Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Nurture vs Nurture: Family #1: Erick and Elsie

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Dr. Mogel speaks with family #1: Erick and Elsie and answers the question: Will our children hate us if we stop loving them so much? She also teaches us a new word: Familect Listen to a BONUS EPISODE right now on the Nurture vs Nurture feed. And make sure to subscribe to weekly episodes, dropping every Tuesday only on the Nurture vs Nurture feed. Just search “Nurture vs Nurture” on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or visit bit.ly/wendymogel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are about to listen to the first episode of Nurture vs. Nurture, the show we are most excited to be a part of. It is produced by Wabiwab, Monica, and myself, and it stars the incomparable Dr. Wendy Mogul, who guides us with such expertise and comedy through the ever challenging role of parent raising kids. So if you enjoy this, I urge you to go over to the Nurture Versus Nurture feed by searching Nurture Versus Nurture wherever you listen to podcasts, where there is a bonus episode waiting to be listened to. So please subscribe to Nurture Versus Nurture wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Nurture Versus Nurture. I'm Dr. Wendy Mogul, and I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been in practice for approximately 100 years,

and I work with parents, and we talk about their children to help them understand that whatever they're struggling with, they are not alone. I've seen it before. It's a little bit funny and a little bit wonderful. One of the things I do in working with parents is I bring up words from other languages. Monica Padman has so beautifully described this as a side hustle in linguistics. I collect words that are untranslatable into English, and I tie them into the conversations with parents so that not only can we realize that our struggles are not unique to our family, but that the planet has a way of describing some of our emotions and some of our dilemmas in beautiful single words.

So today we are going to meet Eric and Elsie. The theme of this episode is thinking about new ways to demonstrate love. thinking about new ways to demonstrate love. These days, it's tough for families to figure out how to strike a balance between fun and firm. Parents are so close to their kids. And when I was growing up, if someone asked your dad the name of your fifth grade teacher, he would not know right off the top of his head. And now we just have so much data and we're always parsing it and figuring it out. And also a really sweet and warm and affectionate friendship parents have with their kids. And at the same time, they want to have structure and be firm and they want the kids to become independent but super accomplished, and then each child is different.

These are a lot of balls to juggle. And often I see the most loving, devoted, smart parents playing blame pong. This is a term I made up for how parents will just, because the other parent is the closest one to them, and it's all the other parent's fault that things aren't going so well. And then sometimes teams emerge and each parent is selecting their draft pick. Today you'll hear how our very dear guests, Eric and Elsie, bump into each other as they negotiate their family's rules of engagement. After our session, I will share with you what the author of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, says about embarrassment and murder.

I'll also tell you how an international nuclear disarmament expert recommends handling differences of opinion. We'll talk about the origin of the linguistic term familect, which is a concept that reveals why private jokes and nicknames are serious love bombs. And I will give you an assignment to take home and use with your own family. Finally, we'll learn a single word in Portuguese, cafuné, that means tenderly running your fingers through the hair of the one you love.

We do not have a single word for this in English. And now, join me in the consultation room with Elsie and Eric. First, a disclaimer. What you are about to listen to is not a professional counseling session. Each episode is a one-time conversation, and the advice I offer does not constitute psychological treatment or serve as a substitute for professional diagnosis, intervention, or behavioral health care. In order to protect their privacy, our guests have been given pseudonyms and some personal details have been changed. If you have concerns about your child's well-being or your own, seek out guidance from a medical or mental health professional. Good places to start?

Your child's pediatrician, the counseling staff at your child's school, and the American Psychological Association's comprehensive guide to finding resources in your state. And now, on to the fun. You're my best friend And I think that We got this One day We'll look back and laugh But in the meantime We got this

We got this We got this In the meantime We got this We got, we got this, we got this, we got this. I'm going to tell you what I know. Okay. Which is that you have an 11-year-old daughter named Daisy and a 7-year-old named Julie. Yes. And the issue that you'd like to talk about is structures and boundaries in

raising children, how to navigate and negotiate differing ideas of a fun dad and a more structured mom. We have dad Eric here and mom Elsie. Tell me what that looks like. Okay. Do you want me to start? Yeah, you go. Okay. So Eric is a wonderful dad. Both of our girls love and adore him. He is definitely the fun dad. They love to eat sugary things together. He lets them watch, in my eyes, sometimes inappropriate TV or movies. You know, he would be the one

heading up a trip to Disneyland. And bedtime sometimes is more fluid for him, where I prefer a more solid bedtime and routine. Okay, I'm stopping you right here. Here we go. So sugar, screen, and schedules. These are the big three in most families. Let me know why this is a problem for you. Let's say it continued exactly as it is now. I mean, let's face it. I'm a funner person than you are in general. So it makes sense for me to have that role. Yes, he is more fun. I guess there would not be a huge issue. I feel like a lot of times I'd pick and choose my battles. And some of the questions that I have for you are, are there things that I should let bother? Like, should I let that bother me? I love the way you said that. Are there things that I should let bother me? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I have that battle in my head a lot where I'm,

you know, negotiating in my head. It's not a big deal. It's not the end of the world. It's one night or, you know, it's the holiday. They're going to be fine. We got to balance out. That's a lot of thinking that you're doing. And so you're observing the behavior. It's pretty common. You're used to it. And then you have an internal battle going on. Should I bring this up? Will it do any good? Yes.

Should I bring it up in some whole new way? Yes. And then what do you usually decide? A lot of the time, I will let it go. And how resentful, indignant, frustrated, and annoyed are you? It depends. I don't like getting to the place where I feel resentful. So I try to do that inner talking and decide,

okay, if I'm not going to let this bother me, then I really have to let it go. But I will say, yes, there are times where I will let it go. And I might be just a little, you know, ooh, yeah, like he feels it for sure. Yeah, it takes me just a little bit being like that and then I'll get through it and then it's fine. And then there are times where I have that talk and I'm like, nope, this is not okay

with me and I want to talk about it and say something and have a conversation. Does it do any good? It does. We had a recent disagreement. Please tell. So I did not know that Daisy and Eric had had a conversation about getting Daisy on TikTok to see an older cousin that we have in the family who has an account and she was excited about it. And I did not hear about this. And cut to, I just heard that Daisy was signing up for TikTok. How did you hear? She was coming over to Eric and saying, okay, now what do I do? And he was telling her, don't forget your password,

write it down somewhere. And I asked, oh, what's she doing? Joining a terrorist group. Yeah, exactly. He said say getting on TikTok. There was no discussion in my mind. I just reacted in that moment. And I said, oh no, I don't want her on TikTok. That was a big thing for me. In hindsight, I probably should have waited to maybe react. One of the reasons that you react that way

is you are at a state of semi-alert to alarm at all times, and you're waiting for the intel to drop. Yeah. And that fell on top of a pile of frustration about this child man's judgment and the ambivalence you have about what a warm, loving, fun guy so close to his daughters. His daughters who are coming of age and will have crushes on boys. And they are getting so deeply cherished by their sweet dad. And at the same time, you know so much about what goes on in the world of social media and girl self-esteem and identity and sexuality that you have your good angel and the devil each on your shoulders, arguing at all times. The corpus callosum that connects the right and left hemisphere of women's brains is thicker than in men. And it means that women naturally use both sides of their brains to make decisions. And for men, it's sometimes a little bit more easier and direct.

Is it a cousin or a friend? Who's on TikTok? It's my cousin's daughter. Cousin's daughter, so exciting. Celebrity family member on TikTok doing an adorable dance, and she has her own channel, and it's so cool. And now, Spoilsport here is hypervigilant, that's what we call it in psychology, jumping in to say, that's what we call it in psychology, jumping in to say, you did what? Yeah. So what happened in that moment? The main reason I got irritated is we were with our pod and there were a couple guys there too.

And it was very emasculating. She was just like, no, she's not watching TikTok. That's it. Okay. And I'm like, okay. And for as liberal as I am parenting, I do default to whatever she says. I mean, I'm definitely the beta as far as parenting goes. You default to whatever she says, but you can't read her mind. Right. And this is a beautiful example. Here you were joining with your daughter in a celebration of a cousin's expansiveness on the magnificent new platform TikTok, swirling the pandemic world with joy.

And then this bitch comes in, humiliates you in front of your friends, male and female pod. Right. And you think, okay, I'll just swallow this and eat some more sugar with the girls, and it will be totally unconscious. Right, exactly. Yep, that's exactly what happened. So how did it get resolved? So the next morning, you know, I went to bed.

It was bothering me, and I did feel bad for the way that I handled it. So no conversation between the two of you afterwards? No, not that night. It was Thanksgiving night. We were both tired. Yeah. Yeah. So the next morning, I said something.

I said, you know, I'd really like to get this off my chest. What time, what place, what words? It was probably around 9 a.m. And I think I used the words, I'd really like to get this off my chest. And were the two of you alone? We were alone. Were the girls there? We were alone.

And he was not in the most open mood, but I felt like I really wanted to talk about it. What room were you in? In the kitchen. Seated, standing? I was seated. He was standing. Had you had breakfast, Derek? Yeah. Okay. So I started with, I really want to get this off my chest. And correct me if I'm wrong. I said, you know, I want to have a conversation about TikTok. Oh, so I want to back up just a little bit because we're going to parse words. Sure. I really want to get this off my chest. Strikes terror in every spouse at all times.

It doesn't open the gates of grace and trust and happy anticipation. Oh, wonderful, Elsie. Every single thing that's on your chest, I wish to hear and I already love even before I hear it. Yeah. It did not invoke that. No. So, yeah, he did not feel super open after I said that. So you said this TikTok thing?

Is that how you said it? Yeah. I said, I want to talk about TikTok. I really wish we could have had a conversation about it. Did you shake your finger like that? I didn't. Yeah. I didn't.

But maybe it felt like I was. Yes. Verbal finger. Elsie's good at yelling at you without yelling at you. Yes. You know, she's like the quiet power. Yes, that's what he says. That's what the girls say too.

So then he said, well, we really don't need to have a conversation. It's always what you say. Whoa. Okay. Which it kind of is. I mean, you say, let's have a conversation about things, parenting things, but you're just telling me the way it is. I mean, I don't have a whole lot of input.

Either you're kind of accepting what I'm doing or you tell me not to do it and I don't do it. I understand that, but I do really want to be able to have conversations. What do you want to hear from him? In that moment, what could Eric have said? Do that conversation for me, both sides. Okay, so I'd really like to have a conversation about Daisy being on TikTok. And what a jerk you are. In general. I want you to do Eric, not the actual Eric, what he might have said back to you. This is the dream dialogue. The dream conversation. That will never happen. Oh, the dream. Okay. So I would say, hey, I would really like to have a conversation about Daisy being on TikTok. And then he would say, yes, I realize I talked to her about getting on TikTok before I she really wanted to see. But now, after thinking about it, I could understand that maybe it wasn't the best idea. This is the dream conversation.

I know. I know. I know it never happened. But something like that. Or, you know, even he could say, I thought it would be really fun for us to get on there. And then I could say, I thought it would be really fun for us to get on there. And then I could say, I could see how that would be really fun for you guys. Maybe we could think of a compromise where you or I could get an account and we could look together at that account and not have her have her own account getting on there by herself. Because I feel that she is not ready to be on social media.

And she's also not asking to be on social media. She just really wanted to see what her cousin was up to, which we might all be interested in seeing. And she could care less when you said she couldn't get on TikTok. Yeah, she wasn't upset. She said, okay, I'm deleting it now. So it really went well, except for that moment in front of the other men. And I want to tell you about a study I did so you will know you are not alone.

I interviewed middle and high school age kids around the country and some around the world. And I said to them, what do your parents worry about that they don't need to worry about? What should they worry about that they don't? What do you enjoy doing with your parents most? What are the sweetest things your parents do for you that they may not realize how much you appreciate and what don't your parents understand about texting and technology? And the reason I'm telling you this is that what came out of this so frequently is how much the kids enjoyed doing slightly reckless things with their dads. And they called their mothers fun haters. And it isn't true, but it's their perception. And I would finish by saying, what do you want me to tell your parents tonight? And this was amazing because it was in little

towns in Texas. It was in hipster schools in Brooklyn. It was everywhere. They all said the same thing. They said, just tell them to chillax. Just tell them to chill. Just tell them to chill out and chillax. We are so devoted to getting this right from moment to moment that what it does is it interferes with the bond of trust and goodwill and faith and grace between fathers and mothers. So I would like to know from the two of you what you enjoy doing together that doesn't have to do with the children and what makes the two of you laugh. Well, normally when we weren't in a pandemic, we'd go on date night every Friday night and we'd go to hot yoga. Both of you? Both of us. So on Friday night, you would go to hot yoga?

Religiously. Then food after that? And how did the conversations go, especially after hot yoga? Great. Great. Because we were in a good mood. So I remember I would be driving to hot yoga in a horrible mood going, I don't want to talk to her all night. And then by the time I did hot yoga, I was like in love with her again. And this is so important for everybody. to their success, to their moods, to their pride, and severely neglecting adult relationships, respect for the dignity of men, respect for the tremendous responsibility that mothers take to keep track of everything, and hot yoga plus dinner. It's such a potent formula. So that's what you did. For how long did you do that? Years.

Years. And the girls know you do that. Yes. It's really profound for them to know that because otherwise they feel a little bit like they're in a product development mode and that how well they're doing is all that feeds their parents and stops their mom from being depressed, their dad from being addicted, and their parents from getting divorced. This is in the child mind. So now we're in the ninth month of our pandemic. What are you doing together? I figured I had to set up a hot yoga thing in our gym. Just recently.

How did you do that? Yeah. Well, it involves about 10 heaters and tricking the thermostat to think it's cooler than it really is. So this is a clever, clever, able person. And did it work? Do you have it? It works. I still want to get it hotter.

So I may need to get like a gas burning stove up there. But it works great. Hopefully we won't burn the house down. But it works great. And we've done, what, four classes. Our goal is to do two a week together. And we hit that goal. Last week was our first week with that goal.

And we did it. And I mean, historically for you and me, I was a drug addict for the first eight years of our marriage. So we almost got a divorce and then we had to have a lot of counseling, both when I was a drug addict and when I was coming out of it. So we've definitely figured out how to make our relationship a priority over the girls and let the girls know that we have a relationship separate from them. And I feel like we had such a low for years and years and years that we've been on an uphill climb as far as being close for since I've been sober for seven years. So that's definitely helped our marriage. I don't

think we'd be as close if I didn't have the drug problem. I'm sure you would not. And this is the advantage that people in recovery have. They have tools and insight. Everybody now needs to be in recovery from the culture. Yeah. Because the culture is driving parents crazy. And not everybody can build a yoga studio in their home, but everybody can do some version of that. Right. Talk to me about humor in the family, about private jokes. There's a term

in linguistics, it's familect. Yeah. And it means the private lexicon of a family, and each family has their own. Everybody who comes to see me, one of the first questions I ask them is their pet names for their children. And if they're really, really mad at their children or worried, for example, that their son has terrible character disorder on the road to being serial killer any minute, they say, nothing, none. I don't have any pet names. And I just sit there and wait. And they always do. So Daisy and Julie, what do you call them? So Daisy, we call Daysbug. And Julie, we call her the Dalai Lama for whatever reason. Do you really? Yeah. And Jules, she has a very peaceful energy about her. Okay, yeah.

Yeah. Daisy is much more like me, and Julie's much more serious. Being funny is important in our family. And I think that is a huge part to Eric. Everything is humor. Yeah, I don't really take anything too seriously. He doesn't take anything too seriously, which is actually very good for me. And I see that it is very good for our girls. I mean, after almost dying of a couple of drug

overdoses, it's like, is TikTok really that serious if we look at it for a night or any of this stuff? And I think I, in general, I get triggered by the over-parenting culture. I see these wives talking so intimately about these issues, like helicopter parents. And Elsie hates when her friends will be over and they'll be talking and I'll start going, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip, chip. In front of them? Like a helicopter. Yes.

Okay. So I don't like it. No, and this is the parallel where you say, what kind of idiot are you to allow this tiny little child to be on this slimy platform? Yeah. And then he comes around mocking the very devoted moms. So the part about humor that you're talking about that's really important is that comedy is tragedy plus time. Right.

And you know from tragedy, both of you do. So that's where you meet. And you have a very nice appreciation of the differences in your temperament and how you see that in your daughters. And for all of us, it gets complicated. A lot of us are introverted extroverts. And there's a wonderful book by Susan Cain called Quiet. Have you heard of this book? Yeah, I read part of that because I think I'm a, well, I was a securities attorney for 15 years. And I think I'm an introvert that was forced to be an extrovert for years. And I think that's kind of one of the reasons I got a drug problem

because I needed to get amped up to have an outgoing personality. And I read Quiet. And it's not talked about a lot, like this cultural thing where you want all the kids to have outgoing personalities because those are the ones who are successful.

And those are the ones who make it. And the ones who are introverted, well, they don't get as high esteemed jobs as people who might be extroverts. But our society focuses so much praise on extroverted kids that I think it makes some introverts feel like they need to be extroverts. And some parents of kids who are shy, slow to warm, enjoy their own company, feel like they're defective. Imagine a world where every single person was a gregarious leader. It would be obnoxious and intolerable. But that's what we expect from these kids. And the great paradox is the most important 21st century skill is not learning Mandarin or coding.

It is communication and the ability to talk to other people and to listen and to not think up the next thing you're going to say while you're listening. I think my intuitive parenting style is not the right way to parent. I think at first I want to parent on fear and creating children who can succeed in a world that's or be eaten. be like, no, I'm much better off raising kind kids who are nice to everybody and have good verbal communication skills. Like I logically make myself not focus on grades. You know, I always tell them, I'd rather have someone tell me that you were being kind and tell me you were being smart. You know, if a teacher tells me, Daisy was being kind, and sometimes she puts the students that are having a little bit harder time next to Daisy because she'll help her.

Oh, how wonderful. You know, that will make me feel better than anything. Although I do have this lingering, like, paranoia that I'm raising children who are not going to be able to survive in a world that's hard to survive in. I'm constantly putting that beast in me down. I'm a little bit, I guess, paranoid about just the world ending and that I have to survive. I've

got 20 years of military freeze-dried food in case there's a pandemic and food runs out. Turns out we're in a pandemic. You're not paranoid. You are correct. And this is the really tricky part. So in some ways, our desire for our children to be thickly armed with a layer of skills for anything that will come up is a reflex right now because the world is ending at some point. We're not quite sure when it will be. And so we displace all of our worries about the following things, climate change, aging, our health, the economy, no matter what people's status is. Freud calls this the narcissism of small differences. And the social comparison theory says wherever you are on the socioeconomic ladder, you worry that there are people above you and your children will not have the security they need. You said that that was your intuitive parenting style.

I think it's your brainwashed parenting style, Eric. I don't believe that's your intuitive style. Well, I mean, it's like my go-to, like the girls will do something that wasn't necessarily in their best interest, but maybe would be kind. And I would think, oh, maybe I should tell them like, no, you need to look out for yourself first. And then I have to kind of put that down. And that's part of the reason when I said that I let Elsie make a lot of the parenting decisions, Elsie's never been motivated by money or fear, and she sort of parents that way. So I generally will listen to her and not argue about most parenting things. One of the reasons, like, I think I would have even been worse if I would have had a boy been like, look, you got to

go out there and kill, man, because it is a hard world out there and you better, like, get all you can and be manipulative and figure out how to get into Stanford and be an investment banker. Look what happened to you. Exactly, which is miserable. It didn't go so well towards the end. So that's why I think I was kind of raised in- Success and money.

Were the goal. So you nailed it. I am brainwashed. For my own kids, I don't want to put my own brainwashing into them. And it takes some mental energy on my part to just be like, just raise kind kids. And one thing I thought about at some point was, if I look around all the people I know, there are a lot of smart people who are miserable, but there are very few kind people who are miserable. So if you can get to your kids being kind, I guess they're probably going to

have a more satisfied life, even if they're not as financially successful or whatnot. And really being okay if my daughters want to be teachers or something that's very important to society but doesn't necessarily make a ton of money, that's great. It's also thinking really far ahead. Right. Well, that's what the 20 years of food is for too. Yes, right, right.

Except we do sort of need it now. Right, right. Except we do sort of need it now. Nurture vs. Nurture will be right back. If you're having trouble meeting your goals or trouble sleeping or you're feeling stressed or depressed, BetterHelp is available. BetterHelp matches you with online licensed counselors who are trained to listen and give you perspective, confidence, and courage. With Better Help, you simply fill out a questionnaire to assess your needs and you'll be matched with a therapist. You can start communicating in under 48 hours and schedule weekly video or phone sessions. Better Help counselors have a range of expertise which may not be available in the area

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We had sugar, screens, screen time or screen content and schedule, bedtime. Yes. And it's also the stuff that you don't really love that I let Daisy watch or talk to her about. So Daisy and Eric have a beautiful friendship, relationship, right? I shouldn't say friendship, relationship. Tell me about Daisy and Eric's shared interests. It could be horror movies, could be something that doesn't seem entirely savory, wholesome, wonderful, and predicting a bright future for her.

What do they both love? They're the ones with similar temperaments, right? What do they both love? They're the ones with similar temperament, right? Yes, yes. They are both out-of-the-box thinkers, and they love that sort of conversation. Example, please. Daisy knows that she can go to her dad and ask him anything, and she is going to get a very full and honest answer. Is it too much to you, what he tells her?

Sometimes I think it's too much. I remember when I had the epiphany that I was going to tell her everything and get ahead of it, was she was in kindergarten, and I was driving her home, and she said, Dad, one of the boys in the class told me that my vagina is going to start bleeding everywhere. And so... What grade? This is going to start bleeding everywhere. And so this is kindergarten.

And so I'm like, well, start bleeding everywhere. And then she's going to bleed out to die. Right. So at that point, I remember I'm just going to get ahead of this. And she can hear all this stuff for me rather than some kids at the school. And, you know, ever since then, she comes to me. I mean, the other day, she said some boys were on the radio that she goes surfing with.

They were playing with the dial. And she's in fifth. And they kept laughing when it got to 69. And so- That's hilarious. She's like, what does 69 mean? So I explained exactly what 69 was. For the next one.

The getting ahead of it is a very good intention. Right. Because what you're trying to do is not let her get polluted with misinformation, distortion, scary things, humiliating things. The piece to plug into that is cognitive development and emotional development. And this concept of getting ahead of it, what parents wish to do is sort of get it over with all the truth at once about sex, about money, about drugs, about race, about every touchy topic, every sensitive and important topic. And the first step is to find out what they already know.

When it's distorted, then you correct it right at their level and say, not too much, but be the askable parent, which is what you are. Right. For Daisy, this may be both askable and some hot, juicy topics that she could pass right along. And then Elsie would be hearing about it. Did Eric tell Daisy? She's pretty good at being protective. One of Julie's friends was telling her about sex the other day. And Daisy said, Daddy, she's really too young to be hearing about sex. You need to talk to Julie's friend about it.

That's a really poignant and dignified moment. When the older sibling steps into a respectful and reasonable parenting mode, we want them to do that. They have so little that they feel they can contribute to the family other than how popular they are, how terrific their grades are, what a good athlete they are, and that they're going to get into Stanford. And ordinary stuff like watching out for the sex knowledge of her little sister is really something of a lot of dignity. Yes, she is protected. And would you agree that Daisy, we parent differently than Julie because Daisy seems to be okay and not get overstimulated out of control. Julie is more sensitive. Yeah, Julie is more sensitive. She is a lot more sensitive.

Which one of you reads to them? Do they like to be read to? Do you read to them? This is a good question. So Eric puts Daisy to bed, which is a whole topic I want to get into. And I typically put Julie to bed. And whenever I put Julie to bed, as long as it's not getting too late, we always read books together and we kind of take turns. And that's when we do our reading is before bedtime. That was always our routine with both the girls when they were young. We had like a

bedtime routine and it always involved books before bed, lullaby, sound machine, the whole thing. What was the thing after lullaby? It sounded like sandwiches and I know it wasn't. Sound machine, turning the sound machine on. Yeah. So as Daisy has gotten older, she loves her dad to put her to bed. Because as we were talking about that some of their

favorite pastimes together is to talk and for her to ask all the burning questions. She might have things that have come up or something she's curious about. I mean, she likes telling me about her social things that happened over the day. Yeah. She tells Eric everything, which I think is awesome. And I love that they have such a close relationship in that way. We're close too, but she definitely knows that she's going to get full everything from him. And she loves that. Because like I said, they're both outside of the box. She really wants to be stimulated and interested in a conversation. And she gets that with her dad. Okay, so I just want to check in one piece.

Eric, do you ever feel she amps up the drama of some of the social issues to be entertaining for you? Because it should get a little bit boring and you would want to cut it off at some point. Oh, I want to kill myself half the time. Oh, with the boredom? Okay, good. Oh, I'm so glad. I'm more bored with my kids than anybody. Everyone is bored with their kids. Yeah. And everyone hates them. Yeah. And we love and cherish them more than anything on the planet. They're very, very boring. Yeah. Yeah. And can be annoying. Okay. Yeah. So here's the problem with you suppressing the boredom too long. It's the opposite of the public relations firm.

It is the captivated but incarcerated audience member. Right, and then you're teaching them that other people are going to think that you're like— 100%. That's right. She's going to be that boring. Now, the wonderful thing about reality is that friends give you all the feedback you need. Right. And it overpowers what parents do.

But I would like you to consider cutting things off when they're getting dull. Do you ever do that? I love the face you're making right now. It's just like, maybe, but I don't think so. But really, this is so precious and she'll never be 11 again. Right. I've said a lot. And she loves her daddy so much.

She will use that. What does she say? She will say, because they have this very long drawn out bedtime situation. How long is it? And that was one of my questions about boundaries and structure. Yeah. Like, I'm okay half hour after, like, bedtime, but, like, hour, hour and a half? No.

Yeah. Okay. Really long. But you think this almost 11-year-old kid is going to go to bed at 7 o'clock. No, I do not think that. I do not. Her friend's going to bed at, like, 10. I don't think she will go to bed at 7.

In my mind, I want her in bed at 9. In a perfect world, again, for Daisy, I would love for her to be in bed at 9 o'clock. She can be reading a book. Okay, I'm interrupting you right here to introduce a scary topic. Borderline personality disorder. The reason I'm saying this is that people who have this condition, they feel their identity only in what we call enmeshment with other people. So one of our goals for Daisy, who does not have borderline personality disorder,

is to help her learn to keep good company with herself. That's my concern is she gets almost panicky at bedtime. She's got a fabulous, gorgeous drug here. She will leave notes in front of our bedroom. Daddy, come, please. Every single night, I will see a note in front of our door. What does it look like? What's it written in?

How big are the letters? Does it have little hearts? No, it's usually like scribbled out on a white piece of paper. How big? Highlighter. Like a eight and a half by 11. One color of highlighter? Yeah.

She doesn't take a lot of time to do it. It's just like, daddy, come please. She will set an alarm. And also going back to your point of having this special time between the two of us. For me, I want to get those girls in bed. And Daisy is now older. So it's later than it has been. So, you know, we don't have a lot of time at night after they're in bed.

And I would love to snuggle up and watch shows. And the bedtime situation with Eric and Daisy really impedes on that. She's the younger woman. Yeah. That's what she is. Yeah. She's the younger woman and she's doing a fabulous job of captivating the guy. And it's such a pickle for you.

It is because I love this beautiful relationship. Daughter and this great relationship with man. So you don't have to talk about this eric but i'm assuming that when you were growing up nobody did this for you the way you are doing it for daisy well yeah i mean it's a different world i was an only kid too so no definitely and as you guys are talking about it i'm feeling kind of stupid that i'm like being a little bit too accommodating yeah it's hard for him to say no to her. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your impulse is so good and so worthy.

And boy, she is learning all kinds of techniques that we wouldn't mind if they softened up a little bit and some of them might disappear. might disappear. So an only child is sometimes juggling both parents' issues in kind of an adult way, and you don't have a sibling to sort of mock the parents with and pass it by. What you're trying to provide for her is the land of the cushion of dad, and it has endlessness. It doesn't have boundaries. And the surprising part, and this feels abstract, so it's so hard for parents, the time you spend with each other, the amount of time, and I don't want to weigh too heavily on humor, but right now in a pandemic and, you know, that the pleasure and enjoyment and comfort and fun between the two of you is a direct nutrient for the children. It feeds them no matter how much sugar they eat, no matter how much screen time they have or how much TikTok they're watching, no matter how early or late Daisy goes to bed. This piece is the ballast.

This is what they stand on. This is how the ship, even when the sea gets rocky, feels safe. So by the time he crawls out of there, bored to death and ready to murder things, how do the two of you reconnect? And have you been pissy and it's growing, the frustration? I'm not pissy. It's been one of those things where I'm like, I don't know that this is the best. And I've been thinking too, like, this is getting longer and longer and longer.

I just want to point out how overly rational she is. So you know clearly that it's stretching out more and more. You know clearly that this is his better girlfriend. And you're thinking, what am I, chopped liver? Yeah. And I have tried. I told them both, I have this great idea. Bedtime has been stretched out so late. I think we need to- Okay. I'm going to stop you right here. I'm sorry to pick so much. No, that's okay. I have this great idea. It's very similar to

we need to have a conversation. I'd like to have a conversation about this. These are the openers that alienate your conversational partner. True, true, true. They don't care about your idea for its own sake. They may care about the content of it. Yeah. Well, I was just trying to broach the subject with Eric about how to get the Daisy bedtime situation under control. Okay, stop right here. Just trying to broach the subject with Eric. Yes, go ahead. Yeah.

So I had the suggestion that they could start earlier. But leaving it up to him to do it, it just didn't happen. I have to be the one that's driving the boundary. This is not moral. This is not deeply emotional. It's a habit that's just developing and she's outgrowing. So the part I want you to be prepared for is that Daisy may up her strategies, which is why I asked you what the notes look like. She may put a skull and crossbones on them now or pictures of herself holding daggers. Yeah. And she will up the allure of her pain and her need for time with her precious dad to metabolize the agony of her day.

And I'm not in any way saying not to be empathic with her. You listen to her. And these are the three words really hard for parents to say. I want you to say to her, hmm, tell me more instead of coming up with a solution or cutting it off. So this is not the way you would think it would work. Right. If you say, tell me more, it's very respectful, but it puts her back in a relationship with herself. Yeah.

Instead of outsourcing the pain to dad and the frustration to mom, and then making the relationship between the two of you slightly more fragile. Yeah, definitely. making the relationship between the two of you slightly more fragile. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Some parenting books, it'll say, look, you shouldn't be friends with your kids. And I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I definitely have thought, am I too good of friends with our older kid? Because maybe she's too comfortable and there's not as much of a parent-daughter relationship as there needs to be.

I mean, look, I am crazy. I mean, I'm bipolar too. I'm depressive. So I have a lot of high emotional energy in our relationship. And Elsie's totally normal, flatlined as far as like her emotions are always within a very narrow range.

These are stereotypes and lies about the two of you. You are not crazy. You're not. And you are not totally normal. And our goal right here is to help Daisy learn to keep herself emotional company. I'm afraid that Eric has become her human blankie. Right. Because she says she can't sleep without him.

She uses this. Oh, so do you stay until she falls asleep? Recently. Kind of, yes. Oh, it's a pandemic. And she's 11 and soon she'll be bleeding if she's not already. And what a hard phase of life. Are you in our house?

Yes. I didn't tell you we set it up with a wire. It's like a Wendy on the shelf. And she's very manipulative about it. I mean, just last night. We're not going to call it that. We're going to call it clever and strategic. She's very clever.

Because she's so smart. Right. I mean, her birthday is tomorrow and she's like. Happy birthday, Daisy. You know, Dad, you've only got one more night to sleep with me before I'm 11. And then by the time I'm 12, I'm not going to want to have anything to do with you. I mean, I'm going to have my own life and be social. I'm going to have my friends.

You're an attorney. That's what you are. Yeah, there it is. The little attorney. She is a little attorney. 100%. She's brilliant. Yeah.

She is. So you can admire that without taking it at face value. She's on the stand. She's the witness for the defense right now or the defense attorney. I'm like open to like that this is a problem and I kind of need to figure out how to resolve it. And here's the tricky part. You're going to be tempted to explain it to her and I don't want you to. Right.

So this is where we try to sell them the good emotional technique and theory. Now, Daisy, it will be so much better for you if you learn to fall asleep on your own. Right. And if you learn to have internal conversations about some of the social stuff. Right. And if you learn to have internal conversations about some of the social stuff, implying that you are still completely willing to lie down on the floor and let her do her emotional dance on your belly. Right. And just knowing it is going to guide you in where you want to go. It's just like I was bringing up with you, Elsie, the introductory remarks we make about what we want to say that just alienates and bores everybody else and dilutes

your message. How are you going to go about this? Well, I was talking to her about reading Harry Potter. So maybe I start that at 8.30 and maybe do it till 9.30 and just make sure I'm out of there at 9.30. Is 9.30 good enough? I don't know. I'm interested in you reading for one hour at night, every night at the end of your long pandemic day. Yeah. Well, I was actually thinking the book on tape, so I wouldn't have to actually read. So you'd both be lying there and listening? For an hour? For an hour.

It's probably not realistic, right? Maybe a half hour. But she's going to mess around for a while. What does the mess around look like? She'll want to do some sort of play that she's made up, and she wants to perform it. Eric, is it good? No. Never. form it. Eric, is it good? No, never. But I do tell her, look, you got to get your content better

when you're doing little plays because they're boring and then you don't want to be boring. So, and I tell her this in front of a lot of people, you know, you got to get your game up if people are going to watch your little plays. So she kind of uses me to test it out sometimes. One of the things she's doing is she's leading with her need and implying to both of you that she is so vulnerable, even in this package of extreme strength, unlike her wimpy sister, who is not wimpy but keeps herself company. Yeah. For you to start thinking about, be prepared. And it's so good that you're trained as an attorney because she's going to pull all the stops out. Right. And it will feel scary at first and then for both of you so much easier and more comfortable. And the metabolism, the energy between the two of you will rise because you won't be drained. I picture you crawling out of that room.

Or Elsie comes with a hook and pulls you out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time that something needs to change with that dynamic. Yeah. Or Elsie comes with a hook and pulls you out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time that something needs to change with that dynamic. Yeah, definitely. I need to at least get out of there. Maybe I shouldn't be falling asleep here every night. Yeah, he's been falling asleep in there.

I fall asleep there and then I move to our bed at like 12. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So that's your sleep drug. That's your medication, sober person. Right. Okay. So that's your sleep drug. That's your medication. Sober person is extreme boredom, but it's like you become anesthetized by this process and justify it by giving your poor suffering daughter everything she needs. And just as I said, not to have a big theoretical,

psychological, spiritual conversation with her beforehand, you can definitely let her know that this is the plan. And I could just say, look, mom and I need time together. I mean, it's ridiculous that we're not able to watch our shows. So I don't want to call it ridiculous because that puts the responsibility on her. I'm sure she's brilliant. We get seduced all the time by how articulate and sophisticated these kids are. Most of them are younger than their years. They're not emotionally as mature as any of us were, no matter how messed up at their age, because we had so much more independence. And so they're complicated packages.

They're really articulate. They can argue you out of anything. They're little attorneys. They're brilliant. And at the same time, there's a baby there. Right. So if you say to the baby, this is ridiculous. Mom and I need more time together.

What am I doing? You're asking her to solve your problem and also inviting her to think uh-oh are mom and dad gonna get divorced like they once almost did i mean she probably doesn't know anything about it but no she knows because he's told her yeah okay so we do not want to over share with them that ship has sailed yeah because he's an overshare with them. That ship has sailed. He's definitely overshared. He's an overshare. Okay, the ship is leaving the port every single day, Eric, every day. And every single parent has made one billion egregious, shocking, vile mistakes, and the kids mostly turn out perfectly fine.

It's real life. Right. mistakes, and the kids mostly turn out perfectly fine. It's real life. Right. So you don't have to explain to her except to say, here's the plan, and then expect her to do every single thing in her power to erode it. And this is a wonderful opportunity for you too, and that's how we started today entirely with boundaries and limits and structure. Kids love serendipity, excitement, adventure. They actually don't have nearly as much adventure as they need and they love structure and ritual and predictability. It's one of the problems with

pandemic that everything's pretty unpredictable. The more you can provide predictability and structure at home, they are not going to vote for it. They're not going to say, oh, thank you, Father. Thank you so much for enlightening me about this issue between you and Mom. I would never want to stand in the way, goodness gracious. So she's not going to say that, but you are going to stick with your plan. And the piece about reading to her is that instead of her downloading all of the social stuff to you, which at your age and your gender maybe is not the most fascinating subject matter in the world,

you can talk about the characters in the book. You can gossip like crazy, which you don't want to do about other adults, other parents or her friends. Or kids, right. Or kids, exactly. But characters in books, you get to teach your values. If she tells you a bad dream, you can go into the dream with her. Then what happened? Then what happened? And that monster ate you? And what did it look like? How big was it? This is more for Julie. It's a little bit young for Daisy, but it might fit.

And then you're with her in her unconscious, and you don't have to be physically present with her all the time. I really want you to think of it as a habit and a custom and not any sort of emotional damage at all. Yeah. Right. Nurture vs. Nurture will be right back. Nurture vs. Nurture will be right back. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment all in one place. At Audible, you can find the largest selection of audiobooks, ranging from bestsellers to literary classics to memoirs, parenting books, true crime, and podcasts. parenting books, true crime, and podcasts. During the pandemic quarantine, many of the parents I'm working with in my practice have told me their young children are soothed and entranced by

audiobooks, which is a welcome respite for the whole family from screens. As an Audible member, you will get one credit every month, good for any title and yours to keep forever in your Audible library. You will also get full access to the Plus catalog. It's filled with thousands and thousands of audiobooks, original entertainment, guided fitness and meditation, workouts, sleep tracks for better rest, and ad-free versions of your favorite shows and exclusive series. To start your Audible subscription, visit audible.com slash nurture or text nurture to 500 slash 500. Visit audible.com slash nurture, N-U-R-T-U-R-E, or textURE to 500-500. So, seven-year-olds. The series of books called Your One-Year-Old, Your Two-Year-Old, Your Three-Year-Old.

The seven-year-old book is called Life in a Minor Key. Very interested in death, very melancholy. It was written in 1985. It's relevant today, except the way they talk about how independent the seven-year-old should be and all the chores they should be doing around the house. But they understand that it's a stage of pulling into themselves. They're quieter. And you already have one that's a little bit quieter than her sister. Yeah. And 11-year-olds, this does not fit every child.

Depends on their temperament, their environment, their whole situation. They tend to be angry. They're angry at everybody. They're very expressive. They're very colorful in their language, their emotion, their moods. And so we're already inviting her to take all of her frustration and resentments and all the dark stuff and just dump it on dad. And she will get angry. She will get angry. Yeah.

She will have these bouts of getting really angry over something. And, you know, I'll just ride the wave with her. And she will then come back and apologize a lot of the time. She will have almost like a temper tantrum a little bit. But she does have some insight afterwards that she'll come back. How frequently does that happen? The temper tantrums or the- And the apology. It's like every other month.

Oh, not often. Maybe a little bit more often. Like what she did in the car the other day on the way home? No, I maybe see it more. Like one time a week, once every two weeks. What sort of thing triggers it? It's a lot. Her little sister will piss her off.

Or something related to her sister indirectly affects her. And she gets very angry about it. Angry at her sister. About her sister's privilege, her sister's clumsiness. Just like it affecting her. Like what you've done has affected me. I mean, she'll get really mad. Like say they'll make a mess together and I'll ask them to clean it up and she'll think she did more. And maybe she does does and she just gets really frustrated at her sister and she will do the little parenting thing she always is telling me well you need to make sure that she's responsible for her messes you know I remind I'm like thank you honey she only needs one mommy I appreciate your thoughts she's always trying to tell me what

I should be doing and I need to make sure she's responsible and you're doing this and she's going to be this. She's frustrated. What she's talking about is frustration. And she's so smart that she spins it into, if only you were a better mother, I wouldn't have to deal with this. But since you can't handle it, without sounding too shrinky, you can say, it sounds like it's frustrating, to just name the feeling and to give them the opportunity to figure out what to do. When she has a temper tantrum and then comes to you with an apology, what you can do is unpack it a little bit to see what triggered it and say to her, next time in that situation, how would you handle it?

Or what's your goal in that situation? What were you aiming for? Because what happened is the four-year-old or the three-year-old took over. And that's why she's apologizing because she knows it's babyish. But we want to give her the tool so that next time she can manage it and she won't need to end up with the bipolar style apology. Yeah, a lot of her frustration comes over Julie. And I'm always protective of the seven-year-old Julie. And then her rebuttal will be,

Daddy, you protect her too much. She's not going to be able to deal with life because she's going to not be able to deal with adversity because you protect her from so much. She says she won't be able to deal with adversity. Maybe I made up adversity. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah.

I keep saying manipulative, but she can be manipulative. Manipulative is being a kid. Right, right, right. There's a great word that you can use, which is nevertheless. Yeah, I like that. You can just say nevertheless. Because we really want them to fight. It's a wonderful opportunity for them to learn how to manage aggression.

Our kids in general are deprived of a lot of good danger. There's a child development specialist named Ellen Sandsetter. She does research on the antiphobic effects of thrilling experience. And she says that kids need to be exposed to sharp tools that they can cut themselves with, great heights where they could fall, bodies of water where they could drown, fire, traveling at great speed, wayfinding, finding their way on their own. Our kids almost never get to do that. And aggression. They need to learn to deal with aggression. So many of the times you can say to them,

I'm confident you guys are going to work this out on your own. And they will 100% disagree. So you can just say it to yourself. Yeah. And that is our time for today. Thank you so very much for coming in and talking with me. Thank you. It was a pleasure to meet you both.

Thank you so much. Okay. And good luck tonight. You don't need luck because you know what to do. Yeah. And it's a process. We don't want to be too goal-oriented, just the way we don't want to be too goal-oriented about just the way we don't want to be too goal-oriented

about whether Daisy's going to be a teacher or an astronaut. Right. They're going to be what they're going to be. That's right. Thank you so much. So same time next week. Just kidding. For sure. So that was Elsie and Eric, and what a privilege it was for me to spend time with people this candid, this sweet, and this warm. And for those of you who've never been to therapy, it's good to realize the privileged therapists feel to be trusted with intimacy and to be invited in to such an interesting realm. we would sit in the booth in a restaurant, all four of us, I have a sister, all four of us pressed against the back of the banquets and would not talk. So we could eavesdrop on the other people and then on the walk home from the restaurant, put it all together. So do you think that was a second marriage? And she was so sweet, but the mother was kind of...

So now I still get to do that. I'm really happy. Eric and Elsie. Here's something Eric said. I think the main reason I got irritated is we were with our pod and there were a couple of guys there and it was very emasculating. She was just like, no, she's not watching TikTok. That's it. And it made me think about a quote of Margaret Atwoods, the author of The Handmaid's Tale,

who said, men are afraid that women will laugh at them, and women are afraid that men will kill them. And a goal in our culture right now is to share the valuable input of each member of the team. And in the past, moms used to say to their kids, wait until your dad gets home. And that meant the father had authority and would punish the children. And now the dad gets home. the children, and now the dad gets home, and very often he feels a little bit in the way. What can I add to this group that they don't already have? How can I fit myself in? And again, this is not the least bit true of all families, but for more and more of the families I see, the father has a little bit of trouble figuring out how to place himself in the mix. So my countercultural perspective on this is treating both parents' perspective with calm curiosity and dignity. So here we have Eric lying down with his daughter until she falls asleep.

If you fill your day with acting towards the children like a concierge, a butler, the secret police, a life coach, and a sort of cheap publicist telling them how fabulous they are, you're going to be so tired that you won't have any energy left for your partner. It doesn't leave time for pleasurable adult interchange at the end of the day. adult interchange at the end of the day. And by that, I don't mean serious conversations. So we had Elsie talking about wanting to get something off her chest or having a serious conversation. Trying to do that at night when you're out of emotional fuel and you're tired. We all regress into belligerent babies or indignant martyrs. When you do want to have a serious conversation about differences of opinion, one way to do that is radically countercultural right now. It's listening. If you can postpone persuasion

until each of you can state your partner's point of view to their satisfaction, you have solved 95% of the conflict. Moving along, private jokes, the familect. This is a term from linguistics and it refers to the creative, playful language made up of pet names, inside jokes, slips of the tongue that become part of the family vernacular. Often they are words that come from a shared story. Every household and social group in the world have a familect. These words never make it into the dictionary. They are often inspired by cute words that come out of a child's mouth. The origin of the phrase pet names is Greek, and please excuse my ignorance about how to do a Greek accent, but it comes from hypochorizithi, which means to call a person by a pet name, which comes from chorizithi, which means to caress. Queen Elizabeth II was apparently nicknamed Gary by young Prince

William, who was unable to say granny yet, and the name stuck. So in a world ever more public, it's ever more special to keep some things private and personal. For every parent to freely use affectionate pet names for their children often and easily, but not in front of their friends. And think back to the pet names your parents called you, what a parent called you, what a grandparent called you. In our family group text, we will often just speak entirely in our family act. And it helps us right now, we're all living in different cities, and it helps us feel both our personal family history and united in the moment. So it's a powerful tool. And the Brazilian word cafuné, I'm probably pronouncing that improperly also,

is the act of tenderly running your fingers through the hair of someone you love or stroking their hair softly to make them feel safe, calm, and relaxed. Some extra cafune between Eric and Elsie can also help soothe the frustration they feel as they work so hard at doing parenting right. The kids end up getting so much time and tenderness, and the parents end up feeling just a little bit deprived. When we take family life too seriously, we find ourselves unbalanced, grumpy with each other, and playful with the kids. It's helpful to have a top-down perspective

on fun and affection and run our fingers through each other's hair. Thank you so very much for listening and what a pleasure it was for me to spend time with Eric and Elsie. Great session. Same time next week. We're so proud and honored to have Dr. Wendy on the network. Right now, we have a bonus episode up that you can go listen to. Go over and subscribe to the Nurture vs. Nurture feed

by searching Nurture vs. Nurture feed by searching Nurture vs. Nurture wherever you get your podcasts.