You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.

Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters that this podcast is recorded.

On Hello and welcome to Parenting out Loud, the podcast where if parents are thinking about it, we are talking about it.

I'm Monic Bowley and I am joined by my gorgeous co host, the delightful Stacey Hicks and big brain Amelia Lester.

Oh my gosh, I just need to announce that I ran to the bus this morning in pouring rain, so I hope I'm giving glowy not sweaty.

But if I'm giving sweaty, I apologize.

It's giving both and it's great.

The translation how I can only do so much.

Very dewy.

I'm into it.

It has been a very big week in parenting culture.

On today's show, there has been a tiny shift in the marketing of Father's Day that I need to unpack with you guys.

Plus, does Bluey give you warm feelings or the creeping sense that you're a bit of a shit parent?

Welcome to the Bluey inadequately complex and at the end of the show, we're going to tell you all the things we're loving and we think that you might love too.

It's kind of hot tips and the stuff that we share with our friends.

But first, Stacy, you're the deputy editor of Mama Maya.

You're the big dog.

What's been going off online this week?

Yes, second big dog technically, but I'll take big dog as my title.

But a story that really popped off this week will make you feel very vindicated.

If, like me, despite it officially being spring, you've already achieved the daycare Bingo card of sicknesses.

If you have been completely flattened, you are not alone.

This story was titled You're not imagining it.

There's a reason everyone is sicker.

I think this resonated so much with people because we all know there's nothing quite like the hell of being sick when someone else in your house is also sick at the same time, especially if they're a person you have to care for.

So I think that's why hit the way it did.

But while it's obviously hard to do the sums on every single sickness, Zoe Rutchford spoke to doctor Melanie Conroy about the figures that show that there's already been two hundred and thirty thousand reported cases of the flu this year that's just the ones where they're reported, not the heroes that soldier on without it.

That is the same number as what we had for the entire year in twenty twenty two.

Wow.

So it's it's hitting people hard.

And she cited a few possible reasons for the incline.

So they include vaccination fatigue, saying that maybe you know, that's contributed to the fact that half of Australians haven't gotten their COVID booster and haven't done their flu shot this year, or it's out.

Of pocket costs.

And it's also another potential reason is there is a lot more full return to the office now, so a lot of us are you know, sweaty on the bus or on the train and.

Sharing the dresses around.

Yes.

No, this is really interesting because a it's true.

I just feel like I've been living in sickness for many months now.

I came across an article on the Examine newsletter, which is a sign newsletter put out by The Herald and the Age, and it looked at how even though the federal government recommends the flu shot for kids under five and it makes it free, the message about the importance of getting that flu vaccine is just not getting through to parents, and it looked at some reasons why that might be.

Basically, they did cite that sense of parents being concerned about viral load, like getting too many vaccinations and experts say this is not a thing, do not worry about that.

And then they also thought that maybe it was a post pandemic effect, whereby during COVID parents wanted to do anything they could to protect their children, and before the COVID vaccine that was essentially the flu vaccine.

But now we've all kind of forgotten about flu when we really shouldn't be.

I don't mean to alarm anyone, but a startling fact from this newsletter is that the hospitalization rate for kids under five of the flu actually exceeds that of sixty five plus adults.

It's a dangerous illness and we are just not taking the steps we need to.

Okay, so confession, I did not have a flu jub this year, and I'll tell you why.

It's because I quit my job.

So when you work in a place, they often run a flu JAB program, right, which makes it really easy.

Because I think there's two barriers to getting the flu JAB that immediately spring to mind.

First is cost and second is access right.

And so when you're in a workplace, often they take those two things out of the equation.

They make it free, and they bring someone in to do it for you, so you do it while you're at work.

So the question I've got is why don't they run flu jobs at schools?

Like there is a national immunization program that rolls out some vaccinations, but why don't they just add.

Flu to that?

I wonder if that would be actually quite controversial because another interesting stat is that the nationwide percentage of children who get all vaccines on average is ninety percent, but less than fifty percent of children get the flu vaccine.

There's something about the flu vaccine where I think parents are thinking that it's like optional or that it's not important, and that's leading to this decline in rates.

Mellly, you mentioned that, like the messaging isn't ubiquitous around flu season?

Do public health need to spend more money on social media marketing to get the messages into our feeds?

Like?

I feel like that is how we are all consuming news and information now, does it just need to be more like spend less on ads, spend more in social media?

Well, and I also think that specifically, what the campaign should say is this fact that for children under five this is resulting in more hospitalizations than for older adults, because I think we all have this hangover feeling of like it's something that affects older adults and we're kind of getting it as an act of benevolence for the oldies.

But that's not the case.

Cool, So what else we're parents clicking on this week's stacy?

Another story that went gangbusters was called are you ready for It?

Mum?

That means ejaculate.

The emojis aren't as innocent as they look, and it was basically a glossary we published essentially decoding what all the emojis mean that you can figure out which ones you're using wrong for your genel for children, and if you want to snoop in their phone, you'll be able to code what they're saying to one another if you're so inclined.

So generally we know the ones like the eggplant meaning dick dick.

I was gonna go with Willie for some.

Reasons to use silly names.

Yes, so the eggplant is penis.

There are so many more, so Mon's and Emilia.

I'm going to do a little quiz with you to see if you're down with the kids and see if you're using these correctly.

Okay, first one, what do you think the red heart means love?

Yeah?

Love?

Yeah, truck question, the red heart is love.

You're safe.

Okay, you can use your red heart.

So you haven't recovered from the fact that you're not meant to use the laughing crying one, because apparently that pegs me as an elder Millennius.

We're so uncall using that.

It's fine.

We're meant to use the.

Skull anyway, Yeah, meant to say you're like dying laughing.

We're meant to use the skull anyway.

Let's stick without crying laughing.

It's fine.

But the next one, this shocks me because this is my default emoji.

This is my top used emoji.

So I am sending a very confused message.

The purple heart friendship.

Oh god, is this the ejaculate one?

No, but close it means you're aroused, Oh, arousal.

That's the purple heart, and I've been sending that to all my coworkers.

It actually it actually means the word beginning with H, doesn't it.

Yeah, horny, horny, purple heart segment.

Okay, now the corn cob like, what could that possibly mean?

So innocent?

It means cringe.

It's so corny, so cringe.

No, well, it's code for porn.

So they use this a lot on TikTok as code for porn because it rhymes with corn.

Okay, very simple.

Now, this one genuinely shocked a lot of us.

The little brain emoji thinking emoji, the little brain.

Nerd like, what a nerd?

Oh, my god, such a nerd?

Sixty nine Amelia's pretty close, really close.

It is code for head.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

We never talked about such things when I was a child.

I know, we were just such innocent little beings.

And the last one I had was the bolonnaise the spaghetti noodles with the fork.

I'm hungry for.

Mind boggles, some to pray sex.

I know, nudes, send nudes.

Noodles noodles send nudes.

So there you go, your education.

So have you actually managed to get yourself out of the habit of using the purple heart at work?

Because I'm embarrassed for you.

No, I'm still sending it, but I just avoid sending it to the gen Z's because that feels more risky, so ejaculate.

We need to get water, the splashy war es.

Mon's ding ding ding.

That's right, it's the splashy water yeap that is ejaculate.

So now you know what to avoid.

The rest of the list will be in the show notes.

Okay, into the main stuff for this week.

So the first topic we want to kind of hook into an unpack is about Father's Now, Father's Day is Sunday, and the marketing for it is in full swing.

My letterbox is full of Bunning's catalogs and Ratco sheds and like Dan Murphy's catalogs.

But I got an email this week from a major brand asking something that I've never seen before.

It asked if I wanted to opt out of Father's Day marketing.

And the email said, we understand that Father's Day is a sensitive time for many.

If you'd prefer not to receive any Father's Day related emails, you can opt out by clicking the button below.

And it got me thinking because I think in the last maybe six or seven years, we've seen this cultural shift around Mother's Day, like whereas a decade ago it was kind of wall to wall like World's Best Mom sort of marketing, Whereas now it's understood that not everyone's experience of motherhood and not everyone's relationship with their mom is like a Hallmark card.

There is sort of grief and estrangement and it can be complicated.

So brands and people are a little bit more delicate now around how they talk about Mother's Day.

But this is the first time I've seen this same treatment applied to Father's Day, so I wanted to check in with you, guys.

Where are we at with Father's Day this year?

Stacy?

What do you think it all means?

I think it's interesting.

I definitely think it is a step towards recognizing the sensitivities around it for some people on the more serious side of it, because I think we never really consider the fathers or the men out there who might be receiving these emails and are desperate to become a dad, but are also struggling with infertility or their partner having pregnancy loss.

So I think on that side of things, it's really lovely that there is that sensitivity there for people who maybe don't have the best relationship or are longing to be fathers and aren't at this point in their lives.

But on the more cynical side of this, I just think people might use this opt out situation to get rid of the emails because they never buy their dad are present.

Like every year my dad tells me he doesn't want a present.

Every year, I believe him.

I just take him for a drink, which he usually ends up paying for.

And that's that.

Like Father's Day is just not thought about as much as Mother's Day.

And I'm going to get even more cynical on you, and I want to step back and ask you both how you feel about those emails for Mother's Day or Father's Day, the ones that say, you know, let us know if you have a complicated relationship with your mother.

Because why am I telling.

The brand that it's sort of the brand pretending to be sensitive and concerned about my feelings, but they're also harvesting my data.

Why am I telling them about my complicated family dynamics?

Probably so that they can sell me more stuff?

Or am I being cynical?

Do we think that these are helpful?

No, that was my second thought.

My first thought was oh, how interesting.

My second thought was, oh, this is another data point for you to fill your algorithm.

And also it also feels like savvy marketing dressed up as empathy.

So I do see that.

I'm also interested in why there was a lag for this to hit the dad's content, and I wonder if it's because My theory is like dads seem to carry like less emotional weight in the culture.

Like you think about the way dads are depicted in pop culture and it's like feel done fee from modern family or like Daddy Pig, just like well meaning but quite bumbling dads.

So I think fatherhood feels less emotionally loaded, like in the public's imagination.

So I think there's been less pressure on brands to handle Father's Day carefully until now.

I think this is a kind of an interesting shift here.

It's like, are we finally starting to see dads differently?

And if that's the case, like Father's Day might start to look really different in future.

So I hear your cynicism.

I don't disagree with it.

I think you're right about that.

I'm just holding out hope that the dial is kind of shifting here.

No, that's really interesting, Mon's I hadn't thought about that, but now that you mentioned, say, Daddy Pig from Pepper Pig, there's this iconic song from Pepper Pig where they sing He's a bit of an expert about Daddy Pig, And the idea is that he pretends that he's an expert in all sorts of things, but actually he's pretty useless at most things.

And that really is a sort of trope that we have around dads.

There's another trope that I think this is kind of reversing too, and it relates to what you said, Stacy, for people who long to be dads.

Yeah, I'm wondering how big that group is.

I don't want to stereotype, but certainly the pressures that are on women to pro create are so much more intense and explicit.

But are we now getting to the point where men too are getting these pressures that they need to sort of perform adulthood and have babies.

Yeah, it just feels like maybe we're putting that onto people a little bit like that, it's getting to that extreme point where we're being sensitive about every possible thing, when really you can choose to turn away from that if you want.

So, does it work for you like Mom's, doesn't make you think more of a brand that they're doing this, or does it make you think they are being a bit manipulative.

No, I'm cynical about it, but I do think that sometimes like brands respond to cultural touch points, brands respond to the cultural temperature, and so I think it's an interesting signifier.

Now here's something which I've been hanging to talk about this week.

Hamma, barn, dollar bucks, wackadoo.

If you recognize those sounds I just made as actual words, then congratulations.

You are one of the millions of people who is watching what is considered Australia's most successful show ever.

Bluey So, the animated series by Joe Brahm about the Healer dog family, is now in sixty countries and was viewed for fifty five point six billion minutes last year.

Most of those came from my household alone, and if you're like me, you still can't get through a few of the episodes Baby Race, Granddad Camping without crying.

Such is the power of these animated dogs.

As far as it goes with screen time, it's widely considered to be one of the better shows for our kids.

So a new article from the Conversation talked about how researchers watched one hundred and fifty episodes of Bluey, which I feel like is every episode of Bluey.

Surely they found that she Blue being a girl, just in case you weren't clear.

I know MEA Friedman only found out about a month ago that Blue is teaching kids' resilience in the face of life's ups and downs.

Apparently it's the first time the show's been systematically examined like this to see how it's teaching resilient behavior, and nearly half of the episodes have that as the primary or the secondary theme.

So, Amelia, are you as in love with Blue as I am?

I love that you brought this up.

I have really complicated feelings that I'm looking forward to unpacking with you both.

I should say that when I moved back to Australia from the United States last year, the only thing anyone said to me about the move was is it going to be like Bluey there?

I cannot overstate the way that Blue has shaped international perceptions of Australia and of the life of children in Australia.

They think that it's like Bluie, and look, I was kind of curious about whether it would be like blue as well, and to some extent it really is.

I think it captures something that's still very present in an Australian childhood that is gone from at least American childhoods, which is it feels more carefree, it feels more safe, it feels more harmonious.

So I'd say that it's a really nice depiction of Australian childhood.

Oh you know what, you two, this show does not need any more fans.

I can hear you both, Joe loving it sick.

We know it's the best show on TV.

Blah blah blah.

Joe Brahm's a genius.

It's gorgeous.

What's interesting is the unpopular opinion, the undercurrent of I can't watch this.

It's making me feel like a shit parent.

Okay, I'm glad that you brought that up, because this is where the complicated feelings come in.

I got a text from a friend the other day.

She has three children.

I think of her as an amazing parent.

For the record, she wrote me a text pretty much out of the blue.

She said, I'm the bearer of some reassurance about parenting.

I was noodling around and found some conversation about how parents who watch Bluey with their kids are talking to each other and their shrinks about how the show makes them feel like detached, inattentive parents who do not play enough with their kids.

And I thought, well, if she's feeling like that, To be honest, I'm feeling a bit like that too.

Yeah.

It feels unpopular to say it, but there is this big swell, this groundswell of parents talking to their therapist saying this show makes me feel so shit, And I think that's really interesting to unpack.

I saw a great article on substack.

Jess Commons wrote it.

She's a journalist, She's got a substack called mother Loading, and she wrote about it as well earlier this year and said, how dare these cartoon dogs with seemingly no financial troubles and endless amounts of time show me up?

There is no way I can be as engaged, as invested, as imaginative as them, and it makes me feel shitty.

And there's also there was this hilarious piece in The New Yorker by Ellis Rosen called Blue's Dad thinks He's so great and it starts like this, it goes, well, there is again, mister perfect dad, the best father ever to grace the television screen.

That's what everyone says anyway, including my wife and children, which doesn't hurt my feelings at all.

I definitely didn't mind when my daughter asked me to pretend to be Bluey's dad, even though she wasn't pretending to be blue Like, the struggle is real.

There are parents out there who feel kind of insecure.

This show brings up a lot of feelings of like guilt and rejection and fear and maybe defense.

And I think that this show very quietly exposes the gap between the parent that we are and the parent we wish we were, and that's confronting.

Yeah, let's call it the Bluey backlash.

I've started seeing it everywhere since I got that text.

I found an article on Good Housekeeping that said Louie is fun to watch, but it makes parents feel like crap.

And I've got an example of how it makes me feel like crap.

There's an episode called Stickbird, which I think about a lot, and in that episode, Blue's dad Bandit is really upset about something and yet he still has to play with Bluie.

They're at the beach, and what's very intriguing about this episode is that he tells Bluie that he's a bit upset about something, and in fact, mental health advocacy groups have praised this episode for reminding men to talk about their emotions.

So great, let's make sure that Blue gets that recognition.

But what's interesting is that he manages to hold it in having expressed that sadness, and he doesn't tell Bluie why he's sad.

And I think about that, because that's a really high bar if you're really sad or upset about something and your parenting to just merely say I'm upset about something.

It has nothing to do with you.

Let's move on and keep playing a game that's really hard to do.

I find myself wanting to share with my children why I'm sad.

Now, maybe that's a boundary that I shouldn't be crossing.

But every time I do experience, you know, a difficult chapter, I think about Stickford and how band It doesn't say why he's sad, and it just feels like an impossible bar.

The whole show is an impossible bar.

Amelia the Whole Show, like Bandit and Chili, are endlessly patient and playful and available and navigating like complex emotional issues.

They're never hiding in the pantry scrolling their phone or like giving their kids the finger behind their back.

And even though it's fiction, like, our brains are still comparing and what we see, yeah, can make us uncomfortable with how we're doing things.

And I think this show, like you said, it models a lot of amazing parenting, and so it has become in the zeitgeist, like the default for great parenting is to be like Bluie's parents.

You know, they model this very slow, very responsive, very playful parenting.

But for most of us who juggling work and fatigue and commutes and craziest schedules, like we're tired and we're distracted, and it just feels quite unattainable.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think there are episodes where you see the mum and the dad on their phone, but the second the child enters the room, the phone gets put away.

And I don't know that all of us can say that that happens immediately when it's us one of the positives because I love to make myself feel bad.

So now that you've said it, I'm definitely thinking about it more and thinking about all the times I've gone, oh, yeah, I probably should be doing that, just like Chilli heeler is, but I think one of the ways that it's helped if you're not a parent that finds play naturally comes to them when your kids are at that age.

Imaginative play I find especially embarrassing.

Don't know why, but I've found that Bluey is kind of a connector to some games or some activities that I can do with my daughter that she recognizes from the show, that I recognize from the show, and then it feels like it's a level playing field that we're doing what the Healer family did.

There are some positives, so it is useful anytime a balloon to play keep you uppy.

Let's face that I wanted to get though.

Why we think it's kind of like pushing our button.

I have a theory for why this is.

I think it's because it's depicting parents spending a lot of one on one time with their children, giving them a lot of attention, and we feel like we're not doing enough of that.

But I've got a really reassuring newsflash for you, which is that we are actually spending so much more time with our children than previous generations.

I found an Economist article from twenty seventeen, so pre pandemic, which said that parents are now spending twice as much time with their children than they did fifty years ago.

So don't feel bad.

We're already spending so much more time with them.

And it turns out even men are too, So men are still spending less time with their children than women are, but the amount of time has jumped sixteen minutes a day over the last decade to fifty nine minutes a day.

Fifty nine minutes.

I feel like I'm probably.

Spending around fifty nine minutes a day with my children, and that's average, and I loved that.

One exception to this trend France.

In France, people are still sipping their wine and ignoring their remarkably well behaved children.

That's what the studies show, So don't feel bad.

Australians are spending plenty of time with their children, and Bluis is accurately depicting that.

I feel like I've been too hard on Louis.

I do think it is the most beautiful show, the most well made show on TV right now, and it deserves all of its sissess and it should infiltrate France and teach the French engage playful parenting familiar if I am a parent and I watch this and I feel the defense mechanism coming up, and I start to feel the feelings of in us guilty?

What are therapists telling parents?

Yeah, so this friend who texted me saying that she feels bad actually asked around, and she asked an expert who was a therapist, why she shouldn't feel bad about it.

And this therapist said, each episode shows eight minutes of their day.

Anyone can pareent enthusiastically for eight minutes a day.

For all we know, Bandit spends four hours each day on the care watching the footy and drinking, and that does actually make me feel better.

We can do eight minutes.

We can do eight minutes.

Bend needs to go to work, Guys, bend It actually needs to go and do some work.

Like, how are they affording the three bedroom house in the cul de sac Stacy?

Yes, Mons, you know you're.

Like, we're getting to know each other.

We don't really know each other that well.

Yeah, I deep dived on you.

I googled your name and I started reading your work.

Turns out used to be the editor of Girlfriend magazine.

Yes, that was my dream job.

It was so great.

Apart from being here, of course, that's very cool.

But the other thing that worried me was I think I've said some things to you that I wish I could take back now, So I'm just confessing my sins to you.

What did you do?

I described you as a mother of one and I may have at some point in our conversations said to you, are you one and done?

Yeah?

I'm so glad you raise this mons because I feel like I've made the same faux pat with Stacy.

I was allerted to this because there was an article on folk dot com by Liz Hammond recently, and she makes the plea that we stop using that phrase one and done to describe families with one child.

I didn't even know that I shouldn't be using it.

Let me explain why she said we shouldn't be using it.

She has one five year old son, she's pretty sure she doesn't want more children, and she says that one and done fails to capture the complexity of raising a child today because her responsibilities as a parent are not done after giving birth.

Stacy, are we doing it all wrong?

And why do you have a problem with one and done?

Well, you can both stop panicking.

It's okay because I have referred to myself as one and done until I read this article as well, so it's absolutely fine.

At least to me.

It hasn't bothered me.

But I must admit that that Vogue article did make me rethink the term, because I thought it was really interesting that she argued that when you say you're one and done, it makes it sound like, you know, you popped out a kid.

You've done the hard part.

And now it's just going to be easy, and it's so much easier than listen not to, is it not?

It's so not.

I I was on another podcast called The Kids or Trial Free Podcasts, and Kelty, the host asked me this question as well, because she said a lot of people who are considering whether to have children at all often will say, well, I'll just have one, as if it's a middle ground.

And she said, what is your take.

Do you feel like having one is closer to having two or closer to having none?

And I said, it is so much closer to having two than to having none, Like my life is unrecognizable from before having my child.

And so I think there's this understanding that it's like parenting light.

You know that you just got the easy way out of doing it, but you're still getting all the emotions and all the stress and all the herd outside your body and stressing about whether your child will turn out okay.

And then you're layering on all these assumptions that people have about only children, that they might be selfish, or they might be weird, or they won't know how to share with other people.

There's so many things that people kind of put on you.

Well, you said in your article called for Mamma Mia that you get these comments from.

Yeah to your face, Yeah, yeah, definitely.

And I think, just as a PSA for people who want to say that, I know it's probably out of genuine curiosity, but people with one kid are thinking about it a lot like that is something that plays on your mind A ton is are you doing the wrong thing?

But I think your reason for having a second can't be out of service to your child.

I think now women can and all couples can be thinking about what is best for them as a parent and what will mean that they can give their child the best life, whether that's for financial reasons, whether that's for mental health reasons, whether it's just that you don't feel the strong urge.

Any of those are enough, I think, and so we probably can stop calling it that.

Stacy.

This article that you wrote, and we will link to it in the show notes because I want everyone to read it.

I think everyone should read it, no matter how many kids you have.

It was beautiful, it was smart.

It's important because language is everything.

And what you highlighted in that article is how many times people will come to you and weigh in on your reproductive choices.

When are you having a second?

Are you going to give them a sibling?

And it just feels so I know it's well intentioned, but it does kind of feel very dated to weigh in on someone else's choice of family.

It's like we don't say any more like oh, the clock's ticking, and we don't say like when are you going to start a family?

Because families come in all shapes and sizes, So we've mostly retired those phrases because it feels like, you know, they were never okay in the first place.

I do feel like the questions around are you having another when are you having another one?

Are you going to give them a sister or brother?

They need to be retired, they should be in the same bucket.

Yeah, definitely.

And I think, like I would consider myself a pretty agreeable person.

I know Amelia said yesterday she can't imagine me being bothered by anything, like I think I come across and as there was one thing that bothered you, the people say, and there is one thing that bothers me, And it's when people say, when are you having another?

Not are you thinking about having another?

Because I understand the genuine curiosity, too's the norm, So I understand people assuming that if you've had one, you probably do want to.

So I love talking about it to people, but it's the when that really annoys me because I think it undermines what people go through to even have a child in the first place, and what I went through to have my child in the first place.

For many people, it's not a choice, and having one might not be what they want.

For me, it is, but for some people that's just how their family dynamic pans out.

So I think there's that, and it also layers the expectation on women that we're somehow selfish or prioritizing our own lives too much.

Stacy, you just said it in your own answer.

Then you just said two is the norm, and that's the kind of thinking that we need to stop.

Yeah, that's the retoric.

That's not helpful.

It's not the norm.

There is no norm.

Families are all shaped, sizes, amount of people, there is no normal.

Also, people are having fewer children.

It's becoming the norm.

You quoted this in the article.

But the Australian Bureau Statistics has new numbers on this and Australian families are going to have an average of one point six babies over the next two years.

That's down from two point three.

So this is the new norm.

Yeah, it is.

And I think only just have a pr problem really because it all stems from research that happened in the eighteen hundreds around that only children were a disease was what they were called.

And so I like, very selfishly for my wanting my own reassurance, I interviewed an expert who's done a lot of research on only children because she has one child as well, doctor Razina McAlpine.

So she's got a master's in higher education, done so much research in this area, and research she found showed that only borns generally do equally as well as first borns and children in two child families, and they surpassed children from larger families across all of the measures of academic achievement, intelligence, sociability, character, and child parent relationship.

So all the myths around they will grow up lonely, they don't hold up.

No, they don't hold up.

They have the same outcomes as children into child households.

Thank God for me.

Okay, to wrap up today's show, my favorite bit.

We share the things that we are loving, sick, the things that we might text to our friends, put in the mum group chat, whatever it is.

It's recommendations, Stacy, what do you got so mine?

This week?

Is a sleep story that doesn't make me want to fall asleep, although I have fallen asleep in my daughter's bed a lot of times.

Hang on, that's the point.

Don't you want them to be sleepy?

I want them to be sleepy.

I don't want to be listening to it being tortured by the sound.

And there are a few that genuinely are so painful to listen to, even for a couple of minutes.

But on Spotify it's free.

This series called Calm Kids Bedtime Stories, and there's one called Hector's Exploding Head, which my daughter and I really love.

So it's about a kid who forgets his mum's birthday and forgets his homework and just generally hopeless, like all kids around that age can be with that stuff, and then someone visits the school that teaches them about breathing to calm themselves down and keep their head connected to.

Their neck basically so their head doesn't explode.

I just love listening to it.

I've probably listened to it a hundred times and I'm not sick of it yet.

My daughter's probably half listened to it about one hundred times because thankfully she dozes off.

So that's my recommendation called Hector's Exploding Hector's.

Exploding Head, and it's just fun to say.

Well, I wanted to talk about playdate anxiety because I know I should be hosting playdates, but I hosted one a couple of years ago that i'm still recovering from.

Thought the kids were playing so nicely together because we didn't hear from them, and then basically walked into the room they were playing in and it seriously looked like the Rolling Stones had been there for seven days having a party because everything was everywhere, and it just really triggered my anxiety.

I can't deal with stress or mess, particularly living in a two bedroom of it really gets to me.

Isn't that the fun of the playdate?

No, it's not the fun of the play date.

Months I can tell that we're different people.

So I needed to find something to have the children do that did not result in mess.

And I went to a playdate at someone else's place on the weekend and she had the most brilliant idea which I'm going to steal, which is that the girls decorated water bottles together.

And I love this because it's not just like more useless plastic.

It's actually something they need.

As we know, water bottles disappear to the great water bottle black hole in the sky and you don't know why or where.

With the socks with the one sock, not both socks, just one sock.

And so now she has a water bottle that she's very proud of.

The girls spent a good hour decorating the water bottles together, and I just thought it was a brilliant, very tidy activity for a playdate.

And I will unpack my neurosies about mess at a later time, perhaps not on a podcast.

Anyway, these water bottles, you can get the kits that came.

They're about thirty dollars each.

And I'm going to try that out myself next time I host a play date.

Next time I summon the courage to host a play date.

Okay, So it wasn't like build your own like the mom didn't gather all the separate bits and do it.

It's already done for us.

Oh gosh, no, no, yeah, it was a kit with stickers and righty things, and yeah it was great.

Okay, team, I have the ultimate test of grit for your kids.

You know, we're always looking of ways to increase resilience in our children.

I've got a screen endurance test that's going to break them.

Sounds fine.

You sit down to watch a movie with them.

You select Disney, then choose Mary Poppins.

Say nothing, and what will happen next will determine your kid's level of resilience because the intro Mary Poppins is lacially slow.

There's three minutes and six seconds before anything happens on the screens, just text and very slow Edwardian sort of music.

I aged thirty years before Mary flies out.

Of the fucking sky.

I swear to god, it's so sore.

My kids could not handle it, and I was loving it.

I just said nothing, and they were like, mom, mom, working themselves into the biggest lather.

Why is nothing happening?

What are these words on the screen.

I loved it for them.

I think it's the ultimate endurance test for the screen generation.

I highly recommend it.

That is deranged and I love it.

I want to add a further deranged recommendation for that movie, which is I find the lead actor very attractive.

I enjoyed watching it.

He's very attractive.

Dick Vandyke was back in the ninety nine and he's dancing and he's still living a great life.

And I just love Dick Van Dyke.

No is he the one that could start with the harmonica and no.

Chimney sweet mons.

I guess I'm purple heart for Dick van dye.

Yeah, I think you are.

I think what's refreshing about Dick Van Dyke is his bad teeth, Like how you never see bad teeth on screens anymore?

And I saw his teeth and I was like, Oh, that's so nice that someone doesn't have a year.

That is so cruel and such a bad kind of compliment to a screen merchend.

I'm not into him.

I am into mister Banks how he walks in at the start, He's like, my home is run like a thing.

Like he's just so like precise about everything.

I love that for him.

So what we're saying basically, there's like two male fox leads to choose between.

Yeah, the moms pick your poison and torture your kids.

It sounds great.

All right, that's all we have time for on Parenting out Loud today.

Thanks for hanging out.

Hey.

I want to shout out to the out louders who said we should make this show a real thing, Like you're the reason where he's doing this, so thank you for getting around it.

Mainly Amelia, it's people want you Amelia, so Stacy and I.

I'm choosing don't ever use the brain oji when talking about me.

Okay.

Special mentions to Sally who said parenting podcasts of boring, except this one's great.

We love you, Sally.

Sophie said anything with Amelia, I'm tuning in.

There's a lot of that, Sophie.

I'm offended.

I know, I know, we're just the hangers on.

And Myth, who said I don't even have kids and I never miss an episode, put that on the billboard and then she put a purple heart emoji.

Eh, Myth, we're horny for you two if you'd loved this episode.

The best way to help us in these really early days is just to do one thing.

It's search for Parenting out Loud in your podcast app, find the show, and then hit follow.

So it's free to do it.

But it's like the Instagram algorithm, kind of equivalent of a love heart, where if you do it, it pushes the show in the algorithm, Like the algorithm goes, oh, like shit, there's all these people that are liking this one, so it surfaces it to more all so more people see it and are like, oh, what's this?

Oh merely a lester?

Yes please, you can't dyke discussion so topical.

But if all that sounds too hard, that's fine, no pressure.

Just come back next Saturday and hang out again.

It's been great, so have a great week and we'll talk to you then.

By bye.