January 22, 2019 • 54 mins
After swearing he would never wear his pink striped pants again, Bryn pulls a 180 and declares pink to be his favorite color. Maeven, with an unwavering devotion to all things pink, is not impressed and possibly a little bit threatened. For MLK Jr. Day, Peter stays home with the kids and attempts to teach them a lesson about inclusion by forcing Maeven’s My Little Ponies to invite Bryn’s Rock Lords to their dance party. Some rock/pony based biases are revealed. Inspired by a listener email, Peter and Beth wrap up the episode by brainstorming an appropriate, kid-friendly name for vagina — Peter makes a strong case for "hooha."
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to we know parenting here McNerney. That's
Beth Newell. Definitely not robots replacements. Um high back again
for another week. Our life continues. We are still parents,
Brendon Mayven our children. They are two and they are four,
(00:33):
and they're great, except when we want to strangle them
like I did not but an hour ago. Boy, I
had a really great day with them. Beth. Yeah, m
ok day holiday. So we're we're at home and um
um I left for the afternoon to try to run
some errons and get some work done. You're a full
(00:55):
day off. Um. I wouldn't say a full day, but
I felt like it to me. But but we had
a great time here. Um. They played Brinnan Maven, genuinely
enjoying each other and playing and doing puzzles I thought
were too complicated for them. Brand's like, I need your
(01:18):
help to do the big Lama Lama puzzle and I
was like, I gotta go to the bathroom. And I
came out and the puzzle was done, and he was
very proud. I'll say, in spite of some very trying
moments as this the norm there, they've been really good
considering they've been stuck inside most of the weekend. So yeah,
today arctic blast. It was five degrees this morning when
(01:40):
chill negative three. Nice and um, I was great with
him all day until bedtime when they were super hyper,
and I was like, I'm I've been I've done a
great job all day. I've just when they're doing something bad,
just redirecting their attention and then being able to talk
(02:01):
to them that like, Okay, we don't want to do that.
Here is there, so let's look over here, as opposed
to the stop there's yes, that's you're real good and
telling Bran no, I'm realizing that now as I lay
down the law more often is they do like I
can't get over zealous. You had to pull it back
a little bit. Otherwise the whole day is like a
(02:23):
battle with two kids that are just NonStop trying to
eat snacks all day long on the weekend. Yeah, he
knows it. If you if I'm like Bran raised my voice,
He's immediately going to look at me and just keep
doing what. It gets like a skittish little deer's like.
And it's just the tone. And so if I just
immediately react like I'm on his side, like oh, you know,
(02:46):
we don't want to do this because uh, mom is
coming home as she wants this chair to not scrape
the floor. Hey, did you have a rock lord toy
over here? And then it's problem. That was all day.
I was redirecting the energy. I was riding the wave
until the last minute when you wouldn't lay down, and
he's He's just like, I don't want to read a book.
(03:06):
And then maybe was gonna cry if I didn't read
the book, and Britain was gonna cry if I did
read the book. So fine, It's like I'm just gonna
turn out the light. And I ended up trying to
start reading this book to Maven and Bryn in Defiance
just starts kicking the wall and I lost my mind.
(03:26):
If any of our listeners are putting two kids to
bed in the same bedroom at the same time and
they have any advice, please tell us, because it's just
hell every single time. I mean, they trade off who's
being difficult. It's I mean normally that is that is
the time where I've I really feel good about bedtime
because it's total chaos. But it's constantly like distracting them
(03:50):
and keeping them and holding them physically in bed, but
not to the point where they scream. And if I
hadn't just spent the whole day doing that, I would
have had a little more patience. And I just snapped
and had to like, uh, hold Brittin down because then
he started trying to pinch me, and I'm like, but
then I got in bed read the book to Maven
(04:11):
and Britain was like, fine, you can read it to her,
but I'm not gonna listen. And so I started reading
Lama Lama to It's a Big Lama Llama Day by
the way to Maven, and the whole time Britton was
jumping up on down on his bed with his fingers
in his ears, going I can't hear you because I
have fingers in my ears. And I finally, did you
hear me? Scream Britain like loud enough where he got
(04:36):
scared and went under his covers and weirdly was mad
at me until he went to sleep, but stayed in
bed and was quiet and yelling at him and has
never worked. And now I'm afraid that I'm going to
be tempted to do it a lot. I had one
or two moments like that this week where I raised
my voice where I was just so tired. But I
feel okay about it because it was brief. Yeah, it
(04:59):
wasn't um like a night of trying to shout him down. Well,
that's the tricky thing about screaming is that if you
don't do it hardly, ever, then when you do scream,
it is very powerful. But the more you do it,
the less power you have. Yeah, okay, So one thing
with the briefly uh bring people up to speed on
(05:23):
is what happened regarding the pink pants situation to miss
pink stripe, the blue pants with the one small pink
stripe on them that were the subject of a heated
debate at daycare So Good after Brit was lightly bullied
for having pink on his person and decided he wanted
to throw his pants at the front door, and we
(05:44):
talked about on the podcast. The very next morning, he
woke up and wanted to wear the pants with the
pink stripe. The boy gets over things, yeah, and he said,
and he he asked for them, and he said, because
I love pink, because he's just I think he's enjoying
Maven's enjoyment of pink. Recently, Well, none of them, neither
(06:08):
of them will allow the other to have a thing
that's just their's because maybe her entire identity is wrapped
up in loving pink and she won't stop talking about
because I love pink. I love pink. It's my favoritest
she loves pink. So Brits like Pink's my favorite colors,
like make it less special. And he like now when
(06:30):
he's asking for a cup, sometimes there's only like two
cup pink cups here, and he'll just kind of like
ask for it because he knows it's like the thing
that they even wants. Um. What a brother, What a
big brother. Um. So another thing I want to talk
about this week is tonight the kids haven't really getting
(06:51):
into wrestling, and I think in a good way where
they're not they're finally not actually trying to hurt each
other too much. Brenda's being was being pretty care full
with Mayven, but he was trying to make it look
like she was pushing him off the bed and then
he would fling himself down. Um. And they were having
a lot of fun, and I felt good about it
because it felt like they were testing the boundaries in
(07:13):
a very safe way. There's a couple of times when
Mayven like kind of would bump her head and she
cried like for a second, but like Britain wasn't for
the most part, he was not trying to hurt her.
And I mean, yeah, he used to legitimately hurt her
way more because he just didn't know his own strength,
and he's actually careful with me well, and recently he
(07:34):
hurts her on purpose because he gets mad and he
hits her. But this was the first time they were
like play wrestling, and I feel like they both kind
of were just laughing a lot and enjoying it for
long stretches of time, and I almost felt like it
was better when if I left the room, they would
just be giggling and I could kind of like trust
that they were for the most part, we're not trying
to hurt each other. But then if I walked in
(07:56):
and they were being watched, it felt like then they
almost got more violent. Yeah, you know what, I had
a good chunk of time today where they just stayed
in the other room and I listened to them and
they they aren't actually playing together well, and they were
doing it in the bathtub tonight where they were both
in the bathtub and we were down the hall and
you could hear them talking and gigglings. Yeah, we know
(08:18):
you're not supposed to leave a two year old unattended
in a tub. Stop yelling at up. She's like nearly three,
and they never stopped talking. So if they stopped talking,
we'd be nervous. Even when she's alone, she she like
sings most of the time she's in there, or like
she sing talks to herself. So I feel good, like
putting the dishes away, you know, ten feet away. She
(08:39):
was singing, Santa Claus is coming to town by herself tonight.
She she really can't let that one go. That song
is a faith that has a real impression on you
when you're two or three or four. Santa Claus is
coming to He's he's making a list, he's checking it twice.
He's going to find out he's not in your night.
She also kind of riffs on songs. On the other night,
I swear she said something that was you're bed or
(09:01):
not poop Like she just like they could you record
an entire poop parody just on their own. But today
and the batstuff, they were dumping water on each other's
heads and splashing each other in the face and they
were both laughing. Normally there would be a scream fit.
I know they're recovering. It was great. That was a moment.
When I was unloading the dishwasher, I was like, oh
(09:21):
my god, it's going to get better. It's gonna get better.
It gets better. Oh boy, so can I Uh So today,
you know, it's Martin Luther King Day and we're home alone,
and in my mind I'm like, uh, you know, I'm
(09:41):
stuck with two kids. You can't do anything, so um, yeah,
I can't. You know, there's not much I can do
to sort of honor the day. Um. But something did
happen that I chose to be my teach my kids
a lesson about uh uh befriending people you don't understand.
(10:05):
So that Britain and maybe we're fighting over me. Bryn
had two rock Lords, which are these toys from the
eighties that I got when I was little. In their
knockoff crappy transformers, but they transform into rocks instead of vehicles.
And uh, Mayven had to my little ponies. And Mayven
(10:26):
goes play with me, play with me, and she hands
me one of the unicorns that brinon goes no play
with me and tries to hand me one of the
rock lords and they're fighting over so I go, you
know what, I can do both, and so I pick
up both of them. And it's very different kind of play.
You know. Brandon wants to be like, we gotta go
find the bad guys, let's transform, let's let's do a
(10:46):
bunch of tasks. Listen to me, and and Maven's playing
with the unicorns is all like are you okay your
look at your hair, I'm flying. We're friends. I love you.
Kiss kiss uh, and AND's like, no play with me.
And so I suddenly in this little scene, was like,
you know what, um my rock lord in my unicorn.
(11:09):
We want to hang out with this unicorn? Hey Bryn.
His rock lorders name was Boulder, Hey Boulder, come play
with us. And he starts going no, rockwell lords only
hang out with other rock lords. Rock lords don't spend
time with ponies and unicorns. And I was like, this
(11:29):
is my MLK day lesson for my two and four
year old, and I was like, well, we can all
be friends together. No, he says like jarring things that
are like no, you're different. We're over here, and so
I took my rock lord and I was like, Boulder,
these are my friends and you should not like them,
just because the unicorns were having a dance party. And
he goes, fine, I'm gonna go be alone in my
(11:52):
rock house. And he stormed off as a rock lord,
and we go alright, ponies, we're having a dance party.
We that we all started dancing, and then Britain's on
the other side of the couch with his rock lord,
and his rock lord was jealously looking over to our
side of the couch because we were having a dancing
(12:12):
party with two unicorns and a rock lord. And then
and then he goes ring ring, ring, ring ring, and
I go, oh, um, sorry, Ponies, I think I'm getting
a call on my rock phone. Hello. He goes, Hey, Nugget,
that's the other rock lords name. Hey Nugget, it's me Boulder. Um,
do you want to come to my house? I'm like, sorry, Boulder,
(12:34):
I'm having a really fun party with the unicorns. You
should come over. He goes, um, I don't want to
come over. I don't hang out with ponies, but I
might change my mind and call you back. Okay, bye.
I go all right, who dance. Then he goes spring
Ring Ring. He goes hello, and he goes, I changed
my mind. I'm coming to the party. Where is it? Like,
(12:55):
it's over here? He goes, all right, I'll be there.
Then he comes over and then we all be friends.
And I was like, I did, it's so funny, so
into throwing around rules lately that just are just orders
for Mayven And he's like, Maven, girls don't get to
play with this. Oh, that's a big thing. Last he
(13:16):
keep saying, girls don't do that, like and it's just
it's really just what he wants to happen in that moment.
But I keeping like, girls do whatever they want. I
like it, like really insenses me. I like, no, Briton,
you don't get to tell girls what to do. You're
not the boss of girls. Girls can't be on the footstool.
(13:38):
Girls can be on foot stool. And that tonight when
he did it, you have never sounded more like your dad,
because you were like, brit I wouldn't go messing with girls.
I did not say that. You did. You're like, you
don't want to mess with girls. Take it for me.
Don't tell a woman what she can or cannot do. Um, wow,
(14:03):
well yeah you don't they they there's boy, are our
kids are Britain is such a boy? Maybe it's such
a girl and it's like do you feel disappointed? And
how much are our kids are perform? I mean he's
also in some ways very not like as we've mentioned previously,
(14:25):
he doesn't know a single thing about sports. Oh yeah,
it is the time to sign him up for a
soccer class or something. M I just thought I wasn't
bothered by it. I don't want to get up at
you know, eight am on a Saturday and I have
to run out the door to go to watch four
year old to try to play soccer. You don't want
to get up at eight am, even though I get
(14:46):
up at seven. I am to take them today here
every day, No, not get up, I mean have to
leave the house. Yeah, I leave the house by seven
fifteen every day. I'm talking about on a Saturday. You
leave the house. That's seven fifteen on a Saturday. That's
something you want to do. You think that's a reasonable
thing that I should not be saying this about. I
(15:07):
didn't think it through. I didn't think it through. But
let's look ahead at the end of the week. Okay,
because what's happened in this week? Beth, why don't you
explain to everybody what's happening this week? I am flying
out of here Thursday to go to the Cayman Islands
with my friends with no children. You just told me
one day this was going to happen, and well, that's
(15:30):
the only way it was going to happen. Well, you
think if you asked me, I would say no, I
think I don't need to ask you. It's true, it's true.
I asked you about dates. You know what you're You're right,
I'll be totally honest. I'm I'm I'm pretending like this
is upset me, but you don't think it. I think
you love it because you're just like eyeing the next
(15:51):
time that you can skip down. Oh yeah, I only
ever dare like take time for me if I know
that I've you've done it first. But then that's fine,
that's great. If I don't want to go on a trip,
if you're going to resent me for it, um, and
I really like I will be so much sane or
(16:13):
this for this entire winter. I think for having taken
this what is it, five days trip, I've only jokingly
the thing about giving you a grief about it. I
just want to the benefits of having a vacation as
a mom, because without like little breaks, you forget you're
(16:36):
a person, and you just it's like just this ongoing grind, grind, grind.
And I know a lot of people can't afford to
take like lavish Cayman Island vacations like, but I think
like you can just get But yeah, but if you
can get like a night away from your kids and
stay at a friend's house or anything where you can
(16:57):
just be a person and who gets to have drinks
and not worry about like waking up in the middle
of the night or at seven in the morning with
a person breathing in your face. Yeah, that's a good
thing for a person's mental health, especially in the dark
winter months. Um. I am very glad that you're going,
(17:19):
and I'm looking forward to you coming back and just
being so happy to see me. Um, So my mom
is going to come while you're away, and you're not
going to be here next week when it's recording time. Um,
what day do you get back? Um? Wednesday? Okay, So yeah,
(17:44):
so of course you know we haven't planned What the
hell we're gonna do for the episode, so either we'll
do it over the internet. W I was also thinking,
maybe I'll just do this episode with my mom. I
think you should. I think she would be great on here.
What are you? Mom? You'll probably find it out about
this right now listening. She's probably listening right now. She's
(18:05):
like she's laying on a beach listening to she uh
she uh would be a really great at this. But
I bet she'd be nervous. She shouldn't, Mom, you shouldn't
be You say everything you're thinking out loud, and that's
all you need to do to be on a podcast.
I mean, no one I know would kill it on
(18:25):
here like your mom. And come on, quit quit resisting everybody.
If you want a McNerney as my special guest on
her at a tweet at a McNerney does not have
Twitter at at Twitter dot com, tweet at her at Facebook, backslash,
(18:46):
How do I post this? Can everyone see this? You
know what? Just don't We'll just I'll trick her into it. Um.
So that will happen next week, unless, of course, something
totally different happens. We'll find out. This next segment is
(19:07):
called we Don't know. It's where we discuss some of
our parenting failures. Peter, you've got something. I've got one
involving physical violence bryn Um. Brenna's hitting and Brennan's kicking
and Brenda's pinching. I've got little cuts all over my hand.
(19:28):
Um uh. He's a very good boy most of the time.
And then he has a big tantrum and he started
hitting and this is this one. It's so hard to
control my anger. I think the same as for you.
So hard not to be emotional, and I know what
(19:49):
I'm supposed to do. Well here, here's the big issue,
is like, is I should be able to just put
him in his room and then I closed the door
and let him calm down. But if I do that,
he acts the way he acts out. He's like kicking
and stomping, and then our neighbors get really enraged. And
(20:09):
so I can't let him just blow off steam. I
have to go in there and say no stomping. And
then he comes at me and he starts swinging, and
I was like, I just need to leave. That's the
best way to show him this is not acceptable. Is
the second he takes like a swing. If he goes
in his room, you shut the door until he's calm,
but I can't leave him alone, and so it's this
(20:32):
terrible cycle. I go in and like the only option
I end up having is I need to like lay
him down on the bed and like try to like
hold his hands and his legs without hurting him. And
I need to like hold him until he calms down.
And of course, like then he goes crazy. And I'm
(20:54):
trying to, you know, just go like we don't hit,
and I stay calm because I do not want him
to react to like as if this is me, uh,
focusing like a physical dominance over him, like there's any
emotion attached to it. Uh, And so I try to
just hold him and stay calm. And I recently a
(21:15):
listener wrote in and oh gosh, I'm I'm so sorry, Um,
I didn't write tell your name, um, but uh she
recommended one to three Magic, which is a parenting style
type of book. And I just skiveed a little bit
of it. UM, So I can't endorse it or not.
But but the beginning of it UM has some really
(21:39):
simple ideas. I realized this is a applicable to us,
and too generalize Basically, it's like at that age you
you should never explain yourself more than once. You know
you can say you can't do this because this is dangerous.
And if they try to argue it and you re
explain laying it, you're not achieving anything. You're just falling
(22:05):
into the trap of that you paying attention to them.
So the main philosophy is when they're doing something you
don't want them to do, less talking and zero hide
all negative emotions because the net that we talked about
this for like those negative emotions and that over explaining
is a victory for them because they have your full
(22:26):
attention and part of that actually feels good. So it
is this, Yeah, they're like, oh we're arguing, great, I've
got some arguments. Yeah, that's they're asserting their power. But
if you take that away from them, which is just
they like and then ultimately one to three Magic is
basically like counting to three. I really hope one to
three Magic has a chapter on physically restraining your son
(22:48):
in sort of a choke hold for that chapter yet,
But I've really been trying to exercise that, like I
don't explain my health more than once, and when he
gets really heated. I barely look at him, you know,
And so I tried to do this. We went out
to um Rye Playland. Do you want to tell us
(23:12):
about that trip? Yeah, So this was when we knew
the big storm was coming. So we're like, let's get
out of the house. We tried to do a nature walk,
which our kids sucked at. Um that sucked not good at. Like,
I think part of it is just winter. Maybe there's
less to see. I don't know, but they're like not
interested in exploring their outdoor surroundings very well, and they
(23:36):
like won't continue walking get back on the path. Well, no,
because you guys were just like wandering around and I'm
severely allergic to poison ivy and I could see it
on the trees surrounding us, and I just could very
easily picture either one of you just wandering over and
leaning your hand up against a big rope of poison.
(23:59):
I I wasn't rest because I realized that I've never
even attempted to identify poison ivy when the leaves are dead.
Well I have because I've gotten very bad poison ivy
in the middle of winter unfortunately. So uh Anyway, Um,
I'm very sensitive in a cool interesting allergic action of
(24:22):
what I was saying. No, that's I have a strong
immune system. It's overactive. So anyway, um, I'm cool. We're
they wouldn't like, they won't just take a walk. So
that was frustrating because I like that nature preserve and
I want to cover some ground and I think if
we've got a little farther, you know, they might have
(24:44):
seen like a deer or something, but they're too loud. Anyway,
I should just go in nature walks alone, which is
the ideal way to do it. Anyway, that's your New
Year's resolutions alone nature walks. Right, yeah, that is one
of my new resolutions, get out of nature. Um. And anyway,
so we we end that pretty quickly because Brina was
just trying to turn around would be difficult. And then
(25:04):
we're like, okay, it's like getting kind of late. We
can go get some brunch because they're going to get
hungry soon. And I find a place that's sort of
like a step up from our regular diner. Fair It's
like steps up. That place was it was great. It
was really quality over quantity, which I'm I that's the
thing that's really rubbing me wrong about the diners around
(25:25):
here is just like, well it's a mountain. Food was
also just like so boring and bland and like not
like it just feels like you're shoveling like cardboard into
your mouth at a certain point. The diner I've been,
the diners around here are just a little bit lacking
in my opinion. I've been to plenty of good diners. Um,
(25:47):
so anyway, this place was like a step up and
the food is great and our kids, actually we're really good.
Well because the table clasts all paper and they have
cramps that they could draw on the whole table. Yeah,
and this was a novel to them, and they liked
it better than the our usual diner, which has just
those little mats with drawings already on them like a
coloring book thing. Um, Like, our kids can't handle a
(26:08):
blank page. They love a blank page. So they were.
I actually think they were amazingly good during that meal
compared to like any other meal we've had. With that,
I did have to take brain outside before the check came. Yeah,
but that was like we were waiting a while for
the check and I was eyeing the guy like that
was not our kids faults so then we went over
(26:28):
to Write Playland, which was across the street, and it
was pretty good. We're wandering around. This is great again,
like it's a beautiful boardwalk and along the beach, and
our kids just want to hang out in like basically
a parking lot corner and like it's fine. There's like
a wheelchair ramp and they're running around and stuff. But
(26:49):
it was just like, why do we have to hang
on this ugly little These kids aesthetic sensibilities are a shambles. Anyway,
we were everything was fine, and then we're like time
to go to the car, and I guess he didn't
want to go to the car and you had to
carry him. And then I tried to put him in
the car and put his seatbelt on, and he was
(27:09):
he went full, I'm not putting this seatbelt on. So
I gave it some time and I was like, we
gotta do this seatbelt And then I was doing my one, two,
three magic if I only spent it once, and then
I just started talking to you and I changed the
subject and finally I was like, Okay, we gotta go,
and I was like, all right, I just gotta force it.
I put him in the chair and he screamed and
he take it off seatbelt, so I had to sit
(27:31):
in the back. Oh. And then when I was backing
out he I was driving like a few feet out
and he opened the door. And that's what set you off. Yeah,
I opened the car door while we were driving, and
that is a something I think lawrants a yell. I
gave him a yell. I wanted to scare him about that.
And I had to sit in the backseat. And then
(27:52):
he was trying to hit me, and so as we
were driving, I pulled his hands, and he can hurt you.
So I put his hands, I pulled his jacket sleeves
out so that his hands were inside his jacket sleet
and then I basically like held the ends of his
jacket sleeve so he was like handcuffed in there and
I could squeeze it tight. I wasn't hurting his hands, ornything.
(28:13):
And I was like, this is great. He can struggle.
It's like a straight jacket and no one's getting hurt.
And then he's trying to bite me. And we get
home and he's still screaming and you go inside. So
I'm like, I'm gonna sit out here and I'm gonna
just ignore it and be calm. And it was a nightmare.
It was terrible, and I had evil thoughts and I
(28:34):
wanted to, like I wanted to fight back with a
four year old. Obviously I didn't, and I just did that.
But I finally wore him out. And it's just the
point where then he got tired and he was like, hey,
is that a turkey? And like saw a bird outside, Like, no,
that's not a turkey, and he goes, oh, it looks
(28:55):
like a turkey, and it's just like fine, and it
feels like I feel like it feels manipulative, like and
then like you feel like he's manipulating you, yeah, because
he's like acting like nothing happened, like we didn't just
spend an hour trying to cut me. You're the one
who's always saying that that's what's great about boys, is
(29:15):
that you guys don't hold onto. You're right, I got
over it two seconds later. I was like, Oh, my
son's great. I mean, I don't know, did you get
over it two seconds later? Yes, you don't necessarily seem
over it right now, but I really, uh, I mean
(29:35):
that's because it just happened again in bed. You know why?
You know why? Actually I am like annoyed at him
right now because he calmed down and he went to sleep,
and then I went over there and to give him
a kiss, and I put it in my hand on
his head. I was like, good night, buddy, and he
was still mad. He goes, no, and that's rare because
(29:57):
he was like holding a grudge. And so I walked
out of there being angry with him, and the you're
mad that he went to bed angry. Yes, let not
let not this, Let not the sun go down about
pont your wrath. That's a that's a etching in my
mom's bathroom. Yeah, I really I subscribe to that. I mean,
(30:25):
you do not subscribe to that you let the sun
go down upon your wrath because because there's no amount
of you like shouting at me or arguing with me
is going to make a situation resolve at like twelve PM.
I mean, we don't need to get into how our
our conflict resolution skills couldn't be any more different. No,
(30:48):
but I think this is a common male female thing
where I'm like, I want to believe that you understand
why I was not in the first place, and you
have concrete plans to do differently in the future. It's not,
but in your mind you're thinking, she just needs to
back down and get over this and forgive me. You
are not typical of any genu. That is so not true,
(31:11):
because I'll like go away for an hour and come
back and think about it and then be like, hey,
you're right, here's what any wrong, and here's what I'm
gonna do to change that. Now, please just tell me
it's okay. And then you love me and you're like,
I'm going I need to let the sun go down
upon my wrath. No, because you're you're not telling the
part of the story where you keep ignoring what I'm
trying to tell you I'm mad about, and then I
(31:34):
don't want to take responsibility for it, and you get
brushing it off, and then you're like, hey, can you
just not be mad? Both of these things we're talking about,
we're both much better and not doing the thing that
we're accusing the other person. You're doing right now, So
let's end this by saying nice improvement. Will you just
(31:55):
tell me that's okay? Then you love me though after
you just told me no one thinks like me, and
this we're going and that is we don't knows. This
next segment is called wood he knows. It's where we
take hypothetical situations from you, our listeners, and discuss what
(32:16):
we would do right, rent and right. This one comes
to us from UM. I was gonna say a friend
of mine, but I don't. I've actually never met this person,
but he is married. UM, so a little context on this.
So this uh listener wrote in his name is Ryan
(32:39):
and his wife is Jacqueline West, who is a New
York Times bestselling author. Does he want you to say
this information? Well, he wrote it in the email. Sorry
sorry Ryan, gratulations Jacqueline, you didn't say so the Story Parts.
If you're un from the story Parts, that's my full
time job is to go check it out. The News
(33:00):
Story Parties podcast season is launching January three. One UM
but the Story Parts also released. I have been releasing
serious books. UM. Kids have submitted I a sort of
a synopsis for a story, and then we get a
famous author to write the full novelization of that kid's idea.
(33:23):
It's very cool. Stuck in the Stone Age came out
last year by Jeff rod Key, and this year Jacqueline.
Our brand new book, Digging Up Danger, written by Jacqueline West,
based on an idea by a wonderfully funny kid named
phoebe Um, came out last week anyway, So that's Jacqueline.
I've been on book tours with her story parties. Got
(33:46):
hired too to create these book tours to go out
with real authors, and so I have spent several weeks
all over the country with Jacqueline West. And she is
a wonderful talent and human being. Anyway, that's the context.
Jacqueline did not write this email. Hello Beth and Peter. First,
thank you for your work on this podcast. It's a blast.
(34:07):
It helps remind me and my wife that we are
not alone. Wife in question is the one Jacqueline West. Um.
We and our three year old son listen to your
podcast each morning at the breakfast table. Our efforts every morning.
You either don't get through a whole episode, you're a liar,
(34:28):
or you repeat episodes in chunks. I could see it now, um,
or he means every episode every morning it's available. This
is important to know. Ryan. Will you right in let
us know how. I just want to know if he's
listening to our episodes on repeat after he's listened to
them already. Hey Siri, play we Knows on repeat. Siri
(34:50):
actually listened to me when I did that? Oh no, oh,
I forgot I have a HomePod? It her be Hey Siri, stop,
I have a question. It related to anything? Are we do?
We have to say, hey Siri now instead of just theory. Yes,
it's really annoying. Always been that way. I Um, I'm
gonna keep talking about this even though it's irrelevant to
(35:10):
the segment we're trying to record. I UM got your
old phone, the ten S or whatever, and the ten
I don't know how to use it and it doesn't
have the home button. So I'm totally thrown. And so
my whole day is just me being like, Hey Siri,
Hey Siri, where are you? Where am I? Oh? She
(35:33):
just said here? Um anyway, So so he has a hypothetical,
would you know? But I'm gonna keep reading this our
three year old we listen. Are our efforts it's censoring.
Your occasional f bombs have been futile. Sorry, we really
(35:54):
assume no children were listening. But so he hasn't repeated
any of the worst of your occasional cur is. He's
very keen on meeting your kids as they are outside
his much story classmates, the kids he knows the most
about in the world. Show me, Maven, Show me Bryan,
what are they doing? Are common shouts from our little guy.
(36:15):
He is in his terrible three major stage and hearing
about your struggles with your to help us deal and
provide us with much needed schaudenfreude. One of my favorite words,
the joy of others failures. That's right, I was telling
all of our listeners who also know, um, that's right.
(36:39):
Sometimes we're laughing at you. I appreciate that. I thought
you two could use a break from your own uh,
your own time travel and would be would you know scenarios?
So I came up with a hYP hypothetical for you
that also involves time general to scruffy looking think hoboesque
(37:02):
characters approach you, claiming to be brit and Maven from
the future. They're able to answer a few questions that
lead you believe that they are telling the truth. They
then claim that the two of you must move to
Siberia immediately and permanently, or utter disaster will before befall
you end the world. They then disappear in a puff
(37:25):
of blue sparkling smoke. What do you do love Ryan
and Jacqueline? Wow? I mean blue sparkling smoke kind of
seals the deal. I like, once again, writers have to
have to write in for your benefit that there's no
use questioning whether this is true. That's hard for you,
(37:49):
But that's the whole question is do I believe that
that that's really them? The scenario dictates that you do
believe that it's true, But they're asked the question is
do I believe and do I move to Siberia. I
don't think it's if you believe it's do you actually
follow through with it? No? But I mean do I
(38:11):
follow through? Because do I believe this is really my
two children from the future. I think it makes it
clear that you do believe it. The question is do
you listen to them? Do you basically ruin your whole life?
You guys can't keep sending us these because we can't
even agree on what the question is. Make me read
it again after a few questions, you believe them? Okay? Um?
(38:38):
I mean if I believe them, I believe them, I
have to move to Siberia. Right, Well, it's you know,
maybe like our lives won't be ruined, but our kids
and the rest of the world are, right, I guess
I gotta I gotta go for their future. Although part
of me really, um, I hate New York winter so much.
(39:00):
The idea of moving to Siberia is like a death
onto itself. So part of me is like, well, maybe
I should just move to the equator and enjoy my
last few months of life. I will say, um, I
wouldn't be happy living not in Siberia, but with you inside.
I could a should just send you in the kids,
(39:20):
and I'd be like, sorry, kids, mommy has gone. I
was going to be in the Cayman Islands with her friends.
I was going with her friends to die. Well, we
don't know how long it will be, you know, so
that's what we need to weigh. I say this is
a real analogy for global warming. I feel like there's
(39:41):
a lot of older people they are like, that's fine,
because it's not gonna affackt to my life. But that
means the analogy for global warning is that we have
to just flee. We can't try to prevent it or
slow it in any way. It's not a perfect analogy.
I'll tell you what I would do, Okay, step one.
(40:04):
I would google Siberia and I'd be like, you know what,
I don't know, what's the biggest city in Siberia. Maybe
there's some cool spots, are there cities like I don't know,
it's a big place. I don't know anything about. It's like,
but when you see it represented in media, it's like
a desert wasteland of cold tundra. I feel like every
(40:28):
time Siberia is referenced, it's in the context of like, like, uh,
you know, nineteen century Siberia. No, I think it's still
like that. It's so cold up there, sure, but that
doesn't mean there's no civilization up there. There's little civilization. Well,
it's like Alaska. Like Alaska doesn't have like a ton
of people, like the Alaska has a ton of people,
(40:50):
but as a whole, like foot by foot, it does
not have a lot of people. Sure, but Anchorage is
a is the city, it's I've been there. It's cool,
warmer than Siberia, and that is true. Anything near the
coast is far warmer than That's why Siberia is the worst,
(41:11):
because it's so it's so far away from the ocean,
so that's where it gets the coldest. It's more like
northern Canada. We don't know, listeners, we don't know what
we're in for, and we would google it and we
would try to find out. I'm looking it up right now. Okay,
Well let's try the home put. Hey, Siri, are there
(41:33):
cities in Siberia? I can't. She can't get the answer.
Nobody knows. Nobody knows. There's no way of knowing. Um.
But here's the thing. If it was any other remote
area that this person had named, I'd be like cool, done,
I'm gone. I don't need to be part of civilization.
(41:54):
Love it. I'll hide in the hut. But the fact
that it's so cold I cannot handle. But climate change
will make it, you know, pre reasonable. You know today
it was the same temperature here as it was. You're
assuming that the disaster that our children are for telling
uh and there as their future hobo sells, is related
to global warming? Well, I mean I can't because it
(42:17):
only happens if we don't move to Siberia. So there's
some bizarre butterfly effect that we are. We moved to Siberia.
It saves everyone. Yeah, I thought this is just us. No,
it says saves them end the world. Mm hmm, okay,
(42:39):
I guess we wanna say, I'm gonna be cold all
the time. You're f I can't swear because their son
is listening. We do need this person right back in
and say if Peter was to take the kids alone
and I was to go to the Cayman Islands, would
the world still be saved? No, you're not. Weasually your
way out of this. We don't know. It's all the
(42:59):
information we got. We're gonna need a little more info
from hobo esque children. That's what happened. We stayed at
home and they turned into a post apocalyptic hobos. Did
that answer your question? We don't knows. This next segment
(43:23):
is called Listeners Want to Knows, where we answer some
of your questions. Oh, they wanna knows, they want to knows.
This person is They don't want to know anything. They're
actually giving us a suggestion, some advice, and I'm curious. Um,
so this involves body parts? Um, well, I'll just read
it and then I have something to share. Hi, Peter
(43:45):
and Beth, I've been listening and laughing since Sky Brandham. Um,
your podcast on pop Rocket mentioned I think it's a
word Messing mentioned your podcast on pop Rocket. I have
a two and a half year old daughter and have
to thank you both for the weekly dose of relatable
frustration and joy. You guys do a great job. I'm
(44:09):
writing after listening to the anatomical discussion of butts, wieners, nipples,
and giant butts a k a. Vaginas. This was a
while back when um Brin claimed that girls only have butts,
they just have one big butts. I will say briefually
(44:30):
the tonight when they were taking their bath and they
were throwing water each other, they would do this thing
where they would turn around and stick out their butt
and then the other one would throw water at their
butt and then they would laugh. There's a lot of
Mayven just like sticking her butt in Brent's face. They've
they love butts. Um I'd like to promote the idea
(44:51):
of teaching your kids to say volva instead of vagina
for several reasons. Reason A, it's the anatomically it's amatomically correct.
The vagina is the inside part, the volva is the
whole thing. B It's way easier for a kid to
pronounce My daughter loves pointing to it and identifying it,
(45:15):
and I hope this will give her a sense of
ownership and confidence. Words are powerful. See if they know
the difference, you can have a better conversation about which
part itches, slash, hurts, etcetera. Should the need arise. Thanks
for sharing your lives with us. Cheers, Laurel. PS. My
daughter also asks to see nipples, but so far just
(45:38):
just family and friends. That's great. Um, what are your
thoughts on this? Interesting? I appreciate what she's saying about
understanding anatomically like what hurts her itches, but I still
am really on the fence on this because it's like
one of those things where have like the thing that's
like technically correct sometimes is also the thing that makes
(45:59):
your kid a weirdo who like can't communicate with other
people to sure, I'm having an issue with my volva,
like well just other kids like just I don't know,
I'm I really I can't predict how this will play
out over time, but um, well here's the thing I've
I've realized is like, yeah, I haven't because Brent and
(46:24):
I have, uh we've talked about his wiener. Whenever the
need arises, um, and that's the language we use. And
there's there's something like weird, safer thing about giving your
genitals like a cute nickname instead of being like, is
your penis okay? You're like, all right, grab your wiener
(46:45):
there and uh go to the bathroom. But I don't
have that with may even because I grew up with
four with three brothers. No, but no one has that
because no one ever thought to give women any nice
names at all. Like if you think of any word
associated with women, it's not fun or good, like the
word mom, if you like, your immediate connotation of a
(47:05):
mom is like a lame person. Like everyone thinks that
when they hear the word mom. And if you say dad,
people are like, oh, like a dad, Like it doesn't
like so it's there's just like no, there's so there
was no like cute name for vagina growing up. I mean,
I feel like it might gonnaway say like privates. I'm
(47:28):
sure people have good ones, we just need to know it.
I started I started saying with may even, who ha
as like a as like a joke who has fun?
And I was like, I was like, all right, you know,
wipe your like that's the thing is like I would
rather have a name like that and then also later
teach her the difference between vagina and volva and have
(47:50):
her know all the words. But I don't want to
like lock her into just volva, you know what I mean? Yeah,
because I have started saying vagina, but then I suddenly
feel like a weird, weird lame dad or a doctor.
I'm like, any well, I love something some of them,
(48:12):
but it's like, you know, it's the Madonna whore complex
like we have. I'm not going to say them because
our listener just indicated that his kids listen to this,
but we have some slang terms for vagina that are
maybe fun, but they're not something you would feel comfortable
saying to a child because they're very sexualized. So, like
everything related to women, we either make it like very
(48:35):
boring and old and like gross, or we make it
seem like very sexualized, like you know that when I
think of women, I think boy born and sexy. Well,
let's make up a word. What is it? What should
we call it? M M? There's nothing I could say,
(48:57):
like the people are not like immediately going to be
grossed out your chat skey who ha who has pretty
good yeah, it's pretty safe. Who who ha? How's your
who ha? Okay, It just for some reason that reminds
me of the story. Have we told you your childhood
(49:20):
Hubba story on the podcast? I feel like we've told
it before. No, we have not. Okay. So when Peter
was in elementary school, they would do like what was
it daily? Like for a week? Okay. So in second
grade Mr Ryan's class, we were learning about the um
(49:41):
pilgrims Um, and so we each learned. We learned with
the Mayflower, and we learned about a real person who's
on the Mayflower. We had to do research, and then
the next week we had to show up to class
every single day dressed as that person. I might be
mixing it up, or maybe we did this over the
(50:02):
full amount of time it took for the Mayflower to
get across the ocean. But at certain points during the day,
like events that we knew actually happened in the Mayflower,
we would reenact. So at one point, like in the
middle of math, the teacher just started flickering all the lights.
It was like the storm. It's the giant storm. And
so my character, who was a real person, he had
(50:24):
a wife who gave birth to a baby on the
Mayflower who was named Oceana the baby and the baby
was born during the storm. I have to say, it's
a great name, Oceana. Yeah. So during this, like Mr
Ryan starts flipping the lights and we're like, this is
the storm, this happened. We did our research, and so
we all all of like the boys start climbing on
(50:46):
the desks to fix the main beam, which we knew
cracked and it was a big deal. And all the women,
the girls went to help this this girl give birth
to a baby. And there was a girl in my
class who was assigned as like the who the character
was my wife, And so she brought a fake baby
and was pretending to be pregnant for how I don't
know how many days, and then during the storm, she
(51:08):
like pretends to give birth. And I don't watch any
of this because I'm fixing the beams so the ship
doesn't sink. And then suddenly we save it and the
lights go down, and then I'm like, I fall on
the ground because I'm pretending to be dramatic. And then
suddenly I hear my teacher go like Mr. Mr Johnson
or whatever his name was, Look, look your wife, and
(51:31):
I look up and there's my fellow second grader slash
wife holding a plastic baby doll, my baby that she
just gives mind giving birth to. And I look up
and he goes look and everyone is looking at me,
and I'm on the ground, and I look up at
my new wife and baby, and in that moment, I
(51:53):
choose to say Hubba, hubba. It's so cinematic. I gotta say,
I got a really good laugh. Yeah, it's so funny,
Like imagine all those kids laughing, having no idea what
that means. But it's like, clearly I had some associated
association with like some movies. It's just like somebody looking
(52:18):
at a woman and going hubb It's like, oh yeah,
like sex and babies and girls in general are all
just that's all one category. But really, if you think
about it, when women have babies, we should be saying
hubba hubba because it's so impressive. Check out that placentab.
(52:40):
So I've always been a real sensitive feminist boy. Sensitive. Yeah,
that's my baby. Let's go to the new world. This
has been another episode of We Know Is Parenting. Please
if you if you like the show, prove it leave
us a review. And a rating on the on the
(53:05):
Apple podcast. It really helps in subscribe Subscribe Baby. You
can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, at we knows
pod uh, and you can find us on our website
at we Know. It's a we Knows parenting dot com.
If you want to submit a question, share a story,
or give some advice or share a hypothetical for the
(53:26):
would you Know segment, you can email us at we
Knows pod at gmail dot com or leave a voicemail
at three four seven three eight four seven three nine six.
Someone please leave a voicemail or we're gonna have to
stop mentioning that option. We're real close. Um. Also, on
a point, remind you you can pick up Story Pirts
(53:46):
rand new book um by our the one and only
Jacklin West Digging Up Danger wherever you get books. Also,
the Story Pirates podcast returns new season January. Already. First,
if you have kids and you don't listen yet, you're
a fool. I'm so sorry I called you that name.
But check it out and have yourselves a wonderful day. Goodbye,
Hello, and welcome to we know parenting here McNerney. That's
Beth Newell. Definitely not robots replacements. Um high back again
for another week. Our life continues. We are still parents,
Brendon Mayven our children. They are two and they are four,
(00:33):
and they're great, except when we want to strangle them
like I did not but an hour ago. Boy, I
had a really great day with them. Beth. Yeah, m
ok day holiday. So we're we're at home and um
um I left for the afternoon to try to run
some errons and get some work done. You're a full
(00:55):
day off. Um. I wouldn't say a full day, but
I felt like it to me. But but we had
a great time here. Um. They played Brinnan Maven, genuinely
enjoying each other and playing and doing puzzles I thought
were too complicated for them. Brand's like, I need your
(01:18):
help to do the big Lama Lama puzzle and I
was like, I gotta go to the bathroom. And I
came out and the puzzle was done, and he was
very proud. I'll say, in spite of some very trying
moments as this the norm there, they've been really good
considering they've been stuck inside most of the weekend. So yeah,
today arctic blast. It was five degrees this morning when
(01:40):
chill negative three. Nice and um, I was great with
him all day until bedtime when they were super hyper,
and I was like, I'm I've been I've done a
great job all day. I've just when they're doing something bad,
just redirecting their attention and then being able to talk
(02:01):
to them that like, Okay, we don't want to do that.
Here is there, so let's look over here, as opposed
to the stop there's yes, that's you're real good and
telling Bran no, I'm realizing that now as I lay
down the law more often is they do like I
can't get over zealous. You had to pull it back
a little bit. Otherwise the whole day is like a
(02:23):
battle with two kids that are just NonStop trying to
eat snacks all day long on the weekend. Yeah, he
knows it. If you if I'm like Bran raised my voice,
He's immediately going to look at me and just keep
doing what. It gets like a skittish little deer's like.
And it's just the tone. And so if I just
immediately react like I'm on his side, like oh, you know,
(02:46):
we don't want to do this because uh, mom is
coming home as she wants this chair to not scrape
the floor. Hey, did you have a rock lord toy
over here? And then it's problem. That was all day.
I was redirecting the energy. I was riding the wave
until the last minute when you wouldn't lay down, and
he's He's just like, I don't want to read a book.
(03:06):
And then maybe was gonna cry if I didn't read
the book, and Britain was gonna cry if I did
read the book. So fine, It's like I'm just gonna
turn out the light. And I ended up trying to
start reading this book to Maven and Bryn in Defiance
just starts kicking the wall and I lost my mind.
(03:26):
If any of our listeners are putting two kids to
bed in the same bedroom at the same time and
they have any advice, please tell us, because it's just
hell every single time. I mean, they trade off who's
being difficult. It's I mean normally that is that is
the time where I've I really feel good about bedtime
because it's total chaos. But it's constantly like distracting them
(03:50):
and keeping them and holding them physically in bed, but
not to the point where they scream. And if I
hadn't just spent the whole day doing that, I would
have had a little more patience. And I just snapped
and had to like, uh, hold Brittin down because then
he started trying to pinch me, and I'm like, but
then I got in bed read the book to Maven
(04:11):
and Britain was like, fine, you can read it to her,
but I'm not gonna listen. And so I started reading
Lama Lama to It's a Big Lama Llama Day by
the way to Maven, and the whole time Britton was
jumping up on down on his bed with his fingers
in his ears, going I can't hear you because I
have fingers in my ears. And I finally, did you
hear me? Scream Britain like loud enough where he got
(04:36):
scared and went under his covers and weirdly was mad
at me until he went to sleep, but stayed in
bed and was quiet and yelling at him and has
never worked. And now I'm afraid that I'm going to
be tempted to do it a lot. I had one
or two moments like that this week where I raised
my voice where I was just so tired. But I
feel okay about it because it was brief. Yeah, it
(04:59):
wasn't um like a night of trying to shout him down. Well,
that's the tricky thing about screaming is that if you
don't do it hardly, ever, then when you do scream,
it is very powerful. But the more you do it,
the less power you have. Yeah, okay, So one thing
with the briefly uh bring people up to speed on
(05:23):
is what happened regarding the pink pants situation to miss
pink stripe, the blue pants with the one small pink
stripe on them that were the subject of a heated
debate at daycare So Good after Brit was lightly bullied
for having pink on his person and decided he wanted
to throw his pants at the front door, and we
(05:44):
talked about on the podcast. The very next morning, he
woke up and wanted to wear the pants with the
pink stripe. The boy gets over things, yeah, and he said,
and he he asked for them, and he said, because
I love pink, because he's just I think he's enjoying
Maven's enjoyment of pink. Recently, Well, none of them, neither
(06:08):
of them will allow the other to have a thing
that's just their's because maybe her entire identity is wrapped
up in loving pink and she won't stop talking about
because I love pink. I love pink. It's my favoritest
she loves pink. So Brits like Pink's my favorite colors,
like make it less special. And he like now when
(06:30):
he's asking for a cup, sometimes there's only like two
cup pink cups here, and he'll just kind of like
ask for it because he knows it's like the thing
that they even wants. Um. What a brother, What a
big brother. Um. So another thing I want to talk
about this week is tonight the kids haven't really getting
(06:51):
into wrestling, and I think in a good way where
they're not they're finally not actually trying to hurt each
other too much. Brenda's being was being pretty care full
with Mayven, but he was trying to make it look
like she was pushing him off the bed and then
he would fling himself down. Um. And they were having
a lot of fun, and I felt good about it
because it felt like they were testing the boundaries in
(07:13):
a very safe way. There's a couple of times when
Mayven like kind of would bump her head and she
cried like for a second, but like Britain wasn't for
the most part, he was not trying to hurt her.
And I mean, yeah, he used to legitimately hurt her
way more because he just didn't know his own strength,
and he's actually careful with me well, and recently he
(07:34):
hurts her on purpose because he gets mad and he
hits her. But this was the first time they were
like play wrestling, and I feel like they both kind
of were just laughing a lot and enjoying it for
long stretches of time, and I almost felt like it
was better when if I left the room, they would
just be giggling and I could kind of like trust
that they were for the most part, we're not trying
to hurt each other. But then if I walked in
(07:56):
and they were being watched, it felt like then they
almost got more violent. Yeah, you know what, I had
a good chunk of time today where they just stayed
in the other room and I listened to them and
they they aren't actually playing together well, and they were
doing it in the bathtub tonight where they were both
in the bathtub and we were down the hall and
you could hear them talking and gigglings. Yeah, we know
(08:18):
you're not supposed to leave a two year old unattended
in a tub. Stop yelling at up. She's like nearly three,
and they never stopped talking. So if they stopped talking,
we'd be nervous. Even when she's alone, she she like
sings most of the time she's in there, or like
she sing talks to herself. So I feel good, like
putting the dishes away, you know, ten feet away. She
(08:39):
was singing, Santa Claus is coming to town by herself tonight.
She she really can't let that one go. That song
is a faith that has a real impression on you
when you're two or three or four. Santa Claus is
coming to He's he's making a list, he's checking it twice.
He's going to find out he's not in your night.
She also kind of riffs on songs. On the other night,
I swear she said something that was you're bed or
(09:01):
not poop Like she just like they could you record
an entire poop parody just on their own. But today
and the batstuff, they were dumping water on each other's
heads and splashing each other in the face and they
were both laughing. Normally there would be a scream fit.
I know they're recovering. It was great. That was a moment.
When I was unloading the dishwasher, I was like, oh
(09:21):
my god, it's going to get better. It's gonna get better.
It gets better. Oh boy, so can I Uh So today,
you know, it's Martin Luther King Day and we're home alone,
and in my mind I'm like, uh, you know, I'm
(09:41):
stuck with two kids. You can't do anything, so um, yeah,
I can't. You know, there's not much I can do
to sort of honor the day. Um. But something did
happen that I chose to be my teach my kids
a lesson about uh uh befriending people you don't understand.
(10:05):
So that Britain and maybe we're fighting over me. Bryn
had two rock Lords, which are these toys from the
eighties that I got when I was little. In their
knockoff crappy transformers, but they transform into rocks instead of vehicles.
And uh, Mayven had to my little ponies. And Mayven
(10:26):
goes play with me, play with me, and she hands
me one of the unicorns that brinon goes no play
with me and tries to hand me one of the
rock lords and they're fighting over so I go, you
know what, I can do both, and so I pick
up both of them. And it's very different kind of play.
You know. Brandon wants to be like, we gotta go
find the bad guys, let's transform, let's let's do a
(10:46):
bunch of tasks. Listen to me, and and Maven's playing
with the unicorns is all like are you okay your
look at your hair, I'm flying. We're friends. I love you.
Kiss kiss uh, and AND's like, no play with me.
And so I suddenly in this little scene, was like,
you know what, um my rock lord in my unicorn.
(11:09):
We want to hang out with this unicorn? Hey Bryn.
His rock lorders name was Boulder, Hey Boulder, come play
with us. And he starts going no, rockwell lords only
hang out with other rock lords. Rock lords don't spend
time with ponies and unicorns. And I was like, this
(11:29):
is my MLK day lesson for my two and four
year old, and I was like, well, we can all
be friends together. No, he says like jarring things that
are like no, you're different. We're over here, and so
I took my rock lord and I was like, Boulder,
these are my friends and you should not like them,
just because the unicorns were having a dance party. And
he goes, fine, I'm gonna go be alone in my
(11:52):
rock house. And he stormed off as a rock lord,
and we go alright, ponies, we're having a dance party.
We that we all started dancing, and then Britain's on
the other side of the couch with his rock lord,
and his rock lord was jealously looking over to our
side of the couch because we were having a dancing
(12:12):
party with two unicorns and a rock lord. And then
and then he goes ring ring, ring, ring ring, and
I go, oh, um, sorry, Ponies, I think I'm getting
a call on my rock phone. Hello. He goes, Hey, Nugget,
that's the other rock lords name. Hey Nugget, it's me Boulder. Um,
do you want to come to my house? I'm like, sorry, Boulder,
(12:34):
I'm having a really fun party with the unicorns. You
should come over. He goes, um, I don't want to
come over. I don't hang out with ponies, but I
might change my mind and call you back. Okay, bye.
I go all right, who dance. Then he goes spring
Ring Ring. He goes hello, and he goes, I changed
my mind. I'm coming to the party. Where is it? Like,
(12:55):
it's over here? He goes, all right, I'll be there.
Then he comes over and then we all be friends.
And I was like, I did, it's so funny, so
into throwing around rules lately that just are just orders
for Mayven And he's like, Maven, girls don't get to
play with this. Oh, that's a big thing. Last he
(13:16):
keep saying, girls don't do that, like and it's just
it's really just what he wants to happen in that moment.
But I keeping like, girls do whatever they want. I
like it, like really insenses me. I like, no, Briton,
you don't get to tell girls what to do. You're
not the boss of girls. Girls can't be on the footstool.
(13:38):
Girls can be on foot stool. And that tonight when
he did it, you have never sounded more like your dad,
because you were like, brit I wouldn't go messing with girls.
I did not say that. You did. You're like, you
don't want to mess with girls. Take it for me.
Don't tell a woman what she can or cannot do. Um, wow,
(14:03):
well yeah you don't they they there's boy, are our
kids are Britain is such a boy? Maybe it's such
a girl and it's like do you feel disappointed? And
how much are our kids are perform? I mean he's
also in some ways very not like as we've mentioned previously,
(14:25):
he doesn't know a single thing about sports. Oh yeah,
it is the time to sign him up for a
soccer class or something. M I just thought I wasn't
bothered by it. I don't want to get up at
you know, eight am on a Saturday and I have
to run out the door to go to watch four
year old to try to play soccer. You don't want
to get up at eight am, even though I get
(14:46):
up at seven. I am to take them today here
every day, No, not get up, I mean have to
leave the house. Yeah, I leave the house by seven
fifteen every day. I'm talking about on a Saturday. You
leave the house. That's seven fifteen on a Saturday. That's
something you want to do. You think that's a reasonable
thing that I should not be saying this about. I
(15:07):
didn't think it through. I didn't think it through. But
let's look ahead at the end of the week. Okay,
because what's happened in this week? Beth, why don't you
explain to everybody what's happening this week? I am flying
out of here Thursday to go to the Cayman Islands
with my friends with no children. You just told me
one day this was going to happen, and well, that's
(15:30):
the only way it was going to happen. Well, you
think if you asked me, I would say no, I
think I don't need to ask you. It's true, it's true.
I asked you about dates. You know what you're You're right,
I'll be totally honest. I'm I'm I'm pretending like this
is upset me, but you don't think it. I think
you love it because you're just like eyeing the next
(15:51):
time that you can skip down. Oh yeah, I only
ever dare like take time for me if I know
that I've you've done it first. But then that's fine,
that's great. If I don't want to go on a trip,
if you're going to resent me for it, um, and
I really like I will be so much sane or
(16:13):
this for this entire winter. I think for having taken
this what is it, five days trip, I've only jokingly
the thing about giving you a grief about it. I
just want to the benefits of having a vacation as
a mom, because without like little breaks, you forget you're
(16:36):
a person, and you just it's like just this ongoing grind, grind, grind.
And I know a lot of people can't afford to
take like lavish Cayman Island vacations like, but I think
like you can just get But yeah, but if you
can get like a night away from your kids and
stay at a friend's house or anything where you can
(16:57):
just be a person and who gets to have drinks
and not worry about like waking up in the middle
of the night or at seven in the morning with
a person breathing in your face. Yeah, that's a good
thing for a person's mental health, especially in the dark
winter months. Um. I am very glad that you're going,
(17:19):
and I'm looking forward to you coming back and just
being so happy to see me. Um, So my mom
is going to come while you're away, and you're not
going to be here next week when it's recording time. Um,
what day do you get back? Um? Wednesday? Okay, So yeah,
(17:44):
so of course you know we haven't planned What the
hell we're gonna do for the episode, so either we'll
do it over the internet. W I was also thinking,
maybe I'll just do this episode with my mom. I
think you should. I think she would be great on here.
What are you? Mom? You'll probably find it out about
this right now listening. She's probably listening right now. She's
(18:05):
like she's laying on a beach listening to she uh
she uh would be a really great at this. But
I bet she'd be nervous. She shouldn't, Mom, you shouldn't
be You say everything you're thinking out loud, and that's
all you need to do to be on a podcast.
I mean, no one I know would kill it on
(18:25):
here like your mom. And come on, quit quit resisting everybody.
If you want a McNerney as my special guest on
her at a tweet at a McNerney does not have
Twitter at at Twitter dot com, tweet at her at Facebook, backslash,
(18:46):
How do I post this? Can everyone see this? You
know what? Just don't We'll just I'll trick her into it. Um.
So that will happen next week, unless, of course, something
totally different happens. We'll find out. This next segment is
(19:07):
called we Don't know. It's where we discuss some of
our parenting failures. Peter, you've got something. I've got one
involving physical violence bryn Um. Brenna's hitting and Brennan's kicking
and Brenda's pinching. I've got little cuts all over my hand.
(19:28):
Um uh. He's a very good boy most of the time.
And then he has a big tantrum and he started
hitting and this is this one. It's so hard to
control my anger. I think the same as for you.
So hard not to be emotional, and I know what
(19:49):
I'm supposed to do. Well here, here's the big issue,
is like, is I should be able to just put
him in his room and then I closed the door
and let him calm down. But if I do that,
he acts the way he acts out. He's like kicking
and stomping, and then our neighbors get really enraged. And
(20:09):
so I can't let him just blow off steam. I
have to go in there and say no stomping. And
then he comes at me and he starts swinging, and
I was like, I just need to leave. That's the
best way to show him this is not acceptable. Is
the second he takes like a swing. If he goes
in his room, you shut the door until he's calm,
but I can't leave him alone, and so it's this
(20:32):
terrible cycle. I go in and like the only option
I end up having is I need to like lay
him down on the bed and like try to like
hold his hands and his legs without hurting him. And
I need to like hold him until he calms down.
And of course, like then he goes crazy. And I'm
(20:54):
trying to, you know, just go like we don't hit,
and I stay calm because I do not want him
to react to like as if this is me, uh,
focusing like a physical dominance over him, like there's any
emotion attached to it. Uh, And so I try to
just hold him and stay calm. And I recently a
(21:15):
listener wrote in and oh gosh, I'm I'm so sorry, Um,
I didn't write tell your name, um, but uh she
recommended one to three Magic, which is a parenting style
type of book. And I just skiveed a little bit
of it. UM, So I can't endorse it or not.
But but the beginning of it UM has some really
(21:39):
simple ideas. I realized this is a applicable to us,
and too generalize Basically, it's like at that age you
you should never explain yourself more than once. You know
you can say you can't do this because this is dangerous.
And if they try to argue it and you re
explain laying it, you're not achieving anything. You're just falling
(22:05):
into the trap of that you paying attention to them.
So the main philosophy is when they're doing something you
don't want them to do, less talking and zero hide
all negative emotions because the net that we talked about
this for like those negative emotions and that over explaining
is a victory for them because they have your full
(22:26):
attention and part of that actually feels good. So it
is this, Yeah, they're like, oh we're arguing, great, I've
got some arguments. Yeah, that's they're asserting their power. But
if you take that away from them, which is just
they like and then ultimately one to three Magic is
basically like counting to three. I really hope one to
three Magic has a chapter on physically restraining your son
(22:48):
in sort of a choke hold for that chapter yet,
But I've really been trying to exercise that, like I
don't explain my health more than once, and when he
gets really heated. I barely look at him, you know,
And so I tried to do this. We went out
to um Rye Playland. Do you want to tell us
(23:12):
about that trip? Yeah, So this was when we knew
the big storm was coming. So we're like, let's get
out of the house. We tried to do a nature walk,
which our kids sucked at. Um that sucked not good at. Like,
I think part of it is just winter. Maybe there's
less to see. I don't know, but they're like not
interested in exploring their outdoor surroundings very well, and they
(23:36):
like won't continue walking get back on the path. Well, no,
because you guys were just like wandering around and I'm
severely allergic to poison ivy and I could see it
on the trees surrounding us, and I just could very
easily picture either one of you just wandering over and
leaning your hand up against a big rope of poison.
(23:59):
I I wasn't rest because I realized that I've never
even attempted to identify poison ivy when the leaves are dead.
Well I have because I've gotten very bad poison ivy
in the middle of winter unfortunately. So uh Anyway, Um,
I'm very sensitive in a cool interesting allergic action of
(24:22):
what I was saying. No, that's I have a strong
immune system. It's overactive. So anyway, um, I'm cool. We're
they wouldn't like, they won't just take a walk. So
that was frustrating because I like that nature preserve and
I want to cover some ground and I think if
we've got a little farther, you know, they might have
(24:44):
seen like a deer or something, but they're too loud. Anyway,
I should just go in nature walks alone, which is
the ideal way to do it. Anyway, that's your New
Year's resolutions alone nature walks. Right, yeah, that is one
of my new resolutions, get out of nature. Um. And anyway,
so we we end that pretty quickly because Brina was
just trying to turn around would be difficult. And then
(25:04):
we're like, okay, it's like getting kind of late. We
can go get some brunch because they're going to get
hungry soon. And I find a place that's sort of
like a step up from our regular diner. Fair It's
like steps up. That place was it was great. It
was really quality over quantity, which I'm I that's the
thing that's really rubbing me wrong about the diners around
(25:25):
here is just like, well it's a mountain. Food was
also just like so boring and bland and like not
like it just feels like you're shoveling like cardboard into
your mouth at a certain point. The diner I've been,
the diners around here are just a little bit lacking
in my opinion. I've been to plenty of good diners. Um,
(25:47):
so anyway, this place was like a step up and
the food is great and our kids, actually we're really good.
Well because the table clasts all paper and they have
cramps that they could draw on the whole table. Yeah,
and this was a novel to them, and they liked
it better than the our usual diner, which has just
those little mats with drawings already on them like a
coloring book thing. Um, Like, our kids can't handle a
(26:08):
blank page. They love a blank page. So they were.
I actually think they were amazingly good during that meal
compared to like any other meal we've had. With that,
I did have to take brain outside before the check came. Yeah,
but that was like we were waiting a while for
the check and I was eyeing the guy like that
was not our kids faults so then we went over
(26:28):
to Write Playland, which was across the street, and it
was pretty good. We're wandering around. This is great again,
like it's a beautiful boardwalk and along the beach, and
our kids just want to hang out in like basically
a parking lot corner and like it's fine. There's like
a wheelchair ramp and they're running around and stuff. But
(26:49):
it was just like, why do we have to hang
on this ugly little These kids aesthetic sensibilities are a shambles. Anyway,
we were everything was fine, and then we're like time
to go to the car, and I guess he didn't
want to go to the car and you had to
carry him. And then I tried to put him in
the car and put his seatbelt on, and he was
(27:09):
he went full, I'm not putting this seatbelt on. So
I gave it some time and I was like, we
gotta do this seatbelt And then I was doing my one, two,
three magic if I only spent it once, and then
I just started talking to you and I changed the
subject and finally I was like, Okay, we gotta go,
and I was like, all right, I just gotta force it.
I put him in the chair and he screamed and
he take it off seatbelt, so I had to sit
(27:31):
in the back. Oh. And then when I was backing
out he I was driving like a few feet out
and he opened the door. And that's what set you off. Yeah,
I opened the car door while we were driving, and
that is a something I think lawrants a yell. I
gave him a yell. I wanted to scare him about that.
And I had to sit in the backseat. And then
(27:52):
he was trying to hit me, and so as we
were driving, I pulled his hands, and he can hurt you.
So I put his hands, I pulled his jacket sleeves
out so that his hands were inside his jacket sleet
and then I basically like held the ends of his
jacket sleeve so he was like handcuffed in there and
I could squeeze it tight. I wasn't hurting his hands, ornything.
(28:13):
And I was like, this is great. He can struggle.
It's like a straight jacket and no one's getting hurt.
And then he's trying to bite me. And we get
home and he's still screaming and you go inside. So
I'm like, I'm gonna sit out here and I'm gonna
just ignore it and be calm. And it was a nightmare.
It was terrible, and I had evil thoughts and I
(28:34):
wanted to, like I wanted to fight back with a
four year old. Obviously I didn't, and I just did that.
But I finally wore him out. And it's just the
point where then he got tired and he was like, hey,
is that a turkey? And like saw a bird outside, Like, no,
that's not a turkey, and he goes, oh, it looks
(28:55):
like a turkey, and it's just like fine, and it
feels like I feel like it feels manipulative, like and
then like you feel like he's manipulating you, yeah, because
he's like acting like nothing happened, like we didn't just
spend an hour trying to cut me. You're the one
who's always saying that that's what's great about boys, is
(29:15):
that you guys don't hold onto. You're right, I got
over it two seconds later. I was like, Oh, my
son's great. I mean, I don't know, did you get
over it two seconds later? Yes, you don't necessarily seem
over it right now, but I really, uh, I mean
(29:35):
that's because it just happened again in bed. You know why?
You know why? Actually I am like annoyed at him
right now because he calmed down and he went to sleep,
and then I went over there and to give him
a kiss, and I put it in my hand on
his head. I was like, good night, buddy, and he
was still mad. He goes, no, and that's rare because
(29:57):
he was like holding a grudge. And so I walked
out of there being angry with him, and the you're
mad that he went to bed angry. Yes, let not
let not this, Let not the sun go down about
pont your wrath. That's a that's a etching in my
mom's bathroom. Yeah, I really I subscribe to that. I mean,
(30:25):
you do not subscribe to that you let the sun
go down upon your wrath because because there's no amount
of you like shouting at me or arguing with me
is going to make a situation resolve at like twelve PM.
I mean, we don't need to get into how our
our conflict resolution skills couldn't be any more different. No,
(30:48):
but I think this is a common male female thing
where I'm like, I want to believe that you understand
why I was not in the first place, and you
have concrete plans to do differently in the future. It's not,
but in your mind you're thinking, she just needs to
back down and get over this and forgive me. You
are not typical of any genu. That is so not true,
(31:11):
because I'll like go away for an hour and come
back and think about it and then be like, hey,
you're right, here's what any wrong, and here's what I'm
gonna do to change that. Now, please just tell me
it's okay. And then you love me and you're like,
I'm going I need to let the sun go down
upon my wrath. No, because you're you're not telling the
part of the story where you keep ignoring what I'm
trying to tell you I'm mad about, and then I
(31:34):
don't want to take responsibility for it, and you get
brushing it off, and then you're like, hey, can you
just not be mad? Both of these things we're talking about,
we're both much better and not doing the thing that
we're accusing the other person. You're doing right now, So
let's end this by saying nice improvement. Will you just
(31:55):
tell me that's okay? Then you love me though after
you just told me no one thinks like me, and
this we're going and that is we don't knows. This
next segment is called wood he knows. It's where we
take hypothetical situations from you, our listeners, and discuss what
(32:16):
we would do right, rent and right. This one comes
to us from UM. I was gonna say a friend
of mine, but I don't. I've actually never met this person,
but he is married. UM, so a little context on this.
So this uh listener wrote in his name is Ryan
(32:39):
and his wife is Jacqueline West, who is a New
York Times bestselling author. Does he want you to say
this information? Well, he wrote it in the email. Sorry
sorry Ryan, gratulations Jacqueline, you didn't say so the Story Parts.
If you're un from the story Parts, that's my full
time job is to go check it out. The News
(33:00):
Story Parties podcast season is launching January three. One UM
but the Story Parts also released. I have been releasing
serious books. UM. Kids have submitted I a sort of
a synopsis for a story, and then we get a
famous author to write the full novelization of that kid's idea.
(33:23):
It's very cool. Stuck in the Stone Age came out
last year by Jeff rod Key, and this year Jacqueline.
Our brand new book, Digging Up Danger, written by Jacqueline West,
based on an idea by a wonderfully funny kid named
phoebe Um, came out last week anyway, So that's Jacqueline.
I've been on book tours with her story parties. Got
(33:46):
hired too to create these book tours to go out
with real authors, and so I have spent several weeks
all over the country with Jacqueline West. And she is
a wonderful talent and human being. Anyway, that's the context.
Jacqueline did not write this email. Hello Beth and Peter. First,
thank you for your work on this podcast. It's a blast.
(34:07):
It helps remind me and my wife that we are
not alone. Wife in question is the one Jacqueline West. Um.
We and our three year old son listen to your
podcast each morning at the breakfast table. Our efforts every morning.
You either don't get through a whole episode, you're a liar,
(34:28):
or you repeat episodes in chunks. I could see it now, um,
or he means every episode every morning it's available. This
is important to know. Ryan. Will you right in let
us know how. I just want to know if he's
listening to our episodes on repeat after he's listened to
them already. Hey Siri, play we Knows on repeat. Siri
(34:50):
actually listened to me when I did that? Oh no, oh,
I forgot I have a HomePod? It her be Hey Siri, stop,
I have a question. It related to anything? Are we do?
We have to say, hey Siri now instead of just theory. Yes,
it's really annoying. Always been that way. I Um, I'm
gonna keep talking about this even though it's irrelevant to
(35:10):
the segment we're trying to record. I UM got your
old phone, the ten S or whatever, and the ten
I don't know how to use it and it doesn't
have the home button. So I'm totally thrown. And so
my whole day is just me being like, Hey Siri,
Hey Siri, where are you? Where am I? Oh? She
(35:33):
just said here? Um anyway, So so he has a hypothetical,
would you know? But I'm gonna keep reading this our
three year old we listen. Are our efforts it's censoring.
Your occasional f bombs have been futile. Sorry, we really
(35:54):
assume no children were listening. But so he hasn't repeated
any of the worst of your occasional cur is. He's
very keen on meeting your kids as they are outside
his much story classmates, the kids he knows the most
about in the world. Show me, Maven, Show me Bryan,
what are they doing? Are common shouts from our little guy.
(36:15):
He is in his terrible three major stage and hearing
about your struggles with your to help us deal and
provide us with much needed schaudenfreude. One of my favorite words,
the joy of others failures. That's right, I was telling
all of our listeners who also know, um, that's right.
(36:39):
Sometimes we're laughing at you. I appreciate that. I thought
you two could use a break from your own uh,
your own time travel and would be would you know scenarios?
So I came up with a hYP hypothetical for you
that also involves time general to scruffy looking think hoboesque
(37:02):
characters approach you, claiming to be brit and Maven from
the future. They're able to answer a few questions that
lead you believe that they are telling the truth. They
then claim that the two of you must move to
Siberia immediately and permanently, or utter disaster will before befall
you end the world. They then disappear in a puff
(37:25):
of blue sparkling smoke. What do you do love Ryan
and Jacqueline? Wow? I mean blue sparkling smoke kind of
seals the deal. I like, once again, writers have to
have to write in for your benefit that there's no
use questioning whether this is true. That's hard for you,
(37:49):
But that's the whole question is do I believe that
that that's really them? The scenario dictates that you do
believe that it's true, But they're asked the question is
do I believe and do I move to Siberia. I
don't think it's if you believe it's do you actually
follow through with it? No? But I mean do I
(38:11):
follow through? Because do I believe this is really my
two children from the future. I think it makes it
clear that you do believe it. The question is do
you listen to them? Do you basically ruin your whole life?
You guys can't keep sending us these because we can't
even agree on what the question is. Make me read
it again after a few questions, you believe them? Okay? Um?
(38:38):
I mean if I believe them, I believe them, I
have to move to Siberia. Right, Well, it's you know,
maybe like our lives won't be ruined, but our kids
and the rest of the world are, right, I guess
I gotta I gotta go for their future. Although part
of me really, um, I hate New York winter so much.
(39:00):
The idea of moving to Siberia is like a death
onto itself. So part of me is like, well, maybe
I should just move to the equator and enjoy my
last few months of life. I will say, um, I
wouldn't be happy living not in Siberia, but with you inside.
I could a should just send you in the kids,
(39:20):
and I'd be like, sorry, kids, mommy has gone. I
was going to be in the Cayman Islands with her friends.
I was going with her friends to die. Well, we
don't know how long it will be, you know, so
that's what we need to weigh. I say this is
a real analogy for global warming. I feel like there's
(39:41):
a lot of older people they are like, that's fine,
because it's not gonna affackt to my life. But that
means the analogy for global warning is that we have
to just flee. We can't try to prevent it or
slow it in any way. It's not a perfect analogy.
I'll tell you what I would do, Okay, step one.
(40:04):
I would google Siberia and I'd be like, you know what,
I don't know, what's the biggest city in Siberia. Maybe
there's some cool spots, are there cities like I don't know,
it's a big place. I don't know anything about. It's like,
but when you see it represented in media, it's like
a desert wasteland of cold tundra. I feel like every
(40:28):
time Siberia is referenced, it's in the context of like, like, uh,
you know, nineteen century Siberia. No, I think it's still
like that. It's so cold up there, sure, but that
doesn't mean there's no civilization up there. There's little civilization. Well,
it's like Alaska. Like Alaska doesn't have like a ton
of people, like the Alaska has a ton of people,
(40:50):
but as a whole, like foot by foot, it does
not have a lot of people. Sure, but Anchorage is
a is the city, it's I've been there. It's cool,
warmer than Siberia, and that is true. Anything near the
coast is far warmer than That's why Siberia is the worst,
(41:11):
because it's so it's so far away from the ocean,
so that's where it gets the coldest. It's more like
northern Canada. We don't know, listeners, we don't know what
we're in for, and we would google it and we
would try to find out. I'm looking it up right now. Okay,
Well let's try the home put. Hey, Siri, are there
(41:33):
cities in Siberia? I can't. She can't get the answer.
Nobody knows. Nobody knows. There's no way of knowing. Um.
But here's the thing. If it was any other remote
area that this person had named, I'd be like cool, done,
I'm gone. I don't need to be part of civilization.
(41:54):
Love it. I'll hide in the hut. But the fact
that it's so cold I cannot handle. But climate change
will make it, you know, pre reasonable. You know today
it was the same temperature here as it was. You're
assuming that the disaster that our children are for telling
uh and there as their future hobo sells, is related
to global warming? Well, I mean I can't because it
(42:17):
only happens if we don't move to Siberia. So there's
some bizarre butterfly effect that we are. We moved to Siberia.
It saves everyone. Yeah, I thought this is just us. No,
it says saves them end the world. Mm hmm, okay,
(42:39):
I guess we wanna say, I'm gonna be cold all
the time. You're f I can't swear because their son
is listening. We do need this person right back in
and say if Peter was to take the kids alone
and I was to go to the Cayman Islands, would
the world still be saved? No, you're not. Weasually your
way out of this. We don't know. It's all the
(42:59):
information we got. We're gonna need a little more info
from hobo esque children. That's what happened. We stayed at
home and they turned into a post apocalyptic hobos. Did
that answer your question? We don't knows. This next segment
(43:23):
is called Listeners Want to Knows, where we answer some
of your questions. Oh, they wanna knows, they want to knows.
This person is They don't want to know anything. They're
actually giving us a suggestion, some advice, and I'm curious. Um,
so this involves body parts? Um, well, I'll just read
it and then I have something to share. Hi, Peter
(43:45):
and Beth, I've been listening and laughing since Sky Brandham. Um,
your podcast on pop Rocket mentioned I think it's a
word Messing mentioned your podcast on pop Rocket. I have
a two and a half year old daughter and have
to thank you both for the weekly dose of relatable
frustration and joy. You guys do a great job. I'm
(44:09):
writing after listening to the anatomical discussion of butts, wieners, nipples,
and giant butts a k a. Vaginas. This was a
while back when um Brin claimed that girls only have butts,
they just have one big butts. I will say briefually
(44:30):
the tonight when they were taking their bath and they
were throwing water each other, they would do this thing
where they would turn around and stick out their butt
and then the other one would throw water at their
butt and then they would laugh. There's a lot of
Mayven just like sticking her butt in Brent's face. They've
they love butts. Um I'd like to promote the idea
(44:51):
of teaching your kids to say volva instead of vagina
for several reasons. Reason A, it's the anatomically it's amatomically correct.
The vagina is the inside part, the volva is the
whole thing. B It's way easier for a kid to
pronounce My daughter loves pointing to it and identifying it,
(45:15):
and I hope this will give her a sense of
ownership and confidence. Words are powerful. See if they know
the difference, you can have a better conversation about which
part itches, slash, hurts, etcetera. Should the need arise. Thanks
for sharing your lives with us. Cheers, Laurel. PS. My
daughter also asks to see nipples, but so far just
(45:38):
just family and friends. That's great. Um, what are your
thoughts on this? Interesting? I appreciate what she's saying about
understanding anatomically like what hurts her itches, but I still
am really on the fence on this because it's like
one of those things where have like the thing that's
like technically correct sometimes is also the thing that makes
(45:59):
your kid a weirdo who like can't communicate with other
people to sure, I'm having an issue with my volva,
like well just other kids like just I don't know,
I'm I really I can't predict how this will play
out over time, but um, well here's the thing I've
I've realized is like, yeah, I haven't because Brent and
(46:24):
I have, uh we've talked about his wiener. Whenever the
need arises, um, and that's the language we use. And
there's there's something like weird, safer thing about giving your
genitals like a cute nickname instead of being like, is
your penis okay? You're like, all right, grab your wiener
(46:45):
there and uh go to the bathroom. But I don't
have that with may even because I grew up with
four with three brothers. No, but no one has that
because no one ever thought to give women any nice
names at all. Like if you think of any word
associated with women, it's not fun or good, like the
word mom, if you like, your immediate connotation of a
(47:05):
mom is like a lame person. Like everyone thinks that
when they hear the word mom. And if you say dad,
people are like, oh, like a dad, Like it doesn't
like so it's there's just like no, there's so there
was no like cute name for vagina growing up. I mean,
I feel like it might gonnaway say like privates. I'm
(47:28):
sure people have good ones, we just need to know it.
I started I started saying with may even, who ha
as like a as like a joke who has fun?
And I was like, I was like, all right, you know,
wipe your like that's the thing is like I would
rather have a name like that and then also later
teach her the difference between vagina and volva and have
(47:50):
her know all the words. But I don't want to
like lock her into just volva, you know what I mean? Yeah,
because I have started saying vagina, but then I suddenly
feel like a weird, weird lame dad or a doctor.
I'm like, any well, I love something some of them,
(48:12):
but it's like, you know, it's the Madonna whore complex
like we have. I'm not going to say them because
our listener just indicated that his kids listen to this,
but we have some slang terms for vagina that are
maybe fun, but they're not something you would feel comfortable
saying to a child because they're very sexualized. So, like
everything related to women, we either make it like very
(48:35):
boring and old and like gross, or we make it
seem like very sexualized, like you know that when I
think of women, I think boy born and sexy. Well,
let's make up a word. What is it? What should
we call it? M M? There's nothing I could say,
(48:57):
like the people are not like immediately going to be
grossed out your chat skey who ha who has pretty
good yeah, it's pretty safe. Who who ha? How's your
who ha? Okay, It just for some reason that reminds
me of the story. Have we told you your childhood
(49:20):
Hubba story on the podcast? I feel like we've told
it before. No, we have not. Okay. So when Peter
was in elementary school, they would do like what was
it daily? Like for a week? Okay. So in second
grade Mr Ryan's class, we were learning about the um
(49:41):
pilgrims Um, and so we each learned. We learned with
the Mayflower, and we learned about a real person who's
on the Mayflower. We had to do research, and then
the next week we had to show up to class
every single day dressed as that person. I might be
mixing it up, or maybe we did this over the
(50:02):
full amount of time it took for the Mayflower to
get across the ocean. But at certain points during the day,
like events that we knew actually happened in the Mayflower,
we would reenact. So at one point, like in the
middle of math, the teacher just started flickering all the lights.
It was like the storm. It's the giant storm. And
so my character, who was a real person, he had
(50:24):
a wife who gave birth to a baby on the
Mayflower who was named Oceana the baby and the baby
was born during the storm. I have to say, it's
a great name, Oceana. Yeah. So during this, like Mr
Ryan starts flipping the lights and we're like, this is
the storm, this happened. We did our research, and so
we all all of like the boys start climbing on
(50:46):
the desks to fix the main beam, which we knew
cracked and it was a big deal. And all the women,
the girls went to help this this girl give birth
to a baby. And there was a girl in my
class who was assigned as like the who the character
was my wife, And so she brought a fake baby
and was pretending to be pregnant for how I don't
know how many days, and then during the storm, she
(51:08):
like pretends to give birth. And I don't watch any
of this because I'm fixing the beams so the ship
doesn't sink. And then suddenly we save it and the
lights go down, and then I'm like, I fall on
the ground because I'm pretending to be dramatic. And then
suddenly I hear my teacher go like Mr. Mr Johnson
or whatever his name was, Look, look your wife, and
(51:31):
I look up and there's my fellow second grader slash
wife holding a plastic baby doll, my baby that she
just gives mind giving birth to. And I look up
and he goes look and everyone is looking at me,
and I'm on the ground, and I look up at
my new wife and baby, and in that moment, I
(51:53):
choose to say Hubba, hubba. It's so cinematic. I gotta say,
I got a really good laugh. Yeah, it's so funny,
Like imagine all those kids laughing, having no idea what
that means. But it's like, clearly I had some associated
association with like some movies. It's just like somebody looking
(52:18):
at a woman and going hubb It's like, oh yeah,
like sex and babies and girls in general are all
just that's all one category. But really, if you think
about it, when women have babies, we should be saying
hubba hubba because it's so impressive. Check out that placentab.
(52:40):
So I've always been a real sensitive feminist boy. Sensitive. Yeah,
that's my baby. Let's go to the new world. This
has been another episode of We Know Is Parenting. Please
if you if you like the show, prove it leave
us a review. And a rating on the on the
(53:05):
Apple podcast. It really helps in subscribe Subscribe Baby. You
can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, at we knows
pod uh, and you can find us on our website
at we Know. It's a we Knows parenting dot com.
If you want to submit a question, share a story,
or give some advice or share a hypothetical for the
(53:26):
would you Know segment, you can email us at we
Knows pod at gmail dot com or leave a voicemail
at three four seven three eight four seven three nine six.
Someone please leave a voicemail or we're gonna have to
stop mentioning that option. We're real close. Um. Also, on
a point, remind you you can pick up Story Pirts
(53:46):
rand new book um by our the one and only
Jacklin West Digging Up Danger wherever you get books. Also,
the Story Pirates podcast returns new season January. Already. First,
if you have kids and you don't listen yet, you're
a fool. I'm so sorry I called you that name.
But check it out and have yourselves a wonderful day. Goodbye,
We Knows Parenting News
Hosts And Creators
Beth Newell
Peter McNerney
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.