July 4, 2025 • 32 mins
Ready for the weekend, Outlouders? We've got a fresh episode of Parenting Out Loud. Because if parents are thinking about it, we're talking about it.
On the show today, Jessie Stephens, Amelia Lester and Stacey Hicks join forces to chat all things including:
👩 'I abandoned my family without warning. It was the best thing I ever did.' We dive into the article that went viral on site this week and we have lots of thoughts.
🍼 Why more families than ever are wanting daughters over sons - what's behind this fascinating shift?
💚 Plus, do you have a DFK? Were you a DFK? And WTF is a DFK? Dr Becky's latest parenting trend explained.
🤸 And, are you in trampoline denial?
Plus, in this week’s reccos:
📝 Amelia wants you to try Spirograph Drawing and Design Set
🧸 Jessie wants you to listen to the podcast Eat Sleep Repeat
📚 Stacey wants you to make this recipe-less crowd favourite meal, just cook lamb mince with cumin, paprika and cinnamon in a fry pan. Throw some potato and zucchini in the air fryer (or oven) and a dollop of tzatziki to finish it all off.
Support independent women's media
What To Listen To Next:
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 1: Grandparents — It's Time For Your Performance Review
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 2: The Death Of The Dining Table & 'Outdated' Schooling
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 3: A New Co-Parenting Rule & The 100% Work Dilemma
- Parenting Out Loud Ep 4: The Ms Rachel Controversy & The Great Kids Vs Friendships Debate
- Mamamia Out Loud: "Too Rich" Celebrities & The Adolescence Theory
- Eat Sleep Repeat: I Don’t Want To Parent The Way I Was Parented
- Connect your subscription to Apple Podcasts
What to read:
- 'I abandoned my family without warning. It was the best thing I ever did.'
- 'I didn't realise gender disappointment was a thing in pregnancy, until I admitted I had it.'
- What you should do if your child gets injured on the trampoline.
- "My adult child was suffering, but I had to step back for my own health.”
- There's one questio
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
our limited series Parenting Out Loud. I am Jessie Stevens.
I am joined by Amelia Lester here Hello, and Mamma
(00:35):
Maya's deputy editor, Stacey Hicks.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
We're here to talk about some of the stories that
dominated the week, because if parents are thinking about it,
we are talking about it. On today's show. Do you
have a DFK that stands for a deeply feeling kid?
And Doctor Becky knows how to spot one? But is
there really any such thing? And the stunning decline of
the preference to have boys? Apparently girls are very much
on trend. Why plus are you and trampoline denial? We
(01:02):
read the most shocking article about trampolines and are desperate
to debrief.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But first, in case you missed it, one of the
biggest story who on MoMA Mia this week was about
a woman who abandoned her family to live on her
own and now we're all a little bit jealous. In
an interview with Katie Powers, author and mother of two
Monique Ben told her spoke very candidly about the moment
she was staying at her family's home in North Queensland
and just decided to never go back to her life
(01:28):
in New South Wales.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I feel like a very relevant detail here with the
age of her children, That's what I scrolled to be,
like how old are to and four? Are we talking?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
When can I leave? She had two teenage sons. But
she said days turned into weeks and she just sent
her husband an email and said, that's it. I'm done
with carrying the mental load. I want to live on
my own. I'm not divorcing you. I just don't want
to live in the same house as you anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
See I thought when I first read this and it
described the suns as growing, I sort of thought, this
is a semantics exercise. If she's leaving home, specifically leaving
her husband and her children are largely looking out to themselves,
it's up to her whether or not she calls it divorce.
But it feels a little bit like she's separating from
(02:16):
her husband.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah, and that's what she said.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
She said that he was initially surprised and kind of
making sure she hadn't gone mad and had a breakdown
or something more serious had happened, but that he actually
came around to it and supported her and was like,
that's okay. Well they visit each other now regularly, so
a couple of times a year they'll go and see
the other one and they just say the dynamic works.
But she acknowledges, She said, I know that this could
(02:38):
not work for all people, mostly because most people don't
have two houses.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
To go between.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
We couldn't get very far, which chose to la you
didn't have another bedroom. Yeah, exactly, exactly, So she is
doing this from a very privileged position. But yeah, she said.
People do say is there adultery involved? Is there some reason?
And she said, I actually love him so much more
now than when we were living under the one roof,
So that's why they do it.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It's the most taboo thing a woman can do anytime.
I've read a few books recently that have this as
a thing, and it's like, when you're confronted with that,
readers get really triggered and just like the thought. I mean,
when a man does it, we're horrified, but when a
mother leaves her children or her husband, that's seen as
(03:24):
particularly kind of I don't know, subverting the maternal nature
of her role. But I think the interesting question is
like what leads to that, and also the amount of
people that clicked on it is kind of going, there's
some fascination with this decision. And clearly it was years
upon years of resentment of taking on the mental load
(03:45):
to such a point that it just overflows and you
just can't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, she said, it just got to the point where
she couldn't not leave. She said it felt like that
was the only option and that she had to be
prepared for whatever his reaction was to that. But luckily
he was okay with it, so maybe he was feeling
the same way.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Do you have a deeply feeling kid? Are you a
deeply feeling kid?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Doctor Brymuch.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Doctor Becky is a clinical psychologist and an icon for
millennial parents, and she published a video to her three
point three million followers recently and here is what she said.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Right now, raise your hand. If you were told that
you were dramatic when you were a kid, raise your hand.
If you were told you're making a big deal out
of nothing, raise your hand. If you were told things
like you're ruining this for the family, I have news
for you. I have a feeling you are a deeply
feeling kid. I have a feeling you might have a
deeply feeling kid. Deeply feeling kids are more porous to
the world. They truly do feel things more intensely.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
More comes in and more comes.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Out, which yes, means very intense tantrums and escalations. Deeply
feeling kids sometimes experience their feelings as threats. It's like
they're being attacked.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I need initial reactions. What do you think do you
put much stock in a deeply feeling kid?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Am I allowed to say that I hate this?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Tell me why you hate it?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Isn't Doctor Becky just reminding us all of us subjectivity
as humans, that we all feel things, whether or not
we show it to the world or not. Look. I
think doctor Becky's success boils down to the fact that
she has identified the fundamental truth that we need to
treat our kids like humans. And Okay, sometimes I need
a reminder of that.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Well, will co sign yes?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
When I scream at my child, put your socks on,
go to the toilet and brush your teeth. Would I
say that to my partner? No? I probably wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
She will putt sucks on a brush of taker.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That's true, but that's I think why she's so loved,
and look, I don't want to I don't want to
yuck anyone's arm. I know many people who say that
doctor Becky has really helped them break generational cycles of trauma.
And I really like how that she emphasizes you need
to handle your own feelings before dealing with your childs,
and that includes figuring out if you yourself or a DFK.
(06:02):
But ultimately, this clip just irritates me because she is
selling your product, and she is trying to come up
with a label that could conceivably be applied to just
about everyone. Am I wrong? That?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Okay, That's how I feel because when it's like highly
sensitive person or you'll often hear someone say I just
experience the world a little more deeply.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Than I'm an you know what I am?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I'm an overthinker, And it's like the no, no. You
just have closer proximity to your thoughts and your feelings
than anyone else's, so we imagine that our own inner
worlds are far more complicated than anyone else's because I
can't access yours. I'm like Amelia's pretty simple She's just
here with a smile on her face. Me very very complicated, Stacy,
do you have any Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I felt very seen and attacked in equal measure because
I am definitely a DFK. I am someone who will
cry when they see someone alone in a restaurant, despite
the fact that person is probably having a great time
alone in the restaurant. I project those feelings onto them.
I'm that person. But you have to say, pull yourself together.
You should not need to be upset by this. So
(07:09):
I do think that my emotions are probably a bit
closer to the surface, I would say, than other people's,
But that doesn't mean that I feel more deeply than
another person. But I do feel conflicted because I have
to admit when I saw doctor Becky's videos and I
heard this label, it did kind of give me some
level of comfort to put a name to something I
(07:30):
feel like i'm a little bit different to other people with,
and also a term for something that I think my
child experiences. On the other hand, I don't want to
pigeonhole her as this particular type of person, and I
think that's where the danger comes with all the labels.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
If it lends itself to treating our child with like
more empathy. And I mean, I've got a two year old.
Where you go, I don't know many even tempered two
year olds who are really good with their feelings and
have really quite muted feelings about yogurt. She has quite
strong feelings about yogurt. But in saying that, what I
worry about is the labeling. And I'm not talking about
(08:09):
diagnosed seeds necessarily, But even I look at my daughter
and the moment I think she's shy, she does something
that suggests maybe she's not, or the moment I think
she's really gentle, that's when she'll bite. You know, Like, kids,
by their nature, are in a process of evolution, and
I worry that by putting any kind of expectation or
(08:31):
label on them, it becomes self fulfilling.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yes, I worry about the impact on kids, and I
worry about the impact on parents as well. So, okay,
you've established that your kid is deeply feeling. How does
that flow into how you treat them? I think what
it leads to is this idea that you have to
prioritize their feelings above your own or even above your
own schedule. So I found this CBC article that nicely
(08:56):
summarized the back class to doctor Becky and sort of
gets it where I'm at on this, which is gentle
parenting too rough on parents. Now, I should say that
doctor Becky is probably doesn't identify as a gentle parenting acolyte,
but she's definitely adjacent to it. And basically the idea
is that in in stressing the importance of acknowledging children's
(09:16):
feelings sometimes above all else, it makes it really hard
for parents. They constantly feel like they're falling behind. And
sometimes you do have to be the bad guy, and
sometimes you just don't have time with the feelings and
you just have to get out the door. And so
I worry about both the children's side of it and
the parents' side of it when we're labeling kids in
this way and giving your child the label of a
(09:37):
DFK doesn't stop that behavior from occurring. Like you can't
just be in the shops going just look away, she's
throwing products at you because she's a DFK. It won't
change what's going on. So having it is not very useful. Yeah,
So what I wonder why do people respond to this? Then?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Why do you think this video thing too anytime on
the site on Mamma Mia. Anytime on Mamma Mia that
we write about something that is a term or a
theory or gives a name to something that's happening in the.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
World, people love it, like people will flock to that.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And I think it's just about kind of tying a
neat little bow around something that they're may be grappling with.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Is it also confirming our sense that our child is unique,
which all our children are genuinely unique and are genuinely special,
But these titles suggest like there is something that you're
seeing in your kid that makes them different, because she's
not saying that all kids are DFK, she's saying that
only some are. And it also I think it then
(10:37):
makes us feel like, Okay, now that I have a
DFK doctor, Becky is going to teach me some strategies.
And I will give her a lot of credit in
this because she's really straightforward. And we've talked on the
show before about how for a lot of mums and dads,
they don't have a community that might teach them strategies.
Like I'm really close to my mum and she'll often
tell me something that will help with parenting, like I'm
(10:57):
doing this for the first time, and doctor Becky provides
that for people. She has something she talks about sturdy.
Have you heard this? So she taught her big thing
is like a parent needs to be sturdy, not super authoritarian,
not entirely gentle, but sturdy suggests you're something that a
child can lean on. You know your values, you know
(11:18):
what the limitations are, you know the rules, but you're
also there's some flexibility in that. And I quite like
there are a lot that pops up from doctor Becky
and I'm like, yeah, like that, I'll use it. But
at the same time, you're right, she's selling a course,
she's selling a book, she's selling her expertise.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And I also think she's kind of pathologizing parenting itself. Like,
sometime around the point at which parenting became a verb,
we decided that to be a parent meant you had
to absorb all the evidence and all the latest studies
and all the greatest thinkers on parenting. And I think
part of that I have a theory. I think part
of the reason why doctor Becky and others have such
(11:56):
slavish devotion online is because it's a bit of a
pendulum swing response to the style of parenting that a
lot of millennials grew up with. So, for instance, doctor
Becky says you should never do chimeouts because they shame
the child. Comes from her grounding in modern psychotherapy. She's
also a psychologist, so there's clearly some evidence to back that.
(12:18):
On the other hand, pediatricians advocate for timeouts some American pediatricians,
according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, because it has
been shown to be effective in rewiring kids' behavior. So
different experts are going to come up with different assessments
for what the best cognitive approaches are. It's clear why
doctor Becky doesn't like the timeouts. At the same time,
(12:40):
it can be a tool in the toolbox. And for
millennial parents, I think there's a sense of we want
to do better than our parents, We want to correct
their perceived failings. But the truth is no one can
be a perfect parent.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Have you ever watched a gender reveal video where the
parents are clearly trying to hide their disappointment, Well, it
was probably because they found out they were having a
boy in a surprising turn of events. There is now
an increasing preference by parents to have little girls, when
it was once very much the opposite. An article in
the Economists this week showed this is a trend happening globally,
even in countries like China, where the now abolished one
(13:16):
child policy once meant that pregnancies resulting in girls were
routinely aborted in favor of boys who would carry on
the family line and look after parents in old age.
To put it into context, the article said, so globally,
among babies born in the year two thousand, one point
six million girls were missing from the number you'd expect
given the natural sex ratio at birth. This year that
(13:38):
number is likely to be only two hundred thousand, which
is still a lot, but it's falling. In America and Scandinavia,
families are now more likely to have another child if
their first child is a son in the hopes of
getting a girl, and seventy five percent of Japanese couples
who only want one child say they'd prefer it be
a daughter. They're also seeing it for adoptive parents. Some
(13:58):
agencies now charge higher fees for placing female children as
the demand is so much higher. I think there's a
few reasons for this gradual about turn. So I'd love
to know why you think there's a sudden in girl power.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I reckon there's a few things right because historically boys
have offered families an economic advantage, right, and with gender
equality and getting women in the workplace, that's meant that
what boys offer in that way, girls can now offer.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I think it's definitely an interesting point that the article
makes about people feeling as though a daughter will look
after them into old age. I've actually heard people say that,
but I'm going to throw out a totally random theory
that's just mine. I wonder if there is more of
a focus on centering what the mother wants.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So we're talking about things like gender disappointment, which we've
never talked about before because of you know, just the
public conversation going on to TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Don't know anyone personally who's experienced, yes.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So, Kelly McCarran spoke really candidly about this after the
birth of her son, and I found it really refreshing.
I hadn't heard that term before. And you know, she
loves she's such a great mum. She loves her son
more than anything in the world. But her initial response was, oh,
I didn't realize how much I wanted a girl, And
I think that by centering mother's voices, we're probably hearing
(15:21):
that more. The question is, why would a mother want
a daughter, ever a son? And I wonder if it's
we feel like we know what we're doing because we
were a daughter, and also some deeply psychological sense of
wanting to reparent ourselves, like I have this thing I
wonder if I go, I want to re enter my
own childhood, and maybe I feel I can better do
(15:43):
that with a girl than a boy, which I don't
think is true, but it could just be what our
guts tell us. What do you think, Amelia?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Well?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Anecdotally, I will say that in the new South Welles
public school system which I currently am experiencing, girls are
very much the white whale. It seems there are just
not enough girls to go around to sprinkle the fairy
dust of good behavior across classes. In public primary schools,
they are better behave. There are also fewer of them
(16:11):
than boys in public schools in my experience, and I
wonder if part of this is because I certainly know
women who have put their daughters in single sex education
from kindergarten, whereas I don't know anyone who's chosen to
do that with boys. Not to say it doesn't happen,
but it's because of that conventional wisdom that girls have
contagiously good behavior and that will translate to boys as well.
(16:33):
So there is this sense now where to have girls
in your child's class, and the more girls you have
in your child's class, the more valuable because the class
is likely to be better run, less disrupted, less loud.
It all makes me a bit sad, to be honest.
I have a boy and then a girl. And when
this happened, I have a friend who is French who
(16:54):
said to me.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Ah leschois duro.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I said, what is that and she said, it's the
choice of kings because going back historically in France and
in other monarchies around the world, kings wanted a boy
first to secure the lineage in that very sexist way
of monarchies everywhere, and then a girl because girls, you know,
they dress more nicely and the people love looking at
their clothes, and that's what royal families wanted. And I
(17:19):
guess it's understandable that as women are delaying childbirth and
as people are having fewer kids, particularly in rich countries.
It's not surprising that they want the choice that is
considered easier, because we do consider girls to be easier
For all those reasons. It still makes me sad, though,
and I wonder if part of it is that we
(17:41):
can see that the boys are not okay. They are
behind in school, they are behind in life. We see
TV shows and movies about in cell culture, it's the
men are not okay. And I feel like we're making
choices based on what we think boys and girls are
rather than what they are capable of or what they
could be, which, after all, isn't that the point of parenting?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I know, I thought that after adolescence. I thought, I
don't think a lot of people are watching that show
going I can't wait to parent a teenage boy like
it feels terrifying a lot of ways. How about you, Stacy,
what do you think is behind it?
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I think there's an assumed closeness between a daughter and
their mother, which is not necessarily the case. It's a
sweeping generalization, but I think for women, when you are
thinking about the fact that, especially if you're having children later,
that you may only have one child or you're making
that decision that you're definitely only having one child, that
you go, well, I'm familiar with that, Like, I know
what to do there. I'll be the mother's side for
(18:36):
when the grandchildren come. I'll be the mother's side for
the wedding. Like I feel like a mother and a
daughter being close. Everyone goes, oh, isn't that sweet? A
mother and a son are close, And it's a Mormon
baits and psychos.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
That's so true. That's so true.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
It's seen as toxic somehow if a mother is super
close with their son. So I think maybe that's part
of it.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
An article this week rocked my world, turn me upside down,
potentially cause some bones to break. Let me explain. It
was called are You in Trampoline Denial? And it was
from the cut. Like the author, Lady Arnold Ratliffe, I
have long heard rumors that trampolines are in fact incredibly dangerous.
I am rolling my eyes as I say this. For
(19:17):
many years now, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said
that no trampoline is safe for children under six, and
that no trampoline outside a gymnastics program is safe for
children over six. But again I had rolled my eyes
at this, I had silently judged those pediatricians as kill joys.
And I held my child's fifth birthday party at a
trampoline park.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Did everyone come? Or were there some who protested?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
No? Everyone can. They did a thing about trampoline parks
and five year old boys. Say what you will about boys.
They need to burn up some energy and that's what
trampoline parks are for. However, I can no longer dismiss
the rumors because this piece had some absolutely horrifying statistics
in them. I'm going to share three. First statistic, an
(20:00):
estimated three hundred thousand trampoline injuries a year occur in
the United States, that so many. Statistic two twenty percent
of those involve head injuries, including concussions. Statistic three eleven
percent of injuries at trampoline parks are significant. And you
know when doctors use the term significant, they're actually they
(20:21):
actually mean significant, as opposed to when I use the
term significant when I can't decide what decision about what
to eat for lunch. So this is major. And then
also the waiver you sign, which I'm sure none of
us have read because it's a PDF and it goes
on for many, many pages. Turns out that waiver basically
signs the way your and your child's life should anything
terrible happen at the trampoline park. So where does this
(20:44):
leave this? And what am I meant to do with
my children on rainy winter days to stop them from
climbing all over my furniture? Are we all just kill joys?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Now?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Give me a permission to believe this Jesse.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Look, I I think there's an element of killed joy
to it, because I went all right following this. Firstly,
this article was incredibly percuisive. I read this and it
talked about the trampoline fracture, like the particular break double bounce,
the double.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Bounce, and we explain the double bounce, so the you
go no, no, you expected the double bounce is when someone's
legs are already coming down straight and then another person
bounces and it makes their legs compound and cause a fracture.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And the break is exactly the break I had, so
I know how bad it is. It's the break of
the tibia and you actually hear a pop is and
you need surgery and stuff like, and for kids to
get the break is even worse. Than adults because of
something about growth plates and like growth plate, growth plates.
You don't want to hear growth plates.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
You don't you don't want to hear growth plays.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I'm like, I thought it was just a cheeky little
broken wrist, but no, that one, no no fun. So
I read it and went, no, this is really bad. Okay, okay,
no trampoline. But then I thought, where do we draw
the line, because what are kids do outside trampolines?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Scooters?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Well, my sister broke a wrist on a scooter, but.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
There's way more dangerous, sure surely, surely skateboarding.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Also, how do we balance this against what Jonathan Yah
was telling us about how the online world is so
much more dangerous and the offline world. Was he not
talking about trampoline parks though, exactly?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And this is the thing is, it's like, okay, so
we take them out of the skateboarding parks. They know
you should never go to the beach, don't go near
a body of water, No roller skating, jumping castles, rock climb.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I forget the screen.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Oh any sport. No screen is like they.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Meant to be doing with their time. Don't say read
a book.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I don't want to read a book.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And to your point, Amelia, like the reason trampoline parks
are so popular is because what are we to do
on a rainy day? Tell me what we are to
do other than turn the television on. So I think
it's like that. There is an element of risk with
any physical play. But if we want children and adults
and human beings to be physically active and engage in
the world, then every now and then we're going to
(22:59):
break a bone. That's a very unpopular thing.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I would argue that this is more low risk than
them going down those burning hot slides in the middle
of summer, oh.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Where they could end up with rashes down their legs.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
This is interesting, Stacy. You have just hit my third rail,
which is playgrounds. Yes, because we're in this funny limbo
lane right now. Because risk taking is seen as desirable
for kids, we all want to raise risk takers, and
yet we don't actually want our children to take any risks.
And these contradictions played out in a very interesting situation
(23:29):
for me. Recently, I went to a playground in Bury
in New South Wales, which The Daily Mail has described
as Australia's most dangerous playground. So naturally I read that
and I had to go there.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Your son saw it and was like, take me there immediately.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He's a risk taker, aren't I a good parent? Doctor Becky.
At least thirty parents have reported broken bones, fractures, burns,
and other serious injuries to kids at that playground. I
don't quite understand the burns. I don't want to know.
But this playground is actually the vanguard of this new
style of playground which does experiment with risk taking. So
it's got a faster flying fox, it's got a higher
(24:05):
piece of climbing equipment. It's got a bizarre giant beer
barrel that your children all around it. There's no beer,
don't worry. But what I found interesting there there were
these signs that said that you were not allowed to
help your children on the play equipment. It said, your
children know their own limits and they will play safely
within them. The minute you were helping a child climb
up to the next level of a climbing structure, you
(24:27):
are putting them in danger. You're putting them in a
potentially unsafe situation because you're pushing them beyond their limits.
What does this all add up to? How do we
figure out the right amount of risk.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
That's fascinating because I think people do do that and
don't realize that the hovering and the not allowing the
confidence to grow and that kind of thing can actually
cause harm. And you point to as well the revolution
in kids playgrounds, which is I remember when I was
at school, a girl fell off the monkey bars and
there was a something was hanging out when she did it,
(24:57):
and like elbow through arm, like horrific break. Now you
looked at that equipment and went, that is actually avoidable.
Like there are such regulations, which is really really positive
from the floor being a little bit more bouncy and
not being so high and all that kind of stuff.
That's great, But I still think that we've got to
accept that our kids are gonna get hurt sometimes. And
(25:20):
with this too, I found the point pertinent that it
is far less risky to jump on a home trampoline
than in a trampoline park. So the issue in your
trampoline park is that it's often the little kids that
the smaller kids that get hurt by the bigger kids
who jabble, bounce them or land on them. And there
are no springs, So you think it would be fine.
That's not what's hurting them. That's you know, spinal injuries
(25:43):
or the crap that you hear way safer on a trampoline.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
The springs at home, I have to add, are hurting them.
The nutritions wanted me to make that clear.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Mine at Hope is like a padded cell. I love
sending my daughter.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Out of her trail one with the big netting.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Oh yeah, big netting.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
But I was actually hoping that this was going to
catch on because my pelvic floor is not what it
used to be and my daughter wants me on the
trampoline with her a lot. So I was happy to
be discouraged from getting on there for safety reasons.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
And of course, what you have to tell your daughter
is I've read the safety research because I'm such good mother,
and you should only have one person at a time.
That's true, because that's when we get dangerous. So mummy's
gonna scroll on her phone.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Way.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
It is time for our recommendations of the week, Stacy,
I want you to go first.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
What have you got for kay? Mine this week is
very random. It's a recipe except it doesn't really exist.
I'm a terrible cook, but making this for dinner always
makes me look like I'm great, and I will bring
it in here for leftovers at least once a week,
and everyone thinks I'm really fancy. Everyone asked me to
tell them what it is, and it's so basic that
I don't even need to write it down for you
(26:52):
or send you a link, because I can just tell
you in one sentence. So it's just lamb mince instead
of beef mince, and I just do cumin, paprika and
cinnamon and tomato paste. You don't need measurements.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
That's in my cupboard right now.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
They coat I could do that, just go off vibes,
just whack it all in. It looks right to you.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Salt and pepper if you wish, don't go crazy. And
then I just cook zucchinis and potatoes in the air
fryer and whack it on top.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
With How am I cooking the lamb itself?
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Just in a fry pan?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Okay, Chuck one of those who does need step.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And I just put taziki on the top and it's delicious,
last for days and you look really talented when you're not.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
I would eat that.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
It's very good.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
And my daughter actually does eat it, and she can
be a bit peach, pretty good eater, but she can
be a bit piggy. But it's kind of mild enough
that most kids, I think would eat it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I have a confession, which is that my nearly two
year old has never eaten meat, not not for a preference.
She will not put meat in her mouth. And it
has been my goal to try and get something because
this is.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Cinnamon makes it taste like dessert.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Cinnamon's always That's what I do with the veggies. I
think that I could get some lamb into her that way.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I'm going to try it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
How about your Millia.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Mine is an attempt to answer the question that has
been running through this show, which is if our children
are not allowed on the screens, and they're not allowed
on the trampolines and the dfks who need to keep
their hands busy, I have a potential answer for you.
I was recently in a children's museum in San Francisco,
(28:30):
which I know sounds very fancy, but as listeners will
be aware, when you travel with children, all you do
when you go to a new place is you type
playgrounds or children's museum into Google Maps, and then you
end up going there every single day of your holiday,
which is precisely what we did. We went to the
Children's Museum and they had a brilliant thing there that
took me immediately back. You know when you see something
(28:51):
that just immediately gives you a flashback to your childhood.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I love that when that happens. It was a spirograph.
So this was the things that looked like tongs.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yes, I need a visual of this.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I'm going to questa con Jesse.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Did I go to.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
This is a device out of the eighties. It's not
even the nineties. I think this was nineteen eighties technology.
Like we're talking Alan Bond, We're talking Australia winning the
America's Cup. This is what we're talking about here. But
it was cutting edge at the time. And basically what
it was was two pieces of plastics in a circle
shape and you put one circle inside the other, and
(29:30):
the circles have rings with teeth, and then you use
the rings to create the most perfect geometric shapes. So
basically you can create these utterly mesmerizing, almost trippy patterns
with the different spirographs. And I of course leapt on
this at the Children's museum, and being a DFK, did
(29:51):
not want to leave when I was told by other
members of my party that we needed to go to
another room. And then I promptly bought a travel tin.
Very cute. You can very easily travel with it, as
the name suggests, take it to a restaurant, and it's
just a little tin with the spirographs in. It takes
some paper, just use a regular pen or a pen
and you will find it very soothing. I guarantee it's
(30:14):
almost meditative to create these geometric shapes and then hopefully
one day, fingers crossed, your children will find them soothing
as well.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I have gotten really into coloring and lately because I'm
doing it at the same time as as Larner, and
I'm like, this is quite.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, there's something in that we lost the art.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah yeah. And I'm doing like my cross hatching and
like my shading, and then she comes and up.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
And I'm like, back off, kid, back off.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
My recommendation is eat, sleep, repeat. Have either of you
listened to this podcast?
Speaker 4 (30:46):
A great podcast?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I love it. So I was talking before about Kelly
McCarran and she is on Your Beauty. She's been on
a bunch of MUMMYA podcasts, and she has been making
this podcast with Key Researls, who also used to be
on The Spill, used to work at Mummy Out. And
I have loved this podcast since it first came out.
And it's really hard to explain why because I generally
(31:08):
don't listen to a lot of parents podcasts, but this
is It feels really warm, it feels really friendly. There's
no judgment. They are very vulnerable about their own experiences,
but then it's very relatable. So for example, there have
been episodes about is my toddler a bully? One of
my favorites was be honest, how bad was it going
(31:28):
from one to two? Like the Transition. Kee recently shared
her second birth story. I could listen to birth stories
all day, every day. I just love that it can
be really helpful. Sometimes they speak to experts. They actually
started off independently and they've just come on to the
Mummeya network. I've been yellingked for years, get those girls
on our network. They are just so so good, and
so finally they are. They've got new art. It's just brilliant.
(31:52):
I love what they do, eat, sleep, repeate. There's a
link now show notes. That is all we have time
for on Parenting out Loud today. We will see you
next Saturday.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
See you at the trampoline part.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Bye.
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on Hello and welcome to
our limited series Parenting Out Loud. I am Jessie Stevens.
I am joined by Amelia Lester here Hello, and Mamma
(00:35):
Maya's deputy editor, Stacey Hicks.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
We're here to talk about some of the stories that
dominated the week, because if parents are thinking about it,
we are talking about it. On today's show. Do you
have a DFK that stands for a deeply feeling kid?
And Doctor Becky knows how to spot one? But is
there really any such thing? And the stunning decline of
the preference to have boys? Apparently girls are very much
on trend. Why plus are you and trampoline denial? We
(01:02):
read the most shocking article about trampolines and are desperate
to debrief.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But first, in case you missed it, one of the
biggest story who on MoMA Mia this week was about
a woman who abandoned her family to live on her
own and now we're all a little bit jealous. In
an interview with Katie Powers, author and mother of two
Monique Ben told her spoke very candidly about the moment
she was staying at her family's home in North Queensland
and just decided to never go back to her life
(01:28):
in New South Wales.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I feel like a very relevant detail here with the
age of her children, That's what I scrolled to be,
like how old are to and four? Are we talking?
Speaker 3 (01:37):
When can I leave? She had two teenage sons. But
she said days turned into weeks and she just sent
her husband an email and said, that's it. I'm done
with carrying the mental load. I want to live on
my own. I'm not divorcing you. I just don't want
to live in the same house as you anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
See I thought when I first read this and it
described the suns as growing, I sort of thought, this
is a semantics exercise. If she's leaving home, specifically leaving
her husband and her children are largely looking out to themselves,
it's up to her whether or not she calls it divorce.
But it feels a little bit like she's separating from
(02:16):
her husband.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah, and that's what she said.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
She said that he was initially surprised and kind of
making sure she hadn't gone mad and had a breakdown
or something more serious had happened, but that he actually
came around to it and supported her and was like,
that's okay. Well they visit each other now regularly, so
a couple of times a year they'll go and see
the other one and they just say the dynamic works.
But she acknowledges, She said, I know that this could
(02:38):
not work for all people, mostly because most people don't
have two houses.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
To go between.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
We couldn't get very far, which chose to la you
didn't have another bedroom. Yeah, exactly, exactly, So she is
doing this from a very privileged position. But yeah, she said.
People do say is there adultery involved? Is there some reason?
And she said, I actually love him so much more
now than when we were living under the one roof,
So that's why they do it.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
It's the most taboo thing a woman can do anytime.
I've read a few books recently that have this as
a thing, and it's like, when you're confronted with that,
readers get really triggered and just like the thought. I mean,
when a man does it, we're horrified, but when a
mother leaves her children or her husband, that's seen as
(03:24):
particularly kind of I don't know, subverting the maternal nature
of her role. But I think the interesting question is
like what leads to that, and also the amount of
people that clicked on it is kind of going, there's
some fascination with this decision. And clearly it was years
upon years of resentment of taking on the mental load
(03:45):
to such a point that it just overflows and you
just can't do it anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, she said, it just got to the point where
she couldn't not leave. She said it felt like that
was the only option and that she had to be
prepared for whatever his reaction was to that. But luckily
he was okay with it, so maybe he was feeling
the same way.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Do you have a deeply feeling kid? Are you a
deeply feeling kid?
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Doctor Brymuch.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Doctor Becky is a clinical psychologist and an icon for
millennial parents, and she published a video to her three
point three million followers recently and here is what she said.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
Right now, raise your hand. If you were told that
you were dramatic when you were a kid, raise your hand.
If you were told you're making a big deal out
of nothing, raise your hand. If you were told things
like you're ruining this for the family, I have news
for you. I have a feeling you are a deeply
feeling kid. I have a feeling you might have a
deeply feeling kid. Deeply feeling kids are more porous to
the world. They truly do feel things more intensely.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
More comes in and more comes.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Out, which yes, means very intense tantrums and escalations. Deeply
feeling kids sometimes experience their feelings as threats. It's like
they're being attacked.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I need initial reactions. What do you think do you
put much stock in a deeply feeling kid?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Am I allowed to say that I hate this?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Tell me why you hate it?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Isn't Doctor Becky just reminding us all of us subjectivity
as humans, that we all feel things, whether or not
we show it to the world or not. Look. I
think doctor Becky's success boils down to the fact that
she has identified the fundamental truth that we need to
treat our kids like humans. And Okay, sometimes I need
a reminder of that.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Well, will co sign yes?
Speaker 1 (05:28):
When I scream at my child, put your socks on,
go to the toilet and brush your teeth. Would I
say that to my partner? No? I probably wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
She will putt sucks on a brush of taker.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That's true, but that's I think why she's so loved,
and look, I don't want to I don't want to
yuck anyone's arm. I know many people who say that
doctor Becky has really helped them break generational cycles of trauma.
And I really like how that she emphasizes you need
to handle your own feelings before dealing with your childs,
and that includes figuring out if you yourself or a DFK.
(06:02):
But ultimately, this clip just irritates me because she is
selling your product, and she is trying to come up
with a label that could conceivably be applied to just
about everyone. Am I wrong? That?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Okay, That's how I feel because when it's like highly
sensitive person or you'll often hear someone say I just
experience the world a little more deeply.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Than I'm an you know what I am?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I'm an overthinker, And it's like the no, no. You
just have closer proximity to your thoughts and your feelings
than anyone else's, so we imagine that our own inner
worlds are far more complicated than anyone else's because I
can't access yours. I'm like Amelia's pretty simple She's just
here with a smile on her face. Me very very complicated, Stacy,
do you have any Do you agree?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I felt very seen and attacked in equal measure because
I am definitely a DFK. I am someone who will
cry when they see someone alone in a restaurant, despite
the fact that person is probably having a great time
alone in the restaurant. I project those feelings onto them.
I'm that person. But you have to say, pull yourself together.
You should not need to be upset by this. So
(07:09):
I do think that my emotions are probably a bit
closer to the surface, I would say, than other people's,
But that doesn't mean that I feel more deeply than
another person. But I do feel conflicted because I have
to admit when I saw doctor Becky's videos and I
heard this label, it did kind of give me some
level of comfort to put a name to something I
(07:30):
feel like i'm a little bit different to other people with,
and also a term for something that I think my
child experiences. On the other hand, I don't want to
pigeonhole her as this particular type of person, and I
think that's where the danger comes with all the labels.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
If it lends itself to treating our child with like
more empathy. And I mean, I've got a two year old.
Where you go, I don't know many even tempered two
year olds who are really good with their feelings and
have really quite muted feelings about yogurt. She has quite
strong feelings about yogurt. But in saying that, what I
worry about is the labeling. And I'm not talking about
(08:09):
diagnosed seeds necessarily, But even I look at my daughter
and the moment I think she's shy, she does something
that suggests maybe she's not, or the moment I think
she's really gentle, that's when she'll bite. You know, Like, kids,
by their nature, are in a process of evolution, and
I worry that by putting any kind of expectation or
(08:31):
label on them, it becomes self fulfilling.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yes, I worry about the impact on kids, and I
worry about the impact on parents as well. So, okay,
you've established that your kid is deeply feeling. How does
that flow into how you treat them? I think what
it leads to is this idea that you have to
prioritize their feelings above your own or even above your
own schedule. So I found this CBC article that nicely
(08:56):
summarized the back class to doctor Becky and sort of
gets it where I'm at on this, which is gentle
parenting too rough on parents. Now, I should say that
doctor Becky is probably doesn't identify as a gentle parenting acolyte,
but she's definitely adjacent to it. And basically the idea
is that in in stressing the importance of acknowledging children's
(09:16):
feelings sometimes above all else, it makes it really hard
for parents. They constantly feel like they're falling behind. And
sometimes you do have to be the bad guy, and
sometimes you just don't have time with the feelings and
you just have to get out the door. And so
I worry about both the children's side of it and
the parents' side of it when we're labeling kids in
this way and giving your child the label of a
(09:37):
DFK doesn't stop that behavior from occurring. Like you can't
just be in the shops going just look away, she's
throwing products at you because she's a DFK. It won't
change what's going on. So having it is not very useful. Yeah,
So what I wonder why do people respond to this? Then?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Why do you think this video thing too anytime on
the site on Mamma Mia. Anytime on Mamma Mia that
we write about something that is a term or a
theory or gives a name to something that's happening in the.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
World, people love it, like people will flock to that.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
And I think it's just about kind of tying a
neat little bow around something that they're may be grappling with.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Is it also confirming our sense that our child is unique,
which all our children are genuinely unique and are genuinely special,
But these titles suggest like there is something that you're
seeing in your kid that makes them different, because she's
not saying that all kids are DFK, she's saying that
only some are. And it also I think it then
(10:37):
makes us feel like, Okay, now that I have a
DFK doctor, Becky is going to teach me some strategies.
And I will give her a lot of credit in
this because she's really straightforward. And we've talked on the
show before about how for a lot of mums and dads,
they don't have a community that might teach them strategies.
Like I'm really close to my mum and she'll often
tell me something that will help with parenting, like I'm
(10:57):
doing this for the first time, and doctor Becky provides
that for people. She has something she talks about sturdy.
Have you heard this? So she taught her big thing
is like a parent needs to be sturdy, not super authoritarian,
not entirely gentle, but sturdy suggests you're something that a
child can lean on. You know your values, you know
(11:18):
what the limitations are, you know the rules, but you're
also there's some flexibility in that. And I quite like
there are a lot that pops up from doctor Becky
and I'm like, yeah, like that, I'll use it. But
at the same time, you're right, she's selling a course,
she's selling a book, she's selling her expertise.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And I also think she's kind of pathologizing parenting itself. Like,
sometime around the point at which parenting became a verb,
we decided that to be a parent meant you had
to absorb all the evidence and all the latest studies
and all the greatest thinkers on parenting. And I think
part of that I have a theory. I think part
of the reason why doctor Becky and others have such
(11:56):
slavish devotion online is because it's a bit of a
pendulum swing response to the style of parenting that a
lot of millennials grew up with. So, for instance, doctor
Becky says you should never do chimeouts because they shame
the child. Comes from her grounding in modern psychotherapy. She's
also a psychologist, so there's clearly some evidence to back that.
(12:18):
On the other hand, pediatricians advocate for timeouts some American pediatricians,
according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, because it has
been shown to be effective in rewiring kids' behavior. So
different experts are going to come up with different assessments
for what the best cognitive approaches are. It's clear why
doctor Becky doesn't like the timeouts. At the same time,
(12:40):
it can be a tool in the toolbox. And for
millennial parents, I think there's a sense of we want
to do better than our parents, We want to correct
their perceived failings. But the truth is no one can
be a perfect parent.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Have you ever watched a gender reveal video where the
parents are clearly trying to hide their disappointment, Well, it
was probably because they found out they were having a
boy in a surprising turn of events. There is now
an increasing preference by parents to have little girls, when
it was once very much the opposite. An article in
the Economists this week showed this is a trend happening globally,
even in countries like China, where the now abolished one
(13:16):
child policy once meant that pregnancies resulting in girls were
routinely aborted in favor of boys who would carry on
the family line and look after parents in old age.
To put it into context, the article said, so globally,
among babies born in the year two thousand, one point
six million girls were missing from the number you'd expect
given the natural sex ratio at birth. This year that
(13:38):
number is likely to be only two hundred thousand, which
is still a lot, but it's falling. In America and Scandinavia,
families are now more likely to have another child if
their first child is a son in the hopes of
getting a girl, and seventy five percent of Japanese couples
who only want one child say they'd prefer it be
a daughter. They're also seeing it for adoptive parents. Some
(13:58):
agencies now charge higher fees for placing female children as
the demand is so much higher. I think there's a
few reasons for this gradual about turn. So I'd love
to know why you think there's a sudden in girl power.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
I reckon there's a few things right because historically boys
have offered families an economic advantage, right, and with gender
equality and getting women in the workplace, that's meant that
what boys offer in that way, girls can now offer.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I think it's definitely an interesting point that the article
makes about people feeling as though a daughter will look
after them into old age. I've actually heard people say that,
but I'm going to throw out a totally random theory
that's just mine. I wonder if there is more of
a focus on centering what the mother wants.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
So we're talking about things like gender disappointment, which we've
never talked about before because of you know, just the
public conversation going on to TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Don't know anyone personally who's experienced, yes.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So, Kelly McCarran spoke really candidly about this after the
birth of her son, and I found it really refreshing.
I hadn't heard that term before. And you know, she
loves she's such a great mum. She loves her son
more than anything in the world. But her initial response was, oh,
I didn't realize how much I wanted a girl, And
I think that by centering mother's voices, we're probably hearing
(15:21):
that more. The question is, why would a mother want
a daughter, ever a son? And I wonder if it's
we feel like we know what we're doing because we
were a daughter, and also some deeply psychological sense of
wanting to reparent ourselves, like I have this thing I
wonder if I go, I want to re enter my
own childhood, and maybe I feel I can better do
(15:43):
that with a girl than a boy, which I don't
think is true, but it could just be what our
guts tell us. What do you think, Amelia?
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Well?
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Anecdotally, I will say that in the new South Welles
public school system which I currently am experiencing, girls are
very much the white whale. It seems there are just
not enough girls to go around to sprinkle the fairy
dust of good behavior across classes. In public primary schools,
they are better behave. There are also fewer of them
(16:11):
than boys in public schools in my experience, and I
wonder if part of this is because I certainly know
women who have put their daughters in single sex education
from kindergarten, whereas I don't know anyone who's chosen to
do that with boys. Not to say it doesn't happen,
but it's because of that conventional wisdom that girls have
contagiously good behavior and that will translate to boys as well.
(16:33):
So there is this sense now where to have girls
in your child's class, and the more girls you have
in your child's class, the more valuable because the class
is likely to be better run, less disrupted, less loud.
It all makes me a bit sad, to be honest.
I have a boy and then a girl. And when
this happened, I have a friend who is French who
(16:54):
said to me.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Ah leschois duro.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I said, what is that and she said, it's the
choice of kings because going back historically in France and
in other monarchies around the world, kings wanted a boy
first to secure the lineage in that very sexist way
of monarchies everywhere, and then a girl because girls, you know,
they dress more nicely and the people love looking at
their clothes, and that's what royal families wanted. And I
(17:19):
guess it's understandable that as women are delaying childbirth and
as people are having fewer kids, particularly in rich countries.
It's not surprising that they want the choice that is
considered easier, because we do consider girls to be easier
For all those reasons. It still makes me sad, though,
and I wonder if part of it is that we
(17:41):
can see that the boys are not okay. They are
behind in school, they are behind in life. We see
TV shows and movies about in cell culture, it's the
men are not okay. And I feel like we're making
choices based on what we think boys and girls are
rather than what they are capable of or what they
could be, which, after all, isn't that the point of parenting?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
I know, I thought that after adolescence. I thought, I
don't think a lot of people are watching that show
going I can't wait to parent a teenage boy like
it feels terrifying a lot of ways. How about you, Stacy,
what do you think is behind it?
Speaker 4 (18:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I think there's an assumed closeness between a daughter and
their mother, which is not necessarily the case. It's a
sweeping generalization, but I think for women, when you are
thinking about the fact that, especially if you're having children later,
that you may only have one child or you're making
that decision that you're definitely only having one child, that
you go, well, I'm familiar with that, Like, I know
what to do there. I'll be the mother's side for
(18:36):
when the grandchildren come. I'll be the mother's side for
the wedding. Like I feel like a mother and a
daughter being close. Everyone goes, oh, isn't that sweet? A
mother and a son are close, And it's a Mormon
baits and psychos.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
That's so true. That's so true.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
It's seen as toxic somehow if a mother is super
close with their son. So I think maybe that's part
of it.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
An article this week rocked my world, turn me upside down,
potentially cause some bones to break. Let me explain. It
was called are You in Trampoline Denial? And it was
from the cut. Like the author, Lady Arnold Ratliffe, I
have long heard rumors that trampolines are in fact incredibly dangerous.
I am rolling my eyes as I say this. For
(19:17):
many years now, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said
that no trampoline is safe for children under six, and
that no trampoline outside a gymnastics program is safe for
children over six. But again I had rolled my eyes
at this, I had silently judged those pediatricians as kill joys.
And I held my child's fifth birthday party at a
trampoline park.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Did everyone come? Or were there some who protested?
Speaker 1 (19:39):
No? Everyone can. They did a thing about trampoline parks
and five year old boys. Say what you will about boys.
They need to burn up some energy and that's what
trampoline parks are for. However, I can no longer dismiss
the rumors because this piece had some absolutely horrifying statistics
in them. I'm going to share three. First statistic, an
(20:00):
estimated three hundred thousand trampoline injuries a year occur in
the United States, that so many. Statistic two twenty percent
of those involve head injuries, including concussions. Statistic three eleven
percent of injuries at trampoline parks are significant. And you
know when doctors use the term significant, they're actually they
(20:21):
actually mean significant, as opposed to when I use the
term significant when I can't decide what decision about what
to eat for lunch. So this is major. And then
also the waiver you sign, which I'm sure none of
us have read because it's a PDF and it goes
on for many, many pages. Turns out that waiver basically
signs the way your and your child's life should anything
terrible happen at the trampoline park. So where does this
(20:44):
leave this? And what am I meant to do with
my children on rainy winter days to stop them from
climbing all over my furniture? Are we all just kill joys?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Now?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Give me a permission to believe this Jesse.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Look, I I think there's an element of killed joy
to it, because I went all right following this. Firstly,
this article was incredibly percuisive. I read this and it
talked about the trampoline fracture, like the particular break double bounce,
the double.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Bounce, and we explain the double bounce, so the you
go no, no, you expected the double bounce is when someone's
legs are already coming down straight and then another person
bounces and it makes their legs compound and cause a fracture.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And the break is exactly the break I had, so
I know how bad it is. It's the break of
the tibia and you actually hear a pop is and
you need surgery and stuff like, and for kids to
get the break is even worse. Than adults because of
something about growth plates and like growth plate, growth plates.
You don't want to hear growth plates.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
You don't you don't want to hear growth plays.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I'm like, I thought it was just a cheeky little
broken wrist, but no, that one, no no fun. So
I read it and went, no, this is really bad. Okay, okay,
no trampoline. But then I thought, where do we draw
the line, because what are kids do outside trampolines?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Scooters?
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Well, my sister broke a wrist on a scooter, but.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
There's way more dangerous, sure surely, surely skateboarding.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Also, how do we balance this against what Jonathan Yah
was telling us about how the online world is so
much more dangerous and the offline world. Was he not
talking about trampoline parks though, exactly?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
And this is the thing is, it's like, okay, so
we take them out of the skateboarding parks. They know
you should never go to the beach, don't go near
a body of water, No roller skating, jumping castles, rock climb.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I forget the screen.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Oh any sport. No screen is like they.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Meant to be doing with their time. Don't say read
a book.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I don't want to read a book.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And to your point, Amelia, like the reason trampoline parks
are so popular is because what are we to do
on a rainy day? Tell me what we are to
do other than turn the television on. So I think
it's like that. There is an element of risk with
any physical play. But if we want children and adults
and human beings to be physically active and engage in
the world, then every now and then we're going to
(22:59):
break a bone. That's a very unpopular thing.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
I would argue that this is more low risk than
them going down those burning hot slides in the middle
of summer, oh.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Where they could end up with rashes down their legs.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
This is interesting, Stacy. You have just hit my third rail,
which is playgrounds. Yes, because we're in this funny limbo
lane right now. Because risk taking is seen as desirable
for kids, we all want to raise risk takers, and
yet we don't actually want our children to take any risks.
And these contradictions played out in a very interesting situation
(23:29):
for me. Recently, I went to a playground in Bury
in New South Wales, which The Daily Mail has described
as Australia's most dangerous playground. So naturally I read that
and I had to go there.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
Your son saw it and was like, take me there immediately.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He's a risk taker, aren't I a good parent? Doctor Becky.
At least thirty parents have reported broken bones, fractures, burns,
and other serious injuries to kids at that playground. I
don't quite understand the burns. I don't want to know.
But this playground is actually the vanguard of this new
style of playground which does experiment with risk taking. So
it's got a faster flying fox, it's got a higher
(24:05):
piece of climbing equipment. It's got a bizarre giant beer
barrel that your children all around it. There's no beer,
don't worry. But what I found interesting there there were
these signs that said that you were not allowed to
help your children on the play equipment. It said, your
children know their own limits and they will play safely
within them. The minute you were helping a child climb
up to the next level of a climbing structure, you
(24:27):
are putting them in danger. You're putting them in a
potentially unsafe situation because you're pushing them beyond their limits.
What does this all add up to? How do we
figure out the right amount of risk.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
That's fascinating because I think people do do that and
don't realize that the hovering and the not allowing the
confidence to grow and that kind of thing can actually
cause harm. And you point to as well the revolution
in kids playgrounds, which is I remember when I was
at school, a girl fell off the monkey bars and
there was a something was hanging out when she did it,
(24:57):
and like elbow through arm, like horrific break. Now you
looked at that equipment and went, that is actually avoidable.
Like there are such regulations, which is really really positive
from the floor being a little bit more bouncy and
not being so high and all that kind of stuff.
That's great, But I still think that we've got to
accept that our kids are gonna get hurt sometimes. And
(25:20):
with this too, I found the point pertinent that it
is far less risky to jump on a home trampoline
than in a trampoline park. So the issue in your
trampoline park is that it's often the little kids that
the smaller kids that get hurt by the bigger kids
who jabble, bounce them or land on them. And there
are no springs, So you think it would be fine.
That's not what's hurting them. That's you know, spinal injuries
(25:43):
or the crap that you hear way safer on a trampoline.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
The springs at home, I have to add, are hurting them.
The nutritions wanted me to make that clear.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Mine at Hope is like a padded cell. I love
sending my daughter.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Out of her trail one with the big netting.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Oh yeah, big netting.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
But I was actually hoping that this was going to
catch on because my pelvic floor is not what it
used to be and my daughter wants me on the
trampoline with her a lot. So I was happy to
be discouraged from getting on there for safety reasons.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
And of course, what you have to tell your daughter
is I've read the safety research because I'm such good mother,
and you should only have one person at a time.
That's true, because that's when we get dangerous. So mummy's
gonna scroll on her phone.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Way.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
It is time for our recommendations of the week, Stacy,
I want you to go first.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
What have you got for kay? Mine this week is
very random. It's a recipe except it doesn't really exist.
I'm a terrible cook, but making this for dinner always
makes me look like I'm great, and I will bring
it in here for leftovers at least once a week,
and everyone thinks I'm really fancy. Everyone asked me to
tell them what it is, and it's so basic that
I don't even need to write it down for you
(26:52):
or send you a link, because I can just tell
you in one sentence. So it's just lamb mince instead
of beef mince, and I just do cumin, paprika and
cinnamon and tomato paste. You don't need measurements.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
That's in my cupboard right now.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
They coat I could do that, just go off vibes,
just whack it all in. It looks right to you.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Salt and pepper if you wish, don't go crazy. And
then I just cook zucchinis and potatoes in the air
fryer and whack it on top.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
With How am I cooking the lamb itself?
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Just in a fry pan?
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Okay, Chuck one of those who does need step.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And I just put taziki on the top and it's delicious,
last for days and you look really talented when you're not.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
I would eat that.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
It's very good.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
And my daughter actually does eat it, and she can
be a bit peach, pretty good eater, but she can
be a bit piggy. But it's kind of mild enough
that most kids, I think would eat it.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I have a confession, which is that my nearly two
year old has never eaten meat, not not for a preference.
She will not put meat in her mouth. And it
has been my goal to try and get something because
this is.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Cinnamon makes it taste like dessert.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Cinnamon's always That's what I do with the veggies. I
think that I could get some lamb into her that way.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I'm going to try it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
How about your Millia.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Mine is an attempt to answer the question that has
been running through this show, which is if our children
are not allowed on the screens, and they're not allowed
on the trampolines and the dfks who need to keep
their hands busy, I have a potential answer for you.
I was recently in a children's museum in San Francisco,
(28:30):
which I know sounds very fancy, but as listeners will
be aware, when you travel with children, all you do
when you go to a new place is you type
playgrounds or children's museum into Google Maps, and then you
end up going there every single day of your holiday,
which is precisely what we did. We went to the
Children's Museum and they had a brilliant thing there that
took me immediately back. You know when you see something
(28:51):
that just immediately gives you a flashback to your childhood.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
I love that when that happens. It was a spirograph.
So this was the things that looked like tongs.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yes, I need a visual of this.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
I'm going to questa con Jesse.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Did I go to.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
This is a device out of the eighties. It's not
even the nineties. I think this was nineteen eighties technology.
Like we're talking Alan Bond, We're talking Australia winning the
America's Cup. This is what we're talking about here. But
it was cutting edge at the time. And basically what
it was was two pieces of plastics in a circle
shape and you put one circle inside the other, and
(29:30):
the circles have rings with teeth, and then you use
the rings to create the most perfect geometric shapes. So
basically you can create these utterly mesmerizing, almost trippy patterns
with the different spirographs. And I of course leapt on
this at the Children's museum, and being a DFK, did
(29:51):
not want to leave when I was told by other
members of my party that we needed to go to
another room. And then I promptly bought a travel tin.
Very cute. You can very easily travel with it, as
the name suggests, take it to a restaurant, and it's
just a little tin with the spirographs in. It takes
some paper, just use a regular pen or a pen
and you will find it very soothing. I guarantee it's
(30:14):
almost meditative to create these geometric shapes and then hopefully
one day, fingers crossed, your children will find them soothing
as well.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I have gotten really into coloring and lately because I'm
doing it at the same time as as Larner, and
I'm like, this is quite.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Yeah, there's something in that we lost the art.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Yeah yeah. And I'm doing like my cross hatching and
like my shading, and then she comes and up.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
And I'm like, back off, kid, back off.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
My recommendation is eat, sleep, repeat. Have either of you
listened to this podcast?
Speaker 4 (30:46):
A great podcast?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
I love it. So I was talking before about Kelly
McCarran and she is on Your Beauty. She's been on
a bunch of MUMMYA podcasts, and she has been making
this podcast with Key Researls, who also used to be
on The Spill, used to work at Mummy Out. And
I have loved this podcast since it first came out.
And it's really hard to explain why because I generally
(31:08):
don't listen to a lot of parents podcasts, but this
is It feels really warm, it feels really friendly. There's
no judgment. They are very vulnerable about their own experiences,
but then it's very relatable. So for example, there have
been episodes about is my toddler a bully? One of
my favorites was be honest, how bad was it going
(31:28):
from one to two? Like the Transition. Kee recently shared
her second birth story. I could listen to birth stories
all day, every day. I just love that it can
be really helpful. Sometimes they speak to experts. They actually
started off independently and they've just come on to the
Mummeya network. I've been yellingked for years, get those girls
on our network. They are just so so good, and
so finally they are. They've got new art. It's just brilliant.
(31:52):
I love what they do, eat, sleep, repeate. There's a
link now show notes. That is all we have time
for on Parenting out Loud today. We will see you
next Saturday.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
See you at the trampoline part.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Bye.
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