Does being a parent to twins simply mean two of everything? There are certainly twice as many diapers to change, two bladders to potty train, and double the tears during teething. But to twin parents, the emotional impact and physical toll often feels more than double… it feels exponential. In this episode, Adam and Marc welcome Shaw Flick, a fellow dad of twins, to examine the unique challenges that twin parents endure. Also, Marc and his wife try not to bust a gut when their three-year-old son puts them in their place, in an installment of “So That’s a Thing Now.”
Does being a parent to twins simply mean two of everything? There are certainly twice as many diapers to change, two bladders to potty train, and double the tears during teething. But to twin parents, the emotional impact and physical toll often feels more than double… it feels exponential. In this episode, Adam and Marc welcome Shaw Flick, a fellow dad of twins, to examine the unique challenges that twin parents endure. Also, Marc and his wife try not to bust a gut when their three-year-old son puts them in their place, in an installment of So That’s a Thing Now.
Adam and Marc open the show by catching up on Marc’s new Disney+ subscription, and Marc shares an update to one of his recent Confessions regarding a bouncy ball from hell which made a brief comeback recently, before being permanently banned from the Checket household.
The guys welcome creative copywriter and father of twin daughters, Shaw Flick, into the conversation. Shaw is a co-worker of Marc’s, though living in Portland, Oregon, they have only meet and collaborated virtually. As fathers of three-year-old twins, Marc and Shaw have plenty of twin-dad experiences to compare and contrast. Topics of the conversation include:
• The annoying things that people call out when they see twins
• Shaw’s history as the front man of the band Ra Ra Riot
• The unique set of challenges that twin parents are faced with
• The chaos of newborn multiples
• Encouraging individuality
• How to address when one twin takes on an alpha role
• Twin parent camaraderie
• And more
Post-interview, Marc shares a So That’s a Thing Now which finds him getting scolded by one of his boys (and trying not to laugh when it happens).
Links:
Shaw Flick (LinkedIn)
Shaw Flick (Instagram)
Ra Ra Riot
Red Vault Audio
Stuffed Animal (Marc's musical project)
Caspar Babypants
Spencer Albee
Adam:
Oh, hey, Marc.
Marc:
Adam Flaherty. Adam Flaherty?
Adam:
What up?
Marc:
Adam.
Adam:
What's up, old feller?
Marc:
What is going on? I haven't seen you since… this time last night.
Adam:
24 hours ago.
Marc:
What is that all about?
Adam:
We were doing this same thing.
Marc:
Such is the life of a passion project podcaster.
Adam:
Alliteration.
Marc:
Yeah. Triple P, man.
Adam:
This podcast is called Modern Dadhood, and we say it's an ongoing conversation about the joys, challenges, and general insanity of being a dad in this moment. My name is Adam Flaherty, I'm a dad to two daughters who are seven and four years old.
Marc:
My name is Marc Checket, and I am a dad to twin three-year-old boys.
Adam:
Who do we got today?
Marc:
Who, on the podcast?
Adam:
Who's our guest on this episode?
Marc:
I'm actually excited about this one for personal and selfish reasons. We're talking to a fellow twin dad by the name of Shaw Flick.
Adam:
Let's chat with him, shortly. I saw you finally signed up for Disney+.
Marc:
Yes, indeed. Yeah. And I got to tell you, we've spent in this house, a lot of time on Disney+ and probably more than 50% of the time is just me late at night watching Marvel movies.
Adam:
Did you watch Bluey yet?
Marc:
I didn't watch Bluey yet.
Adam:
What?
Marc:
We're going to watch Bluey.
Adam:
Are you kidding me?
Marc:
We're going to watch Bluey, it's going to happen. I've seen so many people mention Bluey. It is the one thing that people have mentioned more than anything else about Disney+.
Adam:
It is so good. You will enjoy it as much, if not more, than the boys do. An eight minute cartoon on Disney+.
Marc:
I promise. I will carve out the time. Okay? I will.
Adam:
There's not even time. Eight minutes?
Marc:
I will carve out the time.
Adam:
You can spend eight minutes in the bathroom scrolling Facebook.
Marc:
I just did.
Adam:
Right before we hit record?
Marc:
It was more like 16 minutes. So, I guess I could've caught up on two episodes.
Adam:
Jeez.
Marc:
Hey, I'd like to catch you up on something that I feel like our listeners might be wondering about.
Adam:
Okay.
Marc:
You remember the bouncy ball from a previous confessions segment? The bouncy ball that disappeared and my son was devastated but I felt very good about the fact that it had been disappeared?
Adam:
Hmmm… Oh, yeah. For a minute I couldn't... Thank you for refreshing my memory.
Marc:
It made quite the return, unbeknownst to me. It was just in a drawer that was in full reach of the kids.
Adam:
Oh, so you didn't actually get rid of it?
Marc:
I actually didn't get rid of it on purpose, no. Not that time.
Adam:
You just needed to take it out of circulation for a while.
Marc:
Yeah, exactly.
Adam:
Okay.
Marc:
But this time around, it was spotted. We were at the kitchen counter, we were unloading the dishwasher and putting... I would hand big spoon and they'd put it in the big spoon slot. Little fork, and they'd put it in the little fork slot. It was going great and they were just being these little wonderful little helpers. And then the drawer got opened and it was like-
Adam:
"Whoops."
Marc:
"My bouncy ball." And then we were like-
Adam:
“What the hell is it doing in there, dad?”
Marc:
"Oh, yep, it is. Oh, yay. You found it!"
Adam:
"Why did Rigby put the ball in the drawer?"
Marc:
But dude, those bouncy balls, it's like a switch for the kids, man. They went from being cute and it was like a switch, dude. And they just turned into little Tasmanian devils in that house was-
Adam:
I almost just said, was it like Tasmanian devils tornadoing around your house?
Marc:
It was just like a blur of cyclone cloud with the occasional arm poking out of it. It was nuts. And we tried really hard to just like, "Let's just let them play. They'll have a good time."
Adam:
But you know something's going to get broken.
Marc:
Well, that's exactly right. And we tried to corral them. We've got this, it's not really a hallway, but back to the where the pantry is, it's like a little hallway. We were like, "Go back there." Because it's like wall, wall, wall, floor, ceiling.
Adam:
Right.
Marc:
Just bounce somewhere and go crazy. But they just... They can't. They can't handle themselves. So it really came back with a vengeance. And I had to put up a rule. I was like, "If this ball goes over the counter," I just picked something that I knew was going to happen in 10 seconds. Like I said, "If the ball goes over the counter, it's going back in the drawer." It's going away, whatever it was I said. And it was like, "Okay, five, four, three." And then one of them just went way over the counter.
Adam:
Did it go through window?
Marc:
No, no. Luckily. No, but it didn't sail past 10 different things that it totally could have destroyed somehow.
Adam:
Oh yeah. So, did it go back in the drawer or is it gone-gone now?
Marc:
Actually, I took it and I put it in my pocket and in full view of them too, it was like, "It's going in the pocket." And I just held onto it for a while. And now it's upstairs in a little trinket dish on top of my dresser.
Adam:
How many months before it's discovered again? Because eventually there'll be snooping around in your trinkets.
Marc:
Yeah, I'm not going to make any promises. It might never be discovered again. It might fall off the back of a truck. You know what I'm saying?
Adam:
Some things just go away. They just disappear for good.
Marc:
I put some concrete shoes on it. Let it go for a walk in a pond.
Adam:
Off the end of a long dock.
Marc:
Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Bouncy ball, I'm not into you. So, I met Shaw Flick recently when he started working at my company as a copywriter and a mutual friend of ours reached out to me via electronic mail. And he said, "Oh, hey dude, there's this new guy, Shaw. You're not going to believe it. He has twins. I think you guys should hook up and chat because you have twins." I was like, "Cool. Okay." So we arranged them Teams Meetup.
Adam:
Are you getting paid by Microsoft?
Marc:
Shout out to Microsoft. So, we ended up meeting in a Teams chat like you do these days, starting swapping twins stories. We've got another coworker who happens to also have twins. She's in there too. We're talking shop. It's great. It's a lot of fun. We almost got a little club thing going on.
Adam:
It sounds a little exclusive.
Marc:
It's quite exclusive. Anyway, he is a super cool guy. He lives in Portland, Oregon. He's a copywriter, actually in our video services department. Believe it or not, he used to be the lead singer for the band Ra Ra Riot when the band first formed.
Adam:
That's fun!
Marc:
Yeah. And for actually a little while also during the pandemic, he took the job of full time, stay at home dad, for his twins as well, which is, I bow down when I hear stuff like that. Anyway, he's a super cool guy. I asked him to come onto Modern Dadhood and talk twin stuff with us. Shaw, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Shaw:
I love your podcast. I think it's really cool. It doesn't make me bristle like almost all other daddy content does. So, thank you. You're amazing.
Adam:
We're psyched to have you here. I know little about you Shaw. I'm excited to learn about you. So I understand that you're twins and Marc's twins are the same age, three. You have two girls. Mark has two boys. Am I correct on that?
Marc:
All correct.
Shaw:
That is correct. Yeah.
Adam:
Cool.
Shaw:
Charlie and June.
Adam:
Oh, great names! Give us a little bit of a context about the girls. What are they into? What's a fun? What's making you crazy?
Shaw:
They are incredible. If I say they're the lights in my life, it's an understatement. They're just out of this world. Everything about them. Just the smiles, the way they eat, the way they take baths, the way they run around, the way they interact with each other. I feel super lucky to have twins in my life and I never expected it. And I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it on the podcast with you guys.
Adam:
Alright. So, before we get into the “dadhood” part, I'd love to hear and I'm sure some of our listeners would about your brush with fame and the rock and roll business.
Shaw:
Sure. At some point in high school, even though I was terrible at all instruments, I loved singing so much that I decided that I was going to be in bands. And then in college started actually playing in bands. And I was like, "This is really." But I was around a lot of really creative people. And I was able to bring a bunch of really talented people together. I was a front man of that band. We started it and it was awesome. And we had so much fun and they're lucky enough that they still get to have that fun. And I'm here saddled with my twins, in my life that I'm obsessed with. But yeah, I love those guys. They're wonderful. A wonderful crew of humans.
Adam:
Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome.
Marc:
So, we're here to talk about twins because two out of the three of us have been blessed. I'll say blessed.
Adam:
Is that the word?
Marc:
Yeah. I'll say it.
Shaw:
That's what people shout at us from cars.
Marc:
Yeah. “Double the fun!”
Shaw:
“Double trouble!”
Marc:
But I was just going to drop a little statement at the beginning of this. I'm not really necessarily taking a stance one way or the other though I am biased because I am a dad of twins. So my statement is that parents of twins have a unique set of challenges that they have to deal with. Shaw, do you think that's fair in your experience?
Shaw:
Yeah. I totally agree. It's tricky because similarly, the experience of having twins is different from the experience of having a four-year-old and a seven-year-old for example. I think that when people have their second kid, if they have a second kid, they start to realize that exponential difference of how much work and how much focus. And got to get this weird galaxy brain. And I think your reflexes get faster because you have to be like the Flash sometimes where you're grabbing one head from falling down a flight of stairs and pulling the other one by their belt loop because they're going to fall off the porch, or something like that. And you don't know how it's happening. You don't know how you stopped two children from falling down different sets of stairs at the same moment, but you did.
Marc:
But you did. And then you take about seven nanoseconds to breathe and then you're onto the next precarious situation.
Shaw:
Yeah. There's the moment of like, "Is everybody okay? Let's collect ourselves. I need a minute." I think that's one of the hardest things about having two kids at the same developmental stage is that you're managing these moods that one of them is having a tantrum, the other one's annoyingly okay. And then, the one that was having a tantrum is okay, and then the other one that was okay is now having a tantrum, and it's just wearing away at the amount of patience you could possibly muster. And you have to just deal with in that moment. And it's led to some times where, when I do have a chance to take a beat, I'm like, "I don't feel great about where my own head went." And that's a real challenge when you're in general, a real patient person.
Marc:
When I say something like that, Adam, what do you feel about that?
Adam:
It's hard for me to challenge that just because I obviously don't have twins. I would imagine that there are challenges. Shaw, when you were saying that your tank is empty, you just get to the end of your rope. I would imagine that's one of the extremely challenging things, especially when they're young, three years old and younger. I think in some ways it probably will get easier as they get older and get a little bit more independent. If I think back to the times when my daughters were really young and I just felt like I was at the end of my rope and I didn't know how I was going to actually going to live another day. I can't imagine having another one there who's on potentially a different schedule and I would imagine that dads listening, who have twins, will be able to relate to a lot of those challenges that those of us who don't probably don't think about all that often.
Shaw:
It's weird as a dad because it's so hard when you're trying to manage two different moods and two different versions of the same reality at the same time, I'm blanking on a lot of those like specific moments. I think, because as a survival mechanism, just blocking those kinds of things out.
Adam:
You blocked them out?
Shaw:
I think a lot of those memories got overwritten by the pandemic memories because I switched to being full-time dad, 12 hours a day, basically solo parenting.
Marc:
You used the term “survival mode,” which is perfect, but it feels like it at a very basic level. It's like, "They need to stay alive. That's my job. I need to do what I can to stay alive." Meaning don't forget to eat. Even if it's a handful of Cheerios at 2:30 in the morning. Do something.
Shaw:
Tummy time.
Marc:
Yeah. There comes a point where they start to develop to a certain degree and the other complexities just start to pile on. And it still feels like survival mode sometimes, but it's so different. And there's so much more to be concerned with, especially when you start talking about their emotions coming into it and them starting to verbalize things and them starting to draw conclusions on their own. And now you having to also teach them things besides just putting the bottle in their mouth.
Adam:
I was going to ask, you painted this picture when you said something about them running in different directions, and just having to like almost split your brain in half, it seems like, to have attention on to people. Are there also ways that you found or find now, at three years old, that they are more in sync though, than siblings who aren't twins?
Shaw:
I think a lot of their in-syncness comes from, we put in some time in getting them on the same schedules and we're really laid back people. But I think we come off as pretty high touch parents because there's so much planning and there's so much infrastructure that you have to build or you don't have to, right? But it makes your life so much easier. It makes it easier to manage those moments when they're running in different directions. Because what if you could establish something with them in terms of their engagement with a situation where they understand that running in opposite directions is... That is just not the shit. Don't do it. So, working really hard to get them into the mindset of not doing that so that when we're in that moment, if they do go completely off from one another, then it's easier to recollect them. What pops into my head is when I was in college, if somebody had said to me, "Hey, is it nature? Or is it nurture?" I would have said, "A hundred percent nurture." I grew up in a crappy household, not a really stable situation. So I was like, "If I had been in a different environment who knows, I could have been the innovative CEO at a tech company or something like that, or I could have been a famous author. The things that I'm good at I'd be so much better at if only I'd been nurtured in the right way.
Adam:
Or the lead singer of a famous rock band….
Shaw:
Yeah! Right. None of my achievements, nothing that I've actually done is how good it should have been. I should have been in Vampire Weekend, not Ra Ra Riot. Right?
Marc:
That's great!
Adam:
This might be a silly question. For those of us who don't have twins. I think particularly when you know somebody, you have a friend, they have identical twins, from the outside, it's easy to think about the twins as one unit. Of course they're individuals, they're different people. They have their own likes and dislikes, whatever. But you think about in terms of like, "Hey, there's the Checket's and the twins. For me, it's hard enough to remember that my seven year old likes tomatoes, but she doesn't like chickpeas. My four year old loves hummus, but she hates raisins. What do I pack in each lunch? Those details make me crazy. But I guess my question is with so many details, so much to keep track of in terms of your two twins, does it become even that much harder when they do have so many similarities?
Shaw:
Harder… it's hard to say.
Adam:
Right, I guess you don't know.
Shaw:
But it is, I feel a little bit embarrassed because in my head they're two totally separate, totally autonomous people, but a lot of times the way we treat them is as a unit. Am I putting different things in their lunches? No. June doesn't like tomatoes, then don't eat your tomatoes that I put in your lunch. Part of that is my stubbornness of not giving into whatever the annoying whim is. Because I know that sometimes they do the like, "Oh, I don't like pineapple." And you're like. "What are you talking about?"
Adam:
"You ate it yesterday, all day long."
Shaw:
"You are currently chewing on a piece of pineapple. You don't hate pineapple-
Marc:
Sounds about right.
Shaw:
... Stop it." I'm not embarrassed to say it, but maybe I sometimes, I'm like, "I don't really care that you don't like chickpeas, honey."
Adam:
That's what you have and if you're hungry, you're not going to starve because they're there.
Shaw:
Yeah. Your teachers aren't going to let you starve.
Marc:
That's funny. Because I'm right there with you. I think for so long, from the very beginning, it's less daunting thinking about them as a unit, as a one unit, as opposed to two. But in my experience, it's just the older that they get, the more so different they are that it forces you to have to think about things a little bit differently. Though, we do put the exact same food in front of them, every time. But I do think it is one of those things that maybe, it's something that we should be aware of because you don't want to run the risk of not treating them as individuals. You want to be able to give them that room to find out who they are and find out the things that they like and the things that they dislike.
Shaw:
Yeah, for sure. Maybe it's that I don't have a lot of opportunities to talk about these kinds of things with another twin parent where I feel like in this moment right now, I'm doing a lot of weird reflecting on what these things mean. And how much of June, the way she expresses her emotions comes out of, that's her emotional territory in some way. Where it's like, Charlie has laid claim to X, Y, and Z. So, June lays claim to, C and J and L, or just random letters that are leftover. So, I'm like, "Oh man, how intentional should we be with this?"
Marc:
So I'm youngest, I'm from a family of four. I have three older siblings. I'm the youngest one. So I think pretty much everything I did was I was looking up at the older kids and mimicking and I'm sure that goes on with kids that are the same age as well. I would think that it probably goes back and forth a little bit. My siblings were much older than me. So they were not eight years older than me looking at what I was doing and being like, "I'm going to do that." It was always me looking up at them saying, "I'm going to do that." But I wonder if it happens with kids at the same age, back and forth. But I guess what I have a personal concern about is going through so many days too quickly and too often speaking to them as one unit and rushing into, I'm trying to bring them into a decision for something, but I'm rushing to whatever that answer is by taking whoever yelled at the answer first and not giving the other one the room to think about it on their own pace. Here's the example that comes to mind because it's not food related, but I feel like it works for this scenario. When we go to school every day, there's two ways that we can go, we can go down the bumpy road or we can go the other way past the purple castle. Those are both real things.
Adam:
I know both of those spots!
Marc:
And one day, one of my sons yelled out as we went down the bumpy road, "I don't like the bumpy road. The bumpy road scares me." And I said, "Oh, I had no idea that bumpy road scared you. Do you guys want me to go the other way from now on?" And the answer that I got was, "Yes." And so we started going to school every day, not going down the bumpy road, but going down to turn right at the purple castle. And then a couple of weeks later, I took only one of my kids to school because the other one had to go to a doctor's appointment. I go right past the bumpy and really quietly in the back, he goes, "I like the bumpy road." And that was like, "I'm sorry. I thought, I guess I just thought when I heard the answer couple of weeks ago that both of you felt the same way," but I felt like such an idiot. Because in thinking back, it was really clearly, it was just one of them. It was like, "I don't like the bumpy road." "Oh, do you not want me to go to the bumpy road anymore?" "No, I don't." I just took them both together and, "Okay, this is the thing then, this is the answer then." But it made me wonder when I heard, "I like the bumpy road," it made me wonder like, "Well, shit, what other things does he like that he never gets an opportunity to say that he likes?" And is it me that's not giving him the room and the opportunity to speak his mind?
Adam:
With children who are three years apart, we experienced exactly the same thing. And I think some of it is just a function of you're living your life, you ask a question, you get an answer, and you move on. And just the fact that in retrospect, you're thinking about that and thinking about their individual preferences and needs, it goes a long way. Do you separate the boys and do stuff one-on-one?
Marc:
We do. Yeah, we do. And it's really important. We found it to be really important for not just them, but also for us.
Shaw:
I can say that, this goes back to what I was saying about feeling intentional about certain things. And then that kind of goes back to feeling like we're in constant motion and the faster we spin, that's how we can keep together. In my experiences, they're pretty much the same. I don't know. When they're separated, they're the same, but this is a conversation that comes up a lot, especially with school where they're like, "Hey, maybe we should put them in different classrooms next year." I feel like we've talked a lot about the challenges of twins, but there's also how special it is. Right? They're having a sibling experience that I can only understand from the outside and a lot of ways, and my perspective is all knowing in some ways and then knows nothing at all in other ways.
Marc:
I was talking to somebody recently, somebody at a checkout counter and they're like, "Oh, I have twins and they're in their thirties now." And it's like, "Oh, cool. You survived." Because I'm thinking about it from the parent perspective. And she's like, "More like they survived. They were challenging and, and we didn't kill them."
Shaw:
I'm like, "Okay."
Marc:
That's awesome. That's pretty funny. I do find often, I don't know, I feel like other stranger twin parents, when they see you with twins, they seek you out.
Shaw:
Oh, yeah. They focus right in on you. And the conversation always the same way. "Twins?" "Yeah."
Marc:
Then you look around, you go, "Oh, it was triplets two minutes ago. Shit."
Adam:
"Where'd she go?"
Marc:
"I lost one of them." Yeah. As soon as we started going out in public, it was no matter where we went, it was just a countdown for the one other twin parent that's in the Marshall's to come and find us and be like, "I'm a parent of twins." It's like, "Okay. We have that in common. It seems like that might be it."
Adam:
"Cool. See you later."
Shaw:
I think about that a lot too, where it's like, "How much do you have in common with parents at your kid's school or just every other twin parent out there?" This is the same reason I think I like your podcast. And it's because I feel like I have more in common with you than I do when I'm reading a lot of other dads specific content, it's very relatable.
Adam:
Well, that's nice, man. Thank you. That means a lot. We want to thank you, Shaw, for making time to talk twins with us. And it's really been super fun chatting with you.
Shaw:
Thank you, guys. Like I said, I'm not bullshitting you when I say I really admire the work that you guys do. It's just really cool to get to be a part of it.
Marc:
Thank you so much, Shaw.
Shaw:
Later, you guys. Thank you.
Adam:
After our interview segment, usually we do a recurring segment. So, that's a thing now, did I just say that out loud? Confessions, talking about toddlers.
Marc:
There's a lot. There's a lot of them. And each one is more popular than the next if I might add. And you're right. And I do have one. I have. I have a, so that's a thing now. Great. Originally in my notes, when I was prepping for this episode, I put this little note in there that said defiance.
Adam:
Defiance?
Marc:
Yeah. Defiance. I was like, "This is going to be the, so that's a thing now." This new form of defiance that my kids are... but it's not really defiant. Or at least that's not new. It's not that, so that's a thing now because it's always been there, but it's some kind of escalation. They both do it a little bit, but one of them, it's almost as if he's trying to rise up to this level of authority in a situation. So for example, something will be going on, whatever it is, he's just come home. And instead of putting his shoes where he's supposed to, he's just kicked them off and they're in the middle of the room. And so I might say to him, or my wife might say to him, "Oh, Hey, don't forget. We put our shoes in the closet when we come home from school." And so the defiance is usually like, "No." Just a little snarky, three-year-old, "No." But what's happening now is so we'll say like, "Okay, well, don't forget." We just remind. "Don't forget, we put our shoes in the closet." So then he'll take it a step further and he'll say something like, "Well, I don't like my shoes. I want to put them in the trash."
Adam:
He's pushing boundaries.
Marc:
He's totally pushing boundaries. So it'll go from "No," which it was that, it was, "No," for a long time. And then we would just be like, "Put them away."
Adam:
That's not gonna fly.
Marc:
Yeah. And so now it goes to this, "I don't like them anymore. I want to throw them in the trash." If we'll engage, he'll come right back at us with some of the things that we say and use to the kids. For example, if we've gone back and forth a little bit, he'll throw his hands up like this and he'll go, "Timeout." Which is definitely something that I do if they're both going nuts and it's just a cacophony, craziness in the room, I'll say, "Okay, everybody time out." That's just me trying to be like, "Everybody take a beat."
Adam:
Yeah.
Marc:
So he'll use it back at us in moments like that. "Okay. Timeout." And then he'll say, "I'm going to count."
Adam:
Ha! What happens when he gets three?
Marc:
Well, yeah. I don't know. We have gotten there, but I think what we've learned is when it does escalate to that point, the best thing to deescalate is to, we're going to have to ignore this. We cannot engage in this back and forth with a three-year-old.
Adam:
It's just empowering him more. Right?
Marc:
Totally.
Adam:
It's just bowing to his authority to control the situation.
Marc:
Absolutely. And the thing is, is that when he gets there, my wife and I sometimes look at each other, like, "This is hilarious and actually also really cute that he understands what it is that we're doing when we're saying, "Okay guys, time out, hold on a second." and if it gets a little crazy, "Okay guys, I'm going to count. All right?" And that's means it's getting serious. "If I get to three, something's going to get taken away. You're going to lose that thing or whatever it is." So for him to be feeling, "Okay, I need to get serious like they get serious back at them and count..." I don't know what he's going to take away from me, my car keys.
Adam:
You're grounded.
Marc:
Yeah.
Adam:
And your instinct might be to laugh, but you also don't want to laugh. Right? You don't want to belittle him.
Marc:
Yes. We try really hard to, my wife and I will sometimes give this side eye. Like, "We got to laugh about this later." And here's where it goes a little... It's easy to ignore if it's just me and him going through that or just my wife and I are even the both of us and him going through that. But sometimes it gets tricky because he'll do that to my other son. He'll take that tone with him and say, "Time out, I'm going to start to count," and then he'll start to count, and then we have to intervene.
Adam:
You have to. You have to say, "No, you cannot do that to your brother."
Marc:
The cutest part of the whole thing though I think is if that does happen and he counts to my other son, there's been a couple times where the other son will go, really... He's really set off by his brother treating him like that. So he'll say, "You're not a daddy. You're not a daddy." Which is really cute.
Adam:
That's so hilarious.
Marc:
Which is also really hilarious. But it also is one of those moments where I look at the situation, I go, "But what about mommy?"
Adam:
Right. "Am I the only one who..."
Marc:
I know it's not just me, but there's definitely an association in there with the whole time out, I'm going to count you and take something away with me, which is not super great, but it's quite a spectacle, sometimes.
Adam:
It'll be fun to see how that continues to shape. And as both of them grow.
Marc:
What's the next phase? What's the next phase of that? Maybe he is going to start taking stuff from me.
Adam:
He's probably going through your trinkets right now looking for that ball.
Marc:
Shoot. I got to put stuff up even higher.
Adam:
Yep. There you go. That's a thing now... Defiance.
Marc:
Yeah, that's a thing now.
Adam:
Defiance elevated.
Adam:
Dads, you can find us at moderndadhood.com on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon Pocket Casts, Overcast, anywhere you like to listen. Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show wherever you listen. And word of mouth is always a great way to help us spread the word about Modern Dadhood.
Marc:
And while you're talking to that friend about the show, follow us on social media. We've got a Facebook page, an Instagram account, we've got a YouTube. We've got a YouTube. You can actually see some of the guests. It's fun. It's great. Check it out.
Adam:
If you have questions, ideas, complaints, we invite you to email us any time. We invite you to email us anytime at Hey@moderndadhood.com. And we want to say a few thank yous. Thank you as always to Casper Babypants and to Spencer Albee for the fantastic music in our show, to Mr. Pete Morse at Red Vault Audio for mixing the podcast, check him out at redvaultaudio.com and to Marc's friend, and now my friend, Shaw Flick.
Marc:
Exactly. He's all of our friends now, anyone listening out there, consider Shaw friend!
Adam:
Great dude.
Marc:
Also thank you, for listening.