The mission of Modern Dadhood is to meet and learn from dads whose fatherhood experiences are different than our own. In this episode, guest Stephen Stratton gives us some new perspective and helps us realize the transgender taboo we grew up with doesn't exist in the same way for our kids. If we can bypass the stubborn notion that we might offend someone by asking the wrong question, we might find there’s a ton we have in common simply by being present, engaged dads.
The mission of Modern Dadhood is to meet and learn from dads whose fatherhood experiences are different than our own. In this episode, guest Stephen Stratton gives us some new perspective and helps us realize the transgender taboo we grew up with doesn't exist in the same way for our kids. If we can bypass the stubborn notion that we might offend someone by asking the wrong question, we might find there’s a ton we have in common simply by being present, engaged dads.
Adam begins Episode 12 by recalling the recent “sweetheart dance” he attended with his kindergarten-aged daughter, and how it differed from their first time attending last year. The guys introduce guest Stephen Stratton, a stay-at-home father of one, who happens to be transgender. Stephen shares his compelling story from his childhood as a “tomboy” in rural Connecticut, through planning his own family, becoming a father, and raising his son with his partner Josh. Stephen candidly answers questions about his own story, about his son who was assigned female at birth but now chooses “he/him” pronouns, and about how to have a conversation with a transgender person without being disrespectful, pissing them off, or sounding like a dope. Topics include:
• Getting past the instinct to avoid people who are different than you
• Language and questions that are appropriate (or inappropriate) regarding transgenderism
• Discovering as a teen that the feelings Stephen had been experiencing had a name, and that it was an option he could pursue
• Stephen’s desire to be a parent, and his personal goals surrounding fatherhood
• Being a pregnant man (without turning heads!)
• How a transgender person handles discovering the sex of his baby
• How to talk to our kids about sex/gender/the transgender community
• Our children don’t have the same baggage that we have from our childhoods when this was considered much more taboo
The show wraps up with a riveting “So That’s a Thing Now” (spoiler alert... the twin boy toddlers are fighting! When will it stop?) and the guys gush about Marc’s cherished Hopsulator Trio by BrüMate. Turns out, Modern Dadhood listeners can get 15% off your first order by using the code “DADHOOD”. So use it!
Thanks to Tanner at Portland Pod for hosting and engineering our session with Stephen.
Links:
Stephen Stratton's blog
BrüMate (use code DADHOOD at checkout!)
Portland Pod
Red Vault Audio
Caspar Babypants
Spencer Albee
Bubby Lewis
Marc:
Good, sound good? Look good. Feel good?
Adam:
Yeah. This is Modern Dadhood. It's an ongoing conversation about the joys, challenges, and general insanity of being a dad in this moment.
Marc:
I would like to introduce myself, if I may.
Adam:
You may, and you're encouraged to.
Marc:
Okay, my name is Marc Checket, and I am a dad of twin boy toddlers. What about you?
Adam:
Oh, I'm Adam Flaherty. I'm a father of two daughters, six years old and three years old.
Marc:
Let me ask you, what's new in your life?
Adam:
Yeah. I mean, life with two kids, especially six and three, that this age is totally crazy. From the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep, it's insanity.
Marc:
I recently had the pleasure of seeing your girls for the first time in a long time the other day at your home.
Adam:
That's right. We were going to head up to Portland to do our interview with the guest for today's episode. I'll say, they really took to you. Sometimes they can be very shy and other times they open right up to people, and they just were all about you, man.
Marc:
I think it helps that I look like a real life Muppet. I think that's helpful for kids. They're not afraid of me in any way.
Adam:
The Jason Segel as a Muppet kind of Muppet or like a-
Marc:
Maybe. Yeah, maybe.
Adam:
... or a more like a Muppet Muppet?
Marc:
I feel like I feel more like a Muppet Muppet. I feel like I look like I belong on the Muppet Show or something.
Adam:
You're like Scooter.
Marc:
I'll take that. He's got the glasses and the little orange mop.
Adam:
Yeah.
Marc:
But, he's a little bit on edge. He's a little bit on edge.
Adam:
You could tell that there was some anxiety underneath the surface?
Marc:
Yeah, a little bit. I mean, he means really well and he just kind of wants everything to work out, right?
Adam:
Correct. One of the things though that I wanted to talk about that my older six-year-old daughter and I did recently was we went to a Sweetheart dance, a daddy-daughter type dance.
Marc:
Now, did she ask?
Adam:
No. So, this is actually something that we did last year for the first time, and it was really nice. It's something that before kids, I probably would have rolled my eyes out a little bit and I'm like, "No, that's really tacky," but of course now that I have two daughters, I'm like, "Oh, that's so cute, and of course I'm going to do that." When my three year old is old enough to do it next year, I'm bring them both. Last year, our first year doing this, we danced a lot together. It was very sweet. She loved being there. I got her a little corsage, she felt so special. It was really, very heartwarming. This year, now that she's in kindergarten, we show up and there's a few of her friends there with their dads. So, we danced a little bit together, and then she really enjoyed just running around with their girlfriends. So, there I was hanging on the sidelines chatting with the dads.
Marc:
What?
Adam:
It's fine. It was still a very nice event. It was still very sweet to get dressed up and to make her feel so special, but little twinge of disappointment that I was kind of just hanging on the side, watching her have all the fun.
Marc:
Yeah, yeah. Did you think at all that might happen?
Adam:
I knew that she was going to have a few friends there this year, and so yeah, maybe it crossed my mind.
Marc:
Oh, dude.
Adam:
It's okay, it's all right. You know what? Honestly, it's representative of the future.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
She's going to want less and less to do with hanging out with dad, and that's okay.
Marc:
Yeah, yeah, sure. But also, be a kid for a little longer, right?
Adam:
Yeah, but I'm not going to make her feel guilty about it either. You know?
Marc:
Did you do the corsage this year?
Adam:
I did.
Marc:
Yeah?
Adam:
Yeah, the corsage that costs more than the ticket to the event. Yeah. Did that.
Marc:
Nice. Was she stoked about it?
Adam:
She loved it, yeah.
Marc:
But see, and she's got memories, right? She got memories of that, that dance.
Adam:
Yeah, how much fun she had with her girlfriends.
Marc:
You know, that she left you in the lurch and just was like-
Adam:
It's almost like dad wasn't there. Hey, Dad-
Marc:
... "Get out of here. Thanks for the ride."
Adam:
Part of the original mission of Modern Dadhood was to have conversations with a diverse collection of dads who all have different experiences. For you and I, Marc, to learn about fatherhood experiences that are maybe different from our own. I find that for myself, I don't know if it's the same with you, it's very easy for me when I'm out in the world with my kids, or otherwise, to avoid interacting with someone whose situation I don't fully understand, for any reason.
Adam:
It can be really intimidating to think about starting a conversation with somebody because I don't want to say the wrong thing, I don't want to ask the wrong question that offends them. I don't want somebody to put me in my place for saying something stupid when really, there was no harm intended. It was an innocent question.
Marc:
It's hard to come up upon someone. Maybe there's some kind of connection there, right? Because, you each have children but maybe they're just very different than you.
Adam:
Exactly. So, a lot of times we just pivot from the conversation because it's easier to not. It's easier to not. I think that the really unfortunate side effect of that, of avoiding those situations or avoiding people because you're intimidated to bring something up or to get past whatever you don't understand, is that you could miss out on a friendship with someone who you may have so much in common with just because there's this one small thing that you may not have in common.
Marc:
Exactly. You could miss an opportunity to learn something new from a perspective that's wildly different than your own, and you could stand to learn so much in a moment like that. Right? I mean, we only know what we know through our own experiences, and there's so much more knowledge to gain from people who have different experiences than you, right?
Adam:
So dads, Marc and I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Stephen Stratton, who is a father of one son who's nearing six years old, to talk about some of the ways that our fatherhood experiences are similar and some of the ways that they're different. Stephen Stratton, when we first launched Modern Dadhood, I shared the podcast with a Facebook group, one of the groups that I really like and you responded with this note, which I'm going to read.
Stephen:
Okay.
Adam:
"Hit me up if you ever want to do a show on queer/trans fatherhood/families." Why did you respond to that post in that way?
Stephen:
I mean, I think there's not a ton of stories out there still. I am a person who's happy to share my story, so it helps to educate and share. I think we have a pretty great family, so I like talking about it.
Adam:
My first reaction was, "Yes, that sounds awesome." That's exactly the kind of meaningful conversation that I want to have on this podcast. That's what this whole thing is all about is just hearing about different perspectives from different dads. My immediate follow-up was like those words: queer, trans, but those are words that I would never use when speaking to someone who is transgendered or about someone who's transgendered. So, that's terrifying. How am I going to navigate a conversation like this without offending somebody? Then, it transitioned to, this is a really exciting opportunity because now we're in a space having a conversation where I would encourage you, as Marc and I are asking you questions, to correct us or to let us know that what we're asking is not appropriate or that different language might be better.
Stephen:
Yeah, happy to do that.
Adam:
Talk to us about growing up, up to the point where you first realized that you were not the sex that was physically assigned to you.
Stephen:
Okay, so I grew up in Connecticut and was born in '81, so I grew up in the '80s.
Marc:
Me too.
Adam:
'80s.
Stephen:
Yeah, and I actually grew up in a pretty small town in Connecticut and we had woods to play in, what would be called free range parenting today was how we grew up.
Marc:
Sounds idyllic.
Stephen:
Yep. I don't recall having a ton of gender dysphoria growing up. I think I started thinking about it as early as four or five. I was calling myself like Brian, which is not the most creative thing, no offense to any guys out there named Brian.
Marc:
I mean, I have a brother named Brian, but we don't care about him. I'm sorry Brian, I don't mean that.
Stephen:
When I maybe got a little bit older, I started noticing that I would ask in public to use the bathroom and I would be led in the direction of the men's room, which was secretly really exciting for me, but I didn't want to tell people about it. Talking about how things change over 30 something years, I was 19 before I met a trans person and I didn't even really know queer, gay identified folks growing up. Probably when I hit puberty, it was really when things started to shift for me. I remember being online and coming across a blog of a young man who was transitioning from female to male. He was 19 years old and he was going to school in Boston. He was going to school to be a teacher, and it was like a light bulb went off for me. I was like, "Oh, this is an option." It had never occurred to me that this was a life that one could live.
Marc:
Yeah.
Stephen:
That's really when I started to come out and started to transition.
Adam:
Sometime in your mid 30s, you had an epiphany of sorts about your future.
Stephen:
Yeah. I mean, I've known I wanted to have kids since I was four or five. I always planned on having kids as I grew up, and I was on an adult and thought about it in a more serious way, especially after I transitioned, I sort of assumed that my path to fatherhood would be through adoption or foster care. Then as I got closer to 30, and I didn't have a long term partner, I thought more about, "Okay, well maybe, hey, not going to wait around forever. I want to have kids. I know I want to have kids." Maybe the night before I turned 30, I decided that by the time I was 32 I was going to be on my path to having figured out fatherhood. I wasn't necessarily going to have a kid by 32, but I was going to have figured out how I was going to do it and be actively pursuing it.
Adam:
There would be a plan in place.
Stephen:
Yes. Then, I met my partner, Josh, a couple of weeks after I turned 30. Pretty early on in the relationship, I told him that I wanted to have a baby. He's a little bit younger than me. He was not super interested in having a baby at that point. He had certainly not thought about it the way I had, but a couple of years into our relationship I said, "I really want to start thinking about this more seriously. Even if we're not ready right now, I need to be starting to plan for it." So, I stopped taking testosterone, which I had been taking for nine years. Six months off of testosterone, I went in and saw my doctor and he did a lot of blood work and he said, "There's no reason why I don't think that you should have a healthy pregnancy. So if you guys are ready, go for it whenever you want."
Adam:
How did you feel when you got that news?
Stephen:
Terrified. I mean, we hadn't told many people yet. At that point, he and I still were not completely in agreement about what the timeline was going to be. The longer I was off testosterone, the more I was like, "Okay, I'm ready to just do this." Yeah. So, I was off it for about nine months and we weren't actively trying to have a baby, but we also were very aware that it could happen. Then two weeks after my 32nd birthday, I got pregnant. So, it was not expected. It was a surprise to both of us, but it was the, probably, the scariest and most exciting thing that we've ever done.
Adam:
That's amazing.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
That's amazing. How was pregnancy?
Stephen:
It had its ups downs. I was healthy throughout my pregnancy. I didn't have a lot of morning sickness or anything like that. Again, we didn't plan it this way, but the way it happened was I was my most pregnant in the winter. So being a Mainer, having a beard and wearing some flannels and having what looked like kind of a beer gut, I was able to just live my life and be pregnant. Most people didn't know, didn't think anything about it. Probably would have worked out differently if it was maybe the summer, but yeah, it just worked out that way.
Adam:
Tell us about Rowan.
Stephen:
So, Rowan is five going on six. He talks nonstop from the minute he wakes up to the minute he goes to bed. He really loves space and wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. He's very creative. I think he's a lot like both my partner and I, which has been really a fun part of this process to see is that not only did he inherit our physical characteristics, but sometimes I watch him and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you're so much like your father." The performing around the house, and even his facial expressions, I'm like, "Oh, you look just like your dad."
Marc:
Yeah, there's so many times where I look at one of our kids and I'm like, "Oh man, they're so much like me. I'm so sorry."
Stephen:
Yeah.
Adam:
I read in a blog entry that you shared with me, you wrote about talking to your baby still in utero, referring to your unborn child as them versus assigning a pronoun. Was it a conscious decision to use the pronoun to them?
Stephen:
Yeah. So, we had to make a decision about whether, everyone, whether we wanted to find out the sex of the baby or not. We ultimately decided we were going to find out the sex because we want sort of want to take the power away. We didn't want our baby be born in the first thing that you know hear is, "Oh it's a boy, it's a girl." I was like, "Eh, I don't want that to be the first words they hear." But, we also decided if we were to share that news, what the baby's sex was going to be, it was going to start to become a big deal to everyone around us and it was going to start to mean this bigger thing. So, we decided to find out the sex but not tell anyone. So, we just referred to Rowan as they/them.
Adam:
I know, but I'm not telling you. It's none of your business. Yeah.
Stephen:
Yeah, we did share the name. We picked Rowan's name before he was born, and we wanted to choose a name that we liked equally for either a boy or a girl.
Adam:
You are referring to Rowan as he. When we were talking about the pregnancy and reveal of the sex, Rowan was assigned female.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Adam:
So, talk to me about that, and when he came to you and said, "I feel the same way that, essentially the same way that you felt that I was born the wrong sex."
Stephen:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess I would say, just an in an educational--
Adam:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Stephen:
I don't think I was born in the wrong sex. I mean, some people do feel that way and I think that's the pervasive story we hear about trans people's, like they're born in the wrong body narrative. Having been assigned female at birth and having been born with certain body parts, it allowed me to make a baby with my partner, which it was not something I ever thought was going to happen for me. I just felt so grateful and really I think accepted myself in a way that I hadn't ever been able to accept myself up until that point.
Adam:
Thank you for calling me on that, by the way.
Stephen:
No, but I mean that's what we're told, right? That trans people, it's we're born in the wrong body and I'm like... But to get back to Rowan, so I don't want to talk too much about his story, because it's his story. But yeah, he was assigned female at birth and probably it was only this summer that he really started to explore his own gender. He's five, so we're not sure where this is going to lead. We've always told him, "What's important to us you love yourself, you're a good person, and you feel loved. If to you loving yourself means that you're a boy and you want to celebrate that, then great. If that changes, that's okay too." It was all very led by him. Right? I think about my own coming out experience, and I was terrified. I was terrified to tell anyone, even my best friends. Where, he's like running down the street being like, guess what? I got a new pronoun. I'm using he now, and was met with so much love and acceptance, and it's a different world than I grew up in.
Marc:
Yeah. Do you think a lot of that is because of where we are now, just as a society or do you think some of it just has to do with? The household that he's growing up and is one that's a lot more, I don't know what to say, forward thinking or understanding or has the vocabulary or is familiar and comfortable with talking about it, or maybe it's both of those things. I don't know, I mean...
Stephen:
I mean, yeah, I think you nailed it. I think it's all of those things. I think had I been told at five that it was an option that I could be a boy or I could try using he pronouns, I would have been, "Yes, yeah."
Marc:
Yeah.
Stephen:
When people find out their kids are trans or queer, they search for a why is it, or is it something I did, or even I did when Rowan first started telling me he felt trans, I was like, "Oh, people are going to think it's my fault." Even though I know that's not how it works, but I'm also like there should be no shame about it and that shame isn't coming from within, and I never wanted that shame to come from within. I think when I got pregnant and when I had that experience, it really lifted a lot of that shame for me that I have been carrying around for a very long time.
Adam:
What I think is interesting is you mentioned this earlier, we grew up in the '80s when somebody was transgendered, it was taboo. It was like you didn't really talk about it, or they didn't talk about it, or they went on, you know, Maury Povich and there was a spectacle made of it. But I think that our kids, they're not even thinking about. It's not even a thing to them.
Marc:
We're looking back at how we maybe would've reacted, and so it's like we sort of think like, "Oh, I have to explain this," and maybe not.
Stephen:
Yeah. There's not the unlearning process that when adults go through it-
Adam:
That's what it is.
Stephen:
... they have to, you know?
Adam:
That's exactly what it is. Thank you.
Stephen:
Yeah.
Adam:
Everything that I just spent seven or eight minutes saying the word salad, it's exactly what it is. They don't have the unlearning process. You've done a lot of writing about how to talk to our kids about this stuff and how it doesn't need to be something that is taboo. I shouldn't feel like I have to soften or sugarcoat that your friend who was "he" is now "she" because it's just the tiniest shift in mindset and right from the first time that she spends time with that friend who is now a "her", she's a her.
Stephen:
Kids especially, when they relate to each other, aren't thinking, you know they're not carrying all this baggage of "I have to relate to this person in this certain way" it's like "okay, she's 'she' now, like in your kid's case, "uhh, you wanna go play on the swings?" You know, they're still the same people and I think kids inherently know that it's not... our kids are growing up in this much, much different generation. Ten years ago, twenty years ago, things looked and felt a lot different. And I think by the time our kids are grown up, it's gonna be a whole nother world.
Marc:
I mean kids in general have a much different view of the world that's not so clouded by all of the stuff that gets into your mind as you get older.
Stephen:
There's also, and especially watching my own child go through this right now, and like I said, I don't know what his trajectory is. I came out like a hundred times, so I didn't want a gender to become this anxiety for him. So, we started talking about it. I was like, "Gender only matters as much as it matters to you, and it's only one part of you," right? "So, you're a boy and that's great. You're also an artist. Also, you want to be an astronaut, you also want to be a parent. You also are a great friend. You're also really funny, and you like to perform, and you like to sing, and you like to go running, and ride your bike, and swim. There's all of these things that make you who you are." It's just one piece of who we are.
Adam:
Are there other words or phrases or questions that you're asked a lot that you're just like, "Don't ask me that. That's a terrible question"?
Stephen:
Yeah, yah.
Adam:
Or, anything that our listeners might benefit from hearing, and Marc and I in this room, might benefit from hearing?
Stephen:
Yeah. So I would say, just to tweak your wording a little bit, instead of saying transgendered, you should say transgender. It's something about it being a part of who you are and not who you are. Yeah.
Adam:
That makes a lot of sense.
Stephen:
Some people will get very offended if you use transgendered versus transgender.
Adam:
Didn't even know that I said it.
Stephen:
Yeah, and it's just a little tweak of language. With Rowan, something that we say is like, "First of all, you don't actually have to know someone's gender in order to interact with them," but it seems to be something that people care very much about. Kids get to a certain age and they start asking that, "Are you a boy or a girl?" question. If they're not sure, so what we try to tell him is if you're not sure what someone's gender is, you could just say like, "Hey, I use he/him pronouns. What pronouns do you use?" I think that's just a little bit of a gentler way of saying like, "Are you a boy or a girl?" Because, that actually doesn't matter, and maybe they're both, maybe they're neither.
Adam:
Any other common things that people say that you are like-
Stephen:
Yeah, don't ask people what their given name was. I think when people ask that, they're trying to place you like, "Oh, I'm trying to picture you as a little girl you grew up as," or like, "I'm trying to imagine that you used to be a girl."
Adam:
I'm so glad I didn't ask you that earlier.
Stephen:
It seems to be a question... it feels like kind of a personal thing that. So yeah, I wouldn't ask that question. The other thing I'll say is that I'm one person coming from my own perspective. I cannot speak for all trans people in the world. I have my own unique way of seeing my identity and experience. I don't reject my childhood, I don't reject that I grew up as a girl, I think it gives me a pretty unique perspective as a man. Not everyone feels that way and not everyone wants to be reminded of their childhood or who they used to be. For me, I just feel like that person integrated... who I was is who I am now. Some folks don't like having to be educators of their identity. You know, we live in a time where we have so much information, so if you have questions, get online and Google it. I reached out to you guys because I do like educating folks about queer and trans identities and queer and trans families. I'm happy to do it. Not everyone feels that way. Some people just want to be left alone and live their lives.
Adam:
Here's my last question: for somebody who is transgender, there are certain hardships that you go through. You deal with some bullshit. Does any part of you feel like you need to protect Rowan from pain and those hardships that he will inevitably face, just by the nature of the family that he's part of?
Stephen:
I mean, I think we all want to protect our kids and I think we know there's some layers to what Rowan's gonna face and sending him to school this year was scary. Iv'e been the primary caregiver since he was born. And part of that was like "oh I don't want to let my baby go," like I was going to be sending him out into a world that I wasn't sure was always going to be kind to him. And so when he began to encounter some questions about "Where's your mom? Why don't you have a mom?"... you know, and it wasn't... these are questions coming from children his own age and they're not malicious, they're just like... the first time he got that question, he was like "Well, Papa, I told them..."
Adam:
... A little too much personal information!
Stephen:
Yeah, and you know, and I've given him permission to, I said "I don't want you going around necessarily telling everyone our business. But should the question come up, and you feel like it's information that you need to share, to tell our family's store, then it's okay to talk about Papa being trans." And so you know, someone had asked him "Well I just don't understand, how can you be a... how did you come to be if you don't have a mom?" And he said "Some babies are born and they're assigned female and then they group up and it turns out they're actually a boy and that's my Papa! And he actually is a boy but he was assigned female and so he got to have me so my Papa had me. And I said "yeah, what did your friend say?" And he said "Well, my friend said 'okay' and then we went and played." That was like the beginning and end of the conversation and it never came up again. So in some ways we try to prepare him for the world that he's going into but I think the path we've sort of taken is to just sort of buffer him with this... First of all we have a really rich community with a lot of adults around him who identify in a lot different ways, and he sees that there are a lot of different ways to be in the world. And he just sees that being part of a queer and trans community is a beautiful experience and I don't know what he's going to face as he grows up, or who he's gonna be, but I want him to know that he can always talk to us, that he can always feel safe at home, and that he always has adults around him who he can see himself reflected in. And hopefully by the time he's a grown-up, no one's gonna care what your gender is.
Adam:
Well, thank you for creating a safe space where we can ask questions and look like idiots.
Stephen:
You guys were fine.
Marc:
Yes.
Stephen:
I used to speak at a high schools and middle schools, so this is very tame in comparison.
Marc:
So, our questions were better than middle school kids' questions?
Stephen:
Yes.
Marc:
Okay, whew.
Adam:
That's all I was hoping for.
Marc:
Thank God. Stephen, thank you so much for taking time to sit down and chat with us and help us learn a little bit. It was a pleasure to meet you and hear about you and your family.
Stephen:
Yeah, thanks for having the conversation, and thanks for asking the questions. I know we can't learn if we don't have the conversations, so I'm glad that we could be here tonight to do this.
Adam:
Tell me what's a thing now, Marc.
Marc:
I have a thing now. Actually before I get too far into this story, I need a little sip of coffee from this product.
Adam:
I see you carrying that product a lot.
Marc:
This product? I'm glad you brought it up, Adam, because this product, which I'm holding as if I'm on The Price is Right, is called, HOPSULATOR. That's by a wonderful company called, BrüMate. All joking aside though, this product right here is something that I love. I hold near and dear. It's a coffee mug during the day, and it becomes a, I think, a double walled insulating device for beer. You hot swap the top-
Adam:
And sometimes it holds hops.
Marc:
Look what you did.
Adam:
It doesn't even rhyme.
Marc:
Do it again.
Adam:
No, I can't.
Marc:
Okay.
Adam:
I got nothing beyond that.
Marc:
Yeah man, this is a beer coozie and a coffee cup. I carry it every damn day. I have it with me so often that my kids look at it and when they see it on the shelf at home or they see it on the counter at home, they point at it and they say, "Daddy, coffee."
Adam:
Dads, so to be transparent, we've talked about this product HOPSULATOR by BrüMate off air because Marc does carry it around with him a lot. So, we actually reached out to BrüMate to see if they would be interested in doing any cross promotion, and they said, "Hell yeah."
Marc:
Yeah, we share a similar audience.
Adam:
So, stay tuned to our social media, Modern Dadhood Facebook page specifically and we're going to get some contests going and give away some of this awesome product. However, if you want to look at BrüMate, B-R-U-M-A-T-E dot com, if you order anything on there, they gave us a discount code for Modern Dadhood listeners.
Marc:
They did?
Adam:
Yep, they did.
Marc:
That's awesome.
Adam:
The discount code is actually good for 15% off of your first order with BrüMate. Put it all in caps, you ready? DADHOOD.
Marc:
DADHOOD.
Adam:
It's that easy. Anyway, what's the thing now? That was really long-winded.
Marc:
Oh, man. That was really long-winded. Well, a little situation I'd like to talk about.
Adam:
Hit me.
Marc:
Maybe you can help me understand the hell I'm supposed to do as a dad.
Adam:
I'll try.
Marc:
So, here's the thing now: I have two kids, they're twins, and they've just gotten to the point now where they kind of fight with each other. I think they're just getting a little bit older now and they kind of get in each other's space, and I think they're understanding that they each have buttons that they can press. I don't know, is that a sibling thing? Do your kids fight? They're different ages, do they fight?
Adam:
They do.
Marc:
Yeah?
Adam:
Your boys have just turned two and they're starting.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
My girls are six and three, and it's just starting now. It's interesting.
Marc:
Oh wow, really? So, we're way ahead of the curve. That's good to know.
Adam:
Yeah. My girls love each other, but they are just starting to learn each other's buttons that they can press to get the other one, but they also are so sweet, and they snuggle up and they're best friends too.
Marc:
I wish I could say that about my kids. No, they're sweet to each other sometimes, but yeah, I don't know. They're just getting at each other a little bit. I don't know if it's a brothers thing, if it's a same age thing, if it's a twin thing, I don't really know. This is all new territory for me, right? But there's a particular sequence of events that happens, and it usually happens very fast and it happens several times a day. This is almost a guarantee that this is going to happen a couple times every day. The sequence of events kind of goes like this: the first kid will intentionally get into the second kid's space physically, and that might just mean like I'm going to back into you. That might just mean I'm on my little indoor tricycle and I'm just going to just slowly ram into you and push you a little bit.
Adam:
Didn't you say that there were Siamese twins? I thought they were always in each other's space.
Marc:
Yeah, yeah. They're attached. It's funny, they're attached at the body.
Adam:
Like paper dolls?
Marc:
The whole body.
Adam:
Their sides.
Marc:
It's always the same kid that gets into the other kid's. It's always kid one gets into kids two's space. Kids two will handle it for about a nanosecond before he does a very loud scream in a forceful shove. Then the first kid, now remember this happens very quickly, now we're back to the first kid. The first kid does a high pitched squeal. It's in a very definitive manner, will take both of his hands and sort of pound them on his chest and he'll say, "My body," which is something that they're kind of learning I think at daycare. They're learning about each other's bodies and space and giving each other room, so that's the front, sort of irony, ironic thing.
Adam:
We've got those kinds of screams in my house. When it happens, once you're like, "Okay, but don't scream," then it happens again and you're like, "Oh my God, if I hear that noise one more time," I'm going to lose it.
Marc:
Yeah. That's the thing. So, that sequence happens and my wife and I have been trying really hard, we've been changing our approach a little bit with how interactive we are with them in moments like that. Right? But these situations happen, they're really quick. They're all of a sudden, you hear the first scream and the shove, you hear the second high pitch squeal and then, "My body," and then it's got a brawl at that point. Left to their own devices, would they figure it out?
Adam:
Yeah, would it just work itself out or would it just happen again in another 30 seconds?
Marc:
I don't know. It's so hard to figure out what to do, and it's something that Jamie and I are really struggling with at the moment.
Adam:
Would it behoove you and Jamie to create a short list of things that we could do when this happens? One would be to sit them down and say, "You need to respect each other's bodies, and we don't yell," or whatever it is. It could be even just one of those things.
Marc:
That I think is where we're kind of going a little bit.
Adam:
Because then-
Marc:
The personal space thing?
Adam:
Right. Then when you're conflicted with all of those emotions at the same time, you can just be like, "Oh, we're going to try this one this time."
Marc:
The personal space thing is funny too because I have to, or Jamie has to, get into their personal space in order to separate them to have that conversation.
Adam:
You also want to lead by example.
Marc:
Oh, yeah.
Adam:
In my situation, my girls, when I've heard that high pitch scream three or four times, my instinct is to each time for me to get louder.
Marc:
Yep.
Adam:
My instant reaction is, "Stop screaming,"
Marc:
To scream, "Stop screaming."
Adam:
Right.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
But, I try my hardest not to do. My wife does the same thing. She tries her hardest not to do that.
Marc:
Yeah. But, it is sort of a constant, I don't know how to describe it, but there is something going on in my head and in my heart a lot of the time when we're doing things like that.
Adam:
So, that's the thing now fighting in the Checket house?
Marc:
Yeah. I think that might be a thing for a long time.
Adam:
Probably. Probably until they're, I mean, it could be for the rest of their lives. You hope that the best friend thing and just the idea of family can sort of override all of that.
Marc:
Yeah. Best frenemies.
Adam:
Another episode in the bank, Marc.
Marc:
Cha-ching.
Adam:
I wish, imagine.
Marc:
I realized as I was saying that, that yeah.
Adam:
Dads, you can find us at moderndadhood.com or anywhere you listen to your podcast, Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you like to listen. It's very easy. I just want to remind you, it's very, very easy to click the ratings button. It only takes the few taps of a fingertip to leave us a short review.
Marc:
Tap, tap, tap.
Adam:
What your review does is it lets other parents know that the Modern Dadhood is worth a listen. It's worth their time.
Marc:
Do it right now before you forget. You know what else is really, really helpful, Adam?
Adam:
I do, but you tell them.
Marc:
Word of mouth. Get out there and just tell your friends. If you like the show, tell your friends about it. Tell your dad friends, tell your mom friends, let them know that we're here for them. Now, I'd like to ask about something on these notes, Adam. I see names on here that are very impressive to me.
Adam:
Yeah, I haven't told you about this yet.
Marc:
I see names that are very impressive. There's a doctor on here I'm familiar with.
Adam:
Yes, Dr. Phil is now a mentor. So, the music for our show has always been something that's really important to me. Recently, I reconnected with somebody who I've met a handful of times over the years, Bubby Lewis. He's an amazing bass player. He's toured with the doctor who you've mentioned.
Marc:
Dr. Dre?
Adam:
Yeah, yeah. He's played with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog, with Lupe Fiasco.
Marc:
That is awesome. That is so cool.
Adam:
Thank you to Bubby Lewis for the great bass stings, the Modern Dadhood stings. Thank you to Caspar Babypants and Spencer Albee for the awesome music in our podcast.
Marc:
I'd also like to give a quick shout-out to none other than Nic Roes, our intern here at Modern Dadhood.
Adam:
He's very dedicated. Thank you, Nic, for everything that you do for us.
Marc:
Love you.
Adam:
Dads and Moms, most importantly, thank you. Without listeners, we probably still would be doing this, right?
Marc:
Probably, we just wouldn't have to plug anything in.
Adam:
Until next time...
Marc:
Thanks for listening.