs kids, you know, and I don't mean that in a bad way, like to your point earlier, they're self -centered and they they have a hard time not thinking like whatever they're doing is like already fucking amazing. It's funny.

So I try to work within that and just kind of give little pointers. And Phoebe has picked up some stuff and is actually doing really well. I want her to like try to get her some real basketball going. And it makes it even worse to accidentally have said that. And I, I really hope that it, I kind of undid that damage in the, in the moment, but it's just like, man, gotta be aware.

0:37:17 Tom: Likes it the most, right.

0:37:40 Tom: I I don't think like a one-time, know, I mean, like I think most things have matter because they're patterns Yeah, all right.

0:38:18 Thomas: Well, with Phoebe, maybe Arlo won't

0:38:19 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:21 Tom: Right. Yeah. In general. In general.

0:38:21 Thomas: Care, but yeah,

0:38:22 Eli: Depends on the kid. Yeah. So some of those kids are just like writing it down as you're saying it, emailing their future therapist while you're speaking. I'm, often so jealous of like our grandparents and our parents just because they had were so, to be so much less aware. Right. Like I remember my mom had Dr. Spock and Dr. Spock's controversy was don't hit your kids. And everyone was like, this fucking commie wants We're like, oh, I hope that one comment I did, like Just the pure bliss to Be our grandparents and just be like, this one didn't die of the rickets, I did it all.

0:38:23 Tom: Yeah, right. Right.

0:38:24 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, my intonation. Yeah.

0:39:09 Eli: Gentlemen, before we go, I was admitted to the hospital with 15 plastic horses inserted into my rectum the other day, but it's okay, the doctor told me, me, I'm stable. Sure.

0:39:25 Tom: That's terrible.

0:39:25 Thomas: Stupid.

0:39:30 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.

0:40:09 Thomas: Hey, sorry. I keep hearing a clicking. Is that, it's like in the middle of your, is it you? Or it's, like, a loud thing. Sorry.

0:40:11 Tom: I don't know what that is. Don't know. All

0:40:14 Thomas: Go ahead. Eli, is that? Okay.

0:40:14 Tom: Right. No, that's okay.

0:40:15 Eli: Don't think it's me now but I'll camera

0:40:16 Thomas: Stop clicking.

0:40:18 Tom: I'm looking around trying to figure out what it is. All

0:40:19 Eli: Pans over, I'm just holding maracas with a look of terror on my face.

0:40:23 Tom: No

0:40:24 Thomas: At my jokes.

0:40:35 Thomas: At my jokes.