The Bossticks - Dr. Scott Cohen On Parenting, Childcare, Vaccines, & How To Combat Parental Anxiety & Depression

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

#305: On today's episode we are joined by Dr. Scott Cohen MD, FAAP. Dr. Cohen is a board certified pediatrician and the author of the bestselling parenting guide Eat, Sleep, Poop: A Common Sense Guide to Your Baby's First Year. Today Dr. Scott joins us to discuss parenting, childcare, vaccines, and how to combat parental anxiety and depression. Check out Dr. Cohen's Book HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) The episode is brought to you by AncestryHealth  Your inherited health risks don't have to stay unknown. Learn if you're at lower or higher risk for some commonly inherited conditions linked to breast cancer, colon cancer & heart disease, with AncestryHealth. Find out what your DNA says about genetic risk with AncestryHealth®. Head to Ancestry.com/SKINNY to get your AncestryHealth® kit today! This episode is brought to you by Feals Feals is a better way to feel better. Our premium CBD will keep your head clear and help you feel your best. CBD has been proven to greatly reduce anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. Feals has us feeling our best every day and it can help you too.Become a member today by going to Feals.com/skinny to get 50% off your first order with free shipping! This episode is brought to you by THRIVE MARKET. We use Thrive for our online grocery delivery on a weekly basis and we also now get our wine at Thrive! They provide the highest quality products and ingredients delivered straight to our door with unbeatable prices.  Be sure to grab our deal by going to to https://thrivemarket.com/skinny to select your preferred memberships package and start saving today! Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you alone for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

Most things, even serious things in kids, kids do really well and are treatable. Even really serious things like leukemia. is more treatable than ever before. And it's horrible to have any child with a serious diagnosis and watch them have to go through anything. But knowing in the back of my mind that kids are really resilient and we can do so much for them, it helps not to go to that bad place. Happy Election Day.

That clip was from our guest of the show today, Dr. Scott W. Cohen. He's a board certified pediatrician and the author of the best-selling parenting guide, Eat, Sleep, Poop, a common-sense guide to your baby's first year. His groundbreaking common sense-based parenting philosophy has helped thousands of parents learn stress-free techniques for raising healthy, happy children. He is an insane pediatrician. We are obsessed with him. He's Zaza's pediatrician.

We really get into this, into this episode. We are recording this on Monday night. It's going to be a hell of a week. We don't know which way all this is going to go. This has been a crazy year. And I just want to take the time to remind everybody no matter which way this goes, no matter who wins, no matter who's in office. We are all going to continue to get through this.

It's going to be okay. We're all going to be fine. Just got to keep persevering, keep pushing forward. I know that's not necessarily the message that everybody always wants to hear, but it's the message I think everybody should hear. And I think this episode is very timely, whether you have children or not. The future is about, you know, raising families and children and creating a better world for people that are going to live in it after we're all long and gone.

And I think that's always the context to go in and try to remember things. We're all human beings. We should all be coming together. I'll be helping each other. and I'm hoping that we go into 2021 with that energy. Dr. Scott Cohen has been selected as one of the best doctors in America in 2007 to 2019. And he was named one of Los Angeles Magazine's top doctors in 2018 and 2019. I personally love his energy.

We got to vet doctors and interview a bunch of doctors and he just really stood out to us. He's been on tons of national media outlets, including Good Morning America, the doctors, ABC News and Parents Magazine. He's charismatic. smart and very well spoken as you'll see. With that being said, I want to jump right into this show. It's a long one. Even if you don't have children, I do think it's relevant. With that, Dr. Scott Cohen, welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her show. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Zaza's pediatrician. You're more than Zaza's pediatrician, but to us, you're Zaza's pediatrician.

Give us a little intro on yourself. So my name is Dr. Scott Cohen, and I'm one of the co-founders of Beverly Hill's Pediatrics. I'm originally from the East Coast. I'd like to make fun of all the born and bred L.A. people. But originally from the East Coast, grew up in Maryland and came out to California to work at Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, had the privilege of working with some amazing doctors there for three years, met my original partner there, Dr. Best Raker, and then we opened up for those pediatrics about, gosh, it's almost been two decades. And it's just such a joy. I say, you know, if parents didn't show up in my office, I'd probably have the easiest job in the world. You know, then I get people like, you know, the two of you. And I have to do.

So give us, like, more of a background on how you grew up. Like, go way back, your childhood, everything. So I was born in Boston. So everybody thinks that I'm a bandwagon Boston person, but I'm a huge Boston fan. So when I grew up, the Patriots, the Celtics, the Red Sox, they were all horrible. Now they just happen to all be great. So people get really angry living in LA. It's really unfair, actually. I know, right? It's just, it's just really amazing. And then I grew up in Maryland outside Washington, D.C. My father worked for the Department of Education under the Carter administration. That's why we're living there. We used to put on all our school forms. We had to say he was a consultant. We actually think he's probably a spy, like a CIA or FBI agent of some

sort. Either that or he was having a fair when we were younger because every dinner he would leave, his beeper would ring and he would leave and go someplace. So probably secret agent, we'll go with that. And then, easier to take. Easier to go. Yeah. My mom is a realtor. We had a great, great upbringing. I had a younger brother and a younger sister were all three years apart. And it was like suburban Maryland. Potomac, Maryland, outside D.C., public school, sports, dance, theater, you know, something every day of the week, which was just awesome. Dinners together. Really, really awesome to have the family life together.

And then I went to Cornell in upstate New York for college. And that's actually where I met my wife, Aaron. She's an amazing orthodontist out here. She's a practice called Lux Orthodontics. But we met my senior year. I was three months from graduating. She was a young sophomore. her sorority best friend, big sister was a good friend of mine and introduced us.

We were pretty much inseparable after that. We ended up being long distance. Gosh, if she was here, she's going to correct me, but it was like seven or eight years. Oh, that's hard. It was horrible. And that was before, you have to remember, before video calls. And I hate talking on the phone, even though it seems like I do that for a living. We would talk every night on the phone or she would talk to me every night on the phone.

We did that. We were two years apart in our career. So I went down to University of Miami for medical school. It was tough living on South Beach across from the Delano Hotel for four years. And then she's the smart one. She went to Columbia for dental school. So we did New York City, Miami, great cities to do long distance from. And then I came out to Los Angeles to work at Children's Hospital, Los Angeles.

She was still in New York. So then we did New York City, L.A., another two great cities to do long distance from talking on the phone all the time. And then she had the opportunity to go to UCLA for a fellowship. They take like two people in the country. And she said, I'll come out. It wasn't even if I get in. She's like, I'll come out if, you know, what's going to happen with us? And she came out.

We lived together for a year. And then I got an ultimatum. I mean, I proposed to her. No, no ultimatum. Yeah, we've been together now. Gosh, how many years, 20, some years. You said something when we were in your office to me. You said, I asked, I think I asked you know you wanted to work with the baby and not the mom.

Yeah. And you told me something. Can you tell the audience that you said? Sure. You know, it's funny. When we go through medical school, you go through rotations of different special just to see what you like at your third and fourth year of medical school. And I always knew I wanted to work with babies. And I didn't know if I wanted to be an obstetrician and deliver them or I wanted

to be pediatrician and take care of them. And I did as many deliveries as I could and I really, really loved it. And it was just interesting because when the baby came out, somebody said, well, are you more interested in and not in a mean way, but are you more interested in what is going on with the baby or the mom? And I was always so interested in the baby. Of course, we cared about the mom too. But that was really interesting to me and how the baby grows and develops. And I feel personally the best doctors are teachers. And there's no bigger field of medicine that education plays such an important role. And I think I got that from my parents and my father again working for developing the Board of Education, Department of Education. But that teaching aspect, because think about

what we do in the office together, right? You come in with Zaza, but we spend like 30 minutes just talking. And we talk about what she's doing that's appropriate and what she's going to be doing until the next time I see you and what's safety things. And as a parent, that provides so much knowledge and so much reassurance. So when things happen, you can be like, oh, great, we knew that was going to happen, not, oh, my God, what are we going to do about it? And that's what I love so much about pediatrics is education. Think about how much we do with the exam. It's actually a very small part. It's a very important part.

But more of what we're doing is the education, the talking about the child. Yeah, because I mean, every time I see you, I mean, I leave. I'm like, okay, I feel a lot better because you go in here like, what the hell is going on? Lauren and I've never done this before. So I'm like, what the hell is going to happen here? But then I'm like, oh, okay, he talked about when this is going to happen or when we watch for this or this milestone or what this means. And I think like it makes parenting a lot easier because we're not sitting there constantly scared of like what's going on with the kid. It's all perspective, right? I mean, remember when Zaza was born, how you held her, right? It was like a porcelain doll. I'm sure you were afraid every possible movement. Should have seen me driving home from the hospital. Right? It's like, is the first time your wife is like, great. You're like actually driving slowly in L.A. traffic. But now, you know, you feel more comfortable. You can flip her around.

You can do things comfortably because you know you're not going to hurt her and it's safe. And that's the same thing with the perspective of being a parent. I thought as a first time parent, I would have the perspective, right? I take care of thousands of children. I've done this a million times with my own kid. Why would it be so different? But it is. You know, I say the first kid, you hold, fix, and stare, right?

You're like holding them. You're staring at them and you're trying to fix something. I remember with Aubrey, the phone ringing. And I was like, somebody get the phone. And I'm like, wait, I could have just put her down and gotten the phone, which is what you do with your second and third. You don't even know where you put them. They're back in the corner somewhere.

And you're like, yeah, you're good. Yeah, you're hungry. We'll get you. But it's all about perspective. If we could have the second child's perspective on the first, life would be much easier. But even the specialists can't have that. Who's more micromanaging in your relationship? Your wife or you about the kids?

Because Michael's more than me. Oh, my wife. I'm very laid back. I mean, you know my personality. She probably thinks I'm too laid back with the kids. My wife is also, I mean, orthodontics is a microcosm for her life, keeping things straight, teeth straight. She keeps things straight. She is A plus personality, which is amazing because I need somebody to keep me straight. I mean, I would be a disaster if not for her. But she is. One example was Lexi is our second. She was probably about four years old. And you guys know what croup is. Yeah. Krupp is, you know, the virus. Like, scariest can be. Always. happens at like three in the morning, of course, which means I'm getting that call in three in the morning. I love it. So it was like, I got home from work, and Lexi's on the couch, and she's sitting there. She's like, and my wife's like, that's croup, right?

And I'm like, uh-huh. She's like, what do you want to do about it? I'm like, no, I mean, she's watching TV. She seems comfortable. She's fine. She goes, what would you do if it was your patient? I'm like, oh, I'd put her in a steam shower, take her on the cold air and give her a dose a decadron.

She's like, then why don't you eff and get up and go to the pharmacy and get the medicine? And so it was like, you know, this is the perfect example of what I do and what I say two totally different things. That's an interesting dynamic. What do you think the reason for that is? Is it like you're wanting to get away from work when you're at home with your own kids? Or is because you're doing it so often? No, I think it's, I just, and what we try to impart on parents is what to worry about

and what not to worry about. And I don't feel like I'm laid back in a negligent way. I just, I wasn't worried. You just know how serious. A million times and nothing's going to happen. And if she gets into stress, yeah, we'll move to the next step. We didn't have to do it that second. But, I mean, there's a million instances where we're just like, I mean, I love your podcast,

the him and her, because I feel like that's me and my wife. And we fight over things, especially when it comes to the mouth. Aubrey, I think it was Aubrey, was running down the hall one day. We were living in the Hollywood Hills, like all hardwood and like stone, right? And we hair, boom, like flat on her face. So my wife runs over. All she's worried about is one thing, like, what happened to the teeth? So I'm like looking at her doing like the typical is your head.

Okay, whatever. She's like, no, no, no, let me look. That's the teeth. I'm like, no, let me look. That's the head. So we're literally fighting over body parts. Meanwhile, she's totally fine, you know. I'm dreading that moment because I know what, you know, I was telling you on the

hall that like she's starting to move around a lot here. And I'm like, oh, I thought I had a grip on this. And now she's moving and she's mobile and she's going different places. And I'm like, oh, shit. Like I'm scared for those moments. Safety proof. I really think you're such an amazing pediatrician. If someone is looking for a pediatrician out there, what's the pediatrician checklist that you would recommend?

So that's interesting. So I think that philosophy, overall philosophy is so important. So when we meet with, you know, pediatrics is a very interesting field. It may be one of the few or only fields of medicine that patients interview you before they go, right? Usually you just go see your doctor and if you don't like them, maybe you don't see them again. But this is a relationship I have with families for 18 to 21 years, one of the longest relationships. So when we meet with families, you know, I like, I want to impart on them that it's important that we have similar overall medical philosophies with things so that we can spend the time enjoying each other and the child in the exam room and we're not fighting over fundamental differences. Do you vaccinate or do you want to give medicine? Do you not want to give medicine?

And there has to be some level of trust there as well. If you're coming to me as your specialist, I would hope you would trust my opinion on those things. And I think that's so important. And personality makes a big difference. Again, you're sitting in a room with me for long periods of time for years and years, and you have to have sort of that feeling of, you know, I get along with this person as well and that you're getting the best medical care. So I think obviously a good medical degree and being board certified is important.

It means you took extra testing in the specialty of pediatrics. I think availability is really important as new parents. You know, when do all things happen? It happens in the middle of the night or after hours. and everything that happens for the first time, I get this question all the time. Well, you know, we always say, oh, we'll call us if it's emergency. Well, what's an emergency? Everything that happens to a first parent the first time is an emergency.

You know, to me, I know, 99% of things that happen are never an emergency, but the first time it happens, it is. So you want to have the ability to obviously communicate with your doctor. You know, I feel like our practices is, we're fortunate. We have the square footage in space. We have two entrances, you know, a six-size. and a well side so we can, you know, keep the sick kids away from sick kids and the well kids away from the other sick kids, which has been so important during COVID as well. In-house laboratory has been really great. So we get tests back. I'm somebody I really like information.

And I think it's important for parents to have that information and we're not waiting and finding out lab results at 11 o'clock at night because then what do you do with it? So I think these things are really important. But I think that connection you have, just like when you walk in anywhere, preschool or anywhere else, you know if they're your people or not, you know, and you're going to get it along with them and you have similar, similar viewpoints. And I think that's really important. It's 2020 and getting your groceries delivered to your door makes all the difference. I'm telling you one of the things that I spend my money on is saving time. I am all about saving time. It is my number one priority. And when it comes to going to the grocery store, especially right now,

I just prefer my groceries delivered to my door, which is why for the past two years, I've been using Thrive Market. Some of my favorites that I've been getting lately are healthy fats. So I'm doing a lot of avocado oil. They have this pure, delicious avocado oil. I do a vegan mayo. They also have regular if you're not vegan. And then they have an MCT oil. So those three things are amazing, healthy fats. And then another thing that I had to tell you guys, and when I was making it, I was like, oh my God, I got to talk about this on the podcast was they have this sweet and spicy barbecue sauce. and it's pure and it's good ingredients. And what I did is I took a cauliflower pizza

and I made a chicken barbecue pizza. It was so good. I did the barbecue sauce. I did some tomatoes, some basil, a couple of red onions and then some chicken on top. And Michael loved it. So when you're shopping on Thrive,

definitely check those four things out. Just to give you a recap too, you can shop by category, convenience features, brands, and general functionality. Everything's very streamlined for you. And they basically are the middleman

and do all the work for you. So you're not in the grocery store looking at all the ingredients, having to figure out what's the best. You should also know that they have the highest quality and healthy, sustainable products. So tons of wholesome food, home and beauty products curated just for members. All you have to do is go to thrive market.com slash skinny

and give Thrive Market a try. You can choose the membership model that best fits your lifestyle. They have a one month and a 12-month membership option. Choose a free gift up to $22 value when you join. today telling you you guys are going to love it go to thrive market.com slash skinny. Speaking to COVID and this is a perfect segue real quick and we won't spend too much time about it, I promise. But I get a flack on the show all the time where I feel right and say, this guy is not a doctor. I know I'm not a doctor. But now I have a doctor and I want to talk

just when it pertains to children, young children and COVID because you've made us feel obviously very comfortable with Zaz and not having to worry. Obviously everyone's worried about COVID. But at least when it comes to her, we have not been worried. And that's in very large in part because of the conversations we've had. So maybe like sharing a little bit of data from a doctor, everybody, on how children are affected, if at all, and what to look for. So we've been very fortunate. I feel very fortunate as a parent, as a pediatrician, that the pediatric population has not been as severely affected as the adult population, especially the older adult population. The people that are most significantly affected are obviously over the age of 65 with

comorbidities, whether it's diabetes, heart disease, obesity, things like that. It doesn't mean it can't be severe in kids, and it doesn't mean that kids can't spread the illness. It's just, statistically speaking, over the last six months, it's happened a lot less so. And complications from COVID, especially in younger children, have been a lot less as well. And thank God, I mean, if we had to worry about the kids as much as we did the rest of our parents and grandparents, I don't think anybody would ever be able to leave their house ever. No, I think people would be they've got insane. You know, it's just so scary.

And it's a weird thing, and I feel weird every time I say it. But most illnesses affect the youngest, the most and the oldest. And in COVID so far, the youngest have actually done statistically the best as far as serious complications. Have they figured out why that is? So, I mean, there's a lot of hypotheses. One may be the actual binding of the COVID to the cell, that it's just less likely to happen and be. in children. The other is that COVID is a type of coronavirus, and it may be that children, because they get sick a lot, have seen a similar virus, maybe not the exact same. So you've gained some

type of immunity. And there's a lot of talks about T cells. T cells give you long-term immunity. So there may be some T-cell immunity. And that may be another reason why even some adults, even older adults, do better than others, because maybe they do have some T-cell immunity. So those are some other reasons. But, you know, I feel very fortunate and lucky that this is been going on. But still, despite that, we need to take all the precautions necessary to help prevent anybody from getting it, including kids, because if they do get it, yes, it could be serious. So wearing masks and social distancing over six feet and constantly washing our hands. And, you know, it's all about mitigating risks because short of never leaving our house, everything has risks,

right? So, you know, masks are better than no masks. Being outside is better than inside. Small groups are better than large groups, washing your hands better than not. So, These are common sense things that seem so obvious. Right. And it should always be that way. It's just people need to do a better job of following that. What are some common things that you see in your practice? What are people bringing their kids in for?

Kroop, you mentioned. Are there anything that you keep seeing over and over? And are there any ways to combat or prevent that? So currently or always? Could be both. Yeah. So, I mean, outside of like the regular checkups. Just like any things you see.

Maybe there's something like that you just people don't think about. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, colds are probably the most common, especially when kids are school. I mean, kids are cesspools. They pass everything. They're all touching the same thing and putting the same things in their mouth. I live with two of them. So, you know, a lot of just different viruses that caught colds.

Thankfully, again, most of these end up being totally benign and kids get over. Yes, it's not fun to have fever for a couple days and cough and congestion and or vomiting or diarrhea, any of these things. It's not fun. But kids are really resilient and they get over most of these things without secondary complications. or problems. Krupp is just a type of virus. Well, there's many viruses that causes croup that gives that specific sound because it causes inflammation in the upper airway. A lot of ear infections, obviously, a lot of rashes. So we have viruses that cause rashes. One you've probably heard of commonly is roziola, where you get fever for anywhere from one to three days. You may or may

not have other symptoms, fever breaks, and then 12 to 24 hours later red bumpy rash all over your body. So scary because of the high fever, but then the rash comes in actually makes you feel better that things are getting better. Lots of diaper rashes, you know, Azaza and like atopic dermatitis or eczema type rash. So we see a lot of skin issues in kids. But that's sort of the bread and butter, the coughs, the colds, the rashes. And thankfully, the kids end up doing okay. Why are there so many allergies? Why is, like, she's thinking exactly saying it's something. Yeah, what's going on with all these allergies? Has there always been this many allergies? I saw a video of a guy today that got kicked off a plane for having eating peanuts on the plane.

They kicked off. What do you mean? I always eat the fucking Southwest peanuts. You can't eat peanuts or not? They're pretzels now. They don't serve them anymore. Where have you been? Where have you been? Well, the last six months you haven't been anywhere. Wow.

That's right. Yeah, but they took them off the plane. No more peanuts. This guy got literally thrown off the plane because of peanuts. I love Southwest peanuts. There's nothing better. They're done. They're done.

Okay. Okay. So food allergies is really, really interesting. So you're right. When we were kids, people didn't, your friends didn't have allergies. You didn't have to worry about bringing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school. And now, unfortunately, you can't go to a lot of schools because of severe or peanut allergies that cause so many issues.

we actually found out we caused that problem because we didn't sensitize kids to foods early on. So what we were saying is, oh, don't give eggs till this age, don't give fish to this age, don't give peanut products to their three years old. And by not sensitizing them, we increased their risk of allergies. And these great studies came out. One was originally out of Israel, which compared children in Israel to children in the UK. And basically, kids in the UK followed U.S. recommendations of not giving peanut products until about three years of age.

And then in Israel, they would give it in the form of bomba, if you've ever heard of that. It's like a peanut puff. And they were giving it, like, as a finger food around 8 to 10 months. Their kids had 10 times less allergies. They eat 10 times more peanut products. And they got it two years earlier. So we're like, whoops, we did that all wrong. And there have been many studies since then and have shown this.

So now what we do, and we talked about this with Zaza, between four and six months, is anything you're eating from day one that you can make non-choking, she can eat. So I sort of joke, you know, if you wanted to put in a blender, you know, eggs, shellfish, peanut butter, yogurt, citrus, and give it to her. From an allergy standpoint, not a problem. But no honey. No honey till a year. That's right.

No honey till a year because of something called botulism, not allergies, not common at all. But we wait on honey. But anything else you can make non-choking. And we've actually shown that early introduction of a wide variety of foods, especially the allergenic foods, decreases allergies later and creates a better eater. Because think about it. When your parents gave you food, they gave you whatever they were eating, spices included. They just grind it all up and give it to you.

Quick little break to talk about something a lot of people are struggling with, and that is anxiety. Okay, so CBD is known to greatly reduce anxiety, pain, and sleeplessness. Michael and I have been huge CBD fans for forever. It's something we do every single night. I cannot say enough amazing things about it. Now, I want to introduce you to Feels. First of all, Feels is a hassle-free membership program

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didn't realize that I'm doing that I just realized. I haven't been giving her almond butter and peanut butter because I'm scared. Yeah. So I mean, okay, and I eat it every. single day. You should do it. Absolutely. What happens? So like what happens? Even eggs. If we, yes. Absolutely. There's a lot of parents, listen. If you give them, if you give them something, they start to have an allergic reaction at like, let's say, four to, or maybe six to nine months or whatever. Like, what happens then? What do you do? So you give them Benadryl. So you should always, whenever you're introducing food, you just have children's Benadry at home and you dose it by their weight. And if there's any signs of an allergic reaction and, you know,

signs could be anything from hives, which are big, blotchy red spots. It could be violent vomiting. Or in various. I can't do vomiting. No, no. But she's. But she's. She's not going to have an allergy. Okay. Because she tolerates it. She tolerates it. And then, you know, severe reactions would be swelling or breathing. Swelling or breathing, 9-1-1, right?

We're going right to get help. But even hives or vomiting, you're going to give Benadryl, and that's going to blunt the internal allergic reaction. Even in signs of anaphylaxis where kids are having really severe allergic reactions, and they're quick and they can happen quick, usually even with Benadryl and getting the emergency room, we have a little bit of time. It's a serious emergency. see, but thankfully, most kids don't have allergies.

So if first-degree relatives, the two of you don't have allergies, we want to introduce those things and eat them when you eat them so that we're decreasing your chance of having it later. Scramble eggs and skippies on the dinner menu tonight, Saza. Do you recommend that parents have like an EpiPen or no? No. So if I have a family with a first-degree relative, so parents who have true anaphylaxis will often get the child tested for that.

So if you said, oh, I would stop breathing if I had peanut butter, I may consider getting or tested because if she's negative, that would be a reason to introduce it to her to decrease her risk later on. But in general, if families don't have allergies, the child's most likely not going to have it. Benadra will help blunt it. We want to introduce it if we can. Epipens also expire. You're more likely to have it expire than not, then use it. And of course, if there's any concern, we'll give it to a patient. But typically, we wouldn't want to, we wouldn't give it to every single patient starting solid foods because just the chances are unlikely. Why do you see so many patients be so scared of vaccines?

So I think that, you know, it's gotten better. It got better in Los Angeles, especially for a couple of reasons. You know, we had the measles outbreak in Disneyland, which was a big deal. And then, you know, in California now, you can't go to private or public school if you're not fully vaccinated. So that's what it helps the pediatrician cause. But listen, it's scary to give your child anything. And I would, you know, what I always tell patients, I would never do.

do anything to their child that I wouldn't do to my own. I would never ask of them anything. I wouldn't ask of myself or my wife or my children. I think the three biggest reasons people had fears of vaccines, the things that you hear coming up is one, certain preservatives in vaccines. They call them, you know, they said mercury, but it's thimerosol, which was a mercury derivative, could cause problems. And number two, was there a correlation with certain vaccines like the MMR vaccine and autism? And the third is we're putting so much in a tiny baby system that are we overloading their system? And thankfully, all these things have been disproven many, many, many times over in many, many countries. But just briefly, the idea of overloading the

system is not really quite the truth, actually. When you're giving a vaccine, you're basically giving a foreign substance called an antigen, so your body produces antibody. So if you see that foreign substance, again, you know how to respond. You're actually boosting their immunity. You're not decreasing their immunity. And when we give vaccines, whether we give you one vaccine, or we give you three vaccines, your immune response is going to be the same. And actually, the main thing I find that changes is your side effect profile. When you separate out vaccines, you increase their chance of having side effects. Because most commonly, if we give it most likely, nothing happens.

She cries, you feed her, she's fine. But some babies get a little fever, fuzziness, or a little redness at the injection site. Those are the most common things. But that can happen after every individual shot. So giving three doesn't increase that reaction, separating them out. now we could have it three more times. And as a parent, why do you want to watch your child get shots three separate times? I mean, I didn't want to watch my daughter get shots that many times. So we're not really overloading the system. The reason we start at the age we do around two months

is that we want to vaccinate them as early as possible because the younger you are typically the more severe the infection and get the appropriate immune response. And you get that appropriate immune response anytime after six weeks of age. So that's why we do it at two months of age. The correlation of, you know, certain vaccines in autism, obviously this has been debated a lot, and you feel for families that have any child with developmental delay or autism, of course. Thankfully, we haven't seen a correlation between that vaccine. And it was, there's a temporal relationship initially that we give the MMR at a year, and then we diagnose autism because of some of the receptive language skills that they lack around 18 months. So we said, okay, well, wait a second,

if we give this vaccine and then we see this, maybe they're related, right? But then you have to prove that. And thankfully, with lots of studies, there hasn't been a cause and effect causal relationship with that. So there's obviously like a sensitive subject that I obviously, you know, and Lauren, one of the biggest things we say on the show is like we don't ever get involved with telling people how to parent. But when for people that are against vaccinations, like, what are they, what are the main things they're citing as the reasons why they're getting? I think you highlighted a few of them. And like, what are the sources that they're citing to back them up? And And again, like, this is just me being, like, completely uneducated to this space, like, but also

trying to, like, share both sides. No, I think there's a lot of just internet information, and it's really hard to weed through it. I mean, I see information and read stuff on the internet and in books and say, well, is that real? Did I just not learn that? And you really have to do a deep dive. I mean, we're seeing this with everything from medicine to politics right now.

Sure. You have to look at sources. You have to look at, you know, agendas and all these things. And also it's sort of our personal group, our friends and who we equate with. So if you have friends who believe that this is what happened when their child got vaccines and it was really, really bad, then you're more likely to believe that no matter what the science tells you. And that's a really hard thing.

When you have a strong belief, whether it's politics or religion or medicine, if you believe it, it's really hard to change somebody's viewpoint throwing as much science as you want. There was actually a study on this with vaccines that people who truly didn't believe in vaccines, the more information scientific data you gave them actually made people dig in harder and not want to do it more. But I'll tell you, working at a place like Children's Hospital, Los Angeles, where you see, you know, the rarest of the rare and the sickest of the sick children, and you see things that could have prevented, that could have been prevented by vaccines being a parent and a pediatrician. I wouldn't feel like I was being your child's advocate unless I protected him with that.

I need an example. Can you give us an example, like a story of something that you saw at Children's Hospital where you just couldn't believe what was going on? Well, I mean, you know, there have been cases of measles. And measles can be very serious. It could just be fever and rash, but it can cause things like meningitis and even death. And pertussis, which we sort of take for granted, whooping cough, and we get the whooping cough vaccines. you know, there would be floors of kids with whooping cough. Most of them under two months, so they were getting it because they couldn't get the vaccine yet.

But then older kids getting it because they weren't vaccinated. And it causes severe labored breathing. And you can not breathe. So, I mean, these are really, really sad and scary things to sit down with families and watch, and especially if it was preventable. And that's what's so nice about pediatrics. We can prevent so many of the serious things from happening. And look, if it's against your belief or you don't want it, you know, I get it.

I just feel it's so important. Speaking of kids, children and how we take care of our children, let's talk about ancestry health. We have been talking about these guys for a while now. And what a timely partner, because this is very much in line with a lot of things we're discussing on this episode. Okay, so what is ancestry health? Well, ancestry DNA tests can tell you exactly where your ancestors are from, which is so cool. They have billions of records and millions of family trees to live.

let you discover their unique stories. So what Michael and I did was this. They sent us our kit and then we were able to spit in this little tube. You spit, spit, spit, spit. And then they gather your spit, you bottle it up and then you send it back in the mail. And then you get all your test records. It's so efficient, so amazing. But most importantly, I feel like this is such a fun gift to give people for the holidays. You know, I never put much thought into any of this stuff until I started getting a little bit older and started doing these yearly physicals and starting to think about, okay, well, you know, if our ancestors have these sicknesses that we could potentially avoid or diseases that we could potentially avoid, why would we not? And now that we have a young child, I definitely want to

make sure that we know everything that she's potentially predisposed to. And so doing this thing, it's so easy, it's efficient, gives you peace of mind. 99% of the time when things go wrong in the medical field is because they go undiagnosed. So knowing what to look for ahead of time is super important. And boy, oh boy, do we have a deal for you. Don't miss special holiday pricing on truly meaningful gifts during the holiday sale at Ancestry. Head to our URL at Ancestry.com slash Skinny to get your ancestry gift today. That's Ancestry.com slash Skinny. Such a good holiday gift, guys. Again, as somebody who's not super educated on this subject and wanting to just understand a little bit more, like, when did the conversation start around anti-vaccing?

And what was the reason that that movement started? Like, and was it something that happened that people started looking at was it's some data that came out like what started this conversation between vax or not backs it's that's a that's a tough one i don't know exactly i think it was perpetuated i think there are some pediatricians that perpetuate the anti-vaccine belief which i think is unfortunate and i think it gained a i think some high profile people also as well so i think but there's certain things that they're citing to like there's pediatricians that i think it's just chemicals in your body, I think is the biggest thing. We're putting chemicals in a small baby. Do we really need to put chemicals? And it sort of goes on for there. And I think sometimes the people with the biggest

voices sometimes can do a lot of harm by putting those beliefs out there when there could be a lot of good. But you know, you get it. You understand different people of different beliefs. You just hope that we're doing the best for everybody. Being a pediatrician to me seems like almost similar to being a vet. And I'll tell you how. If I was a vet, I would have a vet. extreme anxiety about seeing hurt animals. Yeah. And as a pediatrician, I would have extreme anxiety about seeing a hurt baby. When you see something that's horrific happening to a three-month-old, is there a practice that you go through in your mind to calm yourself down so you're working from your logical side of your brain as opposed to your emotional? Right. No, it's a good point.

And especially being a father seeing that, I think things touched me a little closer to home because you put your own child in that place. Ever since I became a father, I'm way more emotional about stuff like, I don't know like, you know, I don't know what happened. It's just like something happened. So fortunately, like we talked about that most things, even serious things in kids, kids do really well and are treatable, even really serious things like leukemia now is more treatable than ever before. And it's horrible to have any child with a serious diagnosis and watch them have to go through anything. But knowing in the back of my mind that kids are really resilient and we can do so much for them, it helps not to go to that bad place.

a personal story. I, with my kids, as you know, I'm pretty laid back with them. I really never go to a bad place even when they're sick. When my wife was pregnant, I didn't worry about anything. And I think as a physician, you can go one of two ways, right? You know so much so you could run every bad thing through your head, what if, what if, what if? And I don't know how you would get through the day. Or you could be like, no, everything's going to be okay. And we'll take it as it comes. So Lexi was probably about three. She went to ballet class, baby ballet, and she had had fever all week, and then she didn't have fever for a day or two and felt really good that Saturday morning, and we took her to ballet. And she did the class fine, and then we're walking the car, and she started the limp. And she said, Daddy, my leg.

And she started the limp and fell to the ground. Couldn't walk, wanted me to carry her. So I was like, okay, and maybe she did something in ballet class. So we picked her up. We put her in the car seat. and as we were buckling her up, my wife goes, what's that rash? And she had purpura, which is like purple bruising all down her legs and on her chest and on her belly. So as a doctor, there's really two things that cause that, fever, limp, and purpura. So cancer. Or something called head

axolina purpora, which is the type of asculitis, which has a lot of things going on with it, but it resolves on its own and tends to be okay. So it was the first time that I was inside losing it. And my wife, she said, looked at me and she goes, what are you thinking? And I'm like, nothing. Everything's fine. We'll go. Let's just go to my office right now. And she goes, look at me, don't lie to me. What are you thinking? And she read me like a book. And so I told her, and it can be differentiated very simply with a blood test, the CBC. If your white blood cell count and all your lines, your hemogloomy hematocopulitis are normal, it's probably, They had extra lyrin proprera, and if they're down, then cancer.

So I called my nurse. I didn't want to go to the emergency room. I didn't want to wait. We had the machine in our office. I called my nurse. I said, I'm sorry. I don't know what you're doing. Can I just pick you up?

I don't want to poke my own daughter. And we took her there. And it was like the worst five minutes of my life waiting for that result. And thankfully, it was fine. And it was this other thing. But as a parent, like, you get it. I mean, these things, when these happen, you feel for all the family. that have to go through anything.

And as a pediatrician, I actually think it makes you a better doctor to witness these things so that you sort of get the idea that things aren't always so rosy. When you witness these gnarly things at work or when you were at Children's Hospital and you saw all these things, how do you come home and I'm sure you could ask this all the time? Just disconnect. Can you? Yeah. I think it would be different now.

I have to be honest. When I was at Children's, I was single, dating my wife. No kids. And I didn't have that perspective. So I was doing my job. I was treating kids and sitting with families, but I didn't have that underlying thought process. Like when you were just telling me that story about your daughter and I knew you were going to at the end say it ended up being okay, obviously, because I know you. But I was viscerally stressed.

Yeah. But I always wondered and I've asked doctors that I know who went through residency training who were pregnant, who had little babies at home. and I'm amazed by them how they could go through the daily things that they saw and they did and then go home to a baby and not think, well, what happens if this happened? Which is just, it is really interesting. But you find a way you have to decompartmentalize it, you know, or compromise. What are some things that you do that have nothing to do with work that make, like, do you run? Do you take cold showers?

What are those little things that you do that really help you? Well, this is interesting too because Lauren's, like if I'll be kind of stress case and things. Lauren has, you know, she always says exactly, she said like decompartmentalize. Yeah. Figure a way to like separate. And it's like, so it's interesting to hear how people do that. Yeah, let's just put it this way. He woke me up at 5 a.m. because we're jet lag today. And he goes, so what do you want to interview Dr. Cohen about today? And I looked at him and I'm like, you're not asking me about work. The first fucking second I opened my eyes. You've got to be kidding me. That's a minor example too. Or like going to bed with him. And you know, I was looking at QuickBooks

today. And I literally have a butcher knife next to my bed. He does not know how to compartmental So we would love to know your tips and tricks. No, I mean, I love, I grew up playing every sport. So I love sports. Now it's hard, but we've been able to play, you know, a little golf and tennis. I live vicariously through my girls. I have to be honest. So everything that they love doing, my oldest loves playing soccer.

So watching her games on weekends is like the thing I look forward to. You know when you wake up on a Monday and you're like, you're just waiting for Friday because there's just something to look forward to? Like, that's how I feel with whether I have a date. night. Before COVID, my wife and I made it a point every Friday night, we would do a date night together. And it was crazy because all week, that's what I looked forward to. What's your favorite restaurant that you guys would go to? We love restaurants. Oh, my God. We, no, we just go, I don't know. We go everywhere. We love sushi. Okay. I love sushi. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And then my little one,

Lexi is an amazing violist and Aubrey also plays the violin. And so I just, I love watching them and doing those things. And the date nights, you know, you have to keep it, you know, in your marriage. You've got to keep it fresh, right? So I love dating my wife. And I, it's just, that's the best part, like looking forward to those things outside of work. Because you know, you can just get in the grind like you guys did at five in the morning where every day you're waking up and you're just doing the same thing over and over and over again. And I love what I do and I wouldn't choose anything else. But I also love other things too. Like writing the book was so much fun for me. I was an English major at Cornell. And it was something I always wanted to do. So those things outside.

side make me really happy having other projects too. Why are people so fucking judgmental about breastfeeding? I know, right? You know, because listen, we know breastfeeding is the best, but I wish that people would just say what's best for mom is also really, really important. And if we can breastfeed, that's great. We should try to do that for all the benefits. And you won't find a pediatrician who doesn't say breastfeeding has advantages over other things.

But, you know, I'm sure I told you this. whether you breastfeed for a day, a week, a month, or a year, if you choose, this is a miserable process for you or the baby's not gaining good weight or something like that, you know what, baby's going to be okay. And you're going to be okay too. I feel like this happens with a lot of things in all of medicine, especially in parenting, maybe more than anything else. Everybody has their opinions and wants to impose it on everybody else, right?

And really what we should look at is, yeah, this is just one way of doing it. And if you choose to do it, great. But there's also a lot of right ways to do it. I mean, I hope I even do that as a pediatrician that I don't say to you, this is what needs to be done, gospel, have a good day if you don't do it. But it's, look, this is my opinion. I think this is important. And it's one way of doing it.

But if you have other ways you'd like to discuss, let's discuss them. But then I'll also tell you when there aren't other ways because those ways are just straight out dangerous. But most of the time, they're not. There's just lots of different right ways. And that's what we should be talking about. It would make everybody's life so much easier. I joke on this show because, like, I mean, again, new parents.

And I'd never seen people get so riled up about like how, like what and what and how and when people should be doing things and imposing like their way. And I always joke like, you know, if you were at a dinner table and I was at the same restaurant and I walked over in the middle of your dinner, but you know, you really shouldn't be eating that. Like people look at me like I was a psychopath, but they do that with parenting. But it happens all the time. I mean, it literally happens when you walk down the street. A stranger will be like, well, da, da, da, da. And you're like, and in any other area. As for your opinion.

COVID's eliminating that. That's one good thing about COVID. Yeah. Nobody can come. You're like, why are you crossing the street getting closer to them? Yeah.

But in any other area, like people would look at like, what is the psycho doing? But with parenting, it's like free game. People just say whatever they want. They impose their will. And it's like,

I get it. People are passionate and obviously they care about kids and they want, and like, you know, especially people that are, you know, they take parenting so seriously. Like they want to do,

you know, they think their way's right. Right. But it gets, you get into this awkward place where what it's right for them may not be right for you. 100%.

You do have a really great lactation coach, Linda. Linda, Hannah. She's amazing. Yeah, she really helps me a lot. Yeah, but you know what? It's so funny because I worked for about a decade without a lactation coach. It just wasn't, I guess it wasn't in vogue. Like, you didn't have them in your practice.

And I thought I was doing a great job helping moms. Nobody seemed to complain. We talk about breastfeeding and everything seemed fine. I didn't know what I was missing until she came in and just, whether you're having your first kid or your fifth, like people come out of that room and are. like, oh my God. I was scared, but then I walked out of the room and I was like, whoa, she knows what she's doing. Yeah, you're a little scared. Yeah. But you know what? Even she's a realist about things. Like, yes, we're trying to help breastfeeding. But if forever reason, we need to do a little

of something else or supplement, that's okay too. We put too much stress on parents to do things a very specific way. And that can cause its own problems. I think what is overwhelming about breastfeeding as a first time parent is that you basically give up your body for nine months. Someone else is taken over residence. And then you give birth and you're like, oh, you know, I get my body back. Yeah. And then the weight doesn't fall off as easy as you thought it would. And then you're also having someone clinging to your tit.

Yeah. And so your-and-about-your-daughter. Yeah. So your body is still really not yours. Yeah. And then your husband wants a blowjob. And it's like, Jesus Christ, what am I open a fucking 24-hour motel? There's one way.

But she, Aaron would say, like, yeah, I was, you know, pregnant for nine months, then breastfed for a year. pregnant for nine months, especially for a year. She's like, I just want to be able to dress in something that I can't pull all the way down in the front, you know, when I'm walking down the street. And then Michael turns to me at three months and goes, what's wrong with you? I've been beat up too much on this show now. What do you mean what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?

I'll be better the second time around. Speaking of the second time around, if there is a second time around, when another kid enters a family, how do you coach parents to obviously still. care for the first kid because there's different dynamics. Sure. And you see, like, I have a friend that just had another baby. Yeah. And the first daughter will not let the dad in front of her touch the other, like, the new baby. He's very jealous and just mad at the mom.

Like, how do you, what do you do with parents that have it? Like, look at our situation. Right. If we had another baby. Yeah. Oh, it's going to be disaster. No, okay. No, you know what?

You end up, like I said, you know, first child holds their fix. And the second child, you realize doesn't need much other than, you know, when they're hungry or to be changed, you end up spending more time and more one-on-one with your first anyways and giving them all the attention. And then there's little things you can do to make it okay. So, you know, when you were able to, so after the baby's born, you know, I like putting pictures of the older child around the bassinet so that the older child sees themselves. And you can be like, oh my God, look Zaza, your brother loves you.

Look at your pictures. You're the best big sister. So it's all about her, right? and then having a present from the baby to her and her to the baby because it teaches sharing. And then holding her next to you with the baby. And the whole time, it's all about Zaza. Oh, my God, you're the best big sister. You're so gentle because the most common behavior at all ages is like, nice baby, nice baby.

Wack. And it's not that she wants to hurt her brother or sister. She just wants to get your attention. When people visit at home or the hospital, instead of like I watch my daughter Aubrey, like watch everybody walk right by her to the new baby. Remember, for two years, they've been going right. to her. Yeah, it's tough. So you say, oh, Zaza, you want to go show him your baby? Get her involved. We used to wrap a bunch of crap at home. So everybody who brought the baby something,

we would have something to give to our older one to, you know, like, nothing fancy, but like something to unwrap. Like, here's your big sister present. Oh my God. This sounds like so much work. But then the best thing is it's all about reverse psychology, right? So you're playing with Zaza and the baby cries. And you can be like, I'm playing with Zaza right now. We'll be there in a second and spend like 20 seconds and be like, Zaza, your brother's crying. What should we do? Should we go get him? And what you just did in 20 seconds is said, you're more important. You make decisions. And now when you do it, she's okay because she permitted it, rather than just being like, hold on, Zaza, and going to get the baby and saying after two years,

he trumps you. So little reverse psychology things work amazing. Because I think about it selfishly. I'm like, okay, you know, like in my dynamic and my family, like, I'm the oldest of a middle sister and a young sister. And I was, okay, there's always that joke about the middle kid, sorry, Jordan. And then there's the baby, Tara. And I think like, Well, you're one of three? I'm one of three. I'm the oldest. I'm the only boy.

But I, you know, like, I try to think, like, one, I think it's important to parents individually for each kid because we're all different, right? And I think my parents did that. But I also think, like, how do you avoid the dynamic of what I'm describing here? It's like oldest, youngest, youngest, the oldest is always the best. Yeah. Which one were you? She's the oldest.

Oldest. I was the oldest. My wife was the oldest. Sorry. Right. I mean, it's just we get all the attention. So we're spoiled. That's just the problem with it all.

One thing that you do in your practice that I think is genius. And I don't know if everyone does this. So correct me if they do is you give the mother a checklist to every time she comes in to ask how she's doing. And I had really bad postpartum anxiety. And I feel like it's not talked about enough. Can you speak on why you do that and more on anxiety and depression that women experience after they have kids? Yeah. So we do a postpartum checklist at your first couple visits through the first couple months.

And it's just so, you know, we sort of forget about the moms. Like we assume everybody's happy and the baby's doing well and but how's mom doing? And that's really important. And especially in COVID, it was really sad for me to watch and all of us to see the first couple months of COVID, I would say the vast majority of mom, new moms that we saw had postpartum depression. Why? They didn't have any family support.

Grandparents weren't coming out to visit. Nobody was helping at home. Moms were leaving the hospital sometimes as early as 18. hours because dads weren't allowed to be there after delivery. Breastfeeding rates were plummeting because moms were in pain and stressed out and things like that. And it was really, really, really sad and hard to watch. And we want to see that early on so that we can get moms and dads help to, you know, cope with all those things. And, you know, it helps obviously your parenting and it helps how you treat each other and the baby. And so that's why we do it. Yeah. Can you explain

to my husband how real postpartum anxiety and depression is. Because I think that the dads, you said they don't get it, they really don't get it. Yeah. No, but I believe it now. We've done a bunch of shows. See it now. This is great. So you just need me whenever something comes up, we'll come in and you'll just be like,

can you tell him? You know, things like that. No, but, you know, I'm guilty of that too. We just don't know. Yeah. And also just, you know, you're so strong and it looks like you're handling everything well. and sometimes it's just hard to tell. And that's why those questions are really, really important.

Because, you know, sometimes I'll have moms who fill out the questionnaire and I'll say, listen, this score says that you may be at risk for postpartum and, you know, do you want to talk to somebody? Can we, can we help? And they're not even aware of it. They're like, oh, my God, I didn't realize that these things were happening. So it's important not just for us to see, but for them to see so we can get you the help they need.

And, you know, this is, but this is dads on everything, you know that. Like I come home and I, you know, I, you know, I want all the attention. from my wife, and she's like, I don't want to talk to you right now, and I get upset. And it's because she just spent, you know, she ran her practice. She cooked and cleaned and took care of two homeschool kids. And then it's no wonder why, you know, she doesn't want to talk to me. That's not her fault. That's, you know, she's doing too much. Right. You guys love to talk. I mean, sometimes I'm, I'm talked out so much. Speaking of COVID right now and kids at home, because I'm talking, I have talked to a lot of different parents and I have some friends that are old and they have kids that are

older than us, right? And it's a handful for them right now because all these kids are at home. And, you know, a lot of parents, especially, I mean, luckily, we're not going through this. They're not equipped to be teachers, but they're at home. And obviously, teachers are still teaching, but parents are now with their kids a lot more. What is that doing to the development of children right now? And I think it's an issue that people aren't talking about as much because there's obviously other things that are happening in the world. But I think it's a serious issue because it's a very serious issue. And it's really hard on all families right now. And you can Imagine you have kids at home and whether you have working parents or not, right?

They're trying to teach their child if they're able to. Sometimes there's just not time and they have to do the virtual teaching and the teachers are also doing their best, but sometimes they're at home with their own families and having to deal the same thing with their own kids. So the circle goes on and on. What I've seen with my, you know, I have a fifth and a seventh grader is really, you really need at times an adult there with them when they're off these zooms to help out to answer questions that would have been answered if they were, you know, physically in school and to help

go over the things that they went over in the quote unquote virtual classroom. And if they didn't have that, I think they'd be missing out on a lot. And that concerns me. And all the racial and socioeconomic divide that we're talking about, I worry that's going to get bigger, you know, the longer this goes on because those reasons. And kids need help with the education. And, you know, I feel fortunate. My wife and I can work and we were able to hire somebody to be there with our girls and help them. And they have amazing teachers and schools. And my Wi-Fi goes out a couple times a day. But you can imagine in places where you don't have a good computer reception or you don't have the support that you need to help the children or both parents are working and, right,

all those things. It's a tough time. Not to mention just that, but also the social interactions. I feel like children learn so much by seeing facial expressions and interactions. of other children. Even with Zaza, she's so young, but like if we have the masks on in front of her, she pulls them down and she wants to see like what our mouths are doing. Of course, yeah. And I think about like, you know, when I was a young kid, like you learned so much about life by interacting with other kids. And like a lot of kids have, you know, it's been a year almost of them not being able to experience that. So what like what do you think the long term effects of that would be? I mean, I would hope not as much as we think because again,

kids are so resilient. And we've just adapted to socializing in a different way, right? Unfortunately, they're socializing on the computer and on Zoom and on all the video chats. So they're doing it. They're just not doing it as much. You know, fortunately, kids under the age of two, I always say first children are really good with adults. They're around adults all the time. And then when they get to school around two to three years of age socially, they usually

end up all in the same place within a couple weeks because they adapt and they're used to being around and the structure really helps. So I think as soon as we're able to go back and it's safe to go back, I think kids are going to get back in there and it's going to be really great. And the long-term effects won't be as significant as they seem right now. But at the same time, you know, the learning and that social development is so important that we want to be able to do it as soon as we can do it. Yeah. Eat, sleep poop. Yeah. Dr. Cohen, tell us about your book. Pimp it out. Yeah. Pimp it out. All right. So, you know, when I wrote my book, I had just had my daughter. And,

And there were a lot of pediatric books written by doctors, and there are a lot of pediatric books written by parents. But nobody combined the two pieces of advice. And before I had my girls, I was really good at quoting information. I could quote you any topic, any research, anything, and people seemed very happy with that. I think maybe they came to me because of that knowledge base. And I felt really good about that. As soon as I had my daughter and I would start spewing the exact same thing, I would get

stopped every time. And the parents would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. what do you do at home? Does your daughter listen to that advice? Does your wife listen to that advice? Because what do you want to know as a parent? Does the specialist really follow his own advice at home? Because that's really what's important. It's not what the book says. It's what really happens in real life. So that's what I wanted to do with eat sleep poop. I wanted to give all the things that happened in the first year. Every question I've ever been asked is in that book. Because it's funny, no matter what age you are, the parents ask the exact same question. So all parents of two-month-olds,

I could write you the list, ask the exact same questions. All the parents are four-month-olds, ask the exact same questions. And we're talking like 99% pretty much the same. So it's very easy to compartmentalize those ages and know what parents ask. But then I wanted to give, but what really happens at home. So when Zaza's are four months old and I said, hey, if you want a sleep train, I'm a big advocate of it, who doesn't want their child to sleep 10 hours through the night, let me explain how to do it. Yeah, well, that's what the book says.

But let me tell you what happened at home where my wife and I fought and she cursed at me for a couple nights and we didn't sleep together because my daughter was crying and I was being a mean dad. So that perspective, which you would think parents would say, I don't want to go to a doctor who does all these things and makes all these mistakes. I actually think it gains confidence. You tell me because you see that at home, we all make the same mistakes and the kids do great. It's like people that write business books but haven't done the business, right? You're like, yeah, that you're saying, but that's not what you're actually doing. and the ones that write the books that show you exactly what they did and how they did it.

And then those are the ones like, oh, okay, like that's actually real. Because it gives perspective. And then you can see as a father, you can read this. And it's not just like boring data. But it's like, oh, okay, he's advising us on that. And look what happened to him. So if it doesn't go perfect, that's okay. Like, you know, Zaza's going to, you know, you said she's moving around so much.

I mean, don't give her the beeper to your car. So when Aubrey was a year, she used to like pressing the lock button on the car. keys. Aaron asked me one day, she's like, can you put Aubrey in the car? Sure, no problem. I buckled on her car seat and I hand her the keys to play with. And she went, beep, beep, and locked all the doors. Okay, not a big deal. We're in the garage and she's going to hit it a thousand more time. She always does. But instead, she throws them on the floor. So I go inside and I call up. I'm like, hey, where's the spare set of keys? She's like in the glove compartment. So I can't tell her she's dumb for putting a spare set of keys in the dumb apartment because I just locked her daughter in the car.

So I'm super calm and I'm like, all right, so I think we need to call AAA. Why? I locked Aubrey in the car. She's like, no, are you crazy? We're calling the fire department. So fire department comes up. We're talking like, you would have loved this. Three gorgeous strapping firemen like out of the movies, get out. And imagine me in one window, two firemen and another, we're seeing itsy-bitsy spider to Aubrey, keeping her laughing. And a fourth guy's at the fourth window, Jimming the lock. Aaron is in the corner, just arms folded, just like glaring at me. And in the middle of it, she says to the captain, she's like,

hey, what would you guys think if I told you my husband's a pediatrician? And they're like, what? And they're like, oh, yeah, this guy, pediatrician. And they're like laughing at me. And they get Aubrey out and we take pictures on the fire truck together and we send them pizza and a thing. But like, and then Aaron calls everybody she knows to tell them how dumb I am. But, you know, we. I'm sure that story.

Okay. So you are 180% me. And Michael is your wife because I will probably lock Zaza in the car on accident. No, but I think like you need that dynamic to balance out a relationship. And I, you know, like not to, if some people don't have that dynamic, I don't mean to say their relationship won't work. But I think like Lauren, like if I maybe level her out and she also makes me not so rigid, right? Like that's what we do for each other. Oh my God.

So you're the A plus? He's the A plus personality. You know what he does? I'm going to tell you what he does. I'm going to call him out. So he's on the Zaza's strict schedule. I'm more fluid. go with the flow.

Every day's different type of person. He will walk by me and go, she needs a bath. At 6.30 on the dot. Maybe it's 629. She needs a bath. The other day I looked at him, I said, I do not need you micromanaging

every step of the day under your breath. He'll walk by me. He goes, she's hungry. You know what they're cute? Why do you tell him to do it? Because that's what I would hear. I do it. But he does do it.

He does do it. I know better not to say it because I know I'm in trouble. Yeah, he does do it. Michael does pick up 50% sometimes more of the slack, but the micromanage of the like under the breath, like blow. Like, I don't notice what he's doing to like push me. Her diaper needs changing. Like, I can't, I can't do it.

Well, I haven't learned. I haven't yet got farther enough in the relationship to learn not to say things. Oh, yeah. But I'll learn. I'll learn. I'm very stubborn. The second one, you're going to be like, do what you want. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think it's funny, like, both of us are discovering like Zaza's like both of us, right? And so like the things that I'm like, oh, she's like, oh, she's like, like me and then they'll see like, like, oh, she's like her. And so, like, we're navigating that new dynamic. I just wish my wife trusted me, and I think she does, but I wish she trusted me as much as my patience trusted me. And I didn't have to quote, like, but, but they would listen to me if I said this, but it's hard. You know, everybody's got to do it the way they feel comfortable. But the funny part is when we first had Aubrey, she would call her two friends that had like an end of one, right? They had their own first babies who used to call me for advice. And she would like

ask a question to me and then the two of them and weigh them equally, which is, wait, we, I'm supposed to be the specialist here. And so it was so funny. So I used to call them and plant information with them. Smart. That's the dynamic, though. Right. Like, they could at least say what I was going to say. You and it works out perfectly. You and I could literally go in the other room and then we could say like, we're going to say this to Lauren. If I say it, she'll say no, but if you said it, she'll say yes. And vice versa. Like, if it's, I'm sure with your wife, too. It's like, it's something in a relationship where if it's coming from the spouse, it's not the same as it is hard to get my way though if I'm the one that locks her in the car. I feel like

it's going to be hard when I accidentally lock her in the car to try to get my way. I mean, my wife will, she will admit pretty much every bad thing that's happened has probably happened on my watch. I don't recall it that way, but yeah, it probably is that way. Yeah, I know. Where can everyone find you, share your Instagram or how they can book an appointment with you? Give us all the detail. Yeah, so they can go to Beverly Hills Pediatrics.com as our office website, It has all our phone numbers and addresses. The book is on Amazon. And when we used to have book stores, it was sold there too.

And I think those are the two best ways. Yeah. Do you have an Instagram? I do. I have to be honest. I'm so bad. I do have one. Has it ever been updated or anything?

So maybe you guys can help me with that stuff. Yeah. Beverly Hills, a pediatrician needs Instagram. So I have eat sleep poop is my Instagram. I think it's Dr. Scott Cohen. But I don't know that there's anything on there. That's the bad part. Okay, but you do have like, because I'm a doctor.

I don't think about these things. I don't blame you. I don't blame you. You know, I don't think, I don't do that well on the social channels either. I just like doing this. You do have a finding Nemo fish tank with all the fish in it. We do. That's so cool.

I mean, but I would never do that again. Oh my gosh. I've made my existence. No, no, it's fabulous. The kids love it. The upkeep on it is like, you know, I feel like I'm the aquarium of the Pacific. I'm like, what is going on? Things only like four by four feet.

What's going on? Dr. Cohen. Thank you so much for coming on. Come back anytime. eat sleep poop. Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. Wait, don't go. If you want to win the new Skinny Confidential stickers, tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential. And of course, make sure you

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