DOD244: 48 Is the New 90

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Eli: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that knows your son -in -law is a massive piece of shit.

0:00:42 Eli: Yes. Yes. A good impression sounds nothing like the person you're impersonating. That's what I've always said. It's repeatable. It's demonstrable.

0:01:04 Lydia: Listen to the show I do I don't know what you're talking

0:01:06 Eli: She's sleeping through most of the edits.

0:01:07 Lydia: About, I'm sleeping through the edits, I don't think Tom was talking about in his past and then Eli was like, yeah, that's when he started sounding like that, oh I don't remember what that is, sorry.

0:01:09 Eli: Rocked gently to sleep.

0:01:14 Eli: That's when he started sounding like that. That was when it happened. And anyways, welcome to Dear Old Dads.

0:01:19 Lydia: Well yeah, today's topic is finding out that your wife actually doesn't like your show. Okay, whatever.

0:01:23 Eli: She sleeps. She's embodying our listeners, and many of our listeners fall asleep to our shows. She's representing that population during the editing process.

0:01:29 Lydia: Guys, yeah.

0:01:35 Eli: I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith.

0:01:37 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, hi, hi.

0:01:38 Eli: Tom Curry was unable to join us today because he's unable to look into his calendar book and see that we exist at the same time every week and always have and continue. But that's okay because we've got an amazing replacement, you've heard her already, the one, the only, the master of research, the smoke of the island and lost, Lydia Smith. Hey!

0:01:50 Lydia: What?

0:02:01 Lydia: Interesting. I had no idea where you were going to take that. I didn't know where it was going either.

0:02:05 Eli: Good news, neither did I.

0:02:08 Lydia: Hi. I invaded your space. I'm happy to be reunited with you guys.

0:02:12 Eli: Lydia, welcome to the show. My question is, now that you are on it, do you think you will fall asleep to you, or will you keep yourself awake?

0:02:16 Lydia: Yes. Oh, that's a good question. If I'm talking, I will stay awake. Oh. Well, I've just found out a very useful piece of information. We've been watching Stranger Things lately and you know how they have to put the headphones on max to keep her from being, yes, taken by the demon. I guess I have to just pop the old headphones on.

0:02:24 Eli: Okay, good to know. You know. Yeah, that's right.

0:02:40 Lydia: Lydia with her voice. Yep, just a Lydia recording some social situation or something. Yeah, it'll just, yeah.

0:02:45 Eli: Is there any fight more married than "you keep falling asleep during the show we've agreed to watch

0:02:51 Lydia: Here's the thing, just to make very clear, I don't actually care that much. I care that she, she goes into a gaslighting, lying, like a demon takes over and she can't acknowledge it. She can't ignore it.

0:03:00 Eli: Together"? I'm not asleep. I'm gonna sleep. I'm

0:03:06 Lydia: Oh, are you? I will do a thing where I'll sit there and watch her sleep for five minutes. Just make sure.

0:03:12 Eli: Fine.

0:03:12 Lydia: And then I'll be like, OK, so you're sleeping. No, I just watched you for five minutes.

0:03:15 Eli: No, really, what just happened to the scene? Well, me and my sister were wandering through the them all.

0:03:24 Lydia: Listen, that's a dream that Lydia just told us about. Yeah, before the mics were on it was a very funny joke for us, but yeah, no, that's actually the only part I care about. It gets so funny that she can't, I don't know what it is. Yes.

0:03:37 Eli: Now. Aside from the sleep gas lightning, does your partner engage in what Anna used to engage in, which is, why don't we watch that again, which is, again, they're not admitting I was asleep and I'd like to know what happened. They, they just fucking want another round of that

0:03:54 Lydia: To Lydia's credit, for some reason the next day the demon has left her brain and she's like, yeah, yeah, I was sleeping. I know! God, it's every time. Sometimes what I do is I try to like sneak it in. If I feel like I got away with him not noticing that I slept. You never, ever got away from it.

0:04:02 Eli: Episode. So why would you think you got away with it? You're unconscious. Sure.

0:04:14 Lydia: Okay, because I wake up earlier than Thomas by several hours, many hours. Yeah. Usually what I'll do is watch the episode myself quietly in a different room to catch catch up and then when he wakes up I can engage in, like, the conversation from the night before, you know, like, oh, wasn't that great, I really loved when this

0:04:26 Eli: Two times speed with the subtitles on. God damn it, come on, come on, how are you liking this season? It's a little rushed. It's all rushed. I didn't like it when Vecna

0:04:45 Lydia: Delidious credit, she's never tried to pull this off. She usually says, well, I watched it this morning. Yeah, I know, I'm, I'm honest. Yeah, but I do catch up because I don't want to, like, impact our ability to watch the next episode. Yeah, yeah, I

0:04:55 Eli: Said of course, of course. But do you know the only thing worse than when your partner won't admit to falling asleep during the show you agreed to watch together. Why? It's the auto-ads. Nobody could sleep through those.

0:05:08 Lydia: Feel attacked right now. Yeah, I feel attacked now because those aren't as bad as what we're

0:05:14 Eli: Because those are at wildly different volumes than the podcast you're listening to, but you can make them go away. And pay Lydia to stay awake. With our new Patreon goal, Lydia stays awake for seven days straight. That's right. If we hit 25 patrons, Lydia will not sleep for a Christian week.

0:05:28 Lydia: Describing. I thought you're gonna say seven hours straight. Yeah. Wait, how many?

0:05:36 Eli: And you can do that over 25. 25, just 25. We made it. Total, yeah. Patreon .com forward slash dear old dads. Lydia, you want to give us a rip into it?

0:05:37 Lydia: Oh my god, like total? Or oh boy, oh

0:05:49 Eli: Oh, fantastic.

0:05:47 Lydia: Boy, rip into it. Thank you.

0:05:58 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:59 Eli: So we have several things to discuss today. First and foremost, I did say several, and I was kind of hoping you'd let it slide.

0:06:01 Lydia: Did you just say several things? I can't fix that in the edit, amateur. I could fix

0:06:09 Eli: You can't fix that. You can, you can a little, just throw a S in there. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Little symbol, little morph. Come on.

0:06:17 Eli: What's the AI for anyways? Anyways, we have several things to discuss today. We have a listener email, which is truly fantastic. But first and foremost, we need to talk about what your husband, Lydia, did to my son. As you know, my son has had completely typical neurons his whole life. A straight shooter, straight arrow. Very good at paying attention to other stuff. But then, a mere year and a half before this past weekend, he met Thomas Smith. And now, where the ADHD remained asymptomatic except for all the symptoms he had, and now, a mere year and half later, he has caught ADHD from your husband. What do you have to say on his behalf?

0:06:29 Lydia: That. Yes. Yes, tell me. Oh boy, my deepest apologies. I'm so sorry to him, to you, to Anna, to whatever partner he may have. If he doesn't have a partner, the potential partners that he may have in the future. Yeah, that's rough. I'm so sorry. Yeah.

0:07:07 Eli: Mm -hmm. Mm -huh. Yeah.

0:07:19 Eli: Nope.

0:07:19 Lydia: Eli put this note in the Slack that I gave his son ADHD. And I was thinking there'd be more to it than this. Is there any proof?

0:07:25 Eli: Is it? Nope. Well, I'll tell you we have the proof.

0:07:29 Lydia: I think I'm getting off scot -free on this one.

0:07:30 Eli: So it was time for his developmental pediatrician assessment. And if you've met my son or seen my son, he has a lot of energy and he has quite literally all the symptoms of childhood ADHD. If you needed like in an emergency situation to typify the symptoms of childhood ADHD, I would recommend a video of my son. Right. Like if you needed to send it to space so that the aliens could get us a cure right away. Right. Right, yes, exactly.

0:07:54 Lydia: Yeah. Like on that golden record or whatever. Why did I say gold? Was it golden?

0:08:01 Eli: I'd put it right there. It was gold, yeah.

0:08:03 Lydia: Okay. That came into my brain. I was like, fuck, did I just say something dumb? But I think it was. What are you talking about?

0:08:08 Eli: That, wind through the tree, a child's laughter, heartbeat.

0:08:08 Lydia: It's okay. Lydia's not a nerd. The record that Carl Sagan sent into space. Hon, come on. No, I don't know about that. Pale Blue Dot. Oh, just for fuck's sake. I'm going to give you a YouTube video with the Pale Blue Dot read over some music. If it doesn't stir up the emotion a little bit, then we can get a... That sounds like a plan.

0:08:14 Eli: Yeah. You don't know about this? Was it SETI or what was it?

0:08:32 Eli: Hey, everybody, we're back from the edit. Lydia watched one second of the video, said nope, nothing, and then handed Thomas pre -filled out paperwork. Oh.

0:08:41 Lydia: How'd you already have this plan? Okay. Weird.

0:08:44 Eli: Oh, she did have to write pale blue dot or something at the top.

0:08:48 Lydia: The reason for a divorce, yeah.

0:08:49 Eli: In that box at the time. The world that Mike Pence wants. You got to put a reason for divorce right at the top of the form. Yeah, he's had this for a while. We've been struggling with it at school. Obviously, we have a bunch of stuff in his IEP already, but because he just has the autism diagnosis and diagnoses are like way behind the times when it comes to, like, care and treatment and stuff, getting this new diagnosis was probably important.

We kind of saw it coming, but you know, we never want to influence his doctors when we speak to them about that kind of stuff. We always sort of let them call that first. So we had his teacher survey, we had our survey, and then of course he had a private assessment that he did for a couple of hours with our doctor, and sure enough, he has the thing that we all knew he had, which is very funny, because when I was talking to his IEP team about it, we got together, I was like, "Hey, we got behavior codes for ADHD now," and they were like, "Oh, good, we're chatting sort of doing that, like, mildly," and I'm like, "Yeah, can you believe that?

Totally wrong, right?" And I watched everyone at the table freeze because they didn't know if I, I was joking, and they were like, "Oh, um," and I was, I'm just kidding, it's very obvious, and they're, "Okay, okay," because that's not usually, that's, that's what happens. So yeah, it's cool. We're not like medicating her or anything. There's actually pretty significant science that says that medication before six or seven isn't particularly useful for ADHD kids. There's mixed science on that, but certainly for all DHD kids, which is what Max will be. Pharmacological

0:09:56 Lydia: Oh, man. Oh, God, that's funny.

0:10:16 Eli: Intervention right away is not the idea, and we're gonna instead work on some social skills stuff and some attention stuff. But yeah, he's got his new diagnostic codes. He just got a full behavioral assessment at school, which means he's gonna have all sorts of cool stuff. He got a behavior plan in place, little treats he can earn throughout the day. It's awesome. There's the thing.

0:10:27 Lydia: Wow, nice. Very cool. Was there a question? Yeah, I did do it. Yeah, was there a question on the assessment itself that said, have you ever been exposed to Thomas Smith? None of the RFK juniors in there probably did. Did you get exposed to any Tylenol takers? Yeah. Like tuberculosis questions, you know, have you never been ever traveled outside of the country yet?

0:10:42 Eli: Yeah, it did say Yeah, it didn't have a child at all. Did you have as a kid? Yeah, exactly. It's right in there. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly with Thomas Thomas Smith, have you ever been to French wine country with Thomas Smith? Because we don't trust him. Yeah.

0:10:56 Lydia: Yeah. Max hasn't. I would love that. Just you and Max? Yeah, just me and Max.

0:11:05 Eli: He was inside my balls when we went to French

0:11:07 Lydia: Oh, I was very close to those.

0:11:07 Eli: Wine Country waiting. Yeah, exactly. I was riding on your shoulders the whole time.

0:11:12 Lydia: Now, now you do you feel dumb.

0:11:15 Eli: All right. So that's the update. My son has a medical diagnosis. Help him out. Thomas did it. Cancel Thomas. All Right. Now we have a listener email and I love this listener email because as you may remember, if you've been listening to our show for a while, we had a little spate where we went through kind of am I the asshole posts on a pretty regular basis, kind of ended up tackling a few of those. And so when we get listener emails to thedads at dearoldads .com, that's thedads at dearoldads. Com.

0:11:46 Lydia: The dads at dearoldads .com. Oh, sorry. Yeah.

0:11:48 Eli: That's right, thedads at dearoldads .com. You might get a bonus, Lydia. You never know. They often take a am I the asshole tone because of that early sort of pattern that we set. And we have a listener here. Here, spoiler alert, who is so obviously not the asshole, but is being so careful, just in case they are, I can't wait to read you this email. So here it goes. I'm going to do an old person voice because this person's an old person.

0:12:15 Eli: Hi, dads. I'm looking for some perspective on how to handle my adult daughter's recent marriage. That's right. My daughter, 28, recently got married at a J -O -P. Do you guys know what that is?

0:12:14 Lydia: Oh, all old people are British. No, I tried looking it up. One option was just outside Philadelphia. And I was like, I don't think that's it. If you know what I mean. I don' t know.

0:12:33 Eli: That's what it is. They got married to a just outside Philadelphia.

0:12:39 Eli: My daughter recently got married at a J .O .P. to a man I've never met. I'm not upset about the way they got married or that I wasn't there. My wife and I also did a tiny elopement ourselves in a bookstore coffee shop with a $50 officiant, so I get the appeal of not inviting people in a wedding. I have never met or spoke to him. What's bothering me is what I've learned about her husband so far. One, age difference. My daughter is 28. He is, any guesses? 40. And then in parentheses, I'm 47.

0:13:06 Lydia: Okay. Oh, no. 52. Oh. Okay. That's. Oh. Oh. Okay. That's strange. Somehow the age gap isn't as bad as that second fact. Yeah.

0:13:23 Eli: The age gap isn't my main issue, but it covers everything else. Two, living situation. My daughter worked her ass off to get a small two -bedroom apartment for herself and my granddaughter from a previous long -term relationship. After they got married, he moved in with her. He didn't have his own place and was living with his parents.

0:13:45 Lydia: Oh. Oh. What? At 40? At 40. Wow.

0:13:47 Eli: At 40. 3. Work slash finances. From what I can gather, he either doesn't have a job or only has a low -paying part -time job so far. So far, it sounds like my daughter is carrying most of the load of the relationship. 4. Relationship history.

History: he's 40, never been married, and my daughter is his first wife. That alone isn't a crime, but paired with everything else, it does make me concerned about what type of person he is. With the holidays coming up, I'm probably going to meet him for the first time. I don't want to blow up my relationship with my daughter or make her feel judged, but I'm struggling to see a walking red flag moving into the life she's built for herself and her child. My daughter and I have have always had a good relationship.

We are pretty close, and she often seeks my advice and trusts me to be there for her when she needs me. We have never had a strained relationship or anything like that. How do I show up for her, stay honest with myself, and not torpedo our relationship by coming in too hot or too skeptical?

0:13:49 Lydia: Okay. Hmm.

0:14:52 Eli: What should my priorities be as her dad in this situation? Do I not voice my concerns? Do I wait for her to ask? I just am not sure how to handle of this.

0:14:59 Lydia: Because you were reading it in a grandma voice, I assumed it was a grandma. You thought it was the mom the whole time.

0:15:03 Eli: No, it's a man. It's a men. Above all, I want my daughter to be happy and have a decent life. I want to maintain a supportive and healthy relationship with her, but I'm worried, butch, I'm worried she's being taken advantage of or leeched off by a low quality man.

0:15:11 Lydia: To have some milk and cookies. Ooh, low quality, man. Before we get into that, also, you said this person's an old person. They're 47. They said that in the email. So, listener, if you're out there, if your hearing this episode, I wouldn't have done that voice.

0:15:28 Eli: 47. 47's old. That's like dead.

0:15:34 Lydia: Hear that, Tom? God, I'm turning—oh, you said Tom, right? I said, yeah, you hear that, Tim? Oh, okay. Okay. I just assumed you were about to say me. So I just, but then I started talking before I heard the end of Tom and I could have been Thomas. That was unnecessarily confusing.

0:15:48 Eli: Do you want to know how you know 47 is an old person age? Are you ready? My buddy Mike just died. He was 26. Oh my god, he was so old. What, what happened? My buddy Mike just died. He was 47. Oh no.

0:16:02 Lydia: No, that's not how people would respond.

0:16:04 Eli: Way, you're fucking shocked a 47-year-old died? You're not, like, what freak accident occurred at the age of the

0:16:08 Lydia: Yeah, you are. Are you kidding me? Tom is like older than 47. And to be fair, if she said Tom died, it's like, oh, finally. It took so long, the poor guy. He can finally rest. Yeah, exactly.

0:16:19 Eli: Young. Oh god, honestly, here's the thing: when the demon finally conquers Tom and he dies, guys, we are gonna have to walk the line of, like, it wasn't a positive for our friend Tom. The term eternal rest

0:16:29 Lydia: I know. How do we pretend that that wasn't a good thing? Oh, no. Yeah.

0:16:39 Lydia: I want to emphasize, he himself will be happy that it happened. Like, it's not even...

0:16:42 Eli: Oh my god, he's gonna be so excited.

0:16:44 Lydia: More than three and a half hours of sleep, yeah. If I could get him that for Christmas, I would.

0:16:49 Eli: Yeah, you know, you say you, like, want to live a long happy life and you don't want to know you're dying. I think Tom deserves to know he's dying, right? Like, he should get a full two hours to just be like, oh man, give me one second, I'm taking off the shock watch. You keep that, and then let me know how the pool works out, motherfuckers.

0:16:56 Lydia: Yeah, so he gets to have some fun with it. Yeah. Oh yeah, the pool. Oh

0:17:11 Eli: I think they should put him in a boat and then light the boat on fire in the pool. I think it's what he would have wanted.

0:17:13 Lydia: Man, in the pool. Yeah, yeah. Well

0:17:23 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:17:25 Eli: So what are your thoughts, Smiths?

0:17:27 Lydia: This is fucking weird. Yeah, there's a lot here. I mean, okay, I'm surprised that a job has never come up in conversation with this person, not directly with the new husband but with your daughter, like she's offered some information information, but it's never been like, and this is what he does for work, or you've never asked to follow up. He just doesn't have a job at all? Oh, and what does he do, you know? Like, that that's never been part of the conversation is kind of surprising to me? Yeah, yeah, that is, that's

0:17:54 Eli: And if you're close with your daughter, why did she marry someone without introducing them to you? I believe that you are close with your daughter. I, I want to be clear, I don't think that this is a dad who, like, like, whose kid hates him and he doesn't know it. I think something is weird. Yeah.

0:18:13 Lydia: Bizarre. Something's going on with your daughter. It's not, definitely not

0:18:17 Eli: I mean, it could be, but it would be... You'd have to be so clueless, though.

0:18:21 Lydia: That, yeah.

0:18:22 Eli: And you don't write this email.

0:18:23 Lydia: The email doesn't come across that clueless. No, it feels like whatever happened in this daughter's life, this feels like it was impulsive. I mean, just, we only know the other option is obviously the daughter knows this is not a good idea, and you can never discount that the two old partner is trying to isolate her possibly, you know. Yeah, yeah, it could be that, but not isolate enough that they are expecting them at Christmas, right? So

0:18:26 Eli: Right. Right. Right, that's the thing. They're going to meet this person at the holidays. Now, I know I'm very close with my family, but, like, I would just never marry someone my family hadn't met.

0:18:55 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, I'm dead, I don't know. At this point in my life it's too hard to say, because I don't, I maybe when I was marriageable age. Yeah, yeah, let me think. If I were to remarry, it would for sure be someone my family hasn't ever met, because then I would have to have seen them for that for. Okay.

0:19:09 Eli: When Liddy gets you to sign those papers, what do you think? Who's... Yeah. Yeah. How many 17-year-olds does your family know?

0:19:24 Lydia: Oh boy, yeah, no, I'm, I'm with you, Eli, though. Like, I, I'm close with my family and I can't imagine, like, the first time my parents or my sister meeting the person that I'm planning on spending potentially the rest of my life with. The first time is after we've gotten married and everything. Oh, you're going to spend the rest of the life with them, huh?

0:19:47 Eli: Yeah. And I mean, look, my parents both loved Anna right away. My mom went on a museum trip with Anna so soon into us dating, and she texted me, she's a keeper, but, like, it would have been a major issue for our relationship if my parents had been like, I don't think she's the one, I would have pumped the brakes and really put a tremendous amount of trust in my family to see or understand something. Oh, absolutely.

0:19:52 Lydia: Of course.

0:20:07 Lydia: Oh, holy crap. Do you think that they would have said something like that? If the person wasn't right for you, they would.

0:20:16 Eli: Not only would they have, they did multiple times in my life. Yes.

0:20:20 Lydia: Oh, really? Eli's mom has for sure said, like, well, that Thomas fucking sucks, and it has significantly hindered mine and Eli's relationship. Yeah.

0:20:30 Eli: Affected our sexual relationship. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I married him without telling her.

0:20:35 Lydia: That's interesting because I don't know that my parents would necessarily tell me. I think that they would just hope that I got there on my own kind of thing if it wasn't the right person.

0:20:45 Eli: Oh no. That was my mom. My mom would sort of try and give me a pros and cons, but could never really help herself because the cons list was so much heavier. My dad would literally just be like, nope.

0:20:56 Lydia: Good. Wow.

0:20:58 Eli: He had no chill whatsoever. One of my very, very long -term girlfriends who I was very sure I was going to spend the rest of my life with the entire relationship. He was just like, yeah, for now. Like he never, just no matter what. And I, I multiple times during our relationship, I sat him down and I was like, dad, I know you're just joking? And he was like, I'm not joking. And I was like okay, well, I know that it's kind of a joke. He's like, not at all a joke I was, like, it would really mean a lot to me and he was ,like, I don't care what it would mean to you.

0:21:00 Lydia: Oh. My God, oh

0:21:30 Eli: And, I was like, alright, well. Aston answered He knew. He just knew. No, they were fine.

0:21:30 Lydia: Man, was there a good reason? Like, did this person suck? Really? Yeah.

0:21:37 Eli: They were fine He just new.

0:21:39 Lydia: That's a little extreme. If it's that level, like, that reaction makes sense if this person is an abusive piece of shit or just sucks, like, real bad, but, like, just new? I don't know. Now,

0:21:49 Eli: Can I say, I now sympathize because I have now done this with the younger people in my life. Obviously, none of them are my children, but, like, I've talked about this before. My group of friends is much younger than me. And so, I've watched them go through relationships and they've been, like, this is Scandler, he likes guitar and doesn't remember words with more than three syllables, and I've been like, nope. My

0:22:04 Lydia: Scandler, that's an all -timer. That's a really good, wow,

0:22:15 Eli: Friend Rachel, because she got out of a long-term relationship that was very hard for her, and she dated a fucking, no, no, this was after he, this was post he, she dated a white piece of paper, and she sat me across from him at her birthday and I refused to learn his, his name. I kept being like, uh, what's your face? And he was like, it's blue. And I was like, whatever you say, man. Like, I'm absolutely not making room in here. You're gonna be gone. I'm, there's no fucking chance I'll see you again. We are interstellar levels of never going to meet again.

0:22:19 Lydia: Heath. Okay, oh, no. Oh, my God.

0:22:49 Lydia: Wow, wow.

0:22:49 Eli: So I'm gonna go ahead and not make room in the cupboard for your name, and sure enough, never saw him again. Don't know his name. So I am very sympathetic to the David Bosnick theory of, of things.

0:22:57 Lydia: Now, Lydia's not going to, yeah, how's that going to work on? And if our kids are dating someone that sucks because you're no,

0:23:03 Eli: You think Thomas is gonna fucking lie? I

0:23:06 Lydia: I mean, I meant how's it going to work for Lydia for me? OK, so not judgmental. I don't know. I would probably try to find the good things and focus on that. But I want to clarify. It's not like my parents didn't have opinions about who I was. I think they did. Well, because like when I had my high school boyfriend that was kind of long term and stuff, I talked about like, you know, this is it, of course, because I was, you know, 17 years old or whatever.

0:23:28 Lydia: I was like, this isn't the one. It's so stupid and cringy. Oh, man, it's so cringey. And my dad would be like, you're in high school. He would say things like that where it's like he wasn't saying that this person is bad for me or like it's not okay for me to have feelings like that for somebody, but he was like, you know, you're still really young, just kind of trying to offer perspective throughout the entire time or asking questions. And I feel like that's what I would try to do with the kids. But also, I don't know, I'm not, like, so sure of myself that I know the complete package of a person if I only see little bits of somebody. And I don't like what I see, it's also not their entire being. Pretty bad for Lydia to have that kind of opinion

0:23:28 Eli: Mean Yeah, well, also she's gonna have to balance out you, Thomas, who I assume will walk into the room with one of those push brooms and be like, nope, nope, hey, get, get, get

0:24:14 Lydia: Yeah, nope, push them outside with, oh my god, oh no, sweeping them

0:24:23 Eli: Baby, stop crying. Get, get. Have a good one.

0:24:30 Eli: Man, this is literally what picture. I picture Thomas's head popping out of his office where he is editing a firm, no, and then back into the office again. Click. No.

0:24:39 Lydia: Out. Yep, I'm just going back in. No, I, I feel like you would Facebook message me, like, from above, like in your office, and you're like, well, that's not happening. Yeah, yeah, do what you can to get him out of here. Oh man

0:24:46 Eli: Saw him on the Ring doorbell. The answer is no. Broom is upstairs. Call is yours.

0:24:55 Lydia: We are changing topics a little, but it's okay. None of us have the experience of having a 28-year-old daughter dating a 40 or whatever, marrying a a four-year-old. So a little bit different than that. But I think it is fun to talk about this because I will say, as much as, you know, I don't have the most of chill if someone really sucks, I also am trying to think, like, does it really matter or help to express that opinion?

Like, does it actually matter if your kid thinks that they're going to marry the person? Because like, here's the thing. Now, Eli's aside, and maybe this will be one of those, like, everyone else is different than me. I'm different than everyone else.

But does your parents' opinion really even an effect your opinion of your person, like, if you were like, I'm gonna marry this person, and you're like 17 or whatever, and your parent is like, oh okay, bump the brakes, does that have any effect on how you think? Because for me, zero. It would have had zero effect. And yet I still didn't end up marrying my high school sweetheart or whatever. So like, does it serve any real purpose as a parent to be like, well, you're still actually pb

0:25:55 Eli: This is my thought, because your daughter, from what I can tell, doesn't make make amazing decisions. She doesn't seem like the best decision maker. She married this guy without talking to you. She has a kid from a previous situationship. She moved him in. There was no conversation, age difference, all this stuff. It does not seem like this is a person who is, to use the term in parlance, doxastically open. So I think possible.

0:26:06 Lydia: Or no, I'm just kidding.

0:26:23 Lydia: Or she's too doxastically open.

0:26:27 Eli: I think your job is to to listen, because I think I would guess she married this person and the reason you haven't met them is because she is afraid of what you will think and say.

0:26:31 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:26:41 Lydia: Yeah, now that could be for good reasons or really, really bad reasons, though, you know, and that's the key. I feel like we don't have enough information like it's neither is the parent. So, well, no, no. We don't even have to help the parent because it's possible this parent is the asshole, but it's just a good writer or like, you know, someone who's presenting themselves in the best light.

0:26:45 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:26:59 Eli: I mean, we have to preclude that, because if they're like a psychopath who has rewritten the entire situation

0:27:04 Lydia: I don't know. I'm not saying to that level if they are oblivious to why the kid would not be. You don't think that's it? Oh, like there could be some situations from the past in which they haven't been necessarily supportive. Or there just could be Some reason why the kid doesn't want to, the daughter doesn't want to talk to them about it. There could be, but I would say based on the age, you know, the no job and all that stuff, I would say odds are, listener, that it's more that this guy sucks and is trying to isolate the daughter or she's just embarrassed about, she knows that it is not good and is embarrassed about it, could be that. Yeah, I'm leaning towards embarrassment and probably does care what you think and is afraid to hear it.

0:27:40 Eli: That's what I would think it is. I think it's that. I mean Right, and so what do we do when someone's embarrassed to admit their mistake? We open up, and first of all, we rip on them until they incorporate it deeply into their personality. And, and then when they do an impersonation of their own voice, it sounds like your impersonation. That's what we do. And it works a hundred percent of the time. Their own children do that

0:27:54 Lydia: We make jokes about it. Cry. And then we pretend we were just joking.

0:28:12 Lydia: Oh, man. Hopefully.

0:28:12 Eli: Impersonation Of their voice to them. That is what we do. But if you can't do that and you probably can't, cause you're not the heart and soul of the podcast.

0:28:18 Lydia: Hopefully, you know, what's funny is my kids don't ever hear me do that. Like, that's not my way with the kids at all. If you did your impression of me for my kids, they would be so confused. They would have absolutely no idea what you were doing. Yeah. They wouldn't not know that it was supposed to be Thomas. Yeah. Isn't that funny? I just thought, sorry. It says, oh, that'S Norm MacDonald. Yeah.

0:28:40 Lydia: Like, That's my favorite comedian from before I was born. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny.

0:28:37 Eli: That's crazy. I love Norm Macdonald, but that's not like my dad at all. You're not screaming. You have to scream.

0:28:49 Lydia: Their impression of me would just be like saying, I love you every three seconds. I don't know. And time to watch the Sharks. That would be the other part of their impression. There is stuff you could do. Eli, you could make it work, but it wouldn't be the one you do for the show.

0:29:03 Eli: My son's impression of me is going to my computer and saying, I am learning about number blocks. Yeah.

0:29:10 Lydia: What? Like you are learning about them?

0:29:13 Eli: We were talking the other day and I was like, and what does daddy say? And he came over to my desk, sat in my chair, put his hands on my computer and said, I am learned about number. So there you have it where

0:29:22 Lydia: Oh. That's interesting. Do you have a side project, a number of blocks podcast? Yeah.

0:29:27 Eli: I'm learning about about number blocks. Yeah.

0:29:34 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:29:35 Lydia: I do agree with you, Eli, though, that listening is the best route for these parents to take when they show up.

0:29:42 Eli: Yeah, radical acceptance. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad to see you. Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I'm so excited to meet him. You know, marriage is always tough. I hope you know you can come to me with anything.

0:29:45 Lydia: Yeah.

0:29:54 Lydia: Exactly. That's interesting.

0:29:54 Eli: I am so proud of you. I am so happy for you. You blast them with positivity. It lets them feel like they can open up and say, "Yeah, you know, it's actually not perfect. You know, I'm being human trafficked. We're two presidential administrations apart."

0:29:57 Lydia: Really? And if there is something wrong, they can actually talk to you about it. I am being human traffic. Geez. Well, which two? Sorry, that's a really dumb joke. Depends on which two.

0:30:21 Eli: If it's Clinton to Reagan, I don't know.

0:30:25 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Bush senior to Clinton is fine. Yeah. That's interesting. Is your thought there that they will open up? Cause like my thought when you started saying that was maybe a different justification, which is like at this point, she's 28. Here's an interesting thing. I wonder if as parents, will we still feel like when we're, let's say there are kids are fucking 30 and we're God, how old will it be? 48 or something. Oh my God. No. Uh, how old would it be a million? 60, 60, 60 something. Yeah. Yeah, Tom will be dead. I'll be 60. Eli might be dead, depending on if he gets lucky with the heart attack, whatever. And I'llbe the youngest of all of you. Yeah?

0:31:03 Lydia: Lydia will still look the same. Yeah. Skincare.

0:30:59 Eli: 100% dead. That's Right. Vitamin C, everybody, hit it.

0:31:09 Lydia: Is there, do parents, and I actually think this might be true, and I wonder about this. Will we still have a feeling like, oh, we're going to still change our kid. We're going still make them think differently on certain things in a way that's probably probably inappropriate.

0:31:24 Eli: Up, right.

0:31:24 Lydia: You know, what do you think about that? Do you think that happens? I think it does.

0:31:26 Eli: I mean, I'm 38 and my mom still thinks she's working on me. She's still working on my ass, you know? She's developing a behavior plan with my teachers.

0:31:30 Lydia: Yeah. She's definitely not. Yeah, yeah. I think it's probably normal for parents to have that feeling even as their kids grow up and are complete adults and stuff. But it's how you act on that. If that's an internal experience of you as a parent where it's like challenging to figure out this new dynamic or whatever or live in that new dynamic. That's one thing. It's another thing if you're trying to control their lives. Yeah, I guess why I started thinking down that road is like, maybe that's also another reason to go with the Eli Bosnick plan, which is that like, you're really not changing them at that point. Like if this daughter was 17, 18, even 21 or something, maybe, but like 28, man, you know, I forgot about that part. Yeah, I think that's another reason to kind of be chill is like, what's the best case scenario, you know, here of like trying to like intervene or trying to say something or like, I don't think it's going to do much.

0:31:42 Eli: Right, exactly. Right. Yeah, the best case scenario is your kid listens to you, recognizes that her relationship is in a good place, ends that relationship, right? The worst case scenario is you daughter, who, based on your description, is not a great decision maker, decides that you are the problem and then cuts you off and doesn't have that support when she needs it. And when she's married to a 40-year-old without a job, she's probably going to need that support sooner rather than later. So I would hold my tongue early and often and just offer support and help, and support and help. Let her learn the lessons herself. Give her advice when she really asks for it, because this is a thing that people in their late 20s love to do: is they love to half ask for advice.

0:32:41 Lydia: Never speaks to you again.

0:33:11 Eli: I see this with my younger friends all the time. They'll be like, "So what do you think of so-and-so?" That's not actually asking. That's a trap. That's you say, "I think Jesanthapus is awesome, he's so great." "What do do you think? How's it going?" And then they go, "Man." Let them find that for you. Very, very rarely will people in their late 20s just come to you with a fully open mind about wanting to change their relationship.

0:33:11 Lydia: Yeah. Right.

0:33:40 Lydia: Yeah. But we're so fucked when it comes to Phoebe in this. I'm realizing like she's goingto come home with whatever she can bring home some. Well, to be fair, I hope Phoebe's like my younger sister in that. We all thought she would never die single, but because she's so well. Oh, yeah. You can almost just do the me impression for her. Like we never thought there'd be anybody who she would deem good enough until she found somebody. And he's cool. He's he's a cool dude. I mean, they're super Catholic and all that, but like he's great, though. Yeah, he's not. He's a great match for her, but he's like, I don't know. It worked out way better than I think any of us really thought, to be honest. Even she said that like she didn't know if she would ever find someone that she deemed good enough kind of thing.

0:34:22 Eli: Status turns at the altar, who dodged a bullet, am I right, everybody?

0:34:24 Lydia: And I kind of feel like Phoebe could be that way too. But Phoebe has this thing where she's already, God, she already gets so mad. Like she can sense that we're in some way not liking what she's doing. And it's probably because she's doing something insane. And she's already pre -mad at us about it. It's really, it's going to be tough. She also does the thing where like, yeah, she's going through this she's knowing that she's doing something that's not true.

And even if we're trying to be supportive in that moment, she, like, knows that that's not true, and then she'll be mad at us for, like, this supportive thing for something that she has identified is not worthy of support. Can I get a kid? Does anyone want to trade for a kid whose brain just kind of does normal kid stuff? We have these fucking, we have, when it comes to Phoebe, Phoeba, I swear to God, her brain is working 400, 400 miles a minute.

Like it's just, there's so much going on. She's super smart, but I also think that so much of her brain is dedicated to these weird things like that, where she's like policing everybody's reaction to everything. And she's noticing everybody's thing. It's man, it's going to be tough.

0:35:08 Eli: Well, you ruined mine. I had a complete straight shooter, and then you rubbed your ADHD all over him.

0:35:37 Eli: Yeah, Max has a, a little bit of that, which is like, he's almost always doing, that's true. Doesn't know who's in the room, but he's always doing a bit, which actually makes that harder.

0:35:41 Lydia: He doesn't even know who's in the room. Oh, nice. I haven't seen him do a bit.

0:35:49 Eli: I'll give you a great example of it, right? So like he gets super upset if things don't go his way, but he's also doing a bit. I give you great example. This morning on the way downstairs to breakfast, his hand was a cuckoo bird and the cuckoobird was requesting things and asking for things. The problem is my son straight up and down when he wants to ask for something has the autism stammer, right? The like restart the sentence 800 times stammer. So it's already pretty tough for him to get through a straight up -and -down request.

0:36:02 Lydia: Love it, great bit. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, is that what Arlo's doing? Interesting. Maybe does the bird

0:36:22 Eli: So no, the bird makes it harder, right, because the bird is a bit on top of that. And so he's like, I'm not Max.

0:36:23 Lydia: Help. Oh, so you're saying it takes forever. Oh, it's Tom shit. I'm Tom the bird.

0:36:31 Eli: I am the bird. And you will. And then he's upset at me. Then he's like, no, no. And I'm like, hey, no no no. You have to choose between instructions to the butler

0:36:38 Lydia: Oh man, that is Arlo. Low. Holy shit. Yeah. Oh,

0:36:49 Eli: And the bit. You can't be mad at the butler for not bringing the strawberry yogurt fast enough when you and the bird that is your hand didn't actually get strawberry yogurt out of your fucking mouth. You gotta get, you gotta clearly communicate what you want from butler daddy, and you'll get it right away. Yeah.

0:36:58 Lydia: Boy, this is, this is so real. Oh man.

0:37:10 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, man. Arlo, it does have that stammering, but it's not when he's asking. I'm wondering what that's about. So he doesn't have it all the

0:37:17 Eli: I mean, not everyone with a stammer has... my son just fucking has It's so funny, because so one of the things that I read and, uh, "Caring for the Autistic Child" was like, "Hey, make sure you don't interrupt your kids, because a lot of the autism stammer that we sort of associate with autism comes from them just being interrupted" and having their sentences completed all the time. So try not to complete their sentences. Try not to interrupt them.

0:37:34 Lydia: Time. Shit. That's like, um, people with stutters too, right? Like that's their experience. Yeah.

0:37:41 Eli: Exactly. Yeah. Don't interrupt with someone with a stutter. Let them get through their speech. So I did this so much. Doesn't matter. Max has still got just the fucking exact autism stammer. I was like, okay, well, nothing we could have done. We tried.

0:37:51 Lydia: I tried. Yeah. God, I was just going to say, like, shoot, I feel like I mean, I definitely have interrupted before, but I also feel like I do a pretty good job of wanting to hear him talk. However, I'm realizing that from the age of zero, Phoebe was finishing his sentences. Yeah, that could be part of it. But if Eli's telling me it didn't even matter anyway, who knows?

0:38:12 Eli: Yeah, sometimes you just roll those dice and they come up with a beautiful, beautiful autism diagnosis.

0:38:18 Lydia: God, Arlo's the best. I have a question. Thinking about this listener's email and like all of the rehearsal. Right. I'm sure you've seen that, Eli. Nathan, what's his last name? Fielder. Oh, my God. So good. All of the rehearsal. Like there are so many different ways that this could shake out, I think, at the holidays. What are those potential different scenarios and how should the listener react in those different scenarios? Should they happen? Like what happens if we talked about, you know, the general advice of being open and positive and listening? I would like to see some role playing, Eli. Yeah, I would like to see that.

0:38:20 Eli: Yes, of course.

0:38:52 Eli: Okay, cool. Am I douchebag boyfriend or daughter?

0:38:54 Lydia: Who do you want to be? Well, no, I think it's the daughter and the parent. Okay, Eli, I want you to be the daughter. And Thomas, you're the parent.

0:38:59 Eli: Got it. But wait, is he Thomas?

0:39:03 Lydia: I think Eli should be the parent. Why are you I'm the director. I'm going to be the daughter. All right, fine. Okay, whatever. I think it'll work better. I think there's more comedy in the parent and Eli's better. All right. Yeah, he already did the continuity. That's true. He already did the character. Tom is like 50

0:39:08 Eli: Let me get my walker and I'm coming over. Here I am.

0:39:20 Eli: Let me put in my teeth. All right, I'm ready to have a conversation. I've finished. Yeah. Does he seem great? Does it seem awesome to be in Tom's body? Have you seen the screenshots of how much he sleeps? Fucking the people with the blood on the sand in Senegal are like, "That sucks, man. You gotta get a better situation." Oh,

0:39:37 Lydia: Oh, no, he sends us his app screenshots of, like, it's negligible amounts of sleep. I'm like, dude, why do the app? That's the same as doing nothing. Yeah, you're gonna die. We're concerned about your

0:39:48 Eli: So that the app could be like, "Pay attention." I bet they do an app update specifically for Tom where they're like, "Hey, guys, we need stronger language than pay

0:39:58 Lydia: Brain." Or there's a bug. There seems to be a bug. Yeah. Okay, so the first example, let's just do kind of the general advice that we had about being supportive and opening listening I'm not here to spoon-feed the lines. I'm just here, I'm giving that the general motivation. How exactly? Well,

0:40:10 Eli: Attention. Give a line read if he needs a line. Rain Oh!

0:40:19 Lydia: We'll see how you do, and then I'll determine if you need a line read or not. Exactly.

0:40:21 Eli: That's why you never cast a straight boy as your lead. This is the problem. Oh, Jennifer, thank you so much for coming over and introducing me to Howard.

0:40:29 Lydia: Action. Let me help you down the stairs, Father. Oh, that's true. Yeah, no, I'll help you into the chair. Can I? I'll walk. Oh, I'll just walk by it. I'll rock next to it. Okay.

0:40:35 Eli: Thank you. Wait, no, I've got this chair I installed.

0:40:47 Eli: I'll meet you down there. That's fine. All right, now I'm here. So I sure am glad to meet your 40 -year -old boyfriend. It's cool because he and I could have gone to high school together.

0:40:53 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, husband Well, not really. I mean, this is part of your brain is kind of leaving you at this advanced age. It's still seven years. How long do you think high school is? Are you smelling toast? I'm pushing the button on the chair and making it go back.

0:41:02 Eli: If he took advanced classes, maybe I saw him for me. It took a while. I got held back three times. You know that.

0:41:16 Lydia: Upstairs. Okay, bye. Bye, Dad. We'll be down

0:41:16 Eli: Oh, no, I back up the snake! Not during my monthly erection. So how do you think that worked out, Lydia?

0:41:27 Lydia: Here.

0:41:29 Eli: Do you have any notes for Thomas?

0:41:29 Lydia: That's about how it probably would go. Okay. Oh boy. Amazing from top to bottom, but some thoughts. I would like to have a little more time for you. We're all dads. Yes.

0:41:54 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:42:01 Eli: But, Smiths, Smith, before you go, scientists believe that crows are losing their ability to communicate. Experts are desperately searching for the cause. Let

0:42:17 Lydia: That's good. Cute.

0:43:05 Eli: Me know how the pool works out, motherfuckers. You think Thomas is gonna fucking lie? What do we do when someone's embarrassed to admit their mistake? We open up, and first of all, we rip on them until they incorporate it deeply into their personality and

0:43:15 Lydia: We make jokes about it. Cry. And then we pretend we were just joking.

0:43:27 Eli: Not during my monthly erection.