A Christmas Story: Kids & Their Parents

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
We're all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists,
who practice out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed
mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes
and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and
all forms.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
Hello everybody, and welcome to our last episode of season seven.
We are doing a Christmas Story, the nineteen eighty three
classic that any millennial has watched four hundred thousand times
as it ran on TBS every single year, on every
single hour for every single day of December four years.

(01:10):
So we're going to talk about it. And in this
episode we're going to talk about the kid dynamics we
see parenting and especially the differences between parenting in the
nineteen forties and now the mom and dad relationship, and
then we will cover treatment and final thoughts. The movie
is about an older Ralphie reminiscing about the best Christmas

(01:31):
present he ever got, which is the Red Writer be Begun.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
You don't know the full?

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Do you know the full?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:40):
I do not know the No.

Speaker 5 (01:41):
I don't. I look it up.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
If you nah, it's fine. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
If you could throw it off top of your head,
I cannot.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
I don't love this movie enough to be able to
memorize that whole thing about the two hundred rounds.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
And Zally gives.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
The whole little spiel. But I guarantee you for something
that I love, I could.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I mean, the movie is basically just like a bunch
of like kind of almost little vignettes of this time
in Americana for this kid and his family.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
So what do we see with the kid dynamics?

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, I think what I I will start off the
top by what I do like about this movie and
also have a lot for rough final thoughts. But I
do like how accurately this movie portrays things from the
kid perspective and what's important to a kid. It is
a good job of showing how fantastical a kid's world

(02:34):
is too like their point of view, and how daydreamy
and kind of ridiculous it is. I think it is
a good job of showing, like what's important to a
kid that isn't important to us once we get older
and our world gets bigger and we have more worries
and anxieties of how many like social rules there are
with kids specifically, and how that shows up in how

(02:56):
they treat each other. I mean, I'm not a I
was in boy. I know, Ben you were saying beforehand,
this was very accurate to being a young boy.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Absolutely yeah, never seen anything more accurate.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
So what did you? I guess what do you pick
up on it? Specifically for you? That feels so accurate?

Speaker 3 (03:14):
About the dynamics, Everything about the dynamics is accurate to
what it was like to be a little boy. I
think at certain points in times and maybe still, but
I have girls now, so unfortunately don't know what it's
like to parent boys.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
Though.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
This movie is yet again another reminder that my father
would always say that having a house full of three
boys is a never ending factory of bad ideas, which
this movie yet again displays all the bad ideas that
they have and all the misadventure that comes from it,
and should we go down the alley.

Speaker 4 (03:50):
Or should we take the way that's safe. Oh look, the.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Bullies were always in the alley are there again? Surprise surprise.
Now we have to run and dodge this empty car
and go through this car house can do whatever weird
stuff we do, and maybe we have to fight them,
maybe we get in a snowball fight. Maybe we stick
our tongue to the frozen poll. But my dad is
clearly smarter than your dad. So whatever your dad says,
fuck your.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
Dad, Yes, absolutely, and that won't happen.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
That's ridiculous, your tongue can't stick to it. All of
the dynamics between the kids, of the way they dare
each other to do things, and the like the gravitas
that it takes to triple dog dare someone and how
up against a wall your reputation is for the rest
of your life if you back down, And also the

(04:37):
way the kids pull each other, like down the stairs
when they're running up and Ralphie and his brother.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
I feel like that's just siblings because me and my
siblings definitely did that to each other.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
And you know, all I can speak to is being
a little boy with boy siblings.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
So yeah, I feel like the only reason why you
don't experience that is because you have such a big
age difference between your two kids. But I feel like
if your kids were close in age, they'd also be
doing that.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah, and maybe they will when they get a little
bit older, and Mean's still the baby.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
So that's what I mean. I feel like there's two
for anyone who doesn't know, there's like a five four
and a half five and a half five and a
half your age difference between your kids. So I feel
like a lot of this stuff might not happen because
of that. But me and my siblings we were like
on top of each other age wise, and so we
were like a lot of that stuff that you see
in the movie definitely happen with us.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, what happened with me and my middle brother guaranteed
ninety percent of this stuff of fighting over a bathroom,
like he's really gotta go.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I'm busy, Yes, want in privacy, But I would say,
what I think is so interesting, Like one of the
things that pops out for me is the whole like
Dare scene and doing something that is potentially like high
risk if you are believing what could happen, which does happen,

(05:59):
which is getting your tongue stuck yep, maybe ripped off
in their world. I come from obviously a child therapy background,
obviously Fred Rogers background. He is my you know, lord
and savior. And it makes me think of when he
talks about how kids play is so serious and how

(06:20):
you have to take kids play serious. And I think
this is such a good example of how us as
adults would look at something like who gives a shit
if you get triple dog dared? It's all made up, right, right,
And we forget that so much of the adult stuff
that we are invested in socially is also made up.
We've just made it make more sense to us as

(06:42):
adults than kids do. But it's the same idea where
there is like your reputations on the line, you have
to prove something to the other people, all these kind
of things that's so important, And a lot of ways
what these kids are doing is they're practicing the adult
version of this within little kid context, which is are
you a man of your word? Prove it?

Speaker 4 (07:02):
You know?

Speaker 1 (07:02):
All this stuff they're trying to figure out in the
world they're doing as kids, and that is serious stuff,
even though us as adults like to poo poo it,
make fun of it, diminish it. Yeah, because all this
this is their whole social world is each other and
how they treat each other, and like the bully for example,
that is a big deal. That is like their villain

(07:24):
that they have to survive on a daily basis. That
also probably brings a little excitement to their lives, the
same way that us as adults will still kind of
poke at relationships or people and end up in situations
with people that we don't necessarily like, but we still
do it anyway.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
You know.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's all stuff that like we just.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
I like The Wizard of Us. I like the tin Man.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, I don't understand what.

Speaker 5 (07:47):
But you're a little boy, the little boy in line.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
What the little boy with the goggles who just like
stares at him.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Oh, I think I was mildly zoning out on that part.
I think something people should know off the rip is
I don't like this movie. It's like I might not
have retained all the stuff in it that I have,
so I won't be good at the bits. Apologies.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
It's on me.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
So obviously kids learn a lot through play. Kid's primary
ability to learn is through play, and they are auditioning
adult roles, yes, And they are learning how to apply
adult rules through play. And we see that in this
movie all over the place, and I think that's a
really important part of it. And the narrator adding the
extra gravitas with the way he says.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
Saying the triple dog dear. Yeah, I think.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
All of that does capture a really important component of
the way kids think about those things because it is
so serious to them and they can't see beyond the
next hour.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
Right, especially at this time in the world in which
they don't have internet, they don't even have TV yet,
that their world is so small and it's just the
people around them and their school and their class and
their family, and so how you are perceived socially is
really important. And they are making the stakes with these things,

(09:15):
and so they are deciding collectively that the stakes are
high in these dog dare stuff, and so it is high,
and it is important because you don't want to be ostracized,
like they are playing out all these sort of almost
like tribal behaviors of like who's like you're saying, like,
whose dad is the one to be respected, right, which
then allows that's the kid that's attached to that dad

(09:37):
to then be respected. And what I do like about
the narrator and because he's the guy who wrote the stories, right,
mm hmm, yeah, it's about his childhood, is he does
do a great job which not a lot of adults
are good at of really remembering like you were saying,
like the intensity of this time in your life and
the ceseriousness of these things, and not really try eating

(10:00):
it as silly, like even the daydreaming that he does,
where he's daydream about saving his family from the robbers
and then he's daydreaming about his essay in school. This, like,
all that stuff seems really funny and silly as an
adult's looking at it, But as a kid, like all
this stuff is you are figuring out the world around

(10:20):
you and what matters.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
And I think that stuff holds up to time. I
think kids still play when they have the chance to play,
largely the same way that they did in this movie
set in the forties. I think that's part of why
it endures, even if I don't know how much longer
it will, because as we start to lose touch with well,
this was what life was like when your parents grew

(10:45):
up or your grandparents grew up. I don't know how
much longer kids will care, although my daughter did watch
it and like it.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
I do also feel like why I think any kid
would still like this movie is because they can they
relate to some of the silly us that we see
and some of the silliness that these kids are experiencing.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
I think what is different nowadays, though, is not a
lot of kids are out in the streets walk them
to school, being just together kind of I guess free
range would be what they would call it nowadays. No,
and getting the opportunities to do a lot of these
risk taking things and like social experiment stuff that is

(11:27):
really important, and I do think we are kind of
figuring out what to do with that now because we
sort of overcorrected culturally.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Well yeah, we overcorrected because our parents brought us up
on a whole bunch of movies and shows about all
the shit that can happen when you don't listen or back.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
You know where your kids are right now?

Speaker 4 (11:50):
Right?

Speaker 1 (11:50):
They just have to put ads on TV to make
sure that you knew where your kids were at ten pm.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, because they tell you come back when the street
lights are on.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
I would say what I'm more see now, unfortunately, is
parents getting involved a lot more when kids are having skirmishes.
I mean, I would definitely still understand like a parent
getting involved when Ralphie goes off and beats the shit
of that kid the bully, right farcas. Yeah, but I

(12:20):
do feel like what I see more nowadays, unfortunately, is
parents getting involved as soon as, like someone gets upset
or as soon as there is a negative interaction between kids,
instead of letting kids like work it out between them
and letting kids kind of take not dangerous risks, you know,
like appropriately dangerous risks, And so there are a lot

(12:44):
of life skills that can be learned through this. I
guess free range play that I don't know if kids
are getting as much as they should because of, like
not to sound like a boomer, video games and online
stuff that just lets them stay at home really like
wiling out with other kids on the street and in
the playgrounds and stuff.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, I think kids have a lot less time where
they're just together and don't have to be doing anything.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Oh that's such a good point, because what we do
see a lot with these kids is they just have
a lot of time, like free time where they're in
and out, they're walking back and forth from school, they're
at recess just dicking around, and yeah, kids are so
scheduled nowadays.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
So that there's not a lot of I would even say, yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
There's not a lot of time for kids to just
like dick around with their friends after school, which is
important to their development, and I would argue maybe more
important than the twenty hundred extracurriculars you've signed them up for. Yeah, exactly,
because you're robbing them of a chance to develop social
skills that will help them throughout their entire life, and

(13:55):
ones that are that are incorporate like improving, not like
doing this structured activity with these other kids. So there's
always like an adult there and a script in a
very specific way, whereas back when we were kids, it
would be like, hey, does someone want to play kickball?
And then the kids would organize kickball and do it

(14:18):
in the street or at the school, and it was
much more like kids having to figure out all these
like leadership as qualities and working together qualities and organizational
qualities that they don't develop unless an adult in one
of these extracurricular activities is like making sure they develop
it through how they engage the kids.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
I think when I see parents that have kids that
have gotten into hockey or soccer or volleyball in particular,
that these kids get so pulled into this universe of
being a professional athlete at ten, and parents are spending

(15:02):
their entire life at these practices and games at four am.
It is absurd, and the kids really don't always have
the chance. And I've had these kids come in too.
They don't always have that chance to sit and just play.
Whether it's the just.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Be bored, which I know Brittany has brought up before
on the podcast, but of just the just being bored
and having to come up with something and having to
learn how to past time and be a little bit uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
Yes, my daughter hates hates that.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
In the car, she calls YouTube Ducky songs and in
the car she's like, can I watch Ducky songs? Because
when the pandemic was going on, she started that with
there was nothing to do.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
So sometimes you're like, sure.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
You're like indulging her a bit, which I would Understan
at that time.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Right, But she cannot tolerate being in the car sometimes,
like can I watch Ducky songs like no, you cannot.
You need to learn to be bored and how to
amuse yourself, and she hates it. So, just like you said,
right there, she's like, I'm bored. And we have probably
like the parents in this movie did.

Speaker 4 (16:08):
At some point in time.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
We read her a book called Dear Girl, and one
of the things in it says, dear girl, do you
know what's really boring? When people tell you how bored
they are?

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Read her down.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
She hates stacks.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Well, you can throw at her what I always say,
which is, Hannah, what do I say about being bored?

Speaker 5 (16:28):
If you're bored, you're boring, You're.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Boring, because what it is is that also, other than
all these other skills we've talked about, kids develop imagination,
problem solving, like you were saying, Hannah, distress, tolerance, frustration, tolerance,
not beating, instant gratification, impulse control, all these things that

(16:52):
unstructured free time allows kids to develop. Now, is there
a line to this?

Speaker 4 (16:57):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Is that line a kid like farcas?

Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Yes, absolutely, Because there are bullies and I get why,
especially I'm sure parents who experience bullies. Maybe that's part of,
you know, why we've kind of locked down on kids
more is not wanting our kids to be bullied, which
I understand, and I don't know if this has helped
the bullying problem. I feel like bullying, unfortunately, just adapts

(17:24):
to the culture.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
It does, and it becomes pretty prevalent through social media
and social apps with kids nowadays, so they just find
other ways to do it. And then one kid bullies
another kid on Insta and shares it to all everyone.
It's the same effect. Yeah, and there's things that tend
to happen over time with what's the next focus? Because

(17:48):
social emotional learning that's pretty big now is really trying
to combat the bullying. But parents are also spending four
times more time with their kids than our parents spent
with us, and the bullying I think is part of it.
The other thing is they showed us a bunch of
movies and things. Like I said before, but like Bridge
to Terabithia, My Girl, Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Oh my Girl. That movie upset the hell out of
me when I was a kid, Yeah, upset the hell
out of me. I remember when they do the Blood
Oath in that movie. My mom looked at me and
she went, don't.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
You ever do that anybody? Brothers.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
That's how you get right, because well you hit on
what you just said there, which is like, what did
you say emotional social emotional learning, social emotional learning. Because
here's the thing. The reason why bullies persist isn't because
kids were just running around and then a farcas just

(18:47):
was like, had no one there to like rain him in.
A kid like farcas exists because farcus is probably either
has like raging ADHD and or a parent or parent
in the home who treat them like shit. You know,
as long as there are kids that are being traumatized unfortunately,
there's going to be bullies there will, yep. And as

(19:10):
long as there are kids that aren't being taken care
of by their family, either because they're not getting their
needs met if they have something on ADHD, or they're
being neglected in some way or abused in some way,
there's going to be bullies. So if we really want
to tackle bullies, we have to tackle the way that
kids are treated in their homes. And that's with mental
health stuff too. So all that shit is generational trauma usually.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, which sounds like it's kind of leading us into parenting.
So do we have anything else we want to say
more on kid dynamics or should we take a break here?

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Let's take a break.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
So coming out of this break, let's talk about the
parenting styles we see in this film. I think we've
started to kind of hint on it in our last
section there, but clearly parenting in the forties and parenting
in the mid twenty twenties are very different things. And
even the way we were parented in the eighties and
nineties is a very different thing than what's happening now.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yes, I mean this is just like the old school
punitive parenting. You get in trouble, you get punished in
some way, and then we keep it moving and there's
no real discussions about anything. And also, one thing I
want to point out is a lot of times like hard,
like these more specifically punitive methods like putting a bar

(20:33):
soap in your mouth, it doesn't really have like a
lasting impact. What kids learn how to do is they
just learn to deal with your punishment. Because he mentions
when he has the bars ope in his mouth, all
he's become like a bar of soap connoisseur. He knows
exactly what every bar type tastes like, what every brand
tastes like, which once tastes better or worse, which means

(20:55):
that he's had to do this many times. You know,
he's probably five times he's had a bar soap in
his mouth, oh at least so and he's only nine.
So what does that tell you?

Speaker 3 (21:07):
That his dad swears up a storm and so do
the other kids, and all he's doing is emulating the
adults and other people in his life, just like every
other kid. And I love how that keeps getting brought
up throughout the film by the adult version of the
narrator going throwing gentle shade it dad for whatever streams

(21:32):
of obscenities would come out of his mouth, And then
how everyone including his mom just ignored that and punished Ralphie.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, well because yeah, because well one when there's this
pinitive thing, like the bar of soap thing, and like
getting lectured, which was another part of the movie I
can't quite remember. I think the teacher was lecturing them,
is that he also mentions there that you just kind
of have to grin and bear it, and that's what
kids learn how to do once they get smart enough
to think more sophisticated than like a kindergartener is I

(22:01):
just have to deal with this short moment of discomfort
and then I'll just go about my day. So kids
don't really learn anything like when they get whooped or
smacked on the bottom or anything like that. Once they
get older, then like I said, three five years old
and they have long term memory, they learn that Okay,

(22:23):
I just have to deal with this moment and then
I'll move on, and maybe it will be bad enough
that they will try not to do it again in
the future. But a lot of times kids will just
learn how to deal with their parents, like glimpses of
punishments at them.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
Well, yeah, and Ralfie is nine. Nine to ten is when.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
The prefronts of cortex really starts turning on.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
So kids are.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Capable like abstract thinking and stuff.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, and having logical advanced planning you really turn on,
they're going to have the you know, adult brainstar to develop.
At that point, it's not developed, but it's starting much
more than a younger kid. And he was smart enough

(23:10):
to know that the only thing that's going to happen
if I answer dad. When Mom asks where did you
hear this word? When he drops the big kahuna, yes,
oh fudge, yes, that he blames his friend. Then hear
his friend getting his ass whooped on the line. But

(23:31):
he knew that was better than saying dad, because he
would start a war in the house even though everybody
knew it was dad.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Which is also the part of it that's so irritating,
almost like enraging about this style of parenting is this
unwillingness sometimes of parents or whoever the charagivers are to
recognize how they are doing the behaviors that then they're
punishing their kids for doing. It's like this blissful ignorance

(24:02):
that mom wants to live in that like, of course,
where the fuck do you think you learned that word from?
Like are you stupid?

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah? I mean me and my friends swore as much
as the boys, and this swear. When I was at age,
I said fucking all kinds of stuff when I was
in second grade.

Speaker 5 (24:20):
Never got caught though.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
To the surprise of no one, but also because I
had a parent who used that language on a regular basis,
So that was a part of why it was naturalized.
Naturalized the experience of using that language, and so it's
so shitty when the mom calls the other mom and
gets that other kid in trouble, like she doesn't know
what she's putting that kid through just because she's.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Pissed at her kid said it's weear word. And also,
just like I said, the wilful ignorance of where did
you learn that word? Like that question pisses me off
about this mom. I'm on this mom's side a lot
in this movie because I feel bad for her because
her life sucks, which I'll talk about later, But I
would say with this it is this farce that everyone

(25:05):
is playing of like we're just ignoring the shit that
dad does on a regular basis, like living in this
fantasy that not only is your kid not really being
exposed to this shit that your spouse does, but also
that they should know better. Like we're hitting on a
real pet peeve with me, which is when adults asks
the kids expect the kids to behave better than the

(25:29):
adults around them, which I would also say with that
kid he snitches on because his mom kind of makes
him snitch, and then that kids get the shit kicked
out of him, I'm sure that kid also beats people
up or whatever, and their mom's like probably beating him
to be like stop hitting kids, and it's like, what
the fuck are you doing. It's just such a shitty
thing that parents will do or adults will do to kids,

(25:52):
which is, don't do the thing I'm literally doing. How
dare you? And you should know better than what I'm
literally doing, even though I'm the persons was to be
showing you how to be in the world.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
And we wonder where kids are confused about how they're
supposed to behave Yes, yep.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
It's not hard to see. And they would tell you
that when you take any child psychology class or any
family therapy classes, that if you want to see the
root cause of a child's behavior, look at what's going
on with the parents.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, and that's something I would when I used to
do family therapy with kids that had sniffing at behavioral issues,
I would ask like, well, how do you guys talk
at home? The amount of times that a parent would
start telling me the story is if they're kid's the
biggest asshole that has ever been created, And the kids
were usually like seven, eight, nine, and then they would

(26:42):
tell on themselves in the story like, well, I was
yelling at them to stop doing that. Da da da
da da, And then I have to be the bad
guy that jumps in and is like, rewind, what did
you just say? And so if like I almost said
Kevin's mom because we just said home alone, Ralphie's mom
was in my office complaining to me about Ralphie swearing

(27:06):
and stuff, I would say, well, what do you and
your husband say around him? I would be interested if
the mom would tell the truth. I feel like she
want it. I'm not in the way that I think
she'd be like intentionally manipulatively lying to me, but I
think that she wants to pretend that that doesn't happen
at our house.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
I think she does want to pretend that because that
would not be socially acceptable and so for everyone, and
Ralphie knows it too. So despite everyone knows who his
dad is and how his dad is and can probably
hear him, they all ignore that and act like the
kids universe is separate than the adults universe, and children's
rules are separate from adults rules, which is consistent with

(27:47):
that old school parenting that would have come down on
us and did not as hard as maybe in the forties,
but certainly the remnants of that were still there. And
how we were parented and speak when spoken to are
things all of us probably heard at least once.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Well, I would say where I can give my parents
credit is that I think they were definitely in that
transitionary period of parenting where my parents did try to
do more like modeling. Like when my mom would swear
in front of us on accident, she would like apologize
and she would kind of like name what was happening.

(28:28):
And my parents actually did a good job and like
not yelling at us and not speaking us. But I
was aware that a lot of the choices she made
as our parent was because of how much she obviously
didn't enjoy the way that she was parented, So she
had more of the you want something to cry about
punitive kind of stuff like getting hit the belt and
things like.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
That major pain as a parent.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah. Well, and definitely this kind of stuff where she
would probably get in trouble for something she was literally
repeating her dad say yeah, and then getting no credit
for the fact that she's, like kid, just repeating what
the adults are saying around her. And so I think
my parents were kind of that sweet spot in the
nineties when they were making like a conscious effort to
do things differently.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Your parents are than me and Hannah's Yeah, which may
create because this movie would have been my grandparents and
my parents.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, this movie would have been my grandparents and their.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
Parents, right, which gives a one generation up. Yeah, one
generation up. And they would have been part of the thing,
which is good that they get credit for that, But
and not that things were always you know, speak when
spoken to, is just sometimes there was those moments in
parental frustration where things went to a little older school.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Which I do think where I want to give the
mom credit, especially for the time period this takes place
in she does do things here and there that do
speak of her potential for increased emotional awareness and intelligence.
Like when the younger son, what's his name, he's like

(30:05):
five or six, Ralphie's little brother. Do we know his name? Randy? Randy?

Speaker 5 (30:12):
I knew, I can think of it.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
I knew it was similar to Ralfie, like they have
that matchy names thing. Yeah, And when Randy won't eat
and you can tell that Dad is getting impatient with
him not eating, and Dad's trying to do that thing,
which is old school and dumb, which is just like
telling a kid to snap out of it, especially a
kid that little. He's probably kindergarten age, maybe fush greg kindergarten,

(30:37):
and he's obviously distressed something's going on. And so the
mom does something which is really great and something I
used to do when my work with little kids his age,
which is use play to sort of snap kids out
of their mood. So when she does, like show me
what a piggy would do, it's disgusting what he does.
I can't stand it, but it is a good intervention

(30:59):
for get a kid to snap out of whatever feelings
they're stuck in and to get them more buy in
to actually go closer to the thing you're wanting them
to do, which win the situation was eating. So like
that was a really good parenting choice there.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Yeah, and then what Hannah instead of struggling with the
power dynamic, Yes, with a child, power dynamic, with a
power struggle exactly.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
She does have really great moments of parenting, and that
is one of them. My wife is a daycare director,
so I definitely learn a lot from some of her strategies,
and she would use something like this of distracting them,
getting them back into play and trying to move them
off of that emotion.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
Because it won't last long. Yeah, And if you can get.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Them through that, they will rebound and get kind of
themselves reregulated and go back to taking care of their needs.
But if you get into the power dynamic and continue
to up the stress level of the situation, you will
get more.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
And more ancient behavior moments.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yes, well, because you're right on it, which is that
kids feed off the energy of the adults around them.
So when you do a power struggle thing like dad
was going to the kids responding to his stress and
anger and irritability ratching it up. So the kids just
matching your energy. And so when you do what more
the mom did, you're subverting it and you're making more

(32:27):
playful and so the kid's going to match that energy.
Like I used to do a ton of that stuff
when kids riving our time, and I would use like
a silly voice or do something in a sing song nyway,
which is actually a coping intervention, a coping skill. It's
a way to do thought diffusion, Like when you're struggling
with a circular thought, you can make it silly and
that kind of snaps you out of it a little bit.

(32:48):
And so she is doing a version of that with him.
I mean, does she also have other stakes in it,
which is I have to calm Randy down before my
husband gets too upset. For sure, yeah she does.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
She also has the if this kid does not eat
now when we're all eating, then what's going to happen
when it's bedtime is he's not going to sleep because
he's going to be hungry and he's going to want
food and now I'm going to have to feed him
or going to be doing all of this shit all
over again. And if you think you're gonna be like

(33:25):
the tough parent that's gonna send a kid to bed hungry,
you're reading a book and have never been a parent. Yeah,
not gonna happen. You're gonna have to feed them. So
it's gonna delay bed time, it's gonna delay teeth brushing,
it's gonna get him off their routine, it's gonna get
him off their sleep schedule, and then everybody's fucking life
is going to be miserable. And whatever you're trying to
manage Dad from not doing is going to blow up

(33:46):
times ten mm hmmm. So everybody's gonna be deregulated if
we can't reregulate and get back in control of this
situation right now.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
And then I think another thing that she does well
is when she pulls Ralphie off of Farcas and he's
losing it and he's clearly we would say he's in
his emotion mind. He is not an a rational place.
He has snapped.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
He snapped.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
You see that look on someone's face. That is a
good clue that you better stop, yeah, or you will
meet their fight.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Part. Oh, I saw a kid. There was a kid
in my six strade class used to get bullied a
lot by this other kid who was an infamous bully.
And one day when we had to sub that kid
snapped and stabbed at other kid in the arm with
a pencil. It was nuts. I was like right next
to them when it happened, and the kid had this
pencil sticking out of his arm. Anyway, sidebar. But what
the mom does well is she also actually unknowingly unintentionally

(34:43):
does another coping strategy, which is like temperature change, where
he's so in his head. When someone's that escalated emotionally,
all you can do is try to regulate their immediate
crisis body self. And so what she does is she
put so it's like I assume cold water on his
face and on his neck, which is actually the exact

(35:05):
right thing to do. It was when a kids that
worked up is you don't get into it, you're She
does keep saying you need to calm down, which I
don't think she could have not said at this time
because people would just say that even though it doesn't
do anything. But she was like speaking in like a
calmer tone of voice and really just focusing on de
escalating him is almost like his nervous system, which is

(35:25):
what you're supposed to do. It's like sometimes called like
shock to your system, where you will hold ice or
splash your face with cold water, take a cold shower,
put your face in the freezer, something that like shocks
you sensationally and hopefully like brings you out of whatever
headspace you're stuck in.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
It's an immediate grounding to the immediate moment because there
is drastic stimuli changing where your focus is.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
It just distracts your body pretty much.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Yeah, because it has to deal with that is so
cold that you need to pay attention to it, because
there's only so long you can tolerate it, So whatever
else is going on you need to back off from.
It's very important. And it goes back to that same
thing again of remembering calm body, calm mind. It does
not ever work the other way.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
And then she tells him to go lie down, which
is also good. She's just like, go nap, which is
exactly right. Like he's probably going to be exhausted after this,
and so instead of getting in his face about what
she saw, I appreciate that she just tried to really
calm him down. And then she didn't have any expectations
of him. She was like, just go chill out in

(36:39):
your room by yourself. And I bet you she tried
to make sure that Randy didn't go in there. I
can throw her that bone. Yeah, she probably tried to
Keeprandy busy. Yeah, Ralphie had timed himself in his bedroom.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Which he needed because once you go into a hyper
arousal state, you're going to go into hypo to recover
period all of us, and it's going to look a
little different. But for a kid in particular, they're you're
not gonna be able to explain that to them, he
had a full on hyper arousal burst fight mode and
he's gonna need to shut down in order to recover.

(37:12):
And had she tried to talk to him about what happened,
or think about consequences or get into any of that,
all that would have happened is he would have sparked
right back up into that hyper aroused state and been
absolutely inconsolable and afraid and terrified, and all his nervous,
little nervous system would have been completely overridden.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, she's able to clock that. You can't talk to
a kid who's hysterically crying like that. I've watched parents
try to rationally engage with their kids who are that upset,
and it's just like we're all wasting our times and
probably ratching it up. And what I also appreciate is

(37:55):
that she doesn't really hold a grudge with him about it.
She doesn't know his dad, which might be for other reasons,
you know, But she does a thing which I also
really appreciate if parents can do this, which is, if
your kid does something this out of character, then something's happening,
Like something's wrong. It's not just that they've decided this

(38:18):
day to be like a huge asshole that hopefully with
a situation like this, and maybe like modern day parenting,
you're asking your kid, you're like debriefing afterwards, like can
you help me understand what happened there? Because that's so
different than how you usually engage with your friends or
when you're walking from school. And I think that's really
important for parents to have more curiosity when your kid

(38:41):
out out of character yep, than to just like punish
them because you're so shocked that they would do this,
that and the other.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
I agree.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
I think the importance of that debrief is really important
because people still keep a lot of emotion stuck under
a bubble at that point because whatever burst out of
them to survive that situation they got in. Once that
is resolved, then the shame, the guilt, the fear of

(39:09):
what they just did as they regain the ability to
cognitively process it, once they settle down enough kicks in.
That's going to go under a bubble to try to
keep themselves protected, and they won't talk about it. But
if you can create a self or a safe environment
for it, you can pop that bubble and allow whatever
emotions are still stuck to come out and digest and

(39:32):
find out what's really going on. My mom may not
know that Scott Farcas and whatever, the other little fucker.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
It's little sidekick toad No, they call him a toady.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
They call him a toady. That's all they refer to him.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, he had a name.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
Like if what's his name talks to you, you're like,
you're not getting punched in the face.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
It's like a little newsboy from a cartoon. I know.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
It's so weird that he's one of the bullies.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
How'd you get here from New York?

Speaker 5 (39:56):
Lackey? They call him a lackey, call.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Him right, But looking at you know, you can find
out Mom may not have known the bullying was that bad.
Ralphi may not have said anything. Yeah, but if you
can get him to talk about it, then we can
get you know, a more adaptive response programmed in for
next time. Yeah, instead of bursting into a survival rage monster.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah, because they're going to see Farcas again. They are,
you know, and so this is gonna be a regular situation.
So you're right. Part of the debrief is so when
you come across Farcas again, if he antagonizes you, you
will what are you gonna do different? And something you
also just brought up was another point I wanted to

(40:41):
make too, which is when you said, like does mom
even know about farcus and the bullying, which is that
when you decide to be a very punitive more like aora,
what's authoritarian? Yeah, there's authoritative and authoritarian. I always get the.

Speaker 4 (40:58):
Most authoritarian would be more tyrannical.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yes, So when you're more of authoritarian parent, what your
kids learn to do is just not tell you shit, yep,
And then you just don't know things that are going on,
because what you've established with your kid is that if
I tell you about something and you disagree with part
of it, or even if maybe I did something wrong,

(41:21):
I'm just gonna get punished and nothing's going to be better.

Speaker 4 (41:24):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
So why the fuck would I tell you shit?

Speaker 4 (41:27):
You wouldn't.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
So kids just learn how to be more secretive with
their parents, and then the parents are like, what, how
did this house is happening?

Speaker 4 (41:37):
Correct?

Speaker 3 (41:38):
And that's why it's important to kind of pop that bubble.
And we see a little bit of that, not with Ralphie,
but we do see that in her dynamic with Randy
when he's under the sink when Randy's under there kind
of crying. She does has another really great moment of
parenting where she kind of talks with him and asks
him what's going on, what he's saying, and then he's

(41:58):
having that secondary reaction that Daddy's gonna kill Ralphie.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Oh yeah, which again, I mean that's very telling.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Yeah, it's very telling that he's actually like his little
brain in his little body is really worried about that.

Speaker 5 (42:14):
He's upset. He's crying in the he's crying in the.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
Cupboard, and it's real to him.

Speaker 5 (42:18):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
And people, she doesn't dismiss that outright. She's telling me,
Daddy's not going to kill Ralphie. Can I get you
some milk? Do you need anything? And then she just like,
do you want to come out? And he says no,
and she gets him the milk and lets him kind
of close the door and go back in there and
have his space. I thought she did awesome there.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, itys a lot about how she probably does have
a lot of good innate natural empathy and emotional intelligence.
She's just in a time period where that's not really
how you go about doing stuff.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
No, they didn't have most of the words that we're using.
Oh yeah, you know, to even developed yet and looking
at how much more or we will.

Speaker 4 (43:00):
Talk to kids and encourage that. Now.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
I would have loved for their if this were in
modern times, to be a conversation with the brother a
little bit more about what makes you think Daddy would
kill Ralphie or what did you think happen today and
how are you feeling about it, and letting him if
Randy was in a space he was ready to talk
about it yet, but explore that a little bit more.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
But for nineteen forty she did awesome.

Speaker 5 (43:26):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
I think the other thing that I wanted to bring
up while we're talking about parenting is when you teach
your children to be afraid of you, that is how
they identify other relationships that they should feel afraid and
that that's a normal and natural experience to have. Yeah,
So when you raise your voice or talk loudly, or

(43:50):
punish your child in that way, you are teaching them
that being fearful of someone who's supposed to take care
of them is a natural experience.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
It's a part of love. Yes, Then kids will grow
up and they'll tolerate a lot of not great stuff
from other relationships, friends, partners, YadA, YadA, which is the
generational part of this we've been talking about.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
All right, let's take a break here and we'll pick
back up with parenting A and we're back, and so
let's talk about the relationship between mom and dad. While
not a major component of this movie is it's largely
about kids, the dynamic is definitely present and impacts this family.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
What do we see?

Speaker 1 (44:31):
I remember I was gonna say yes, so let's just
lead into this, So this is a good segue. Territory
is that we see, obviously because of the time period,
a very traditional gender role dynamic between Mom and dad. Yes,
And a part of that is this like submissive nature

(44:52):
in mom where Dad is in charge, right, and Mom
has this like meekness about her, where there are certain
things she won't touch that Dad says and does right.
And I think that's where it bleeds into the parenting,
is that they can't actually address problems with their mutual

(45:13):
parenting and how it's showing up in Ralphie and maybe
Randy's behavior because we can't acknowledge and she can't challenge Dad.
So when the fuck thing happens when the bar soap
swearing situation happens. I think in a more modern relationship,
she would just maybe they would like do a little

(45:34):
somewhat punishmenty consequency thing with Ralphie, you know. But I
also think or I would hope that the mom would
go to dad and be like, you know, where he's
learning that word? You know, we need to watch our mouths.
You need to watch your mouth. Like there are moments
in which she could challenge what they're doing and what
Dad is modeling for the kids. But in this dynamic

(45:57):
where you can't challenge the patriarch like that she has
her own sort of like fearish thing with him, you
can't go there. And so then these things just go
unsolved and go unfixed because we can't talk about what's
really not working or what's really causing some of these issues,
which is dad.

Speaker 4 (46:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
I mean, in the nineteen forties etiquette and relationship, it
probably wouldn't have been a thing, at least not an
encouraged thing. And I'm sure that had consequences that weren't okay,
And it certainly doesn't represent how relationships are now in
many places, but in some others they still are very

(46:39):
much stuck in that old space, and people think that
one partner deserves more power over another, which leads to
some of the problems you're describing.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, because then how do you address stuff like this?
You can't. Can't, You truly can't, especially in this time
period where the woman is entirely depending didn't on the
man for their livelihood, for their security and safety and
all this stuff. So to upset the dad at worst,

(47:11):
I mean, at best, you're like a stereotypical nag, which
doesn't feel good, and at worst he will take it
out on you in a way that could be genuinely scary.
What it ties into here is that it I think
I see a lot of moments in this movie where
I would interpret them both as pretty lonely. But I

(47:33):
guess before I kind of go into it, because I've
been talking a lot of this episode, how would you
both Maybe I'll throw it to you, Hannah, because you're
the marriage and family therapist. How would you evaluate or
assess their relationship with each other?

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Oh, I think that they are. I think that they're
both completely disengaged from the romantic relationship. I think that
she is largely leaning into the mother role which I
think again, because of the power dynamic between her and
her husband, is her only option in a lot of ways,

(48:13):
I think that I also agree that they're both lonely.
I think they're both lonely. I don't think they're getting
any kind of connection. I think even when we see
some of their small even romantic moments, that those are
happening only when the kids are not around. They're not
able to not that they're miserable fucks in front of

(48:35):
the kids all the time, but just like most of
the time that they seem to be close is when
the kids aren't necessarily around, and so you're also so
what that also shows is in terms of the kids,
is that then we also have these kids who are
seeing this relationship with these two people who seem to
be miserable, and that's the and that becomes the status quo.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
I think they only find some small moments of joy,
But the moments of joy they seem to find with
each other, we don't see happening with each other.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
It's about the kids.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, Like it's never focused on the relationship. That's what
I was trying to get at. It's never focused on
them being connected to each other, them feeling like they're
on the same team, them feeling like they are creating
a loving, open household for their children, like there is
there's no connection there.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
So I would really put.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Them as people who are pretty unhappy in their relationship,
pretty unhappy in their marriage, and are maybe having a
neutral experience as parents, because when you're still in this
dynamic where you're not allowed to go above the gender
role in any kind of way, then you get really
stuck in the kinds of things that you can talk

(49:49):
about kind of what you were saying, kind of what
we were all talking about, that there's no room for
growth or questioning or curiosity in this relationship.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah, because I think what I noticed this time around
watching it with my therapist eyes and ears is in
the I think it's the opening scene of them when
it's I think it's I don't know if it's dinner
or breakfast, but Dad's reading the paper at the table,
Mom's doing a bunch of like harried multitasking to get

(50:22):
the meal on the table, and he is trying to
engage with her. They actually kind of introduced them, like
if I just saw that scene and wasn't thinking about
all the labor she's doing. Yeah, I would probably judge
her harder that, Like he's trying to make a few
bids of connection with her, Like he's trying to bring

(50:44):
up what he's reading in the paper, this thing he's doing,
like he's a few times in that opening exchange, he
is trying to get her attention and pull her into
a conversation. Yes, and he's getting disappointed because she's giving
him these non aisuse she's not paying attention, and you
can see it's bumming him out. I think that was

(51:04):
really telling to me in a way I hadn't thought
about before that he is trying to find a connection
with her, and maybe he even thinks in his worldview,
why doesn't my wife pay more attention to me? Why
doesn't she talk to me about the things I care about?
He seems like the kind of guy who had come
in a couple's therapy and be like, I am trying

(51:26):
really hard to connect. I bring up stuff that I'm reading,
like I'm trying to have a conversation with you, and
you're the one that blows me off. And he might
come in feeling like he is the lonely one and
that she's not doing enough and not understanding that she's
doing all this stuff all the time, so she's distracted.

(51:47):
He's trying to engage her in moments when she is
not able to be engaged with, and he's not.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
Doing anything to take the workload off the Yes, late
because you know, he goes to work, so his life's
really hard.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
Yes, his eight hour shift is so much harder than
her twenty four hour shifts every day.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
I mean, he probably isn't working eight hour shifts. He's
probably working ten twelve. But it still doesn't justify not
taking the load off her plate while you're raising children
you helped create.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
Yeah, Like he's got his weekends off and his evenings off.
She doesn't have any time off exactly exactly. And so
you wonder why a partner doesn't want to engage with you,
it's because they're exhausted. They're exhausted from carrying the load
by themselves. It continues to create a narrative in which
I have to do this by myself and you can

(52:39):
just do whatever you want. I guess because that's the
way that this dynamic is working out for us. It
just creates so many barriers to connection and to being
on the same team. That's one of the things I
have to remind couples about the most, that you're on
the same team. This is supposed to be your favorite
person in the world. What the fuck is going on

(53:02):
that we can't even have a conversation about how much
you fucking swear well? And also I think we're projecting
also like a modern view of relationship down to them,
because what I do think is interesting about them, it
makes me curious about the genesis of their relationship. Is
they have a substantial age gap, which isn't the most

(53:24):
bonkers thing, especially true back then, I assume, But he's
like must be like twenty years older than her or
around that fifteen to twenty years older than her, And
their kids are fairly young for the fact that they're
in there clearly in their like early forties and then
like late fifties. Yeah, for them to have like a

(53:46):
nine and a probably six year old, maybe even five
year old is fairly young. So it makes me curious
about all that, like the choices to have made them
that old and that kind of thing, and how that
might have a different color to their dynamic. But like,
did they even get married because they like each other?
Did they get married because they're both older and you know,

(54:09):
maybe it was just time to get married and he
was the guy that asked her and she was older.
You know, like we don't know any of these parts
of it. But I think that is also something to
consider in terms of what they expected out of a
marriage and what they thought it would look like in
terms of feeling lonely or not lonely with each other,

(54:32):
because they're not on the same team, like as we're
talking about, like this time period, a marriage wasn't equitable, no,
and so they aren't on the same team. So I
really don't even know if I would understand like the
head like the headspace of a man or a woman
at that time.

Speaker 4 (54:48):
We wouldn't because we didn't live it, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
And what's acceptable and what's not.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
Yeah, And you know, taking the actors that they chose
to portray the characters that face value too, you know,
we don't know if I haven't read the books, no,
so I don't know, you know, how the author would
have presented it. Taking just the actors that they pick
doesn't necessarily mean that in the story the parents weren't
closer in age, but the actors clearly are would you

(55:15):
say they're like twenty years apart the actors?

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Yeah, I looked it up because I was curious because
my second note no offense to this actor, was why
is this dad so old? Because he is especially for
this time when people were having kids, getting married and
having kids, like you'd marry your high school sweetheart. Yeah,
and I was very normal, like you were having your
first kids at like twenty twenty one, twenty two.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
So for them to be older and have had kids
so much older, I don't know it just I mean,
I know we're reading into it the way we like
to do with movies. It just makes me curious about
the dynamic as well. In that I also wonder if
they even have this, like I said, expectation that once
I'm married, I will have a friend in my part

(56:00):
partner that I won't be lonely. That doesn't mean that
these people won't experience profound loneliness and maybe not even
understand how to fix it or if that's possible to
fix it. There might have been a lot of accepted
loneliness their adulthood.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
I think with this time period to what we don't
see because it's from the standpoint of a nine year
old is whatever social interactions they may.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
Have had, Yeah, we don't see any friends because we're
not following them.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
Or you know, moms would have been involved with groups
of other moms in the community and they would have
been doing things, and we don't see any of that
because it's not as pertinent to the story. But it's
fair to look at these two and see from their
behavior with each other that there's not a lot going
on there.

Speaker 1 (56:47):
No, they don't have chemistry, I'll tell you that much.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Only in a few moments do they have like interaction.
But there seems to be some pretty hardcore like resentment
when mom likes saunters over while vacuuming and accidentally breaks
that lamp. Yeah, and she's sitting there laughing her ass off,

(57:12):
watching him try to glue this thing together and trying
not to get caught laughing her ass off and look
very sad and shameful and like sorry, But you can
see her loving every second of the collapse of that
lamp and her just like.

Speaker 4 (57:31):
Walking in there.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
The look on that actress's face was fucking brilliant. Everyone
knew it was gonna happen, that that lamp.

Speaker 4 (57:37):
Ain't gonna survive.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
And yes, Dad is inappropriately attaching to it. And is
he doing that because he's lonely and there's no spark
between them, and that's igniting some feelings in him that
maybe have been a little dormant.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Probably, Yeah, his preoccupation with the lamp feels just indicative
of how many needs he's not getting met, and not
because Mom's fault, I think just the dynamic that they're in. Yeah,
because she's also not getting those needs met. Because this
goes back to what we were saying earlier. She doesn't feel

(58:12):
like she can go to her husband and be like,
get that goddamn, fucking this weird like perverted lamp out
of our front goddamn window. Were all our neighbors can see,
we're looking like we have the pervert house. Now we
have like you're making our house look like a whorehouse.

Speaker 4 (58:26):
Like that's what I feel like.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
People are gonna come here and proposition me for money.
Get that ship out of my window.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Yeah, yeah, because that's like an outrageously sexually especially for them,
and the fact that she doesn't feel like she has
any say in her house.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
Is a major award.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Brittany Oh my god, what did he win it for?
They don't tell us, do they not tell it? Like
a sweepstakes probably, or something stupid like crossword puzzle or
the crossword puzzle. I thought it was from the Yeah,
he does do the crossword puzzle?

Speaker 4 (58:56):
Is that what it's from?

Speaker 5 (58:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (58:57):
They make my brain does want to say that's true
because he was talking about the cross from the beginning,
but who knows. Yeah, but it is kind of interesting,
like even because the house is her domain and she
can't even feel like she's allowed to say, get that
lamp out of the window, that she has to go
about this sneaky accidentally breaking the lamp thing to get

(59:21):
that need met because she cannot suck to her husband
and then he's surprised he's lonely. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:29):
Uh, he solved a series of newspaper puzzles by a
pop company.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
They don't cover this in the movie, but they must
do it in the book.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Yeah, which makes sense because knee high grape was a
popular brand back then. So when he gets a knee
high leg lamp, oh, wearing knee highs Oh?

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Is it like remember those types of a COmON shut
like eggs? Yes, that's what it is making to think
of Yes, legs and eggs.

Speaker 5 (59:57):
Legs and eggs.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Yeah, and I'll even but even then, now I'm getting
more mad for the mom. Even then, this motherfucker has
enough time to play so many games that he can
win a prize for them.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
And I could see her being resentful of the lamp
just because of what it means. Because of that, I'd
be like, fuck you in your lamp that you have
time to do these little games where I'm running around
this house to carry your kids, you know, not being
stimulated anyway, probably, Yeah, and then you get to play
your puzzles and then whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
And we wonder why Ralphie is thinking it's okay to
occupy the bathroom even though Randy clearly is about to
pee his pants so he can solve a puzzle that
was on the radio.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Yeah, it's just like his dad, look at that. Yeah, priorities.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
So does there anything else we didn't cover with their
relationship and our wild speculation ride here based on the
actors ages presentations.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
I have some stuff more that I could say, but
I'm gonna save it for treatment about their dynamic. And
I guess what I want to say to all those
people that are like waxing poetic about the good old
days with like trad wives and shit and when men
were men. And I don't think a lot of them
are probably listening to our podcast, probably, but in case
they are, if they're in the car with someone time,

(01:01:24):
these people weren't happy. This is what this is more
accurate of what it probably was like for a lot
of people, which is that you were very lucky if
you ended up in a relationship with someone that you
genuinely liked mm hmm and got your needs met from.
And it was more just these two people orbiting each other,
probably both resentful, both feeling lonely, both not sure how
to stop the cycle of being resentful and lonely, not

(01:01:47):
feeling like they can talk to each other like. That's
what it means when you have this dynamic.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
So before we start treatment here, I'd just like to
remind everybody that take a second and look back at
the cast of Cheers. Oh, I know what you're gonna say,
and look at the ages of those actors in the eighties.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
We're all older than all the characters and Cheers.

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
Currently currently right now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Norm and was the other guy's name, The mailman Cliff Cliff.
They were like thirty four when that show started.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
Wow, they look like they're in their fifties.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, so let's talk about that too, when we can
talk about the good old days age? Do you like
a motherfucker?

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
So, just as a caveat that, we do know we're
speculating wildly. So when you leave us comments, we know
we kids, we know we're speculating. We know the actors
may have been chosen because they better represented the way
people may have looked back then, and the dad being
sixty may have been the way it was artistically displayed
to the child. We know, for God's sake, we.

Speaker 5 (01:02:56):
Know we do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
This is the fun of the pod.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
We're just speculation to me because that's our emotional reaction
to it as what we saw.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
Yes, so treatment who wants to go first?

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
I mean, I guess I can go since I'm gonna
roof off of what we're just talking about anyway. Okay,
so what comes up for me? And thinking about the
loneliness of both feeling like I said, reminds me of
one I work with couples sometimes and one partner will
complain of loneliness understandably, So like I'm not invalidating that.

(01:03:28):
And we'll say like, I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm doing this,
I'm doing that, and the other and then the other
partner and I'm gonna be real when I do this.
And it's heterosexual relationships, usually the guy is the one
who's like, I am trying, I'm doing this, I'm doing that,
and the wife is the female partners usually yeah, and
I'm doing all this shit. You know, I'm busy. I'm

(01:03:50):
not trying to ignore you or not be available to you.
I'm I got a million things happening in my head.
So your attempts to reach out to me are not
working because either you're trying at wrong time or I am,
like you said earlier, Hannah, I'm exhausted. I'm mentally exhausted,

(01:04:11):
physically exhausted, both whatever. So when you are gonna approach
this kind of dynamic with a couple, you have to
focus on division of labor and equity of labor, which
is a conversation they could not have had. So when
I'm talking about treatment, I wouldn't do this with this
actual mom and dad. But if they were, like if

(01:04:31):
someone liked them were to come into my office nowadays,
and they were like, I'm feeling lonely. I'm also feeling lonely.
Usually what they say is I want to work on
our intimacy intimacy, but they usually have different examples of
what intimacy means. But I could see this dad saying
in this movie, like I'm trying to have conversations with
you in the morning. You don't care. You don't care

(01:04:52):
about what I like, You don't care. I'm trying. I'm trying.
I'm trying. And what he's missing is that she's doing
all this other stuff all the time while he's trying
to engage with her. Like Ralphie does have that very
insightful quote from probably more of his adult perception, which
is my mom hadn't had a hot meal in fifteen years,
that she is constantly thinking about what everyone else needs

(01:05:15):
working on that doing that, she's like got a she's project,
managing their household and so, and if you want to
have your partner be more available to you mentally, you
have to create a system in the household in which
they can be So what that looks like is you
have to actually sit down and realize, like who is

(01:05:36):
doing what and how much of especially and nowadays when
most couples both are usually working. But even then, you know,
if we're going to think about her work as work,
which was all, would be another whole discussion with this couple. Like,
first we'd have to get the dad to acknowledge what
the mom is doing is also work. Yes, she is
managing your household, it's work, and that her shifts never stipd.

(01:06:00):
She's working around the clock seven days a week. And
so I'd first have to get him bored on board
for that. And then a book that I was actually
recommended to me by a couple I worked with, so
shout out to them. And then I read because I
like to read things that my clients are reading so
that I can know what they're talking about and if
I need to fact check it to be honest, because

(01:06:23):
some of the self help stuff is bonkers why written?

Speaker 5 (01:06:27):
So I have no background in mental health, so I
have to read a.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
Teen year old and I am a relationship coach and
I printed a book, so obviously it is full of facts.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
Well, usually it's more like I'm a person with a
ton of privilege, and I don't recognize that privilege at all,
But I think you could live a life like me
if you do these twelve things I do every day.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
And it's like, well, okay, you're starting at the third
base and not understanding that. But AnyWho, So the book
place that dead is not getting anytime soon. Yeah, exactly.
So that book is called fair play. Whenever I and
I did read it, and when I recommend it to couples,
I do give them a huge caveat that. It is

(01:07:09):
a very headonormative book. That's why if you look at
reviews for it, the reviews are kind of all over
the place, like a lot of one stars as much
there are five stars, because it's extraordinarily hedonormative. And it's
also written in a way that I don't know how
it couldn't be really off putting to men. It's written
as if every couple is like kind of like this

(01:07:32):
one actually, or every couple is sort of like a
sitcom couple where your husband is just a giant meatball
that you have to figure out how to trick and
to help them out around the house. What a dummy
like that is like? To me? When I read it,
I was like, I can't imagine asking a male partner
to read this, I feel like I would be like
it'd be insulting them. And it's a lot of like

(01:07:55):
corny stuff like are you the she felt parent?

Speaker 4 (01:07:57):
Are you a she ro?

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
Like a lot of cornball stuff like that. My hope
is that if she hasn't already, then maybe there's gonna
be like an updated version that addresses some of this
the critiques of it. But what I do like about it,
and I think, Hannah, you've had couples use this book
too fair, Yes I have. Yeah, her name's Eve something
I cannot think of her last name. Apologies. And it
really does a good job though of explaining what mental

(01:08:22):
load is and that like specifically, if if no one
takes anything from this, it's this idea of like CPE,
which is conception, planning and execution, and that whenever there's
any sort of task in the house, that usually includes
CP and E, and that a lot of times when,
in her examples, your husband will volunteer to take something

(01:08:44):
off your shoulders, they actually are usually only volunteering for
the E part. Like the example she gives in the
book is if your husband's like, Okay, I get it,
you're really burnt out. You know what I'll take Cindy
to soccer practice from here on out. But they're only
he's only acknowledging an understanding the E part of it.
He's an understanding the C and the P, which is, uh,

(01:09:05):
are is her uniform clean? Does she have snacks? Are
we on the schedule to bring snacks for practice that day?
You know? Do we have to make sure like are
they going right from is she going right from school
to practice? So we need to make sure that her
uniform and her snack and every of that stuff is
either like we're gonna bring it with us when we
pick her up from school, or that we're gonna give
it to her, like all the mental stuff that you

(01:09:26):
have to think about to make sure the engine's running
smoothly in the household, and how even though in her examples,
the male partner might take on that task and then
feel like I'm doing my job, Like fuck you. If
you're saying I'm not helping out I'm taking Cindy to
soccer practice, it's because there might not be an awareness
of the C and the P that's going on that
the wife is still taken care of, So you're only

(01:09:50):
really actually taking over the easiest part in some ways
of the task, but thinking that you've taken over the task.
So when I explain this to a couple, it does
really help them understand, like, oh, I'm actually not taking
that task off my partner's plate. I'm taking like a
third of it, maybe even like twenty percent of it,
and that's not the part that's making them tired, yep,

(01:10:12):
And so I like that part of it. They also
talk about bare minimum, so like what's the bare minimum
to like do a task where it's acceptably done, so
don't get caught up, and like, if it's not done
the way I like to do it, then I'll just
do it myself. Like if you're gonna let your partner
take something over, it's okay if they do it their
way as long as it's done adequately.

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
So struggle so hard with that, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
And so basically along on the short of it is
within these kind of dynamics, you can't really address the
connection and the loneliness part until this part has been addressed,
because I can't ask the burdened parent to extend more
of themselves when they don't literally have more of it available.
And that also helps to take on some of the

(01:10:57):
resentment piece, like because also so I don't want to
be closer. I don't want to make out with someone
that I'm resenting, like because they're not out. And so
if you want your partner to be more into you,
even form like purely selfish reasons or like purely superficial reasons,
they have to feel available and they have to want

(01:11:18):
to be available to you. So all this stuff kind
of goes into the pot of like, how do we
build up that closeness is you have to get these
barriers out of the way. So if I were to
work with someone like them, and I have worked with
people sort of like them, you have to address the
equity of labor first and the acknowledgment with that, and
then you can build up more of the relational stuff.

(01:11:39):
So that's what I would do with treatment.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
All right, Hannah, you want to go next to you
on me too?

Speaker 5 (01:11:42):
Sure I'll go next.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
So when I was thinking about doing treatment, I was
thinking about the mom and thinking about how being in
a different place in terms of emotional intelligence, in terms
of maybe like having self awareness, and also somebody who's

(01:12:05):
unhappy in their marriage, And so when I was thinking
about that, it brought up a couple of different clients
that I've worked with where a part of helping them
trust themselves more in a dynamic that doesn't work is
helping really helping them see their strengths and helping them

(01:12:26):
focus more on themselves in terms of getting their own
needs met instead of relying solely on a partner. Now
that might sound like a lot, but the idea is
for me, when I work with somebody, especially especially I
would say in this instance, where the chances of her
partner wanting or wanting to do therapy. And again, this

(01:12:50):
doesn't even apply to this couple because that was not
even a possibility at that time, but let's say that
they were here during this time. Having a partner who
has no interest in changing and no interest in growing,
no interest in understanding you in a better way can
make it really hard to find happiness and joy in
a relationship can make it really tricky. And sometimes when

(01:13:13):
we're in that position, I see the client who is
having the hardest time. I see the person who's having
the hardest time in the relationship, and a part of
what I try to do to help support them is
helping them so like I would want to help the mom,
find things that she likes to do, find other women
to spend time with, find other ways to get her

(01:13:34):
needs met for herself so that she can continue to
build up her confidence in herself, that she can make
decisions so that she can then press against her husband
in a way that is appropriate to see if he
is willing to open her change or grow or whatever.
And sometimes when I work with people, when I work

(01:13:57):
with these other halves of the relationship, helping them strengthen
their own individuality and their own comfort with themselves can
really help them have a better understanding of their relationship
and have a better understanding of what they're not getting.

(01:14:18):
And also I help them ask how to ask for it.
I offer them how to communicate different things with a
partner who's really rigid or has a really hard time.
And that's what I would want to do with this mom.
I would really want to help her have more awareness
of what she's contributing to the household, also of her

(01:14:38):
finding other ways to get her needs met, that she
can't get mad with her husband who is not interested
in making any changes or being flexible in any way.
It doesn't even wonder if she Because you were saying
like she does seem like she needs help with the
confidence of communicating.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
Yes, maybe even how to communicate. I wonder if she
is just repeating what was modeled for her, but by
like her mom for example, like all the women in
her life, where you don't talk to the husband about that.
So it does make me wonder if she was able
to communicate more assertively with him. I don't know, maybe

(01:15:16):
he would welcome it. It makes me wonder if they've
ever even tried. Yeah, my guess would be no, And
so has she given him the opportunity to maybe be
more interested.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
Right, But in order for her to be comfortable enough
to bring that up, she has to feel more confident
in herself.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
Which I would imagine back then, they probably didn't encourage women.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
Oh definitely, that was definitely not this This scenario of
tribute that I'm giving only works in this setting that
we're currently in.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
Yeah, it does not work.

Speaker 5 (01:15:47):
Back then.

Speaker 3 (01:15:48):
Not till after late World War Two, where women started
working in the factories did this really start to change.
So we're sitting a couple years before.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
Yeah, women were like, holy shit, I can do more.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
Stuff, right, the suffrage movement had happened, but there was
some backlash to that, and you don't see another women's
rights burst until after the Rosie the Riveter face.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
Yeah, well think about you weren't here for this one,
but like Fried Green Tomatoes. Yeah, even then in the nineties,
a big part of Kathy Bates's character is her realizing, oh,
I can be an individual mm hmm, and I don't
have to just like be like a stagnant, boored, lonely
wife and mother.

Speaker 5 (01:16:38):
Yep, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:16:39):
And that was very similar the one. I know, I
watched it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
You weren't here for that one. It was it was
the ladies only.

Speaker 4 (01:16:47):
Did I get sick with that one?

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Probably?

Speaker 4 (01:16:49):
Yeah, I watched that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
It was our Rachel stand in.

Speaker 4 (01:16:53):
Yeah, I know we had Rachel with it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:55):
Yeah, you weren't there, brother.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
But I would say the couple in Fried Green Tomatoes
this very simil Yeah to the couple that we to
these parents in this film, very similar where ed in
that marriage is not interested and is not willing to
do anything different, and she just has to fulfill her
own life in her own ways in order to be

(01:17:16):
in a comfortable enough place to push against the dynamic
that she's experiencing. To Wanda Bitches, to Wanda exactly. So again,
so like that's something that I would do. That's something
that I would want to do with this mom again
to help her feel more confident in herself, to help
her be in a space where she can push back
against her partner a little bit and say, hey, I

(01:17:37):
am also doing all of these other things. Yeah, and
I need more than you asking me how my day
is while you're sitting on your ass reading the paper.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
And she's not fine because she does a lot of
mumbling under her breath, like specifically when they're doing the
tree she's like, I'm not colorblind either, So she has
stuff that she wants to say absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
Yeah, because he was wrong. He was trying to say
that a green or blue light was green.

Speaker 5 (01:18:02):
Yeah, he was just wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:18:04):
Yep, he was just wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
Then, So I think I think I would pick the
Dad as a client of all these because I think
Dad probably is going to need a space if he's
going to make any of these changes that we're talking
about that probably need to be made. Dad probably needs
some space to talk about what's upsetting to him and

(01:18:30):
if he's not getting his needs met and not feeling it.
Even if he's the cause of it. If he's not
having a place where he can talk about what it
feels like to him and have his perspective validated and
have a space to talk it out, he's not going
to move. And people miss that all the time. It
doesn't matter how right or wrong someone is, or how

(01:18:51):
correct or incorrect there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter one fucking bets, not
at all.

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
And the same thing is true in therapy. When you're
working the client, they need to have space to have
the feeling they're having. So I think working with Dad
on really sitting with a supportive method of just letting
him kind of have a space to talk and to
complain about what he's feeling and what he's not getting

(01:19:18):
met and how the idea of having a lamp with
knee highs on a leg when the last time he
saw anything like that out of his wife was ten
years ago, is probably some feelings he's gonna have Later
there will be some discussions on why do we think
that's not happening that need to happen, But you won't

(01:19:39):
get there without validating where people are at. And it's
a thing that I think I have to work on
with new therapists all the time when I'm supervising them,
and they get mad at me about sometimes and you
guys have set in on those meetings where I'll do it,
but some of those that they're like, all behavior has
a purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Yeah, everyone's trying to get a need met always.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
Yeah, every behavior, So why is this behavior happening? And
my newer clinicians get mad at me with that. Sometimes
they're like, no, he just needs to do this, and
he needs to get better, and he needs to do
the things that you two are talking about and recognize
that his wife and da da, I'm you're yes, doesn't correct.
But if we don't get past the feelings and the
behaviors we're seeing present and validate and d prime those,

(01:20:25):
we're going to get nowhere.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
Especially with someone like him, where you can almost think
of it like we've got to open up the closet door,
the junk closet. We gotta let everything come out and
then we can start sorting through it. But you have
to do that part first, like the letting out and
the inventory.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
You're gonna have to do that, and if we're gonna
see change in his family unit, that is what I
think would need to happen is for dad to have
a space where.

Speaker 4 (01:20:52):
He can be.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Feeling all the things that he's feeling. Somebody's gonna need
to tell him that, hey, it is pretty fucking hard
to work. You're probably doing his twelve hour shifts at
a factory that sucks, and to be busting your ass
and then coming home, Yeah, I get it, that's hard.
He's gonna need to have his reality validated because no
matter what opinions we offer, or what he's not seen

(01:21:15):
going on with his wife or his kids or any
of that is, if we can't acknowledge that his world
is hard too, we're missing the fucking point.

Speaker 4 (01:21:22):
And it is hard.

Speaker 3 (01:21:24):
Does that excuse his behavior for not picking up shit
or not taking care of stuff in the house and
not recognizing him working twelve hours doesn't mean that his
wife working eighteen hours a day with these kids is
somehow equivalent, because it's not. And in his mind, he's
probably like, I work so hard, I deserve a break,
which is.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
Probably at home all day, sitting on the couch watch
and listening to her stories, and say, watching her stories,
but it was listening.

Speaker 4 (01:21:49):
To her story.

Speaker 3 (01:21:49):
Yes, right, these kids are at school while she's for
part of her day she could be doing other.

Speaker 4 (01:21:54):
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:55):
Yeah, you know we've seen that shit before, all of us.
Even with all that, you still have to meet people
where they are wherever that is to be a good therapist,
and you don't get to have an opinion on that.
You got to work with the clay you have and
mold it into where you and the client want it

(01:22:17):
to go. But more importantly than where you wanted to go,
where the client wants to go.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
Well, yeah, because you also have to have enough of
like a rapport buy in for when you do have
to start the challenging phase, which is he is a
lot he's going to have to unlearn to figure out
like why he's also not getting what he needs, like
like the wiliness thing, right, And also he probably would
need a male therapist with someone who has these like
strong more traditional views.

Speaker 4 (01:22:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
I could see if he saw like a female therapist
just feeling like we don't get it. Oh yeah, and
he probably more receptive to a man telling him these
things or challenging.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
Him probably and probably would see it as more as
someone that's likely to understand. I mean I get that
all the time when I male clients. There aren't as
many male therapists as there are a female, like by
a wide margin. I think my grad school classes were
ninety three percent female. There's not as many male therapists
out there to offer services. And sometimes men don't want

(01:23:16):
to talk to another man and would prefer to talk
to a woman, and other times it's the opposite. And
to have that resource available where somebody can talk to
somebody whoever it is, for whatever reason they feel connected
is a huge component of rapport building, because yes, that
challenging phase requires challenging and busting someone out of their

(01:23:37):
shit and going, hey, you're kind of on bullshit here,
and we need to get you off bullshit, but saying
it in a therapeutically appropriate way, which maybe you have
the report to tell someone bro, you're on bullshit, and
maybe it has to be I hear what you're saying,
and that feeling is very real, but also it sounds

(01:23:57):
like your wife might be having a feeling too, and
perhaps both of your feelings are valid in this case
instead of one or the other, or.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Even just why do you do you have any theories
about why people in your house don't tell you what's
going on, why things are kept from you.

Speaker 4 (01:24:12):
Right, But I think you know.

Speaker 3 (01:24:16):
For me, that's what I would focus on as a
supportive approach, and then build that into a CBT or
act based approach, So working on connecting thoughts and behaviors
or really generating an acceptance for the way things are
and what can't be changed, but some commitment to making
serious and significant changes to what can be to get

(01:24:38):
unstuck and have more of those moments like he had
where he loosened up, where he laughed and smiled and
even almost cried giving Ralphie that red Ryder be begun,
because nobody knew about that but him. He'd been listening,
he heard, he knew what Ralphie wanted. He is a

(01:24:59):
good dad under there somewhere, but it's going to take
more than just a present to make that an actual reality,
and I think that would be my focus with him.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
Yeah, and also too, I think why it would be
good for someone like him to have a male therapist
is having another man model emotional vulnerability and emotional expression.
Because where I can also throw a guy like him
a bone, especially of this time, is that he probably

(01:25:28):
feels lonely, but doesn't know how to even acknowledge that
and how to go about it other than like sex
and stuff like that. You know, with the partner.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):
Man, his therapy is fixing that furnace and swearing at it.
What do you talk about, sexy, It's fixing the furnace
and swearing at it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Yeah, and that's where all his feelings are going. So
it also is good for where I just got off
of writing a chapter about toxic masculinity and feelings and stuff.
So this is why I was fresh in my brain.
But just how like being raised in that additional environment?
What it really one of the many things that robs
for men is knowing even what their feelings are and

(01:26:08):
how to talk about them. And if you can't talk
about something, you can't ask for something, you can't if
you can't name a problem, you ain't gonna solve the problem.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):
Nope, you'll just be in a space where you expect
people to sing a song about your feats, where they
talk about all the things that no one does quite
like you.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
Oh yeah, I guess, which is also in that chapter
I'm writing AnyWho anything else?

Speaker 3 (01:26:33):
Nope, it seems like a good spot to take our
last break and move into the final thoughts for season seven.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Oh yeah, I should probably go first, because I'm a hater.
I freaking hate this movie, y'all. I fregna hate this
movie is goods and I've watched it about a bajillion
times because part of growing up in the Midwest is
being subjected to this movie twenty four hour movie style,
like Bena was referencing up the top of this episode
where you can't escape this movie. This movie is inescapable,

(01:27:04):
So I know this movie probably backwards and forwards against
my will. Why don't I like this movie? I find
the look of it off putting, the very like seventies is,
even though it's in the early eighties, like kind of
like how Carrie looks, like how seventies movies kind of
have this like film meaness to them. I don't like that.

(01:27:24):
The sound of this movie. I feel like every one
of my notes was this movie is grating my nerves
all the I wanted to put my fingers in my
ears multiple times in this movie. Every noise that that
little brother Randy makes makes me feel crazy. So much
of this movie makes me. I hate that. I hate
that I can't watch the scene with with him eating
the fucking food like I can't. I think when he cries,

(01:27:47):
I'm annoyed every noise he makes. It makes me feel
like a kid hater though I'm not obviously because of
my job. He is such a pain in me, which
I know he's a child, and he's such a pain
in the ass. And all so many parts of this movie,
like even when they go to like when they go
when they go to Santa's, and like the kids are
being dragged this souls crying happening, and like this movie

(01:28:09):
is very tense, and I don't like its vibes, and
I feel like I just would just stressed out. I
got stressed out when he swears outside. I would get
stressed out with all the trouble he would get into.
I would get stressed out with the Santa stuff. I
just everything about this movie makes me cringe. And it
doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy at all. It

(01:28:31):
assaults my senses and I don't like it, and I
hope I never have to watch it again after this,
but I agree to watch it for this because I
do know that as a staple of our culture. Unfortunately,
and it gives me the ugs. I don't like that lamp.
I don't like how the dad is with the lamp,
which is everything about this movie gives me like the heaves,

(01:28:53):
and I don't like it.

Speaker 4 (01:28:55):
And of opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:28:58):
Okay, to be concise, they're Brittany, I.

Speaker 1 (01:29:02):
Hate this movie. I hate it.

Speaker 5 (01:29:06):
I'll go next.

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
So I've seen this movie a thousand times. Like Brittany
already stated, I've seen this movie a lot. It's a
movie that I grew up watching with my family, and
so in a lot of ways, this movie is just nostalgic.
For that reason, I don't know that I particularly like
this movie as much as I've just seen it so
many times that worn you down. It's worn me down

(01:29:32):
in some ways. I do feel a little different after
watching it as a therapist. I do have to say,
and feel very angry with the dad. So we'll see
if that colors my future watches. But to be honest,
I'm sure I'll watch it once a year like I
always have.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
I don't even bring up the tongue part. I hate
that part too, when his tongue gets stuck the thing
and they yank it off. Your turn is over, Brittany,
I don't care. I'll allow you to now speak, Ben, Yeah, go.

Speaker 4 (01:30:00):
Ahead, good.

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
I usually love that attitude in my house anyway, the
king of this castle, in my pretend mind anyway.

Speaker 4 (01:30:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:11):
I feel it's probably the first time I ever said
I feel like neutral.

Speaker 1 (01:30:15):
Yeah this movie just like exists in the vapors kind
of yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:30:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:19):
I mean I have seen it a billion times, and
I think rather than like me being worn down, I'm
like or by the movie, I'm worn down with it,
like the same way that in guitar stories in the
nineties they would literally post, if you play Enter Sandman
on a guitar, we are throwing you out. Do not

(01:30:40):
play that song. And in the seventies they did the
same thing with Stairway to Heaven, like, do not play
that song just if you start playing those notes, we
are throwing out because some everybody would pick up a
guitar and play that song. And that's what this movie is.
The thing that's always on. It's always, always always on.
But though it's nostalgic and it carries in air that

(01:31:03):
I think is relevant for us, I don't think it's
that relevant ongoing. I don't think it's that relevant in
twenty twenty four. I think in the nineties it was relevant.
I think in the eighties it was relevant. It's sat
in a particular niche that this was Americana.

Speaker 1 (01:31:17):
Yeah, this maybe is like a time capsule.

Speaker 3 (01:31:18):
Yeah, absolutely, But like other things in time capsules, people
that didn't put the shit in it don't give a fuck.

Speaker 4 (01:31:27):
Yeah, and I think.

Speaker 3 (01:31:28):
That's where this is going to get. Like, my daughter
watched it and kind of laughed at some points, but
you know what, you know what, the part that she
really laughed at that she liked the most was we
didn't even talk about yet. Is the bunny suit.

Speaker 1 (01:31:40):
Oh yeah, that's also something I was gonna bring up
with the parenting. I don't think parents do that kind
of stuff anymore, like almost like do these like humiliationy
things with their kids. Yeah, of like put that on
because I want to see it, no matter how much
it bums you out.

Speaker 4 (01:31:54):
Not as much. Yeah, she liked that.

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):
She thought that was really funny, and she was like,
oh my god, the way the kid goes through his
fantasies and like the tension you mentioned of the film
does make it interesting because you wonder the whole time
is he going to get the Red Rider be begun.
Did Mom's like a secret plan to subvert him at

(01:32:16):
every possible moment work, and then Dad gives him the gun.
I think it does create like a heartwarming thing of
like the one person you thought was not paying attention
to you really was and gives you the thing you
really wanted. And I think that tells a Christmas story
that connects to people, because a lot of people have
gone through that moment where somebody thinks it's like it'll

(01:32:37):
be more meaningful and special to let someone wait it
out and squat it out and feel anxious they got
almost everything they wanted except this one thing, and then
give it to them and then how like life, the
one thing everybody fucking warned you would happen.

Speaker 4 (01:32:54):
Happens happens and they weren't wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
And I do love that this movie ties that in
that the wisdom of the adult version of him remembering
that goes like I did almost shoot my eye out
with that damn thing within thirty seconds of having it,
and everyone was right. And I feel like that was
some like nod to his parents of going like, all right,

(01:33:18):
all right, I get it. I never told you so
I wrote this whole last story to tell you the
thing that I never told you, that I lied to
youpot and ice to g head. I mean, I absolutely
almost shot my eye out. I think I do enjoy
that because sometimes those are the way children, adult children
tell their parents that they were right thirty years ago

(01:33:40):
is through little stories like this. So the moments like
that that happened, where you wait something out and then
finally get it, and then also the way adult children finally,
eventually some way get around to telling the truth an
hour and a half later.

Speaker 1 (01:33:53):
M hm.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
So I like it. I don't know that I'll seek
it out. I don't know that I'll still watch it
when it's on. If I get a hankering, I'll probably
watch it. But beyond that, this one might fade the time.

Speaker 5 (01:34:04):
Yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 4 (01:34:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
I think probably a lot of the engine behind it,
like you're saying, is people who feel nostalgic to their childhood, right,
And that's not really anymore, Like people don't watch The
Little House in the Prayer anymore, you know?

Speaker 5 (01:34:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:34:19):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:34:20):
Unlike Batman, who will be with us forever.

Speaker 1 (01:34:24):
I wish she'd shoot his eye with a B B gun.

Speaker 4 (01:34:26):
Agreed, he's too smart for that, he's the world's smartest detective.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
You'd never Yeah, have you seen him propose to women?

Speaker 5 (01:34:33):
It's terrible at it.

Speaker 4 (01:34:35):
We didn't cover that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
Mean he's wearing his version of a rabbit suit.

Speaker 3 (01:34:39):
I mean, for the record, doing karate with her out
in the yard worked, so you know, anyway, horrible. For
the record, that's probably a Bengo mentioned Batman, and we
reference the past episode that's probably about Batman, So check
off those Bengo squares, guys.

Speaker 4 (01:34:55):
AnyWho.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
I think that about wraps our episode here on a
Christmas story and close out season seven of our show,
which is crazy to realize we are about to start
season eight. Yeah, and we've been doing this for eight years,
and I want to take a second for me to
thank all of you for listening to us. When we

(01:35:18):
started this, we thought we'd get maybe twelve listeners ever,
and we are over seven hundred and fifty thousand now.

Speaker 4 (01:35:26):
It's just unreal.

Speaker 3 (01:35:28):
And I'm ecstatic that you guys like listening to this
show so much that you're sharing it with people, You're
telling us what you like about it. And look forward
to seeing you guys in season eight.

Speaker 4 (01:35:39):
So thank you all.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
Yeah, and if you are one of those many listeners
and you haven't yet left us a rating and review,
it is the best way for new listeners to find us,
and it's also the cheapest way for new listeners to
find us. So if you could leave a rating and
review wherever you listen to, us would really appreciate it.
If you would like to sponsor us with a little
bit of move law, you can do so two different ways.

(01:36:02):
You can either buy merch via Tea public or you
can become a Patreon patron, which does have its own
Perkson rewards, including if you are fifty dollars or more.
Patren you can pick the subject of an episode, which
is really cool. So far we've done the Departed and
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. As fan requests and

(01:36:22):
as always, if you would like to find us, you
can find us at Instagram, TikTok, threads, Facebook, or do
I think of the All pop Porn Psychology. You can
also always email us atop Pornpsychology gmail dot com. Happy holidays, everybody,

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