June 26, 2018 • 38 mins
Beth accidentally locks Maeven in the apartment. Peter goes on a playdate. We discuss a study of kid’s reactions to breaking their toys, play a game of real or fake Bryn quotes, and hypothesize what to do with a leaky diaper on a rush hour train.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
I got Hello, and welcome to We Knows Parenting, the
parenting podcast hosted by real life parents. I'm Peter McNerney
and I'm Beth Newell, and we're not experts, but we
do have two small children. In this podcast, we're comparing
notes on our week in parenting and trying to figure
(00:27):
out what we know. Beth, how was your week? Oh,
you know, pretty pretty good for the most part. I
have a story I'm going to get into a little
bit later, but I know all about it, so I'm
not going to spoil it. I will say my week
was much less stressful. I went on my second play date.
(00:48):
I mean, it sounds like it's just for the parents
to play date. This is pretty scary for you to
interact with human beings. Yeah, they're They're very scary, and
I'm worried what they think about me. And I'm worried
whether I'm looking smart, cool, or humble enough. And so
it's a problem. So you took the two kids to
(01:09):
the playground with one of the other kids from daycare
and his mom. Yes, we went over to their house recently,
you and I both and brand and Maybne, the whole family.
It was really, really wonderful. Brand has a best friend
and they had a bunch of toys and we hung
out for a long time and it was awesome. And
then we invited them to go to the playground and
(01:30):
ended up just being me and Brand's friend's mom and
we're on a playground, and boy was it lovely. You
know what, people are great And at no point you
feared that your children would run away into the street. Oh,
I wasn't paying attention to them because I was too
worried making sure I was having a nice social interaction.
(01:53):
And they only fell down a couple of times, maybe
got a big bump on her head from going down
to slide backwards. She just her body down slides. They
love backwards slide sliding. Yeah, but I will say this
lovely woman told me a story about something horrible they're
(02:13):
going through. Uh, that sounds so terrible. So we went
over to there. They have a great, great apartment the
top of this building and they have roof access and
you can see the whole town on top of the hill.
But apparently underneath them, this old, sort of not well
woman moved in who screams profanity for like hours during
(02:38):
the day and night at herself, and it's like sounds
very sad. But their son is now repeating things that
he's hearing from this insane, scary woman like at school,
and like they're talking about it and what a nightmare
and this woman. They're trying to evict this woman, but
(03:00):
like that's impossible, so they're trying to move and I
was just all I was thinking, is thank God that
we have two very quiet, nice old people to live
underneath us that don't complain that our kids snop around
all day. Yeah, that's horrible. At our old building, the
neighbors that I used to babysit for, they had a
downstairs neighbor and she would come up on a daily
(03:22):
basis telling a sob story about how loud their kid
was for like walking or running around the apartment. And
they had installed a soundproof flooring on top of their
existing flooring, and this woman still came up every day
and it was like put in earplugs, but she clearly
like wanted like she wanted an interaction. She wanted to
(03:42):
tell someone how hard her life was. Wait wait, wait,
these people installed soundproof flooring and she's still complained. Yeah,
I mean I get it. I've i know what it's
like to have a noisy upstairs neighbor, but you if
but he puts in even a little bit of effort
(04:03):
um And anyway, the swearing thing is so hard because
our kids are at this age where you can kind
of explain why certain behaviors are bad, like running into
the street and stuff, but it's like mostly still over
their heads and they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, moving on. Yeah,
I you know, I just read recently. It's a really
(04:25):
obvious fact. But kids, kids understand they believe what you
are doing, how you're behaving, way more than what you say.
So it's it's this one time Bryn actually dropped an
F bomb repeating the TV, and I had what did
(04:46):
you say? And I was like really panicked by it,
and it was a genuine like oh my god. And
he immediately could feel that and he saw that there's
there was a tenseness in my body and a seriousness
that was different, and he immediately like he we're actually
talking about this later. He's not the most shameful, he
doesn't feel a lot of shame, no, but in that
(05:09):
moment that like full shoulders slump and like head down,
shame thing hit and he was so vulnerable and immediately goes, Okay, well,
Maven's been doing something, This is not that bad. But
she has discovered the phrase oh my God, and she's
very into it, and I guess she must have heard
it at school and um, but she started doing it
(05:33):
so dramatically, so I was like, wow, she was. I
would put her to bed and she'd be crying and
wanted me to take her out, and she'd be like,
oh my God. And it's so dramatic. And I think
that they've like, must they must be doing something at
daycare to get her to try to stop saying because
she's shifted into oh my gosh. Well, I don't know
(05:55):
about there's a woman, one of the women at daycare.
I have heard her say that oh my god. May
have even like very cheerfully, and it may even seems
to be copying that. When she was opening presents for
her birthday. I tried to get it on tape, but
she opens up a box with the unicorn in it
and she goes, oh my god. It was like that
(06:17):
was an appropriate response. It's so funny. But I immediately
I always respond by saying, oh my gosh to sort
of tweak it. Yeah, it's not that bad. It's not embarrassing.
It's just like you don't want her to be the
kid that's getting all the other kids to say oh
my God all the time. That was never a thing
I ever thought was bad at all until I started
(06:40):
working for story Parts, where I learned working with kids
and in schools that people have different opinions about that.
So I removed oh my God. I was smack my
mic I removed oh my God from my vocabulary entirely
in the past ten years. Yeah, I don't think it's
a big deal. But also the way she was saying
it was very funny and disrupted, like as to her
(07:00):
being like, oh my God, she would like react to
like me not giving her milk or something, Um, mom,
oh my god, you're the worst. Give me some milk.
She's getting very um, dramatic and very much a two
year old. And she did another funny thing this week
where um, she likes to like complain for drinks and
(07:21):
stuff and then decide she doesn't want them. So she
I offered her milk, she didn't want it. I left
her alone. I won't put it in the fridge. She
pulled it out of the fridge just to throw it
on the floor angrily, which is like a very dramatic move.
That's that's maximum drama. She's getting some attitude. Yeah, they
(07:43):
the throwing and the pushing between those two has has increased.
She went after him yesterday for no reason. I was
just like blocking her, no, daddy. Yeah, she's like starting shit. Oh,
she's like, um, she's stirring it up. Yeah, she's becoming
(08:07):
a little bit of a problem. Like she's like more
antagonistic than him sometimes, which is surprising because he's such
a strong personality. I'm starting to wonder if she notices
that I take her side more be I mean, because
I tell Bryn like Maven's little she doesn't understand, which
he doesn't understand. I don't even know why I bother
(08:28):
saying that, but it's usually him. He always has the
power to end something, and I wonder if she is
now old enough to realize that, like, oh, daddy always
thinks I'm right. Yeah, I don't know. She also just
has a very devilish sense of humor. Where sometimes I
may have mentioned this already, but Brin will be having
like a full on meltdown and I'm trying to get
(08:49):
him to calm down, and then she'll say things to him,
just real cheerfully and she's like you okay, Brin, Like
I'm trying to get him to dinner and he's having
a full tantrum and doesn't want it, and I know
he's hungry, and she's like, you want some dinner, hey,
brend buddy, you okay. He did the exact same thing
to her the other night. She was having a meltdown
and he was being sweet and he's like, Mayven, are
(09:10):
you okay? Yeah? But she no, And then Brand goes, Daddy,
I'm being nice to Maven. Maven should say thank you,
but she doesn't in this way that's like too cheerful,
and she's kind of like laughing, like she's like, you
want dinner, Brand, you want dinner? Um. Yeah. There's got
(09:31):
to be some evolutionary connection to that sort of tag
team sense of meltdowns, whereas one super melts down it
the other one it's like, oh, this is intense, and
calms down and it's just really sweet, and the second
you come the other one down, that's when the other
one freaks out. Is there's any scientists listening, not Child's
(09:56):
like I was just scientists of any kind, please validate
that concept. Another thing may haven husband doing lately is
taking enormous poops. I thought about whether to bring this up,
but she yesterday said I want to go peepe. I go,
all right. I took off the diaper, she went over
(10:16):
the potty and she was in there for ten minutes.
I kept going in and she hadn't done anything, and
she just get up and go go away, leave me alone.
And then she closed the door pushed me out, and
then I just hear her in there going from from
like she doesn't really want to go. And then I
finally was like, all right, we gotta go. And I
(10:36):
go in there and there is not to be gross
but a man sized pile of poop. She's always loved food,
but I think she's going through like a growth spurt
or something. She eats a lot of fiber, she gets
(10:57):
a lot of like fruits. She's a healthy baby. She's
a good, good eater. And now it's time for we
don't know. This is a segment where we share our
most defeating or perplexing parenting moment of the week. Beth,
You've got one, and this is somewhat epic. I didn't
(11:18):
share this in the intro because it deserves its own
full attention. Um. So, taking the kids home from school, UM,
I felt somewhat on top of the world because I
picked up a Domino's pizza on the way to get them.
Knew I had food for them because they come they're
starving the second you get them from school, and they're
(11:38):
so angry, so they ate that outside. It was hard
to get them in from the conversation you texted me
and I could feel the excitement in the text that
was did you know that if you go to Dominoes
you can walk out with a pizza in twelve minutes? Well,
because I got there and I was like, because I
knew I had like twenty minutes to be a daycare
and I was like, you know, two minutes away from
daycare and they were like I was like, how long
(11:59):
is this going to take? And he said it'll be
down in twelve minutes. And I was like, this is
a fact I need to know by heart. Um you
needed to write it down. Yeah. Um so yeah, I
got them a small pizza and some chicken fingers. I
know this is not healthy, but it is of a
win when you have hungry kids on your hand, and
you just need to not have to simultaneous meltdowns on
(12:22):
the way home from school. So we so Brin was
trying to eat hot pizza the whole car ride home.
I think he even took his seatbelt off two blocks
from home and that was very um traumatic, but he
was sitting still in his seat. So I was like,
let's just get home. Then we then they ate pizza.
Love it. You've already set this up as a real
win so far. The eight pizza outside, I was like,
(12:47):
they're fed whatever, I'm invincible. I have food in their stomach.
I'm like getting them almost inside, and then May then
like stop to look at something and didn't want to
go into. Then I grab her. Brind's already inside the door,
and then as I get her, he decides all of
a sudden that he doesn't want to go inside, so
I had to fight to get him up inside. It
(13:07):
was like, is a real struggle because you have to
carry two kids up the stairs either like lock one
in while you get the other one up the stairs,
or that's almost sevents of children. Yeah, it's just like
a real risk of someone tumbling down some very hard
sets of stairs into our apartment. So I really and
(13:28):
I was carrying like bags and stuff like it was
other anyway, it was traumatic stuff. I get them both
inside the apartment. I shut the door. I'm sweaty and tired.
I go to get a glass of water, and in
the meantime, Bryn knocks this child protective lock off the
(13:49):
front door door knob that is meant to prevent him
from leaving the apartment. And he opens the door and
he starts sprinting down the stairs and he I think
he actually already got like tried to escape once and
I had gotten him inside, and then this time I
just did not realize that I had taken my keys
(14:09):
out of my pocket at this point. And I so
I sprint out after him, shut the door behind me
because I don't want Mayven tumbling down the stairs chasing us.
I run downstairs. He gets down two flights of stairs
out the front door. I grab him. I'm bringing him
back in, and then as I'm coming in, I like
reach my back pocket for the keys, and I'm like, fuck,
(14:31):
stomach drops. I have no keys, and I have luckily
my phone. But I look at my phone and it's
like one percent battery. So I'm like, so I text
our neighbor who across the hall, who has a key.
I am like, hey, are you around, Um, we're locked
out of the house. I try to make it like
kind of casual to not panic her because our home
(14:52):
is pretty child proof. I don't think Maven's going to
kill herself immediately, but it'll take her a little time. Um.
So our neighbors like, oh, we're eating at a smashed
burger down the street having dinner, and it was sort
of like implied, like sorry, can't help you. And I
was like and then, knowing then that I had one
percent battery. I had been also begging Maven to open
(15:15):
the door, because now that the child protective thing is off,
I'm like, maybe she actually can turn the door knob
and let us in. And so she kind of jiggled
it a few times, just very ineffectively, which was so frustrating,
and then she just walked away to um like climb
up on the chair and drink my glass of water,
I guess at the table. And so I was like, maybn,
(15:38):
can you try to open the door, And she's like no.
Now she's just like happy, and so she's like you
she finally has some alone time, so on one percent battery,
I like text our neighbor like a bunch of misspelled
stuff that I was like, uh, I'm sorry, mavens locked
inside the apartment and um, and then my phone immediately dies.
(16:01):
Keeping keep in mind, the entire time that this is happening,
Bryn is screaming his heat off, fighting me as hard
as possible to get away from me. Yeah, so I'm so,
I'm like, I'm sweating from like holding him so hard
and also talking to Maven and also trying to figure
out the text situation. And so then I'm like, Okay,
(16:23):
our neighbor is probably coming back. I don't know how
long it's going to take her. I really I don't, like,
I don't know if she's texting me now to like
confirm if that's necessary. You are an hour and a
half away in the city, and my phone stead. So
then I knock on our next door neighbor's door, who
is uh, an older woman, and I'm just sort of
(16:44):
like because I just at this point, I'm like, I
don't know if I'm going to have to call the
police department. I don't know if I'm gonna have to
do what you did when you locked our kids in
the apartment. Men, That which is cross, which is go
through another neighbor's apartment and crawl across the fire escape
into our window, says discover we live next to a hoarder. Yeah,
but I didn't want to. I knew if I had
(17:06):
to go through her apartment to crawl on the fire escape,
I would need someone to contain Bran and that would
mean asking her elderly neighbor to like stiffly hold this
screaming child. So he's like flannling. And then when I
knocked on her door and she came out, he kind
of calmed down, and I was like, Okay, at least
we're all calm for a second. So I was talking
to her and I was like, I don't um. I
(17:29):
was like, I don't know if I should call the police.
I was like, do you have our other neighbor's phone
numbers so I can call her on your phone. She's
like looking through like a binder of phone numbers, like
old school style, and I was, and she was that
binder has been in that apartment for at least Yeah,
so she's finding the phone number. And then as this
is happening. Thankfully, our neighbor's husband starts comes sprinting up
(17:53):
the stairs to us and goes in the apartment and
gets the key. And I guess I felt bad because
he had taken a cab home from the restaurant to
get to us, which is like a fifteen minute walk,
but it's like a five minute drive. So I felt
really bad interrupting their dinner. Because also our neighbor has
a three year old and is very very pregnant, and
(18:14):
I was like, I've interrupted her last dinner maybe with
her family. Um, and we should say, this is the
third time we have needed the key from them, well,
the second time we need the key. The first time
the first time there was no key in place. I
did this almost exact same thing for different reasons. Was
(18:35):
because Maven was in a stroller. She was tiny, so
I carried her up in the in the car seat
case you strapped in and brought Brandon, put them down,
ran downstairs and at the bottom of the stroller, came
back up and Brynn closed the door, and I realized
I had taken off my jacket and freaked out because
Brain was crying. He was much smaller. Maven was in
the car seats was less issue, but I called the police.
(18:58):
I tried to break into the door and and that
you suggested, uh, the fire escape brilliantly. So I went
into the neighbors. It's terrifying over there at the neighbor's place.
It's just like and you can tell she's a little
uncomfortable me being in there. But I had to crawl
through like four lamps, one of which seemed to be
plugged in. And I went through the window and I
(19:20):
was like, I'm just gonna gonna process anything I just saw.
And I came in and there was Maven in this
totally happy and next to her was Brin sitting on
the floor with a gallon of milk and he was
probably two years old at the time. Yeah. Well, they
seem to be able to entertain themselves. They got locked
out of their apartment once and I tried so hard
(19:43):
to help them because I felt like, you want to
come in. They're like, no, I made pizza, and I
was like, hey, I got some pizza, and it's like, oh,
we went to get food, will be fine, And they
just sat out in the hallway reading books, and I
was like, let us help you. So I feel less
bad when this happens in the future, like calmer and
more together by virtue of having one kid. I also
(20:04):
felt bad that this is me like premonition ing for
them the reality of two children and being like, good
luck with this. They have so much more space between
those kids. I know, three and a half years between kids.
Their oldest is much more docile than our I don't know,
(20:25):
you know that he he has his moments, they all do.
But he leaves their apartment a bunch, like I've come
up three times now coming home from school with the
two of them, and there he is at the top
of the stairs just saying hi, and his front door
is open, and then we come up and then his
mom comes into the doorway and goes, where are you?
(20:47):
And I can tell that he can just leave. Well,
I think that was her trying to get him inside,
and then he just stayed No. This has happened at
least two or three times. Came out of their apartment
on his own. Yeah, he can. He figured out I
just opened the door, and she's always a little flustered
by it, and she's very pregnant. I think the hard
thing is that we it's like we now know. Okay,
(21:09):
we can like do the top lock on the door
and lock them in, But then it feels like I
might be locking you out of the apartment for when
you get home later in the evening. Wow, where's kids? Scenario?
I wake you up, We'll see I guess, and that
is we don't know? Is This next segment is called
(21:35):
did you Knows? This is a segment where Peter learns
a parenting or child related facts. Peter, what's your fact?
So this is an interesting one. This is from the
New York Times h In a broken toy experiment, two
year olds were given toys that were rigged to break spectacularly,
and those kids who showed the most guilt went on
(21:58):
to have fewer behavior problems later on. So they would
give it. They would give a toy man so that
and this immediately made me go, like, how would my
children fair? But they'd give a toy to a child
and then it would break right away, and they weren't
mean about it anything, but they sort of just like
(22:19):
let them sit there in that moment for like sixty seconds,
and they would just squirm or like cover their face. Uh,
and then they'd be like, it's Okay, this does not
bode well for Britain because his reaction to this would
definitely be blaming us and telling us to fix it. Well,
I thought about this because I was so basically low
(22:39):
guilt kids uh tend to go on to have a
few more behavioral issues. But there's also another side to this,
and I'm dramatically summarizing, um, But there's sort of two
aspects of this, which is high or low self control kids,
kids that can sort of see the outcome of something
and as a result adjust their behavior knowing that there's
(23:03):
negative consequences to something. So there's self control and guilt.
And it's the kids who have low guilt and low
self control that are sociopaths. Um. But in general, the
higher the guilt, um, you know, the more well adjusted
they're going to be. And it's really obvious to me
(23:25):
this sort of like, yeah, guilt serves a very specific purpose.
It doesn't seem like it would be that positive though,
Like I don't think of guilt as like helpful force
in my life. Well, I think in general, in our society,
guilt is only brought up as like a real negative thing.
But of course, at the core of the feeling of
(23:47):
guilt is a positive thing, which is that teaches you
to feel bad if you break your friends toy, So
you're not a sociopath. Um related to this, I took
a very nice friend of ours of us a gift
card for our children this week because um, it was
Maybe's birthday, and so I took them to the toy
(24:08):
store to buy toys, which they don't have, Like most
of their toys are hand me down toys, or they'll
get something for the birthday here and there, but they
don't have these like plastic piles of toys that a
lot of kids have. Um, not because we're special, just
because we don't like to spend money. And um, I
(24:30):
think I think it's mostly because our gifts is very low.
In our love languages, we both discovered that we aren't
real big into gifts. Yeah, so I took them to
pick out toys and Bryn really wanted a Transformers rescue bot.
So I'm looking at it. It's very mad if I
(24:51):
call them Transformers, even though they are Transformers and Rescue Boss.
So he got this like what to me looks like
a very cheap piece of plastic that happens to cost
twenty dollars, which it's insane, and so I was this
is why I don't feel guilty about not buying them toys,
because I was like, Okay, I'll do this because someone
specifically wanted the kids to get something they like for them,
(25:15):
and I'm just gonna let him get his heart's desire,
which is like a plastic piece of crap. So we
get it, we leave the store. They both behaved like
surprisingly well in the store. Um, he got it. He
was being really nice about it. I had warned him, like,
you better be good, and then he got it and
it was like really hard to transform it and the
(25:37):
head wasn't popping out the way it was supposed to,
and it was like very in my mind disappointing, especially
because of the twenty dollar factor, which I was just like,
that's so much money for this. So I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna try to becomm and rational about this and
be like model what I think is like I don't know,
somewhat more responsible spending habits and take him back to
(25:59):
the store to exchange this for a functional toy. Um,
none of this would make any sense to him. I
will it just makes sense in my mind, because I
feel like in my family and something like that happened
growing up, there would be a lot of like crying
or like drama around the fact that like this stupid
cheap piece of crap blah blah blah. And then my
(26:20):
parents don't My parents were busy people, and I just
don't think they would have the energy to like go
back to a store and return things. They're just like, well,
the mistakes have been made. Um. So, so I was like,
let's just see if we can calmly resolve this. So
we um, I think they might have you'd be surprised. Um.
(26:43):
So we go to the store. Of course it's closed,
and then Brin was like surprisingly calm about the fact
that it was broken, Like I was like, he was
like complaining. He was like, my toy is broken, but
he wasn't mad, he didn't freak out. I was like,
Daddy's gonna return this for you later, and he he
was like okay, and he kept talking about it, but
he wasn't like super angry, which I was impressed with.
(27:07):
I took it back and I told him I was
going to take it to get a new one, and
he freaked out, but I later realized it because he
thinks that that toy is just a broken toy, and
then if I get the same one, it'll be broken.
So I brought it home and it was fixed, and
of course he was delighted. He was really confused by
the whole experience, but I do think it was like
good lesson for him if this thing is not supposed
(27:30):
to work this way. But certainly, back to guilt, I'm
realizing that kid does feel guilt, or he at least
knows like he does something and I can see him
look at me, and I know. I worked on at
a middle school first six years, watching kids on the
playground after school, and you knew when they did something
(27:51):
wrong because that was the only time they would look
at you. Yeah, we're standing there and they look at me,
and then I just stare at them and piece together
what had happened, and I tell them to come over,
and then I usually just go tell me why what
you did was wrong, and then they would explain to
me everything I didn't see. By the way, great parenting tip,
(28:13):
that's a real one if you're not sure what happened,
just if your kids are a little older. This is
my dad always did to me is he just very
calmly bring me over and say tell me why that
was a bad idea, and then I would explain it
and then punish myself and you'd say okay, and it
was over. Another funny example of that is a part
of Brian's morning routine is to get up a half
(28:33):
hour before us and just wander around the apartment getting
into trouble. And this morning the thing he found to
get into trouble was he pulled a salami out of
the fridge and was just eating it like a comically
big salami. Yeah. Um, And so he's just like munching
on salami. And I woke up and my eye, my
vision was still kind of like blurry, and I was like,
what do you have? And of course he just like
(28:54):
runs away that He did the same thing to you
where you were like I had been talking to for
a while. He's just like munching on salami, and then
you sat up in bed and he was like, daddy
takes things away from me. He just ran. Yeah. He
can read that body language and he knows there is
guilt in there, and I think a healthy amount of
(29:16):
guilt so that we know he's not a sociopath. He's
just the selfish oldest child. All right. Now it's time
for a fun new game that we just created. And
um boy, we need another segment title. I'm gonna call it.
Do you knows what he said in this game? Beth
(29:38):
and I each wrote down a real quote from our
three and a half year old Brand, and uh, I'm
gonna tell you three quotes and one of them is true,
and you're gonna have to guess which one is true.
Are you ready, Beth? Okay? Number one? These are all
things Brand did or did not say to me, Daddy,
(30:00):
you're a butt daddy. Daddy, You're a beautiful fart daddy. Daddy,
you're a mommy daddy. Um, I'm going to guess he
said you're a butt daddy. Very close he said to me, daddy,
you're a beautiful fart daddy, after admittedly I had farted. Okay,
(30:24):
mine are very similar. I'm gonna give you a Here
are some things Brand may or may not have said
to me. Mommy, you look really handsome, Mommy, I want
a butt toy. Mommy, I can count to fart. Um,
(30:47):
I think because it's the funniest. I have to guess Mommy,
I can count to fart. No, he said, Mommy, you
look really handsome. Also, those are all very brand awesome.
I think he walked in when I was getting dressed
or something. Is very weird. But I'm a handsome lady.
(31:08):
Do we call him handsome? We must? I think I
have called him handsome before. He's a handsome fella. Can
we talk about his haircut? She's got permanent mini alfalfa
mohawk back of his head. I think it's a good
look for him, but it's it's like not his hair
(31:30):
is sticking up. It's there's no way for it not to.
He has major cowlics. And then his hair is at
a shorter length where the weight of it does not
hold it down. Yeah, somehow the barbera before figured out
how to take care of that horn. Well, I like
it alright. Cool. So the real quotes were, ah, Daddy,
(31:58):
you're a beautiful fart daddy, And Mommy, you're very handsome. Mommy,
you look really handsome. Mommy, you look really handsome. Well, best,
you know what you do look very handsome, and you
look very beautiful. Far Yeah, all right, now it's time
(32:21):
for our favorite game. Would you knows? This is where
we posit a hypothetical parenting situation to the other parents
and discuss how we would handle it best. You've got
one for me, yeah yeah, so um. This is a
based off one of our childless friends posted on Facebook
this week about how he saw someone changing a baby's
diaper on a crowded rush our train and he was
(32:45):
like yea or nay, And then all these childless people
chimed in and they were like, disgusting, unacceptable, never change
diapers in public. And then all these people with kids
were like, well, it's really hard to find a place
to change a kid's diaper in the city. And also,
kids get diaper ashes if you don't change the diaper
soon enough. And stop shaming parents, you idiots, leave us alone.
(33:06):
We're just trying to survive over here. So my hypothetical
is you have a baby on a crowded rush hour
train stroller, diaper is exploding and it's pretty much definitely
about to start leaking out of the diaper in front
of the world. Okay if they're in a stroller, though,
(33:30):
never mind, they're not in a stroller. I'm holding a
baby with a leaky diaper. Okay, they are in a stroller?
What do you what do you do? Stroll? I mean stroller. Honestly,
I'm like, I'm waiting till I get off this train.
You're just gonna let them destroy the stroller. Yeah, people
are looking at your baby because your baby is cute,
(33:51):
but people are also about to notice that, like poop
is going to start leaking out of your kids. It's
a crowded train. Like, I don't have space to like
do a diaper change. Can't do it in the stroller.
I need to lay it down. But you're sitting in
a seat, so you have a seat to lay them down,
so their seats next to me to do it. Yeah,
uh no, I wouldn't do it. I would just keep
(34:15):
it contained in the stroller and I would be like,
look around and be like and then I get off
of the next stop and I would do it on
a one of those bedbug written benches. Well what some
what someone brought up in this threat is that those
bedbug written benches have little dividers between every seat, so
you can't lay a baby fully down on them. Oh gosh,
(34:38):
that's true. And the thing that you have to keep
in mind with Manhattan is wherever you're going the idea
of there being accessible bathroom anywhere near you is pretty slim,
not to mention if you do find a bathroom, there's
no way there's a changing table in it. And especially
now with all the Barnes and Nobles closing and the
bathrooms are filthy. I mean you know, I would, I would.
(35:04):
I would grab a blanket and I would put that
baby disgustingly, where's this blanket? Where are you getting this blanket?
I'm prepared in my am I me or am I
like a real dad who's prepared. Okay, so I don't
have a blanket. How cold is it? Do I have
a jacket? Uh? No? This is this sucks. I mean
(35:26):
I was gonna say I I would put my baby
on the subway ground, which no, is disgusting. I mean,
if I had something to put it, No, you should,
nothing should ever touch that floor, you know what, it's
every every the side. Would you put it on a sidewalk?
(35:47):
The sidewalks not the same, It's equally gross. I would
put something on a sidewalk in the suburbs. I wouldn't
put something on the sidewalk in the city. I mean,
it's uh uh oh God, I just leave it all
in the stroller and I would run home. That being said,
I like the idea that you think you're close to
(36:08):
home because you're not. You're like an hour and a
half away from home. You keep trying to shift the reality. Okay, well,
the point of this is I want to point out
that these parents probably had few other options. Absolutely. Here's
the thing is, I am a hundred percent for if
(36:29):
I see anyone changing a baby anywhere, I'm like, go
for it. I feel you. I'm I'm too uncomfortable to
have that kind of attention, and I'd avoid it for
as long as I possibly could. Um, but change your
baby wherever you need to. Also, I am sure that
before I had kids, if I heard that, I would
(36:50):
have had a different reaction. Hmm. Okay. I would like
to think that I would be understanding, But if I'm
going to be honest with myself, I probably wouldn't have
thought the whole thing through and be like, don't do
that there, and that'd be the end of it. I
wouldn't comment, because I don't comment on Facebook. I'm so
(37:14):
upset about that time I was on the subway with
the leaky poopy diaper and I threw my baby on
the ground. I can't believe you would even consider putting
a baby on the ground of the subway car. In
my mind, I had a big blanket, not the ground
of the subway car. I get off the train on
a narrow train platform where people are shovels. On my mind,
(37:37):
I'm going to find a space where there aren't a
bunch of people and I just want a flat surface,
and I put it. I put a blanket down and
get it done, and then go home and never leave
my apartment ever again. You'd have to burn that baby
after that. I just want to officially say that we
do not condone throwing babies onto grounds or burning them
(37:59):
on this podcast, and we don't take a lot of
hard stances on stuff. But that's a hard stance, Beth
I'm taking. Okay, this has been we knows parenting. If
you'd like to hear more from either of us, you
can find me on Twitter at Beth new You can
see my website reductress dot com and the Reductress Minute podcast.
(38:20):
If you want to hear more from me, you can
find me on Twitter and Instagram at nicknon m I
c any end or bit Peter McNerney dot net or
on the Story Pirates podcast. If you have parenting questions, comments,
or advice, send them to us at we knows Pod
at gmail dot com. You can also find we Knows
Parenting on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at we knows Pod. Also,
(38:42):
please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.
That would really help us out. Yeah yeah, yeah, And
until next time, goodbye,
I got Hello, and welcome to We Knows Parenting, the
parenting podcast hosted by real life parents. I'm Peter McNerney
and I'm Beth Newell, and we're not experts, but we
do have two small children. In this podcast, we're comparing
notes on our week in parenting and trying to figure
(00:27):
out what we know. Beth, how was your week? Oh,
you know, pretty pretty good for the most part. I
have a story I'm going to get into a little
bit later, but I know all about it, so I'm
not going to spoil it. I will say my week
was much less stressful. I went on my second play date.
(00:48):
I mean, it sounds like it's just for the parents
to play date. This is pretty scary for you to
interact with human beings. Yeah, they're They're very scary, and
I'm worried what they think about me. And I'm worried
whether I'm looking smart, cool, or humble enough. And so
it's a problem. So you took the two kids to
(01:09):
the playground with one of the other kids from daycare
and his mom. Yes, we went over to their house recently,
you and I both and brand and Maybne, the whole family.
It was really, really wonderful. Brand has a best friend
and they had a bunch of toys and we hung
out for a long time and it was awesome. And
then we invited them to go to the playground and
(01:30):
ended up just being me and Brand's friend's mom and
we're on a playground, and boy was it lovely. You
know what, people are great And at no point you
feared that your children would run away into the street. Oh,
I wasn't paying attention to them because I was too
worried making sure I was having a nice social interaction.
(01:53):
And they only fell down a couple of times, maybe
got a big bump on her head from going down
to slide backwards. She just her body down slides. They
love backwards slide sliding. Yeah, but I will say this
lovely woman told me a story about something horrible they're
(02:13):
going through. Uh, that sounds so terrible. So we went
over to there. They have a great, great apartment the
top of this building and they have roof access and
you can see the whole town on top of the hill.
But apparently underneath them, this old, sort of not well
woman moved in who screams profanity for like hours during
(02:38):
the day and night at herself, and it's like sounds
very sad. But their son is now repeating things that
he's hearing from this insane, scary woman like at school,
and like they're talking about it and what a nightmare
and this woman. They're trying to evict this woman, but
(03:00):
like that's impossible, so they're trying to move and I
was just all I was thinking, is thank God that
we have two very quiet, nice old people to live
underneath us that don't complain that our kids snop around
all day. Yeah, that's horrible. At our old building, the
neighbors that I used to babysit for, they had a
downstairs neighbor and she would come up on a daily
(03:22):
basis telling a sob story about how loud their kid
was for like walking or running around the apartment. And
they had installed a soundproof flooring on top of their
existing flooring, and this woman still came up every day
and it was like put in earplugs, but she clearly
like wanted like she wanted an interaction. She wanted to
(03:42):
tell someone how hard her life was. Wait wait, wait,
these people installed soundproof flooring and she's still complained. Yeah,
I mean I get it. I've i know what it's
like to have a noisy upstairs neighbor, but you if
but he puts in even a little bit of effort
(04:03):
um And anyway, the swearing thing is so hard because
our kids are at this age where you can kind
of explain why certain behaviors are bad, like running into
the street and stuff, but it's like mostly still over
their heads and they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, moving on. Yeah,
I you know, I just read recently. It's a really
(04:25):
obvious fact. But kids, kids understand they believe what you
are doing, how you're behaving, way more than what you say.
So it's it's this one time Bryn actually dropped an
F bomb repeating the TV, and I had what did
(04:46):
you say? And I was like really panicked by it,
and it was a genuine like oh my god. And
he immediately could feel that and he saw that there's
there was a tenseness in my body and a seriousness
that was different, and he immediately like he we're actually
talking about this later. He's not the most shameful, he
doesn't feel a lot of shame, no, but in that
(05:09):
moment that like full shoulders slump and like head down,
shame thing hit and he was so vulnerable and immediately goes, Okay, well,
Maven's been doing something, This is not that bad. But
she has discovered the phrase oh my God, and she's
very into it, and I guess she must have heard
it at school and um, but she started doing it
(05:33):
so dramatically, so I was like, wow, she was. I
would put her to bed and she'd be crying and
wanted me to take her out, and she'd be like,
oh my God. And it's so dramatic. And I think
that they've like, must they must be doing something at
daycare to get her to try to stop saying because
she's shifted into oh my gosh. Well, I don't know
(05:55):
about there's a woman, one of the women at daycare.
I have heard her say that oh my god. May
have even like very cheerfully, and it may even seems
to be copying that. When she was opening presents for
her birthday. I tried to get it on tape, but
she opens up a box with the unicorn in it
and she goes, oh my god. It was like that
(06:17):
was an appropriate response. It's so funny. But I immediately
I always respond by saying, oh my gosh to sort
of tweak it. Yeah, it's not that bad. It's not embarrassing.
It's just like you don't want her to be the
kid that's getting all the other kids to say oh
my God all the time. That was never a thing
I ever thought was bad at all until I started
(06:40):
working for story Parts, where I learned working with kids
and in schools that people have different opinions about that.
So I removed oh my God. I was smack my
mic I removed oh my God from my vocabulary entirely
in the past ten years. Yeah, I don't think it's
a big deal. But also the way she was saying
it was very funny and disrupted, like as to her
(07:00):
being like, oh my God, she would like react to
like me not giving her milk or something, Um, mom,
oh my god, you're the worst. Give me some milk.
She's getting very um, dramatic and very much a two
year old. And she did another funny thing this week
where um, she likes to like complain for drinks and
(07:21):
stuff and then decide she doesn't want them. So she
I offered her milk, she didn't want it. I left
her alone. I won't put it in the fridge. She
pulled it out of the fridge just to throw it
on the floor angrily, which is like a very dramatic move.
That's that's maximum drama. She's getting some attitude. Yeah, they
(07:43):
the throwing and the pushing between those two has has increased.
She went after him yesterday for no reason. I was
just like blocking her, no, daddy. Yeah, she's like starting shit. Oh,
she's like, um, she's stirring it up. Yeah, she's becoming
(08:07):
a little bit of a problem. Like she's like more
antagonistic than him sometimes, which is surprising because he's such
a strong personality. I'm starting to wonder if she notices
that I take her side more be I mean, because
I tell Bryn like Maven's little she doesn't understand, which
he doesn't understand. I don't even know why I bother
(08:28):
saying that, but it's usually him. He always has the
power to end something, and I wonder if she is
now old enough to realize that, like, oh, daddy always
thinks I'm right. Yeah, I don't know. She also just
has a very devilish sense of humor. Where sometimes I
may have mentioned this already, but Brin will be having
like a full on meltdown and I'm trying to get
(08:49):
him to calm down, and then she'll say things to him,
just real cheerfully and she's like you okay, Brin, Like
I'm trying to get him to dinner and he's having
a full tantrum and doesn't want it, and I know
he's hungry, and she's like, you want some dinner, hey,
brend buddy, you okay. He did the exact same thing
to her the other night. She was having a meltdown
and he was being sweet and he's like, Mayven, are
(09:10):
you okay? Yeah? But she no, And then Brand goes, Daddy,
I'm being nice to Maven. Maven should say thank you,
but she doesn't in this way that's like too cheerful,
and she's kind of like laughing, like she's like, you
want dinner, Brand, you want dinner? Um. Yeah. There's got
(09:31):
to be some evolutionary connection to that sort of tag
team sense of meltdowns, whereas one super melts down it
the other one it's like, oh, this is intense, and
calms down and it's just really sweet, and the second
you come the other one down, that's when the other
one freaks out. Is there's any scientists listening, not Child's
(09:56):
like I was just scientists of any kind, please validate
that concept. Another thing may haven husband doing lately is
taking enormous poops. I thought about whether to bring this up,
but she yesterday said I want to go peepe. I go,
all right. I took off the diaper, she went over
(10:16):
the potty and she was in there for ten minutes.
I kept going in and she hadn't done anything, and
she just get up and go go away, leave me alone.
And then she closed the door pushed me out, and
then I just hear her in there going from from
like she doesn't really want to go. And then I
finally was like, all right, we gotta go. And I
(10:36):
go in there and there is not to be gross
but a man sized pile of poop. She's always loved food,
but I think she's going through like a growth spurt
or something. She eats a lot of fiber, she gets
(10:57):
a lot of like fruits. She's a healthy baby. She's
a good, good eater. And now it's time for we
don't know. This is a segment where we share our
most defeating or perplexing parenting moment of the week. Beth,
You've got one, and this is somewhat epic. I didn't
(11:18):
share this in the intro because it deserves its own
full attention. Um. So, taking the kids home from school, UM,
I felt somewhat on top of the world because I
picked up a Domino's pizza on the way to get them.
Knew I had food for them because they come they're
starving the second you get them from school, and they're
(11:38):
so angry, so they ate that outside. It was hard
to get them in from the conversation you texted me
and I could feel the excitement in the text that
was did you know that if you go to Dominoes
you can walk out with a pizza in twelve minutes? Well,
because I got there and I was like, because I
knew I had like twenty minutes to be a daycare
and I was like, you know, two minutes away from
daycare and they were like I was like, how long
(11:59):
is this going to take? And he said it'll be
down in twelve minutes. And I was like, this is
a fact I need to know by heart. Um you
needed to write it down. Yeah. Um so yeah, I
got them a small pizza and some chicken fingers. I
know this is not healthy, but it is of a
win when you have hungry kids on your hand, and
you just need to not have to simultaneous meltdowns on
(12:22):
the way home from school. So we so Brin was
trying to eat hot pizza the whole car ride home.
I think he even took his seatbelt off two blocks
from home and that was very um traumatic, but he
was sitting still in his seat. So I was like,
let's just get home. Then we then they ate pizza.
Love it. You've already set this up as a real
win so far. The eight pizza outside, I was like,
(12:47):
they're fed whatever, I'm invincible. I have food in their stomach.
I'm like getting them almost inside, and then May then
like stop to look at something and didn't want to
go into. Then I grab her. Brind's already inside the door,
and then as I get her, he decides all of
a sudden that he doesn't want to go inside, so
I had to fight to get him up inside. It
(13:07):
was like, is a real struggle because you have to
carry two kids up the stairs either like lock one
in while you get the other one up the stairs,
or that's almost sevents of children. Yeah, it's just like
a real risk of someone tumbling down some very hard
sets of stairs into our apartment. So I really and
(13:28):
I was carrying like bags and stuff like it was
other anyway, it was traumatic stuff. I get them both
inside the apartment. I shut the door. I'm sweaty and tired.
I go to get a glass of water, and in
the meantime, Bryn knocks this child protective lock off the
(13:49):
front door door knob that is meant to prevent him
from leaving the apartment. And he opens the door and
he starts sprinting down the stairs and he I think
he actually already got like tried to escape once and
I had gotten him inside, and then this time I
just did not realize that I had taken my keys
(14:09):
out of my pocket at this point. And I so
I sprint out after him, shut the door behind me
because I don't want Mayven tumbling down the stairs chasing us.
I run downstairs. He gets down two flights of stairs
out the front door. I grab him. I'm bringing him
back in, and then as I'm coming in, I like
reach my back pocket for the keys, and I'm like, fuck,
(14:31):
stomach drops. I have no keys, and I have luckily
my phone. But I look at my phone and it's
like one percent battery. So I'm like, so I text
our neighbor who across the hall, who has a key.
I am like, hey, are you around, Um, we're locked
out of the house. I try to make it like
kind of casual to not panic her because our home
(14:52):
is pretty child proof. I don't think Maven's going to
kill herself immediately, but it'll take her a little time. Um.
So our neighbors like, oh, we're eating at a smashed
burger down the street having dinner, and it was sort
of like implied, like sorry, can't help you. And I
was like and then, knowing then that I had one
percent battery. I had been also begging Maven to open
(15:15):
the door, because now that the child protective thing is off,
I'm like, maybe she actually can turn the door knob
and let us in. And so she kind of jiggled
it a few times, just very ineffectively, which was so frustrating,
and then she just walked away to um like climb
up on the chair and drink my glass of water,
I guess at the table. And so I was like, maybn,
(15:38):
can you try to open the door, And she's like no.
Now she's just like happy, and so she's like you
she finally has some alone time, so on one percent battery,
I like text our neighbor like a bunch of misspelled
stuff that I was like, uh, I'm sorry, mavens locked
inside the apartment and um, and then my phone immediately dies.
(16:01):
Keeping keep in mind, the entire time that this is happening,
Bryn is screaming his heat off, fighting me as hard
as possible to get away from me. Yeah, so I'm so,
I'm like, I'm sweating from like holding him so hard
and also talking to Maven and also trying to figure
out the text situation. And so then I'm like, Okay,
(16:23):
our neighbor is probably coming back. I don't know how
long it's going to take her. I really I don't, like,
I don't know if she's texting me now to like
confirm if that's necessary. You are an hour and a
half away in the city, and my phone stead. So
then I knock on our next door neighbor's door, who
is uh, an older woman, and I'm just sort of
(16:44):
like because I just at this point, I'm like, I
don't know if I'm going to have to call the
police department. I don't know if I'm gonna have to
do what you did when you locked our kids in
the apartment. Men, That which is cross, which is go
through another neighbor's apartment and crawl across the fire escape
into our window, says discover we live next to a hoarder. Yeah,
but I didn't want to. I knew if I had
(17:06):
to go through her apartment to crawl on the fire escape,
I would need someone to contain Bran and that would
mean asking her elderly neighbor to like stiffly hold this
screaming child. So he's like flannling. And then when I
knocked on her door and she came out, he kind
of calmed down, and I was like, Okay, at least
we're all calm for a second. So I was talking
to her and I was like, I don't um. I
(17:29):
was like, I don't know if I should call the police.
I was like, do you have our other neighbor's phone
numbers so I can call her on your phone. She's
like looking through like a binder of phone numbers, like
old school style, and I was, and she was that
binder has been in that apartment for at least Yeah,
so she's finding the phone number. And then as this
is happening. Thankfully, our neighbor's husband starts comes sprinting up
(17:53):
the stairs to us and goes in the apartment and
gets the key. And I guess I felt bad because
he had taken a cab home from the restaurant to
get to us, which is like a fifteen minute walk,
but it's like a five minute drive. So I felt
really bad interrupting their dinner. Because also our neighbor has
a three year old and is very very pregnant, and
(18:14):
I was like, I've interrupted her last dinner maybe with
her family. Um, and we should say, this is the
third time we have needed the key from them, well,
the second time we need the key. The first time
the first time there was no key in place. I
did this almost exact same thing for different reasons. Was
(18:35):
because Maven was in a stroller. She was tiny, so
I carried her up in the in the car seat
case you strapped in and brought Brandon, put them down,
ran downstairs and at the bottom of the stroller, came
back up and Brynn closed the door, and I realized
I had taken off my jacket and freaked out because
Brain was crying. He was much smaller. Maven was in
the car seats was less issue, but I called the police.
(18:58):
I tried to break into the door and and that
you suggested, uh, the fire escape brilliantly. So I went
into the neighbors. It's terrifying over there at the neighbor's place.
It's just like and you can tell she's a little
uncomfortable me being in there. But I had to crawl
through like four lamps, one of which seemed to be
plugged in. And I went through the window and I
(19:20):
was like, I'm just gonna gonna process anything I just saw.
And I came in and there was Maven in this
totally happy and next to her was Brin sitting on
the floor with a gallon of milk and he was
probably two years old at the time. Yeah. Well, they
seem to be able to entertain themselves. They got locked
out of their apartment once and I tried so hard
(19:43):
to help them because I felt like, you want to
come in. They're like, no, I made pizza, and I
was like, hey, I got some pizza, and it's like, oh,
we went to get food, will be fine, And they
just sat out in the hallway reading books, and I
was like, let us help you. So I feel less
bad when this happens in the future, like calmer and
more together by virtue of having one kid. I also
(20:04):
felt bad that this is me like premonition ing for
them the reality of two children and being like, good
luck with this. They have so much more space between
those kids. I know, three and a half years between kids.
Their oldest is much more docile than our I don't know,
(20:25):
you know that he he has his moments, they all do.
But he leaves their apartment a bunch, like I've come
up three times now coming home from school with the
two of them, and there he is at the top
of the stairs just saying hi, and his front door
is open, and then we come up and then his
mom comes into the doorway and goes, where are you?
(20:47):
And I can tell that he can just leave. Well,
I think that was her trying to get him inside,
and then he just stayed No. This has happened at
least two or three times. Came out of their apartment
on his own. Yeah, he can. He figured out I
just opened the door, and she's always a little flustered
by it, and she's very pregnant. I think the hard
thing is that we it's like we now know. Okay,
(21:09):
we can like do the top lock on the door
and lock them in, But then it feels like I
might be locking you out of the apartment for when
you get home later in the evening. Wow, where's kids? Scenario?
I wake you up, We'll see I guess, and that
is we don't know? Is This next segment is called
(21:35):
did you Knows? This is a segment where Peter learns
a parenting or child related facts. Peter, what's your fact?
So this is an interesting one. This is from the
New York Times h In a broken toy experiment, two
year olds were given toys that were rigged to break spectacularly,
and those kids who showed the most guilt went on
(21:58):
to have fewer behavior problems later on. So they would
give it. They would give a toy man so that
and this immediately made me go, like, how would my
children fair? But they'd give a toy to a child
and then it would break right away, and they weren't
mean about it anything, but they sort of just like
(22:19):
let them sit there in that moment for like sixty seconds,
and they would just squirm or like cover their face. Uh,
and then they'd be like, it's Okay, this does not
bode well for Britain because his reaction to this would
definitely be blaming us and telling us to fix it. Well,
I thought about this because I was so basically low
(22:39):
guilt kids uh tend to go on to have a
few more behavioral issues. But there's also another side to this,
and I'm dramatically summarizing, um, But there's sort of two
aspects of this, which is high or low self control kids,
kids that can sort of see the outcome of something
and as a result adjust their behavior knowing that there's
(23:03):
negative consequences to something. So there's self control and guilt.
And it's the kids who have low guilt and low
self control that are sociopaths. Um. But in general, the
higher the guilt, um, you know, the more well adjusted
they're going to be. And it's really obvious to me
(23:25):
this sort of like, yeah, guilt serves a very specific purpose.
It doesn't seem like it would be that positive though,
Like I don't think of guilt as like helpful force
in my life. Well, I think in general, in our society,
guilt is only brought up as like a real negative thing.
But of course, at the core of the feeling of
(23:47):
guilt is a positive thing, which is that teaches you
to feel bad if you break your friends toy, So
you're not a sociopath. Um related to this, I took
a very nice friend of ours of us a gift
card for our children this week because um, it was
Maybe's birthday, and so I took them to the toy
(24:08):
store to buy toys, which they don't have, Like most
of their toys are hand me down toys, or they'll
get something for the birthday here and there, but they
don't have these like plastic piles of toys that a
lot of kids have. Um, not because we're special, just
because we don't like to spend money. And um, I
(24:30):
think I think it's mostly because our gifts is very low.
In our love languages, we both discovered that we aren't
real big into gifts. Yeah, so I took them to
pick out toys and Bryn really wanted a Transformers rescue bot.
So I'm looking at it. It's very mad if I
(24:51):
call them Transformers, even though they are Transformers and Rescue Boss.
So he got this like what to me looks like
a very cheap piece of plastic that happens to cost
twenty dollars, which it's insane, and so I was this
is why I don't feel guilty about not buying them toys,
because I was like, Okay, I'll do this because someone
specifically wanted the kids to get something they like for them,
(25:15):
and I'm just gonna let him get his heart's desire,
which is like a plastic piece of crap. So we
get it, we leave the store. They both behaved like
surprisingly well in the store. Um, he got it. He
was being really nice about it. I had warned him, like,
you better be good, and then he got it and
it was like really hard to transform it and the
(25:37):
head wasn't popping out the way it was supposed to,
and it was like very in my mind disappointing, especially
because of the twenty dollar factor, which I was just like,
that's so much money for this. So I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna try to becomm and rational about this and
be like model what I think is like I don't know,
somewhat more responsible spending habits and take him back to
(25:59):
the store to exchange this for a functional toy. Um,
none of this would make any sense to him. I
will it just makes sense in my mind, because I
feel like in my family and something like that happened
growing up, there would be a lot of like crying
or like drama around the fact that like this stupid
cheap piece of crap blah blah blah. And then my
(26:20):
parents don't My parents were busy people, and I just
don't think they would have the energy to like go
back to a store and return things. They're just like, well,
the mistakes have been made. Um. So, so I was like,
let's just see if we can calmly resolve this. So
we um, I think they might have you'd be surprised. Um.
(26:43):
So we go to the store. Of course it's closed,
and then Brin was like surprisingly calm about the fact
that it was broken, Like I was like, he was
like complaining. He was like, my toy is broken, but
he wasn't mad, he didn't freak out. I was like,
Daddy's gonna return this for you later, and he he
was like okay, and he kept talking about it, but
he wasn't like super angry, which I was impressed with.
(27:07):
I took it back and I told him I was
going to take it to get a new one, and
he freaked out, but I later realized it because he
thinks that that toy is just a broken toy, and
then if I get the same one, it'll be broken.
So I brought it home and it was fixed, and
of course he was delighted. He was really confused by
the whole experience, but I do think it was like
good lesson for him if this thing is not supposed
(27:30):
to work this way. But certainly, back to guilt, I'm
realizing that kid does feel guilt, or he at least
knows like he does something and I can see him
look at me, and I know. I worked on at
a middle school first six years, watching kids on the
playground after school, and you knew when they did something
(27:51):
wrong because that was the only time they would look
at you. Yeah, we're standing there and they look at me,
and then I just stare at them and piece together
what had happened, and I tell them to come over,
and then I usually just go tell me why what
you did was wrong, and then they would explain to
me everything I didn't see. By the way, great parenting tip,
(28:13):
that's a real one if you're not sure what happened,
just if your kids are a little older. This is
my dad always did to me is he just very
calmly bring me over and say tell me why that
was a bad idea, and then I would explain it
and then punish myself and you'd say okay, and it
was over. Another funny example of that is a part
of Brian's morning routine is to get up a half
(28:33):
hour before us and just wander around the apartment getting
into trouble. And this morning the thing he found to
get into trouble was he pulled a salami out of
the fridge and was just eating it like a comically
big salami. Yeah. Um, And so he's just like munching
on salami. And I woke up and my eye, my
vision was still kind of like blurry, and I was like,
what do you have? And of course he just like
(28:54):
runs away that He did the same thing to you
where you were like I had been talking to for
a while. He's just like munching on salami, and then
you sat up in bed and he was like, daddy
takes things away from me. He just ran. Yeah. He
can read that body language and he knows there is
guilt in there, and I think a healthy amount of
(29:16):
guilt so that we know he's not a sociopath. He's
just the selfish oldest child. All right. Now it's time
for a fun new game that we just created. And
um boy, we need another segment title. I'm gonna call it.
Do you knows what he said in this game? Beth
(29:38):
and I each wrote down a real quote from our
three and a half year old Brand, and uh, I'm
gonna tell you three quotes and one of them is true,
and you're gonna have to guess which one is true.
Are you ready, Beth? Okay? Number one? These are all
things Brand did or did not say to me, Daddy,
(30:00):
you're a butt daddy. Daddy, You're a beautiful fart daddy. Daddy,
you're a mommy daddy. Um, I'm going to guess he
said you're a butt daddy. Very close he said to me, daddy,
you're a beautiful fart daddy, after admittedly I had farted. Okay,
(30:24):
mine are very similar. I'm gonna give you a Here
are some things Brand may or may not have said
to me. Mommy, you look really handsome, Mommy, I want
a butt toy. Mommy, I can count to fart. Um,
(30:47):
I think because it's the funniest. I have to guess Mommy,
I can count to fart. No, he said, Mommy, you
look really handsome. Also, those are all very brand awesome.
I think he walked in when I was getting dressed
or something. Is very weird. But I'm a handsome lady.
(31:08):
Do we call him handsome? We must? I think I
have called him handsome before. He's a handsome fella. Can
we talk about his haircut? She's got permanent mini alfalfa
mohawk back of his head. I think it's a good
look for him, but it's it's like not his hair
(31:30):
is sticking up. It's there's no way for it not to.
He has major cowlics. And then his hair is at
a shorter length where the weight of it does not
hold it down. Yeah, somehow the barbera before figured out
how to take care of that horn. Well, I like
it alright. Cool. So the real quotes were, ah, Daddy,
(31:58):
you're a beautiful fart daddy, And Mommy, you're very handsome. Mommy,
you look really handsome. Mommy, you look really handsome. Well, best,
you know what you do look very handsome, and you
look very beautiful. Far Yeah, all right, now it's time
(32:21):
for our favorite game. Would you knows? This is where
we posit a hypothetical parenting situation to the other parents
and discuss how we would handle it best. You've got
one for me, yeah yeah, so um. This is a
based off one of our childless friends posted on Facebook
this week about how he saw someone changing a baby's
diaper on a crowded rush our train and he was
(32:45):
like yea or nay, And then all these childless people
chimed in and they were like, disgusting, unacceptable, never change
diapers in public. And then all these people with kids
were like, well, it's really hard to find a place
to change a kid's diaper in the city. And also,
kids get diaper ashes if you don't change the diaper
soon enough. And stop shaming parents, you idiots, leave us alone.
(33:06):
We're just trying to survive over here. So my hypothetical
is you have a baby on a crowded rush hour
train stroller, diaper is exploding and it's pretty much definitely
about to start leaking out of the diaper in front
of the world. Okay if they're in a stroller, though,
(33:30):
never mind, they're not in a stroller. I'm holding a
baby with a leaky diaper. Okay, they are in a stroller?
What do you what do you do? Stroll? I mean stroller. Honestly,
I'm like, I'm waiting till I get off this train.
You're just gonna let them destroy the stroller. Yeah, people
are looking at your baby because your baby is cute,
(33:51):
but people are also about to notice that, like poop
is going to start leaking out of your kids. It's
a crowded train. Like, I don't have space to like
do a diaper change. Can't do it in the stroller.
I need to lay it down. But you're sitting in
a seat, so you have a seat to lay them down,
so their seats next to me to do it. Yeah,
uh no, I wouldn't do it. I would just keep
(34:15):
it contained in the stroller and I would be like,
look around and be like and then I get off
of the next stop and I would do it on
a one of those bedbug written benches. Well what some
what someone brought up in this threat is that those
bedbug written benches have little dividers between every seat, so
you can't lay a baby fully down on them. Oh gosh,
(34:38):
that's true. And the thing that you have to keep
in mind with Manhattan is wherever you're going the idea
of there being accessible bathroom anywhere near you is pretty slim,
not to mention if you do find a bathroom, there's
no way there's a changing table in it. And especially
now with all the Barnes and Nobles closing and the
bathrooms are filthy. I mean you know, I would, I would.
(35:04):
I would grab a blanket and I would put that
baby disgustingly, where's this blanket? Where are you getting this blanket?
I'm prepared in my am I me or am I
like a real dad who's prepared. Okay, so I don't
have a blanket. How cold is it? Do I have
a jacket? Uh? No? This is this sucks. I mean
(35:26):
I was gonna say I I would put my baby
on the subway ground, which no, is disgusting. I mean,
if I had something to put it, No, you should,
nothing should ever touch that floor, you know what, it's
every every the side. Would you put it on a sidewalk?
(35:47):
The sidewalks not the same, It's equally gross. I would
put something on a sidewalk in the suburbs. I wouldn't
put something on the sidewalk in the city. I mean,
it's uh uh oh God, I just leave it all
in the stroller and I would run home. That being said,
I like the idea that you think you're close to
(36:08):
home because you're not. You're like an hour and a
half away from home. You keep trying to shift the reality. Okay, well,
the point of this is I want to point out
that these parents probably had few other options. Absolutely. Here's
the thing is, I am a hundred percent for if
(36:29):
I see anyone changing a baby anywhere, I'm like, go
for it. I feel you. I'm I'm too uncomfortable to
have that kind of attention, and I'd avoid it for
as long as I possibly could. Um, but change your
baby wherever you need to. Also, I am sure that
before I had kids, if I heard that, I would
(36:50):
have had a different reaction. Hmm. Okay. I would like
to think that I would be understanding, But if I'm
going to be honest with myself, I probably wouldn't have
thought the whole thing through and be like, don't do
that there, and that'd be the end of it. I
wouldn't comment, because I don't comment on Facebook. I'm so
(37:14):
upset about that time I was on the subway with
the leaky poopy diaper and I threw my baby on
the ground. I can't believe you would even consider putting
a baby on the ground of the subway car. In
my mind, I had a big blanket, not the ground
of the subway car. I get off the train on
a narrow train platform where people are shovels. On my mind,
(37:37):
I'm going to find a space where there aren't a
bunch of people and I just want a flat surface,
and I put it. I put a blanket down and
get it done, and then go home and never leave
my apartment ever again. You'd have to burn that baby
after that. I just want to officially say that we
do not condone throwing babies onto grounds or burning them
(37:59):
on this podcast, and we don't take a lot of
hard stances on stuff. But that's a hard stance, Beth
I'm taking. Okay, this has been we knows parenting. If
you'd like to hear more from either of us, you
can find me on Twitter at Beth new You can
see my website reductress dot com and the Reductress Minute podcast.
(38:20):
If you want to hear more from me, you can
find me on Twitter and Instagram at nicknon m I
c any end or bit Peter McNerney dot net or
on the Story Pirates podcast. If you have parenting questions, comments,
or advice, send them to us at we knows Pod
at gmail dot com. You can also find we Knows
Parenting on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at we knows Pod. Also,
(38:42):
please rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.
That would really help us out. Yeah yeah, yeah, And
until next time, goodbye,
We Knows Parenting News
Hosts And Creators
Beth Newell
Peter McNerney
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