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We have recorded this podcast on the Gatagoul people of the Eur Nation.

We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and torres strained islander cultures.

Hello.

I'm Stacy Hicks.

I'm the editor of Mamma Mia and I'm also the host of our new parenting podcast, Parenting out Loud.

And this summer, we're curating your listening with a healthy dose of culture savvy conversations that parents actually want.

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There's a link in the show notes.

Welcome to Parenting out Loud podcast for people who don't always listen to parenting podcasts.

We bring you the week in culture, trends and news, and if parents are thinking about it, we are talking about it.

I'm Monicue Bowley, I'm Amelia.

Lester, I am Stacey Hicks.

And first of all, I have some breaking news that I just saw as we walked into this record.

It is the first time I've ever been ahead of a trend in my life.

Iebags are cool.

Now, what what does that mean?

Well, lots of women are going and getting surgery to remove their lower bleff, which is essentially their lower eyebags.

And now Jessica Defino's newsletter is saying, no, no, it's French.

It's cool to have eyebags, so we're cool.

Wow.

Right, that's great to know.

I have another fashion trend.

I need to mention it, okay, or rather not a fashion trend Dean and jackets.

Now, I'm not calling you out.

I have a den and jacket that I'm wearing today.

I just didn't want to match with you.

That's right.

But I am in a den and jacket right now, which I love.

But you are about to say, well, I.

Have read that.

Apparently their cringe and hopelessly millennial and gen z is making fun of us for them.

Have you heard that?

I have heard it, and I just wear it anyway.

I'm wearing my ankle socks.

I'm wearing my big denim jacket.

I don't care what they say.

Do you think that there are some denim jackets that are better than others?

Yes?

I do think so.

I think the ones that they think a cringe are like the cropped denim jacket.

Oh okay, well you know that we wear on a night out.

That's what they're talking about.

Mine's bagging and oversized.

So I'm cool.

I'm maintaining along with my eyebags, got my baggy jacket.

Everything's fine.

I just bought a denim jacket yesterday off deep.

Obviously that's why they're selling it.

It was probably some gen z going oh, and I'm like, oh, that's cool, all right.

Coming up on today's show.

The guy who created adolescence has an idea for how dads can connect with their sons.

It's beautiful, but one of us hates it.

There is a kid's party photo that was taken in Sydney recently that has ignited a great Australian debate.

Can you bags a park table?

Oh?

And it's alpha clock And what I mean by that is it's the time of year that I remember.

I'm the last mum on Earth without a little spy living in our house.

So I want to talk traditions.

Are there some traditions we should embrace and are there others that we should just leave alone?

But first, celebrities are making us feel bad about our screen time habits again.

Miranda Kerr was on a podcast this week.

You may remember her as the winner of the Dolly Model contest back in the day Victoria's Secret Angel.

Now married to Evan Spiegel, who was the founder of Snapchat, living in a palatial mansion in southern California.

Here she is talking about her screen time policy.

Well, my husband is very anti screens for the young ones.

I've said to him, Look, something that feels good to me is just like maybe on the weekend or a special occasion curling up with the kids, like the six and seven year old and the teenager if he wants to join in and like snuggling up and watching a movie.

And he's like, okay, but not every weekend.

Although my seven year old did just do a little a learning program that he could do over the holidays, and he learned like a little mindcraft like thing, and so he was you know, he obviously had screen time there.

But then when we talk about my teenager, our teenager who is fourteen almost fifteen, so I have the parental controls on his phone.

And then on top of that, he doesn't have social media, which we think is important, but he does have Snapchat, which is the only way he communicates with his friends.

I could not love this more.

You thought I was going to say I hate.

I really did think that you were about to go on a rant.

That's why I'm delighted by it.

To recap, Miranda and Evans's younger kids don't have screen time, not even movies because they're very, very bad.

But her son does play a little thing called Minecraft.

Her older kid doesn't have any kind of social media because that would be terrible, but he does have Snapchat.

I love it.

What's the problem.

Once it's a bit all over the shop, which you know we all are with screen time, It's extremely relatable, extremely relatable.

What I think is really interesting about this is she paints this picture where her husband, the founder of Snapchat, is very anti screens.

And that's an interesting thing that we've seen before with these big tech pros, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg do not let their kids on screens, and it is this kind of do as I say, but not as I do in reverse.

Oh, it's fine for everyone else, but not for my kids.

It's this I know what's behind the curtain, and I don't want that for my kids.

And that is scary.

Yeah, let's unpack what that actually means.

The people who know the most about these apps and devices, who jerry rigged them to make us all addicted to them and know all the tips and tricks on how to do that, they are the very people who are making clear to their kids that they should not go near them.

Yeah, I'm so surprised you like this, because aren't you just irritated by the privileged flex to say no?

But I can afford my children the time and the activities and to not have to be on screen.

Here's why I loved it.

Every parent has these arbitrary and actually very silly rules that make them feel better about their parenting style, like, oh, I don't let my kids have screen time except minecraft.

Oh, I don't let them use social media such a little bit of Snapchat and not a monster.

And he's on it all the time, She says, he's on it all day long.

Oh god, yeah, I love the little branded mentioned there for her husband's company, Like, oh, of course, but Snapchat's absolutely fine.

Snapchat's great.

So it's quite ironic.

I heard an interesting quote from Bill Gates daughter, Phoebe.

She's been in the news a bit lately.

She's in her twenties, and she has just launched a shopping app where apparently it helps you get the best price for things, querying why Bill Gates daughter he needs to find the best price for things.

But anyway, she was talking about when she was growing up.

Her father made a distinction between how he had used technology as a kid and how he wanted his kids to use it.

He said, when he was a kid, he experimented with technology and that is what led him to become a billionaire and the founder of Microsoft.

But he didn't want his kids experimenting the technology because he already knows what's wrong with it, and so for them he wanted them to quote grow into it thoughtfully.

And I just reckon, We've got to listen to these tech bros when they tell us this.

It's very revealing, Amelia.

These tech bros are rich, and they have their time and the resources to have their kids not on screens.

They probably can afford to pay for pottery workshops and camps that are offline and all these things.

But if you're a normal family, screens are very much the way that dinner gets made, the way that work gets done.

So I know it's interesting what they're doing and we should take cues from it, but it's just not rooted in reality.

No, even that idea of cozying up to watch a movie that Maranda talked about.

Look, before I had kids, I thought I be doing that cozying up to watch Disney movies from my childhood.

That's not how it works when the TV is on, I am folding laundry.

Exactly Earlier this year, Adolescence was the biggest show.

I feel like you could not look or scroll anywhere without seeing this.

It was the biggest show on Netflix in the world at the time before K Pop Demon Hunters overtook it.

But if you didn't watch it, it was essentially about what happens to a family when their thirteen year old son is arrested for murdering a school friend, and it launched this global conversation around men and boys today, and the creator of the show's now using his platform to launch this program where he's asking men to write letters to their sons and he'll turn it into a book.

This is such a lovely project in my eyes.

Like, I think it's so great to see any focus on raising emotionally intelligent boys.

Do you reckon Mon's I love it to Stacey, I think we are trying to raise a new kind of man.

There's a lot of focus on boyhood at the moment, and anything that we can do to bring dads into the conversation and ask dads to kind of reveal emotional intelligence and connect with their boys is really great.

And I know other people have tried to do it before, but when you have someone as big as Stephen Graham, who has this huge platform, who did kind of start this global conversation now turning that into action, that can only be a good thing.

Yeah.

No, I hate it.

I absolutely hate it.

Look, I didn't watch this TV show.

I never will.

In fact, anecdotally know a lot of parents of younger children just could not stomach the idea of watching a show like this that essentially presents boys as having this monster inside them that has to be changed.

And that's my issue with Stephen Graham's whole shtick.

It's predicated on this idea that boys today are in a unique crisis.

He says things along these lines.

He says, there is arguably an even bigger disconnect between fathers and sons than ever before.

Sorry, what where is the evidence for this?

I think nineteen fifties patriarchs who never spoke to their family want a word.

I don't see any evidence for it, And I think it's perpetuating this idea of boys as weird aliens that we have to treat with kid gloves.

Sure, write a letter to your son, but how about writing a letter to your daughter too.

I don't see why we keep having to treat them in this almost fearful way.

But don't you feel like there needs to be a bit of a recalibration, Like I feel like at the moment we are seeing that so many boys are feeling angry and feeling disconnected and looking to these like manisphere figures, that we do need to have these people who do have the platform focusing more on them and kind of bringing that balance back of what it means to be a good man.

There's been a bit of a backclash to adolescents I hear you on that, but I think that the idea of being a better man, the flip side is you've got to be a better man because inherently you are a monster, no, and you've got to stifle that and stifle the toxic masculinity.

And so a lot of people are saying that Adolescence it was a hugely popular show when it came out, but a lot of the debate now has shifted to was Adles since kind of an example of a moral panic, Like we've always worried about teenage boys.

This is not new, and that's what I take exception to.

In the eighties apparently, I've read that people were worried about dungeons and dragons corrupting youth and Chucky from child's play, and then in the nineties it was violent rap lyrics.

None of this is new.

I don't think it is a moral panic because we are seeing the data on boys being influenced by the andrew Tates of the world and this toxic manisphere and the parenting experts.

There's an amazing parenting expert, Australian expert called Steve Bitoff who writes a lot about raising boys, and he says that the really critical time for dads is the age between six and fourteen, and this is when boys are working out who they are and if there's no one there to guide them, if fathers don't fill that gap, they will go looking for scripts of masculinity elsewhere and they will find it online.

And he calls it the vacuum effect.

When good men go quiet, bad ones get loud.

And I think boys are the new misunderstood gender.

But back to your point about how nineteen fifties dad's had a much bigger disconnect with their sons, I'm not sure if that's completely the case, because I think the modern dad.

We've come a long way with men being more emotionally intelligent, and we see it in pop culture.

We see it like Blue is Dad Bandit.

We see a lot more representations of sensitive, emotional men.

But we've told men for years to open up, but we've never given them a format that feels kind of like safe to do that.

And I think a letter is a really good way to do it because it's feelings in a space that's non confrontational.

So no dad is going to sit down and look at their son in the face and have a deep and meaningful conversation, and a lot of the parenting experts say that is not the time to talk to boys, that the best time to communicate with them is side by side, when you're working on a project together, when you're driving in the car.

And I think a letter does the same thing.

Putting your feelings down on paper and slipping it under the door.

It's very non confrontational way to communicate with your son.

There was this study in twenty twenty three that the University of Queensland did and it found that young men learn how to be a man from their dads.

So dads pass on their masculinity beliefs to their sons.

And it might sound really obvious, but here's why it's important.

Because there are a lot of people out there wanting to build policies and interventions and programs aimed at stopping this toxic manisphere.

It's more likely to work if we target the dads.

It's just more likely to work to promote that healthy vision of masculinity if it's coming from their dad, not from school, not from other people, but dads.

So that's why I think the letter project is amazing.

And I also want to say Maggie Dent wrote about this in twenty twenty four.

She called it the power the parent letter.

She's got this book helped me help my team.

She's even got templates in the back of the book which is like, copy my letter.

Here is how to do it if you're not sure where to start.

And she says that like having a well thought out letter can build this bridge, and it's deceptively powerful.

Okay, I'm kind of sold on that.

Maggie Dan also taught me something about talking to boys, where she said that they value predictability, a certain script every day, and so she gave us a suggestion that a boy will find it especially powerful if at bedtime you tell him something like I love you more than all of the grains of sand on all the beaches, because he can visualize that it's really quite beautiful.

I started this conversation a cynic, but I'm kind of being one over to this idea.

Mon's that there is some kind of crisis in boyhood and that fathers have to play a really important role in that.

And what I liked in this project, Stephen Graham said that he's purposely looking for all sorts of fathers, so he wants new fathers, fathers who are much older and their children are later in life, absent fathers who haven't been there, and what they're feeling about that relationship.

So I think it's quite good in that it would feel accessible to all types of dads.

And yeah, maybe it's just a matter of this needs to be targeted at the father's not the sun.

Stephen, you in this realm.

It's the photo which has divided Australia.

Picnic tables at a local park, cheerful, pink plastic tablecloths, brightly colored bunting which reads happy Birthday?

What could be wrong with this?

Sounds lovely?

There's something wrong with it.

There are no people in the photo and that's what's set off a firestorm because the person who reserves these tables for a kid's birthday party was not in the park.

Oh now, this photo was posted to the Facebook page Southwest Sydney Kids Parks and Places earlier this month, and as Yahoo News, which has gone really impressively deep on this photo reports, e quote left hundreds of viewers stunned.

Hundreds tread Now a few facts before I'm going to turn to the jury for a verdict on whether this behave is acceptable or profoundly an Australian.

Here are the facts you need to know.

The setup was there since at least nine thirty am on a Saturday, when eyewitnesses first observed it.

I need to tell you that the council has confirmed you cannot reserve tables at this park, so before you ask, not an option.

And also the offending family arrived at the park for the party at twelve thirty pm.

Now the family was apparently very understanding.

They moved their party because other people had already taken the tables.

Everything was fine, But the question remains, two bags or not two bags?

Stacy, what's your verdict?

I think it's okay.

I just think don't hate the player, hate the game.

Like, if you want to get there early, then you've put in the work.

As someone who sent their father down to bags the table for my daughter's birthday party at six thirty in the morning, Stephen Graham would approve exactly for a ten thirty party.

My dad sat there in the chair with the setup holding for holding his flad.

I imagine too, that's different.

Respectfully, he was sitting there.

The issue is there were no people there.

Mons Yes, I agree.

I think the prevailing theory is fine to bags, but someone must physically be there on table watch.

Yes, someone must remain visible.

This also happened last summer when there was a big kerfuffle about people reserving beach spots by erecting the cool kabana in the morning and then leaving and being able to come back and forth.

The unofficial Australian rule is one person must stay, otherwise it's a free for all.

It's a public space, public space, public rules.

We need to protect that kind of party.

I love a humble park party.

They are just the best mons.

I couldn't agree more love a park party.

There's something so simultaneously nostalgic and very free about a park party.

And also you don't have people jamming lollies and cake into your carpets, which is nice too.

Yes, but I had a very traumatic experience with the park party.

I was living in Washington, DC and I had a third birthday party which was Octonauts themed.

I had ordered a lot of oct Nauts themed party merch and swag, got to the park early to Saturday.

Captain Barnacles like in the Octonauts.

Captain Barnacles, I think.

Captain Barnacles is too type a for you.

I feel like you might be the pirate with the patch classy.

That is so hurtful, like a pirate.

I would never break the lawn time guy.

He's a good he's vibes.

Sorry, continue getting a distracted.

So I set up the party and I was there.

I was there the whole time, and the party student start at eleven am.

Ten five woman rocks up at the park.

Oh no, and says, I reserve this.

No, And my whole body went cold, because what could I do?

She was absolutely right.

I did not realize that you had to reserve, and there was, in fact, an online booking system in place.

I had to take down all the option nauts merch and essentially just create a makeshift picnic party, which was not my vision.

So I guess that's kind of an urban horror story.

And I guess it shows you should always check out whether you can reserve.

Yeah, that's why well done, well done, because there isn't There is a lot riding on the picnic park table.

You cannot leave it to chance, like you need to try and control those controllables.

And were you just like living in the shadow of that table, and that change you to.

A party that is perfectly put living in the shadow.

That will be the name of my parenting memoir that I write about that incident and how it caused me to reevaluate whether, in fact I was a terrible parent.

I'm so sorry for your loss of the picnic.

I actually think it's kind of cool that you just pivoted, and we're just like, what else could I do?

Park?

What was her party?

Did you keep side eyeing hers?

Look?

Her party looked fine.

It didn't have an option naut scene.

It did not appear to have a discernible theme, which is fine.

You don't have to have a theme.

Look lovely that she was too busy reserving the actual dave Ault.

The thing was it was at a splash pad, and I do love a splash pad for kids, for little kids, because they can run back and forth.

Look, it turned out great.

The kids didn't care, but I live with the shame.

You know what, Amelia, you got that party planner, the amazing pickle whatever his name was, what was his name?

The gecko, Their.

Great zucchini, the great Zuchin zucchini.

You have the great Zucchini law.

You managed to book America's most famous party planner.

It doesn't matter what you do from here, it's never going to live up to that.

So I think it should just.

Be scrappy little park parties from here on in forew.

I like that a lot.

And I also feel like park parties reach a kind of age limit as well, and now I feel like I'm actually hitting that.

I think it's around seven.

So to everyone who's still got kids under seven who can have park parties, lean in.

They're the best.

Before we go into this next chat, if you have small children, you can hear this episode.

If they are in earshot, you may want to skip forward by just a few minutes.

I'm going to be referencing North Pole business that only adults can know.

Thank you.

Now, you two come into my secret room.

Shut the door.

I need you to help me work through a problem.

It's Elf a clock or what I mean by that.

Yeah, it is because it's we're almost tipping into November, and then by the time November gets here, it may as well be December.

It's the time of year that I remember I feel like the last mom alive without an ELF on the shelf.

It taunts me every year, and you know, last week we talked about how Halloween just has this crazy momentum.

I feel the same way about elves on the shelves.

They are everywhere.

They're in schools, they're on supermarket shelves, they're in cafes, like they're multiplying, like knits on a year three classroom head.

Like it's just if they are everywhere.

I agonize over this every year.

The time comes and every fiber of my body is trying to resist the ELF.

But the pressure, the tradition, the beauty, the magic, the joy is also there too, And I feel completely split down the middle about it.

And I want to ask you to as my confidants to elf or not to elf.

There is a lot of psychology behind this.

I went really deep on it, and researchers say enacting a family ritual is more important than the specific form that that ritual takes.

So it doesn't really matter what it is.

But if you're doing something that your children are expecting, that's a regular thing in your family.

Repeated rituals are proven to foster closeness and belonging and like that identity of your family.

And that's what's good about it.

Like, yes, it will foster community.

It is something you have to do long term.

But I want to talk about the dark side of the tradition too, because this goes to your question of whether or not you should do helf on the shelf.

Monds And you sent me a link to a newsletter called I Kid you not listeners type a mom.

Now, this is not a newslet I subscribe to, but it's fine time.

The author of that newsletter, Amanda Brown.

She gave me a phrase I honestly never given myself permission to think about before.

She talks about traditions I hate and traditions I regret starting because we always think a tradition is a good thing for all the reasons you said, Stacy.

But there's a lot of sort of pernicious elements of starting a tradition within a family.

And Amanda has three lessons she's learned about traditions.

One, once you start a tradition, it's very hard to stop it.

Two kids do not need traditions to be elaborate, which is great because my favorite tradition is sleeping in on a Saturday morning.

And three, these traditions will continue until your youngest child grows out of them.

So by and beware, what does that make you think?

In terms of ELF on the shelf, Monds like that idea of committing to it for a long time.

I'm okay with that.

I actually feel really divided about this.

I'm not anti ELF.

I think it's gorgeous and I think that kids are little for such a short time that doing anything that brings joy and magic into the house is a good thing, right.

And I also identify as a Christmas mom, like I'm in Christmas Mom's Australia Facebook group every five seconds, like I love we Know.

The thing that has stopped me from doing it are two things.

The first is it feels deceptive, like once they find out is it I've been lied to this whole time.

I also don't love the idea that kids have to be good because someone's watching them.

I want my kids to be like intrinsically good, not extrinsically motivated.

And thirdly, I think the mental load was too much for me in the past.

I had a huge job, we had a lot going on at home, and I just felt like one more thing in December was probably going to break me.

But I couple that with the idea that it does bring that sort of sense of magic, and it is something that they're going to wake up in the morning and feel excited about.

But it is a lot of mental load.

But that's what we do as parents, right We manufacture these moments to make our kids happy.

Well, you could try my tactic mons.

Last year.

I caved and decided that I needed to be this mum.

The first night, I put it on the toilet because I would thought that would be funny in the morning.

But my daughter got up in the middle of the night, saw a strange figure sitting on the toilet.

Terrified, screamed.

The elf will never be back again in our household, which I'm grateful for.

What story did you give us to why the elf went away?

I just said you didn't like her, so that's fine.

We'll just not We won't do that anymore.

The health services are no longer repor.

I fired the.

Elf, Yes, Stacy, I mean the toilet is a weird choice for the first buy the toilet.

That is where the door should be closed.

It's your private business.

What was going through your mind when you chose toilet?

I panicked.

I panicked.

I wanted to commit to this but didn't really have the time to commit to this, So that's where I put it failed miserably, So that's my sign that that tradition is not for our family.

I feel like this question of to elf or not to elf is tied up with the idea that we feel like we don't have enough traditions anymore, and I think there are a couple of reasons for that.

The first is that so many seasonal traditions are connected to the Northern Hemisphere calendar.

So for instance, an Easter egg count or an Easter egg roll.

The whole idea of that is that it's meant to be in springtime, and that's why they're all these eggs to fined or Halloween.

It's meant to be when the days are getting darker and shorter, and there's this sense of menace and the ominousness of the cold.

So that's the first reason.

Second reason, I think a lot of traditions are obviously quite religious in nature, and so we're looking for secular traditions to start, and I think that that's probably why we search for things like Elf on the Shelf.

But I do think that committing to them is huge.

I see this even with the tooth fairy.

Now I felt obligated to employ the tooth fairy in case there are little kids who have come back.

The tooth fairy does work in our home, but the tooth theory is not reliable.

Sometimes she tells me that she doesn't have any cash.

Sometimes she asks me change for a fiftyeth and I don't have changed through fifty And I think that should be her job as tooth fairy to keep gold coins on hand.

And I'm frankly not pleased with the job she's been doing.

But am I going to fire the tooth fairy?

It raises all these questions, but I think these ones feel like a big commitment, and I think the best family traditions, like I don't think you need to be worrying about the elf mons, because I think the best family traditions are the ones that are quite specific to your family.

Like in our family, we do tree Day.

So we've done tree Day.

I'm thirty six now for thirty six years with my parents where we go and get the tree from the Christmas tree farm.

And my brother now lives into State with his wife and they fly back from Melbourne to come and cut down the tree for our family.

They're not even there, but that is something that even in my wider friend group people talk about, oh yeah, you've got Tree Day this week, like it's something that is unique to our family.

And I think those are the ones that should bring a bit more joy to you as well.

Like if it's feeling like a chore, it probably shouldn't be a tradition.

Can I ask what days?

Tree?

Dau four?

Tree Day is just the first week of December generally, so we always do that.

And I kind of went in search of other more achievable traditions around this time.

You put the elf in the bathroom, which is perfect and creepy.

I know, look, I'm not great at traditions across the board.

I found this brilliant when I was looking at other traditions that are like family identity, and I found this brilliant one by this woman named Kylie, and she said that they do Cookie Hookie Day in their family.

So one day a year in December, they all take the day off, The children skip school, the parents take the day off.

They make cookies the entire day, which ends up forming presents for the other people in the family.

They watch Christmas movies.

Everyone loves it because they feel like they're being a bit naughty and doing something that they shouldn't do by taking the day off.

And I just thought that was brilliant, Like, isn't that what we're meant to be looking for with traditions, not buying a bloody elf that we put everywhere.

Thank you for this pep talk.

I think this is exactly what I need.

And what you said before that was so beautiful and brilliant, and I want to put a highlighter on it is If it feels like a chore, maybe it's not the tradition for you.

And I think the reason I'm attracted to the elf or I have this tension around the elf, is because we don't have any of these beautiful traditions and so it's like, oh, here's one you can just buy off the shelf.

Sorry, moms, did you say you're attracted to the earl?

I am, Yeah, it's there.

There's a whole group of us online.

That's another Facebook.

Oh my god, I'm trying to get deep here, right.

Maybe it is actually about choosing things that we look forward to.

I think I'm just going to get the fucking elf.

You don't.

After all of that, do you know what I also love about your story is that you tried something and you quickly realized it wasn't for you and you were abandoned.

And I think that's quite good because, as you said earlier, once you hook into a tradition, you have to it's a long term thing to keep it going.

I want to ask a question about your tree Day.

Did you do Tree Day as a kid with your parents?

Yes, yeah, it's been so something that my parents have always done.

But now there's that tension of well where at that point?

Now where now our daughter is brought in on that?

But when does that end?

And I think that's always the hard thing and the sad thing with traditions sometimes is they're started by someone who then no longer ends up being there.

So do you continue that on?

Yes, of course you honor them.

It's beautiful.

Yeah, such a legacy or people can grow out of them.

Like for our daughter, the night before her birthday, I dress all of her stuffed animals in party hats because I had seen a video of that.

It's an easy cheap thing to do.

They all sit in a circle with her present, so in the morning, all the stuffed animals are there for her to get her present.

But last year when I did it, I felt this big sense of sadness because I thought this will end.

At some point, she won't want me to do this anymore.

When she's fourteen or fifteen years old, maybe sooner.

You know what, she might want you to do it.

She might I will do it until my dying day.

She wants me to Amelia any traditions other than sleeping in at your house.

You guys, this is such a type a conversation.

I want to point that, and I love that I don't have any.

We love essions go forth.

Okay, so I'm in the market for a new tradition.

I think what I would like to know is what other people are doing.

Stacy, You've got all the ideas, but what are our listeners doing that they can recommend.

I would love it if people could go to our Instagram at Parenting out Loud and tell us your Christmas traditions, your family traditions, so that we can copy them and steal them.

Thank you.

Okay, you know that feeling when a friend tells you about something so good that it goes straight into your notes app and then you probably never look at it again.

But you've taken on the recommendation.

That's what we do every week, we bring you the best things that we've read or seen or bought or used Stacy.

So this week I got myself a little treat and I've had a big reaction to it, so I thought I would share here because a lot of people said they didn't know about this.

I bought myself a makeup lesson at Mecca.

Oh that's brilliant.

So it's one hundred and fifty bucks.

It's not cheap, but it's redeemable on products, and you take your bag of makeup you already with you and go, this is what I've got, this is what I'm using.

Can you show me how to use this?

And then they'll fill in the gaps with anything you don't have.

So, like, I needed a nice foundation, but I had an eyeshadow palette that I have owned for probably seven years and never actually used because I didn't know which ones to use.

I loved it.

I left with a full face of makeup.

Okay, I need some tips, Okay, that's the best.

Yeah, So the best things I learned were about so I just have been doing my makeup the same since I was like sixteen, years old, where you just like slap the foundation on me your hands and rub it all over your face.

You are to do apparently not the main thing now that we're of a certain age is to not put the foundation up and ride up under your eyes, because she said, if you're going to put on concealer or a color corrector, you're just layering heaps of stuff in that spot and it's what can kind of drag your face down.

So she left all that area and showed me how to put like a nice color correcting product that I have your sports look Spectacle, Thank you so much.

My other one was instead of doing liquid eyeliner, which I've never really been able to master, they always look crooked, like one will look great and one will look crap.

She said, I should be using eyeshadow with an angled little brush, you know, the ones like tiny, tiny, tiny little brush with an angle to create a line of a flick, rather than using a liquid eyeliner because it can look a bit too harsh.

So I bought a ton of things, but I've also now got a ton of things on a wish list for Christmas for myself.

What funct did you buy that you were most excited about.

Oh, the cheapest thing, the angled brush, because I did my little flicky eyeliner this morning with brown eyeshadow and I feel like it's okay and I won't smudge it all over my face.

So yeah, hot tip, do that or put that on your birthday or Christmas wish list for someone to buy for you.

That's so good.

While we're talking about makeup, I started following that woman you told us about, Amelia Erica Taylor.

She's a genius, genius.

Oh so if you don't have the time or the money to get into Mecca, just do the cheapy version and follow Erica Taylor on Instagram and just copy what she does.

Yeah, she's brilliant.

That's great.

If you own a danim jacket, you probably need to be updating your makeup.

And we said, all right, little change of pace here because I have a recommendation that goes a bit deeper.

You know, you when someone you love is going through something really shit and you don't know what to say or do.

It's Breast cancer Awareness Month and I read an article on substat last night by Lucy Ormond.

Her substack's called a Year of Healing, And this article is called so your friend's been diagnosed with cancer.

Here's how you can help.

And it was so brilliant.

It was full of brilliant ideas of how to show up for someone in the thick of it, really like low cost things to do, things that you should text, things not to say, and how these small things can help more than you know.

A disclaimer is that Lucy is my friend, my very dear friend, so you can imagine the guilts that I felt when I read this and realized all the things I could have done better.

So don't be me.

Read it book market so that the next time you know someone that's going through something really horrible, you will know what to do.

So we might link to it in the show notes.

What's one thing that you shouldn't text or say?

I know someone that had cancer and died.

Yeah, yeah, my friend had that and they died.

She said, why would you say that?

Yeah?

Yeah, oh that sounds so helpful.

Thanks for that.

Months Mine is a parenting technique that is actually extremely easy and dare I say it fun.

So I'm not taype A, but I am a nerd and I will take any opportunity to learn more about how to be about a parent, and I took a parenting class in person a couple of years ago.

It was with an American pediatrician called doctor Dan Shapiro.

He is extremely sought after.

His practice is basically impossible to get into.

But he does run this course and it's called Parent Child Journey, and you can actually do it online.

And I particularly recommend it for parents whose children are You're divergent, because that is his area of specialty.

But the tips and the techniques that he talks about can be applied for all children.

The best thing that I took out of it was this concept of time ins.

Now you've probably heard of timeouts, but no one should be implementing time outs without also implementing time ins.

Doctor Shapiro says that the whole concept of timeouts as a form of discipline was only ever meant to be implemented if you were also doing time in.

Okay, so let me explain what a time in is.

The idea of a time in is committing to spending a small amount of time with your kid, one on one, not with your partner, not with your other kid.

He talks about actually when you have a triad group, the kid feels that the attention is being divided.

So, for instance, I have two kids, and obviously is easier for me if I'm spending time with them to spend time with both of them, and that is what happens the vast majority of the time.

But he just asks that every now and then, if you can carve out some one on one time with the kid, and even if it's five minutes, you will see really powerful results in terms of your connection with them.

And he Doctor Shapiro still does this with his adult sums.

He's still like he'll meet them for a coffee and think to himself, this is a time in so there are some rules of the time in you can't ask questions.

That was really surprising to me because I think we're taught as adults that the way you show interest in someone is by asking a question.

But he explains that to a child, and in fact, potentially to adults, a question is stressful, it requires a response.

By asking the question, you are requiring someone to answer you, and that's not the point of the time in.

You are not requiring anything of your child.

You cannot issue instructions to them or commands to them, and you can't use your phone that's pretty obvious.

Again, five minutes is fine.

It's really hard, though, even for five minutes to not ask a question, to not issue a command, or to not sort of sneak in a little learning like just say they draw a and you're like, you know, the thing about trees is that they emit oxygen and taking cup and direxcite.

Do not teach them anything.

This is not a teaching time.

You were led by them, and I'm not very good at it.

But the other weekend I spent one on one time with my child and I tried to take those principles into our conversation and it was really great.

I felt like we got to spend time together.

It was an afternoon we spent together, and obviously I issued commands and ask questions over the course of the afternoon.

But I noticed in the days afterwards that our relationship felt much easier than it would have had we not had the time in so good.

And I think it's one of those good things because we spend so much time like correction and direction, as you said, like you're either telling them what to do or steering them towards something else, to just like.

Be there with them.

So yeah, Maggie Dan.

I know we keep going banging on about Maggie Deden.

She talks about how kids will have this cup and you've got to fill it up every day, and sounds like the time in is like very filling of the cup.

And like he says, aim for like five to seven minutes once a week, and you might hear that and think that sounds well once a week.

It's hard.

I mean, that's why I love his advice.

It's not unrealistic, like it's like five to seven minutes a week.

Aim for a time in.

All right, girls, that's all we have time for parenting, culture, news trends this week.

But friends, if you have a friend of yours that would really get this conversation and like this show, you should send it to them or tell them about it.

That's how we're going to grow this little community of ours, just one person at a time.

And people are always looking for new podcasts to add to their rotations.

So be the friend that gives someone a good one to try.

A big thanks to our team this week, Junior content producer Tessakotovic, our senior producer Leah Porges, and executive producer Sashtanic and the group EPE is Ruth Devine, and you are Stacy, and you're Amelia and I'm Monique.

We are bye bye