Our world is full of big, heavy topics: War, politics, racial injustice, poverty... The list goes on. What’s the best way for dads and moms to approach these topics with our kids? Do we let them come to us? Avoid them at all costs? Hope that through some combination of teachers, YouTubers, and headlines, our kids will draw their own conclusion? Adam and Marc sit down with Patrick Coleman, father of two and Parenting Editor at Fatherly, to discuss his work exploring big topics, and sometimes big feelings, with our children. Plus, Adam’s kids learn a new phrase and get introduced to a classic 90's cartoon. [This is part one of a two-part interview.]
Our world is full of big, heavy topics: War, politics, racial injustice, poverty... The list goes on. What’s the best way for dads and moms to approach these topics with our kids? Do we let them come to us? Avoid them at all costs? Hope that through some combination of teachers, YouTubers, and headlines, our kids will draw their own conclusion? Adam and Marc sit down with Patrick Coleman, father of two and Parenting Editor at Fatherly, to discuss his work exploring big topics, and sometimes big feelings, with our children. Plus, Adam’s kids learn a new phrase and get introduced to a classic 90's cartoon.
[This is part one of a two-part interview.]
Modern Dadhood’s 37th episode opens with a brief reflection on the trying year of 2020 and a chat about broaching major current events with children. Marc and Adam discuss the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. At 12 or 13 years old, both hosts share their experiences of learning about it via the news, and how as young teenagers they processed the tragedy.
The conversation shifts to the rage-fueled insurrection at the US Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, and the guys tee up part one of their recent conversation with journalist Patrick Coleman, a father of two boys and the Parenting Editor for Fatherly. Patrick’s recent article How to Watch a Coup Attempt With Your Kids provides some powerful and applicable strategies for contextualizing heavy current events for our children in a way that promotes discussion… and doesn’t scare the shit out of them. Other topics include:
• Being a “buffer” for your partner, and leaning on them as your own buffer.
• Processing your own feelings and emotions first
• Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
• Explaining current events in real time
• The value of Inviting your kids to ask questions
• When the heavy news doesn’t have a happy ending
To round out the episode, Adam recalls a recent moment of craziness which involves Ren, Stimpy, and the phrase “skinny dipping,” which is a new addition to his children’s lexicon. Episode 38 will feature the second part of our conversation with journalist Patrick Coleman.
LINKS:
Fatherly
Patrick Coleman (Twitter)
How To Watch A Coup Attempt With Your Kids
Patrick Coleman’s articles
Ask The Goodfather
Social Learning Theory
Oklahoma City Bombing 1995
US Capitol Insurrection 2021
Resource: Explaining The News To Our Kids
Resource: How To Explain Scary News To Kids
Resource: How To Talk To Your Child About The News
Red Vault Audio
Caspar Babypants
Spencer Albee
Marc:
Look, here's the thing. As a dad, you have to be able to make the toot sound with your hands.
Adam:
Yeah, that's right.
Marc:
What were you saying about focusing and getting right down to it?
Adam:
Hey, Marc!
Marc:
Adam? Adam Flaherty?
Adam:
How are you?
Marc:
I'm well, I'm very well.
Adam:
Won't you tell everybody what they're listening to?
Marc:
I would love to. This is Modern Dadhood. An ongoing conversation about the joys, challenges and general insanity of being a dad in this moment.
Adam:
I can tell you're reading that.
Marc:
Oh, but I wanted to nail it. I really wanted to nail that. Should we introduce ourselves now?
Adam:
Yeah.
Marc:
I don't even need to look at notes for this part. My name is Marc Checket, and I am a dad to twin boy toddlers. What about you, sir?
Adam:
My name is Adam Flaherty, and I have two girls who are seven, and dangerously close to four.
Marc:
She's on the precipice of the fourth year.
Adam:
The terrible fours.
Marc:
Oh, don't tell me that, man.
Adam:
Oh, it's going to carry you into four, yeah.
Marc:
I'm in the thick of the terrible, I don't know, two to threes right now. Please don't tell me it goes on for more years.
Adam:
Are you a fatherhood expert, Marc?
Marc:
Oh yeah, man. I spent at least two years in art school, so a hundred percent expert at being a dad.
Adam:
Now be real with me.
Marc:
Ah, no.
Adam:
Thank you for your honesty.
Marc:
It's about as real as I can be.
Adam:
Well, I'm not either. So, what the hell are you and I doing, hosting Modern Dadhood?
Marc:
Well, I can tell you, I'm trying to get a little bit closer to that expert level, knowing full well I'm never going to achieve it, but this right here, friend, gives us the opportunity to speak to people who might know a thing or two about being dads.
Adam:
That's right. And I would argue that our guest for today's episode could be considered an expert.
Marc:
I'd put him in that category.
Adam:
Patrick Coleman is the Parenting Editor at the online publication, Fatherly. And if you haven't heard of Fatherly, then...
Marc:
What are you doing?
Adam:
Where have you been?
Marc:
Yeah, what is going on in your life?
Adam:
Yeah, and I would consider him an expert in the field of parenting because as he told us in our conversation, Marc, he so frequently speaks with brilliant minds about fatherhood and uses them for resources in his articles. So, we'll get into the conversation with Fatherly's Patrick Coleman shortly. So Marc...
Marc:
Go ahead.
Adam:
We are living through a pretty stressful and trying time in general. Would you agree?
Marc:
Yeah, I would agree. I'm feeling it.
Adam:
I think, long term, we're talking about having been in this pandemic for coming up on a year, but also just lots of ups and downs politically, lots of things that can be worrisome and stressful. And it's certainly taking a toll on many of us, most of us, all of us.
Marc:
Yeah, every single one of us, I think, in some capacity.
Adam:
When you were a kid and something really big and devastating happened, I'm thinking of something as big as, say, the Oklahoma City Bombing, which I think was in '95.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
Do you recall having conversations with your parents about those types of events, or do you recall how you became aware of current events like that, especially ones that could have been very scary to a kid?
Marc:
Yeah. Side note, it's funny that you should bring that up because that was the first, okay, that was the second thing that popped into my head. That was the Oklahoma City Bombing. The first thing was the OJ thing because that was a year before.
Adam:
Yeah.
Marc:
I remember learning about the Oklahoma City Bombing... First of all, I have family that lives in Oklahoma city.
Adam:
Oh wow.
Marc:
Yeah, and they lived there at the time. And so there was that sort of added layer to me and my family, but I was 13 or 14 years old, and I do remember seeing it on the news but then also overhearing my family talk about it.
Adam:
Was your family who was living out there close enough to Oklahoma city that they're actually concerned that they could be somehow directly affected by this?
Marc:
Unless I'm misremembering this and it's totally possible because I don't know if I ever really sat down with them, even later to be like, "Explained to me everything about what happened at that time," but I want to say that I at least had some family members that were close enough that they felt the blast...
Adam:
Oh shit.
Marc:
... from it.
Adam:
That's terrifying.
Marc:
To me, as a kid, I think I do remember kind of being really scared, overhearing things like that.
Adam:
Yeah.
Marc:
I don't think I've really voiced those fears. I think it was just a quiet like, "This is adult talk and it's scaring me." For some reason, the detail that I really fixated on was the fact that it was a yellow Ryder rental truck. And then I just had a weird fear of those every time I saw one for a little while after that.
Adam:
Man, that's interesting. I feel like my experience was the same. That particular detail didn't stick with me, but I remember seeing it on the news with my parents there but I don't recall specifically having a conversation about it. And I don't know if it's something that happened when I was younger if it's something that my parents would have approached me to talk about. Maybe it was just a different time, but I think their assumption would have been that if it was going to be addressed with me then maybe it's something that would happen in school.
Marc:
I also wonder if at that time... It's hard to state exactly how different media was at that time. But, I mean, you and I both remembered, I'm sure a lot of our listeners remember. The internet was not there. There was no YouTube. There was none of that stuff. There wasn't really the 24-hour networks yet either, I don't think. Maybe there was a mention on a morning show, but then probably that evening news that right around before, after dinner time, because we're not sitting there watching news with our... And I guess my point is that even though it was big and it was present on all the news networks, it wasn't ever present in our lives. It wasn't just like you pick up every device in your house and the Oklahoma Bombing is being screamed at you.
Adam:
With notifications as soon as it happens.
Marc:
Exactly. You can't pick up your phone or go through your email or check Facebook or Twitter or whatever without you're just being yelled at.
Adam:
Yeah, that's very true. I wonder if the lack of immediacy played a role in people's perceptions of how big or scary or urgent something really was.
Marc:
Local news was kind of where it was at, that's what you wanted to know about. And there were a couple of those shows on TV or whatever, and a couple of the newspapers, like USA Today, that talked about news from all over. But the news from all over, you had to be picky and choosy about what you were going to talk about. It had to be pretty high level.
Adam:
Right. Anything politics, you would read about in the newspaper, if you cared about it.
Marc:
Yeah. And now the Oklahoma Bombing was terrible and it was a confounding act that it warranted discussion, national discussion.
Adam:
Like you mentioned, even just how news was consumed in the nineties is so, so incredibly different than how we receive news today. For example, today, older kids will learn about something of that magnitude either by word of mouth or alerts on their phones, like we said, or the news, which is accessible 24 hours a day. Whereas, parents may not even have the opportunity to give that context or to have a conversation with the kid because of that immediacy that information is transmitted. And I just think about if I can't control the narrative with my children, who is going to control it and what bias or what agenda could they have? Which is a little bit scary, especially when it comes to them looking something up online. Who knows what information or disinformation or opinion they're going to stumble upon that's going to shape their whole perception of whatever the event is?
Marc:
Just on YouTube alone. There are more commentators who have absolutely no business doing what they're doing, and yet they do it and they get millions of views and they're known for it. And I just think that there are people out there that gain power in notoriety, and they can end up being very influential just because of that, not because of any kind of credentials that's behind that. And that's what's scary. To me, you've got to, I'm coming at it from, well, I lived this whole before the internet and I saw the stuff as it was created over time. I just can't imagine jumping into it now as a kid and just being like, "Hey kid, here's the world. All the information comes at you all at once. Hey, figure it out."
Adam:
It's just about who can get information to you the quickest.
Marc:
Yeah. Scary stuff.
Adam:
It is. It is.
Marc:
I wish there was someone out there writing articles, directed at parents to help figure out how to do things like talk to your kids about insurrection.
Adam:
It's so funny that you should say that, Marc, because...
Marc:
Why?
Adam:
In all seriousness, I recently read an article about this topic, specifically on Fatherly. Even more specifically, it was about the recent insurrection at the Capitol building. The article was written by our guest for today's episode, Patrick Coleman. I've read his articles before. I know that you've read Patrick's articles before. What I really took away from reading this particular article, which we will link to in the show notes, is that I really appreciated how Patrick and his wife approached explaining the insurrection to their two sons and actually watching some of it with them.
Marc:
And be ready to field questions...
Adam:
Exactly.
Marc:
... because they're coming.
Adam:
And the conversation was so good, was so rich, that, in fact, we're going to play back one part of it now, and the second part of it in the next episode of Modern Dadhood.
Marc:
This is a first in Modern Dadhood history.
Adam:
The span. What do you say? Should we just let it roll?
Marc:
Let's let it roll.
Marc:
Patrick, welcome to Modern Dadhood! Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
Patrick:
Thank you very much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to talk to you guys.
Marc:
Great. Yes. The excitement is mutual, mutual feeling over here. Let's start with your role as, if I have it right, parenting editor at Fatherly. Can you talk a little bit about what maybe a typical day looks like for you?
Patrick:
Yeah, absolutely. I've been a parenting editor of Fatherly for about four years. Fatherly has been up and running for about five so I was the first parenting editor, and I've been in there ever since. I spent most of my days talking to researchers and scientists and pediatricians. I consider myself essentially a journalist, and I speak to people who range from developmental psychologists to cultural anthropologists, to pediatricians, to child psychologists, anybody who has an insight into parental behavior and child development and child behavior. I'm speaking to them, and I've developed these relationships over several years. And it's the favorite part of my job, is just to speak to people who are doing this good work and getting my mind blown pretty much every day.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
What prompted me to reach out to you, Patrick, was an article that you wrote about the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th. I certainly don't intend for this entire conversation to be about that event, but what caught my eye was this headline that you wrote, How to Watch a Coup Attempt with your Kids. I would love for you to kind of walk us through how things played out in your house that day, on January 6th. I think maybe if you could start by just sharing a bit about your family, kind of paint a picture of your family for us, and then share about the events of that day from your perspective.
Patrick:
Absolutely. I have a wife and two kids, who are seven and nine years old now, almost eight and nine. We live in a suburb of Cleveland called Chagrin Falls. We've been locked down for the last year, just like everybody else, but they have been crucial to my job over the years. The story that I wrote about the insurrection is sort of linked to other stories that I've written about my family. I had a series called Experimental Parenting, where I would take some of this information that I get from experts and then I would apply it in my family for a week just to see what happens. And maybe it's not the best idea to experiment on your children and family, and I'm sure that there will be repercussions in the future, but it's worked out so far.
Marc:
So far, so good.
Patrick:
I'm always thinking about them. They're here all the time. They're part of my work. I work from home. They're very much a part of what I do at Fatherly, which is sort of how this rolled out. To speak to what was happening on that day, I was at my laptop, as I am every day in my office here. I was excited to see what was happening, how the change was going. I think a lot of people were sort of oriented on that day as the electoral votes were being counted. I had the news running in the background, and then things started changing and shifting, and the tone changed. And I began to focus more on what was going on there. And as I watched, it was getting more and more intense and the anxiety was building, and it was just one of those moments where you're kind of unsure where to go and how to react and what to do.
Adam:
Both of your kids are home right now? Are they learning remotely?
Patrick:
Yes.
Adam:
At what point did you sort of alert them to what was going on?
Patrick:
Well, it took a little while, and I didn't just want to bring them right in on it. Because one of the things that I've learned is that you never want to go into a situation with your kids where you are not in control of your own emotions and your own feelings. It's never a good idea. No matter what it is, whether you're angry or you're outside the house and somebody is having a tantrum, or anytime there're big emotions basically, you don't want to go into it raw. You want to take a beat and figure out where you're at. I knew I didn't want to go to them right away because I didn't know how I felt about the situation honestly. All I knew is that I was very anxious and shaky and excited and all those emotions that we have when we watch these things. So the first thing I did was actually spoke to my wife who was home at the time. I talked to her about it first. And that was a way for us to both sort of go through those emotions together, to bounce things off each other and to talk it out and sort of come to a place of reasonable calm. And we wanted to make sure that we did that before the kids ever were introduced to what was happening.
Marc:
You mentioned, though, you take a beat.
Patrick:
Yeah.
Marc:
That's a big challenge that I have. For context for you, my kids are young. I have twins that aren't quite three years old yet. So, for the most part, we're sort of in that position now where we don't have these conversations with them. We talk to them about kindness because sometimes they pick up a Matchbox car and huck it at the other one's head. And so that's what most of our conversations are sort of centered around. But, a challenge that I have is that sometimes information just comes at you. It's like a fire hose, and I have such a hard time parsing through it before I can decide even how what it is I'm really even feeling. I feel things, and you kind of mentioned big feelings. Adults, parents, we have big feelings too sometimes and it can be really hard to sort of parse through that, especially when you know that kids, they can pick up on your emotional state. Even if you're not saying anything, they can feel anxiety coming off of you. They can feel anger or frustration. The question is, do you have tricks in your mind to be able to help parse through that information in real time as your kids are coming to you with questions?
Patrick:
Yeah, I think part of it is just developing a habit of doing this as early as you can in your career as a parent. You're right. Empathy is sort of hardwired into children. There are studies that show that even as babies, children have a sense of what's fair, what's right and wrong. For instance, a newborn can hear the sound of another baby crying, and they will orient themselves to that cry. They understand innately from the beginning this sort of emotional soup that they're born into. It's all around us. There's a researcher, a developmental psychologist named Albert Bandura, he's a Canadian legend of developmental psychology. And he came up with this idea of social learning theory. Social learning theory states that as humans, we learn by watching other people, which is a really good thing. Because if we had to learn everything new for every person, if we had to go through trial and error to figure everything out, we would be screwed as a species. We're sort of oriented to take information from each other. And so if you sort of live this way where you understand that children are looking to you to learn how to be human, it sort of helps you cement these habits into your life where you recognize like, "Okay, this is a big emotion. Maybe I should just stop, and count or lock myself in the bathroom for a couple of minutes." It's okay to disengage that much too. Luckily, I have a partner who I communicate with well so in those moments, she's a very good buffer for me. We both are. We act as very good buffers for one another. But if you're alone and if you're in those moments where you're feeling overwhelmed for whatever reason, whether it's something you're watching on the news or whether it's something that you're feeling, whether you're observing your kids throwing Hot Wheels cars at each other, mine still do that by the way...
Marc:
Oh, great. So I still have that to look forward to for a little longer.
Patrick:
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Marc:
Awesome.
Patrick:
You can take those moments and you can train yourself to sort of pause. And there's really no moment unless your kid is in imminent danger. There's really no moment in your life where you shouldn't be able to disengage for long enough to take a breath and come back to yourself and re-enter the situation.
Marc:
You're bringing up something that for me is actually... It's pretty hard for me to recognize those times. My wife can sometimes see those things happening in me well before I can't, which I've considered myself very lucky to have a partner who's keyed in enough to be able to do that. So sometimes it's the hand on the shoulder from her that's like, "Why don't you go on the front porch and just take a deep breath?" That's only then that I realized like, "Okay, I'm getting really worked up over whatever this is." But learning to feel that on your own, that can sometimes be a real difficult thing.
Patrick:
Yeah, it takes a while, but it's just a matter of checking in. It's a practice that you're going to do for the rest of your time as a parent, which for the rest of your life essentially. Taking those beats will be as pertinent now when your children are three as it is going to be when they're 16, 18. Even in their thirties, you'll probably have moments where you'll have to be like, "Okay, well, let me take a moment here before we go on with this." I don't think we need to be down on ourselves if we're not good at it now. It's a lifelong process.
Marc:
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:
So you've had this time to sort of talk through it with your wife and assess your own feelings about it. At what point did the kids come into the picture?
Patrick:
My wife Kitty and I decided that we were going to allow the kids to come to us instead of going down and trying to have some sort of introduction. I'm not even sure how we would have framed it. I think it's better in those situations to allow kids to ask questions and be curious. And because children, at least my kids, are super naturally attuned to a screen on anyway, it was inevitable that they would come up and see what was going on. And so we decided the best course of action would be to allow them to come to us. And they did eventually. At first, TV is TV. They really weren't that concerned until they recognize sort of the tone of the news, which was very serious, there was a lot of yelling when they tapped into the live pictures. They wanted to know what was going on. And that's when we sort of kicked into answering those questions as best as we could. And given that we've taken time to process ourselves, we were ahead enough in the game that we could answer those questions in a way that was calm and as reasonable as possible.
Adam:
Yeah, I loved in the article, you said that your boys weren't aware that they could have thoughts and questions. That's really interesting. And I think probably my girls, who are seven and four, would be the same way. Did you have to kind of invite them to ask questions about it?
Patrick:
Yeah, after their initial "What's going on?" and us explaining to them what was going on in the most age-appropriate, low key way, which is important... The last thing that would have been good for them is to say, "Well, people are attacking our Capitol, our nation's Capitol." You want to go as low key and as age-appropriate as possible. And once we let them know what's going on and they sort of fell into this quiet, at which point I realized they probably wanted to ask things. And so I just gave them permission and just said, "If you have any questions, you can ask us anything about what's going on." And my oldest son immediately started popping in with questions right away. Because, sometimes, kids know where they're at in the scheme of things. And if they're told all the time their opinion isn't necessarily that important or their questions aren't helpful or whatever, then they're going to sort of internalize this idea that they can't ask and especially when things are scary or strange or whatever. I just wanted to open that up to them.
Adam:
How did the end of that event play out for your family? Was there a closure to the conversation, or has it remained sort of an open-ended thing?
Patrick:
At some point after their questions were exhausted, they got bored with it, as weird as that is to say. It just wasn't interesting anymore. This is a bunch of adults going crazy and having adult opinions about things. It's not as interesting as whatever you're playing on your Switch.
Marc:
Sure.
Adam:
And it doesn't impact them immediately and personally in their eyes?
Patrick:
Right. And since their mom and I weren't freaking out, it allowed them to sort of move on with their lives. But when the house came back later that evening and started going through the votes again, I wanted to make sure that the boys saw that that was happening, because I didn't want to leave them this place of national chaos and, luckily, I didn't have to leave them there. And so before they went to bed, I made sure they came back and they saw that the people we have put in charge of representing our voices were doing the work we hired them to do, regardless of what had happened before. It's important for them to know it's not as easy as they might worry to sort of derail the country. It sort of gets back on track pretty quickly. As they've grown older, my 9-year-old already is like, "It's the morning. I want to listen to the news."
Marc:
What?
Patrick:
He's always very interested in what's going on. I love that about him and...
Marc:
That's great.
Patrick:
... I'm very happy to talk to him about whatever's going on. And it's challenging for me. There's a lot of stuff where I'm like, "I don't know, how can you... When a newscaster is talking about 400,000 dead from coronavirus, how can you talk to your child about that?" It's difficult for me still to get into those subjects. It takes a certain amount of bravery to get in there and just expect that it's going to be all right. At least with you and your kid, it'll probably be all right. You're not going to ruin them. As long as you're talking to them honestly, as long as you're sort of emotionally on an even keel, you can get through any conversation. You just got to let it happen.
Adam:
Patrick, I understand you're working on a book about childhood development for Fatherly. When and where will we be able to find that?
Patrick:
It's going to be published by HarperCollins. It's called Fatherhood. It will be out from HarperCollins hopefully this year, I believe, probably later in the year. Right now, it's being copy edited. It's very exciting. But yeah, I spoke to a lot of dads, a lot of incredibly smart people, people way, way smarter than me. And I think it's going to be a good read.
Marc:
That's very cool. I'm excited for you for that.
Adam:
Dads, keep an eye out for Patrick's book when it's released, hopefully later this year. Read his articles on Fatherly.com. You can follow him on Twitter @thegoodfather, and we will include links in the episode notes to a whole lot of the stuff that we talked about so check there for more information on Patrick Coleman.
Marc:
And just a reminder. You'll hear the rest of our conversation with Fatherly's Patrick Coleman in our next episode.
Adam:
Guess what I have.
Marc:
Don't tell me.
Adam:
Okay.
Marc:
Gonorrhea.
Adam:
It's not an STD nor an STI.
Marc:
An STI?
Adam:
Infection.
Marc:
Infection?
Adam:
Yeah. They changed it from Disease to Infection. STI. Look it up.
Marc:
I wasn't aware of that. Wait a minute. Rewind. Do you have something for a recurring segment, Adam? Is that what you're trying to say?
Adam:
I do. I have a "Did I just say that out loud?"
Marc:
Hit me, tell me. What do you got?
Adam:
I'm going to do what you do. Sort of. I'm going to recite the statement that I said out loud. But then rather than making you guess, I'm just going to kind of spell it out.
Marc:
Oh.
Adam:
Well, whatever, you can guess. Here we go. Ready?
Marc:
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:
Here's what I said.
Marc:
Hit me.
Adam:
There will be no skinny dipping in the toy box. You're welcome to guess the context.
Marc:
I think I might... I think I might already know what's going on here, but also, that's just really sound advice.
Adam:
Yeah. Anybody should take that advice.
Marc:
There's got to be a lot of sharp things in that toy box you don't want to come in contact with.
Adam:
Allow me to paint a picture for you.
Marc:
Oh, should I close my eyes?
Adam:
You might close your eyes. Yes.
Marc:
Okay.
Adam:
And there will be some accompanying audio to my story.
Marc:
Oh, that... Geez. You are elevating this segment. Okay.
Adam:
Here we go.
Marc:
Hmm-mm.
Adam:
It's a typical winter Saturday. There's snow on the ground here in Maine, but the sun is shining. It's 17 degrees or so. Too cold to go outside. It's not worth the effort. Everyone's going a little stir crazy and the girls have just finished their lunch. They're both very expressive and very silly, but my seven-year-old makes this really weird face right up close to my face and just freezes that way. And I go, "Oh geez, that looks like something out of Ren and Stimpy." Of course, they have no idea what Ren and Stimpy is. And so I have to bring it up on YouTube. I pull up my phone, I plug in Ren and Stimpy, and I find a short segment just so they can see the ridiculous faces that these characters would make so she understands the reference.
Marc:
Just enough to give your kids nightmares.
Adam:
Yeah. Precisely. The scene I bring up, but I hadn't seen it before. It features Ren and Stimpy deciding to go skinny dipping together in a lake. It's actually awesome. They both take off their fur and hang it up on a tree, but it's still their body shape. Do you know this one?
Marc:
I think I know the episode. Yeah.
Adam:
Okay. So as they're skinny dipping together, they're joined by this country bumpkin who was voyeuristically watching them from the bushes for some reason. It's got a chicken bone on his head, and this is all in a three-minute segment and it's hilarious and ridiculous. And because I hadn't seen it before, I couldn't sensor it for them. If I had chosen to stop it right when it hit the first super weird or inappropriate part, things would have crumbled in my house. There would have been mayhem if I just stopped it and said, "No, we can't watch this." So we get to the end of this amazing Ren and Stimpy segment, and I'm going to play the soundtrack for you. The chant you hear over and over, of course, is "We are skinny dipping."
Marc:
Oh, that's a good laugh.
Adam:
And then they decide that the toy box is their preferred body of water to skinny dip in.
Marc:
I love the guttural growly voice that she gets it to.
Adam:
They're really at an age where they're getting each other really laughing right now.
Marc:
Now, that definitely had the stank of a new term all over it. They had never heard the term skinny dipping before, had they?
Adam:
That's correct. They had never heard the phrase before. There will be no skinny dipping in the toy box.
Marc:
New rule in the Flaherty household. This is the end of the show.
Adam:
We always get here eventually.
Marc:
You know we should do, Adam Flaherty of Modern Dadhood, the podcast?
Adam:
What's that?
Marc:
We should just do the wrap-up banter part of your notes.
Adam:
Sounds great to me.
Marc:
Great. Kick it off.
Adam:
Dads, you can find us at moderndadhood.com, where you'll learn anything you've ever wanted to know about Modern Dadhood. You can find the podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon, Google, and a whole lot more. And we would love it if you would take a moment to subscribe and rate and review the show. It means a whole lot to us. It makes us feel happy, and it is a great way to help us promote the show to other potential listeners.
Marc:
You know what you should do also? Swing by the website. We've got a little shop there with some t-shirts and some dad hoodies. I think you should check that out.
Adam:
Let's rattle off a few thank yous.
Marc:
Okay, I'm down with that. Do you want to spontaneously just do a back and forth thing, like you say one and I say one?
Adam:
Let's do it.
Marc:
Totally spontaneous. Go.
Adam:
Thank you to Caspar Babypants.
Marc:
Can't forget Spencer Albee.
Adam:
How about Mr. Pete Morse at Red Vault Audio?
Marc:
A good addition to the thank yous. I'd also like to think Patrick Coleman for joining us.
Adam:
Well, if you're going to thank Patrick, we got to thank Molly Battles and the team at Fatherly.
Marc:
If you're going to take a step forward, I'm going to take a step forward. Thank you to some spider.
Adam:
I think that's it, right?
Marc:
But... Wait.
Adam:
What?
Marc:
You forgot...
Adam:
I didn't forget. I was just trying to rile you up.
Marc:
Well, I've come riled. Consider me riled.
Adam:
This one's all yours.
Marc:
Okay. Thank you for listening.
Adam:
Bye.