DOD234: Kids Want Attention and That Is Okay

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 dialed two out of three emergency numbers. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:40 Thomas: It almost was like a big bopper. Hello, baby.

0:00:44 Tom: Hello.

0:00:45 Thomas: Does anyone know that? Nevermind.

0:00:49 Tom: No. Right?

0:00:50 Thomas: Yeah, I know. I keep forgetting that my, no, because my dad was so fucking old and I like oldies better than fucking classic rock, 80s bullshit. So, like, all my references are from the 1860s. Oh, they're so good. Oh, they're are so good. No, not right now. Well,

0:00:57 Tom: Newies. Wait, what's an oldie now? Like, my dad used to listen to oldies. Yeah. But what do we consider an oldie? Like what are the oldies?

0:01:10 Thomas: Okay, again, right now oldies is like the 90s or something. There's like the, that's a little too old because those are kind of boring, but like, and just basically the late 50s. I mean, yeah, that's part of it. The late 60s through to like, oh yeah, that there's, there's where you're going wrong. Yep.

0:01:16 Tom: 80s. Okay.

0:01:29 Tom: Yeah, I grew up in the car listening to the oldies in the 80s. My dad, born in 47, was listening to the oldies in the car every time we went somewhere, like on a road trip, and I cannot stand any of those songs. Like, any of those songs come on, I'm like, those are all terrible. Literally terrible songs.

0:01:37 Thomas: Oh. You're so wrong. God, you're wrong.

0:01:55 Eli: Hello! Song for me when I was a kid. And now I fucking love this music. So I'd be like, listen to this song. And then she'd be, like, you listen to the song and be like.

0:02:00 Tom: Oh.

0:02:04 Thomas: Yeah. Well, the ones, the ones from the fifties. Yeah, no, no.

0:02:05 Tom: Oh my god.

0:02:07 Eli: There goes the girl who stole my heart.

0:02:09 Tom: Yeah, my dad, like, fucking humming along to like "Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream." Makes me want to kill myself. Yeah, no, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah, no.

0:02:12 Eli: Yeah, exactly. Fucking my boyfriend's back and he's gonna be trouble.

0:02:13 Thomas: That's so that's not sixties. Yeah, that's almost good. Well, that's more like doo-wop. Once you get into doo-wop, you're good.

0:02:21 Eli: Now, here's the thing, though. I think 60s music breaks down into and blah, blah, There was bad music nostalgia. I think 60s music breaks down into some of the most brilliant music that's ever been made and drug -addled swill.

0:02:35 Thomas: Yeah, that's there.

0:02:35 Eli: And my favorite thing is that people who like 60s Music don't know the difference a lot of the time. So they'll be like, have you heard Joe Cocker do I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends? Oh, you should listen to it. Also, here's Prince gently rolling back and forth on top of a guitar for 27 minutes.

0:02:53 Thomas: Prince. Okay.

0:02:53 Tom: Are we denigrating Prince now? Right now?

0:02:53 Thomas: Well, do you know when anything was? Well, Oh,

0:02:56 Eli: I was just doing a random...

0:02:56 Thomas: I'm all for denigrating Prince. He just, he's not from the sixties Oh, Jimi Hendrix is so fucking good. Well, no okay. OK, Eli, if Eli is talking about like the B -sides from Hendrix's albums,

0:02:59 Eli: Hendrix. There we go. Hendrix, can we do Hendrix? Hendrix, Hendrix rolling back and forth.

0:03:01 Tom: We're shitting on Jimi Hendrix now? Okay, we are. This is what is

0:03:10 Eli: This is what I'm taught. Yes.

0:03:10 Thomas: Then sure. But like the hits are the so fucking good. God, Jimi Hendrix is so good.

0:03:15 Eli: Exactly the thing I said. Some of the best music ever. But you have a friend who loves Jimi Hendrix. He's going to be like, have you ever heard Scoodle-a-Boo? And you'll be like no, I love Jimi Hendrix. Play it for me. And it's him being like, I said I wanted pork on this sandwich.

0:03:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Just nothing. Yeah.

0:03:30 Eli: You motherfuckers didn't listen to me.

0:03:31 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:29 Tom: Happening, that's True of almost every artist though, where you're just like, I love every song they ever made. It's like, well then you're bad at deciding things. Like everything nobody's made only good.

0:03:36 Thomas: Before The Beatles invented albums, There was the funniest thing, was listening to an album from like pre that, because it'll be the one hit they had and then fucking nothing.

0:03:41 Eli: Incorrect. Yep. Nothing.

0:03:51 Thomas: Like, it'll just be like, does anyone know any other songs? And just be like, we could cover 15 other things. Yeah, but we have to have like one other one, and it'd just be absolute dog shit.

0:03:52 Tom: Songs, that's still like just one hit wonder stuff.

0:04:01 Tom: But isn't that still like, I mean, one hit wonders are, no, I mean, they're, they're still out there, still very much out there.

0:04:05 Thomas: Yeah, well, but no, it was even worse, it was even worse back then because, like, before there, they just, nobody cared about albums for a long, until the Beatles started doing albums, you know, like, or, like, Bob Dylan had some good full albums, but for the most part it was like, they were so bad they didn't even try. Now I think if you have a one hit wonder now, they just make one song, they don't even, they don't even try with the rest of the stuff.

0:04:27 Tom: I'm just curious, are you guys album guys or are you guys playlist guys?

0:04:29 Thomas: Yes, I'm an album guy and the only one left.

0:04:34 Tom: No, I am also an album guy. Hayley and I were just talking about this yesterday. She played me a song, I really liked it. I'm like, oh, send that to me. I wanna listen to what they've written on it. And she's like, Oh, it's the only song I know. And I'm, like, for me, it' like, I do the same thing if I'm reading. It's like if I read a really good book, I'm lik, well, now I immediately need to read everything that author has written, right?

0:04:43 Thomas: I

0:04:51 Tom: It's just, I want the whole, I wanna them all. Like, if this one was good, I want the whole thing. Like, if this song is good, what if there's another fucking gem hidden in there?

0:04:52 Thomas: I don't understand that, yeah. Yeah.

0:04:59 Eli: Ugh.

0:04:59 Tom: You know that?

0:04:59 Thomas: It's like if you reached into a bag of chips and you had, like, an amazing chip and you're like, that was good, and you like, do you want the rest the chips? There's other chips in there. I don't.

0:05:07 Eli: Okay, to be fair, Thomas. If we're carrying forward that metaphor, 90% of chips in a pack of chips are wet, dry dog shit. I know.

0:05:14 Tom: Is true.

0:05:13 Thomas: I know. No, but You at least try them. No, no, no. Hold on. Distinction. If Haley had been like, oh yeah, the rest of the album, it sucked. Yeah, that's fine. Cause you could try the rest of the album and it's like, it sucks.

0:05:16 Tom: That is the truest. Yeah. Yeah, right.

0:05:26 Thomas: But if it's like, Oh no, I haven't even checked. That's what weird to me. Because if I hear a good song, I think it's because music's like the most important thing to me, so if I hear a song, I'm like, dear God, please tell me there's more music that's good from this person. And often it's not, I

0:05:40 Eli: Oh, God. Never. Yeah.

0:05:43 Tom: For me it also stems from just, like, an inability to make a playlist. I've never made a playlist, like, ever. I've ever made a song like that, never one time made a playlist. Yeah.

0:05:48 Thomas: Don't want to make a playlist. That That's their job. The artist makes a playlist for you. It's called an album.

0:05:53 Tom: Well, right. I, Hayley makes me playlists and they're great. Like, she does a great job, she's, does, she's a very good ear, she curates a lot of good music, so she's made me playlists, they're wonderful, I love them, I put them on, I listen to them all the time. I will not make a playlist. That's a lot of fucking work to be like, what song goes with this? I'm not doing that. I'm never doing that, like, never in my life. And be like, I'm just gonna listen to this album and I just press play on the whole album and if I'm like, that's, it's a turkey, I go skipsies on it. But nobody does that.

0:06:20 Eli: The problem with listening to albums is I live in the optimism of a young Thomas Smith, which is I'm like, oh, man, Big Thief has made some of the most beautiful music I think I've heard for the last 10 or 15 years. Let me just give this other track on their album a listen. Oh, what's that? It's a laundry bag being thrown down the stairs for 11 minutes. Oh.

0:06:20 Thomas: Yep, literally no one.

0:06:44 Eli: That's cool. I dare anybody to listen to a Big Thief album and not think to yourself at

0:06:42 Tom: Anymore, I have

0:06:44 Thomas: I don't know what that is.

0:06:50 Tom: No.

0:06:50 Eli: One point while listening, surely this wasn't on purpose.

0:06:54 Tom: Idea. There is nothing worse though than when you're anticipating an album, sometimes for years, and then the album comes out and you're like, that's not good, I don't like that.

0:07:05 Thomas: Yeah, the latest Tool album was that.

0:07:07 Tom: Yeah, there's one song on that album that I think is really good and then the rest of it is like, I just passed the whole album is a hard pass for me. Numa, I think it's genuinely a great song, like in the, among their best.

0:07:12 Thomas: But because the album wasn't good, I quit immediately and I haven't listened since. I don' t do just one song. If they don't make a whole album that's good, then fuck it. I don''t want to listen to it.

0:07:25 Tom: That one I will listen to. I'll put that one on. Chocolate chip.

0:07:27 Thomas: I mean, to be fair, that's album length. Like one of their songs.

0:07:29 Tom: It is, that's the thing. Like, I, it is funny to be like, okay, how far away are we we in our drive? Well, we're, uh, like a one Tool song. We are one Tool song. It's a 15 minute

0:07:38 Thomas: That could be that could be three minutes or an hour. That's a good one. Did I ever tell you it's kind of cute when my mom used to not not my dad. He wasn't involved. My mom used To take us to my grandma's. I love my grandma. She lived in near San Francisco. And so I didn't even know it at the time because I was too young, but she was actually kind of cool and like liberal and like had a interesting life. I heard from some family member at some point that she tried to help get people something thing in fucking the Soviet Union, like that, God, what was it? She was like, like smuggling something. It was, yeah, it was the Bay of Pigs. I don't know. It was Something.

0:08:10 Tom: Drive. Missiles, uranium.

0:08:15 Thomas: Uh, no, but I don't know if it was medicine or something. It was something crazy where I was like, really? Because I guess my mom's dad died, like, pretty early, so she was just, I don't know, doing shit. But anyway, point was, we would drive to there, which is, uh, for a kid, you know, two hour drive is pretty long, and then as we get, get closer and closer, my mom would always tell us how long was left in terms of, like, Sesame Streets or Mr.

0:08:17 Tom: Blue Jeans.

0:08:36 Tom: Oh, I love that.

0:08:36 Thomas: Rogers. She'd be like, we have two Sesame Streets left, and we always love that. It's cute. I do that with the kids too, except it's, it's hard to, I don't know what they fucking, it's 1900 of your stupid YouTube shits that are all 30 seconds long. What?

0:08:49 Eli: Yeah, no, that'll, that will be an issue. Yeah, but you know the only thing worse than watching the fucking numbers who aren't the Number Blocks punch each other and scream. Why? It's the auto ads. Some parent out there with another YouTube child will get it. Why it's the audio ads? The audio ads interrupting your podcasting experience. But you can make them go away for as little as a dollar over at patreon.com/theskeptocrat. For as little as a dollar, you get a commercial free version of every single show plus bonus episodes each and every month they're a ton of fun. Check it out over at patreon.com/dear old skeptocrats. Rip it to

0:09:32 Tom: Yeah.

0:09:32 Thomas: My favorite of Eli's bits are the ones that bankrupt us.

0:09:35 Eli: It, hey, they bankrupt you guys.

0:09:35 Tom: The ones where, like, them, hey, the power's Flickering. That's good. Hey, uh, yeah, we're having beans for dinner again, kids. Beans, again.

0:09:39 Thomas: Yeah, they bankrupt. You, jokes on you'll love beans. No, literally.

0:09:54 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:09:56 Tom: So we've got an email, but before we read the email, did you guys know you can send an email to us that we might actually address on the actual show?

0:10:02 Thomas: What are you talking about? Absolutely no idea. He's a witch! Burn!

0:10:06 Eli: Whoa, whoa. Whoa, Tom, you're saying that I could write in to Dear Old Dads, the audio

0:10:07 Tom: I know,

0:10:13 Thomas: Him, this is made up, there's no way.

0:10:14 Tom: The audio podcast.

0:10:14 Eli: Podcast, and have my question answered? Well, where, where would I do such a thing, Tomifer?

0:10:17 Tom: You could write at thedads at dearolddads.com and you can ask your question. And if we like it, we might get around to answering it sometime in our actual lifetimes. But, but, remember, if you write us an email, that email is to be read on air. It is not a place for you to ask for or solicit random personal advice. So don't do that. Yes.

0:10:40 Thomas: Well, it is for that, but personal advice that you want everybody here, you know.

0:10:44 Eli: Also, there's a price, I just want to be very clear, because we always make that joke, but I just, be clear, like, you can give us ten thousand dollars and we will absolutely gather up and fucking talk to you, and yeah, exactly.

0:10:44 Tom: Yeah.

0:10:53 Thomas: Yeah, unmarked nonsense sequential bills.

0:10:56 Eli: Like, there's, I just need to be super clear, there's, I know some people, right, you can't reach some people, you can reach us. I'm poor anyways.

0:10:56 Tom: Just pretend you're the FBI. Put in a bag of money with a dollar sign on it. It'll be great. All right. So this email comes from somebody that didn't give their name. Hey, dear old dads. I had a thing happen with a child. Seven. A school that I've not quite figured out how to deal with. The other day I got a call from the principal that my child had expressed a desire to harm himself and I needed to come talk to them and a crisis prevention team.

So I popped down to the school and through discussions with the boy and the principal the versions of events I got was the class was doing an activity with drawing and when that task wrapped up and they were moving on to math the boy was upset and wanted to continue drawing he was told no so he said he wanted to die.

Now we went through the whole meeting everything he was doing signaled that he was just fine and was just upset in the moment, but I'm pissed because my workday is screwed.

Obviously, I wanted to let him know that he's loved, that the people around him care about his safety, and he should reach out to help with feelings like that if he ever has them, but I also don't want to set up a system where we scream, I'm going to kill myself if I have to do classwork, and the teachers won't make me do it, and I get to leave school early.

I spent the walk home being like, hey, everybody loves you and cares about your safety, butI never want another call like this. We have to to do school shit at school. It's that simple. I have to do work or we all go homeless. I have to work this weekend now because you did this.

0:11:05 Thomas: Oh yeah. Oh.

0:12:21 Tom: This is not a funny joke or a good way to skip class. If you really are feeling like that, don't shout it out at school, come talk to me. Next time this happens, it's a big problem for you. How can I make it clear that task avoidance edge of this problem isn't okay without having the takeaway be never say X or I will get in trouble?

0:12:21 Thomas: Oh. Wow. Wait, was that what they actually told him? That sounded pretty, pretty harsh to me. Holy shit, okay.

0:12:40 Eli: Seems like it from the email, yeah, yeah.

0:12:41 Tom: I'm assuming so. Yeah, yeah. Being perfectly honest, that That messaging, I think, is the right messaging. I don't know if it's the right messaging for Seven. Seven feels a little young for something to be like, now I have to work this weekend. That kind of feels a lot a little rough to me.

0:12:55 Thomas: Yeah, that's putting a lot on the kid, yeah.

0:12:57 Tom: But there is a difficulty, I think, that's worth addressing here about the difference between a crisis and a call for attention. And just kids saying stupid, quasi -violent shit because kids think that's edgy and they're still sort of playing with those boundaries. Certainly Certainly, Eamon does that all the time, all the time. Eamons does and did do that. And it's something I'm actually working on breaking him of of saying like violent stuff in a joking way because he thinks that that's sort of like how humor operates. Right.

0:12:59 Eli: I

0:13:28 Thomas: Well, yeah.

0:13:29 Tom: Or like how to sort of like gather attention is with this sort of like laughingly violent stuff. And it's fucking annoying as shit. And I know that it's kind of age appropriate. But at the same time, it's like my guy, it's weird and off -putting and it's getting you like disinvited into people's homes so you've got to cut that shit out but this is a balancing act this is a fine line because we want kids to go to people that they trust and who they think have their best interest at heart if they're in a real and actual crisis but we don't want them making shit up or just saying stupid shit in order to like get attention a

0:13:29 Eli: Don't

0:14:04 Thomas: I guess, what's your guys's read of, like, how obviously a joke this was? Because it sounds pretty obviously a joke, right? I mean, are we thinking

0:14:13 Tom: Hundred percent, yeah.

0:14:15 Eli: Think it was a joke. I think it was a thing a kid did not expect to be taken as as seriously as it was, if that makes sense. The thing that's sort of important to understand is that kids say things that they don't mean all the time that Adults take with a grain of salt. I hate this hamburger. I never want to go back to school. I love this movie. This is my favorite food, right? So they're used to speaking in extremes, and I think that we often do them a disservice. And look, it's with good intention. We do them a disservice when we create magic words that all of the sudden they are sort of plopped into an adult linguistical place And treated

0:14:31 Tom: Yes.

0:14:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I was gonna say. In terms of, like, actually, if you're worried about the kid and if you want to make sure the kid feels seen, in a way I was worried that this could really backfire. Like, I get that the school has to be like, well, they technically said the following words, so. But I just know that as a kid, if you said something that was obviously a joke and then everyone reacted this way, I'd almost wonder if that would make you less likely if something were going on. Just because, like, it feels very, like, – not trust -violating, but it just feels like, oh, okay, all you people don't understand me at all. You know what I mean?

0:15:00 Tom: Yep. Yeah.

0:15:01 Eli: Like an adult.

0:15:33 Thomas: Like, it feel like it would be a little more alienating.

0:15:33 Eli: Yeah, yeah,

0:15:35 Tom: Yeah, I think this is on the school to a large degree, right? Because like the school is not taking into account, in my opinion, exactly what Eli said, which is that at an emotional maturity stage, kids at the age of seven, like this is second grade, right? Seven -year -old kids live in a world of emotional absolutes. And they live in a World of Terrific Hyperbole. In the moment, I think often emotionally, they sort of believe -ish what they say in the sense that you're trying to express to you that they're having a big feeling. And these are the words that they have to use to express the feeling that they have in the moment.

I think somebody having a difficult time transitioning from a fun assignment to a less fun assignment and being like, I'd rather kill myself than do this. I've said that a million times, right? Oh my God, I rather fucking kill myself than have to go to this meeting for work. I don't really want to kill myself. I'm just expressing like a frustration.

So treating that language, like you said, like magic words where where we just don't, we pretend to sort of decouple and decontextualize these words from the person who's saying them and the context they're being set in and the sort of emotional, psychological stage that somebody is going through. Like, it's stupid.

0:15:36 Eli: Right.

0:15:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:53 Tom: That's just kind of stupid. I think the school really kind of fucked that up, honestly.

0:16:56 Eli: Well, and look, these are policies that were put in place to be a safety net, which the fewest amount of people will fall through, right? Because obviously, the reason these policies were put into place is that kids would show suicidal tendencies or suicidal ideation, and some fucking gym teacher would be like, well, you just need to rub some testing in it. And so they were like, okay, well, Martin's not going to understand the milk of human kindness. So from now on, everybody, if the word kill myself goes into your ear, nope, not that hole. The other one. Thank you, Martin. That hole, if that word goes into that, you have to tell us so grownups can take it seriously. You're never going to convince them to a more subtle version of that because it's the safest possible version. Yeah.

0:17:03 Thomas: For Eli in particular as a – Right, yeah, the one time that there's something that somebody interprets as a joke and it's not, then it's, it's over, you know? And I get it, like, I, I totally get that. It just feels like this kind of thing is not going to help, it might make a kid feel more alienated is all, but I, I don't know. I felt like, I mean, I, you know, not to critique someone's parenting, except I don't know what else we'd be doing with, with an email that felt a little harsh for a seven-year-old, honestly. Um, and that felt like putting a lot on them for like, why would they know this? You know, like, why would, why would they already know this information about like, Oh, if I say this, then all these bad consequences will happen for my parent. You know? It's just like, I, that feels like a lot as someone who frequently fucks up with my kids. I get it. But that, that, That feels like A lot to me.

0:18:15 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:16 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:18:30 Eli: I think there's a lot of things in this language that are, we're going to take it literally. Maybe these aren't the exact words you said, yada, yadda, yedda, but like we, we can help you with the words you didn't say. So I want to talk about a bunch of these choices of the language. Now we went through the whole meeting, everything he was doing signaled that he was fine. Okay. That's a weird take, right?

0:18:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Delivery matters too. You know.

0:18:51 Thomas: Hmm.

0:18:51 Eli: Cause this is the take of a debt. And I want to finish the sentence, stop interrupting myself. "Now we went through the whole meeting, everything he was doing signaled that he was fine and just upset in the moment but I'm pissed because my work day is screwed." That, to me, says that your focus was not on your kid in that moment. I understand, believe me, I get it. This month we have gotten to come pick Max up, he has misbehaved at school calls, and I know how that feels and how little free time I have, and I have a relatively easy job where I talk into a microphone, but I think it's worth noting, right, because this is why we talk about these questions on air, that is a really good sign that your focus is not in the right place that your focuses on you and your your job getting interrupted. And that is further influenced by the idea later. It's like, we have to do school shit at school. It's that simple. I have work to do or we get homeless. I have worked this weekend now because you did this.

0:19:06 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:19:38 Thomas: Yeah. Oof. There's a lot there.

0:19:40 Eli: So first of all, threatening your kid with homelessness, never good, right? Maybe you're using a short expression just for us because we're all adults and we kind of get it. But like, even if those aren't the exact words you said, there is a fairly decent chance that you communicated that idea to them. And unless you're just completely making up the sentence where you said, I have to work this week and now because of you, that's just a ton of weight to put on a kid.

0:20:06 Thomas: Yeah. I, yeah. Sorry.

0:20:08 Eli: And again, I wouldn't nitpick language like this, except this is exactly the kind of reason why a kid will now not talk to you when they're having these issues, right? Because they'll be worried about, well, I can't talk to the teachers about how I'm feeling because my dad will get called in and we'll end up homeless, or my dad will have to work this weekend and we want to do something fun. Like, as someone who worked with a lot of suicidal kids in my day, the reasons kids don't talk to people are kid reasons, and that's really, really important.

0:20:08 Tom: Yeah,

0:20:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, the more I read this, the more I really worry about, and again, you know, apologies, email, or like, I know we're just distilling from an email, so apologies if this misses you, you know, nothing personal, but I do worry about saying like I'm pissed about my work day, like my thought again

0:21:01 Tom: That's what I have written down, too.

0:21:02 Thomas: I would understand this a little more if this was the third time this happened. Yeah, if this is like, okay, the kid knows what he's doing, I've said, hey buddy, you know, the first guy I've sent, hey, this is really interrupting work again, the kid doesn't know this information, so like the language of being pissed because my workday is screwed, for one, like, as Eli points out going into it, you know, you don't know a hundred percent that this wasn't real, I think, and I think that would at least make me like go into it a little bit like, oh shit, you know, like my focus wouldn't be on my work day, is all I'm saying. And then two, like, this isn't something the kid knew about, like, this is a crazy thing to happen for a seven-year-old, like their brain doesn't like, what is any of this to to a seven-year-old.

So I don't know. I just know maybe I'm different, but I just feel like I would be like, well, the kid doesn't know it'd be hard to be that mad at the kid for making a mistake like that, that they don't Know. And I just worry that this language feels very like there's a lot of, I don' t know, there feels like there' s resentment here, you

0:21:32 Tom: Yeah,

0:21:53 Eli: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:21:53 Thomas: Know, in this relationship in a way that worries me.

0:21:56 Tom: I think, to echo some of the things that you said and add a little bit to it, like, I think that the most important thing to remember here is this kid had no idea that this would happen when he said those words, because I wouldn't have assumed it. I'm 47 years old. I would not have, if I got this call from the school, I would probably be like, hey, you guys are overreacting here. Let me talk to you guys privately. This is a little bit ridiculous. I would not assume that the school with a seven-year-old kid in a moment of like, if the kids in a fit of peak in a transition between two classes or something throws out an offhanded comment like, come on, like, let's let's get real. If you want to pull them aside and check in with them with a counselor or something, fine, that's cool. But let's not do this whole crisis intervention bullshit. That's a ridiculous overreaction that I as an adult would not have assumed that they would do or would have to do.

0:22:46 Tom: So if I can't assume it, I can ask a seven year old to assume that that's happening. That's ridiculous. I think if it happens again and again, then you can have a more stern conversation. But also the conversations we have with kids need to be age appropriate. I actually think that I would be able to have a conversation that is a little more stern with, let's say, a 13 or 14 year old.

0:22:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:23:06 Tom: If this exact same thing had happened, if you've written the exact same email, but your kid was 13 or 14, I'd probably be like, yeah, man, maybe a little harsh, but I don't have a lot of notes here. By 13 or14, kids know that they're not supposed to say shit like that because it triggers a series of cascading events, right? They've figured that stuff out at some point. I also think that it's okay for kids to understand that when they do stupid shit that impacts your life, like pulls you out of work, that that's something, not at seven, but that's something that in their teenage years, they do need to start contending with. So all of this is appropriate, I think. I really do. All of this ist appropriate.

If Aislinn, for example, who's 14, if she is at school and she does something stupid and it could have been prevented and it should have been been prevented. And I've got to stop my work day and I've got to get up and I got to drive my ass over to her school and pick her up. I would be unhappy with her. And she would, I would make it clear that I was unhappy with her about that.

And I would ask her to make sure that she'd be more respectful to my time, right? Because now it has an impact on me and my life and we're a team and a family. And that's not fair at seven. No way. At seven, you have no family responsibilities. You're a thing that is taken care of. There's no reciprocity expected at seven

0:23:18 Thomas: Yeah 100%. And the only thing I'd say is, I agree that this language definitely, it's, you know, I wouldn't probably put too much time into critiquing it if the, if the kid were older, like you're saying. The only thing I will say, I kind of want to ask you guys, I have a feeling that, or a tendency maybe, that rather than take this kind of scoldy tone, I try to let kids in a little more. Maybe this is, I don't know if we've talked about this before, but the language of "you did a bad thing to me and how dare you" and like "don't do this to me" versus like, "oh boy, well, I'm going to have to find a way to catch up on the work that I was doing in a way that's genuine."

Here's what's going on now. And not in a passive aggressive way, but in a letting the kid in a bit rather than like, how dare you? You caused all these things. You did this and it's bad. Rather like on a human level, taking them in as more of a partner somewhat. Maybe not seven. I mean, if they were older.

0:25:21 Tom: Yeah.

0:25:21 Thomas: I don't know. I tend to do that a little more because I just think humans in general are better with trying to give some ownership a little bit, you know, in a way, rather than like "stop doing the bad thing because you're doing bad and I'm mad at you," rather than that being like, "well, here's the set of issues we have," and trying to like give the kid a little more ownership and like, um, being a part of, you, a little more. I don't know, does that make sense? When they're older, yeah, not when they're seven. Yeah.

0:25:47 Eli: When they're older, for sure. For sure, for sur. Yeah, no, so, yeah... I mean, that kind of empathetic invitation is really fantastic when their brain has the wrinkles to do it, where they care about how you feel or it's healthy for you to share how you feel, right? So, like, your crying annoys me to a baby never matters. Never matters it's damaging, it's abuse, right. There's no situation where you tell a baby, right, yeah, exactly, right there's no position where you don't like it's crying and you've done a good thing. Not any circumstance under any way, right and we all sort of understand that. Hey, you kept it just to us, baby. Baby. You're all good in the hood. You kept it just to us.

0:25:49 Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:26:10 Tom: So when you're sad, it's boring. I shouldn't have said that a lot. Yeah, okay.

0:26:21 Tom: I'm gonna need that time machine, Eli. Yeah, I gotta

0:26:23 Thomas: Okay, but have you heard Remi, I mean, I mean, is an example Yeah, yeah.

0:26:37 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:26:39 Eli: My buddy, well, he's not my buddy, but he's an old classmate of mine, has a parenting channel. And one of the things that he talked about on that channel, because this topic came up, was sort of like, my kid says these horrible things for attention. What do I do? And he has a great phrase that I keep in my head, which is that until you're around eight or nine years old, there's no such thing as bad publicity. Whatever Whatever gets you attention is the thing you're going to do.

0:27:04 Eli: Positive attention, negative attention, it doesn't matter. You're going do the thing that gets you, yeah.

0:27:04 Thomas: Well, That explains a lot about our politics currently. Yeah, and the eight-year-olds in charge of our country.

0:27:10 Eli: You're gonna do the think, yeah, you're gonna the thing that gets your attention. So the question is, how do you redirect that attention towards positive behaviors? Because, and this is something that I see a lot, I see it especially now that my parent friends and the kids we have over and play dates and stuff, of. I see this default setting, which is, you know, five, six year old, which is where Max is and where most of his friends are. When they get to be that age, they get a little more independent so that people set to let their guard down. And the sort of way of the world becomes, I'm going to ignore my kid until they do

0:27:10 Tom: Go, yeah, yeah, mm.

0:27:48 Eli: Something bad. Oh man, he's entertaining himself. Perfect. I'm going to read my book. I must scroll on my phone and watch some TV. And your kid tries to get your attention in a nice way, but that doesn't fucking can matter. You're exhausted, right? You're tired, you're overworked, you want a break, so you take that break, and then your kid takes the lamp, pushes it over, and you go, "Oh my god!" You run into the room, and the kid has 100 your full focus, and that cycle just keeps acting on itself over and over and over again.

0:27:48 Tom: Hmm, yeah.

0:28:12 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:28:15 Tom: Okay, but what's the alternative? Pay attention to your kids? I don't want to do that. You've got to have something else up your sleeve. Please. Yeah, I'm not, I mean, have you met kids? It's so boring.

0:28:19 Eli: Yeah.

0:28:21 Thomas: Yeah, work to do. Sharks are on.

0:28:27 Eli: Exactly. Child care, paying other children to watch your children. Yeah.

0:28:30 Tom: Okay, all right. I got dollar signs here that. Yeah.

0:28:32 Thomas: Yeah, you know, I I hear you, and I hear you on the older stuff, but I would say one thing I'm trying to do, because again, I have, I have problems with Phoebe's still with a lot of the hurting siblings and, and stuff. And I do rather than do a like, Hey, no scoldy bad, you know, stop doing whatever, which, you know? You still have to do sometimes like in the heat of the moment, like, ah, don't, don't light your brother on fire. You know, you have to, you have, you have a lot to do to like stop.

0:28:58 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:28:58 Thomas: But in addition to that, like I do try to do maybe not with me and maybe this changes like how age appropriate it is, but I do trying to do like, Oh, you know Remy was really excited to kind of play with you. And then, you know, you pushed him and I think, I think it made him sad, you know, to try to talk in the terms of like, not you're in trouble because you did a bad thing, stop doing bad things, but like, Hey, understand that how this made your little brother feel. And I just, I don't know. I don'T know if there's anything there and maybe I'm getting too off topic, but again, rather than trying to set up a morality and a worldview for your kids where they get in trouble, if they do these bad things and not, if They do these other things, letting them into a world of empathy a little more.

0:29:36 Eli: Yeah, absolutely. No. And I think using that language is really useful. You know, like Daniel Tiger says, saying I'm sorry is the first step. Then how can I help? It's training the how can I help reflex rather than the punishment reflex. Right.

0:29:49 Tom: Yeah, I agree with that. I like, I'm not big on punishments, and I'm really not big on guilt trips either, but I will say that if you don't teach kids to look outside of themselves, which is what you're talking about, if you don't teach kids intentionally to look outside of themselves, they have fucking no idea what's being done. I know I told a funny story like as a joke in our last patron bonus about about being invisible in the car. But like, I will say that to kids, most of the work and the labor and the time pressures and the emotional pressures that you're under are fucking invisible. They have no idea at all that any of these things are happening. They don't see how hard you're working all the time because they're internal, right? Well, they're living this like really entirely different life that only later may they actually reflect on and say, God, my dad really worked his ass off all the time.

0:29:49 Thomas: Yeah.

0:30:20 Thomas: Why would they? Yeah.

0:30:28 Eli: Yeah. Right,

0:30:39 Tom: They don'T see that. And I do think that that carries on oftentimes into the teenage years. And I think it is very reasonable to bring them into it and say, hey, hey. When you do this, you're not being fair to me. You're not Being kind to me, you are adding to my workload. I have a lot of work. You are adding my burdens here. You Are doing things that are having an impact on me.

Me, I need to show you that it's not fair. And then when you do that, I think a lot of kids respond to it, but until you point it out, it's invisible because their entire life is so internally focused and so intentionally self-focused, because their lives are not like our lives. Their lives are full of all of these, like, brand news, brand news, every experience, every context, everything that they're dealing with. Oh my god, I got swimming class in high school, I got a deal I've never done done that before.

Oh, I have my first dance, first homecoming, first time I'm walking, first time trying this food, first sleepover, first. Their life is so full of stuff that our lives aren't full of. And so they're constantly assimilating all of these new experiences. They're very internally focused. And you really have to do work, I think, intentional work to pull them outside of that and say, hey, because they don't see it otherwise.

0:31:51 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:31:51 Tom: And I think once they see it, most kids that have been sort of like empathetically trained, they are more responsive to it. I, so I totally agree with you, I'm just kind of adding to it a little

0:31:58 Eli: Right. And I want to point out something about the language used there is that it's an invitation to empathy, not a responsibility for another person's emotions. And that's a really hard line to draw, right? Because "that makes mommy really sad" feels like an invitation to empathy, right? Feels like you're saying, "No, no, please empathize in this moment." But actually what you're doing is you're making the kid responsible for their emotions. Instead, we need to talk about what they're doing, whether it's appropriate, and then we can talk about how it makes us feel, but not "you made me mean blank." A two-year-old didn't make you anything, right? You're a grownup.

0:31:58 Thomas: Mm hmm, yep. Right, right, right.

0:32:08 Tom: Yeah, that's true, yeah. Yes, yeah, yep.

0:32:38 Thomas: Again,

0:32:39 Eli: And if you don't,

0:32:40 Thomas: Have you heard Remy? God damn it.

0:32:42 Tom: Yeah, speak.

0:32:42 Eli: And if you don't delineate between those kids grow up feeling responsible for the emotions of others.

0:32:47 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Boy, and I joke, but I would say one place where we, I mean, I'll just speak for me, but honestly, I do think this is a whole family thing, because of Remy's volatility, I think we did get in an unhealthy place and I, this is like a, you know, trying to do better and, and admit that all, obviously all parents get stuff wrong all the time, so I don't want this listener to feel like we're singling them out, but, but, uh, well, yeah, Tom's perfect, he's just gonna die of a

0:33:09 Tom: For yourself, Thomas, no, fuck that.

0:33:13 Eli: Well,

0:33:13 Thomas: Heart attack tomorrow and then his kids will be, you know, without a, without a dad, but other than that, but slower, he'll just enter the warm embrace of nothingness, yeah. But Remy was so volatile that it did reach a point where it was kind of like, hey, everybody, fucking, oh god, it was all, it was everybody's, you know, mine, Lydia's obviously, but also it did become a little bit on the kids just because we all can't stand the yelling, the screaming, that it was like, no, oh god, don't fuck this up. Like, it became like this burden, and I think that's a place where we did, you know, we kind of messed that up, and I don't know how to have have done it better, or because like, we just felt like hostages, you know, because it was just truly everybody. It was so bad. You know, kids almost noticed nothing. It was so bad that the other kids were like, I hate when Remy screams. And we're like, yeah, I know. I know we all gotta try to not make Remy scream.

0:33:16 Tom: Say it again. God, I'm so tired.

0:33:42 Tom: Right, yeah.

0:34:07 Eli: I mean, that's youngest child syndrome, right. That's that. Right.

0:34:08 Thomas: Well, that's Remy, Remy syndrome. That's right.

0:34:11 Eli: But it's, but that's a classic thing with youngest. Someone is the baby and then everyone resents them for being the baby. And you could see this in adults too, right? Like if you ever see an unhealthy healthy sibling dynamic, you'll be talking to three fully grown ass adults and two of them will be like, well, fucking Michelle's the baby.

0:34:31 Thomas: You're all 30.

0:34:31 Eli: And you're like, cool, cool. So not even a single therapy session, huh? Not just one to see what it was all about. Like I said, like, I think it's important for us to understand that we do all make mistakes and to catch it and to do better the next time, because shaming ourselves or feeling bad about the mistakes does nothing. If anything, it's actually worse for you than just ignoring the bad thing that you did. Probably not going to have healthy behaviors around shame and guilt unless you're correcting those behaviors. But yeah, I mean, I make mistakes all the time. Just a hundred times a day, I go, oh, could I handle that better? Could have said that better.

0:35:02 Tom: Yeah.

0:35:07 Eli: Could have done that better。 I mean,, you know, I'm dealing with this food thing with Max now. I just live in a constant state of thinking, well, well, I must have messed something up, right? He'll only eat strawberry yogurt and that can't possibly have happened in a perfectly healthy environment.

0:35:22 Eli: You know, here I am doing my, you know, I'm going through the checklist in my head. Like I did this, I did that, I said this. But unless you're willing to go, okay, cool. What's the healthy thing to do now? How do I check in now? How do we make good choices now? It's all you can do.

0:35:21 Tom: I don't know, man.

0:35:22 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

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0:35:41 Tom: The only other thing I want to add as a piece of advice for this topic specifically is I also think it's important to start having conversations with kids around their mental health about the difference between what's capital T true and what's true for now.

0:35:55 Thomas: Man.

0:35:55 Tom: That's a big distinction that a lot of kids don't fully understand. And they really need to understand that in different ways, in different stages as they get older, You know, because there's what's true for now, right, which is important, and then there's what's like capital T big true, right? Like, like, all the way fucking neon signs true. And I think that there is a lot of, to your point, Eli, there's a lot of attention that can be had by being sick in some way that nobody can run a test on, and that's just a fact, and we want to be able to give kids like the ability to distinguish between what's real today and what feels true for you in this moment. You know, I am experiencing anxiety. I am experiencing some, you know, sadness today. These are things that are true for now. And they don't necessarily mean that they're capital T big true, right? And kids need to understand the differences between those things.

Because I have seen instances where it's like, all right, if you express things the way that you're expressing to me here, you might end up committed, you know, against your will, you might have a 72-hour holder, you know, you might be put in, in a, and that's not actually what you need right now. That will not be to your benefit. That will actually potentially be traumatic and problematic. That's because you're confusing what's true for now with the desire for attention with what's capital T big true. And so kids need to understand that, like, look, it's okay to have these feelings that are true for today. They don't necessarily mean that they're long -term, capital T, true, right? And it's okay to want a little attention for what's true for now.

0:36:04 Thomas: Boy. Boy. Yeah.

0:37:35 Tom: You can have some attention for whatever you want to do. You don't have to have a lot of attention for what's real for now without needing the sort of big interventional attentions. That's a big conversation that I think has to be continuous and ongoing as kids mature, and even into their late teen years, because there are kids that will end up putting themselves on a a path for attention, for example, because they're actually having a moment and they don't know how to distinguish the moment from, you know, this, this sort of broader illness category. Do you know what I mean? I hope I'm expressing that. Yeah.

0:38:03 Eli: Oh, no, a hundred percent. I mean, yeah,

0:38:03 Thomas: Yeah, I have so many thoughts. Yeah, I, I, um, I had, so first I want to say, I, this is something we definitely probably all right come across, but I just want to say it because it was something that when I first heard this, it was at a time in my life where it was kind of a revelation, which was when someone, you know, it was probably a meme or something, was like, like, oh, don't worry, they're just doing it for attention. And then it's like, what is wrong with a kid wanting attention? And to me, that was a revelation because my family was so shitty about this.

0:38:27 Tom: Yeah.

0:38:31 Thomas: Like, so shitty. Demanding attention was like the biggest crime of my stupid, shitty family. So I just wanted to, like, if anybody hadn't heard that, that really kind of blew my mind a little bit at the time. Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:43 Tom: Yes, yeah.

0:38:32 Eli: Right. Of course. Kids are supposed to want attention. That's a good, healthy thing, yeah.

0:38:43 Thomas: What is wrong? With a kid? Wanting attention. Yeah.

0:38:46 Tom: And if you're sick, if I have a cold, I want some attention for my cold, right? Like, that's okay. I want some empathy. I want someone to bring me some fucking chicken soup, whatever it is, weird about it, yeah.

0:38:52 Eli: Right.

0:38:51 Thomas: Yeah. And yeah, being an adult and being able to understand that you need attention and not be fucking weird about it is a good thing. Yeah.

0:39:03 Tom: So, and like, if you're a kid and, and you've got the sads today, it's okay that you've got the sads and you want a little extra hug and attention, right? That's fine. But like, I think a lot of kids feel like they have to make it bigger in order for it to deserve the attention.

0:39:15 Thomas: That was the other thing I was thinking when you were saying before, Tom, was I just, I just had this with Phoebe, actually, because she was having a rough one. And I'm realizing, to distill all of it down, I'm realizing more and more that everybody, all the parents out there, number one, make sure you have a handle to the best of your ability on your mental health first, and I'll tell you why for so many reasons, but not the least of which is your kids are probably going to have your shit, and there are so many parents that don't get that, and they don't understand that they have a certain thing and then their kids act a certain way and they're like, what the fuck is wrong with this kid? And it's like, well, you know, right? Yep.

0:39:40 Tom: No.

0:39:57 Eli: Well, More importantly, a lot of the time you have maladaptive behaviors around those tendencies uh, that you have been using, you know, negative thought spirals to repress for your whole life, and so you see big sad and you're like, oh, don't worry, I know the response to big sad, it's yell, fuck off, and you'll be like, oh wait, no, that was only inside before. I mean, look, here's the other thing that I say as well. And I used to say this when I was sort of a big brother in that program for kids.

When you learn you have depression and look, the internet's going to be super mad because you learn that you have depression, capital D depression. That's when the hard work begins, right? That's when you start employing mindfulness tactics and you understand that you will be in therapy for the rest of your life.

And here's the thing, the super cool cats and kittens on TikTok who want to tell you to self-diagnose and talk about yourself in the third person and, you know, use words like trauma and PTSD without ever getting a doctor involved, like they're fucking hooking themselves up to an IV drip on the Reggie Reg, uh, they will not be there for you while you do that hard

0:40:04 Thomas: Yep. Yeah.

0:40:48 Thomas: Maybe.

0:41:05 Tom: That's right.

0:41:05 Eli: Work. Doctors will be there for you while you do that hard work. And yes, Tom doesn't think doctors are real. He thinks they're ghosts. He thinks they're ghosts sent from hell to attack him personally, and can I say, his evidence is pretty strong. He's nailing him, that doctor who walked through a wall while showing you all your worst memories. I'm gonna concede that one. I'm gonna concede that one. But like, that's the thing, right? Like, the problem is when you discover, and kids discover it relatively young now because we have that language, when you discovered that you've got capital D depression, the work begins, and a lot of the time that is not what a kid has been exposed to, right? They've been exposed to like sad music and TV shows where people look out of rainy windows, not fucking mindfulness exercises and dipping in and out of the stream, right the idea that like you're going to be 12, 13 and tell your parents you're depressed and everyone sort of gather around like Lorelei as opposed to like, well now you got to read the fucking happiness trap

0:41:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:10 Tom: I am aware that there are doctors. I was going to say, I mean, like we should compare some notes. Can we compare some notes?

0:41:17 Thomas: They might be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:42:07 Eli: Kid, like, here we go. You know, it is a lot of work, but it's also good and positive work. I was, and I talk about this all the time, I know, but like, I was incredibly lucky that I grew up with a parent who had such severe depression because I lived in the soup of how you take care of that depression, right? It's like I had a parent who was diabetic, I knew how to take care of my own diabetes, right, in a certain way. And a lot of, especially neurotypical families or non-neurodivergent families, they don't have those skills, and they are in that same level of adrift that their kids are, right, when the big diagnosis happens. Is they're like, all right, well, I think TV says you're supposed to look out of a rainy window. It's not raining, it's California. I don't think we're gonna get a lot of rain this year. Like, what do we do? Yeah.

0:42:56 Thomas: Oh, is that what the fucking it's actually there's water outside today.

0:43:00 Eli: There he goes.

0:43:00 Thomas: I was going to ask you guys, is that what that is? Crazy. It's nice.

0:43:00 Tom: Oh

0:43:04 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:43:10 Eli: All right, gentlemen, before we go, my ex-wife just texted me, "Wish you were here." She must be at the cemetery again.

0:43:19 Tom: My god so

0:43:22 Thomas: What the fuck is that supposed to be? It's so stupid.

0:43:25 Eli: I like it.

0:43:26 Tom: Bad

0:44:16 Thomas: My favorite of Eli's bits are the ones that bankrupt us. Jokes on you, love beans.

0:44:22 Eli: I said I wanted pork on this sandwich.

0:44:26 Thomas: Tom's perfect, he's just gonna die of a heart attack tomorrow and then his kids will be, you know, without a, without a dad, but other than that,

0:44:31 Tom: Say it again