Let it Go!

The family makes it across the country and back, Beth and Peter talk about problem solving with kids instead of trying to control behavior, and then review Frozen II.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
I got to say, oh, welcome back, friendos. It's parenting
and Peter McNerney and I'm Beth Noel and we have
been through it. The holidays we really had We had
some really epic holiday travel. I think this is the

(00:32):
first time we have flown over Christmas? Is this is
that true with kids? Now? This is the at least
the second time we've done it with two kids. Okay, well,
it feels like our flight times were much more in
the holiday time frame. Does that make sense? Nope, not

(00:54):
at all. You think we've been at the airport when
it's that busy. Oh, I see saying we've flown at
less typical times. Yeah. Well, with Britain in school, we're
really tied to everyone else's schedule now, right, so we
couldn't like head head there early. So we started our
trip very chaotically. Day of the flight with a nighttime flight.

(01:18):
Day of the flight, Mayven throws up. We're it doesn't
seem like a stomach bug. She just didn't have a fever.
We're feeling it out. And then we discovered that one
of our children turned off our refrigerator. When did they
turn it off? How long had it been completely off?
No one knows for sure. I would guess at least

(01:40):
two days everything in the freezer was completely so we
just have to wear our whole fridge. And then we
were like thinking, okay, so she probably got sick because
she ate something bad from that fridge. And then during
thinking that, she barfed again, Yes, about five times in
an hour. Yeah, well probably, as I feel like she

(02:00):
kept eating. So that was also why I was like,
how sick can she be if she keeps wanting to eat? Yeah,
I had a feeling she wasn't really sick. Um, so
then she eats some things, doesn't throw up for a
few hours, We crossed our fingers and head to the
airport because well, we don't want to deal with re
origin air. You don't want to rebook a flight. It's expensive,

(02:24):
Like she can barf on the plane, she probably won't,
So get to the airport. Get and then before we
get to the airport, I go to check in on
my phone, only then to discover our five pm flight
had been changed months earlier to a seven pm flight,

(02:47):
and I somehow never got the notification because it went
to spam because he ordered through orbits, which I think
we should never do again. Um, so we we were
this is our driver was forty minutes early. Our drivers early.
We just got in the car. We're getting onto the
highway and we realized we're actually heading to the airport

(03:09):
four and a half hours early. And half hours so
we get to LaGuardia and in front of the ticket counter, Maven, well,
first of they can't find our Our tickets aren't linked.
I did the thing in the machine. It only find me.
It didn't have the rest of the tickets attached to it.
So we had to go up and ask. And they
started looking at it and they're like, this is weird.

(03:30):
Hold on it clearly collected, you know, they type in
an impossible amount. They did that like a character in
a night anymore like. And then I look over and
you were with Mayven and something had happened. She's puking
all over the floor of the airport. Bright pink, bright
gatorade pink. And there we go. So we're four and

(03:56):
a half hours early for a flight. Our daughter's peaking
the airport. We managed to get it mostly cleaned up.
I still have a kid with puke breath. You you
take her to the bathroom while you're in the bathroom.
She this woman is still like I don't understand this,
and she's like, hey, Ted and call someone over and

(04:16):
he's like, well, I don't don't know. Maybe it's something
you missed. I'm like, I don't know, we don't they
don't have our flight. So finally she goes, well, I
don't know why, but here's four first class tickets. And
then you showed back up and I said, guess what,
everything's fine. So then we have first class tickets, which
is amazing because we get wave through security pretty quickly.

(04:38):
With the barfiet girl girl, it was like it really
turned around at that moment. And then we went and
sat down at a restaurant, got some food. Very few
sit down restaurant options in this Lagartia terminal, which is
I think annoying when you have kids, I mean, but anyway,
it's a brand new terminal I LaGuardia, which was another

(05:02):
godsend because some of those terminals. So they ended up
having a really good kids play area where they have
a screen where the kids they can go on one
of these iPads and type in the name that they
want their airplane or helicopter, design an aircraft and then
write their name on it. Yeah. So then it takes

(05:24):
off on this large, huge screen on the public as
could be screen. So brands there and he names about
ten planes or helicopters with his name, and then other
kids start showing up and the brilliant idea that Brand
gets a brilliant idea to name one of the planes poop.

(05:46):
And then all the kids are just naming well they'll
first of all, Brand wrote poop and he goes daddy
and I look at him and I gave him a
big old we don't do that, and I sort of
scolded him in front of the kids and this, and
he was suddenly so embarrassed that he did that. And

(06:06):
this girl, there were these two sisters that were much
older than him, only ten nine. One of them was
but the the eleven year old heard me scold him,
and he was like put his head down like he
was ashamed. And then he turns to her and she

(06:27):
just puts her finger up in the air and just
like wags it back and forth. And I was like, hey,
let me parent here. But then those girls go on
to name the airplanes all of these obscene things. It
was like butthole, but hole was the first one there's
a few butt holes. There's a lot of blank hole,

(06:48):
and then somebody escalated it to something with ass in it. No,
it was funnier than that. They were actually really funny
suck ass. Yeah, it was a lot of things like
that that I hadn't heard since like the nineties, and
I was like, the kids still say these things suck

(07:09):
as No, but it would be like butt face. Like
it was just like all these like sort of like
older brother insults from like a movie. Yeah. Then these
there's these older boys showed up and this one kid
just totally by himself, not smiling or giggling at all,
just walks up it's like this, this this, and just

(07:31):
writes like fuck hole. Oh yeah, Well we were at
the airport for a very long time watching this screen,
so we saw everyone's take. But he wrote the most
vulgar thing and they just walked away like it was
you know, it's just like Tuesday, Like you didn't do
that as a kid. I mean, we've all heard the
story where I wrote Peter on the ladder. Okay, but

(07:54):
so Bran was eating this up. He's never been were entertained.
He like I was hanging out with all the kids
who showed up. He was like an uncle at a bar.
He was like, Hey, what are you running on the
air plane? What's going on over here? Hey, welcome to
the play area. I'm the mayor, and threw about ten
rotations of kids. You feel like putting his arm around

(08:16):
some kids shoulder and whispering in his ear and feel
like I put poop on the plane. No. Well, he
he started telling other kids to write poop because I
told him he couldn't. And at one point He's like,
it's not fair. They can write poop but I can't
write poop. And I'm like, well, I'm not their dad,
I'm your dad. So then, anyway, after nine million years,

(08:39):
we boarded our first class plane and it was you know,
we got that free drink as fast as possible, and
then um, I got a double. I didn't ask her,
but she gave it to me. I had a confusing
interaction with her because I was trying to ask what
alcohol they had and it was not a great airline

(09:02):
and they did not have options. But um, she really
because she she listed at least three whiskey options before
I said I'll take that one. I don't know. There
could have been okay. Well, when I was asking her things,
I was like what do you have? And she was
like wine and I was like, um, what kind of one?

(09:23):
And she was like white wine, red wine. She did
not want to help me. She was flirting with me.
She's like, did you notice I gave you a double?
It's okay, that makes sense because when the um pilots
got in, she was super chatty and like flirty, and
then like they had like you know how sometimes there's
a pilot on the plane who's not like not the

(09:45):
cool one, not flying the planet, Like there's like a
third guy who was like the third guy, and he
was like, either can I talk? I need to know
that the role is. So I think he was either
it is like an extra pilot who was taking this
flight to get back home, or he was like observing,

(10:06):
but he was like up there and she was like, oh,
James James Bond like she had she had like she
had never met him before. But she was just like
trying to be really flirty and it was just like
sort of sad, like I was like, why are you
She she was a little weird. She'd make these just

(10:27):
sort of stern jokes and I was like I think
you're joking anyway. May then passed out almost immediately upon takeoff,
which was amazing, and there was no plan pukes and
we got there quickly. Um. I could just say. We

(10:47):
bought these compact car seat boost booster things that you
can fold up and I can put both of them
in my backpack, and they make traveling with kids so
great because some lift drive you know ride what are
they called app uber lift, They won't pick you up

(11:11):
if you don't have car seats. Yeah, those car seats
are great. Um. And then coming home we had sort
of a slightly chaotic airport experience all over again. That
was the most packed I've seen an airport at a
don't care our tickets. Once again, we're not connected, so
we had to stand in the bag check line. We

(11:31):
checked our bags, and then we had to get in
the assistance line to get it because we couldn't get
the kids tickets. And then we had to get in
the security line and we were not going to make
it until somebody whisked us away to the family line.
Also while we're standing in just these three eternally long lines.
Towards the end of it, oh, I was like starting

(11:51):
I didn't eat breakfast because I have this thing where
I have to take my pill and then I can't
eat for a half hour. So then as we're standing
in like security for eight thousand years, started to hit
me that I was like, oh my god, I have
like super low blood sugar and now I'm suddenly going
to be like deadweight in this stressful situation. And I
realized I had a cookie in my bag and shoved

(12:14):
it in my mouth so fast, and it was I
was so glad I had it. I'm more glad you
had it. And then Maven touched her ear and her
ears started bleeding a lot. She like scratched her ear
by accident, and she was like stressed out about that.
And then thank god, once again an angel situation where

(12:37):
a man pulled us out of security and he was like,
you guys got to go up in the family line.
His name was Mark. Yeah, So once again it turned
around and we survived and we arrived at the gate
as the final group was being called, and so we
got straightened lines straight toward seats, and it was sort
of best case scenario in the opposite direction where we

(12:59):
were there sit on short forever. Yeah, it all worked
out and so now you can't see you know, the
path that's being made for you. You gotta drive forward
by looking in the rear view mirror. Yeah, go see
Frozen two and then you'll get it. We just saw

(13:21):
Frozen too. Okay, boy, when we should do a separate
when we're Frozen too, I just say that horse is peak,
little girl Naven fantasy. Um, so where are we now, Beth?
We're we're back home, but we're not. I know, We're
in a We're in a weird limbo. We're in an
airbnb inner town while our bathroom continues to be renovated.

(13:46):
And it's nice. It's it's such a weird everything's weird.
I was stressed out at first because we don't have
all of our stuff with us, and it's like we're
just like there's we keep thinking of things we don't
have of but there is a lot of room in
this house, and it's like we're in a three bedroom house.

(14:08):
Our airbnb is significantly bigger than our actual apartment, but
it was the closest thing. And boy, and now you
don't have work this week, and I'm sort of working,
and so we're all just on this little vacation with
just us in this big empty house. I can't remember
the last time we like actually had like a vacation

(14:31):
like at in a home like scenario, just the family
where we don't have a lot of things to do,
we have nothing to do. Yeah, it's great, Okay. So
the hardest part was so I went over to our
apartment and it is sealed every door, every entryway. They

(14:52):
have done a very thorough job of putting plastic up
and painters tape on the pater's tape the crack of
all four you know, sides of the door so no
dust can get anywhere. And then there's these giant sheets
of plastic in front of everything, so it's double sealed.
So I stopped though, I'm like, I'm gonna grab a

(15:13):
couple of things, and you can't get in anything without
breaking this seal and then taping it back up. So
I had to get the microphones. So we're recording in
this Airbnb and my mic stand broke, and so Beth
is happening, like we just there's so many weird accidents

(15:37):
this week. But I just need to paint a picture
of what you look like right now. Is a lazy boy,
A leather lazy boy with a broken mic stand on
a little side table next to her, and she's just
like craning her neck over it to speak, And how
are you comfortable? How's it going? I'm okay, I'm I

(16:01):
have to cran my neck in a weird way to
hit this microphone. But me too, my neck hurts well,
but let it go, Let go. If I set up straight,
I sound like this. Oh boy, that if the sound
is all terrible, you know what, when has it ever

(16:23):
been good? When has anything ever been good? Okay? Um,
so we need to wrap. And the last thing I
want to say is we have three bedrooms. So I
put our kids in separate bedrooms last night and they
were all excited. Mayven was super excited and Britain was

(16:45):
pretending to be excited. Um. And then tonight and put
then the bed and Brint just goes, um, do you
think maybe could sleep in this room? I'm too scared
to be alone. And it was really genuine and adorable,
and Maven was happy to oblige. They really love each other, right, right?

(17:07):
What did she? Would you tell them? What they said
about marriage? So Brenda did his thing again where he
was like, you know, boys can marry boys and girls
can marry girls. And I was like, well he said
that before. He's like he's kind of latched onto it
now after he fought it so hard and then he
realized that it was true. Now he's like, this is

(17:28):
a fact I like to share um. And so he
was saying that, and I was like, yeah, are you're
gonna marry a boy or a girl? And he was like,
I'm gonna marry a girl. And then and then he
was like, maybe I'll marry Maven And I was like, well,
you can't marry Maven. And she's standing right there and
she was like they were both like fighting for it,

(17:51):
and they're just like, yes we can. Yeah. She was like,
I was like, you you're not. Brothers and sisters are
not allowed to marry each other. And even was like,
we can pretend marry each other. Like they were both
just fair. And then Burne was like, no, we'll really
marry each other like and he was very it took
him a long time. You can't tell that kid what

(18:12):
to do, but they're committed. I can see why though,
Like we're talking, honestly, they're compatible. When I was telling
May even recently that like she might someday have her
own bedroom. She was like, you and Daddy will get
separate bedrooms too, And I was like, yeah in her mind,

(18:33):
like we share a bedroom, they share a bedroom. Like
it's not it's unclear what's happening. Oh yeah, Like we're
the adult married people, so they must be the kid
married couple. Yeah they're inseparable. Huh, Well here's two, here's
sure your union. That was a weird thing to say.

(18:53):
And I got a little tiny baby glass of whiskey
and I keep wanting to cheers with it. Cheers, cheers,

(19:13):
and now it's time for it. Did you know this
is where we share something that we learned about parenting
from a place. Okay, so this article is from mother Jones.
It's called what if everything you knew about discipline and
kids was wrong? I want to click on that. Yeah,
and it's um an article describing sort of the research

(19:36):
and methods of this. I believe psycho psychologist Dr Green,
doctor um and he has sort of pioneered these techniques
where rather than punishing children, the children who are the
most acting out in school situations, you spend more time

(19:57):
talking it out with those children and sort of helping them,
how to helping them figure out how to deal with
situations that are stressing them out. And so he's talking
about how there's different, uh, you know, learning disabilities or
just issues children could be having where they are not ah,

(20:18):
their brain is not developing at the same rate as
other kids. And they're talking specifically about the prefrontal cortex.
Sorry I'm trying to remember this all from memory, but
umntal cortex. But the brain was involved, the front of
your brain, which processes your executive function, and some kids
it develops later than others. And so they're talking about

(20:40):
how do we deal with the kid who can't sit
still in class, or who acts out, or who is
constantly doing this thing. It's like there's that He used
an analogy that says like, if a kid got a
D on the spelling test, you wouldn't punish them. You
would try to talk through why that happened and how
you could fix that. But when when kids are having

(21:02):
certain emotional issues, the system sometimes will continue to punish
them even though they don't know how to not do
that thing. You're punishing the disease, the symptoms instead of
trying to cure the disease right, And so basically the
technique is just unfortunately for teachers who have their hands
very full, the solution with these kids is to spend

(21:27):
time talking it through with them and letting them cool down.
And you know, yeah, it's basically it's meeting the child's
needs and and solving problems instead of trying to control behavior. Yeah,
and trying to talk through how they'll behave the next time.
What's another solution for how they could seek help if
they're feeling themselves getting close to that situation again or

(21:49):
you know, yeah, it's about putting the problem solving into
their hands. And I've had moments with with Brin uh
where I'm like, oh, yeah, this does fit in more
successful times of dealing with Brin while he's you know,
freaking out um that others because they're when I just

(22:09):
put up the wall of no, like you're being punished.
It does feel like I might get a result that's
in the short term desirable, like I'll stop doing a thing,
But it does feel like I'm actually reinforcing a pattern
of behavior instead of teaching him to recognize how we

(22:31):
got here. So recently he's had like he had a
bit of a meltdown on the grocery store, and so
I had to sort of grab him and take him outside.
And I had a successful cool down with him because
one I grabbed him and like, obviously that's an aggressive thing.
I had to get him out, and he's screaming and kicking,

(22:52):
but I was just showing, you know, not showing him
any emotion or showing that I'm upset or anything. I'm
just gonna, Okay, we're gonna go cool down. And we
go outside and we walk over to the edge of
the parking lot and then I just let him be
there and I just and he was like so upset,
and he was just like kicking the fence and this,

(23:15):
and you're here. And sometimes in that trying to I
try to ignore him, but I too aggressively ignore him,
Like I'll ignore him and I'm clearly making a point
to not look at him, and I feel like that
blows up in my face because then he's defiant with it.
And so instead I just stayed with him and I
looked at him, and I tried to just be where

(23:35):
he was, and I was like, you should kick this part,
come kick it over here. He's kicking the fence yeah, well,
that's like one of these examples in the article is
this this woman who is a teaching aid at a
school who takes one of the kids over to the
stream to throw rocks at the stream while he's calming down.
And I'm like, what a beautiful, uh scene. Imagine if

(23:59):
all of our kids has had like that level of
quality of education all the time, where someone is like,
let me help you deal with these emotions. Yeah. I
mean it's not always it's a boy. It's it makes
it sounds simpler than it is. And I'm sure there's
a I've been that teacher where you just have to
deal like you're trying to You're trying to deal with

(24:19):
a whole classroom full of kids and then there's one
causing a problem. You don't have that room to sort
of like meet them where they are. Yeah, they need
a smaller teacher to kid ra or Yeah. But I
also really like they talked about in some schools who
have really taken on this philosophy, they've actually started dividing
their room into and there's this sort of recharge area,

(24:43):
um and a more focused area as opposed that like, well, okay,
it's not a like punishment. It's like this person needs
to go here for a second. And yeah, it sounded
sort of like what Brent's teacher was saying about. She
has a little corner where there's like a basket of
fidget spinners and stuff and kids can just go over
there and like unlined. But I thought one thing that

(25:04):
I think is interesting in the article they talk about how, um,
this type of punitive strategy is what contributes to the
school to prison pipeline, and how certain kids are just
getting punished over and over again, then they're more likely
to commit crimes because they see themselves as someone who
just does things that you know, like they haven't so
and so they have the statistic that says for black

(25:26):
kids with disabilities, the suspension rate is more than one
in four African American boys and one in five African
American girls with disabilities will be suspended in a given
school year. Um so yeah, there's sort of like this intersection.
I think it's it affects black kids and children with disabilities,
but the kids who are at that intersection of both

(25:48):
those things are suffering the most. And it is that
trying to to in any sort of teaching with kids
if you can meet them where they are in in
a moment and to see what they're thinking about and
focused on. If you can join them in that place,

(26:10):
it is so much easier to then guide them to
new information and new ideas because you're you're putting the
discovery more in their hands. They can at least it
feels like they're discovering it, and then they are more
likely to remember it next time. Then when you just
go no, because then all they see is I'm in trouble,

(26:32):
and they it disconnects them from what was actually happening. Well,
it talked about and there was like a school or
a center or something that was like for kids with
high needs, and there was all these guards stationed around
and they tried to implement this new technique and apparently
the staff were very skeptical because they were like, these
kids need discipline. And then the staff found over time

(26:54):
that the more they would like stop and help try
to help these kids figure out a solution, the more
the kids trusted the staff and vice versa, and it
was just like built a much stronger bond between them. Yeah,
and then there's and then there's MAE. So this this vacation,
there was two instances and one since we've been here,

(27:19):
where she gets in a mode where she wants a
thing and she doesn't get what she wants, and then
you know or what it was. It she was just like,
I want to eat that here, you have to eat
over here, and she won't let it go, and then
he forgets what she even wanted. All she knows, but

(27:40):
part of it is just that she's very tired. She's
used to being at daycare where they nap her every day,
and then when she's with us, she takes no nap ever,
and so at the end of every day she's just
like feeling insane, like she's like, what's happening? And then
the little all of a sudden, one little thing just
completely sets her off and then she's done. So like

(28:01):
one day when we were home, your mom got her
this beautiful princess dress for Christmas that she loved, and
then when we tried to take it off at the
end of the night, she freaked out. She freaked out,
and then she has I put her jammie's on and
she didn't want those to put her in bed. She
didn't want that, and it's like, well, what do you want?
And then she all she can say is and she

(28:26):
just crawls on the ground and takes her clothes off,
and so I do you want to ignore it? But
then she starts hitting me, and I go, if you
hit me, I have to hold you. And then we
get in this pattern where she's rageous because I'm holding her.
And then at one point she pretended to calm down
and lay in bed with us, and then she peeted
on her bed that she wasn't even pretending to calm down.

(28:51):
She just she reluctantly had to calm her body down
so that she could pee on us. You you were
holding her from behind, so it probably felt like she
was relaxing. But I saw her face and there was
white burning rage in her eyes as she let the
urine flow. She's so evil and in my w did

(29:18):
my mom say she's a stubborn one? That one well,
your parents were shocked because she's like the quietest, shyest
girl all day long, and then all of a sudden
they're like, what is this shrieking? She's like, I came down,
I felt bad. I came down and I said something
like she's the literal worst. And then Brinn was right

(29:40):
there and was like, don't say that about my sister.
And I was like, he was like, she's not the worst.
I'm like, oh no, you're right, Britain. That was I
didn't mean that. And then I apologized and was like,
that's my future wife you're talking about. I had to
tell Brandy was right, which he loves. Okay, Well, I'm

(30:04):
happy with him being right about that. Yeah. I felt
bad saying it's not a normal joke I make What
am I talking about? We say that all the time anyway. Mean,
for the record, she's the worst. And then and then
she turns and then you take her to Frozen two.

(30:26):
I wanted to sit next to her during that movie
is so bad. Her eyes were lighting up at the beginning.
They she was like just so excited to see the
sisters back together and singing together, Like I feel like
that part she was going too. Yeah, and there was
a horse, Yeah that got me there was you really

(30:51):
love that horse? Fun. Well, it's just you know, I've
three story parts. I've adapted a million stories, and there's
some so classics in there, a lot not all, a
lot of little girls and not just a little girls,
but a lot of little girls love to write what
I just called the little Girl Horse Fantasy, which is

(31:12):
just finding a pony in the woods. It's scared and
it's lonely, and then it bonds with this young girl
and it's there's a lot of horse fantasy, and this
was the epitome of little girl horse fantasy. Yeah, and
there's some costume changes, magical costume changes. I feel like

(31:36):
it's half of Frozen. And um, I hated Frozen the
first one. When I came out, it was like, this
movie makes no sense. It's so convoluted, it's so just
joined it. It doesn't feel like it goes together. Hate it.
I hate it still. I still think all those things
are true. But I watched it with Mayven and I'm like,
I get it. I get it. It was kind of funny.

(32:00):
There's like one funny thing. I don't think it's qualify
as a spoiler, but there's like a little uh scene
where Olaf is re enacting the first movie for some
people that they meet because he wants he's trying to
fill them in on the backstory, like he does such
a long reenactment of the first movie and like every

(32:22):
iconic like moment, and it really is kind of like
a funny parody of the first movie, because you're like, yeah,
that was good. Yeah, what a weird plot this, Yeah,
there's there's too much magic. There's also like in there,
there's a very funny scene where they're doing charades too,

(32:46):
where um Olaf does an impression of Elsa and he
does this like hip himmy thing she does in the
first movie when she's singing her big song, like and
it's like, it's kind of funny that the animators or
whoever like self aware enough to be like this was

(33:08):
the most ridiculous thing we put in the first movie. Like, yeah,
you know, there's only one thing I hate in the
Frozen movies. What Christoph he does that where he talks
for the span he talks for his reindeer. Oh, it's
so not funny and he's not good at doing it.

(33:29):
And they doubled down on that bit in this movie
so hard the Rock People in the first one where
the Rock People serves zero function, what is that? He's
a bit of a fixer upper? Song? Why is that?
In the movie it was clearly like a song that
Disney had sitting around and they were like, we got
this song anyway, Umo is good it's a good movie.

(33:52):
I liked it. I think it was a more than
the first one. I yeah, I agree, And I like
that Disney is getting into this sort of like pro
like environment phase with Mo Wanna and This and the like.

(34:12):
Also strong female leads that take care of themselves and
don't need I don't need men to save them, although
Anna Auta does have a man savor at one point,
but she doesn't need it. She does, but but it's
only after she's taken great risk upon herself. Women can

(34:33):
be independent and also loving. It's true, it is a
nice balance there, weren't. It avoided a lot of stereotypical
gender relationships. It's a story I've never seen before. Let
it Go, Let it Go, and ride a big old horse.

(34:56):
That song exactly is in the movie spoilers. This next
segment is called Listeners Want to Know. It's where we
take questions and comments from you guys. All right, This

(35:18):
email comes to us from Allison. Subject line, longtime fan,
longtime babysitter, Hello, Peter and Beth. I have been listening
to the podcast since you guys started. I don't know why. Uh,
I don't know what made me start listening to it.
Because I do not have kids. I love kids, but
I love that other people have them and I get

(35:39):
to sleep in on the weekends. I'm thirty years old,
so I'm not young. I'm not old either. I enjoy
listening to you guys. You you guys is banter, and
also find it interesting that your kids are going through
similar milestones as my niece and nephew, who are about
the same age as your kids. Anyway, I just wanted
to write in to add my two sense about your

(36:00):
babysitter reacting like your kids were dying because of their cough.
I don't know if your babysitter has kids or not,
but as someone who babysits quite a bit and does
not have kids, I am overcautious about things, for instance,
leaving the kid's bedroom door open so I can check
that they're still breathing. I am I may have issues,
l O L. I probably would not have texted you

(36:22):
about it, because obviously their coughs did not develop in
the last hour or so while you were gone, But
I understand being cautious when you don't have kids. This
podcast got me pregnant. No, no, just the opposite. Keep
up the good work with the podcast and Raising your
Cool Kids, Alison, it's the opposite. This podcast got you.

(36:42):
Let's not go okay okay. Um the when I used
to babies that I probably did do similar things like
leave the door open at some point. But in general,
if you can have avoid bothering parents when they're out,
you should, I think. Interesting. The only time I remember

(37:08):
like texting people when I was babysitting their kids is
like sometimes I would be like, hey, you have no
milk left. You might want to get milk on the
way home, because you know, when you have like a
toddler and they live on milk's just like it was
like this, they probably want to know this. Um what

(37:29):
if they got that text and they're like the other
they think that we can't parent we don't have milk
in the house now. Whenever I sent that text to
a mom who was like, you know, on her way home,
she was like, oh my god, thank you. Like because
when you're fifty extra dollars when you're running in like
and like especially in New York City where everything is
a headache, like you're like running in and you're like, oh,

(37:51):
I'm going to walk by like three places with milk,
But once I get inside, I can't get I don't
want to go back from milk. Well, now you just
stuck home with your kid, you know, like, all right,
that is good. I take it back. That's a good idea. Um,
that was a great babysitter. You really would be a
great babysitter. Have you thought about being babysitter? You would

(38:14):
crush it? Now you know I'm done with kids at
this point in my life. I think, well, I think
you got at least fifteen more years at least. All right,
you ready for another one of these? I'm ready for
another one of these. Thank you, Allison. Moving on ready
Naomi getting dressed? Hi, guys, my four year old is

(38:39):
not a tourist, but he is exceedingly distractable and can
take an hour and a half or more to get
dressed if I let him. However, there's something that's been
working really well to encourage him along. Recently. I've been
taking two toys and making them argue about how he
gets dressed. For example, Book says in a growley voice, art,

(38:59):
thank you, chip it underwear on first, and Car says
in a higher voice, no, put your shirt on first.
Then he gets to decide who to listen to. It
does require some very focused attention from the parent and
a toddler and a toddler brother who is out of
the room and at least isn't playing with toys distracting

(39:20):
the older one. And it only takes five minutes or so,
and it's much better than the alternative. Come on, honey,
we need to leave soon. Get our pants on. Then
get your pants on. Now it's time to go. And
then if your pants aren't on by the time account
to ten, I'm putting them on for you. And finally, okay,
no more privileges ever, because you can't do this very

(39:41):
simple thing, you annoying child. Also, it's more than worth
it to take time to set out close the night
before because of the time and energy it stays in
the morning. I love the show. Thanks Naomi. That's great.
That's a good distraction technique. This is I feel like,
feeds back into what we were talking about, um about

(40:03):
the instead of punishment. This is a great example. I'm like,
all right, bedtime, Here we go, here we go. If
I just keep repeating it, which I do, it's a
lot easier to figure out what they're focused on. Right now,
go to that place, connect with them there. Then you

(40:23):
can guide them out of it and go, oh is
that elsa? Oh she's got her boots. I like her boots.
I bet her boots are sleepy. Let's walk her boots
to bed. So much more successful then bedtime. Let's go.
Now they just will not literally not hear you. Yeah,
I mean this technique specifically. I think I would have

(40:45):
to be careful with Maven because if I had, like
with Maybe and Britain, sometimes they're savvy if we have
characters talking in a voice, directing them one way or another,
like Maven with Mayven and picking out pants, like it's
some as best if you don't give any opinion, because
if you indicate that you're willing to have her wear

(41:07):
any pair of pants, and she's like suddenly against that pair.
So you have to pretend like you're not partial to
any of the clothes in her drawer. You sort of
had to act like you're dead. She's aware of you,
like you're just observing her curation process. I have opened
up the drawer and I'm like, all right, just pick
just pick pants, pick pants, all right, I'm gonna come

(41:29):
back pick pants. And then she gets on her knees,
and she looks in the drawer and she gets real still,
and she just looks back and forth at all of
her pants. And I leave the room and I come back.
I come back like ten minutes later, and she's has
a pair of pants in her hand, and she sees
me and she just drops them and then goes back

(41:50):
to looking. She didn't want me to see her anyway.
Our child is the worst. She's the literal worst. Um.
But boy, I used to lay when they wake up
the morning and go eat breakfast, And for a few
mornings I laid all their clothes out in the shape

(42:14):
of an outfit. And that first day I did that,
they came in and brand and they were like, whoa.
Maybe was so excited to put her clothes on. But
now she has to lay out her full outfit every
morning as she slowly picks them, and so it takes
twice as long to get dressed. Yeah it's bad. Yeah

(42:39):
it's bad. Oh boy, how are our next? How's your neck?
I'm good? Do you have another email? No we don't.
That's it. Um. Well, we're in a weird place, weird home,
so our pace is all off. We're gonna end it
and we'renna end this one early. My babies never let

(42:59):
me call you my babies ever again. I don't know, Beth,
how did you feel about it? Okay? Our babies or
other babies. This has been another episode of If you'd
like to submit a question and share a story, gives
some advice or a parenting hypothetical for our would you knows? Segment?
You can email us at we knows Pod at gmail

(43:20):
dot com or leave us a voicemail at three four
seven four seven three six. If you want to find
us on social media's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you can find
us and we knows Pod. Also, maybe this is the
week you write us a review. You give this five
starts and you're your rate, your rate, rate and review

(43:43):
that already say that, subscribe. That's the third thing that's
always good is my new rate and review character. I'm working.
It's a work of progress. Save me, Beth, Save me
from this horrible outrow fine fine f