DOD265: Positively Negative

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 not sure who its birth parents are. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen. Hey, still alive. That lady is still alive, I think. I haven't checked in in a few weeks, but I

0:00:34 Eli: You wish, Tom, you. How desperately you wish. I know. It's crazy.

0:00:50 Thomas: Yeah,

0:00:50 Tom: Think I would have found out. My brother probably would have told me.

0:00:51 Eli: No, I think the world will do some kind of celebration. You know, everyone, you occasionally run across those memes that are like, what are you going to do when it happens? And everyone means when Trump dies. That's how I feel about when Tom's mom dies.

0:00:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:01:04 Tom: So still kicking

0:01:01 Thomas: Do you feel like you can't even entertain the thought of Trump dying? Because it's like, I'm not, you know what I'm, man, I am trying to explain this feeling. Like it's not, we'll get to it when we get to. You know, I can't get excited about it, you know? I just can't.

0:01:17 Eli: It is too good a thing. It'll be like, What about when they redistribute all the wealth? Yeah.

0:01:21 Thomas: Yeah, I don't think it's going to happen. So maybe that's it.

0:01:24 Tom: Now I'm curious. I want to ask you guys this on air. This is a great segue. Are you guys stay optimistic, be optimistic, or hope for the best, expect the worst people?

0:01:34 Eli: Stay optimistic. Be optimistic.

0:01:36 Thomas: Really? I actually can't, I'm not sure. I'm trying to think of how I, I think I, I don t know. I'd need an example. I don.

0:01:36 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:01:44 Tom: Well, I'll give you an example. So Hayley is having surgery in like a little less than two weeks now, right?

0:01:47 Thomas: Oh, okay.

0:01:48 Eli: And Tom is already wearing all black and gently. I love you so much. I'm right here. I'll just say it. I'm practicing. Yeah.

0:01:51 Thomas: Yeah. And the veil thing. Yeah.

0:01:51 Tom: No, fuck you. No. So I am as a personality, like I am optimistic. I am hopeful. I'm excited for like, we have a solution in place, right? You know, like, it's like, I am excited for what's next, right. I do expect to be, but it doesn't bother me. Like we're human beings. We're going to hurt sometimes, but it's not upsetting to me, but like Haley will not let herself be excited. She is a person who is like, I'm going to decide ahead of time that this probably won't work.

0:02:03 Thomas: Oh,

0:02:08 Eli: You just expect to be in a little bit of pain, but other than that, you're a ray of sunshine.

0:02:25 Tom: And then if it does work, I'll be happy. But if it doesn't work, I won't be so distressed if it doesn't work, and I found, like, just kind of poking around, that is a fucking line. Like, people tend to be hard one or hard the other way.

0:02:26 Thomas: Wow. Yeah,

0:02:40 Eli: I mean, one is very clearly correct. And then whenever you talk to someone who's the incorrect one, they're like, well, actually, um, that's wrong. And you're you're like, oh, okay. Oh, it's the optimism one. It's the optimism one, they've done a tremendous amount of studies of this, it doesn't matter how many bad things happen to you.

0:02:50 Tom: Well, I don't know that one is correct or not. I think it's like,

0:03:02 Eli: It doesn't care what your life circumstances are. Positive outlooks are better for your mental health, you handle challenges. So there's often one of the arguments people will make when you explain that pessimism isn't useful, is they'll be like, no, because then if you expect the worst, you're never disappointed. And it's like, actually, people who are pessimistic, not only experience more negative emotions about positive things that are going to happen to them, but they actually handle bad situations worse.

0:03:19 Thomas: You're always disappointed. Wow.

0:03:29 Tom: Oh, really?

0:03:29 Thomas: Yeah I believe it.

0:03:30 Eli: Yeah, because you're in a thought pattern of negativity. So when you stub your toe and you go, oh, maybe this is broken, you are much more inclined to go, Oh, it's totally broken. My day is ruined. My, you know, my toe is broken. As opposed to someone who goes, Oh well, you know, let me see how it feels or that kind of stuff. Yeah.

0:03:44 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah.

0:03:49 Eli: There's so much evidence that having Having a negative attitude is bad in any possible way.

0:03:54 Tom: What about a neutral? Because I feel like the space that Haley is carving out for herself is she is not going to get excited one way or the other. It's a very aggressive wait and see, but it has a plan for the worst sort of element to it. I will acknowledge that.

0:04:08 Eli: Yeah, I mean, look, I think if you could achieve pure neutrality, it sounds pretty, pretty awesomely Buddhist.

0:04:16 Thomas: It's gonna give my answer, which is probably annoying, which is like, well, I just try to have the attitude of what's gonna happen. Like, if I'm like, all right, this thing, oh no, I do. No, I do. Yeah, no, I do. Okay, what

0:04:25 Tom: But you don't have feelings. Thomas, feelings are things that you have in your, yeah.

0:04:29 Eli: You answered too quickly.

0:04:31 Thomas: No, I swear.

0:04:31 Eli: Now I think you don't have feelings. I do.

0:04:32 Thomas: I do. I know a lot of people who

0:04:33 Eli: I have feelings and I

0:04:34 Tom: I had one once.

0:04:34 Thomas: Know them. I bet some of my best friends

0:04:36 Eli: Love them. My favorite one is the one that's squishy.

0:04:41 Tom: Feelings? It's like a bag of sand, right?

0:04:42 Thomas: But like, I got a question, like, how are you supposed to feel, like, let's say there's an event that's important and it really does matter how important it is, obviously, like, I, I'm realizing that I'm remembering that I told the story of when we had the miscarriage, and I remember the next time we went to the appointment to, like, like, check when we were pregnant with Remy is I realized I, I hadn't realized how much I had, like, not allowed myself to be excited about it. 'Cause I was so worried that all happened kind of unconsciously. Like, I didn't even realize that, like, I was like, Oh shit. Once it happened, I was Like, Oh wow. I really hadn't even allowed myself To think like, Hey, what if we're having a baby? Like I'd even, you know, cause I was just like, so, so I think when it's something that's really, really important or stealing around, like something that was really like hurt you, it's, it's tricky. I think it's pretty difficult to like shape that when something that's important.

I tend to just be like, well, like if, like, if it, if I was having a medical thing, I'd be like well, there's a, you know, something, something percent chance that goes wrong. I just be like, okay, that's what it is. I don't know.

So, but like, what's hard though, is if, let's say it's like 50, 50, 60, 40, 70, 30, how are you supposed to feel when you have a 30 % chance of something going really badly, let's say? Like, that's not like you're supposed to feel great about that, but I guess it would be, I think maybe to Eli's point, probably, like, obviously it would all be better if we all felt amazing all the time. That'd be great. I tend to just try to match what I think the odds of stuff are usually, and, uh, yeah, I guess. Yeah. Hmm.

0:04:44 Tom: Sort of feeling is right.

0:04:44 Eli: Right.

0:05:12 Tom: Yeah.

0:06:12 Tom: But that's where things get like, I'm right there with you. I think that's where things gets like confusing. Cause like, again, like for Haley, it is 70, 30, 70 % chance. This goes great.

0:06:17 Thomas: Yeah. That's rough. Yeah.

0:06:21 Tom: 30 % chance it doesn't work. The odds are in her favor. Like for me, all I think is like the odds are with us. Like they're strongly with us, you know, like I, like, for me personally, psychologically, it does not useful for me to think any other way. Like, when I fucked up my neck recently, as you may recall, I didn't even look up what the success rate was, because I just knew, like, well, there was not really a choice, like I, I have to go do this thing and, like, it's like, it'll work. And if it doesn't work, then I just have to not be anymore. I don't know, that's not an option. So I gotta go do this thing because it's the next thing to do. And I know that it's way lower stakes, but like, Like, I recognize, like, I can't let myself be like, yeah, the odds are in our favor. That's it. The odds are on our favor, like at some point the odds have to break for you. So like, right? Like at some point.

0:06:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, that's what Tom's been saying for.

0:07:13 Eli: Something has to go right eventually, right? Hey, Tom, this was a weird way for you to say this to us. And also, you probably should have said it off air.

0:07:23 Tom: No.

0:07:24 Eli: Hey, guys, I got a topic for today's show. You know, everything's been going wrong for like two years. And maybe something will go right once. Joke's about it. Go on, have a tequila.

0:07:40 Eli: Spin that dreidel on that particular topic, brother. Let him know.

0:07:45 Tom: I am curious, is Anna also an optimist the same way you are? Is she, uh, things are probably gonna work out kind of person?

0:07:50 Eli: No, Anna is a wild pessimist because she grew up with a parent who thought that by preparing her for the worst, she would be better, but it just gave her an anxiety disorder. And we still actually, and I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this. I don't think she might be sharing this, that is something that we still work on as a family all the time, right? Is like, we will take in a news item and then we have to talk about what is realistic to be expected from that news item. Or we will learn something about the world or something about someone in our family and we will sort of talk through in healthy and positive ways what to actually expect and how we should behave and how we should think about those things. And she has gotten incredibly good through the use of things like CBT and ACT at catching those expectations when they are unhealthy. And that's a lot of the work that she has done. It's really, really important work. One of the reasons why people defend the pessimism attitude so strongly is because it's a self-defense mechanism.

0:07:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:08:19 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:08:54 Eli: Right. Is that they think that they are preparing themselves emotionally, but actually they're doing a tremendous amount of damage. Right? And so one of the reason why people sort of stick by that, even though you show that. Right, because like they can Google is pessimism or optimism better. Right like they've they've. Right but they've read like positive attitude stuff. They're peripherally aware that positive attitudes are good for you. But when you put that in, and you know, this is why I'm so proud of Anna, when you put that challenge in front of most people, like, hey, your worldview is not serving you, they just say or do anything not to change said worldview, right? They'll just be like, no, actually, I made up a source just now. Or, you know.

It's different because my past, I remember this so much. A friend who has this worldview, I was talking to them about it. And she explained to me that it was different because the pessimism that most people experience, they're not as intelligent as her. So they're not as good at like assessing the situation. And so her pessimism comes from a place of like superior knowledge. And I bet if they studied like smarter pessimists, that the smarter pessimist and I was like, wow, I say this is a pretty pure psychopath. What?

0:09:09 Thomas: Well, they would never do

0:10:10 Tom: Yeah. Well, it's, it's funny because, like, and now I'm wondering if Hayley is gonna be okay me sharing this, but like, Hayley, when we first met, very much an optimus. I mean, it was something we were both drawn to and in each other. Very much in optimist. No

0:10:22 Thomas: That Just lived a, like, two weeks into living with Tom. Holy shit.

0:10:28 Tom: No.

0:10:28 Eli: No. Yeah.

0:10:28 Thomas: Is anything good ever gonna happen again?

0:10:31 Tom: And this whole like medical shenanigans that has been just like genuinely traumatic and it's been going on for, you know, five plus years now, it has changed her mindset that like, you know, now it's like, well, we're not going to get hopeful about things because if we get hopeful and they don't work, then like that is an extra trauma. And I get that. Like, if you see, so it's like, wow, because we've been hopeful in the beginning, like, oh, cool. Like we figured it out and like, it'll be this and like we'll try this thing. And it's like well that didn't fucking work and now here we are, and it is like, so I think, like, it can kind of arrive through these, like, really negative experiences. It's just interesting because, like, as somebody who personally, like, I ever, it's, it's optimism or nothing for me.

0:11:00 Eli: Yep. Yeah.

0:11:14 Tom: So, like, when things happen, though, now I temper my, uh, expression of that where I'll just be like, I'd be okay if that, it's probably good news, right? Probably it's good news, good, good-ish news, kind of, you know, because you don't want to. It's like, how do you feel about that? Actually, don't check in. Yeah.

0:11:24 Eli: Yeah.

0:11:25 Thomas: Ever I Really? That's interesting because, as somebody who, I, I let you know, because obviously I grew up with the most negative people in the world, I think, in a way, and a pessimist actually probably appreciates having someone be an optimist around them. But maybe I, maybe I'm, maybe not in every situation, but I, I almost feel like it's better, it just be you, man. Just like, be the optimist. I think it's like, I think it's part of the overall atmosphere that, you know, that maybe a pessimistic and kind of benefit from your optimism a little bit, you know, I mean. Mm.

0:11:33 Eli: Oh.

0:11:33 Tom: Yeah.

0:12:04 Eli: 100.

0:12:04 Tom: I think if they're still like in the sort of traumatic moment, which I think we feel like here, at least medically.

0:12:11 Thomas: -hmm. Oh. Oh, sure, yeah, yeah.

0:12:11 Tom: Like, we're still very much in that traumatic moment. Like, I think that that is less welcome them. I think overall, yes, I agree with that. Like, overall, absolutely. Like, and I think overall what I fully expect is for, you know, at some point, that's for You at some point, like, Hayley will get better. I'll do it anyway though, I'm within my circle of stones, so it's safe. Like, Haylee will get better, and then that will come back. God damn it! I did it wrong. Ah, yeah, damn it, damn.

0:12:26 Eli: Yeah, yeah.

0:12:28 Thomas: He's talking about me. No, you don't have to do that for me, Tom.

0:12:34 Eli: No, you're supposed to be out of the circle, Tom. God damn it. You negative, damn triple stamp to double stamp.

0:12:38 Thomas: Oh, no, he fucked it. Better smash a mirror. And the only thing, did we do the break?

0:12:46 Eli: The only thing worse than Hayley's luck with the medical establishment is the auto ads. Yes, the auto adds, like the misdiagnosis of your podcasting experience. And you can make all that go away over at patreon.com/dearolddads. We're gonna commercial free extended version of every single show, plus monthly bonus episodes. You can get all of it over at patreon.com/dearolddads. Rip into it. That was an ASMR.

0:13:14 Tom: It. Yes.

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0:13:23 Eli: One plug aside, I did, I did want to point something out because you actually brought up a really good point, which is that there is a difference between encouraging optimism and denying trauma. And It's really, really important not to, because a tremendous amount of people do the latter when they think they are doing the former, right? Someone says, I've had a bunch of really bad medical experiences or I've Had a really bad, a really horrible run of bad luck. Right. And you hear this a lot. I mean, talk about men and women, right. You hear this A lot with like good guy syndrome, right, which is that someone female identifying, we'll talk about like, yeah, no, I had this, these really bad experiences with men, and they're, they're sort of like, well, you can't think of all men that way, you know, you gotta have a positive attitude.

0:13:32 Tom: Right. Yeah.

0:13:33 Thomas: Yeah, yeah yeah.

0:13:45 Thomas: No, no you didn't.

0:14:05 Thomas: Thanks, helpful.

0:14:05 Eli: And that of course is not optimism. It is, it is the denial of another person's lived experience, but there are healthy ways to accept someone's lived experience while also encouraging them to make healthy cognitive decisions for themselves, right?

0:14:21 Thomas: Yeah, good call.

0:14:22 Tom: I think that's exactly it. That's, and that's that, like, toxic positivity stuff that gets stuck in there too, right? Yeah. All right, so we got an email from Paul. Paul says, "My wife and I are in the process of seeking to adopt an older child, could use another perspective. We always wanted a larger family, but our son was

0:14:35 Eli: No.

0:14:36 Thomas: Is that you as an older child? Like, you are an older child. Hey, come adopt me. No, I'm just

0:14:40 Eli: It's an adoption. I just, we're given the adoptive family shout out. I like it that occasionally people will be like, I remember because we were talking about adoption on a gam movie once and I got a bunch of comments from people being like, Eli does not care for adoption, and I was like, I feel like I need to occasionally remind people that I'm in an adoptive family. Yeah.

0:14:55 Tom: Born, what? That is crazy.

0:15:02 Eli: Tom

0:15:02 Tom: We always wanted a larger family, but our son was born with significant medical issues, so much so that having biological children is a risky proposition. Our son is a wonderful young man now at 12

0:15:13 Eli: Do you want to sell that a little less sexily, because that felt, it felt like now. Now we roll the dice on my comment.

0:15:17 Tom: So much so, risky proposition, a risky composition.

0:15:23 Eli: Nut maxing.

0:15:25 Tom: Our son is a wonderful young man now at 12, but the first six years were incredibly tough for us all. When he was small, I couldn't bring myself to be around typical children. The comparisons to his disabilities were too much to bear. Now that he's much older and more self-sufficient, life is easier, and the trauma from his earlier years has eased. He'll most likely need to live with us his entire life, but we're at peace with that and look forward to seeing him continue to develop into a man. About two years ago, we agreed that now that there's space in our lives again, we'd love to adopt an older child.

0:15:23 Thomas: Kidding, not Maxie

0:15:54 Tom: Child, 5 to 12, and have been on that journey ever since. We've cast an ever wider net and are considering children nationwide, but we are starting to get the impression that having a child with disabilities at home puts us in a bucket to care primarily for other children with significant disabilities. This isn't stated outright, but any agency we deal with, nationally, interstate, local, etc., seems to see us as not a good fit for a more typical child. Having barely made it through the first time, we don't feel able to parent another child with significant intellectual disabilities, and we both feel guilty for being so selective. There's a lot of emotion and guilt that comes along with this, but my wife and I are firmly set on being parents to a child we can really teach and raise in a way that we were robbed of the first time. Every rejection feels personal, and after two years of this, it's beginning to feel like we're stuck. What advice advice might the dads have?"

0:16:14 Thomas: Oh. Wow.

0:16:50 Eli: Can I speak briefly to this as an adoptive family? Because I think this person sort of, don't get me wrong, you are right and you are also incorrect in that it has to do with the fact that you have a disabled child. So adoptive services, especially in the United States, are desperate to adopt kids who are struggling with disabilities, because a tremendous amount of kids who were up for adoption are dealing with disability.

They are not getting the resources they need from the state or the country. And so the sooner they can get those young people placed, the sooner They can, for lack of a better term, catch up to the things that they haven't had. Right.

So if a child up for adoption, as an example, is a wheelchair user, right, they will often have little to no experience at a state level pushing their own wheelchair or operating their own wheelchair, certainly if they need a motorized wheelchair or anything that requires like money to an assistive device wheelchair, something that goes up or down or all of that, the chances that they have had access to that, even in the best possible states, right? Even here in Jersey, right? Where we really put a ton of money into that. The chances that they have Had that kind of access are incredibly

0:18:05 Thomas: Man.

0:18:05 Eli: Minimum. So the pressure that you're seeing is the general pressure of adoption everywhere, right, which is to get kids placed into healthy, safe environments. Adding to that that you are already supporting a child with medical needs, like, you're the fucking golden goose of placing someone with advanced medical needs, because they're like, holy shit, they did a good job. Like you said, your kid is thriving, so they can actually see a child thriving in that environment, right? That's, that is why. It is not because they have necessarily pigeonholed you or think that that you're not a good fit for a children without medical needs. It's that they know you are up to the task of medical needs. Yet.

0:18:24 Tom: Yeah, That was my first thought, too. I wondered the same thing, if they aren't looking at it and saying, oh, my gosh, like, we have so many of the kids in the foster and adoptive care system are people that have high needs. That is a huge amount of the kids that end up in that system and stay in that sistem longer term in that age bracket. And I wonder if they're saying like, you guys know what you're doing. This would be great. Right. Like we would love to put, you know, one of these kids that desperately needs a home and long term care with somebody who has experience in that. And I wonder if they're not biasing themselves in the sense of being like, we're impressed. Look at what you've done, you now.

0:19:04 Thomas: Bummer.

0:19:19 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:19 Tom: But I want to acknowledge, too, I totally understand and think it's legitimate to say I'm not up for that.

0:19:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:26 Eli: A hundred percent. Yes. Right.

0:19:27 Tom: I think there needs to be room for acknowledging that for the most part, when most people decide to have kids. And again, this isn't 100%. This isn't everything. Most people are not thinking the likelihood is that I will have a child that has long -term significant medical care needs. That is not usually the thought process for most people going into having kids. It's okay to be daunted. It's okay to say I know what I can do. It's okay to stay I know my resources are, and that includes, like, your emotional resources, your financial resources, your time and intellect resources, and say like, I got to know what I'm up to, and it's ok to be like, I'm not up to that task. That's a huge, huge task. Like, I feel like we don't sort of say out loud that it's OK to be overwhelmed by caring for, for people that need an intense level of care.

0:20:25 Eli: And I also think that a lot of people in their desire to not make people with disabilities feel like a burden negate the fact that obviously having a child with a disability is difficult and has challenges that having a child without a disability doesn't have, right? And don't get me wrong, like disability acceptance and awareness are such wonderful, important movements, right, but the pendulum always swings a little too far. That's the nature of human interaction, right. We never go from a bad thing to exactly the right take right away.

0:20:39 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:21:00 Eli: And when you are the parent of a person with a disability who you adore and you have a rich parenting experience with, that pressure is doubled and trebled, because when you have to talk about your kid's disability there is sort of an expectation that you'll go like, but really, isn't it all so worth it and wonderful? Like, you have to do this weird spiel about like, but I love my kid anyways, I swear. Tom

0:21:21 Tom: Yeah.

0:21:20 Thomas: Yeah. We're so inspired all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He

0:21:27 Tom: I want to make sure that I'm not misunderstood for that exact reason. Like I, I, I do not hate disabled people at all. Very much. Not, I just,

0:21:30 Eli: Hates disabled people. He's been very clear about that. Yeah, disses disses. He's on 4chan trying to get that going as a slur for most of his day. That's why he's so tired.

0:21:32 Thomas: Calls them the disableds a lot, which I don't think is

0:21:42 Tom: Jesus Christ. I am not. No, no, no. I just. God damn it. That is part of it. That is, that is, that's not contributing. It's a contributing factor. No, like I a hundred percent just want to like, acknowledge that like it's hard, it's okay to say out loud it's hard. There's this like really stupid fucking like a saying that like religion, oh, God never gives you more than you can handle.

0:21:56 Thomas: Right, yeah. Oh, yeah.

0:22:04 Eli: God don't make no joke.

0:22:04 Tom: And like you're supposed to, you're opposed to walk around as if you have an endless fucking well and it never goes dry and your reserves never run low, and that is how you're suppose to be because by God you're a parent and there is no end to the amount of resources that you can pour into to somebody else. And like, that's just not accurate all the time for everyone. It's okay to say out loud that that's not accurate for you. That's okay. Like, we should acknowledge who we are, and that is nothing to do with, like, the dignity and love and respect for people that have disabilities. If anything, it is saying like, hey, I, I don't want to do a bad job I don't want to, like, take on a responsibility that I'm unsure that I can equip myself well for, so I just want to make sure I'm not misunderstood there.

0:22:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

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0:22:56 Thomas: I'll be honest, lately I've been having the feeling to myself, the thought to myself where I'm like, man, people who parent neurotypical kids actually aren't doing parenting. They actually that's actually just, that's just having a roommate, you know? That's just like living with someone. Yeah, you just got a little roommate.

0:23:08 Eli: You just got a little roommate who you occasionally come out and offer a variety of foods to and they eat all of them?

0:23:17 Thomas: I'm sure that's not true, but it is what it feels like to me sometimes, because I just, I have, the other day I'm just like, boy, do people get to experience not their kid just having a fucking psychotic yelling fit every four seconds at your face constantly, and not, and that, like, do I know, I know, and here's the the thing. No one knows what everyone else's experience is. So I bet you there's plenty of people who are like, oh no, my kid still has tantrums or whatever. And it's like, yeah, I guess, you know, like, I don't, I think it's the same. Oh, it's, it'S, yeah. I mean, Phoebe, Phooebe is just, we're struggling and it's like it's it's just so hard. And I don't know, like and it adds up to I mean, someone made us have three kids and whoever made us have three.

0:23:37 Eli: Turns out Remy's just a quiet, normal kid and Tom's been fucking losing it this entire time for no reason. Worked for me. Goo -ga -moog.

0:24:13 Thomas: No, I love our kids, obviously. It's but it's like sometimes weekends, especially if we get through. I know I've made the joke before, but we get to Sunday night and we're just fucking war refugees.

0:24:13 Eli: Damn it! If only they'd warned us.

0:24:27 Eli: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:24:27 Thomas: We're just like, I can't even I I can't even believe we got through that. It's the most draining thing. It's insane.

0:24:34 Eli: Believe me, I 100% get it. And I also think that there is a weird competition among parents to not admit that parenting isn't always fun, that parenting Isn't always easy. Right? But there's just so there are so many people who are like, well, every moment's precious. And it's also, you know, parenting mentorship is really hard to find, which is crazy, right?

0:24:46 Thomas: Oh, I'll admit it, damn it.

0:24:58 Eli: Because it's, it's one of the most important, in my opinion, let me put this for me. It's one of the most important things I will do, right? Maybe not for you. I love your Stardew Valley farm. For me, my journey parenting is one of the most importante things that I will ever do. And yet mentorship is incredibly hard for a couple reasons. Number one, the people who are older in your life who should be mentoring parenting haven't done it for 30 years, which is not great, right.

You wouldn't want to show up to a plumbing school and the guy was like, "Hey everybody, I got my plumbing certification in 1964." You'd be like, "Oh, I feel like I want someone who has been able to work with black guys the whole time they've been a plumber and ride in the same part of the car. I think that's important to me." Right? So you've got that for the older thing. For contemporaries, no matter what you do now, again, I am very lucky in that I just have so many parenting friends who are loving and giving and out in front of that, right? And I've talked about this, but like, like my dad friends are so open about what they're struggling with and create so much space that I really can step into that and really, really talk to them.

And that is literally just I rolled quadruple sixes for all of my parenting friends. Right. And so I have seen that. But I think for a lot of people, that's not the case. Right. Even if you have parenting friends, which is significantly less common than it used to be. Right. Especially for this generation of

0:24:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:19 Thomas: Yeah, and they never did it right.

0:26:25 Eli: Post -COVID kids.

0:26:25 Thomas: Yeah, we have like none.

0:26:27 Eli: Right, well, because keep in mind too that, like, everyone who has COVID-ish babies within that two to three year period, instead of the, like, mommy and me yoga and this, that, and the other thing, we all just kind of fucking sat around figuring out if we would ever go out in public again in those early years. So like all of that stuff that we grew up with, where it's like, "Oh no, my mom's known her since I was a baby, they were in the same delivery list," like, no, none of that fucking shit happened for us. And then you add to that the fact that the capitalist isolationist idea of everybody has to have a seven bedroom house, eight miles from everyone else's seven bedroom house. Right. Which again is a fucking 50 year old idea that doesn't work. Right?

0:26:27 Tom: Yeah. Yep. Yep.

0:27:10 Eli: But you add the pressure of that to things. You add the pleasure of, of preschools and the pressure not to send your kid to daycare or preschool or, well, if you send them too early, they're not not going to recognize, right? You add all of that stuff. I think people are more divided than ever before. And then you've got politics on top of that, right, which is something that Anna and I experience a ton of, right. Which is like we live in a district where we have very, very different lives and very, Very different politics than a lot of the families who go to Max's school. Right. And so we have to navigate those. We don't have a bunch of hardcore Trumpers at our school, but they have very different lived experiences than us, right? They're not interested in hearing about my fucking atheist podcast for sure -sies.

I'm sure there's one or two closet atheist parents out there, but for the most part, they are living a very different experience. And so I think all of that tends to pressure us into this feeling of loneliness and being the only one who is going through that.

0:27:27 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:28:10 Tom: When I read this email, I thought of this kid from my high school. Well, I didn't know him very well. He lived down the street from my ex when we were in high school, Well, no, I think his senior year or right after his senior year, he got in a car wreck. And after the car wreck, he had in the car rack, he'd suffered a traumatic brain injury.

And he was going to, after that car wreck his personality had changed, his needs had changed and he was going to require full -time medical care with his parents. He was never going to be able to move out. Literally the day before that car rack he was on track like like, you know, all of his other peers to go to high school and, you know, move on from whatever was after high school for him.

And then, you know, something in his life changed and all of a sudden, you know, he was profoundly disabled. And his parents were friends of my ex's parents. And they were clearly very upset, not just for, and I just want to like say, I thought this was like, it stuck with me for all these years. And it's been 30 years. They were very upset set obviously for their son.

But as like the years kind of went on, one of the things that became clear is that like they had to sort of completely reimagine how their own lives were now going to look, how their plans for retirement were going to change, how they're financial lives now needed to be adjusted so that there would be a trust that would live on long after them. They had to make a lot of provisions and they had make a ton of money.

And I think of this email and it's like, I think it's entirely legitimate to say, Hey, I know what I want to get into. I know there's no guarantees, right? Like we all have to accept, like there's no guarantees you could get in a car wreck tomorrow. We all have the ability to find ourselves at any moment in our lives. And that's hit home here in our house. You know, we could, our lives could be

0:28:18 Eli: He was disabled, and so Tom refused to let him.

0:29:59 Eli: I keep hitting Haley with my car.

0:29:59 Tom: Upended literally overnight, you know? I mean, well, Haley was fine. And then literally overnight was not fine. You You know, it was it was that fast. And then things have not been good since then, you know, so things can change overnight. But I think it's entirely legitimate to say, well, I'm not going to choose that first because I don't want to put myself in a position that like I might not equip myself well of or that I might not be equipped for.

One of the worries I had personally about being a dad was I was really afraid I was not going going to be good at it. I did not presume that I would be a good dad. I wasn't like, oh yeah, I'll just do, I'll, I'll be good with this. It was a real worry that I, that I wrestled with for like a long time, really up until like Finn was born, and then I was like, oh, this is, I got this. Like, I felt like, I felt a surge of, of probably unwarranted confidence as soon as he was born. But like, through that whole pregnancy, I was like, I am really nervous that I may not be good at this.

And I think it's like, yeah, it's okay to be like, yeah, I might not be good at this, or I might not have the resources for this. Adoption's a big deal. It's a really big deal, and it's a wonderful thing. Haley and I have talked in the past that if we were just a little bit younger, we totally would adopt. We would do that in a second. We both believe in it as a value. Her family has a lot of people that were adopted.

I had a stepbrother that was adopted, two stepbrothers actually that were adopted when I lived with my mom and my stepfather. We've you've had very positive experiences around adoption and personal experiences around adoption.

0:30:02 Thomas: When

0:30:19 Eli: Right. Yeah.

0:31:35 Thomas: Your mom adopts someone, they call it murder. Murder. That's a different, slightly,

0:31:39 Eli: Again, Tom, the cops explained it. This was a kidnapping. No.

0:31:40 Thomas: Subtly different. Yeah. Kidnapping.

0:31:40 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I forget. I mean, it didn't work out well for those guys, but I had, I had positive experiences. So yeah.

0:31:46 Eli: Yeah, to be fair.

0:31:47 Thomas: No, she called it, what'd she call it? It was like involuntary adoption. It was something like that. There's a, they have a term for it.

0:31:52 Tom: Involuntary adoption.

0:31:53 Thomas: Yeah, they haven't, it's an industry term for it, you know?

0:31:54 Tom: Yeah.

0:31:53 Eli: Imagine having to divorce your adoptive parents. It's like, ah, I'm going to pass.

0:31:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:32:06 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:32:08 Tom: I think this couple is wrestling with, like, feeling guilty. Like, I think that's the heart of the question is they're wrestling with feeling guilty for not wanting to take on a set of work or an amount of work or an amount of, like, labor and I think, like, it's okay, like, if you need permission, if you need someone to say it, I'll say it. It's okay to know your limits

0:32:20 Thomas: Yeah?

0:32:26 Eli: Well, and I will also throw this out there because the adoptive process is so difficult and you have to go through so many notes. Keep in mind, I was 15 when my parents adopted. So my parents were pretty young. And they were told constantly, you are too old. The fact that you already have a kid is a negative. There are a lot of real problems with the adoption system right now. One of them being, right, you already got a roaster in the household. How are they, you know, we gotta, we gotta get the toughest possible kid. It's going to be able to put up with his japes, right? But like, yeah.

0:32:49 Thomas: You already have a roaster in the household? That's one of the, that's, yeah, that's one of them things you can't. We'd rather you have a cable, a power cable, like, that's just jumping and sparking and flying That would be less dangerous. Yeah. Oh

0:33:05 Tom: Wow.

0:33:05 Eli: Could you, could you have uncovered wires instead of your 15 year old? I think that'd be better. But because of that, they tend to rush you through the process. They tend to be not as open. And look, sometimes this is an accident. Sometimes it's not. I certainly don't want to say that this is true of everybody, but they tend not to be honest about what disabilities a child is dealing with, right?

0:33:26 Thomas: Wow.

0:33:26 Eli: If they say, oh, they have this one, they might not also talk about that one, which is something that we dealt with really early on in the adoption process before we ended up getting my sister. As we were talking about getting one kid and then it turned out Their needs were much more severe than we could.

0:33:40 Thomas: Are you serious? Are they used car salesmaning the kid? No Way. Jesus Christ. Christ.

0:33:44 Tom: Jesus.

0:33:43 Eli: Yeah, literally fucking used car sales. Yeah. To put it in delicately, they were trying to sell us a lemon kid and we sort of had to.

0:33:49 Thomas: Oh my God.

0:33:51 Tom: Christ.

0:33:51 Eli: Yeah we had to deal with that. And that is incredibly common when it comes the adoption system to put it optimistically. And I think it should be put optimistically because I think most of the people who work in adoption are saints. Those people are very desperate for kids not to become part of a larger state system.

0:33:52 Thomas: That's so horrible. Yeah.

0:34:09 Thomas: I was just had that thought of like, maybe that's actually the best thing to do. Maybe that's really saintly.

0:34:13 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you ask anybody in adoption, they're going to be like, I'll fucking sneak this baby into your house in the middle of the goddamn night, man. You haven't seen what I've seen. You don't know what I know. Right. And look, the solutions to that are better support within the state system, better support within the foster system, these

0:34:23 Thomas: Yeah, I could sell this kid with the leads you got tonight. Yeah yeah

0:34:33 Eli: Things we know already. But what I want to encourage this listener to do, and again, it's probably been several years since they asked this question, so I'm sure they have this child already. And it's actually the listener who wrote in. But what I wanna encourage you to do is understand that it is not a race, that you can take your time and you can wait until you feel great. Waiting until you feels great is a totally okay thing to do as a part of this process. You are not a beggar going door to door asking for a child. You are finding a new member of your family, and you get to take all the time and space required to do that. Are

0:34:46 Thomas: Yeah that's a great point. I really feel for it too because I imagine you know and again just going through I don't know a hundredth of whatever. I don' t think any of my kids technically have disabilities right now Now that I know of.

0:35:22 Eli: Adopted, right?

0:35:24 Thomas: Yeah, not yet. I'm trying. No, I'm just kidding. I don't think any of them will qualify as having disabilities yet. I don't know. I could be wrong about that. But just the neurodivergence, just using that as kind of a bit of a comparison when things are just not as easy as they might be for other parents. I totally feel for these parents for sure. Like the guilt of feeling like, hey, we've been through so much. That might be a feeling of like, that's even less fair to us that we're being pinned as people who would adopt a disabled child. Cause like, I can imagine that feeling unfair just having gone through so much, you know, I, I could imagine that being a really tough thing. And then the, and then of course the like guilt that would go with that, you Know, like the guilt of those feelings.

0:35:24 Tom: Yeah, I I hear this email and like, I feel from this email this sense of like, well, do we have to because we can? And that's something like Haley and I have wrestled with. We're very fortunate that we've got, you know, resources. And it's like, well, are we obligated? Like, should we take I mean, there's all these people that need help, you Know, like, should we do this? And we have had real serious conversations about this. And, you know, ultimately, we decided not to do that. And I think, you know, given the circumstances that followed, I'm glad. I'm very glad that we did.

I don't know how we would be able to get through if we had five kids instead of four, but like, I think there's like, if you're a good-hearted, empathetic person and you see need and you want to meet those needs and you're like, well, shit, and I also, I kind of know how to do this work And you know, like, I would feel a sense of real obligation based on ability, but I think that we do have to, when we're thinking about our families and our future and like our emotional well-being, we do have to say, okay, well, there are more things to consider than in my ability to do what's right, you know? And is it actually the right thing to do long-term if I'm gonna suffer or my relationship with my wife is gonna suffer or my wife might suffer? There is a huge amount of work that comes, everybody knows, like from having kids and that oftentimes puts strains on other bonds in those relationships.

0:36:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:52 Thomas: I mean, unless you have normie kids and it's not even work, it's actually, it's easy.

0:37:29 Tom: Then it's nothing, it's obvious to nothing, yeah.

0:37:30 Thomas: It's actually a vacation.

0:37:32 Tom: So just something else to think about too. It's like, it's okay to say like, hey, I just, this is not an experience that I think I can do twice. You did it once and that's fucking awesome you did it

0:37:41 Eli: It Sounds like you did a great job.

0:37:43 Tom: Once. You should be commended for doing it once. It is a true fact that sometimes kids end up in the foster and adoptive care system because other people weren't able to do what you did, and so you did this and that is great. You should be commended for having the resources and the fortitude and the relationships and the supports that you can offer your son the life that you have been able to offer. And that's great. But I think the ability to do something doesn't create an obligation necessarily to do something.

0:37:43 Thomas: Yeah,

0:37:43 Eli: Too right.

0:37:54 Thomas: Shut

0:38:14 Eli: And whether or not you want a person who, you know, has a disability as your adoptive child is as much your choice as it is your choice to have a child. Like, we all understand, you know, something that comes up quite a bit for us because we do Dads, people be like, well, I don't have kids, or I'm child free by choice, but I still like the show. And I'm like, yeah, that's also fine, right? That's also fine. You get to make those choices about your life, because something that comes up quite a little bit when you're a parent of a kid with a disability is that people are like, well, you're going to be happy with X, right?

You know, there, there is an implication, communication there. Is a sneaky subtext to a lot of what you are told as a parent of a kid with a disability that your life is going to be less than, that your experience with your child is going to be worse than, right, RFK Junior? You're never going to play baseball, right? And it's like, my kid will play fucking baseball. If he wants to play basketball, you're the one who has to wear jeans wherever you go. You

0:39:04 Tom: Right.

0:39:05 Thomas: Up. My kid will play baseball. I'll sign them up, and then they'll refuse to play baseball exactly. Come on, are they just like any other kid? That's why there's no one on the team right now

0:39:11 Eli: Psycho, and then they'll refuse to play. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly just like every other Exactly.

0:39:19 Thomas: They're just an empty field. It's because all the kids do what my fucking kid does. Yeah.

0:39:24 Eli: Yeah, but like, the truth of the matter is, as much as we mock RFK Jr. and are horrified by him saying that, he's just saying a sort of generalized thought

0:39:33 Thomas: God, do you wish you could give RFK Jr. a piece of your mind in terms of, like, if you had a kid that ended up like him? Yeah, exactly. I just wish I could communicate to him fully, hey man, I don't mind having an autistic kid. If I had a kid that was anything like you, I'd fucking kill myself. You know what I mean? Like, I would actively kill myself

0:39:34 Eli: About disabled people

0:39:34 Tom: Yeah, I am. Is a piece of my mind my fist?

0:39:42 Eli: Aloud, I would just destroy every, hey, you have a dynasty that includes a president and a presidential candidate so beloved we've named several airports after him, and and everyone in your family regrets bearing your last name right now. We thought about that. You destroyed the legacy of John F. Kennedy.

0:40:10 Thomas: You ruined the Kennedy.

0:40:15 Eli: Think about that?

0:40:09 Tom: One other quick thing I want to offer is that I think also, especially with issues like this, there is a tendency to confuse What's right for you with what's prescriptively or morally right. And like that is always a mistake. That is always, always a mistake. When you're thinking about issues that are as personal as this, the question about what's right for you is not a prescriptively a moral declaration. It is not like a because I did this. It is the right thing. What you're deciding right now is what's right for you and your family. And you get to make all the choices. You get to draw that circle exactly how you need to draw that circle. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you are prescribing what is right, capital R, or making some kind of moral proclamation. What you're doing is just saying, hey, for me, for my family, this is right.

0:41:10 Eli: And I'll take it one step further. Sometimes there is a better, more ethical choice and you get to choose to make that choice, right? You and your family probably aren't all vegan, right, and you probably should be vegan, but you're allowed to not make that choice and it doesn't make you a bad person, right? I mean, look, Sam Harris is wrong about a lot of things, but this notion of the moral landscape that he lays out in The Moral Landscape is actually a really important thing to wrap your head around, right, which is that you eating meat and making a ton of other choices will make you, arguably, a better person than me not eating meat, right? Similarly, there will be families who are eager to take multiple disabled kids into their houses, and that's how they want to spend their time and energy and effort. And that's what they want their families to look like. And you will make other choices that bring good into the world a different way.

0:41:21 Tom: Right.

0:42:01 Tom: Yeah, dude, that's exactly the right way to think about these things. I think, like, at least for me, I remember, like, as a young person wrestling with stuff, I used to, like, apply that sort of, like, what if ever the content thing, right? Right. Like, what if everybody did this or what if everybody didn't do this? Like, and I kind of thought in those terms, and that's how I wrestled with a lot of, like, how I thought right and wrong worked. But like, there are some issues where it's like, no, this is a personal choice and this is not a prescriptive choice. And it took me a long time to, like, reconcile that for myself. So I think some people, I see it in writing a lot. I see it, like, online in spaces a lot where people will confuse personal choice with prescriptive, like, morality. And they're just not the same thing. So, you know, I want to, I want to acknowledge that, too.

0:42:42 Eli: Yes. A hundred percent. Yeah.

0:42:47 Thomas: Boy, you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me I heard this on, I think Ezra Klein months back or whatever, but do you remember there was that guy after Trump won, there's articles about, he decided to like quit all news or whatever. Do you remember that? He decided to like quit All News. Oh yeah, it was Tom. No, I'm just kidding. It's just how you quit All News. Yeah. Right. That's for your job. Doesn't let you do that.

Quit all news and like, just decided not, you know, cause it was like killing him. And he did it for, I forget how long it was a long time. And the funny thing was that everybody was like, you're evil.

I can't believe you would abdicate your moral responsibility to be miserable with us. And the funny thing was, he was actually doing actually useful stuff during that time, like volunteering and, like, actually contributing to society, but everybody was still pissed because, like, no, you need to be miserable with us, that's the only choice you can make, the only choices. Sort of reminds me of, which the point you're making, which is, like, no, unless you make this choice to be miserable in news consumption every day with all of us, you can't be doing anything good.

0:43:03 Tom: Yeah. Oh, no.

0:43:55 Eli: Yeah, absolutely.

0:43:55 Thomas: You know, it's like, well, actually, you could make a different choice with your time.

0:43:58 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:44:04 Eli: All right, gentlemen, before we go, when I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep, not screaming like the passengers on his bus.

0:45:03 Eli: My favorite one is the one that's squishy. Wishing.

0:45:10 Eli: No jokes about it. Go on, have a tequila.