DOD221: F*** Around and Find Out Parenting

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 that's definitely fucked around and found out. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Eli: Isn't that what being a dad is?

0:00:40 Tom: You found out!

0:00:40 Eli: You fucked around and then you found out that you're a dad now.

0:00:41 Thomas: I'm, yeah, I'm less in the fucked around phase of life, still solidly in the finding out phase of life all the time.

0:00:48 Tom: I feel like I've found out a lot more than I've fucked around. Like, I feel like my ratios are imbalanced for sure in the finding. Like I'm quite sure, thank you, I've find out very, like who do I need to like petition to say like, I get it. We could be done now. The lessons are learned.

0:00:48 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:00:53 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:01:01 Eli: I think every time I fuck around, Tom finds out.

0:01:04 Thomas: That's true of a lot of people, I think.

0:01:06 Eli: Tom, maybe you're a voodoo doll of me. Have you considered that or I'm a voodoo doll of you? No.

0:01:11 Tom: Well, Okay, just can we stop, can just whoever, whoever you've upset, can we just take the pins out? No.

0:01:13 Eli: I love meth.

0:01:18 Tom: I don't feel

0:01:19 Eli: That's what all I'm going to say.

0:01:20 Thomas: Okay.

0:01:20 Tom: Like that's good, that's not good. Yeah, that's

0:01:23 Thomas: Oh boy, I am up and I'm so awake right now. I'm feeling great. I am in the middle of my day, just ready to just, I am so awake and ready to record. Attentive.

0:01:28 Eli: Oh, man. Straight and narrow down the way to go.

0:01:35 Thomas: I've listened to everything you guys have said, whatever it was. Yeah, those are the two

0:01:36 Eli: Yeah, but the problem is Lydia's asleep right now while she listens to this.

0:01:39 Tom: Bad. Yeah, are you guys ever both awake at the same

0:01:43 Eli: Only three times, and when it happened, they conceive a child. That's what They do. It's like the, it's like the

0:01:47 Tom: Time?

0:01:46 Thomas: Modes Hey, we had a miscarriage.

0:01:49 Tom: You've got some weird midnight hockey league that you're in, like, I, I've never heard of a hockey league that plays at fucking, like, 11 o'clock at night or whatever, you guys

0:01:50 Eli: Avatar. Exactly.

0:01:53 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. It's whenever they can spare the ice for the old fucking fat dads.

0:02:00 Eli: Yeah, it's Fat Dad's League, which I think is so beautiful, right? Because at some point they were closing up the ice rink and some guy in his 40s was like, hey, you know, if you guys ever want to keep this open, I think literally hundreds of men, we'll spend the witching hour here, bumping into each other as hard as we can, and they were like, really, at 11 at night? And they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm

0:02:02 Thomas: Yeah, it is Fat Dad's.

0:02:17 Tom: Do, I can't imagine it would fuck up my sleep if I try to do a workout after seven or eight o'clock at night, so like, and occasionally I would miss, I

0:02:33 Eli: Sorry, Tom, it would fuck up your sleep?

0:02:35 Thomas: Leak. Yeah, it would mess up the, the fourth and fifth minute of his seven minutes of sleep.

0:02:35 Tom: Am not a person who has a hard time sleeping. For real though.

0:02:41 Thomas: Would go go, well, we go wrong.

0:02:42 Eli: This is like if I was sitting at a table and I saw a dish go by and I was like, oh, that would ruin my diet. Like, Tom, you're not your sleep Is not, you should do literally anything to your sleep to to change it from what it is. You should drink coffee at night. You should do Coke.

0:02:50 Tom: Oh, coffee

0:02:54 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:00 Tom: And Coke have no effect on my ability to sleep, like none whatsoever, but like a workout at eight o'clock at night will fuck up my sleep. I'll have no problem falling long asleep, but I just can't stay asleep at all. I don't like working out after four or five o'clock. It ruins my sleep. I cannot imagine doing like high intensity exercise at 11 o'clock at night. I'd be up all night. It would ruin my whole fucking night. Just it's not for me. I will tell you, though, that, guys, I discovered something and I may not have to shock myself awake anymore.

0:03:00 Thomas: What?

0:03:26 Eli: What? Right.

0:03:26 Tom: I may

0:03:27 Thomas: He's just never going to go to sleep.

0:03:27 Tom: NOT. The last two nights, I have not had to shock my self awake. So I stumbled across across a Kickstarter for earbuds that are active noise-canceling earbuds that are made for being in your ear while you sleep. And the cool thing about them is they have an alarm that only I would be able to hear. And they nest in your ears and you can lay on that side and they don't protrude and they're comfortable-ish.

0:03:55 Thomas: Okay.

0:03:55 Tom: I've tried them out the last two nights because I just got them recently. And, like, I woke up. So what I did is I set like the sound alarm and then five minutes later as like belt and suspenders, I set the zappy watch up because I'm like, I have to get up, you know, so if the sound doesn't work, then I'll shock the shit out of myself. But it worked. It worked a charm. So the last two nights I woke up without electricity, zero electrical shocks, no taser myself awake.

0:04:25 Tom: I wokeup with just sound like people do.

0:04:19 Eli: Ooh. Look at you, Caligula, just awoken to the gentle washing of your genitals. But gentlemen, do you know what the only experience more pleasurable than waking up without being electrocuted? Why? It's the patron-only feed over at patreon.com/dear-old-dads, which comes without ads, has a special little parenting story at the end, and has a whole bucket of bonus episodes you can enjoy as well. How many bonus episodes do we have at this point, Thomas?

0:04:32 Thomas: I don't know. We've done one a month at least for, we've been doing the show at least three, four months, right?

0:04:59 Eli: That's right, 854 bonus episodes waiting for you over at patreon.com/dear-old-dads, as electricity will no longer rip into Tom's sleep. Rip into it

0:05:18 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:20 Tom: All Right, guys, so I stumbled across this article. Everywhere there are versions of this article, literally everywhere that I've found on my feeds, uh, recently. So there is a viral trend going around, a parenting trend. It's called a fuck around find out, FAFO parenting.

0:05:35 Thomas: I don't want any parenting trends with the word fuck in them. I'll be honest. I don't. I think. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

0:05:38 Tom: No, uh, okay. Yeah, that seems very, very fair.

0:05:39 Eli: Wow this is why you you blocked my text, isn't it? Yeah.

0:05:44 Tom: I'll be honest. I clicked on it thinking, okay, this is going to be some horrible, awful, toxic nonsense. It'd be good to talk about on the show, but it's probably going to be just, you know, these reactionary assholes who are like, whatever, slap your kids in the eyes, you know? But I felt like when I read this article about Fuck Around, Find Out Parenting, I thought, yeah, like a lot of this, I think the name for Fuck Around Find Out parenting is reactionary, but I think a lot of the stuff in fuck around find out parenting is not. I think a lot of it is just gentle parenting rebranded. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

0:06:15 Eli: Is gentle parenting. Tom, you've landed on exactly my hot take about this article, which is that this is gentle parenting for people who had bad parents, but don't realize it and aren't capable of realizing it. And so they needed a harder term.

0:06:19 Thomas: Hmm. Oh, okay.

0:06:33 Thomas: Really? Well, why don't you explain to the uninitiated, What about this article? What is it? What about it leads you to that? Because it is a picture. When you sent it, I saw a picture of a kid wearing nothing in the snow. And I was like, that doesn't seem great.

0:06:45 Tom: So here's what it is: the act of having your kids experience the natural consequences. It is the act of having your kids experience the natural consequences of their actions without you getting too involved.

0:06:52 Thomas: Hypothermia. Oh, that's what my parents thought they were doing. Yeah, we're just not getting too involved, you know?

0:07:01 Tom: And

0:07:07 Eli: Not my circus, not my

0:07:09 Tom: The picture actually refers to part of the article, where the picture refers to an anecdote from the story where somebody, you know, when they were a kid, they would refuse to wear a hat, right? And they would go out, and their mom be like, fucking wear a cap, chase them around, like, trying to fucking put a hat

0:07:21 Thomas: And now they have vicious, vicious skin cancer on their scalp and they are dying. Oh, sorry. I'm in California, yeah. Ours was just like, yeah, you'll get eight sunburns before the hour of 10 of the clock.

0:07:26 Tom: On. Well, a hat out in the cold, it's not, this is, this is such a California versus Midwest moment. Yeah. Yeah.

0:07:37 Tom: And the idea here, if you were to translate this into this fuck around, find out parenting, right. It's like, all right, well, like, look, I'm not going to chase you around for your hat, but you're going to be cold. Like you are going to me the one that is cold. And so I have a lot of thoughts on this. I'm curious what your take on this was. Eli, I know you read through the article and you feel like this is gentle parenting rebranded. I feel like the rebranding is for right -wingers who need everything to be tough.

0:08:03 Tom: That's what I feel like. I feel like this is like, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:08:02 Eli: Monkeys. Oh, see

0:08:04 Thomas: Interesting. Tactical. Fuck around and find out parenting. Wow. Hmm.

0:08:06 Eli: No. Oh, yes, it's tactical parenting. That's exactly what it is. It's time. So I think right-wingers don't have the empathy to enact this, right? I think when they actually read into it, they won't be able. Like, you could trick them into reading the article, right? I mean, you could get a right-winger to read this article because fuck

0:08:21 Thomas: I don't think they read.

0:08:25 Eli: Your kids is in the title, but I think it's actually

0:08:27 Tom: I was going to say my experience is that they never read past the headline, but yeah.

0:08:28 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:30 Eli: They don't read past the headline, but that's, but you get them, you get him with that. Fuck my kids. That's right. I love it. Yeah, let the president fuck my kids. 47% approval rate. Hell yeah. Baby Yeah, no, but I don't think this is for right-wingers. I think this is for a very specific brand of left-winger which I often relate to, which is like, you have the natural instincts to do the right thing, you consciously know that experts have told you this is the best way to raise kids, that this is how kids will feel safe and do well. But there's a little voice in the back of your head that's like, you're doing it wrong. You gotta be tougher.

0:08:35 Thomas: Ooh.

0:08:40 Tom: Maybe

0:09:07 Thomas: I

0:09:08 Eli: You gotta tell, you can love your kid too much. And there's secret middle ground of loving your kid to much and loving your kids too little. And you're too far on the too much love scale. And I think this is a great way to trick those parents into feeling good about their gentle parenting.

0:09:26 Tom: You're right about this because my first read on it. And so, admittedly, I found this in my social media feed, right? So this first popped up in my social media feed. And I read the article, and then I looked at the comments, and the comments were fucking full of people who very clearly had not read the particle.

0:09:45 Thomas: Was going to say, what are you doing in the... You read the article and went to the comments, so you're in the wrong place. You're at a place for people who didn't read the article.

0:09:52 Tom: That I think is why I thought, okay, fuck around, find out is a branding technique to get attention and to get people who, yeah, I think are right -wingers to be like, yep, that's how I do it. That's how I do it, my kids fuck around but what do they find out? Yeehaw, that what I fuck around find out parenting. It occurred to me, too, that I do think this is the problem with a parenting style. I know we've talked about this on the show before, but I take issue with the idea of having, like, oh, I've got to find the right parenting style, like what's the right parent style, I'm going to look up these different parenting styles, what's that right one, is it that one? Alright, so how do I parent? I'm gonna follow these rules about how I parent.

Well, I follow these eight simple tricks, and that's how I parent. I think we need to get away from thinking about things in terms of externally applied styles of parenting and move closer to, hey, what are some guidelines on what's effective and how can I use those guidelines to meet my kids' needs, my individual kids' needs? Because I also think that there's a lot of people who are like, yep, this is the way I do it.

And it's like, is that the best choice for that particular kid? I don't know. Because if it's not, it doesn't matter how effective it is demographically. I don't care what cohort studies necessarily say. You've got to look at what is effective specifically for your kids.

0:10:08 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:11:15 Tom: In a cohort of four, I will say, in this house, if I were to just adopt a single unilateral style to teach all of my kids, it would fail. It would work for some, it Would not work for others. It Would absolutely be a failure around here.

0:11:30 Thomas: A hundred percent. Yeah. So what, so I still don't necessarily know what's the part of that. Cause if ostensibly it's like, fuck around, find out, leave your kid out in the snow. Why do you think that this article is actually about gentle parenting, but disguised? Like, I'm not sure I'm getting that.

0:11:44 Tom: Let me read how this should be done to do this well. So again, gentle fuck around, find out parenting is the act of having your kids experience the natural consequences of their actions without getting too involved. And then if you read down a little further into the article, one of the things that they highlight the importance of is what happens after they find out.

0:12:04 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:12:04 Tom: So when a kid finds out, when a mistake is made, there needs to be the appropriate caregiver support received by the child. Right.

0:12:10 Thomas: Like you rub their face on it and you say, see, I told you so. I told you so I told, you said you cover at least three of those. Look here, you little shit. You got to say that.

0:12:20 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, just swat him with a newspaper. You know, it's a so and a lot of people, I will say, too, like a lot of the people in the comments section don't understand the difference between natural consequences and the consequences they impose through punishment. So many people don't understand, like if you go outside without your hat on and you're cold, that's a natural consequence. I was trying to guard you against this thing. You did not accept that guard. You went out. You experienced the consequence. It's a natural consequence. You didn't do your homework. You got a bad grade. That is a natural consequences. You don't do homework. I grounded you for two weeks is not a natural. Consequence. That's a punishment. And there's also, to do fuck around and find out parenting well, you have to take into account the child's age, what's appropriate, and then you still have to safeguard them against larger harms, right?

0:12:22 Thomas: Mm hmm, right, right.

0:12:35 Eli: Right. Yeah, right.

0:13:14 Tom: This isn't just like, well, it looks like you didn't graduate high school. Sucks for you, you know? That's not how that works, and that's not how advocates of this parenting style would suggest that this happen, because when they find out there needs to be appropriate caregiver support received by the child after they mess around and they can't quite figure it out. So if you don't do that second part, you're just watching your kid eat shit, right?

0:13:15 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, okay.

0:13:21 Eli: What have you learned? Yeah.

0:13:41 Eli: Right, that's just abandonment.

0:13:44 Tom: You're just like being like, yeah, it sucks to suck kid. Anyway, what's your name again? I got a tax deduction. Like that's not, that's nothing.

0:13:50 Eli: Right.

0:13:50 Thomas: We're supposed to not do that. Okay.

0:13:51 Eli: Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think this article is very clever in how it spells this out, right? Because the thing that's great about this article, the thing that I think will be really useful to a lot of people about this particle, is that it comes from the perspective of deserved consequences. This This article deeply empathizes with the idea that when kids do something wrong, something bad should happen, which is not a feeling I share. It's not a feelings I can particularly empathize with, but it walks you into healthy solutions from there, rather than just being like, hey, I'm sorry your parents sucked, but you need to go to like six or seven years of therapy and then come back and learn how to properly parent. It does this very smart thing where it's like, yeah, no, absolutely, we all agree. They're like, there should absolutely be consequences of not wearing a hat. But what if, hear me out, this is crazy if you think about it, the most tactical parenting would actually be, uh,

0:13:52 Tom: Yeah, that'S nothing,

0:14:49 Eli: Supporting them and carrying a hat with you and having it when they get cold. Yeah.

0:14:52 Thomas: I mean, it's and it's funny because it's actually true. Like I know you're doing a bit but like it is actually true that that the way to make the most effective person, like even from a, if you're trying to do like the tactical, I want my kid to be tough. The way to be the most tough is actually to be emotionally secure and like to like all that, that very stuff.

0:15:07 Tom: Right.

0:15:08 Eli: Of course.

0:15:08 Thomas: It's funny. It'S actually true.

0:15:09 Tom: Let's use that hat example, right? Like, would I do the, see, natural consequences on a three-year-old for that? No, I wouldn't. That would be fucking insane. A three year old is not a rational actor in that way, right? So that lesson wouldn't be learned, so that lesson would be useless. Would I do that if it was fucking polar vortex where you go outside and you get frostbite in 45 seconds? No, I would be much more insistent that any person that I have, like, a loving caring relationship for was not an actual danger.

So there's a way to do this, like Eli said, that is strategic. If you use this, like, in an arbitrary, this is how I parent, it's just what I do, I do a set of rules and I never flex from them, and if you don't use it strategically, it just makes you a complete asshole. But if you used it strategically, I think one of the other things that fuck around find out parenting does is it prevents an abundance of arbitrary rules. I'm sure a lot of people can identify. Growing up, I felt like a lot of the rules that we had were arbitrary.

0:16:11 Eli: Of course.

0:16:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:12 Tom: They were just like top-down authoritarian rules. They didn't seem to connect to any natural consequence at all. So the reason you followed them was so you didn't get in trouble. But they didn't seemed to have any actual consequences if you didn't follow them and nobody saw you not follow that rule. So I think focusing on natural consequences also builds an environment where you get to build Build trust with your kid that the rules are there because they keep them safe, rather than the rules are there because it's convenient for me to, you know, manage your behavior this way. Yeah.

0:16:43 Thomas: So do you think this is any functionally any different from what you guys would already do? Is there any place where you disagree with this or where, you know, like, is this in the end, is it just like, oh, okay, well, they're just saying kind of basically the right thing. And And it's all of it is a is a ruse to get people to read like the right kind of parenting.

0:16:52 Eli: No.

0:17:02 Eli: I think it underplays the importance of a ruse to so many people, because I think so So many people in this country need to be rused into making better choices to end the cycle of generational trauma. That I think it's really cool when a trick like this succeeds. Whenever there are Republicans who talk about Bernie Sanders positively, I love that trick. I love the fact that they fell for that trap, right?

0:17:07 Tom: Yeah,

0:17:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:30 Eli: We really need to learn politically, right? Which is that there are hardcore Trumpers, hardcore Trumpers who agree and speak positively with Bernie Sanders points because he has put them in a way they can understand and maintain their identity with. And so that's sort of how I feel about this. Again, I don't think it's going to convince the Trumpers. Right. I think most parents who are right wingers or right wing parents, right, if right wing parenting could be be a political philosophy, I think those people are usually in a tremendous amount of pain in a community that enforces bad values and the way right

0:17:29 Thomas: Hey, don't underestimate the amount that they're just narcissists. You don't fucking give a shit. You know, how

0:18:09 Eli: Narcissists, mentally ill, right? Like, all that, all that kind of stuff. I think there's a tremendous number of people who are in that amount of that going on, but I think there are a lot of well-meaning people who have kind of escaped those environments, who have kind of stepped out of those circles, who just need fuck in the title of the parenting thing that they have to make those steps into, uh, into better

0:18:28 Tom: I think there's a huge segment of the population that is never going to embrace something called gentle parenting. They're going to see gentle parenting and they're going to say that is something the libs do. I'm not doing it

0:18:40 Thomas: Sad is that? How sad is it that there's a significant portion of our population is like gentle, gross.

0:18:52 Tom: Right. Yeah, well, we associate gentle, right, like they're like, we're at a place that has become so crazy, right? So

0:18:57 Thomas: I bet you're a little spoon, too. You fucking.

0:19:00 Eli: Choices. No, that's a reasonable take. I don't know, people are going to be confused, Thomas. They're not going to understand why you would say

0:19:11 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:19:13 Tom: I do want to ask you guys about this. I'm going to read from the article because I am not sure that I believe or understand or agree with this next part of the article. Fuck around find out parenting appears to have emerged from the clash between helicopter parenting and gentle parenting. While gentle parenting focuses on empathy and connection, it often falls short on personal responsibility and accountability. FAFO fills that gap by allowing children to take on more responsibility while teaching themselves for lines. Let me start at the first line because I didn't understand it. Fuck around, find out parenting appears to have emerged from the clash between helicopter parenting and gentle parenting. And I thought, how, what? I don't understand that at all. Like if there's a, I don'T understand how this is an intersection between helicopter parent and gentle parent in any way.

0:19:39 Eli: That, that's not true, by the way, everybody. It's just a thing that they have. Yeah, exactly.

0:20:05 Eli: I think they're different axes, right? I think there's like absentee parenting and helicopter parenting are one axes, and gentle parenting and hitting your kids are on a different axis.

0:20:15 Tom: Right, right, yeah. I didn't understand this at all. I didn't understand how there could even be, because you could very well be a helicopter parent that is using gentle parenting. Like, they are not mutually exclusive. So I don't understand why there would be a clash or how Feyfo would fill a gap in that clash. I didn't understand that at all, but I thought maybe that was like a failing of my reading or

0:20:29 Thomas: Interesting.

0:20:37 Eli: No, no, I think you're spot on. I will say, one of the things, because I really do like this article and I think it's a great article to pass along to the people in your life who might not have the best ideas but who don't deal with discussion well, like one of the things that I'm realizing as I get older is that there are certain people who just, they're not capable of changing their minds like through discussion. What they're capable of doing is being, and, like, you know, I was thinking about it the other day, and a fish jumped over the mud hut, and that's when I realized trans people should probably just be able to do whatever they want. And you're like, fuck yeah, man, whatever got you there, right? But like the Ezra Klein approach to the world, the Thomas Smith approach to the world is just not gonna work on a certain percent. Now, don't get me wrong, I still want the Ezrah Kleins and the Thomass Smiths for those

0:20:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:10 Thomas: Don't

0:21:17 Tom: Something pretty

0:21:24 Thomas: Make me think that I think that'll work on people. I don't. You mean just the way I approach my life?

0:21:27 Tom: Much

0:21:28 Eli: People. Yeah, exactly. You're just good at talking, and so I assume that you you're hoping it'll affect affect someone. Yeah, no, no, just, you know, you just just keep it consistent. Yeah, yeah. You play good ball even when the opponent is weak, that's the point. So I think this is a really good article for it. That said, I do often when reading this article, and I had a couple of moments where I thought this, where I was like, this feels like it was written by a person who doesn't necessarily understand it but approves My example of this always is the Atlantic. So the Atlanic, if you, you haven't read the Atlantic, the Atlantic has sort of played host to some really awful

0:21:30 Thomas: Yeah. No, no, I realize I have no effect on the world. Don't-

0:21:32 Tom: The same person, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

0:21:59 Thomas: Worry really Fuck the Atlantic. Yeah, they've gone fucking down the shitter. God.

0:22:08 Eli: Takes over the last five to 10 years, right? And the sort of trans rights issue is the place where they first planted a flag of like, we're going to be the kind of sort of liberal magazine that like really platforms some toxic, horrible shit. And they got called out for it. And so in the last year or two, I don't know if either of you subscribe or read it. It's in my newsfeed every morning, so I

0:22:29 Thomas: Oh, they just, uh, just keep an eye on the Helen Lewis anti-trans piece they just put out five seconds ago.

0:22:33 Eli: Right, you just keep it. Right, in the last year or two they do that thing that all sort of, I don't want to say well-intentioned, because I genuinely don't believe, I think a lot of people there are ill-intentioned, but I also think there are some good-intentioned people there too. They do the sort of New York Times thing where they'll let a true person talk occasionally, but they do it in this way that's sort of like, because it can't be journalistically integral for them to be like, "I know we let you, Graham Linehan or whatever that guy's name is, tell you that you're, your trans kids will turn into big bottles of slime, like from the end of that X-Men movie." So now we've got this new person who actually is a scientist.

So there's this thing, this framing for articles, and you see in the New York Times opinion column as well, where they'll just be like, "Hey, I'm a doctor of a scientist of Scientology, and I'm here to tell you the guy who talked last week was a fucking idiot." That's how this article feels. I literally looked and I was like, did Huffington Post post like a, you know, punch your kid right in the gullet op-ed the week before? Right?

0:22:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:23:32 Tom: Like they're reacting to

0:23:35 Eli: That this is a balance too.

0:23:35 Tom: Themselves at some point where you're just like, is it still a call out video if we're calling out our own videos? I don't know if that's the right. Yeah.

0:23:35 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Yep.

0:23:40 Eli: Right, right, yeah. Like, remember when the New York Times let Tom Cotton say that we should use the military against peaceful protesters, and then the following week

0:23:47 Thomas: Yeah I just referenced that the other day. Cool.

0:23:48 Tom: Jesus Christ. I forgot about that. Holy shit.

0:23:50 Eli: And then the following week they were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys, we don't know who the fuck that guy was. He just got in here and started typing." Right, that's what this article feels like. So again, I think it's a really good article, but there are moments where this article, I don't know, to me explains things that don't need to be explained. Like, there are lots of moments in the article, I wish I had the quotes in front of me, there are a lot of moments where it's like, "And of course a lot of people want their kids to be safe," and I'm like, yeah, article feels like you're saying that. All right.

0:23:57 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:24:19 Tom: Yeah. Well, and I think too, like one of the things I want to point out from the article for the audience is like, it does like a weird thing where it's like, "Hey, what if I purposely obviously misunderstand this article in order to explain to the idiots who are reading it how to not misunderstand this article?" It's actually kind of funny. Let me read exactly what I mean. UK clinical psychologist Alina Telford agrees that it supports the brain to learn, creating opportunities for resilience, independence, and problem solving. Still, to me and many other parents, it sounds scary, dangerous, and a little mean. What about younger kids who can't easily anticipate cause and effect? And what about outcomes that aren't immediate? Do we really want our children to learn things the hard way and be subject to possible harm?

And then they don't answer those questions. Weirdly, they are crazily. The article doesn't answer those questions, so I feel compelled to just answer those questions for the audience so that people read this like, what about younger kids that can't? Well, then you don't do that for younger kids, right? Like we don't treat babies the the same way we treat teenagers. And there is a continuum in between. So I'm

0:24:35 Thomas: Yep

0:25:24 Eli: No car for you, little Mitsum. Oh, you're chewing on the

0:25:29 Tom: Like, that question is so stupid that I would be tempted to think that it was disingenuous if I was not somebody who had read the comments section of this very post. Because once you read the comment section of something like this, you immediately realize like, oh, actually most people, at least the people online are the worst. They're the actual worst, and They don't understand the difference between a three-year-old and a 13-year-old, right, and what might be appropriate and when you would use something strategically, because they're not thoughtful. I'm beginning to come around to Eli's point of view that, like, they're philosophical zombies. Like, they just, they're, they, they have somebody plugged in a program and they're just running the script.

0:25:51 Thomas: Uh -huh yeah

0:25:52 Eli: Keys.

0:26:02 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. And fun fact about that program, because a lot of people, when I say that, they're like, "Oh, it's so pessimistic." And I'm like, no, no, no, you can plug money into one end of that computer. You plug money and health care into that end of the computer and the program fixes itself. That's the best part. Is you can literally give someone a micro loan and they stop hitting their kids. How cool is that? How cool was that?

0:26:26 Tom: Right. Let me ask about this, this next question: "And what about outcomes that aren't immediate?" And I thought, like, fucking, this is so stupid.

0:26:42 Thomas: You think that's stupid?

0:26:42 Tom: Like for little kids, yeah. Well, like, don't we already know this answer when we train a

0:26:48 Eli: Sure, yeah. So I'll raise my hand and, and speak to struggling with this, um, because I'm, I'm obviously proudly gentle parenting, and and I am pleased to say, god, I don't know if I've actually gotten to say this on the air yet, but Max is for the most part over his hitting phase, I think. I talked about this. Yeah, so he is over the hitting phase almost entirely, with very rare exception at home, but we're still having some problems with, like, conflict with other kids, right, which is like, when it comes to, like, fighting over a toy, Max tends to, like, slap or grab or hair pull or whatever the case may be. So we're still dealing with that conflict, and we've been dealing with that conflict at camp over the summer right now. Luckily it's a conflict that a lot of kids his age go through, it's a conflict that a lot of kids with his diagnosis go through, and this camp, and it's wrestling camp.

0:26:50 Thomas: Oh, wow, really? Nice.

0:27:03 Tom: Dog, oh dude, that's great.

0:27:32 Tom: And it's wrestling camp, so it's more appropriate. Yeah, right.

0:27:35 Thomas: No, he's supposed to do the fake slap, you know, with his foot, so he can't pull it off. Yeah.

0:27:37 Eli: Yeah. Exactly. He's got, his naps are awful. That's the problem. His naps are awful." No, so this camp is fucking miraculous. It is. They are so... The first time they called us to tell us that Max had, you know, had another kid, we got ready for the conversation we have been having since he was, you know, 18 months old, which is that someone was like, "Hey," called us up and they were like, "Hey, your kid's different. It seems like he has a lot of needs." And we were like, "Oh yeah, no, he definitely has those needs." And they were like, "Cool. Get out. That's weird. Gross."

0:27:38 Tom: Yeah, Jesus.

0:28:08 Eli: We don't want to do that. You should go somewhere where the government has forced people to be understanding and kind," and we've packed up our sad little rickshaw of family and then gone to, you know, the next town over. And of course at this camp they called us and they were like, "Great, what are your techniques to help in these moments?"

0:28:08 Thomas: Oh, God.

0:28:09 Tom: Christ.

0:28:25 Eli: "What do you do to help him?" And here's some of the ideas we have, and it's

0:28:25 Thomas: Wow. Where's this camp?

0:28:29 Tom: That's amazing.

0:28:29 Thomas: How long of a drive is it?

0:28:30 Eli: Incredible. It's, and let me shout them out, at Harbor Haven, it's specifically a camp for kids with mild autism, and the difference I have seen just in my son's participation, right, because the joke I always make, and I have the picture and, like, I show people the picture as a joke, but it's kind of a laugh so you don't cry situation, right, which is like, the first year Max ever was in preschool, they have this picture of all the kids riding bikes, and my son is just fucking, he's not on a bike, he's just jamming out behind them, like what has very clearly happened, end is they managed to get all the other kids on tricycles and they're all playing on tricycles, and my son's just fucking singing his own song in the background.

And that's been Maxed with pretty much everything, right? Even in the best possible scenarios, all the kids are doing X and my sun is in the corner on someone's lap being made to do Y, or at the very best, like, being held so that it doesn't seem like he's not doing X. And he's participating in this camp, he is a part of

0:28:37 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

0:29:09 Tom: I Love.

0:29:31 Eli: Stuff I mean, I just have so many pictures of him gloriously, happily participating in things. It's just been wonderful. All of that said, the hitting has been an issue. It is something we're working on. And one of the things that I struggle with is the punishment side. So to speak to the point you just made, Tom, one ofthe things that basically the counselors had to teach me, which is so funny, is they were like, yes, he's hitting.

So we take him out of the activity and he has to sit for a bit and sort of experience natural and immediate consequences of his actions. You hit someone during pool time, you don't get to be there for pool time anymore, right? The classic gentle parenting solution to a problem. But in my head, because I am, you know, one or two degrees away from the person who needs this article, I was like, yeah, but when he gets home, shouldn't I take away his hair?

And they were like, no, no, he'll actually learn nothing from that and it will just make everything worse for his whole life, so don't, don't make up your own punishments for later. Oh.

0:30:28 Thomas: I still think you should do it. Still think you should do it. No. I don't know. I didn't read the, I went to the comments, straight to the comments to say, I think you are wrong.

0:30:31 Eli: Thomas, Thomas, read the article. Read the articles, Thomas. Here's the article, Thomas. I went in the comments and me in the comics. Yeah, like, I want to raise my hand and say that that is still an instinct I struggle with on a really regular basis. Is he'll do something, we'll do the natural consequences, will do the right thing because Anna Bosnick is a genius and I follow her lead, and then afterwards we'll have done the thing and I'll be like, "But also we should, you know, kill one of his camp friends, right? That's so that I'll really, he'll really learn it if we do this extra, right?" Because in my head I'm like, "And, but then the other punishment is for extra learning, that's the one where he knows we mean it."

0:31:08 Tom: It That's, yeah, right, yeah, that'll, yeah.

0:31:15 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:31:16 Tom: To get to the first question that was raised and not answered, which is, you know, we treat younger people differently than we treat kids as they get older. So as kids get older, the time gap that is allowable between the thing that you're responding to and the consequence, it is okay. It's natural for that thing to grow. So if I don't do my homework, it's not like I didn't do My Homework on Tuesday and then my grade was bad Wednesday morning. My grade may suffer Wednesday morning, but I might not find out about it until some weeks later. But that's okay because as we get older, that time gap is more understood by kids and they They can connect the dot between the cause and the effect. But when kids are little, it's just like training a dog, right? Like if your dog misbehaves, you've got exactly that moment to respond to that behavior. And if your dogs are little and your dog behaves in a way that you want to reinforce, you have only that moment to respond to that behavior.

0:31:47 Thomas: Right.

0:32:17 Tom: If you wait, that connection is completely lost. That connection is, is completely gone. On. And you really are going to have a hard time connecting that back. And it's not much different for little kids. Like for littlekids, it has to be fairly immediate. And then as kids mature, that time distance is allowed to sort of grow.

0:32:35 Thomas: I know, because the other day I was like, hey kids, this is why, you better invest your money in some ETFs that are linked to the stock market. And then it was like, oh man, that doesn't, until 30 years didn't he find out that that was the right thing to do. Shit. Bad lesson and it didn't work.

0:32:40 Eli: Oh gosh. Good day, so sorry I told you. Oh, did you invest in the president's stable coin? No.

0:32:55 Thomas: Well, that you'll find out pretty quickly.

0:32:53 Tom: And so let me ask this final question here from the article that doesn't get answered, but I think this is fundamental to it. Do we really We really want our children to learn things the hard way and be subject to possible harm. And I thought, like, what a bad phrasing of the question, because, like I do want my kids to learn some things the hard way as long as they don't receive any like big harms, right?

0:33:05 Eli: Yeah.

0:33:25 Tom: Anything that does not make them unsafe. So I think like like they phrase this question in a way that suggests that if you learn something the hard way, you're going to eat some like impossible or unsafe amount of shit from it.

0:33:39 Thomas: They're thinking about sticking a fork in an outlet. That's what they're thinking. That's, you know,

0:33:41 Tom: Yeah. And I thought like, well, that's not, that'S not what anyone's suggesting. Like, do I want kids to be like, fuck, I should have worn that hat. I was cold all day and I was uncomfortable and I had a bad day. Yeah.

0:33:52 Thomas: Frostbite on my ears. Yeah.

0:33:53 Tom: But like, I don't want him to have frostbite. Right. Yeah, I want him like lose a face part, you know, you

0:33:58 Eli: Absolutely.

0:33:57 Thomas: Gosh, I lost this part of my ear. Should I have worn a hair?

0:34:01 Tom: Know. I had to eat a fucking polar bear liver or something on my way. It's like I I didn't eat breakfast on my way. They're like, I don't want to do that stuff. But like, as I'm raising kids, for example, like actually getting kids to eat in the morning can sometimes be difficult. And so I will cajole the kids and, and, you know, but like, tell you what, you cannot make somebody eat short of abuse. They don't wanna eat. You can't make them eat.

0:34:23 Eli: And it makes it worse.

0:34:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:24 Tom: But if they feel like shit, that's a natural consequence, right?

0:34:28 Thomas: What's great about that too is they will then treat you and everyone else like shit the whole day, but they will have no idea and they won't believe that it was because they didn't eat.

0:34:35 Eli: That it was because they didn't eat. Yep.

0:34:37 Thomas: Hey, are you hungry? No, I'm not hungry! Oh, okay, because you haven't eaten anything. Why do you always say that? I'm not hungry! That's what Phoebe does. It's like, I think maybe you're hungry because you have to eat something. You haven't even eaten anything, ooh.

0:34:37 Tom: Right?

0:34:39 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, we deal with that with Max because his diet has narrowed pretty specifically, and this is a thing that happens with ASD kids. They come in and out of a very specific diet, and there's a part of my brain, again, just a part of my brain, that's like, "But if I just made him sit at the table until he finished it?" And then I google it, right? Because it like, look, here's the thing: I'm one step from a bad parent. I'm not a bad parent. A bad parent goes, "I thought it, so I'm gonna do it." So what I do is I google, and Google goes, "Hey, stop, you're gonna give your kid really terrible trauma." And then I go to ChatGPT, because sometimes ChatGPT is nice to me about the stupid stuff that I say, and I'm like, "Hey, ChatGPT, do you think maybe I had a good point there?" And even ChatGPT, which tells me every idea I've ever had is revolutionary and miraculous, is like, "Nah, man, that's fucking stupid." I'm

0:35:11 Thomas: Yep, yep, yep. Yeah.

0:35:38 Tom: No.

0:35:39 Thomas: ChatGPT is like, I'm not talking to you anymore. Like, I don't know. I'm going to respond. Boy, they need to invent that power actually for ChatGPT. That should be part of it. They need to make it so they can just be like, fuck, I'm never talking to you again.

0:35:41 Eli: Not talking to you. You're gonna type into the abyss for no reason.

0:35:53 Eli: But then who are the Tom people gonna marry?

0:35:56 Tom: No. What?

0:35:56 Thomas: Tom people.

0:36:05 Thomas: I don't think so.

0:36:06 Eli: Have? You guys seen this sketch? I don't know if it's gone viral enough or it's just on my feed, but the sex robot sketch. So it's a series of sketches. You You can look up the sex robot and you'll find it on TikTok. He's bought a sex robot. The sex robot doesn't want to have sex with him. The sex robot wants to eat breakfast, and he's just like, "So you don't want to have sex?" And she's like, "No." And he's like, "Cool. Cool. Yeah, I don't really, cool." It's just, it's just like five, and she eventually gets a boyfriend and he is like, so you do want sex. It's fucking phenomenal.

0:36:28 Tom: Yeah.

0:36:34 Thomas: That's great.

0:36:34 Eli: That's what we need. We need the ChatGPT of "I no longer want to listen to Eli's terrible neuroses." My

0:36:41 Thomas: Gosh. But how much do you think parents, again, the sort of downside of this This strategy that I buy into what you're saying, that this is a good article disguised as something that people need to read. But to the point that you've already made, Tom, like how much is our stupid society going to be like, yep, I saw this headline and that's why I hit my kids or whatever. You know, that's what.

0:37:00 Eli: Kids, fuck around and they find out with the belt.

0:37:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:37:01 Tom: And that was what I was thinking too, is like, Like, I wish we had just named this something different because gentle, obviously the word gentle has now become politicized. Like gentle is like only liberals are gentle.

0:37:12 Thomas: Oh, yeah, God. How do we tactically not being a piece of shit? I don't know.

0:37:20 Tom: And then like seriously, I think if you named this like natural consequences parenting.

0:37:24 Thomas: Hmm. That's you know, Tom. That's a really good idea. Yeah.

0:37:27 Tom: But like I wonder if even that wouldn't get politicized at all. Natural.

0:37:30 Thomas: Yeah. That's yeah.

0:37:30 Tom: I'm not doing anything natural. Like every word now it's put into categories, you know, too many syllables, too much. Too many syllables. Too many.

0:37:35 Thomas: Dude, I think you consequences parenting, if you could disguise it as that and get people to actually read it at all. Quent's parenting.

0:37:45 Tom: Syllables. That's it, everything has to have one syllable.

0:37:49 Thomas: I think you're onto something with consequences parenting. I think right now would be a good, I'm writing a parenting book. Nevermind. Just shut up. Nobody listen to me. Nobody take that idea. I'm taking Tom's idea. No one else take Tom's idea I had it first oh

0:38:02 Tom: Just, I've Got dibs on Tom's idea.

0:38:05 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:38:11 Eli: All right, gentlemen, before we go: why did Italy wander off? It enjoyed roaming around.

0:38:20 Tom: Oh my god.

0:38:20 Thomas: That's

0:39:07 Eli: I love math.

0:39:08 Thomas: Awful

0:39:11 Tom: I'll shock the shit out of myself.

0:39:13 Thomas: That doesn't seem great. I bet you're a little spoon too you fucking