You're listening to a mother and Mere podcast.

Guys, this is just a bit of a PSA.

I know it's busy.

I know we're in this frantic run to Christmas.

Everyone's got a lot on.

You know, there's.

Concerts, their dance concerts.

There's a lot on.

You're running your elderly parents around her appointments.

You've got presents to buy, You've got Chris Kringles to participate.

There's a lot on.

All right, there's a lot on.

But guys, you cannot miss a recycling bin cycle in the lead up to Christmas.

All right, You've got to stay on top of that ship, because if you miss a recycling bin cycle in these weeks before Christmas, then you are You're fucked till May.

Who is that legend?

What a good PSA is Kate McClellan, the comedian, And since seeing that, I've thought about it several times.

Thank you for the PSA.

It's what we all need right now.

It really is.

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

We unpack the news, the trends, the culture, and what parents are thinking about.

I'm gonna eat Bowlie.

I'm Amelia Laston and I'm Stacy Kidds.

And on the show today, there's a mum trend going around that's about not really looking like a mum at all.

And remember when there was a toy of the year.

Now it feels like we've moved to know toys as the ultimate status symbol.

We're going to unpack the new rules of gifting.

And how did gentle parenting go from trendy to becoming now the worst way to raise your kids?

But first, Stacy, Stacy, Stacy, what did you click on this week?

Can I just say that I imagine Stacey's setting off for the planes of the Internet on every Monday, like with a Safari hat and a Safari suit on, and she's just like picking up interesting things for us to sort of pour over on parenting out loud.

That's exactly what I do looking through my window that Internet explorer.

I am.

Well, this week, I've got a little bit of sculess gossip, which you probably thought I was above, but I am not.

But I have hard evidence for this gossip.

So that's what makes it good when you know that there's a little grain of truth in there.

So Ashley Tisdale.

She played Sharpe Evans in high school musical like she played the mean girl brilliantly.

She was awesome.

So she has written a blog post which is very retro.

I feel I feel like not enough of the celebrities are doing blog posts anymore.

They're all over on substack.

But she's got her own blog called by Ashley French, which is her new last name, and it's called You're Allowed to Leave your Mum Group or your Mom Group, And she's written about how she joined a mum group in twenty twenty to keep saying mom, Okay, it's.

Mom from now on.

She joined a mom group in twenty twenty one after the birth of her first daughter, but says that it quickly turned toxic as the kids started to grow.

So she says she started to notice that certain people would get talked about when they weren't present and not in a positive way.

That there were group text change that didn't include everyone, and she said, when I noticed the third or fourth time of seeing social media photos of everyone else at a hangout that I didn't get invited to, it felt like I wasn't really part of the group at all.

So she made the decision to walk away, and she's encouraging people to do the same, which is great.

But this sent people on a little bit of like a man hunt or a mom hunt as it were, to figure out which mom group this was because she was in a very public mom group with Mandy Moore, Hillary Duff, and Megan Trainer, so all like the la the millennial Selarial moms are all in a group and they used to all post about each other all the time.

But people noticed that January was the last time Ashley posted about them.

And I know you're going to say, Stacey, you're a journalist, get a grip.

You can just go from January to December without posting your friends on social media.

It's okay.

But people notice that she deleted an Instagram post that had all of the moms in it, where it said I love being surrounded.

By these ladies.

What an amazing group of women to journey through this momhood together with.

So grateful for this trip.

It is a law that you have to refer to a group of women.

The collective now for it on social media is a group of ladies.

It is ladies.

And my final piece of evidence she now no longer follows Mandy Moore on Instagram.

I hate this because Mandy seems so nicey.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

I know, I'm.

Yeah young you know, Younger is coming to Netflix and it's the greatest TV show of all times.

It really is rewatches in order.

But yeah, so something's going down with the mom group.

We don't know exactly what, but it seems pretty legit.

What's it like to be in a mom group?

Even if Hillary Duff isn't in it.

It's weird.

There's no other example in life where you get put together with a random group of people.

So I got put together in a mum's group from my council area.

It's like, imagine if you had a kavoodle and you go to the vet and the vet goes, hey, twelve other people have all had a kvoodle as well, and now you're gonna meet every Thursday morning to talk about your kvoodle.

Like it's just it's weird.

It's weird.

It's actually even weird, and it's weirdly competitive.

I found it weirdly competitive and it wasn't my jam.

It's actually even weirder than the kavoodle example because at least if you like chose to get a kavoodle, that's probably saying something about you or as having a baby is literally the most common thing that.

Is in the world.

Yeah, that's and that's the only thing bonding you.

People love them though, Like I know friends who are still friends with their mum's group ten twenty years down the track.

And they always have long lunches together.

Yeah, like I love that.

But yeah I totally missed that boat.

I think it's the exception.

But that isping hot is it?

Thank you so much that Do you imagine how the group chat was when they saw the blog.

They would have been like.

The group chat that would have been great and she definitely would have been left out of that one without Ashley in it.

So remember how they used to be a toy of the year every Christmas and it was the one that all the parents needed to get their hands on.

That was the big status symbols.

Look a ferbie, Yeah, that's what I want.

To tickle me Elmo.

I think I wasn't playing attentionion because I didn't have kids at the time, but that was my sense that there was always this really important toy that the parents who wanted to show they were going above and beyond secured for their kids.

Well, now, I think that there's been a real cultural shift and there are now two types of millennial parents.

This was also discussed in a recent Card article.

There are the ones who shower their children with presents and posted on richtop, and then there are the parents who has perp cut and not gifting at all.

And they're not doing it because they can't afford to.

That's not what talking about here.

These parents cite environmental concerns, a desire to.

Shield their kids from materialism.

And they also admit that it is a little bit of a flex to have this blank space below your Christmas tree because it means that your kids don't need anything.

Mond's is this you?

I read this article in the cut.

It's diabolically fascinating.

Is it not?

Like?

So good?

What they're saying is they are so privileged that they are above buying their children things.

It's the ultimate parenting flex to buy nothing at all.

That is so weird.

Can you help me understand this point?

Yes?

So, the article talks about how a lot of dual income families fall into the show your kid with Gifts camp because they're kind of seeking to compensate for their lack of presence.

I mean, this is just what the experts say.

It's certainly not what I do.

And also the ones who are not gifting tend to be those who have made a lifestyle at a spending time with their kids and documenting it on social media, like it's kind of their job to spend time with their kids.

A lot of these parents, I was reminded of this.

I think this is a real thing because I don't know if either of you caught The Duchess of Sussex's Christmas special recently on Netflix.

No.

I swiped right past that Amelia and watch Kpop demon.

Hunt Dying, And in that show, she makes a cloth Advent calendar and she fills it with handwritten affirmations rather than just, you know, one of those chocolate Advent calendars you get from old.

Needs to have listened to this show where I talked about that a few weeks ago, where I was like, I tried to do that in year one of Christmas and my kids were like, give it a.

Chocolate And then it got me thinking about maybe these parents have a point though, because at first I recoiled, but then it turns out that we're not even sure.

That gifts make kids happy.

Like that feels kind of intuitively true when you think about it, Like kids are not happy when they open their presents on Christmas.

They're usually kind of stressed out.

What it's sort of sensory overload for kids to open presents on Christmas, and sometimes they're not getting exactly what they wanted, and it just feels like a stressful situation rather than a like gratitude filled one.

We're not there yet, I can see how that would happen, but we're very much in the happy years of it.

Of the gifts.

The bit that infuriated me in this article when we were ready, it was the woman April Jackson, and she was saying she's got four year old twins and she was saying that they go without screens, sugar, and gifts, which I take personal offense to because those are my three favorite things in this world, first of all.

But it's just that she said, I want my children to value people, not things, And that's the part that's so irritating, Like they are using their privilege to be like, well, my kids are above that.

My kids would never demand a certain gift like, do you think that's what it is?

Well, I'm going to have to drag in some science.

Here, please and drag away.

There's a paper called what makes for a Merry Christmas Buy to psychology professors, and they found that adults whose holidays revolve around gifts were more stressed and less happy than those who focused on family or religion.

Have you ever thought about focusing on family or religion?

Stacy Clatter spikes mum's cortisol and toddler's play creatively with fewer toys.

There's a recent New Yorker cover that really summed this up for me.

There's a baby who's surrounded by all these brand new toys, and the baby is playing with the Amazon box that they came in, and that just kind of like sums up that approach.

Can we also talk about good toys versus bad toys?

Because how you gift and what you gift can also be this status symbol, and no one talks about this, but once you start pulling on this thread, this is really interesting because there is this unspoken belief that some toys make you a better parent, and some toys make you a bit kind of peg you as more of a chaotic energy kind of parent.

So a good toy is usually seen as something wooden.

It's very montessory coded or open ended.

And an open ended toy is a toy that can be played in any number of ways.

So things like how a wooden block could be made into a building, or it could be a racing car, how lago sets can be pulled apart built into other things, or those you know, those kinetics magnetic tiles that it be a.

Million differd things.

Open ended toys, they can be a bit stem coded, but they're about creativity and playing with them in a lot of different ways.

They're seen as a good toy to have.

The other thing about a good toy is that I'm putting that in like little you know finger marks, is they can be bloody expensive.

And this high price is another code for like o, Well, it must be good, it must be valuable, it must be worth something.

Bad toys, on the other hand, are cheap, loud, plastic, key, cluttery, They break, and they're often closed ended, so there's only one way to play with them, so they read as lesser even if kids adore them.

So this is not my idea.

Where did this idea come from there was a substack.

I read on culture study this interview with Alexander Lang, and she's like an art and she wrote a book called The Design of Childhood, and she said, this is a massive hangover from the nineteen fifties.

Little history lesson for you.

So in the fifties, that was when parenting books started telling mums that they should be playing with their kids on the floor all day.

But obviously mums had to cook and clean and run a house and whatever and work.

So toy companies swooped in.

There was like a big consumer boom in the nineteen fifties.

It was postwar.

Everyone was spending money again, and toy companies said, hey, if you buy this toy, it'll teach your child for you.

So Parents magazine had a column called Toys that Teach and Play School marketed itself as toys that build kids, and so these good toys were framed as like educational and character building and creativity enhancing.

She talks about how Lago had to work really hard to prove that because they were a plastic toy, they had to prove that they could still be good.

They had to really double down on the marketing messages of like Danish design and craftsmanship and durability and on violence.

So when we talk about good gifts versus bad gifts, we're kind of talking about the parent, it says we are.

Do you feel that as well?

Yeah, totally.

There's so much pressure on getting the right gifts, and there's also don't you feel like there's almost like a pressure now of the big gift?

Like I feel like I see that a.

Lot, as in like, oh, you get them a lot of little things and a lot of useful things, but what's the big gift like?

And it almost feels like that's performative, that's performative for social media to be like I got them the trampoline or the motorized bike for a three year old, Like it is getting ridiculous and out of hand.

So I kind of love have you seen around now this trend to kind of I think it's parents kind of clawing back into a middle ground between this very privileged we're not giving them anything and this over the top halls where they're doing like category tags for the gifts.

So there's like something you need, something to read, something to wear, something to share, and something to do.

Stop and even that's hard work.

It's because so much you're categorizing, isn't it.

I like that.

I think that's a really good framework for gifting.

And I use that every year something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read.

Yeah, so you can kind of limit yourself and stop yourself from going out and buying a million things to like fill that void of guilt.

I also think that this whole conversation tends to revolve around parents and what gifts say about parents, rather.

Than thinking about what kids might want.

Yeah.

And I was reading the comments on the cart article, and there were a lot of comments from people with older kids who said, A, you know who we don't hear from in this article is kids from those gift households.

We're just hearing from the parents.

And B As your kid gets.

Older and they're comparing their whole with other kids, it's going to become harder to sustain that no gift household.

And that made a lot of sense to Yeah.

But you know that conversation of like trying to minimize the materialism of Christmas that has been increasing in intensity in recent years.

And there was a recent New.

Yorker article that talked about the eighteen Letters project.

And this is whereby an orphan named Jene Darst talked about how instead of giving her child a gift on her child's birthday, she wrote him a letter every year on his birthday for eighteen years, and then she presented it to him as an eighteenth birthday present.

Now that's a lovely.

Idea, And you know, I teared up at various points in the article and also felt guilty that I'm not doing an eighteen letters project.

But what was really telling about this article is that when she finally gave him the eighteen letters on his eighteenth birthday, it's very apparent from this article that he felt a little bit awkward about it and that he didn't quite know what to do with it.

I loved that she kept that in as well, a sense that she wanted him to say, oh my god, mom, this is the best thing anyone could have given me, a set of reflections.

On parenting me through the eighteen years.

But he felt almost a little embarrassed, and by her own telling, he kind of put it away, and she wonders whether or not he's actually he actually wanted it.

And it wasn't sad.

It was more just about when you give a gift, aren't you trying to think about what the person who wants the gift actually wants rather than what you want out of the interaction.

And that's what made the article so interesting.

I think that's why I get annoyed at these no gift parents, because I'm like, you're doing that for you, because that makes you look good to say like it feels so tried.

Wife coded almost to be like, if you just spent all this quality time with your children, then you could raise them to not be so greedy and to just want to enjoy time.

And when she said that, I want them to enjoy people, not things, It's like, that's very privileged to be able to do that and to be able to say that, whereas for a parent who doesn't have the means and is desperately trying to scramble together enough gifts for their child at Christmas, that is their literal nightmare to not be able to give them those things.

So, yeah, you're right, so much of it is focused on what the parent wants and not actually what that kid wants at all.

I noticed this year both of my kids came home from school and their classmates had gifted them something so they'd take it hole like it was tiny little plastic things of bubbles or squishy toys or a wind up father Christmas that walks along and I find that interesting, like who's driving that?

Our parents driving that?

Like, let's give everyone in your class something?

And I don't know how to feel about it.

I think I'm trying not to be like morally superior about it because I don't want the clutter in my house.

I wish no one would do it, but I kind of wish the school would come in and say, hey, instead of spending money on these little things for your classmates, that's so lovely.

Instead we're going to do just cards, or we're just going to write a beautiful message to our I don't know, am I asking too much?

No, I'm noticing that two monds.

It definitely does feel like there almost needs to be like an etiquette check in now, because I feel like everyone's gone too far and not now giving each other.

I'm getting the same like every other day, a tiny little bubble or a tiny little candy cane is coming home, and then I'm now in a panic of do I have to do that back?

I guess I do, But then I'm again doing that so that I look good to the other parents.

The kids don't care, you know, it's discarded basically as soon as.

They get home.

Yeah.

But you know how like in New.

South Wales, the teachers they have to declare if they get a present over fifty bucks.

Seen.

Yeah, so they have to declare if they get a gift that's worth more than fifty dollars, they can keep it.

They just have to declare if they get something that's over that amount.

And I feel like we almost need that for everyone, Like it needs to be like, okay, work, colleague, twenty bucks tops, that's it.

Kids at school cards only, mother in law's twenty bucks, like whatever it is.

I feel like we just need like a nationwide agreement on the amounts and then that would keep everyone in check.

Yeah.

The only thing I want to pause on there is that I'm arranging a group present for one of my kid's teachers.

But in addition, my kids really fixated on the stadea of giving a teachers a chocolate bar, like a sort of one of those ones you get at the markets.

They really wanted to do it.

So I just wonder if kids sometimes they have less of a vocabulary than us.

They have less of a budget than us, and they have less control over their time than us.

So maybe in some cases, a child giving a present, whether it's a candy came to the class or chocolate to the teacher, is them trying to express what that person means to do.

Yeah, maybe, Stacy.

I saw a trend on TikTok this week and I'm old.

I need you to explain it to me.

I don't get things.

It's called alt moms.

Yeah, alt mom, what's an alt mom?

This is where I went out with my Dora Explorer backpack into the Internet, as you spoke about earlier, to get all the information, gather it and bring it back to you both.

So obviously, like society loves putting a tag, specifically, TikTok loves putting a tag on people like crunchy mom.

It's like in overdrive.

But there's this subset of mums who are now at like claiming this title as their own and I really love it.

So they're kind of embracing that.

When you say old mums, it's like that punk, grunge emo aesthetic alternative.

He used to see a lot of you know, goths growing up and where of all the goths?

Yeah, where have all the goth's gone?

Kind of like, yeah, they've gone and had kids.

But I think if you looked at it, you would think and they obviously feel this pressure from what I'm seeing, that they expect women who then become mothers to almost dilute that down.

Like when you think of a classic mum in your head, that is probably not what you think of someone dressed in black with the dyet hair and the tattoos and a lot of piercings.

That's probably not what comes to your mind.

And so there's a lot of women now, particularly this one called at that old mum who's sharing a lot of images of herself when she felt pregnant, kind of saying like I tried to completely dilute down who I was.

I stopped dyeing my hair, I started wearing neutrals.

I didn't know what I was supposed to be because I had this new identity as a mum.

And then when her daughter was a couple of years old, she just leant right back into it and was like, this is my expression of myself.

This is my expression of fashion and who I am, and it's absolutely fine.

To be dressing that way and be a mother.

The two things are not mutually exclusive.

And I love that because why isn't that what we see as a mum.

Did you go through the linen stage you start wearing linen when you became a mom?

No?

Yeah, I tried it, but I just it was very home maintenance.

Did you do it so high hated?

Yeah?

And also just no one ever looks good in sorry they don't.

I once wore a short sleeved white linen shirt into Mom and Mia and MEA Friedman just came up to me and said, you got to get that off.

Why because she said that over forty you should not be wearing a short sleeve linen shirt.

Oh the rules for me Friedman.

I love it because she was right.

Of course, when you're hot, though, it's very nice and airy.

But it only looks good for the first five seconds of you leaving their Otherwise you just look like a crumpled pillowcase.

So I hate it.

No, I love this.

This would be easy to all black and a little bit of a tangent.

But I noticed that you said that when she fell pregnant.

And I have an American friend who religiously listens to this a dad.

He pointed out to me that fell pregnant is an australianism.

Oh wow, because in the US it's less euphimistic.

It's like when she was pregnant or when okay, she got pregnant, like whoops and yeah, he sort of speculated on the use of fell pregnant.

It's sort of like it's like serendipity.

You just felt it just happened.

Happened.

You see.

A single Instagram post caught my attention this week, and I want to talk about it because there's nothing particularly special or groundbreaking about it.

It's just five seconds long.

It's a woman patting her dogs on the head in her Larne room, who cares.

The static text overlaid on it says this, I can spot gentle parenting kids because I raised two of them.

Ten years later, I'm having to undo it.

This five second Instagram reel now has, at the time of recording, nine point three million views, and suddenly every junkie site on the Internet is writing stories about it.

I saw it on the Daily Mail, Upworthy, the Daily Dot Times of India headlines like mum regrets gentle parenting after ten years of gentle parenting.

Mother of two admits she got it all wrong.

This mum used gentle parenting for ten years.

Now she's trying to undo it.

And I want to talk about this because I feel like my algorithm is this tide that's moving really quickly away from gentle parenting.

And it felt like a few years ago, gentle parenting was kind of like this new trend.

It's like very engaging, while very different way to raise your children.

It had a lot of positive attention around it.

But now it's being framed as the worst thing you can do few kids.

Here is some of what my instagram is fading me.

Gentle parenting.

I really do believe it is setting your children up for failure in life.

Gentle parenting does not work.

Gentle parented kids give themselves away immediately.

Gentle parenting is bringing divorce on our children's futures, destroying future relationships because it's just not life.

If a child can't tolerate no, it's because they weren't trained to respect boundaries at home.

When that child becomes an adult, their boss isn't going to get down to their level.

It doesn't work that way.

It is not effective.

It is not working, These children are spoiled, entitled.

I am getting.

Sick and tired of watching these kids be ruined by this gentle kind of parenting.

Does gentle parenting has a massive PR problem?

Yes?

What do you think she meant by I'm trying to undo it?

Did she give us any more clues about that?

She's running an online course of course about how to you know, parent in a different way that's not so gentle.

But I wonder if we just need to unpack why this tide is moving away from it really quickly.

And I've got some theories, but I do want to know from you guys, like when you hear the term gentle parenting, what do you think?

I think it has a massive PR problem because I think if you asked, like a gen X or a boomer what they think gentle parenting is, they'd probably say to you that you never smack and you never yell, but you also just never tell them no, like they would say, you just let your kids run wild and do whatever they want.

But that's not meant to be what it is.

So I think the messaging's got lost somewhere along the way that the lack of yelling should not be the lack of discipline.

Like all of the research says, and all the people using this method are probably very researched and you know, caring about what they're doing.

Is that kids need boundaries to feel safe.

They need to butt up against something and be told no and be pushed back from that and get down off the chair if you're going to hurt yourself.

Those things.

But what I think has happened is that gentle parenting got co opted by a lot of people who were either doing permissive parenting or just not really parenting at all and being inattentive, and so the definition of it has just gotten lost to the point where I think people think that's what it means, that you're just letting kids from the show.

To explain, there are sort of three generally recognized umbrellas of parenting styles.

There is permissive parenting, as you said, Stacy, which is very loving and nurturing but no rules and no boundaries.

And at the other end of the spectrum, we have authoritarian parenting.

This is using fear and punishment to get people to comply.

But in the middle, this is the sweet spot.

This is what a lot of experts says.

The gold standard of parenting is authoritative, and this is respectful parenting.

So it takes a bit of the respect from the permissive side, it takes a bit of the boundaries from the authoritarian side, and it's this middle path of authoritative so firm boundaries, but very loving and kind.

But I think where gentle parenting's going wrong, Like it had good intentions, but it's very misunderstood and it was supposed to fall under that broader umbrella of authoritative parenting, But what's happening is it's just slipping into permissive and I think that's where people are having a major problem with it.

But I wanted to ask you, Amelia, because you're kind of like our geopolitical thermometer.

A lot of the pushback on gentle parenting is from, as you heard in those clips, like Americans saying this is wo this has left us, this is raising pussy children.

Is it an overreach to say that this is linked to Trump and to politics at the moment.

I don't think it's an overreach at all.

I was struck by that too, that you're clearly just getting served mostly American voices here saying that this is out of step with the times.

There was a Wall Street Journal.

Article in July had the headline Goodbye gentle parenting, Hello, fuck around and find out of FAFO.

And the idea of FAFO is that you elevate consequences because one rap on gentle parenting is that children do not learn what happens if they do break the rules.

And with FAFO, the idea is that you let them break the rules and then deal with the consequences of that.

So a simple idea would be your kid doesn't want to wear a jumper to school, so you say, okay, you don't have to wear a jumper to school, and then they go to school in their cold all day, so they learn the next day to take the jumper to school.

The fa FA acolytes say that the reason why they've switched over to it is because it is better preparing kids for this.

Very harsh world that we live in.

Now, that's where I think that political element comes into it, because we are living in a world where the whole fuck your feelings right wing politics in the US prioritizes a more authoritarian style.

I think your spot on it's a political thing.

Parenting is political, and I think we're seeing a trickle down now from politics into how people want a parent under whether like another reason that it's people are pulling back from it is just genuine exhaustion as well, like two income households, nerves afraid, everyone's exhausted, and.

It's COVID too, yeah, post COVID two.

Like gentle parenting.

Sure, you know they're like, you know, let them have the tantrum and then talk about the feelings afterwards.

You can't do that.

If you need to get.

Out the door by a certain time, you can't have that conversation at that time.

You've got to go.

So it feels like it's almost like a backlash of just absolute exhaustion of Parentsh've tried this method for years and gone, this is not working for me.

It's like they've suddenly looked around at this job they've been out for years and gone, why did I stay here so long?

This didn't work for me?

Like I need to walk away, And so they're going, right, I need to be fafo, I need to I need to change something and make this work.

I agree with that, but I do think Mom's is right that there's a bit of a sinister edge to it.

There's definitely a sense that we've swung the pendula from a place where children were seen as figures deserving of respect and autonomy to a point where they're seen more as a less person for a person to control.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone who.

Practices fa FA or authoritarian parenting necessarily is maga, but I am saying, as Mom said, there's a correlation there for sure.

Yeah.

I think like Trump is all about strength and authoritarian leadership and nostalgia as well, terms like make America great again.

Things were better back in the day, and so the term gentle being seen as like soft and emotionally nuanced is kind of It does feel like there's a pushback against that, Like, is it just the term gentle that people are pushing back against, Like I wonder if it had been called boundary parenting, which is what it should be, whether we would feel differently or.

All parenting because Trump loves walls, war parenting.

Oh yeah, war parenting.

I acknowledged the feelery Brown, I see you, here's the boundary.

Here's the wall.

This shows power of social media because I'm ingesting all these messages and thinking, shit, I'm way too permissive in the way that I parents.

So it's kind of working in a way.

I'm like really examining.

Do I need to move into much more of that sweet spot, that middle ground.

I don't know, just interesting.

Maybe gentle parenting and faphone need to have a parenting baby, and then that can be the.

Way that we all me to fall pregnant.

Yes, fall pregnant.

Please, all right, it's time to get helpful.

This is Recommendations, the part of the show where we bring you the things that we're loving, sick and texting each other about.

Last week, Stacy's cake made of fruit was shared like crazy.

It was texted around like a newborn in a little needed beanie, Like everyone just went crazy over it.

So what's it going to be this week?

Look, it's not as wonderful as that, but it is easier to achieve than the fruitcake.

So hear me out on this.

I'm gonna recommend.

You jump up and down fifty times.

And that sounds mean at this time of year.

I know that we're all very, very tired.

But I saw this floating around on my TikTok, and the first time I saw it, I was like, how ridiculous?

And the second time I saw it, I was like, hmm, I wonder if it works.

There's this woman she's called just TV roomy.

She doesn't even have a name on there, and she documented herself jumping up and down fifty times in the morning for sixty days.

Initially she said she was going to do it for thirty.

Now she's at sixty.

She is like, it has changed my life.

I did this as a piss take, and it has changed my life.

You just did little jumps, Like I'm not talking like scary box jumps or anything like that.

Just little jumps.

If you can do them.

It's meant to like drain your lymphatic system, improve your focus.

But she was saying all these other things happened she didn't expect like that.

She noticed her skin looked better and that she was in a better mood generally, And so.

I started doing it.

I'm only four days in, so not a real test yet, but I did feel better.

Yeah, Like when I did it, especially when you first get up in the morning, like watch the pelvic floor because that's a bit tricky with that, but just do little jumps and then I felt so much better.

Like it's just a.

Bit of like silly joy and kind of if you're able bodied, it's kind of just a reminder of what your body can do.

You do it while you're waiting for the kettle to boil, do it with your kids, like something like that.

But it really does feel like, Okay, I don't have time for any other movement.

This I can do.

This is easy, takes ten seconds.

I'm going to adopt this because I'm feeling as I age that when I wake up in the morning, I can feel the quartersole all of a sudden, Yeah, just flowing through my body, coursing through my veins.

And it's been a thing that started happening in my forties and I need a way to counteract it.

And I feel like this could be it.

It really does it, And I felt kind of like buzzy afterwards when I was sitting on the train on the way to work, like I was like, I want to keep moving, like I wanted to stand up again.

And that is not my regular feeling at all at the moment.

So, yeah, do some jumps if you can.

Yeah, I'm just going to do ten just right now.

So you reckon fifty in a row, fifteen a row.

It's so quick you could do it in like thirty seconds really.

And they are small little ones.

Yeah, because at first I was worried when we did it before about my breasts.

Yes, yes, look, if you've been blessed with the bigger bosoms, you might have to hold them.

But that's okay.

It's over before you know it's over.

Before you know it.

Your knees will crack, your ankles will crack.

It's fine, okay.

Mom, fifty in that time that you had that tiny little chat.

Yeah, see it's good, right.

What's yours?

Amelia?

So mine has a little bit of a story.

My kids have been begging me to go camping, and I think if you have listened to this show even once, you probably know that that's not my sweet spot.

Yeah, it's not my comfort zone.

But they were begging me to do it.

So we borrowed a tent from friends, and Sydney's Centennial Park has this amazing program called Camping one oh one where you can go and just try camping overnight and they Incentennial pore and they cook you a barbecue dinner and then there's a continental breakfast so you don't have to worry about the food situation.

And I don't worry about the tent.

But the Continental breakfast is what I want to talk about today.

Because the camping itself, I will say I did not get a great sleep.

It turns out birds make sounds all through the night.

I was led to believe that they made sounds close to dawn, and it turns out that they're having little chats in the middle of the night on each other, which, you know, nature just keep it down.

Was white noise machine.

But woke up and eagerly set off for the Continental breakfast.

And the big hit of the Continental breakfast was Cordial.

Now, I am such a terrible parent that basically solo, like a can of solo that's not a million miles from what my children sometimes consume.

Like we do love a soft drink at times.

But I realized that this staple of my childhood has kind of gone away a little bit because every kid at this Continental breakfast was like, what is this alixture of the gods?

And We're like, it's cordial.

So now I've decided that I'm going to incorporate Cordial into our everyday life.

It's a spot of like retro fun.

You know.

I rediscovered Cordial about a year ago.

With this weird flavor which doesn't sound like it should work, but he's delicious.

Cloudy apple flavor cordial.

It's so good and you don't feel as bad as if it's juice.

Like there's water, it's so much water.

I put the water in water and it's fine.

Solo, yeah, no offense, solo.

Yeah.

I love this for you, definitely.

We're a big cordial fan, here are you?

Yeah?

And I have a cordial theory, I reckon I can tell what kind of person you are based on the flavor of cordial in your pantry or the type of cordial you buy.

Well, what's cloudy apple?

Yeah?

What does cloudy apple say about me?

It's a bit ni.

Yeah, of course, Stacy.

I would have pegged you as a fruit cup girl.

Oh yeah, I would.

I would one hundred percent if you asked me to pick one of the basics.

Okay, here's mine, lemon lime.

Okay.

I wouldn't have paid you as lemon lime.

I would have paid you as red cordial.

That's actually offensive.

Red cordial.

Yeah, I think isn't that band in some states?

So here here's what I think.

So fruit cup is very eldest daughter energy, very type a You're a people pleaser.

You are reliable, You're very dependable, You're predictable.

It's just the real people pleaser of cordials.

I think red cordial is chaos merchant.

You're the fun mum.

You're the kind of mum that's like I didn't.

Memories are important, don't worry about the mess.

Let's make a memory that feels.

Like Wow, I am so glad I'm conveying that to people, because is that not the drew?

That is not the truth?

What about green?

What's green cordial?

Okay, green cordial is you didn't choose cooler.

You bought it for your husband and he's the only one that drinks it, and he drinks it at about an eighty percent concentration level.

So I don't know a single woman that drinks cooler, do you No, it's.

Something off about the color.

What are you minds?

I'm lemon and freak cup.

So lemon is you're a traditionalist.

You are, You're pretty practical.

You enjoy the simple thing lawn.

You know your lawn, and you have a nice cold lemon cordio afterwards.

And can I just say eighty percent concentration is the correct concentration.

I know, if I'm really honest with myself.

What's your rack ones, Okay, I've got the book that you need to read this summer.

I'm so excited about this hit me.

It's called The Air Apparent by Rebecca Armitage.

Have you heard of this?

Oh my god?

Is this Reese's Book Club pick for December?

Yes?

Yes, tell me?

Okay, So first thing to say, is it Rebecca Hormitage is my friend.

It is a book about a twenty nine year old english woman who goes to Hobart and is doing her medical residency and she falls in love.

Plot twist, she's actually a royal.

Oh and what happens next?

And I just feel like this is the book that has ignited reading again for me.

I haven't been reading for a long time.

I'm like, I need a good summer read.

I can't put it down.

It's been picked up by Reese's Book Club.

It's amazing an Australian author, and love it great.

The air Pets sounds so good.

Is it sexy?

Like?

Is this smutty or is this just romantic?

It's not smut It's a love story.

Oh, it's very beautifully written, very rich, very richly written.

But no, it's not kind of fantasy smut.

Okay, is that what you want from your summer reading?

No, not at all.

That's why I was asking.

I just wanted to know how sexy it's going to be when she falls in love.

But it sounds great.

I need a good book to get me out of the slump I finished.

Yeah, Sally Hepworth's Mad Mabel, and now I've had like weeks of nothing because I loved that book so much.

You're a I know, I can't find like I'm trying to find something that's going to hit the same as that hit.

So this sounds great.

Yes, it's the Air Apparent Rebecca Amatage.

And it's also just at Big w for like eighteen race, which is always just perfect icing on top, isn't it.

You don't have to go to special bookshop, not sponsored.

Okay.

Well, hey, thank you to the team that makes this happen.

You are the true gift of this show.

Tessakotovic, Leoporgius, Sashatannic and the group ep Ruth Divine.

You are our magnetic tiles and every week you make a beautiful, beautiful thing for everyone.

So have a great week.

We will be back in this speed next Saturday morning.

Bye bye bye.

MoMA Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.