August 14, 2018 • 46 mins
While at the Newell family reunion Bryn learns to swim (his own way) and then gives Beth and Peter a taste of their own parenting medicine. Back home Beth and Peter prepare for Bryn’s upcoming fourth birthday, Peter has a contentious exchange with a cake designer about the existence of brown spotted cows, Beth shares a study that challenges the validity of parenting styles and a listener ‘Would You Knows?’ asks Peter and Beth to debates who gets the last two seats on an alien rescue ship.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome back to another episode. If we knows parenting.
I'm Peter McNerney. We are married and we have children.
Our children are two and oh almost four. We're so
close the weekend review, Beth. I don't know if you
remember in our last episode we talked about a family
(00:33):
vacation coming up and we said, I think at certain
points we said, uh, this will definitely like something like,
this will definitely be the most stress free vacation we've
ever had. I don't think I said that. I said it,
and you agreed. I said it would be less stressful
than previous family reunions because of the location. Yeah, okay,
(00:57):
how do we do? It was much better? It was
our kids are older, they're a little easier. They were
Britain kind of learned how as one as floating is on.
That was to me the greatest victory of the week
was he loves the water. Yeah, it was a real
(01:18):
lesson in Brian's learning style, which I think we've discussed.
But he just, much like you, does not respond to direction,
does not want to hear any guidelines as to how
swimming works. He just wants to get in the water.
Choke on a lot of water learned through the process.
He's an experiential learner. Yeah, I am definitely that way,
(01:41):
where if you explain it to me, yeah, that's interesting,
but it's abstract until I have an experience to relate
it to it does it's passing through me, So I
gotta jump in and I gotta fail. Ironically, you love
to explain it back to the person who was trying
to explain it to you in the first place. Oh
my gosh, you know what. Wow, that's true. I think
(02:03):
that's me. That's my that's me being proud of myself
for understanding and wanting to share. But I've never it's
insane to me. I've never thought about that of how
insane that is. I don't want you to explain anything,
really maddening to try to do anything with you. Once
I thought I have myself all figured out. But yeah,
(02:26):
I did try to teach him and I was like, here,
here's how to use your arms. And I let go
of that pretty quick and I realized, like, oh, just
let him figure it out, Like you're not going to
teach him how to do laps. Just he is fell
in love with the water, and he figured out his
own little funny doggy battle, and he swallowed a lot
of water and just letting him. I think I was
(02:48):
more comfortable to just letting him swallow like water than
you were. Yeah. Well, it's a real test of control
issues and trying not to have kids hurt themselves. And
there's so many times in parenting where I have to
be like, Okay, they're going to hurt themselves, and I
just have to be okay with the fact that at
least they're not going to die doing this. I think
(03:08):
we both learned a lesson in that lake, and mine
was that that like, just let him do it his
own way. And you were a little him, especially coughing
on things. You're like, are you grabbing him? And then
you would let go of that. And they're one of
times when like if I was grabbing him. He's wearing
this I guess they call it like a puddle jumper. Um,
(03:31):
it's like with a chest piece, so he's not going
on so it's like it doesn't automatically keep his head
above water. He has to mix an effort to do that.
So there's times where he would be choking and then
sort of like his head is like going to fall
back under water, so I would grab him by the
chest of the puddle jumper and lift upward so that
I knew his face was not going back in the
(03:52):
water while he was choking. And you would grab him
by the arm and just pull him towards you, which
doesn't have any like upward out of water effort behind it.
I understand the concern, but I was certainly pulling him
up first. I don't know that you jumped in the
water and splashed waves in his face and he was choking.
(04:13):
And this is someone who just learned how to swim
with like an hour ago. The thing is whenever he
would get water in his face, and I think the
solution was us both leaving him alone. I know, but
I was. I calmed down when I saw him learn
to process it. And you had no concerns from the
beginning about splashing water into your kid's face. Again, in
(04:35):
the end, I was right because that's how he learned.
I mean, I wasn't trying to get water in his face.
I did do a big dumb splash at one point.
I'm just saying, I think having no concern for your
kids safety, it's not necessarily like the best method. I'm
saying we're meeting somewhere in the middle, and it worked out. Yes, yes,
I don't have no concern, but I do have less
(04:56):
concern from your perspective. I totally understand why it feels
that way. But yeah, we he ended up great, and
by he was in the water every single day for
a week, and by the end I wanted him to
be able to I was trying to get him to
jump in the water and be okay with his head
going under, but I let go of that battle turn.
(05:18):
He did do it once, and he was such a
strong mixture of proud and like, I'm never doing that again. Yeah.
So whenever you would swallow water, We're both it would
seem terrible. He's like, oh, I'm like, oh no, do
you want to get out? He's like, no, I want
to swim. Yeah, And he was fine. So that was great,
very dramatic. The house was much less dangerous, and yeah,
(05:44):
I mean we were, we were on top of things,
but still were other people because it was there was
less to be worried about and like they weren't going
off a cliff. For some reason, talking about that just
reminded me of when um, we were at my parents
house a couple weeks ago eating ice cream cake, and
he some and asked him if he was getting full,
if he was too full and didn't want anymore, And
(06:04):
while he was made eating this piece of ice cream
cake that he was obsessed with, and he accidentally said, yeah,
I'm full, and then he tried to recover really quickly,
realizing he saw the wrong thing because he didn't want
his ice cream cake taken away and he was like, um,
I mean, um, I'm very hungry. And it was the
funniest realist moment. It's like literally watching somebody for the
(06:28):
very first time try to lie so blatantly. It's like
it's fast. We obviously as adults, you've had a lot
of years to learn some tact It was just the
misspeaking and trying to recover. I think that. But well,
I gotta say my favorite part of the trip was
when the four of us were out in the lawn
(06:49):
and I don't know how it started. Um it probably Bryn,
who likes to dictate how to play you be this
and do you say this? Um, But he made us
switch roles our lives and he played daddy and Maven
played mommy and I played Bryn and you played Maven,
and I found what then followed to be incredibly illuminating
(07:11):
and hilarious. Um yeah, it was funny seeing he's like
a pretty committed improviser, and I think one of the
funnier moments he was like walking around playing you very confidently,
and then at one point I said, um, daddy, why
aren't you wearing any pants? Because he loves to walk
around and his underwear, and he was like, um uh,
(07:34):
and then he just changed the subject. He was like,
let's go to school. He's also it was really funny
because like, immediately in this role playing game, Maven and
Brinn's thing was that they were trying to get us
to go to school, which is such an ongoing morning
battle we have with them is just like we have
to get you out the door. And so it's so
(07:55):
funny that they picked that as the role playing I mean,
that's a big part of our relay and ship is
me telling them to do things very directly, and and
I was in the end, I was very happy with
how I was portrayed because there, yeah, there was a
lot of like gotta do this, gotta do that, but
there was no anger or like overly sternness. He was
(08:18):
just they they both played just these like confident I'm
telling what to do because that's what parents do. But
my favorite part was when we pretended to get upset
and uh, I started crying and I started doing what Brenda's,
which is that like I'm being disagreeable and I don't
like this. No, I don't want to. I want to
don't want to go to school. And my favorite moment
(08:40):
is my favorite moment was when he just gets still
and he looks at me and he goes, it's okay
to be sad. I was like, wow, brand that was
some great parenting. And may even just repeats everything he says.
My my impression of Maybne was just like you wearing shirt,
you wearing a shirt, dash your shirt. She just loves
(09:05):
to ask them. She asked the most obvious questions all
the time. I know this is like a Tyler thing,
but she goes, you mommy, your mommy, yeah, she just
I think there's there's something that obviously feels great about validation,
just like I love that she constantly just wants to confirm,
like you're my mommy right real quick? Oh wow, this
(09:28):
reminds me you've heard this, I think, but my it's
a little bit of a tangent. But my favorite story
of my cousin Ben when he was little. We grew
up very close to our cousins and they had four kids.
We had four kids, and so my mom was giving
my older brother Andrew and my cousin Ben a bath.
(09:48):
And they were probably six maybe, and they're getting maybe younger,
I don't know. They're getting undressed and getting the tub,
and Ben, who's a very serious, like quiet introverted kid,
is about to take of his underwear and he stops
and he looks at my mom. He just goes, you
see my penis, right, and she said yes. He goes okay,
and then he gets hit. Yeah. He probably just had
(10:10):
like a stern lecture from his pediatrician or something about
who gets to see your penis? Stern lecture from your pediatrition.
Did you not have that talk with your pai? No?
Dr Bagun never talked about that. I feel like that
was an ongoing thing of like them, because they have to, like,
you know, look at you and examine intimate parts of
(10:33):
your body, and I feel like they so they constantly
want to remind you at the pediatrician like, here, but
this should not be something that's happening to you. I
wonder if that's a gender difference. Do you think girls
get that talk more than boys. I don't know, because
my pediatrician was very, um weird towards me for certain
gender reasons. Like he would always, every single visit would
(10:57):
tell me how pretty I was, and then he would
tell me to say thank you for his compliment, which
was just so condescending. And the older I get, the
more insane it seems to me. But it was just
like acceptable misogyny those days. That's insane. I mean, that
would be totally insane right now. I hope so, I
(11:18):
mean I think, but I don't think, like it was
not on my mom's radar because it's just so normal
in those days for people to be like, you should
be very grateful that someone finds you attractive. That's bizarre.
I mean, yeah, if ten even ten years ago. But
I'm sure he thought he was doing a great thing
because I'm sure he said that's every little girl that
(11:40):
came in all day, every day, and he was like,
look at me building up these girls confidence or something. Anyway, Um,
how was the old I mean I mean when you're little,
everyone's old. I guess, yeah, he was grown up. He's
older than my mom. Um. We I have this very
fun memory of our pediatrician, Dr Bagown, but I don't
(12:03):
really remember much. I think you just had a great
playroom and we all had him, and he was very
quiet and got the job done done. And just what
a name. I tell you what. I've done a lot
of improv shows where if I have to be a doctor.
Dr Bagown is the first thing that posted in my head.
And it sounds like a fake name, doesn't it, Bagown?
(12:24):
It sounds like a real name, Bawn. Anyway, that's worry about.
Ben reminded me of that video you posted while around
vacation of bryn Um getting mad at me for something random,
like telling him he couldn't do something, and then he
kept saying, I'm not going to be friends with anyone
at school, and that was his weird that's his revenge
for you not helping him with something. Yeah, I'm not
(12:46):
gonna it's so dramatic. I'm not going to be friends
with anyone at school and then his slump shoulder, fast
walk away. It's just the perfect metaphor for how whenever
any of us are getting angry, we're just punishing ourselves. Yes,
go to my Instagram, am I see any end and
(13:08):
check out what we're talking about. It's very funny, I promise.
But at the very end of that, I go, that
makes sense, and then he goes, it doesn't make sense.
I don't think he knows what that means. No, he
was just trying to be disagreeable about everything he said.
It doesn't make sense. Now it's time for we knows wins.
(13:33):
This is where we talk about some successes we've had
in parenting as of late, Beth, you have something you
feel good about, So I want to talk about Brin's birthday,
which is coming up as coming up fast as usual.
This is sort of like an abstract win. But uh,
I think something about my parenting struggle is that I
(13:58):
am a perfectionist and I like things to be perfect
and that's impossible with children. And so I'm learning balance
and how I'm learning how to put in an appropriate
amount of effort towards events that makes me feel not
insane but also makes me feel accomplished. So for Britain's birthday,
(14:19):
I think we've talked about this where like for the
last couple of birthdays for because we've done almost nothing
because they're little and they don't know. But he's getting
to this point where he does understand and may even
just had a birthday, so now he kind of has expectations.
And you crushed it with those unicorn cupcakes. Yeah. So
originally the plan was like, let's make cupcakes for Britain,
make things even, but he requested cow cupcakes for some reason,
(14:42):
and I thought that was just an arbitrary thing on
his part, but he remembered it a couple of months
later and still keep saying how cupcakes. So I did
some momline research. None of the cow designs look easy
to accomplish, and the thing with decorating cupcakes and a
pacific ways, you then have to buy a lot of
materials and plant it out, and it takes time and energy,
(15:05):
and it's the the money starts racking up where you
think you're saving money by doing something yourself, and then
all a sudden you spent like eighty dollars on pieces
of candy and stuff. So I decided, let's just have
someone else figure this out for us and hire someone.
And so he's not getting cupcakes, but he's going to
get a cow birthday cake, which I sent you to
(15:26):
the cake store. This was also a brave thing you did,
which is you entrusted me to get this done. And
this is the thing for me where I'm trying to
learn to not care about details. You know what, You're
not gonna love this cow cake, I don't think. I
think the joy of not having to do any of
it myself will lower my expectation. You also may never
(15:46):
see this cake, which might be the best. I walked
into the so I walked into the cake store and
I was like, I want to order a cake for
four year old birthday party or some or some cup cupcakes.
She's like, alright, cake, what do you want on it?
Like he wants a cow? And then she looked at
me then like what do you mean? And I was like,
(16:12):
I assume this is normal. And then you follow up
questions and then I suddenly felt so dumb. And then
and then we went through it and she's like what
kind And I was like, well, I guess I hadn't
really thought about it, so now I'm designing a cow
cake in my head. I'm like, I guess just if
it's a cake, we just put the face like a
cartoon cow face on the cake and right, happy birthday
(16:32):
brand and she goes, okay, just a face. I'm like,
I guess and she goes, what kind what kind of cow?
I was like, you know, just like white brown spots
And then she goes, you mean black spots with the
most judgmental look, like she's the one that asked you
like she didn't understand what a cow looks like. Well,
she was just like, cows have black spots, you idiot.
(16:53):
So I go on my Now I'm like, I'm getting
on my phone and I google brown spotted cow and
then I showed her a pick sure of a brown spot,
arguing with her over the why didn't you just relent
and like it doesn't matter? Well, I mean now I
had started. Yeah, well she just treated me like I
was so dumb. I was like, I just don't want
do you think I'm dumb? Look, this is a picture
(17:13):
of a brown spotted cow. And then she goes, so
do you want that on the cake? And it's a
stock photograph of a cow? And I'm like, no, this
is what I'm cows to someone, No, no, no doubt.
I'm so then I realized, oh, I assumed that this
will be a place where they're like, oh, so like
how about this? Instead, she was just like, tell me
(17:33):
exactly what you want, and so then I was like okay.
So then I started looking at pictures of cows, and
I quickly then just google brown cow cartoon and then
there's just a bunch of like cartoon cows. I picked one,
googled cow cake, and given her the most simple execute cake. Yeah. Well,
(17:54):
I expected somebody with some expertise to be asking me questions. Instead,
I quickly found a cartoon cow. I emailed it to
that are and then she goes, what colors do you want?
I'm like, how colors? So I guess like maybe white
frosting and the cow can be white with brown spots,
and then the decorations can be sort of like brown, orange, yellow,
(18:14):
sort of fall colors. That's what I think when I
think cow, you think of fall. It's not not fall,
but the colors of a brown spotted cow. That orange.
This is going to be insane orange, brown, yellow. It's
a kid's birthday is just like blue background with a
cow on it. This might be the best cake ever.
Say that. This is exactly why it is great. How
(18:37):
much are we paying for this cake? There's the thing
I did, the whole thing, like we can have it
by that, but somebody will call you about the price.
I was like, this is they're doing. Now, they're doing
like a mural of fall Folia is going to run
us like eighty bucks. I may explor that. I wanted
very simple. Okay, they're gonna call me. And if it's colors,
(18:58):
ten colors? I said orange. I said orange, white, orange,
and brown. Uh. And I was like maybe a little yellow. Uh.
And then the cake itself is going to be vanilla
cake with chocolate chocolate frosting in the middle, so that
when you cut it, it's like a white and brown cow.
I I can't believe you insisted on brown spots. Well,
(19:22):
she was so judgmental. Bet cows don't have brown spots.
Yes they do. I also have black spots, I know,
but the judgment. I don't want to be wrong, and
I proved her right. But a black and white cake,
I think it's a little less dynamic than some textured
browns and oranges. I can't wait to see this. I
(19:45):
should have just asked her to hold my win into
a loss um and the only thing you're upset about
is the logic I used for the design choices. If
she has said like brown and white, and I said, yeah,
you think that. But this is like every argument you
and I get into about like how to hang a
shelf for something, is you try to man explain these
(20:09):
arbitrary truths that you've come up with that don't serve
the greater ease and execution of the projects. This is
a this is a big stretch. No, it's not the
result of the cake will be will be the same.
I'm just saying you, when you are hiring someone to
(20:31):
do something for you, you you could give it to them
in a more simple way that won't rack up the costs. No, No,
this is exactly what I was trying to do. And
she was helpless, and I realized like later, like oh,
she just needs to get enough information to give to
the person that's actually doing this. And she had zero
(20:51):
agency to be like, oh, here's what we do, here's
what's what works. Okay. But when she said you mean
white and black, you should you could have been like, sure,
white and black. Well, she didn't say that. She she
said something like cows aren't brown. It's like and the
iconically in terms of what a four year old is
(21:12):
picturing at cow to look like, he is picturing black
and white. Oh you don't know that. I do know that,
because every representation of cow he's seen has probably been
black and white. I think the year in her camp.
I don't want to think of a cow. I think
in her camp because she's like, what are you asking
for here? A simple cow or something you're imagining? I
(21:36):
was asking for a simple cow. This is the dumbest
argument we have ever. No, it's not. It's embeletic of
every argument we have. No, I stand by this. She
I was making, trying to make it simple, and she
treated me like I was insane, And so then then
I had to design the whole case exactly like when
(21:58):
I was giving our kids half and half mixed with
water so that they wouldn't have a We talked about
this last week, and you want to, man splinty point
out that it's technically not milk, and just so that
you can be the last time you did that last week.
Literally I did not do that, Okay, But I'm just like,
this is a constant pattern where you're needing to be
(22:19):
right comes above I took. I took the note, but
not in this case. This woman made me design a
whole cake and I did. I did a great job. Anyway.
I came home and Bryn brought it up again because
my birthday, am I going to get a cow cake?
And I smiled and I said, you just might. Brand
you might get a cowcake at school. And then he
(22:41):
made an additional request, can the cow be fighting a unicorn? Wow?
This is like some sort of need to defeat Maven's birthday.
And I wanted so badly because I thought it was
so funny, like a cow in a unicorn in battle,
(23:03):
to like talk about it and like joke about it.
But I was like, I can't let you fall in
love with that image because now you're gonna hate your
cow cake. But to your original point, I mean, when
they call you, you could ask for that and see
what they say, maybe, because I honestly would love to
see that image on a cake now, it would be great.
(23:26):
I don't want to promote let this kid constantly promote violence,
but that's a funny cake. I mean, it's just I
just pictured them both sort of on their hind legs
with their hoofs up like a like a coat of
arms type of pose. It's like that Discovery Channel like
Shark versus Alligator thing, like who would win? Who would win?
(23:49):
Oh gosh, maybe I will if I'm talking to the
actual designer. Well that's the thing. It sounds like this
woman was kind of useless, and when you talk to
the person who's actually going to execute it, they will
probably be like, yeah, fine, yeah, whatever you want. I mean,
I just kept saying, she asked me more question. I
kept Originally I was like, and he's four, it doesn't matter,
(24:10):
just he just wants a cow. It's a cow cake,
not complicated. UMU. The other so the other aspects of
this birthday that I think are again this this uh
nice need for balance is uh we. I don't want
to spend a lot of money on him again because
he's still not quite old enough to really appreciate things.
(24:31):
So instead of ordering him one of the many like
billion dollar Lego sets that are all Star Wars, for
some reason, I found this off brand set of Lego
people that um is is a variety of just random,
(24:52):
generic looking people, and we ordered it. It came in
the mail yesterday and um none of these people are
assembled so it's like how many people forty at least
there's a lot of people. Every hand, every arm, every leg,
every pelvis, every torso, head and hair are separated. I
(25:13):
still think worth it, and the price was amazing. And
if you're to say, who built three of them and
I built wanted too, this is exactly the kind of
project you love, you're right, But boy, my fingers are
messed up. Like there, this is great. We got what
we paid for. But here's what I love about this
(25:33):
is that we don't have a million Legos. And I
think he really mostly just wants to play with the people,
not the lego he's I do think he is old
enough to I want to get him some just like
generic Lego pieces, because he started to play with stuff.
But in structure, I don't want to spend money on
Lego pieces because one they're sober priced and too, I'm
pretty sure we have family who is just begging to
(25:55):
give us like ten million Lego pieces if we are
willing to ask for them. Yeah. I love legos so much, Beth,
you have no idea. This is a phase of painting
I'm not looking forward to because I really don't want
to have a house covered in Legos. But to get trays,
my mom has it all figured out. She has designated
Lego play areas and they have trays with these little
(26:16):
ledges so you don't lose any they don't end up
on the floor. If they're on the floor, there's a
big blanket for them. And she's had a lifetime of
Lego maintenance. This is actually something my mom had on
vacation that my aunt gave her, which is these rubber
mats those that are trays. They're like very flexible that
she Her idea was that kids could paint on them
(26:37):
and spill paint whatever and it doesn't run off. But
she actually bought them at the pet store and they're
dog food bowls. Yeah, they're for like cat and dog
food bowls and it's just like a rubber mat so
that stuff doesn't spill everywhere. And Mason might as well
be a puppy when it comes to eating. All kids
are puppies. Um. Yeah, So we haven't decided what we're
(27:01):
actually gonna do for his birthday, but we have daycare
cake covered, we have some presents. We also ordered a
I ordered it on eBay, a plastic dinosaur from the
nineteen eighties to match the one he has from your childhood,
which they're both featured in the book. He loves what
the dinosaurs did at school, and do you know how
(27:21):
selfish I am? You thought it was for you when
I ordered it. Yeah, and I thought it was the
most thoughtful gift you'd ever given me. H. I mean no,
I didn't think that you actually got it for me,
But when I saw it, I felt an incredible emotional
reaction of this. That was one of my favorite toys ever,
(27:42):
The big dun dinosaurs. Again a balancing because he's been
reading this book and he knows that he has one
of the dinosaurs from it, which is kind of because
it's a dinosaur from the nineteen like a celebrity. Yeah,
and so he he points at the book and says
he wants the other ones, and it's almost impossible to
find them online in on eBay or like you could.
(28:02):
The thing is, I could order like five mismatched dinosaurs
for like a hundred and forty dollars, which is insane,
and the only one or two of them would be Actually,
I know another one is still at my mom's house,
so we'll have to just go steal it, which one,
this diagnosaurus. Yeah, that was that One's really hard to
find online. All right, we gotta grab that. If you
(28:24):
know what we're talking about, you know, maybe this will
be the picture for this week's episode is the dinosaurs.
It's a very specific brand of nine eighties toy dinosaurs
called dorm May And if you look up that brand
or more recent plastic dinosaurs, they don't tend to make
them as big as that. Yeah, that's what's so great
about this huge plastic dinosaur. I want it anyway. We
(28:48):
now have to, so well, someday, someday we'll have all
the dinosaurs happy Birthday brand. This next segment is called
did You Knows? And for the first time ever, we're
gonna learn something from Beth. Yes, Beth learned something and
(29:11):
she took the fact thank you for saying that, as
if it's so rare for me to learn something that's me.
That's what I was implying. Is that so dumb? It's
just thing. You love Man's planning so much and you
love me seated that territory to you, but not today.
So my cousin sent me this article and it's from
the British Psycho. The British Psychological Society Research Digest Juicy
(29:37):
and she sent it to me actually because there's a
picture of a girl that looks remarkably like Maven with
her she's standing on her mom with her arms crossed,
and it reminded her of the video on our Instagram
where Mayven says big fat booty and steps on Brent's
but she stepping on the mom like Captain Morgan does one.
So that's why she sent it. But it's actually the
(30:00):
interesting article and the title of the article is how
kids shape their parents parenting style. And this is like
remarkably sort of like the thesis of what I imagine
my parenting style to be, which is no style because
the first sentence, the first two sentences here are in
our culture we like to speculate about the effects of
different parenting styles on children. A lot of this debate
(30:22):
is wasted breath. And the point of this article is,
like they did these studies to figure out whether, you know,
parenting styles are having effect on the kid or whether
the kid is having effect on the parents parenting style
based on their general nature. And so they compared sets
of identical twins versus fraternal twins and how the parents
(30:45):
parent did them, and what they found is that a
lot of our parenting is actually in response to the
specific nature of our kid um. And I think that's
so interesting because when you read it, they make this
point in the article, it's sort of like they say,
a lot of parents and know implicitly that no matter
(31:05):
how much you try to train yourself to follow these
like specific parenting guidelines of like being incredibly patient and
following specific sets of rules at certain points, it's just
so much easier said than done with certain kids in
certain moments, depending on their behavior and their stubbornness and etcetera. Um,
it's very true when you look at our two kids.
(31:27):
I mean, they're both difficult in their own ways, but there, um,
you just you at a certain level, you just have
to improvise. This is what I've been saying recently. It said,
you know, there's there's value to hearing about how other
people do things and patterns that have been successful for them,
but you have to keep in mind it's successful for
(31:48):
them and their child. Everyone is just figuring out how
to parent the child they have, right, And I do
think there's certain like court truths to a lot of them,
and like there are probably a um, they're probably for
the most part effective in most situations whatever. But I
do think also like sometimes certain methods are really effective
(32:09):
at one age and then your kid hits a certain
age and then it's just like totally useless. So I
think the danger is to like read one parenting book
and follow it like it's the Bible. I think it's
when they're really little. Every every three months, it's a
totally different human being and you have to refigure out
most And then the thing with my experience, the thing
(32:31):
the parenting literature is like they'll develop these like methods
and things that are like week two weeks specific about
how your kid will change and grow and how like
how those things will change, and then they map it
to a certain extent. It is true and helpful, but
at the same time, again, you can't predict any one
kid and how uh they're going to hit those benchmarks
(32:55):
at such a specific time. So like everything, I really
late this back to being an improv teacher, where I'm
trying to get a bunch of adults to learn a
very specific skill, and there's a lot of things I've
learned over the years that if I make everyone do
this they're more likely to learn the core lesson than not.
(33:17):
But I also know that there's people are going to
react to it differently because they are different people, and
everyone needs a slightly different approach to achieve the same goal.
No one's coming from the same place. Different people are
motivated in different ways. And I'm sure if we were
teaching may even how to swim two years from now,
(33:39):
she would respond to the instructions of doggie paddling, because
I think she picks up on things like that from
other people and she likes those cues, and I Brin
doesn't want to hear it. He also has much more
of a performer like you instead of an observer. And
so when I told him I tried to explain to
(34:00):
him how to doggy paddle instead of doing it, he
started barking like a dog in the water. You know what.
I think that that probably helped him more than anything
I told him. I was like a reach and then
pull is the like pretend you're dog, you know. And
then he saw that dog, very old dog swam across
(34:21):
the entire lake to bring us a stick to throw.
Um Swedish man who lived across Swiss Swiss his name
is Bruno. I think he's like old. He looked like
a Waring her Dog character and sounded like when. It
sounded like when and he Um had a big dog
(34:42):
that swam across the lake and was bothering us in
a nice way. Um they called Bruno. Bruno came down.
He's the Swiss caretaker that just lives in the woods
by himself. And he comes down and gets on his raft,
which is built on top of three surfboards and has
the tiniest out word motor I've ever seen. Was insane.
(35:04):
It was like if you took like a wooden dock
that was like many many years old and it had
mosque growing all along the edges of it. It was
like it's been there for a while. It felt like
in Um Lord of the Rings when the ants come
to life and then you just see this like mossy
old thing moving and you're like, this is not supposed
to be moving. That's supposed to stay in place. I
thought you were going to talk about Buckleberry ferry. No,
(35:29):
uh not, but it it didn't look like that was
something that should be moving across the lake towards us.
It was like a decrepit Moldy. You were shocking and
you got across the go. I did not expect the
motor to work. It's been out for all year. He said.
This is the first time I've taken it out this year,
and it was like it was August. So well, yeah,
(35:53):
I don't think he was swimming a lot. No. He
my my aunt told me that. He said that, Um,
he likes to have his friends over to smoke pot
on the weekends. That is not surprising. No, I wish
I could have spent more time with him. So we
are parenting the only way our kids will let us,
(36:16):
which is in reaction to them. It's a hodgepodge of
effort and non effort. This next segment is called Wood
You Knows. This is where one of our listeners posits
a hypothetical parenting situation for us. And for the first
time this week, we have a voicemail recording that we're
(36:37):
going to play for you. Hi, this is Nicholas from
Brooklyn and I have a Wood You Knows. So let's
say that you and your family are either out on
the beach or maybe in like a cornfield in the
middle of Iowa. Point is you're you're all alone it's
(36:59):
just your family there, and all of a sudden in
the sky, there's a huge burst of light and these
magnificent aliens arrive and you're you're certain they're real aliens.
There's no way that special effects could capture this. Uh.
The incredible majesty of it all, it's incredible. You're just like, wow,
these are real aliens. And the aliens step out of
(37:21):
their ship and they approach you, and they are able
to communicate with you, and they say, hey, so we
just discovered that there is an apocalyptic meteor heading for Earth,
and we have two extra spots on our ship. We're
gonna take your kids. Is that cool with you? We
(37:41):
could take you guys, but you wouldn't want to leave
your kids to die here on this um scary, scary planet.
There's not a lot of time. I guess my question
is And it seems like they know what they're talking about.
These are very nice aliens. Any question you ask them
uh generally lines up with um, yep, No, we're aliens,
you know everything, uh, and we're super smart. So would
(38:04):
you let your kids go on the spaceship alone with
these aliens? Thinking that maybe you would be saving their
lives or would you say, oh, no, aliens, that's okay,
we're all gonna go kaboom together. Um let me know,
all right, bye. Wow. My favorite part of all of
that is just how in love Nicholas seems to be
(38:28):
with these aliens. They're majestic, they're trustworthy. I want to
be friends with these aliens. Paints a picture of them
is fairly trustworthy, and but I'm still having a hard time. Yeah,
if this in the in the movie ideal version of
this story, this origin story for some human who lives
(38:49):
in space, uh, we would hand over our kids. But
in reality, I think that'd be nearly impossible to do.
I mean, he's making a really strong point that at
the end of the discussion, we believe their logic and
(39:09):
we believe that we're gonna die and only two people
can live. He does paint a really positive picture of them,
because if they're evil aliens, wouldn't they just try to
wrestle our kids from us and not ask our permission. Well,
they're not evil, they're just I know. I'm just saying,
in the scenario where we're trying to figure out if
they're evil or not, it's like, so I would trust them,
(39:31):
you'd be like, yeah, if you have this much technology,
you could just take them. I think here's the question
for me, is okay, so maybe we give up our
two kids. But is this going to be in my mind?
I'm going should I send these two kids away or
should I send you and one of our kids so
that that person because them just like suddenly being around
(39:55):
aliens and like that's our whole life. Is that traumatizing
or is that going to be normal? List do they
need a person that understands them to be with them
so that their life is not complete misery? What are there?
What are these aliens parenting styles? Or are these aliens
adjust their parentings? I mean I could see why they
would want our kids and not one of us, because
(40:17):
if you're like going out of your way to take
in a human being and support them, you want them
probably to learn about your culture and grow up in
it and and accept it as normal and not like
constantly be like questioning it. In the same way, like
if you learn a foreign language at a young age,
it's going to be much easier for you than like
(40:38):
trying to learn it at thirty. Like, well, if one
of us goes, we're just dead way to these aliens,
like they're just like oh God or no, like then
now they have someone to take care of that child
that they picked up, because like they don't know how
the child works. I don't know. I don't think it's
like that hard to keep. What are these aliens take
Britnam maybe into their planet and they're like, here's lunch
(41:00):
and it's poison and they're dead. And if you have
a parent there to be like, hey, what's in this?
Humans can't eat all things? I don't know. You're giving
yourself a lot of credit to be able to look
at alien food and tell if it's poison or not. Well,
I'd have the sense to ask what is this? You're
not a chemist? Do you know what the chemical compounds
are of poison versus alien food? And you think they
(41:22):
could read you off a sheet of the point or
I could? We can at least wonder we would we
would were the best positioned to take care of our
children in that situation. No, I don't think so well.
I mean, if the baby, if it was a baby,
(41:44):
if it's like a maybe even one year old, I
I can understand why I'm valuable to have there for
emotional support, etcetera. Breastfeeding and are at the current age.
I don't like, Yeah, it's going to be true, Matt,
But kids survive. It's true. True. Kids are designed to
(42:06):
uh withstand to to deal with trauma more than they
are sometimes keeping credit as long as these aliens understand
affection to some degree and like have some sort of empathy,
which I think they do if they're coming to they're
magnificent aliens, majestic, thoughtful, caring, and patient. It sounds like
(42:28):
they're patient. They took a lot of questions, so in
my mind, they're like just zooming by the planet and
they're like, oh crap, look at that meteor. Maybe we
could save some people while we're right here and they
go down. We can save two. We got seats for two.
I'm still having a hard time trusting them, and this is, unfortunately,
just reminding me of these Ice situations where a lot
(42:48):
of times they because they didn't want to have like
a traumatic scene, they would tell these immigrant moms like, oh, um,
we're just going to take your kids over here for
a second, and we just need you to sign this
thing that signs me rights away, and everything's gonna be fine.
And they barely speak English and they think they basically
think they're just like entering the country with some degree
(43:11):
of like whatever. So I don't think. I I feel
much closer to these aliens, and I trust them more
than ice agents, Oh for sure. So I think the
question definitely smarter. I think the I mean, if, yeah,
if the the planet's going to blow up, I think
the core question is, of course I would let my
(43:32):
children live. I wouldn't keep them here and have us
all die. I don't. I really don't think in the moment, though,
you would make that choice. That's that is unknowable. I
think it is very it's very possible we just be like, no, no,
there's gotta be gotta be away. I don't believe you,
I don't trust you. But if there was enough time
(43:52):
to face the fact that that truly was the choice
we were making, yeah, I mean it's just like I
think it's human nature to like act out of fear,
make the bad choice. And like it's like so many
people when there's like a hurricane coming and they have
a chance to evacuate, and they're like, I'm not leaving
my house, and it's like what are you doing? Like
but that's how we are, Like, we're you just made
(44:15):
that idiot Southern. What does that say about you, elite
East Coaster that hurricanes are more likely to happen in
the South. Alright, good answer, I accept it, Um, But
I mean our scoop instructor to this in the Cayman Islands,
he stayed in disaster and hurricane and he regretted it. Yeah, yeah,
(44:37):
but I think another whole story anyway. But like I um, Nick,
we would give the aliens are kids if we were
calm enough to think through it, and if we're emotional
dumb animals like we probably are, we might make the
wrong choice. We don't know, Nicholas, So why don't you
take your aliens you love so much? And why don't
you go with them? That's what we do. We'd say,
(44:57):
you know what, We're not gonna go, but our friend
I would love to go. Thank you, Nick. That was
Would you Knows? This has been another episode of We
Knows Parenting. If you would like to reach out and
tell us about your parenting stories questions. Would you Knows?
(45:19):
You can email us at we Knows pod at gmail
dot com, or you can leave us a voicemail at
three four seven three eight four seven three nine six.
You can find that number also on our website we
knows Parenting dot com. While you're there, why not check
out our new merch store. You can get a T
(45:40):
shirt We Knows Parenting. You can get a I'm a
Handsome Mommy T shirt or I'm a Beautiful fart Daddy
T shirt and more stuff is coming. Yeah, so keep
an eye on that. What do you wanna plug? I
wanted to plug something totally unrelated to the podcast, which
is uh front of the podcast. Guy Brandham's book is out.
(46:02):
It's called My Life as a Goddess, and I'm really
enjoying it. You actually seem to really love this book,
like I want to read it, but you literally are
holding it every time. Well, I shall begin. Well, that'll
do it for us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
and we Knows pod. Uh, that's it. Beth wants to
(46:23):
say goodbye my
Hello, and welcome back to another episode. If we knows parenting.
I'm Peter McNerney. We are married and we have children.
Our children are two and oh almost four. We're so
close the weekend review, Beth. I don't know if you
remember in our last episode we talked about a family
(00:33):
vacation coming up and we said, I think at certain
points we said, uh, this will definitely like something like,
this will definitely be the most stress free vacation we've
ever had. I don't think I said that. I said it,
and you agreed. I said it would be less stressful
than previous family reunions because of the location. Yeah, okay,
(00:57):
how do we do? It was much better? It was
our kids are older, they're a little easier. They were
Britain kind of learned how as one as floating is on.
That was to me the greatest victory of the week
was he loves the water. Yeah, it was a real
(01:18):
lesson in Brian's learning style, which I think we've discussed.
But he just, much like you, does not respond to direction,
does not want to hear any guidelines as to how
swimming works. He just wants to get in the water.
Choke on a lot of water learned through the process.
He's an experiential learner. Yeah, I am definitely that way,
(01:41):
where if you explain it to me, yeah, that's interesting,
but it's abstract until I have an experience to relate
it to it does it's passing through me, So I
gotta jump in and I gotta fail. Ironically, you love
to explain it back to the person who was trying
to explain it to you in the first place. Oh
my gosh, you know what. Wow, that's true. I think
(02:03):
that's me. That's my that's me being proud of myself
for understanding and wanting to share. But I've never it's
insane to me. I've never thought about that of how
insane that is. I don't want you to explain anything,
really maddening to try to do anything with you. Once
I thought I have myself all figured out. But yeah,
(02:26):
I did try to teach him and I was like, here,
here's how to use your arms. And I let go
of that pretty quick and I realized, like, oh, just
let him figure it out, Like you're not going to
teach him how to do laps. Just he is fell
in love with the water, and he figured out his
own little funny doggy battle, and he swallowed a lot
of water and just letting him. I think I was
(02:48):
more comfortable to just letting him swallow like water than
you were. Yeah. Well, it's a real test of control
issues and trying not to have kids hurt themselves. And
there's so many times in parenting where I have to
be like, Okay, they're going to hurt themselves, and I
just have to be okay with the fact that at
least they're not going to die doing this. I think
(03:08):
we both learned a lesson in that lake, and mine
was that that like, just let him do it his
own way. And you were a little him, especially coughing
on things. You're like, are you grabbing him? And then
you would let go of that. And they're one of
times when like if I was grabbing him. He's wearing
this I guess they call it like a puddle jumper. Um,
(03:31):
it's like with a chest piece, so he's not going
on so it's like it doesn't automatically keep his head
above water. He has to mix an effort to do that.
So there's times where he would be choking and then
sort of like his head is like going to fall
back under water, so I would grab him by the
chest of the puddle jumper and lift upward so that
I knew his face was not going back in the
(03:52):
water while he was choking. And you would grab him
by the arm and just pull him towards you, which
doesn't have any like upward out of water effort behind it.
I understand the concern, but I was certainly pulling him
up first. I don't know that you jumped in the
water and splashed waves in his face and he was choking.
(04:13):
And this is someone who just learned how to swim
with like an hour ago. The thing is whenever he
would get water in his face, and I think the
solution was us both leaving him alone. I know, but
I was. I calmed down when I saw him learn
to process it. And you had no concerns from the
beginning about splashing water into your kid's face. Again, in
(04:35):
the end, I was right because that's how he learned.
I mean, I wasn't trying to get water in his face.
I did do a big dumb splash at one point.
I'm just saying, I think having no concern for your
kids safety, it's not necessarily like the best method. I'm
saying we're meeting somewhere in the middle, and it worked out. Yes, yes,
I don't have no concern, but I do have less
(04:56):
concern from your perspective. I totally understand why it feels
that way. But yeah, we he ended up great, and
by he was in the water every single day for
a week, and by the end I wanted him to
be able to I was trying to get him to
jump in the water and be okay with his head
going under, but I let go of that battle turn.
(05:18):
He did do it once, and he was such a
strong mixture of proud and like, I'm never doing that again. Yeah.
So whenever you would swallow water, We're both it would
seem terrible. He's like, oh, I'm like, oh no, do
you want to get out? He's like, no, I want
to swim. Yeah, And he was fine. So that was great,
very dramatic. The house was much less dangerous, and yeah,
(05:44):
I mean we were, we were on top of things,
but still were other people because it was there was
less to be worried about and like they weren't going
off a cliff. For some reason, talking about that just
reminded me of when um, we were at my parents
house a couple weeks ago eating ice cream cake, and
he some and asked him if he was getting full,
if he was too full and didn't want anymore, And
(06:04):
while he was made eating this piece of ice cream
cake that he was obsessed with, and he accidentally said, yeah,
I'm full, and then he tried to recover really quickly,
realizing he saw the wrong thing because he didn't want
his ice cream cake taken away and he was like, um,
I mean, um, I'm very hungry. And it was the
funniest realist moment. It's like literally watching somebody for the
(06:28):
very first time try to lie so blatantly. It's like
it's fast. We obviously as adults, you've had a lot
of years to learn some tact It was just the
misspeaking and trying to recover. I think that. But well,
I gotta say my favorite part of the trip was
when the four of us were out in the lawn
(06:49):
and I don't know how it started. Um it probably Bryn,
who likes to dictate how to play you be this
and do you say this? Um, But he made us
switch roles our lives and he played daddy and Maven
played mommy and I played Bryn and you played Maven,
and I found what then followed to be incredibly illuminating
(07:11):
and hilarious. Um yeah, it was funny seeing he's like
a pretty committed improviser, and I think one of the
funnier moments he was like walking around playing you very confidently,
and then at one point I said, um, daddy, why
aren't you wearing any pants? Because he loves to walk
around and his underwear, and he was like, um uh,
(07:34):
and then he just changed the subject. He was like,
let's go to school. He's also it was really funny
because like, immediately in this role playing game, Maven and
Brinn's thing was that they were trying to get us
to go to school, which is such an ongoing morning
battle we have with them is just like we have
to get you out the door. And so it's so
(07:55):
funny that they picked that as the role playing I mean,
that's a big part of our relay and ship is
me telling them to do things very directly, and and
I was in the end, I was very happy with
how I was portrayed because there, yeah, there was a
lot of like gotta do this, gotta do that, but
there was no anger or like overly sternness. He was
(08:18):
just they they both played just these like confident I'm
telling what to do because that's what parents do. But
my favorite part was when we pretended to get upset
and uh, I started crying and I started doing what Brenda's,
which is that like I'm being disagreeable and I don't
like this. No, I don't want to. I want to
don't want to go to school. And my favorite moment
(08:40):
is my favorite moment was when he just gets still
and he looks at me and he goes, it's okay
to be sad. I was like, wow, brand that was
some great parenting. And may even just repeats everything he says.
My my impression of Maybne was just like you wearing shirt,
you wearing a shirt, dash your shirt. She just loves
(09:05):
to ask them. She asked the most obvious questions all
the time. I know this is like a Tyler thing,
but she goes, you mommy, your mommy, yeah, she just
I think there's there's something that obviously feels great about validation,
just like I love that she constantly just wants to confirm,
like you're my mommy right real quick? Oh wow, this
(09:28):
reminds me you've heard this, I think, but my it's
a little bit of a tangent. But my favorite story
of my cousin Ben when he was little. We grew
up very close to our cousins and they had four kids.
We had four kids, and so my mom was giving
my older brother Andrew and my cousin Ben a bath.
(09:48):
And they were probably six maybe, and they're getting maybe younger,
I don't know. They're getting undressed and getting the tub,
and Ben, who's a very serious, like quiet introverted kid,
is about to take of his underwear and he stops
and he looks at my mom. He just goes, you
see my penis, right, and she said yes. He goes okay,
and then he gets hit. Yeah. He probably just had
(10:10):
like a stern lecture from his pediatrician or something about
who gets to see your penis? Stern lecture from your pediatrition.
Did you not have that talk with your pai? No?
Dr Bagun never talked about that. I feel like that
was an ongoing thing of like them, because they have to, like,
you know, look at you and examine intimate parts of
(10:33):
your body, and I feel like they so they constantly
want to remind you at the pediatrician like, here, but
this should not be something that's happening to you. I
wonder if that's a gender difference. Do you think girls
get that talk more than boys. I don't know, because
my pediatrician was very, um weird towards me for certain
gender reasons. Like he would always, every single visit would
(10:57):
tell me how pretty I was, and then he would
tell me to say thank you for his compliment, which
was just so condescending. And the older I get, the
more insane it seems to me. But it was just
like acceptable misogyny those days. That's insane. I mean, that
would be totally insane right now. I hope so, I
(11:18):
mean I think, but I don't think, like it was
not on my mom's radar because it's just so normal
in those days for people to be like, you should
be very grateful that someone finds you attractive. That's bizarre.
I mean, yeah, if ten even ten years ago. But
I'm sure he thought he was doing a great thing
because I'm sure he said that's every little girl that
(11:40):
came in all day, every day, and he was like,
look at me building up these girls confidence or something. Anyway, Um,
how was the old I mean I mean when you're little,
everyone's old. I guess, yeah, he was grown up. He's
older than my mom. Um. We I have this very
fun memory of our pediatrician, Dr Bagown, but I don't
(12:03):
really remember much. I think you just had a great
playroom and we all had him, and he was very
quiet and got the job done done. And just what
a name. I tell you what. I've done a lot
of improv shows where if I have to be a doctor.
Dr Bagown is the first thing that posted in my head.
And it sounds like a fake name, doesn't it, Bagown?
(12:24):
It sounds like a real name, Bawn. Anyway, that's worry about.
Ben reminded me of that video you posted while around
vacation of bryn Um getting mad at me for something random,
like telling him he couldn't do something, and then he
kept saying, I'm not going to be friends with anyone
at school, and that was his weird that's his revenge
for you not helping him with something. Yeah, I'm not
(12:46):
gonna it's so dramatic. I'm not going to be friends
with anyone at school and then his slump shoulder, fast
walk away. It's just the perfect metaphor for how whenever
any of us are getting angry, we're just punishing ourselves. Yes,
go to my Instagram, am I see any end and
(13:08):
check out what we're talking about. It's very funny, I promise.
But at the very end of that, I go, that
makes sense, and then he goes, it doesn't make sense.
I don't think he knows what that means. No, he
was just trying to be disagreeable about everything he said.
It doesn't make sense. Now it's time for we knows wins.
(13:33):
This is where we talk about some successes we've had
in parenting as of late, Beth, you have something you
feel good about, So I want to talk about Brin's birthday,
which is coming up as coming up fast as usual.
This is sort of like an abstract win. But uh,
I think something about my parenting struggle is that I
(13:58):
am a perfectionist and I like things to be perfect
and that's impossible with children. And so I'm learning balance
and how I'm learning how to put in an appropriate
amount of effort towards events that makes me feel not
insane but also makes me feel accomplished. So for Britain's birthday,
(14:19):
I think we've talked about this where like for the
last couple of birthdays for because we've done almost nothing
because they're little and they don't know. But he's getting
to this point where he does understand and may even
just had a birthday, so now he kind of has expectations.
And you crushed it with those unicorn cupcakes. Yeah. So
originally the plan was like, let's make cupcakes for Britain,
make things even, but he requested cow cupcakes for some reason,
(14:42):
and I thought that was just an arbitrary thing on
his part, but he remembered it a couple of months
later and still keep saying how cupcakes. So I did
some momline research. None of the cow designs look easy
to accomplish, and the thing with decorating cupcakes and a
pacific ways, you then have to buy a lot of
materials and plant it out, and it takes time and energy,
(15:05):
and it's the the money starts racking up where you
think you're saving money by doing something yourself, and then
all a sudden you spent like eighty dollars on pieces
of candy and stuff. So I decided, let's just have
someone else figure this out for us and hire someone.
And so he's not getting cupcakes, but he's going to
get a cow birthday cake, which I sent you to
(15:26):
the cake store. This was also a brave thing you did,
which is you entrusted me to get this done. And
this is the thing for me where I'm trying to
learn to not care about details. You know what, You're
not gonna love this cow cake, I don't think. I
think the joy of not having to do any of
it myself will lower my expectation. You also may never
(15:46):
see this cake, which might be the best. I walked
into the so I walked into the cake store and
I was like, I want to order a cake for
four year old birthday party or some or some cup cupcakes.
She's like, alright, cake, what do you want on it?
Like he wants a cow? And then she looked at
me then like what do you mean? And I was like,
(16:12):
I assume this is normal. And then you follow up
questions and then I suddenly felt so dumb. And then
and then we went through it and she's like what
kind And I was like, well, I guess I hadn't
really thought about it, so now I'm designing a cow
cake in my head. I'm like, I guess just if
it's a cake, we just put the face like a
cartoon cow face on the cake and right, happy birthday
(16:32):
brand and she goes, okay, just a face. I'm like,
I guess and she goes, what kind what kind of cow?
I was like, you know, just like white brown spots
And then she goes, you mean black spots with the
most judgmental look, like she's the one that asked you
like she didn't understand what a cow looks like. Well,
she was just like, cows have black spots, you idiot.
(16:53):
So I go on my Now I'm like, I'm getting
on my phone and I google brown spotted cow and
then I showed her a pick sure of a brown spot,
arguing with her over the why didn't you just relent
and like it doesn't matter? Well, I mean now I
had started. Yeah, well she just treated me like I
was so dumb. I was like, I just don't want
do you think I'm dumb? Look, this is a picture
(17:13):
of a brown spotted cow. And then she goes, so
do you want that on the cake? And it's a
stock photograph of a cow? And I'm like, no, this
is what I'm cows to someone, No, no, no doubt.
I'm so then I realized, oh, I assumed that this
will be a place where they're like, oh, so like
how about this? Instead, she was just like, tell me
(17:33):
exactly what you want, and so then I was like okay.
So then I started looking at pictures of cows, and
I quickly then just google brown cow cartoon and then
there's just a bunch of like cartoon cows. I picked one,
googled cow cake, and given her the most simple execute cake. Yeah. Well,
(17:54):
I expected somebody with some expertise to be asking me questions. Instead,
I quickly found a cartoon cow. I emailed it to
that are and then she goes, what colors do you want?
I'm like, how colors? So I guess like maybe white
frosting and the cow can be white with brown spots,
and then the decorations can be sort of like brown, orange, yellow,
(18:14):
sort of fall colors. That's what I think when I
think cow, you think of fall. It's not not fall,
but the colors of a brown spotted cow. That orange.
This is going to be insane orange, brown, yellow. It's
a kid's birthday is just like blue background with a
cow on it. This might be the best cake ever.
Say that. This is exactly why it is great. How
(18:37):
much are we paying for this cake? There's the thing
I did, the whole thing, like we can have it
by that, but somebody will call you about the price.
I was like, this is they're doing. Now, they're doing
like a mural of fall Folia is going to run
us like eighty bucks. I may explor that. I wanted
very simple. Okay, they're gonna call me. And if it's colors,
(18:58):
ten colors? I said orange. I said orange, white, orange,
and brown. Uh. And I was like maybe a little yellow. Uh.
And then the cake itself is going to be vanilla
cake with chocolate chocolate frosting in the middle, so that
when you cut it, it's like a white and brown cow.
I I can't believe you insisted on brown spots. Well,
(19:22):
she was so judgmental. Bet cows don't have brown spots.
Yes they do. I also have black spots, I know,
but the judgment. I don't want to be wrong, and
I proved her right. But a black and white cake,
I think it's a little less dynamic than some textured
browns and oranges. I can't wait to see this. I
(19:45):
should have just asked her to hold my win into
a loss um and the only thing you're upset about
is the logic I used for the design choices. If
she has said like brown and white, and I said, yeah,
you think that. But this is like every argument you
and I get into about like how to hang a
shelf for something, is you try to man explain these
(20:09):
arbitrary truths that you've come up with that don't serve
the greater ease and execution of the projects. This is
a this is a big stretch. No, it's not the
result of the cake will be will be the same.
I'm just saying you, when you are hiring someone to
(20:31):
do something for you, you you could give it to them
in a more simple way that won't rack up the costs. No, No,
this is exactly what I was trying to do. And
she was helpless, and I realized like later, like oh,
she just needs to get enough information to give to
the person that's actually doing this. And she had zero
(20:51):
agency to be like, oh, here's what we do, here's
what's what works. Okay. But when she said you mean
white and black, you should you could have been like, sure,
white and black. Well, she didn't say that. She she
said something like cows aren't brown. It's like and the
iconically in terms of what a four year old is
(21:12):
picturing at cow to look like, he is picturing black
and white. Oh you don't know that. I do know that,
because every representation of cow he's seen has probably been
black and white. I think the year in her camp.
I don't want to think of a cow. I think
in her camp because she's like, what are you asking
for here? A simple cow or something you're imagining? I
(21:36):
was asking for a simple cow. This is the dumbest
argument we have ever. No, it's not. It's embeletic of
every argument we have. No, I stand by this. She
I was making, trying to make it simple, and she
treated me like I was insane, And so then then
I had to design the whole case exactly like when
(21:58):
I was giving our kids half and half mixed with
water so that they wouldn't have a We talked about
this last week, and you want to, man splinty point
out that it's technically not milk, and just so that
you can be the last time you did that last week.
Literally I did not do that, Okay, But I'm just like,
this is a constant pattern where you're needing to be
(22:19):
right comes above I took. I took the note, but
not in this case. This woman made me design a
whole cake and I did. I did a great job. Anyway.
I came home and Bryn brought it up again because
my birthday, am I going to get a cow cake?
And I smiled and I said, you just might. Brand
you might get a cowcake at school. And then he
(22:41):
made an additional request, can the cow be fighting a unicorn? Wow?
This is like some sort of need to defeat Maven's birthday.
And I wanted so badly because I thought it was
so funny, like a cow in a unicorn in battle,
(23:03):
to like talk about it and like joke about it.
But I was like, I can't let you fall in
love with that image because now you're gonna hate your
cow cake. But to your original point, I mean, when
they call you, you could ask for that and see
what they say, maybe, because I honestly would love to
see that image on a cake now, it would be great.
(23:26):
I don't want to promote let this kid constantly promote violence,
but that's a funny cake. I mean, it's just I
just pictured them both sort of on their hind legs
with their hoofs up like a like a coat of
arms type of pose. It's like that Discovery Channel like
Shark versus Alligator thing, like who would win? Who would win?
(23:49):
Oh gosh, maybe I will if I'm talking to the
actual designer. Well that's the thing. It sounds like this
woman was kind of useless, and when you talk to
the person who's actually going to execute it, they will
probably be like, yeah, fine, yeah, whatever you want. I mean,
I just kept saying, she asked me more question. I
kept Originally I was like, and he's four, it doesn't matter,
(24:10):
just he just wants a cow. It's a cow cake,
not complicated. UMU. The other so the other aspects of
this birthday that I think are again this this uh
nice need for balance is uh we. I don't want
to spend a lot of money on him again because
he's still not quite old enough to really appreciate things.
(24:31):
So instead of ordering him one of the many like
billion dollar Lego sets that are all Star Wars, for
some reason, I found this off brand set of Lego
people that um is is a variety of just random,
(24:52):
generic looking people, and we ordered it. It came in
the mail yesterday and um none of these people are
assembled so it's like how many people forty at least
there's a lot of people. Every hand, every arm, every leg,
every pelvis, every torso, head and hair are separated. I
(25:13):
still think worth it, and the price was amazing. And
if you're to say, who built three of them and
I built wanted too, this is exactly the kind of
project you love, you're right, But boy, my fingers are
messed up. Like there, this is great. We got what
we paid for. But here's what I love about this
(25:33):
is that we don't have a million Legos. And I
think he really mostly just wants to play with the people,
not the lego he's I do think he is old
enough to I want to get him some just like
generic Lego pieces, because he started to play with stuff.
But in structure, I don't want to spend money on
Lego pieces because one they're sober priced and too, I'm
pretty sure we have family who is just begging to
(25:55):
give us like ten million Lego pieces if we are
willing to ask for them. Yeah. I love legos so much, Beth,
you have no idea. This is a phase of painting
I'm not looking forward to because I really don't want
to have a house covered in Legos. But to get trays,
my mom has it all figured out. She has designated
Lego play areas and they have trays with these little
(26:16):
ledges so you don't lose any they don't end up
on the floor. If they're on the floor, there's a
big blanket for them. And she's had a lifetime of
Lego maintenance. This is actually something my mom had on
vacation that my aunt gave her, which is these rubber
mats those that are trays. They're like very flexible that
she Her idea was that kids could paint on them
(26:37):
and spill paint whatever and it doesn't run off. But
she actually bought them at the pet store and they're
dog food bowls. Yeah, they're for like cat and dog
food bowls and it's just like a rubber mat so
that stuff doesn't spill everywhere. And Mason might as well
be a puppy when it comes to eating. All kids
are puppies. Um. Yeah, So we haven't decided what we're
(27:01):
actually gonna do for his birthday, but we have daycare
cake covered, we have some presents. We also ordered a
I ordered it on eBay, a plastic dinosaur from the
nineteen eighties to match the one he has from your childhood,
which they're both featured in the book. He loves what
the dinosaurs did at school, and do you know how
(27:21):
selfish I am? You thought it was for you when
I ordered it. Yeah, and I thought it was the
most thoughtful gift you'd ever given me. H. I mean no,
I didn't think that you actually got it for me,
But when I saw it, I felt an incredible emotional
reaction of this. That was one of my favorite toys ever,
(27:42):
The big dun dinosaurs. Again a balancing because he's been
reading this book and he knows that he has one
of the dinosaurs from it, which is kind of because
it's a dinosaur from the nineteen like a celebrity. Yeah,
and so he he points at the book and says
he wants the other ones, and it's almost impossible to
find them online in on eBay or like you could.
(28:02):
The thing is, I could order like five mismatched dinosaurs
for like a hundred and forty dollars, which is insane,
and the only one or two of them would be Actually,
I know another one is still at my mom's house,
so we'll have to just go steal it, which one,
this diagnosaurus. Yeah, that was that One's really hard to
find online. All right, we gotta grab that. If you
(28:24):
know what we're talking about, you know, maybe this will
be the picture for this week's episode is the dinosaurs.
It's a very specific brand of nine eighties toy dinosaurs
called dorm May And if you look up that brand
or more recent plastic dinosaurs, they don't tend to make
them as big as that. Yeah, that's what's so great
about this huge plastic dinosaur. I want it anyway. We
(28:48):
now have to, so well, someday, someday we'll have all
the dinosaurs happy Birthday brand. This next segment is called
did You Knows? And for the first time ever, we're
gonna learn something from Beth. Yes, Beth learned something and
(29:11):
she took the fact thank you for saying that, as
if it's so rare for me to learn something that's me.
That's what I was implying. Is that so dumb? It's
just thing. You love Man's planning so much and you
love me seated that territory to you, but not today.
So my cousin sent me this article and it's from
the British Psycho. The British Psychological Society Research Digest Juicy
(29:37):
and she sent it to me actually because there's a
picture of a girl that looks remarkably like Maven with
her she's standing on her mom with her arms crossed,
and it reminded her of the video on our Instagram
where Mayven says big fat booty and steps on Brent's
but she stepping on the mom like Captain Morgan does one.
So that's why she sent it. But it's actually the
(30:00):
interesting article and the title of the article is how
kids shape their parents parenting style. And this is like
remarkably sort of like the thesis of what I imagine
my parenting style to be, which is no style because
the first sentence, the first two sentences here are in
our culture we like to speculate about the effects of
different parenting styles on children. A lot of this debate
(30:22):
is wasted breath. And the point of this article is,
like they did these studies to figure out whether, you know,
parenting styles are having effect on the kid or whether
the kid is having effect on the parents parenting style
based on their general nature. And so they compared sets
of identical twins versus fraternal twins and how the parents
(30:45):
parent did them, and what they found is that a
lot of our parenting is actually in response to the
specific nature of our kid um. And I think that's
so interesting because when you read it, they make this
point in the article, it's sort of like they say,
a lot of parents and know implicitly that no matter
(31:05):
how much you try to train yourself to follow these
like specific parenting guidelines of like being incredibly patient and
following specific sets of rules at certain points, it's just
so much easier said than done with certain kids in
certain moments, depending on their behavior and their stubbornness and etcetera. Um,
it's very true when you look at our two kids.
(31:27):
I mean, they're both difficult in their own ways, but there, um,
you just you at a certain level, you just have
to improvise. This is what I've been saying recently. It said,
you know, there's there's value to hearing about how other
people do things and patterns that have been successful for them,
but you have to keep in mind it's successful for
(31:48):
them and their child. Everyone is just figuring out how
to parent the child they have, right, And I do
think there's certain like court truths to a lot of them,
and like there are probably a um, they're probably for
the most part effective in most situations whatever. But I
do think also like sometimes certain methods are really effective
(32:09):
at one age and then your kid hits a certain
age and then it's just like totally useless. So I
think the danger is to like read one parenting book
and follow it like it's the Bible. I think it's
when they're really little. Every every three months, it's a
totally different human being and you have to refigure out
most And then the thing with my experience, the thing
(32:31):
the parenting literature is like they'll develop these like methods
and things that are like week two weeks specific about
how your kid will change and grow and how like
how those things will change, and then they map it
to a certain extent. It is true and helpful, but
at the same time, again, you can't predict any one
kid and how uh they're going to hit those benchmarks
(32:55):
at such a specific time. So like everything, I really
late this back to being an improv teacher, where I'm
trying to get a bunch of adults to learn a
very specific skill, and there's a lot of things I've
learned over the years that if I make everyone do
this they're more likely to learn the core lesson than not.
(33:17):
But I also know that there's people are going to
react to it differently because they are different people, and
everyone needs a slightly different approach to achieve the same goal.
No one's coming from the same place. Different people are
motivated in different ways. And I'm sure if we were
teaching may even how to swim two years from now,
(33:39):
she would respond to the instructions of doggie paddling, because
I think she picks up on things like that from
other people and she likes those cues, and I Brin
doesn't want to hear it. He also has much more
of a performer like you instead of an observer. And
so when I told him I tried to explain to
(34:00):
him how to doggy paddle instead of doing it, he
started barking like a dog in the water. You know what.
I think that that probably helped him more than anything
I told him. I was like a reach and then
pull is the like pretend you're dog, you know. And
then he saw that dog, very old dog swam across
(34:21):
the entire lake to bring us a stick to throw.
Um Swedish man who lived across Swiss Swiss his name
is Bruno. I think he's like old. He looked like
a Waring her Dog character and sounded like when. It
sounded like when and he Um had a big dog
(34:42):
that swam across the lake and was bothering us in
a nice way. Um they called Bruno. Bruno came down.
He's the Swiss caretaker that just lives in the woods
by himself. And he comes down and gets on his raft,
which is built on top of three surfboards and has
the tiniest out word motor I've ever seen. Was insane.
(35:04):
It was like if you took like a wooden dock
that was like many many years old and it had
mosque growing all along the edges of it. It was
like it's been there for a while. It felt like
in Um Lord of the Rings when the ants come
to life and then you just see this like mossy
old thing moving and you're like, this is not supposed
to be moving. That's supposed to stay in place. I
thought you were going to talk about Buckleberry ferry. No,
(35:29):
uh not, but it it didn't look like that was
something that should be moving across the lake towards us.
It was like a decrepit Moldy. You were shocking and
you got across the go. I did not expect the
motor to work. It's been out for all year. He said.
This is the first time I've taken it out this year,
and it was like it was August. So well, yeah,
(35:53):
I don't think he was swimming a lot. No. He
my my aunt told me that. He said that, Um,
he likes to have his friends over to smoke pot
on the weekends. That is not surprising. No, I wish
I could have spent more time with him. So we
are parenting the only way our kids will let us,
(36:16):
which is in reaction to them. It's a hodgepodge of
effort and non effort. This next segment is called Wood
You Knows. This is where one of our listeners posits
a hypothetical parenting situation for us. And for the first
time this week, we have a voicemail recording that we're
(36:37):
going to play for you. Hi, this is Nicholas from
Brooklyn and I have a Wood You Knows. So let's
say that you and your family are either out on
the beach or maybe in like a cornfield in the
middle of Iowa. Point is you're you're all alone it's
(36:59):
just your family there, and all of a sudden in
the sky, there's a huge burst of light and these
magnificent aliens arrive and you're you're certain they're real aliens.
There's no way that special effects could capture this. Uh.
The incredible majesty of it all, it's incredible. You're just like, wow,
these are real aliens. And the aliens step out of
(37:21):
their ship and they approach you, and they are able
to communicate with you, and they say, hey, so we
just discovered that there is an apocalyptic meteor heading for Earth,
and we have two extra spots on our ship. We're
gonna take your kids. Is that cool with you? We
(37:41):
could take you guys, but you wouldn't want to leave
your kids to die here on this um scary, scary planet.
There's not a lot of time. I guess my question
is And it seems like they know what they're talking about.
These are very nice aliens. Any question you ask them
uh generally lines up with um, yep, No, we're aliens,
you know everything, uh, and we're super smart. So would
(38:04):
you let your kids go on the spaceship alone with
these aliens? Thinking that maybe you would be saving their
lives or would you say, oh, no, aliens, that's okay,
we're all gonna go kaboom together. Um let me know,
all right, bye. Wow. My favorite part of all of
that is just how in love Nicholas seems to be
(38:28):
with these aliens. They're majestic, they're trustworthy. I want to
be friends with these aliens. Paints a picture of them
is fairly trustworthy, and but I'm still having a hard time. Yeah,
if this in the in the movie ideal version of
this story, this origin story for some human who lives
(38:49):
in space, uh, we would hand over our kids. But
in reality, I think that'd be nearly impossible to do.
I mean, he's making a really strong point that at
the end of the discussion, we believe their logic and
(39:09):
we believe that we're gonna die and only two people
can live. He does paint a really positive picture of them,
because if they're evil aliens, wouldn't they just try to
wrestle our kids from us and not ask our permission. Well,
they're not evil, they're just I know. I'm just saying,
in the scenario where we're trying to figure out if
they're evil or not, it's like, so I would trust them,
(39:31):
you'd be like, yeah, if you have this much technology,
you could just take them. I think here's the question
for me, is okay, so maybe we give up our
two kids. But is this going to be in my mind?
I'm going should I send these two kids away or
should I send you and one of our kids so
that that person because them just like suddenly being around
(39:55):
aliens and like that's our whole life. Is that traumatizing
or is that going to be normal? List do they
need a person that understands them to be with them
so that their life is not complete misery? What are there?
What are these aliens parenting styles? Or are these aliens
adjust their parentings? I mean I could see why they
would want our kids and not one of us, because
(40:17):
if you're like going out of your way to take
in a human being and support them, you want them
probably to learn about your culture and grow up in
it and and accept it as normal and not like
constantly be like questioning it. In the same way, like
if you learn a foreign language at a young age,
it's going to be much easier for you than like
(40:38):
trying to learn it at thirty. Like, well, if one
of us goes, we're just dead way to these aliens,
like they're just like oh God or no, like then
now they have someone to take care of that child
that they picked up, because like they don't know how
the child works. I don't know. I don't think it's
like that hard to keep. What are these aliens take
Britnam maybe into their planet and they're like, here's lunch
(41:00):
and it's poison and they're dead. And if you have
a parent there to be like, hey, what's in this?
Humans can't eat all things? I don't know. You're giving
yourself a lot of credit to be able to look
at alien food and tell if it's poison or not. Well,
I'd have the sense to ask what is this? You're
not a chemist? Do you know what the chemical compounds
are of poison versus alien food? And you think they
(41:22):
could read you off a sheet of the point or
I could? We can at least wonder we would we
would were the best positioned to take care of our
children in that situation. No, I don't think so well.
I mean, if the baby, if it was a baby,
(41:44):
if it's like a maybe even one year old, I
I can understand why I'm valuable to have there for
emotional support, etcetera. Breastfeeding and are at the current age.
I don't like, Yeah, it's going to be true, Matt,
But kids survive. It's true. True. Kids are designed to
(42:06):
uh withstand to to deal with trauma more than they
are sometimes keeping credit as long as these aliens understand
affection to some degree and like have some sort of empathy,
which I think they do if they're coming to they're
magnificent aliens, majestic, thoughtful, caring, and patient. It sounds like
(42:28):
they're patient. They took a lot of questions, so in
my mind, they're like just zooming by the planet and
they're like, oh crap, look at that meteor. Maybe we
could save some people while we're right here and they
go down. We can save two. We got seats for two.
I'm still having a hard time trusting them, and this is, unfortunately,
just reminding me of these Ice situations where a lot
(42:48):
of times they because they didn't want to have like
a traumatic scene, they would tell these immigrant moms like, oh, um,
we're just going to take your kids over here for
a second, and we just need you to sign this
thing that signs me rights away, and everything's gonna be fine.
And they barely speak English and they think they basically
think they're just like entering the country with some degree
(43:11):
of like whatever. So I don't think. I I feel
much closer to these aliens, and I trust them more
than ice agents, Oh for sure. So I think the
question definitely smarter. I think the I mean, if, yeah,
if the the planet's going to blow up, I think
the core question is, of course I would let my
(43:32):
children live. I wouldn't keep them here and have us
all die. I don't. I really don't think in the moment, though,
you would make that choice. That's that is unknowable. I
think it is very it's very possible we just be like, no, no,
there's gotta be gotta be away. I don't believe you,
I don't trust you. But if there was enough time
(43:52):
to face the fact that that truly was the choice
we were making, yeah, I mean it's just like I
think it's human nature to like act out of fear,
make the bad choice. And like it's like so many
people when there's like a hurricane coming and they have
a chance to evacuate, and they're like, I'm not leaving
my house, and it's like what are you doing? Like
but that's how we are, Like, we're you just made
(44:15):
that idiot Southern. What does that say about you, elite
East Coaster that hurricanes are more likely to happen in
the South. Alright, good answer, I accept it, Um, But
I mean our scoop instructor to this in the Cayman Islands,
he stayed in disaster and hurricane and he regretted it. Yeah, yeah,
(44:37):
but I think another whole story anyway. But like I um, Nick,
we would give the aliens are kids if we were
calm enough to think through it, and if we're emotional
dumb animals like we probably are, we might make the
wrong choice. We don't know, Nicholas, So why don't you
take your aliens you love so much? And why don't
you go with them? That's what we do. We'd say,
(44:57):
you know what, We're not gonna go, but our friend
I would love to go. Thank you, Nick. That was
Would you Knows? This has been another episode of We
Knows Parenting. If you would like to reach out and
tell us about your parenting stories questions. Would you Knows?
(45:19):
You can email us at we Knows pod at gmail
dot com, or you can leave us a voicemail at
three four seven three eight four seven three nine six.
You can find that number also on our website we
knows Parenting dot com. While you're there, why not check
out our new merch store. You can get a T
(45:40):
shirt We Knows Parenting. You can get a I'm a
Handsome Mommy T shirt or I'm a Beautiful fart Daddy
T shirt and more stuff is coming. Yeah, so keep
an eye on that. What do you wanna plug? I
wanted to plug something totally unrelated to the podcast, which
is uh front of the podcast. Guy Brandham's book is out.
(46:02):
It's called My Life as a Goddess, and I'm really
enjoying it. You actually seem to really love this book,
like I want to read it, but you literally are
holding it every time. Well, I shall begin. Well, that'll
do it for us. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
and we Knows pod. Uh, that's it. Beth wants to
(46:23):
say goodbye my
We Knows Parenting News
Hosts And Creators
Beth Newell
Peter McNerney
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