The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – I Love Mom: A Beautiful Gift for Mothers to Treasure & Gia Toddler-Preschool Series by Rachael Tarfman-Perez

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

I Love Mom: A Beautiful Gift for Mothers to Treasure & Gia Toddler-Preschool Series by Rachael Tarfman-Perez https://amzn.to/3C56c20 Mothers are a universal symbol of love, care, and tenderness. In 'I Love Mom, ' you will find a heart-warming collection of photos and quotes from children all over the world sharing their reasons for loving their moms. From the first breaths we take to the milestones we achieve, our mothers are our unwavering support, our safe haven, and our forever heroines. This beautiful book is a tribute to all the amazing moms who make this world a better place, one hug at a time.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Wait, that's me. Hey, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends.

Moving slow with the audience here. I just took them all to kick into gear, too, as well. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Everyone have a seat already. Anyway, guys, we have another amazing author on the show. And I'm not going to tell you who she is yet because, well, I already gave away half of it, really. It's either he or she, right? So she's going to be on the show in a second.

But until then, you've got to put up with me. And I've got to tell you, what a great show we have. I'm guilting people this week. It's the latest thing. You know, guilting and shaming at the beginning of the show are what some people in commercial and TV call the plugs. But, you know, there's 1,400 episodes of The Chris Foss Show but uh you know there's 1400 episodes of the chris foss show did you know that in august we turned 14 years old wow i'm feeling ancient you know how many

podcasts are 14 years old most podcasts are maybe 14 months old no they don't even make it that far actually if you know the stats but uh 14 years old. We're putting out, Simon & Schuster's auto-booking this bloody show. Penguin Random House threatens to do it, but they haven't done it yet. And I'm not sure we want them to have to do it yet. They send us great authors. But, you know, we're doing two to three shows a day now, people. Okay? Two to three shows a day.

This is the love, the burden, the bloodletting that i give unto you my audience because we love you so much and i know that you guys write me these reviews you guys write me these uh comments and you go hey chris we learned so much there's so much of a spectrum of knowledge that we you shovel upon us and and our brains are just so smart we go forth in the world and we can achieve almost anything i lawyer said i said that i had to say i'm almost uh and we can achieve almost anything and we have this glowing embodiment that that comes off as this aura if you will of glowiness and uh that's going to be the new byline of the chris faust show the chris faust show more glowiness. And that's going to be the new byline of the Chris Foss show. The Chris Foss show. More glowiness.

You know what that means. You know, we make this stuff up every time. And you can tell because half the time it's funny and half the time it's not. But that's the beauty of it, isn't it, though? The improv of the ramble. Anyway, guys, we love you as an audience. And we love the fact that you guys recognize

that it makes you smarter and all that good stuff. So keep referring the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Goodreads.com, Fortes, Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortes, Chris Voss. YouTube.com, Fortes, Chris Voss. And we're trying to be cool on TikTok. It won't work, but we're going to try anyway. And we're putting up cuts of all the different great authors and brilliant minds we have on the show.

Today, our amazing guest on the show uh today our amazing guests on the show an amazing author she writes children's books because those are the best kind because we need to we need to plow and harvest and seed the beautiful young minds of the youth because if you've seen the youth of gen z anyway i'm just kidding we love gen z but we need to harvest those new minds i don't even know what that new generation is going to be called. They're going to have to go back around to maybe Gen A, because they've already used Gen Z. Like, what's after that?

I don't know. I flunked kindergarten, so I don't know what comes in that after the alphabet. She is the author of the amazing new book, I Love Mom, A Beautiful Gift for Mothers to Treasure. Rochelle Tarfman Perez is on the show with us today she has written uh this new book came out april 18th 2023 and she's uh also authored quite a few other books we'll get into here in the fun uh called uh food is fun clearly that was one of my favorite books growing up and fast food um but she probably has probably has better, healthier food in the book. We'll find out.

Uh, it's part of the Aegea toddler preschool series. So if you have kids, she has four. So she's going to share with you her amazing insight in keeping kids entertained. And of course what she put into that in her book writing, uh,

you can order up her fine books, wherever fine books are sold state of this alleyway bookstores. Uh, she is, uh, someone who enjoys psychology and has been a passion and she holds a license as a marriage and family therapist. Maybe she can tell me about why my psychiatrist keeps advising frontal lobotomy. This has been provided, this has given her the opportunity to use her professional experience working with families to create stories and characters for their young children.

When she was growing up, she enjoyed all kinds of activities, but she especially loved to read, which is probably why she's so smart, because reading makes you smarter. That's why you folks listen to the show, right? So you can see books you want to read. She's got four children. Count them. One, two, three, four.

I'm sure she does daily just to make sure they're still there. The types of books she's enjoyed over the years have varied from teen thrillers to romance, Star Wars to Harry Potter. Is that legal to go from Star Wars to Harry Potter? As well as the board and picture books that she reads to her little ones. Welcome to the show, Rochelle. How are you? I'm great, Chris. How are you? There you go. Nice to be here. There you go.

Welcome to the show. Now, is it legal to read Star Wars and Harry Potter, or is it, I think it's against the law to be a Star Wars and Star Trek fan. Is that how it works? You know, I was never a Star Trek fan, but I don't read the Harry Potter and Star Wars together. Okay. They have to be separated.

You ever seen the stand-up bit where the guy compares how maybe the gal who wrote Harry Potter ripped off Star Wars and the characters in him? No, I didn't. Is that really a thing? I'll have to send it to you a thing. Because there's an orphan in both stories with really bad uncles and aunts. Yeah. And then, you know,

they go through the whole, down the whole line and, and, uh, really kind of a parallel, but that's okay. I mean, he ripped it off of the hidden fortress,

uh, from, from, uh, from the, from the Japanese producer. Uh, you know,

I think pretty much everybody ripped somebody else off. Pretty much. Yeah. But at least he admits to it. He's like, Hey, I just, I stole off the hidden fortress, uh, which is a great movie and a great

producer. So give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs there. Well, my.com is just my name, which I have right here. Can you give that to us so we can, because most people consume this on audio. Oh, okay. Sorry. It's my name, which is

RochelleTarfmanPerez.com So R-A-C-H-A-E-L-T-A-R-F-M-A-N-P-E-R-E-Z.com No spaces and no underscores and no dashes. There you go. And people will be able to find it on Amazon.

And of course, there'll be a link on the Chris Voss show. Yeah, to my earlier reference, just to clarify that, The Hidden Fortress, it was a great movie by the famed Akira Kurosawa, movie director. And if you want, go back and watch that film and you will see star wars based in i don't know the 1800s of uh japanese culture and stuff nice it's extraordinary to watch like you'll see r2d2 you'll see three c3po it will blow your mind and when george lucas was growing up or

somewhere in that phase he watched it and and uh and went i have an idea for that and the wheels started turning and the wheels started turning. And the wheels started turning. And he literally, when you watch Star Wars and you watch The Hidden Fortress, you will literally see the whole movie play out. It's just basically in two different time zones. Oh, wow. That's wild. Yeah.

I think they even copied the hair buns. I don't know. But no, it's really interesting. And there's even one of the remasters of Star Wars or something, or I think it's the rem. And even there's even a, one of the remasters of star Wars or something, or I think it's the remasters of the hidden fortress. George Lucas comes on and he goes, yeah, I pretty much stole the thing,

but all the great masters of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, all watching Akira Kurosawa movies that were post-war. And that was what influenced our great Hollywood. So talk about what you do and how you do it. What is your life journey? What got you into wanting to write books? My life journey has taken many turns. You know, like you mentioned, I went to school, I got my bachelor's degree in psychology, I got a master's degree in counseling psychology and then went through the process of attaining my 3,000 hours to become a marriage family therapist, which I did for a while, part-time, kind of difficult to do with kids.

But I mean, you learn so much there, so you can relate to what people are coming to you with. Exactly. So I've got some experience with, you know, family relationships and personal relationships. And I've also been married 20 years. So. There you go. Congratulations. As of yesterday.

Uh-huh. You say that like it could be ending soon. No. Like as of yesterday. But we're celebrating the anniversary, right? Yes. We celebrated our anniversary yesterday. There you go.

There you go. And we'll continue through the weekend. It just kind of seemed like you were like, you were Yes, we celebrated our anniversary yesterday. There you go. And we'll continue through the weekend. It just kind of seemed like you were like, as of yesterday. Yeah, as of yesterday. I'm not sure if there's anything. Totally over. Totally over. Yeah.

It's like taking it day by day. Cut him off. You're like one of those people like, how long have you been married? 20 years, five days, three hours, 10 seconds, and counting. And 36 nanoseconds. Yeah, exactly. You got the prison scars on the wall. No, I'm just kidding.

Oh, no. Did you see my mugshot? Oh, gosh. Did we pull that up in research? Anyway. No, that's classified information, Chris. Sorry. There you go.

There you go. It's been hidden. Anyway, hidden by a judge, which is pretty much everything in my past. Nice. Nice. Nice. We'll have to talk more later. Yeah, there you go. We'll have to talk more later, you and I.

So 20 years and four kids. I mean, that's quite a few. 20 years, four kids. No one does that hardly anymore, do they? I mean, that's really tough. Yeah. I mean, some people can, some people can't. I don't know.

I just kind of did it and didn't think too much about it and just bumped and bruised and struggled through it. But, you know, it's fun. I've got a 19-year-old son, a 16-year-old son, a 13-year-old daughter, and a 5-year-old daughter. I think it's great you let them live that long, especially a teenager. I think that's awesome.

I think that's the great thing. My mom spent most of my childhood. She was a great mom. But, you know, every now and then we piss her off. And sometimes we were just bored kids. And we were awful kids, really. And, you know, sometimes she'd be looking at us and she'd say, you know, I brought you into this world. I'll take you out of it. Right.

And, you know, sometimes we test that theory. Right. You know, Chris, there's no refunds. There's not, right? There's no refunds. There's no exchanges. You know, you get what you get. And like they say, you get what you get. You don't throw a fit. There's not, right? There's no refunds. There's no exchanges. You get what you get. Like they say, you get what you get.

You don't throw a fit. There you go. That kind of goes with parenting as well. I sent all my out off to military school. I'm like, call me when you're 18. Right. So what made you want to become a writer and get into writing books? You know, honestly, I have no idea.

I was potty training my youngest child and we kind of kept coming across the issue of dropping toys into the toilet. Either it was accidentally or it was on purpose as a little ha ha ha mom, look what I can do. And I just said, you know, this is kind of irritating. But at the same time, I was like, wait a minute, I couldn't possibly be the only parent struggling with this issue, right? There's got to be other parents out there. Because every toddler, I mean, every potty training book you see out there is be a potty superhero, be a potty, you know, super dinosaur, you know, it's not, it's not a scary thing, you can handle it, you can can manage it you're not going to fall in and get

flushed down you know it's the whole confidence building thing right yeah so i thought wow this has got to be a different take on it that hopefully people will appreciate and enjoy and so three piece for potty let me see if i can get it without a glare came in to be where I created this cartoon character, Gia with the purple hair. And she's just having this discussion with her mom. Mom's trying to tell her what does and doesn't go into the potty. And I came up with the three P's idea to make it a little mysterious. Like, what is the three P's?

What are the three P's anyway? You know? So as she's going through the story, she's talking about, well, what can go into the potty? Can, you know, food go into the potty? Can this go into the potty? And kind of getting mom a little frustrated.

But then, you know, at the end we have a little funny thing between the two of them and she says, okay, you know, I understand now. This is the way, I mean, this is the way kids learn. They need, they need some instruction. That's why they, you know. I read a long time ago the reason they watch those Disney movies over and over again is because that's how they master stuff.

That's how they have to say it. They're like us. They need a little bit of repetition to kind of go, oh, okay, I get it now. It's like the third time you watch Star Wars, you start to kind of get it.

You're like, oh, I see what's going on here with this whole Force thing. Yeah, exactly. And then you're like, what's with this prequel thing going on? Right. I kind of felt ripped off by the prequel, post-call, or whatever it's called thing

because I was like, wait, I feel like how come I didn't get the first movie first? Like, what the hell's going on there? I know. I know. Star Wars has a come I didn't get the good stuff? The, the first movie first, like what the hell's going on there? I know. Star Wars has, everybody talks about the trilogy and I'm my, my mind,

the trilogy trilogy is star Wars, empire strikes back. And that's the trilogy. First is better. You know, I was like, exactly. It's like, you know,

the OG. Yeah. Yeah. The first thing, of course, Hansel, come on. Exactly.

Um, there you go in fact he was just uh cancer and looking all good and people were uh celebrating man he's like he's like still doing indiana jones movies i think uh i think he's got he's got a five more deal it's gonna be called um indiana zombie in the i'm just kidding um so i think he's there now, but, uh, thank God for CGI. So you wrote this book. I love mom and who doesn't because your mom's usually the only one who's going to love you in life, no matter just about whatever you do. Um, I don't know. My mom used to get, I mean, we, I think there's pictures of us running around with the little, uh, potty training toilet on our heads. One time she did it. So what prompted you to want to write this book, I Love Mom? Okay. Well, the I Love Mom was

an idea that I had. I said, you know, moms are special and a lot of moms don't get the appreciation that they deserve. We don't get the appreciation we deserve all the time, you know, especially if we're a stay at home mom, which is what I've been for a long time. We don't get a paycheck. We don't get bonuses. We don't get vacation, sick time. Whatever happens, we're there. And so I just thought it would be really neat to have a book filled with quotes from kids. And if I could get kids from all over the world to talk about what they love about their moms, I just thought that would be something really special something tender something that could be appreciated by anybody you know and so you know the mom book has basically like it's hard to get that so there's an image there's an image and then there's the quote ah so it's all sorts of kids who show appreciation for mom.

So all of those were stock photos that I used to find like the stock photo that basically matched up with the quotes. Somehow there was something in the quote that's, you know, mom's brain, you know, mom does my braids. I love how she does my hair. and so then I would find an image of mom and a little little girl young girl or close to the age of the child giving us the quote having her hair done by mom so that it really just brings it to life there you go makes it more special yeah moms love that sort of stuff I always get my mom like a really good card and when she loves those pop-up cards so they're a little bit more expensive but they're a pop-up and she'll let it sit out for like a month or two. And of course I'm her favorite child.

So I have to make sure we always. Oldest equals best. That's well, of course, the first child is the most important. The ones who get the crap beaten out of us growing up. And the last one's always like, I murdered somebody. Mom's like, shut up. Just whatever, man. Just just fine i love you and the first child is you're like you're like i got an a minus and it's like the beatings beatings no i'm just kidding i know no that's not good enough it's hard being

the first child man you are the pioneer of their uh new parenting and so you just you just grow up scarred and beaten and i think they're get scarred and beaten. And then by the third or fourth, the fourth child's just doing whatever the hell he wants. He's got piles of bodies in his room and steals everything and rips off. He's got a couple cars parked out front. He stole it four years old and shit. And mom's just like, yeah, whatever, man. He's the baby. Anyway, you can tell i have

some issues with that can you you're a family yes let's talk chris let's talk there's a lot of talking hours of therapy um so this is a great book it's and it's a book that you can give to your mom that people can use as gifts we just passed mother's day but there's always christmas uh you should give your mom gifts all the time because she absolutely and moms are special too i mean the the one thing uh you got to remember is they're not around for a long time as we are usually and they're usually ahead of you on that whole life curve thing and uh generally speaking yes generally well i mean they should be ahead of you on life group because if they're not, you might want to check your adoption papers.

Right. Exactly. How come my mom's younger than me? This is weird. I know. I think there's this joke about, I don't know, Robert De Niro's whatever, dating or something. But so this is important. Anything more you want to tell us about the I Love Mom book?

Well, you know, it spans many, many countries. So there's quotes from children from South Africa, from the United Kingdom, from Croatia, from here in the United States, from Thailand. Where else? Australia. There's quotes from a lot of different places. And Spain, to name just a few. So you get an idea that, you know, moms pretty much everywhere are loved the same. You know, we all love our moms the same.

We all appreciate things about our moms the same. And it's just something very special. There's some kids that use different terms. You know, maybe it's not mom or mommy. Maybe it's mom or mummy or, you know, mama. I don't even know. There was a lot of different names. So it was really kind of neat to go through the experience.

And that's kind of great. So it's like an international book where anybody can do it and give it to their mom. And there's pictures in there if you can't remember. Yes. If there's, you know, lost in language. But no, that's good. I mean mothers uh always need to be loved and appreciated i know they have a hard time in the teenage years because everyone has a hard time in the teenage years and then you you know the kids kind of go off leave the nest and they kind of forget about mom because they're trying to figure out their world and then usually they eventually come back and they they go hey

mom i i've been out in the world i really how hard it is to pull off what you pulled off there. And thanks for putting me up with me and yada, yada, yada. Yeah, and I appreciate you. Yeah. And if you don't do that, well, then shame on you. Go do it. Exactly. Go do it.

Go do it. Go do it. Go do it. Go do it. Go do it. Go do it. Yeah. I mean, you know, the worst thing you do is not appreciate your mom until she's gone.

And then you're like, then you're really going to miss your mom. Then you have regrets. Yeah. You don't want to have regrets. You want to always appreciate your mom. You always want to appreciate your mom. You know, your mom is one of the few people in the world who are going to unconditionally love you. Well, that's not true.

Women and children and frogs and pets get unconditional love, but men don't. So if you're a man, realize that you're, you're, you're loved by your condition, your, your resources and what you bring to the world. You have to make something yourself to be loved in this world. But,

uh, you know, your mom is the one person who's going to love you no matter what. I mean, yeah, I've seen guys that they do, you know, really bad things in the world and their mom still loves them.

And you're like, you still love that guy? Right. I don't know. There's a connection. My mom still has all the letters of all the stuff she used to write to me and sing to me when she was carrying me in the womb. Nice. It took them about three years to have me.

I mean, there was a problem with some issues there with my dad's stuff. Fertility. Yeah. So there was a lot of practicing. Yeah. And I think it was tight underwear or something. It had something to do with sperm. But I'll just say it on the show.

But they eventually figured it out. Obviously, you're here. Yeah, I did. In fact, they almost lost me. They woke up one day and the bed was red and they thought they lost me. So I was kind of a miracle baby. Nine months. We were talking before the show.

Nine months. A little over nine months. I think it was like nine and a half, almost 10 months. And I came out 10.9 pounds. Good God. My mother never lets me forget it. And my dad hated me ever since. There's the joke.

So let's fall back to the Gia series again. You've got three different books there. There's three P's for potty, which I probably need because I'm still putting stuff in the toilet. Oh no. Every now and then I throw a phone in there just for fun. People

I guess do that nowadays, drop their phones in there. Food is Fun, which is clearly a book that I engaged in most of my life. And then you got another book called, uh, are we friends? Yes, which is pretty much,

I don't have a joke for that. Um, so tell us about the three different books. Let's kind of roll through them. We touched on a little bit about the three Ps for potty. Right. We talked about three Ps for potty. Um,

the food is fun book was, is a rhyming book so it's just it's a little short it's it's short and sweet and it just talks about the foods that gia likes so there's pictures of let me get a picture of that so there's like pretzels and oranges and pizza ice cream bananas so it just kind of talks about different meals and snacks and things that she likes to eat not everything in the book is healthy it was supposed to sort of go in that direction and then when i started rhyming words it just didn't work out very well it's hard to rhyme lettuce there's a lot of fruit in there though so don't worry there you go fruit fruit's good

for you if you like natural food and you keep it i think because it's good sugar it's actually one of the cheats i use because i'm i'm veganese there's no there's no there's no slice for the way i eat i suppose um and i i i tried to claim i was vegan once then i got yelled at by 150 different variations of veganism but you know i intermittent fast i have great salads every day i buy my stuff from a local farm but you know i i mix in some dairy and and meat every now and then so you know you gotta i just call it veganese um but i try my own version yeah yeah it's my own version i'll do what i want people um right but uh you know i try and eat healthy um but but you know a lot of people don't realize i mean if you really get if you want you get the cravings for some sugar you know, a lot of people don't realize, I mean, if you get the cravings for some sugar, you know, don't go for that high fructose corn syrup crap.

No. Have some strawberries. Yep. Have some raspberries or some apples or, you know, something like that. So that's good. And strawberries are super high in vitamin C, so even more so than oranges. Mm-hmm. So you've got a lot of choices in the fruit category.

What was the idea for this book? What is it supposed to do? What sort of conversations is it supposed to spark between mother, father, child, etc., etc.? You know, there's a lot of picky eaters out there in the world. And so I think this is just a really good book to get children talking about food and trying new things. There you go. My five-year-old loves these books, So I read them to her all the time. This is a great way to get them to eat their peas. I actually didn't mention peas in there, but yeah, you know, just, it's just a conversation

opener, you know, it's a little look, you know, Gia likes ice cream, but she also loves bananas and she also loves pears and avocados, you know? So it's just, just a way to talk about food and have it be a fun subject. Yeah. Cause I, I remember my buddies who had kids, the, I mean,

my own friend, he had twins and like one had one sort of food objection to certain foods. And the other one had different objections to certain foods. I'm like, they're twins. Can't they get this together? No point of them. They look the same. I'm like, they're twins. Can't they get this together? No. Is that the whole point of them?

They look the same. They should be the same. Nope. That's not how twins work. We've got a whole stand-up bit for twins and moms, evidently. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, trying to get foods to eat. But, yeah, helping them understand that, you know, like I used to look at my niece and nephew.

When we'd take them to McDonald's, they had like, I don't want want any pickles and then the other one would be like i don't want any mustard and ketchup and then like take off the lettuce and the pickles and like by the time they get done you're like hey man you just have a patty and a bun yep like you've taken all the life out of this burger a burger like what are you doing like i like it that way you're funny you're like i don't know you must have dropped that kid when he was young or something happened. Seriously. Check and make sure the DNA matches yours. Right.

For some of my family, I've looked at their DNA and I'm like, yeah, I grew up with you. Yeah. Probably your kid. Oh, not sure what that means. I just made sure that in my house, you know, food choices were not necessarily an option. Kids had to eat their salad. There you go. They had to eat their vegetables that was not an option vegetables are not optional in this house so that's the way it's been clean your plate or else that's how my mom ruled you want you want something else nice you want to you know a treat vegetables got to go down first yeah that's my mom cooked everything this is back in the day

when people actually used to sit down and eat at a table and stuff. I don't know if you do that at your house. We do that every day. That's really good. It's actually healthy for people. We just had a neuroscientist on a couple of days ago. We're going to have to reproduce the episode because his audio was bad. He had a bad mic.

Oh, no. And we couldn't fix it in post. That's why we send a writer out saying, get a good mic oh no and um we couldn't fix it in post that's why the that's why we send a writer out saying get a good mic before you come on the show and uh so but it was a great show otherwise and he talked about how neurologically we need to see each other and how the three dimensional aspect of seeing each other and touching each other and being around each other is really important and that's why breaking bread and eating together has always been a thing. So it's great you guys do that.

We can guilt and shame. Yeah. We can guilt. And there's actually like that too. And there's a neurological thing that we get. There's a thing that we use by helping read each other's body language and understand each other. It develops the brain. And one of the problems we're having isn't so much social media,

but it's the two-dimensional aspect of these phones and these screens. Yeah. And so because of them, it damages us. And it even, you know, we don't develop neurologically, and it can lead to diseases like Alzheimer's and other things. So it was a great discussion. But, yeah, sitting down and sitting down. I never really thought about it that way.

And it's a neurological thing this is science and uh it explains why we're having so much trouble you know i see these families now i go out to eat i go out to eat and like everyone's looking at the screen so two kids and two parents and no one's talking to each other and i'm like it's awful what the hell's going on you could have stayed home for this we We were creating, seriously, a generation of zombies. It's horrible. Well, if you've been on TikTok, you've seen how that turned out. No, I'm just kidding, Gen Z.

We love our Gen Z. You're our future. I actually am on TikTok to promote my books. Are you? Awesome. Yeah, I am. You want to plug out the handle? It's at Rochelle underscore children's author there

you go uh let's move on to the third book let's get a plug in for that are we friends are we friends yes yeah tell us about young children don't necessarily have those kind of skills you know sharing and and being nice and helping all of those things have to be taught. Those are not always innate abilities for everybody. So in this book, Gia meets two kids that she sees from next door and they start a conversation and they have toys and they start talking about it,

but they're not quite sure how to navigate this whole situation. So we kind of go through different things throughout the book about sharing toys and sharing food and sharing clothing. It goes through different aspects of what to do as a friend and how to be a good friend. There you go. And this is important because you don't want kids to grow up to be bullies. I'd be really ashamed if I was a parent who kids grew up to be bullies.

Right. Because I did not like bullies. It's gone up clearly. No. They punched a couple. And that's how we ended the bullying. But I don't recommend violence for children in any way. And we shouldn't have to resort to that.

No. Sometimes it's appropriate if they're bullies. But I don't think you can even get away with what we used to get away with back in the day of school fights. No. Yeah. So, yeah, this is good. We train kids early to be kind to each other. Exactly.

What a concept. What a concept. Kindness, friendship, being nice to each other. Yeah, and there's a lot of books about kindness. You know, I've seen a lot of books on Amazon about kindness. I just thought that this would be a good way to show younger children how to be friends. And put young

children, like cartoon characters, engaging in those scenarios. How do they act? What do they do? The facial expressions on the cartoon characters can show okay, well, they're upset now. How do they figure this out? You know what's funny is i just had an

epiphany we always talk on the show about how uh you know books and learning and stories whether it's you know tv movies books that we consume um the stories are our owner's manual to life and that's how we learn yeah um because you know i don't know about you but i didn't get mine in the mail evidently when i was a kid maybe my parents there was no owner's manual and this is how we learn and it just it just made me realize that this is also how children learn and this is where it starts we we watch others and we learn from their behavior as to maybe how to act and and goods and stuff uh so you talk about what does it mean to be a good friend why do we need to share is why is it important to be supportive and help others

yes and so it helps them through their feelings and thoughts about how to be a good friend right because a parent can read this book with their child and then when gia or one of the other characters gets upset she can talk to you can talk to your child about it. Okay. Well, G is upset now. How does she handle this? How does she get to a place where she's not upset anymore? You know,

and talk about feelings because feelings is something we don't like to talk about much in our society. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. The, especially with our boys. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, we have a stoicism problem with how we process logic and reasoning, but I mean, somebody, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we have the stoicism problem with how we process logic and reasoning, but I mean, I mean, there's, you know, we do that from a tribal thing. It's kind of, we're a weird, we're a weird group of people, but I mean, that's how we got here. But it also starts at home, you know, it starts at home. It's very important to teach your children how to be kind to others and you know i don't know

for some reason i just always had that when i was a kid i would just always had that i was always attracted to people who were different i didn't have any issues being friends with people of other races or religions and unfortunately not all families live that same way by that mantra you know and you know we had ed Glaude Jr. on the show years ago. I don't know if you know who he is. He wrote a book on Baldwin, James Baldwin.

And, you know, the thing about James Baldwin's quotes from the 50s, 60s, and 40s is you could take just about whatever he said about race and different things and you can just pick them up and glue them on to today's problems in society and i was talking to eddie and we were talking about you know different things that people could do and i'm like you know you really have to get the source of the bad parenting that's going on that creates these monsters because

a lot of these monster kids are taught racism at home they're taught issues at home. They're taught issues at home. They're taught hate at home. It all begins in the home, and it's the parents. Exactly. Somehow, we need to get at these kids earlier to try and teach them tolerance and understanding of human beings and empathy. Because, you know, we talked about this show with some other family counselors that we've had on. Most of the bullies that I encountered in school were raised by bullies. They had horrible home lives.

Mean parents that usually beat them and stuff. And then they brought it to school and passed it along. Exactly. So somehow we need to raise better people, raise better parents. And maybe this starts at the fountain of the source is, is our opinion. So exactly. Yeah.

We don't want more school shootings. We don't want more violence in the world. We don't want these things to continue. So it's better to learn how to be friends. Yeah. Early on, early on. I've even got,

I've even got some, uh, some of my friends that aren't good friends. And I need to mail this book to, to learn how to be better friends. Cause a little bit of loyalty problems and trust going on. There we go. They're people.

I love it. I love it. We try and love them if we're not throwing them down the stairs. Don't do that, people. That's a joke. Anything more you want to tease out about the Gia series? And it's pretty much targeted towards preschool, toddler preschool. Toddler preschool, yeah. This particular series is geared towards children like two to like six years old, maybe, you know, just because they're funny books.

There's some humor and there's issues that are real life issues for a lot of these kids. So, you know, kindergarten, first grade is when kids start to read and maybe they move towards the chapter books or the, you know, magic tree house type of things. But these books still have life lessons. And that's what I think is important is are the life lessons because the fantasy books are great and they're entertaining, but those are only going to help them so much. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to really learn life lessons from Dr. Seuss. Maybe you are. I don't know. Maybe if you're a Wuzzle, a Wuzzle wereuss maybe you are i don't know the green eggs

technically you shouldn't eat green eggs and ham so if you come across that you shouldn't do it yeah you should walk the other way yeah yeah exactly unless it's food coloring but that's another thing but yeah i mean i need some adults that probably know the three p's for potty so there you go um anything more you want to plug out on all the books you've written in the series uh anything new you're working on upcoming uh we're still working on marketing for my i love mom book so i would love to put together an i love dad because dads also need appreciation as well there you go there you go and i'm hoping for another gia book in the series so look for that in the future. I'd love to see that.

Dads are really important. Fathers are really important. Yes. They do a lot of work. A lot of the media now really kicks dads around. The father's always kind of the dummy. The scapegoat. He's always the dumb one.

He's always the idiot. He's always lazy. That's horrible. They shouldn't say dads like that in sitcoms. It's really bad. I think it bleeds into our thinking. I grew up watching the Leave it to Beaver show. That was a whole different era of fathers and mothers.

There was the dad. The dad was a smart one. Then I remember watching, what was it? What was that show, the dad was a smart one. And then I remember watching, uh, uh, what was it? The, uh, what was that show in the nineties? Uh, with, uh,

Oh, I don't remember, but the dad was married with children. Yeah. It was married with children. Dad. I remember that one. Yeah.

You're like, how do we go from, how do we go from leave it to beaver to, uh, this, you know, the Cosby show tried to resurrect that, but that thing hole went in the toilet,

uh, you know, that whole bit. Unfortunately, we don't want to talk about him. I don't show tried to resurrect that, but that thing hole went in the toilet, you know, that whole bit. Unfortunately, we don't want to talk about him. We don't want to get into that. But I mean, at least it tried to present fathers, at least on TV. Yes, in a better light. You know, in a better light. But I think we need more of that because, I mean,

some of the stuff I see nowadays. But yeah, I'd love to see that. Anything more you want to tease out on the books before we go? No, I just hope that everyone that's listening will be willing to check out these books. Like I said, the Gia Toddler series is great for the young kids. Helps them out.

Give you something to laugh and learn together. And then I Love Mom book is just something to cherish. Something to look at for a long time. Make you smile, make you smile, make you cry, you know, make you laugh,

just something, something beautiful to hold on to. Pick one off for your mom today. Can you give it to your grandma too? I mean, does that technically work? Absolutely. I mean, grandmas are moms too,

and it can bring grandma back to, you know, times that are in the past. Yeah. Plus if it wasn't for your grandma, your mom wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. So, you know, you got to pay homage to the lineage. Plus, if it wasn't for your grandma, your mom wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. So you've got to pay homage to the lineage. If everything works out,

there might be an I love grandma and I love grandpa book too. Tell me you don't too. Because I really love my one grandma. The other one, not so much. But she had a letter of slight. I wouldn't send her the book. But, you know, I mean, hey, she needs some counseling. Maybe quit drinking. That too. But, you know, I mean, hey, she needs some counseling.

And maybe quit drinking, that too. But, you know, people are people. They do the best they can with what they have. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show, Michelle. We certainly appreciate it. Oh, thank you. There you go. And this has been fun, too.

And hopefully people have fun and enjoy the books. And maybe we can get a whole new preschool audience going. Absolutely. We've got to get the future. I'm going to start guilting that and shaming that at preschool audience going absolutely show we gotta get the future i'm gonna start guilting that shaming that at the beginning of the show we do the plugs i'll be like get your preschoolers and your toddlers to list the chris voss show we're gonna read you might just have to tone it down a little bit though oh that's right yeah little censorship goes on

we're gonna scar some kids. We don't want to do that. What happened to you? How come you ended up in an axe murder? I listened to the Chris Vosher. I listened to the Chris Vosher. It's all his fault. No.

I'll just live with guilt for the rest of my days in the retirement home. Anyway, guys, thank you very much. Give us your.com, Rochelle, for coming on the show. Again, that's www.r-a-c-h-a-e-l-t-a-r-f-m-a-n-p-e-r-e-z.com. Sorry it's so long. It's a long name. There you go. But hopefully one to remember. There you go. So thanks for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. Have a great day. There you go. And thanks, Moniz, for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, FortressCrispFoss, YouTube.com, FortressCrispFoss, YouTube.com, 4ChessCrispFoss, LinkedIn.com, 4ChessCrispFoss, to the big LinkedIn group over there, 130,000 people, the big LinkedIn newsletter that just keeps killing it, and TikTok

as well. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us