Ep #196: From Chaos to Comedy: Parenting Advice with a Twist from ABC Parenting

Welcome to real world, peaceful parenting, a podcast for parents that are tired of yelling, threatening, and punishing their kids. Join mom and master certified parent coach Lisa Smith, as she gives you actionable step-by-step strategies that’ll help you transform your household from chaos to cooperation.

Let’s dive in. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to today’s episode. Okay. Y’all listen to me. I know every week I say, I’m super excited to be with you here today. But today I’m triply excited. I’m excited to be with you, but also my very two special guests. And today’s podcast episode is a real step outside of.

The traditional cadence of real world, peaceful parenting, and a real step outside of my own comfort zone as I tend to be a little bit more of a serious person. But today, y’all today, we got some celebs in the house. We have ABC parenting. And if you don’t know ABC parenting, you will, by the end of today’s episode, ABC parenting is a hilarious.

I was binging all the videos yesterday on ABC Parenting and it is an absolutely hilarious take. on parenting and you got to get yourself over there. Run. Do not walk to tick tock and watch the videos. You are going to bust a gut. My abs are sore today from laughing. So with no further ado, I am going to introduce first Stephanie Drake.

Stephanie is the costar of the hit web series, ABC parenting. She’s an actress, writer, producer, and audio book narrator living in L. A. She’s a graduate of U. S. C. will try not to hold that against her as I am a wildcat over here, but we’ll let that slide. So, she went to USC school dramatic arts. And she is most known for her role as Don Draper’s ditzy, but lovable secretary Meredith on the Emmy winning television show, Mad Men.

I think most of you have heard of that. Most recently Stephanie appeared on ABC’s the Goldbergs, and she’s got a whole slew of other credits behind her name. You can learn more about her, uh, additional appearances, if you’d like over on that thing called the web, but Stephanie is funny, adorable, amazing.

And I’m thrilled to have her here today. And then writing shotgun, if you will, with Stephanie is Arthur Meyer. And Arthur is the creator, writer, and co star of the hit web series, ABC parenting. Most recently, Arthur was y’all get this. You ready for this? Arthur was the head writer for the Drew Barrymore show.

I mean, come on. I love Drew Barrymore. I love the show. It’s so cute. Awesome. Wonderful. And just really what the world needs right now. Prior to that, Arthur was the staff writer on the new half hour Amazon prime sitcom called dinner with parents. From 2012 to 2019. He was a writer, sketch, supervising writer and performer with the late night with Jimmy Fallon, also a funny guy and the tonight show with Jimmy Fallon, and he was a long time contributor to the onion.

Uh, and he’s got a whole slew of other things behind his name as well. But if we read your bios, we’d be here all day and we wouldn’t get to the funny part. So welcome Arthur and Stephanie. I’m thrilled to have you here. Thank you so much. Yeah. So great. So great to have you all here. So let’s talk, introduce us to ABC Parenting, tell the listener how it came about, what it is and what is your goal in producing this entertainment for us.

So ABC Parenting is a, uh, I suppose you would call maybe a satirical comedy web series. Uh, and it’s a parenting advice channel, except all of the advice is terrible. It’s terrible. Um, but the hosts, me and Stephanie, deliver the advice with the confidence of actual, you know, people giving parenting advice.

Um, so it’s just a comedy web series. There are 50 episodes. We’ve released about 37 or 38. And I started writing them about two years ago when my wife Kat was, uh, pregnant. Uh, with our son, Theo, and I would kind of, uh, Google search or YouTube search, like how to be a dad. Um, and I, I would find, uh, videos, you know, with all kinds of parenting advice.

And I thought, Oh, this is really cool. There’s so much to learn from this. Um, what do I have to add to this? I have nothing actually substantial, but what I can do is make a comedy version of this. So I just kind of set out to do that, wanted to make it feel like a real parenting channel. That’s why there’s 50 episodes.

And, uh, I guess the goal is just to, um, You know, reach out to people who are both our, our target audience is both parents and non parents. So I think that there’s a lot of humor in there. That’s kind of specifically things that parents will really understand topics that they’ve read about, you know, baby proofing hacks, you know, breastfeeding circumcision, things like that.

Um, how to deal with a bully. How to deal with the bully. But I also, I tried to write the episodes in a way that would appeal to people who, uh, you know, don’t have kids or aren’t interested in that as well. It’s interesting that you say, Stephanie, I want to get your take on this as a mom. It’s interesting that Arthur says it’s for parents and people who aren’t parents.

And it immediately reminds me, I was married for 14 years before I had my son. And, uh, you know, I, I would say that the only perfect parents in the world, I’d love to get your take on this, are the people that are yet to be parents, right? Absolutely. There were so many things I swore I would never do as a mom.

And guess what? I do all of them. Right. Handing the phone over at dinnertime. Of course. Giving the extra cookie 10 minutes before we’re about to eat. Yeah, it’s the hardest job in the world and I feel so lucky that Arthur let me come be a part of his really funny, his funny show. We didn’t know each other before this.

I’m in LA. He’s in New York. We have mutual friends, but after, I think it was shortly after Theo was born, you and your wife were watching mad men. And he found me on Instagram to tell me how great he thought I was. And I always love hearing that. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like this guy just had a kid. I feel for him.

I think I’m about 10 months ahead of you guys. Um, and we kind of left it at that. I was like, congrats on having a baby. Good luck. Thank you for reaching out. And then a whole year passed by and he messaged me again, telling me about this idea for a show that he had. And he had asked me originally every episode of our show starts with a parent asking a real question.

And he asked me to do one of those. So I did one of those. I was like, this is such a funny idea. I can’t wait to watch myself. And a few days later, he came back saying, Hey, the girl that the friend that I was going to co host this with is actually pregnant and not feeling well. Do you want to do this with me?

And I was so game. I was so down to do it. A week later, I was in New York and we were shooting 50 episodes. It was a blast. It was, yeah, we shot 50 episodes in four days. Um, and all of those, uh, are supplemented by footage that I got from like, you know, real parent friends of mine, their kids. Like if you watch episodes, you’ll see all kinds of, you know, videos and photos sent from parents and friends of mine.

But yeah, I just reached out to Stephanie because, uh, when my wife and I were watching Mad Men 15 years behind everyone else, uh, we would see Stephanie appear as Don Draper’s secretary. And she was so funny in every scene. Uh, that’s why I initially reached out to her. And then when my friend dropped out, I thought like, who would be a perfect person for this?

And Stephanie was above and beyond like everything I ever would have hoped she would be both as a performer and as a person and just so much more, you know, I hear you. Well, it works for the two of you. And I would have never guessed. That you met through the project, right? I would have thought you two in watching this series.

I would have thought that the 2 of you. Had been friends since high school. So that’s, that’s a, that’s quite the compliment, right? The chemistry is there, uh, and, and the timing between the two of you. So it’s great. It’s great. So the reason that I wanted to invite Stephanie beyond gushing over them, Stephanie and Arthur today, Is, I wanted to have a, a serious but fun pun intended conversation about the importance of humor.

Stephanie touched on it that parenting really is the hardest job we do. The surgeon general recently would back you up on that, right? The new report came out saying that. And he, and he quotes Stephanie directly in the study and saying that parenting is the hardest job stress. The parents are feeling stress more than ever.

So it seems timely to talk about the seriousness of bringing humor into parenting, both from the standpoint of first, I’d like to talk about the importance of humor and raising a child, and then transition into the importance of parenting parents, having a sense of humor about parenting. So those are the two topics that we’re going to kind of tackle today for you, listener.

So take a deep breath, shake it all out, relax your nervous system and jump on this ride with us for the next few minutes as we discuss this serious topic of humor. So Arthur, tell us, uh, in what ways do you think humor, I mean, you’re in the business of humor, right? You’ve, you’ve been writing humor for a long time.

in your, in your bio. So tell us in what ways you think humor contributes to a child’s emotional development and resiliency. You know, it’s interesting because humor is the sort of non tangible quality that in a way doesn’t really lend itself to super practical parenting advice because it’s not really, you can’t really list off a steps of like how to exhibit humor, you know, that you would be a robot if you were doing that.

But I think. What humor is so amazing at is emotional connection. And I feel like, uh, anytime you find someone really funny, whether they’re a friend of yours or just a, you know, comedian or actor that you really admire, you know, you’re, you’re connecting with them. I mean, there’s something about their personality and their intelligence and just them as a human.

That you’re connecting with. So humor is this kind of sympathetic, uh, thing that we all feel, and it’s part of connection. So I think that that’s why it’s such an important thing to incorporate, you know, with your child. And it could take, you know, an infinite number of forms. I mean, something that just happened last week with my wife as she started, and I don’t remember how she started doing this, but she started doing a David Attenborough voice around the house to Do you know David Attenborough?

I do. Yeah, he’s like that guy who like narrate this. What does he narrate? Like the Nat Geo docs or something like that. So she’ll just be like, okay, Theo, it’s time, time for us to eat some eggs for breakfast, you know, like that kind of thing. And it’s kind of gotten to the point now where he’s is he’s pretty much demanding that she entirely speaks in that voice.

So that might be a little bit of a problem. We’ll have to consult ABC Parenting for how to deal with that. Yeah, she’s a victim of her own success. Right. Yeah, that’s exactly it. She, she, and it’s, uh, it’s driving her a little bit crazy, but it’s such a, it’s such a fun way that they connect with each other.

Um, so that’s kind of the main thing that I think humor is, is good at, you know, is a useful tool. And as you’re talking about that, I want to, I, you know, as the real world peaceful parenting parent co chair, I would say it’s so powerful that you put it like that because connection, I use Brene Brown’s definition.

It’s when the other person feels the word they’re seen, heard, and valued. Right. So, so when we’re, when we’re connecting through humor, I’m getting a feel good chemical hit in my brain. I’m feeling connected to you. Cooperation, cooperation is more likely to follow connection than compliance, right? So as a parenting tool, and I can relate to that.

I’m at the other end of the two of you. I have a 20 year old son who’s a sophomore in college and we use a lot of humor. in our family to drive points home to parent to get points across. He uses humor with me. There’s a lot of, you know, that’s iron sarcastic humor. We use, there’s a lot of memes that go back and forth to, you know, to punctuate, uh, statements.

And, you know, we’re at a point now where. When he really wants my attention, he’ll say something like Lisa, you know, or woman, listen to me. And it’s very playful. And it’s the perfect way for us to communicate with each other as we’re transitioning into that adult child parent role. Right. Which is very different than the, you know, role in as a parent, when you’re parenting little, right.

I’m learning how to parent him. And humor is really, I would say a lot of times that the epicenter of our conversation. So I love that you. Talked about emotional connection. That’s great. Yes. That’s great. Stephanie. Tell me. Um, How do you balance using humor as again a professional humorist if that’s the right term?

How do you balance using humor with your little one with setting necessary boundaries and discipline? Give us some insight into that if you will. Oh goodness. I mean, it’s, it’s challenging, right? Everything is a balance. Um, We find my husband and I find that humor and really making things exciting work works really well with our son to get him to put his pajamas on at night.

I mean, bedtime is always a struggle, but if we make it as fun as, as humanly possible, it’s exactly. it works. But then of course, there are those nights after a long day and I find it the most challenging to keep up the humor and playfulness of parenting after. And I’m sure everyone can relate in their own way.

But as an actress, I use a lot of those skill sets. In my work. So if I have a day where I’m on set or if I have a day when I have a bunch of auditions I have to do I am spent on the humor. Like I’ve been being funny for all day and then I have to also be funny for my kid. It’s hard. And I think when those times come where it is a serious situation, we’re currently dealing with hitting, there’s nothing funny about that.

And we’re, you know, we’re struggling because I think our go to is to make things funny and it works well with him. But then you do have to kind of turn that off when things get. Serious. Um, it’s, it’s a work in progress. Yeah. I love that though, because you hit on a fundamental thing I teach, which is the kids are hardwired for two things and only two things.

And the first one is getting their needs met their core basic needs, right? Attention, affection, appreciation, acceptance, autonomy, and connection. And the second one I tell parents all the time is F U N. And that’s it, right? That’s why a five year old or a nine year old. Or even a 15 year old can’t move out and live on their own because they’re hardwired for fun.

The prefrontal cortex isn’t developed. So when you use that humor, you know, a lot of times parents will want to say, you know, well, well, Stephanie, we’ve played all day and now it is time to pick up the toys and clean up the room. And kids don’t care about that. Right. But if you can make cleaning up a part of the fun or getting the pajamas on a race or right.

The more you can bring fun into your parenting. What I like to think of is the 20 percent of the time where we have to say, no, it’s time to go to bed or don’t run out in the street, or they will listen to us because we haven’t been commanding them all day. We’ve been connecting on a fun level, even when you get home from work and are tired.

Yeah. And to give another example, this is something that we’ve been doing recently to pretty decent success is, um, trying to get my son to eat vegetables. Okay. You know, he’s naturally like every human on the planet, not super inclined to really wanting to eat vegetables. So what we started to do is, you know, he’ll be in front of his carrots and we’ll just say, whatever you do, don’t eat the carrot.

And he’s, and then looks at me and then he picks up the carrot. I go, no, no, no, don’t eat it. Don’t eat it. And he puts it in his mouth and I go, no, I can’t believe it. And he gets such a big kick out of this. But the key thing is he ate the carrot. Now, some might call that manipulation. I prefer to call it humor though.

Humor manipulation. It’s a fine line. Don’t we all agree? Yeah. Right. Okay. I’d love to get both of your takes on this. What advice would you give to parents who might feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar with using humor? In their parenting approach. Obviously, you’re both naturally funny. You’ve also worked at the skill of being funny, right?

It’s your profession. In some regards, you know how to switch into a role, but just thinking, given all that experience, right? As Malcolm Gladwell would say, you’re 10, 000 hours into your skill development. If I was a parent, maybe I’m a new parent. Maybe I lean more toward the serious side. How do I bring humor?

Other than binge watching every ABC parenting video out there, which is a must. In addition to that, how would you guide someone into bringing humor into the parenting? I think it’s easy to confuse humor with being funny. I don’t really think that they’re exactly the same thing. I think it’s kind of a lot of pressure to ask every parent.

You know, to be funny with their kid. I think as I was saying before, humor is kind of a form of connection. So I think it’s kind of just, uh, taking a cue from your child and doing something that in improv, there’s a term called yes. And it’s basically the idea of. You’re in a scene with someone and, uh, you know, they say, Hey, I’d like to buy a bagel.

And if you, yes, and them, then that kind of means that you’re accepting their reality. And you’ll, you know, now maybe you’re the person who works in the bagel shop. Okay. Well, we have this big on this bagel. You kind of do that with your kid. You sort of take a cue from them of like, what is something that is fun to them?

If there’s something that they’re kind of enjoying, you basically just kind of like hop on board with them and just go for that ride and just indulge them in. wherever their imagination is leading. So it doesn’t actually require you to be funny. It just requires you to kind of, yes. And whatever the thing is that they’re interested in, if that makes sense.

Ah, I love that. I love that distinction too, between. Because being funny feels like a lot of pressure. Yes. Especially those of us that are not naturally funny. Right. So even for me, it always is pressure to feel like a need to be funny. I do not thrive under those circumstances. Playing along with the humor sounds easy and doable at any stage, at any age, no matter how many kids you have, how old they are, just.

Indulge in that and play along a little bit. I love it. Okay, Stephanie, what would be your advice? Um, I mean that was great advice, Arthur. I don’t know if I have much more to give than that, but you know, I Thinking about just our day yesterday, you know, the weekends are tough. We get out of our normal weekday routine and we’re a little more lenient on bedtime and things like that.

So by, you know, four o’clock on a Sunday, we’re pretty spent, but it takes so little. I think that’s what we have to remember. Like it really doesn’t take that much for our kids to enjoy being around us. Like I was just sitting on the floor in my son’s room and he was playing with something and would ask me a question and I just answer very simply and he thought that was funny, like I, we don’t want to feel like we have to be, yeah, like we have to be on all the time, just being around, I think, and putting down the devices.

That’s huge for us, like giving that one on one connection is everything. You’re undivided, full focus, attention. Yeah. I think that’s such a good point that Stephanie made, is that kids are, uh, so much more interested in things than adults are. Just so much more easily You know that because everything is so new to them, they’re giving their attention to so many different things that that’s you’re really just kind of following them.

I went when I was a camp counselor, I worked with like seven, eight and nine year old kids, and it was just so fun and easy to kind of joke around with them because you’re just taking their lead. And if and when in doubt, you could just fart and they’ll be in hysterics. That always will work. There is no kid who does not find farting funny.

I don’t know if there’s any humans who don’t find farting funny. I agree. I was at yoga, hot yoga the other day in a very serious class and someone let one out and you know, you just can’t help but chuckle. I mean, it’s just funny. Farts are funny. Yeah, actually I should, I should promote our episode called how to fart your baby for anyone who wants to know more about this topic.

Yes, there we go. There we go. You know, I do think that humor is a good way as a parent To bring yourself back to your Children to be more playful to be fully present. It really is an invitation to be present and to connect with them rather than sort of phoning it in or being distracted and the beauty of humor.

My husband and I were talking about this last night. We’re empty nesters now. And I was mentioning to him, or I was explaining to him that you all were going to come and be on the podcast. And, and we were talking about some of the fun times we’ve had over the years with our son and some of the playful things we did and, and, and the little routines we had, or the things that we said, you know, the nicknames or, or, um, we were just reliving a bunch of memories.

It was super fun. And. You know, of course, I’m getting as I was reliving the memories getting feel good chemical hits coming in my brain. Right? And then I was thinking about how as a parent, when you bring the humor in at the right time, at the right place, and even the simple stuff, like answering your kids question or playing a makeup game or farting or, you know, Having silly nicknames, you’re connecting, you’re being present and you’re helping them enjoy the experience and make memories and be fully present with you, right?

It’s like making deposits. into an account and everybody wins. That’s also a really good point you make about being in the moment. It is impossible to genuinely laugh at something without being in the moment, right? So if anyone could kind of fake laugh and be thinking about something else, but if you’re really truly laughing at something, you’re in the moment of that.

And that is when I find I enjoy parenting the most is when I’m not thinking about, you know, life’s stressors or work stuff or money stuff, but just, you know, the, the sheer beauty of, uh, being in the moment and laughing with, you know, with my son. Totally. Yes. Yeah. It’s the best feeling in the world when you hear them really laugh from their gut.

I crave that. Yes. I want that all the time. I know that’s not possible, but I love that you and your husband were able to look back on 20 years of that. And it’s the most beautiful thing ever. I hope to have that too. You, you will. I mean, I just gotta tell you, I love my kid. I think he’s so cool. I, I just, I mean, he’s, he’s an awesome human.

I can’t wait to see what he does in the world. And he’s just so, he’s been my greatest teacher. I talk about this all the time on the podcast. I mean, he really has been my greatest teacher. This kid can talk about his feelings. He has boundaries. He’s, you know, he can’t, he knows what he wants. He’s not afraid to go after it.

He’s a thoughtful person, but doesn’t get taken in. I mean, he is just, he’s my greatest body of work and I’ve done some really amazing things in my life. Really amazing things. There’s a lot of products on the market that I’ve had a hand in developing and had an incredible career. And, but this kid is just the connection, the presence, the time spent with them.

I it’s my greatest, um, contribution. I feel. That’s amazing. And you have so many more years with them too. So that’s just going to continue to grow and develop and other really amazing ways. You know, the saying is so true. The days are long and the years are short because it feels like there were days when, you know, work, you work all day and you go home and I have to start my second job and, you know, if struggle and getting a kid to bed and whatnot, and then boom, it’s just sort of, it flies by, right.

And so that, that I think is a great lead into the second part that we’re going to discuss. Um, Arthur is a big fan of the idea, and I know Stephanie is as well, that parents need to laugh too. And he says one of the main reasons he created ABC Parenting is there are so many parenting channels out there that are awesome, just like Real World Peaceful Parenting.

But the world could use a little bit more of, let’s say, motivation, prodding and incentive to just really have a sense of humor about parenting. Right. And so Arthur created ABC parenting, and I want to just talk about the role of having a sense of humor about all this. And how that helps us be a better parent.

Yeah, that’s such a good question. I, I think, um, I guess just, I don’t know. I, I think that there’s sort of a chaos that is inherent to the nature of parenting, right? There’s no, there’s no parent ever on earth who has been able to kind of map out exactly how things are going to work. And you could read as much as you want to about any given topic.

You know, we, we’ve read, you know, we read a book about potty training. You know, we’ve read books about Like sleeping and there will still be things that come up that were not covered in the book. And there’s so much advice out there, so much of which is so helpful, but I feel like a lot of parents can maybe relate to the idea of just, there’s almost like two, there’s not, there’s like so much advice out there that I think sometimes you just need to be able to laugh at the chaos of parenting and just how ridiculous it is.

And I think one thing that we try to do with ABC Parenting is we try to present this really bad advice, but be just, be very confident about it. Like, as I was saying before, delivering it with the confidence of an actual parenting expert. Um, but all of our ideas are bad. And I, I think our goal there is to just hopefully let parents kind of like, just be like, oh yeah, it’s okay.

You don’t need to be perfect with everything. Like all of this stuff is kind of ridiculous and we’re all just kind of making it up, you know, as we’re going along, like, you know, there’s no real adults. I mean, I, I, I can’t speak for Stephanie, but I’ve never personally felt like paternal in the way that I looked up to as my dad when I was a kid or my mom, when I was a kid, I’d feel like just a person.

Who happens to be a parent, you know, . So to me it always makes me feel a lot of comfort when I talk to other friends who share in some of the same, uh, you know, like funny aspects of parenting or difficult aspects of parenting. But we just all need a breather as parents, right? Like we just all need to like take our minds away from the actual advice for a little bit, you know?

Yes. And I would say. The reason, you know, the books and the podcasts and everything doesn’t work to a T is because we’re in relationship with these other living organisms. And we’re constantly growing and developing. And so it’s, it’s not static. I mean, that’s the good news, bad news, right? So if you screw up, I mean, the official mantra of real world, peaceful parenting is progress over perfection, right?

So the great news is if you screw up, you get it wrong, and you can laugh. And regroup, then you just begin again. And for some people, humor is the. Activity that can take the edge off the shame, the blame, the guilt, and just bring you back to center point to begin and dry again. And so those people should go straight to ABC parenting and, and get a laugh or two and be like, Oh yeah, right, right.

This is all. A big experiment, the 18 year experiment where you don’t collect any data until years later. Right. Let me just regroup and begin again. Yeah. And it’s not just, and it’s not just parenting that we need a breather from. I mean, I love ABC parenting life in general is just, it’s hard. There’s so many scary things happening out there that we’re constantly being shoved.

In our face and there’s, besides just like the world drama, there’s a lot of sad TV shows that we watch and you know, sometimes we just need a pick me up and I fully believe that laughter. can cure all. They say it’s the best medicine. And my goal in life is to spread that to everyone. I think it makes everyone happier.

I love that. I love that. Yeah, I definitely think humor can help parents cope, you know, with the pressures and the expectations. And also a reminder to put everything down and focus on our kids. You know, they’re not something, they’re not a side hustle to fit into our life. You know, when we take on the responsibility of raising kids, we need to give them our attention.

And that’s the number one core need of kids is attention. And, you know, a lot of times humor can be the connecting piece to give them that attention. A dance party. a silly dance party, singing out loud, uh, you know, doing hand clapping games, telling jokes, knock, knock jokes. I mean, my gosh, who doesn’t love dad jokes, right?

Because they’re so bad. You know, my, my husband has these four or five. Go to jokes and he’ll tell them one at a time to my son. And my son’s just like, dad, but we’re all laughing. Oh, they’re so corny and so old, but you’re laughing over them and connecting. Yes, that’s totally true. And by the way, for any people who are about to become parents or who are new parents, uh, especially dads, you will find that.

Your humor will slowly start to bend towards dad humor, whether you want it to or not. So I just want to issue that warning. No way. It’s inevitable. No way to avoid it. Inevitable. You’re going to start making more puns around the house, puns that you don’t even like as you’re saying them out loud, but you have to say them because you’re a dad.

Right? Like why is six mad at seven? Yes. Suddenly that becomes an important joke in your armamentarium. Yes, exactly. Stephanie, what happens when you become a mom? What advice would you have for new moms? That’s a good question because I’m, I’m actually super curious about like, that seems like, I mean, I, at least even just as a dad and I feel like it’s much more exhausting when you’re starting out as a mom, when your kid is first born.

But I remember That was a time when I’m like, it’s pretty hard to find humor and stuff, but like, just, just because you’re so exhausted, but I’m curious what your experience is like since becoming a mom, especially those first couple of months and even years, it’s really Sometimes hard to find the humor in the situation.

Everything is so new. Everything is so, I don’t, there’s something that happens when you push out a baby that you have to be like teaching them things and making sure they know their ABCs right away, um, to get ahead in life. And I don’t know what that is, but it just happens innately. Um, Much like the puns in dads.

So you’ve got to like, you’ve got to just like step back and yeah, take a breath. And, and one thing that I’m always telling myself and reminding myself is to remember what it was like when I was that little and finding the play and the humor. In that and knowing reminding myself that especially right now, my son is three and I’m loving this age so much and it’s so much fun while it has its like own challenges.

Like I know I’m gonna miss this phase. I wouldn’t say I’m missing the newborn phase, but I’m going to miss this phase. So I’m really trying to soak it all up as much as I can. Yeah. So let’s talk about this. I think you two could give our listeners some great advice. One of the things. That comes up a lot, uh, in the people I work with is we all often, and it’s part of the human condition, right?

If you understand neuroscience, now we’re going to get deep into some science here, but we’ll tag it back. Arthur looks scared to death, but I promise it’s going to relate back to humor. I never did well in science. Yeah. One of the things that happens a lot is we feel judged, right? We’re out with the three year old and he’s having a meltdown in aisle six of target, or we’re at church and our kid won’t sit still, or we’re at a wedding and our kid is running around, or he’s clinging to us at preschool drop off.

And oftentimes the cycle is I look over and I see eyes on me and I immediately feel judged and then I want to get triggered and start storming in a negative way alongside my child, right? And that’s where oftentimes the dominant or the permissive parenting at either extreme will come out. We’re giving into the toy because we feel judged and aisle six, the target, or we’re giving the cookie because, uh, you know, we don’t want to feel the eyes on us at the restaurant or we’re handing over the cell phone.

Or we’re like grabbing, gripping our child’s arm and like dragging away stuff right now. Right. So I think a reminder to the listener, this is one of the greatest places that you can just bring some humor about the situation. And even inside your mind, like, yep, it’s having a meltdown and aisle six, the target, ladies and gentlemen, come watch.

You know, like just alleviating the pressure a little bit with a funny thought or, yeah, I remember one time the three of us, our family, we were on an airplane flying somewhere, obviously flying cause you fly on an airplane and my son had a blowout up the back of the diaper. I mean, just a volcanic blowout.

And it’s like. everywhere and I have clothes for him, but not me. I’m holding him. I tried to get up to go to the bathroom. The flight attendant is yelling at me to sit down and I’m looking at her like, do you see me? Do you see him? I’m not going to go sit back down. Right. And, and just like, I remember like just thinking you got to laugh at this Lisa.

You gotta give it a little chuckle. Yeah. That’s the thing is that you really have no, Choice in a moment like that. So you like, this is an actual true story that happened to me recently. We were on a flight and it was pretty long flight. And my son, Theo, you know, he was. I can’t remember if he was crying or just being loud or something.

I think he was maybe crying while I was trying to help him. There was someone sitting nearby who kind of gave me an eye roll like a very visible, you know, like, Oh, you’re one of those. Yes, exactly. And I didn’t know what to do or say. And what ended up coming out of my mouth was just, Hey, you were a baby, too, dude.

And for whatever reason, that kind of defused the situation where it’s just like there’s kind of nothing you can Really do. You have to just sort of let it pass and just be like, eh, whatever this stuff happens, it’s okay. You know, I mean, I’m doing it to give everybody around him a hard time. He’s having a hard time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I feel like I’ve become less judgmental of other parents since becoming a mom. I mean, I’m sure, um, everyone feels maybe everyone feels that way. Like if I see a kid melting down, I’m like, Oh my God. Like I feel, yeah, we’ve all been there. Same on an airplane. I mean, obviously not everyone is a parent, but.

just knowing that when it happens to me, I try not to take it like Yes, so seriously, like if I get a look from somebody like Whatever. I mean, yeah, there’s nothing you can really do about it Also, I do think like it’s important to just remember to like pick your battles Like when you’re are in a grocery store and your kid is screaming like I don’t know Sometimes it is just easier to give them the cookie and then you fix the problem later Like if you don’t want to deal with the meltdown There’s only so many, so much you can handle in a day.

Yeah. Sometimes I just need some, some breathing room. I would also, I would also argue by the way that, um, uh, the majority of airplane meltdowns now are happening with adults more so than babies. That’s a whole different podcast. I’m staying regulated, staying regulated. Right. That’s a whole different topic.

You know, here at real world peaceful parenting, we designated, you know, 2024 as the year of self regulation. So many podcast episodes. Because I mean, all joking aside, if you want your child to be regulated, you have to model regulation for them. Kids don’t, they aren’t born with it. It’s not an innate skill.

It’s learned and they don’t do what we say they do what we do. Right. So, so if you want your, yes. Most of the meltdowns are, are from us parents and yet we’re stunned that our kids are melting down. So it’s like, I’m not surprised, right? If you know, if your kid is melting down, it’s probably because it’s been modeled for him in the home or her.

And so step one always is to learn to regulate ourselves so that we can model it for our kids. Yeah. That’s such a good point. Yeah. Another funny airplane story. One time Dave and I were on an airplane. I think Malcolm might’ve been there too, but he was older and this family comes down the aisle. And in the surrounding periphery, and I’m passing this out as a tip for all of us, this mom coming down the aisle is handing all of us around her a little baggie and there’s a little note and there’s candy and earplugs inside.

And the little note says, like, hey, my name is Joshua and I’m 3 and this is my 1st airplane ride. And I might cry. And my mom might cry, so I’m just going to go ahead in advance and ask for some grace and kindness. And my mom’s packed you earplugs in case it’s too much and some snacks for you, hopefully to help you just relax while I’m screaming the entire flight.

And it was the cutest idea ever. I mean, what a way, you know, to use some humor to nip that in the bud and just predict what might happen. And, and, and the entire grouping around us, everybody was so sweet when the kids started crying because they’d used humor to sort of, you know, squelch it on the front end.

I thought I’ve always remembered that. And I thought it was a great idea. That is such a good idea. Humor and candy, you said, right? Well, yes, candy does fix many things in life, right? Candy fixes many problems. We may not agree on which candy, but we all probably have a candy that fixes breakups, heartaches, disappointments, you know, the whole nine yards.

100%. Yes. Okay. Anything else you want our listener to hear about humor before we wrap up and tell them where they can find you guys? I don’t think so. I think, uh, I feel like we covered the topic, uh, really well, and you did such an excellent job of, uh, moderating this heated debate. Well, thank you. Thank you.

I fact checked everything along the way, so I can report. We’re good on all facts. That’s excellent All right. Well tell our listeners where they can find abc parenting and a little bit about what they’ll see when they get there Okay, so we are on YouTube, uh, Instagram, and TikTok. If you just search for ABC Parenting or ABC Parenting Advice, we’re on all those channels, and we have, um, kind of shorter versions of the episodes that are on TikTok, and the longer versions of the episodes that are on YouTube.

But yeah, just to give you a few, Examples of topics that we have recently, there’s, um, an episode that we did that’s called sick of reading. Good night, moon. Here’s what to do. So it’s kind of about ways that you can get your child to no longer be interested in good night moon. Um, as I said before, there’s how to fart your baby.

We cover what to do if your child accidentally emails your boss. We have, uh, oh, this is, this is one of my favorites. This is one about, so I, I don’t know if other parents have this experience out there of getting texts from their daycare staff during the day, their child’s daycare staff of like, your kid just took a nap or they just had this meal.

So we have an episode about how it’s just as important for you, the parent to text the daycare staff, what you are up to during the day. I just, I just made copies at the UPS store. I just took a poop, you know, like basically that kind of thing. I just poured my second iced coffee of the day. Yes, exactly.

And another one about screen time addiction, what to do about that. And our solution is to show your it’s it’s not to take away the screen, but to rather show your kid only things that are tedious or no longer relevant so that they therefore have no interest in watching the screen anymore, which I actually think that one’s a.

I was going to say, all joking aside, that actually would work. Yeah, totally. If, if, if there was just things way above their head or, you know, dry popcorn fart lectures, kids wouldn’t be as interested, you know, part of not to get off on this topic, but since you both have little kids, I’ll share this with you part of the reason that little that all kids, all of us, all humans, you know, we’re, we’re get so into our phones, but especially little ones playing games.

is the games always have some kind of coin or prize or a thing popping up that they’re rewarding and the brain gets chemical hit from the reward. And then it wants more. It’s a very quick chemical release, right? That’s why they call it the digital drug, because it follows the similar pleasure pathways of drugs and alcohol and shopping and things like that.

And I remember the first time Malcolm, he was little, he was on a phone playing a game and I saw these coins popping up and I was sure that he had somehow bought coins. And so I’m in the phone digging in and I realized that there’s no actual money taking place or no. He’s just getting points, but I watched his face light up when these points came about, and you can just watch the kid want that reward.

And then the chemical, you know, dies down quickly and then they want it again and that’s the hyper focus, which is what I call it on the gaming and the watching the thing after thing. And even sometimes educational videos will give them. That hit and that’s what makes them want to come back for more. So ironically, to your point of this video, you know, no rewards, tedious work, they would probably feel like it’s a Mac book and want to put it down.

Exactly. That’s totally it. And we even have a name for this process. Cause you know how a lot of parenting place, maybe you do this to have, we’ll have an acronym. We kind of use an acronym for something. So our acronym is STIMULANT, which stands for screen time is mesmerizing unless it’s average, intolerable, no longer relevant, or tedious.

So that’s our little acronym for that one. Very nice. Very timely, very timely. All right, listener, your homework assignment is to go and watch short versions on TikTok or Instagram or long versions on YouTube. I promise it will be worth your time. I’m telling you, Stephanie and Arthur are very funny, very creative, very poignant, and, and it’s, it’s a good time.

So if you’re looking for a good time, go watch Stephanie and Arthur at ABC Parenting. And to both of you, thank you so much for being here today. It was a pleasure to have you. My cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Round of applause for Lisa Smith, everybody.

And I was sort of funny too. So that was good. Very funny. You are funny. Yay. I love to be funny. Okay. Listener. I love you very much. And until we meet again, I’m wishing you peaceful parenting. Thanks for listening to Real World Peaceful Parenting. If you want more info on how you can transform your parenting, visit ThePeacefulParent.com. See you soon.