November 11, 2021 • 48 mins
Welcome to the season 4 finale of Katie's Crib! To wrap up the season, Katie brings in childhood development and behavior expert Betsy Brown Braun (author, "Just Tell Me What to Say") to provide super quick tips on how to respond to a child's challenging behavior and unexpected questions.
Betsy gets to the point in addressing common family topics, including how to deal with picky eaters and fighting siblings. She also outlines helpful pointers on getting children to listen.
Katie’s Crib Season 5 returns in early 2022! Subscribe for the latest.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda land Audio
in partnership with I Heart Radio. An illogical consequence is
when you say, you know what, you didn't come to
dinner when I called you. We're not going to the
beach on Friday. I don't like the way you're you're
talking to me. Go to your room. That's what parents do.
(00:24):
They pick a pull up consequence out of their rear
end and it has nothing to do with anything. A
consequence needs to be related to what the misstep was,
and more times than not, it will work. You guys,
Welcome to the final episode of the fourth season of
(00:49):
Katie's Crib. I know, I know, Okay, it is super sudden.
We didn't give you guys too much of a heads
up here, but thank you so very much from the
bottom of my heart for continuing to tune in for
the next a few months. So you know, Katie's Crib
is going on a break because I'm working on some
additional creative content that you guys are gonna be hearing
more about. Of course, we have Inventing Anna coming out,
(01:11):
the Shanda Rhymes Netflix show that I will be on.
I also have this holiday season Christmas Takes Flight, a
holiday movie on CBS. And speaking of CBS, my sitcom
Smallwood starring myself and the one and only Pete Holmes,
who was one of my favorite guests from this season,
coming out also on CBS. To stay tuned and all
of that. But do not worry, guys, Katie's Crib Wait
(01:33):
for It is returning first season five early next year,
so stay tuned. Now to wrap up season four, we
are going to talk about I'm so proud of this
episode because it really gets in there. We're talking about
all the cringe, e complicated, nuanced scenarios that commonly come
up when you're raising kids, like when your kid asks
(01:54):
about death or sex, or like when your kid is
a really picky eater, or when your kid just goes
up to a random woman and asks her when the
baby is coming out and the woman is definitely not pregnant. Yeah,
that's happened to me. There is no one that can
speak better to all of these hot topic issues than
Betsy Brown Braun. Betsy is the best selling author of
(02:14):
the award winning books Just Tell Me what to Say
and You're Not the Boss of Me. Betsy is a
school consultant. She's a child development to behavior specialist, a
parenting expert. She's the founder of Parenting Pathways, which is
a consulting service for parents. Betsy's parenting expertise has been
featured on USA Today, in The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times, Nick Junior, and a ton of other
publications and like also from personal experience. Her and her
(02:35):
husband are parents of triplets, you guys, and she's grandparents
to six kiddos. Betsy, thank you so much for coming
on Katie's crib. Betsy Brown Braun, Hello, Hello Katie. I'm
glad to be in your crib. You have this incredible
website that I've also found to be so helpful. Oh yeah,
(02:57):
because in the same way, you have little videos on
these same things that I can watch very quickly of
like what to do. Can you just take us through
a little bit about how you come to know so
much about kids? Well, I um, I've been in the
field for a long time. I've taught lots of grades
of school. I started in nursery school. I was a
(03:19):
founding director of Wilshire Bullivard Temples School, and I've had
a lot of experience with kids. I have always loved kids.
I've always been interested in kids ever since my brother
was born. When I was eight years old, it was
a camp counselor. I mean, I worked in nursery schools.
I knew I was going to go into teaching, and
then wouldn't you know, I got pregnant with triplets. Everybody
(03:42):
take a moment for that. It's all breathe. But here's
the thing of it. This was before there was in
virtual My kids are turning forty three in two weeks,
so they're older than you are. I learned a lot
of what I know because I've lived it and I've
taught it, I've studied it. And I don't like a
lot of bs No, you say it like it is,
(04:05):
which is very very very helpful. What's a Betsi ism?
There are things that I'm known for saying, and I
didn't know what else to call them. Each age has
a certain behavior that typifies that age, and like I
call them the terrific twos because they're not terrible, they're
just the way they're supposed to be. And then there's
a theatrical threes. But then we get to four year olds,
(04:29):
and I call four year olds the fucking fours. Oh fuck, really,
it cannot possibly be worth than the theatrical threes because
I am in it, in it to win it. Well,
but here's the thing, so I'm known that's a betsism.
I say lots of stuff. So I talk about the
fucking fours and the Satanic sixes and all right, and
(04:50):
then I have other things I say, like, prepare the
child for the path, and not the path for the child. Damn,
that's good. Prepare the child for the path and not
the path for the child. When my life is falling apart,
I can like hear guests come into my head with
(05:11):
like a mantra. I will hear you say that for
the rest of my life. So thank you for that gift.
Well here's another one. Wait, let me give you another one.
You'll like, please give me all of them. Well, what
I do for my clients and my groups is I
print him in calligatory and I put it in a
bright color, and I say, hang this on your fridge
and it works. So here's my other, very favorite one.
(05:31):
The surest way to make life hard for your child
is to make it too easy for him. Yeah, are
you sensing? Are you sensing? I think you're giving me
exactly what I need. But I know how hard it
is to be a parent. It is really hard and
(05:53):
it's exhausting, and you have to be on your game
and sometimes you just want to say, put him back,
I'm done, I'm not too much. I get it. Or
sometimes you know when you have it, you know you
just want to break, so you give your kid the
inch and then he takes a mile. You have to
always never give an inch I mean in the in
my case for example, because he sniffs it out man well.
(06:17):
And the smarter they are, the more manipulative they are,
and they don't forget. So if some Thursday he's driving
you crazy, I when ice cream, ice cream, It's five
o'clock and you finally say, just have the goddamn ice cream,
right for the next five d thursdays, he's gonna ask
(06:37):
for ice cream. One yes will sustain him through a
thousand nose, another betsism, another betsism. So I know my
kid is hard now, but I also know that there's
gonna be really hard conversations in his future, like what
is death? What is sex? And I don't know what
(06:59):
to say? So can I go through with you a
few like key things like that, and you just drop
your truth knowledge on us and our listeners. I'm happy
to give you a taste of whatever you ask me,
I'll give you a taste. Okay, here's one. How do
I get my child to listen? That one will take
(07:21):
you only thirty years. Well, let's see, my kids are
forty three and they're not listening. Um, here's the reality.
You're a little guy, what's his name, Albe? So Albe
is not listening. I am sure his hearing is just fine.
The problem isn't that he's not listening. The problem is
(07:42):
that he's being defiant. I'm gonna give you a couple
of little hints on this. The word discipline the root
word in Latin disciplay ray. It means to teach. It
doesn't mean to punish, to make feel bad, to hurt,
to make cry, to shame. It means to teach. So
we're trying to teach our kids something. It is very
(08:03):
shortsighted to want to stop the behavior now because it
will come back, So you want to do something that
teaches him. We want our kids to understand that when
you choose a particular behavior, you are also choosing the
reaction to that behavior, so we give up consequence. That
makes sense. There are three kinds of consequences, natural consequences,
(08:28):
illogical consequences, and logical consequences. There are many people today
who say consequences don't work. I call bs they do.
A natural consequence would be when my son left his
water gun out on the grass and I said, taken in.
The dog's going to eat it because he eats plastic.
And he came out the next day and it was
in a million pieces and I said, oh well, and
(08:50):
I didn't buy him another one. An illogical consequence is
when you say, you know what, you didn't come to
dinner when I called you, We're not going to the
beach on Friday. I don't like the way you're you're
talking to me. Go to your room. You didn't clean
up your toys, no, I pad. Those are consequences that
(09:13):
have nothing to do with anything, and mainly that's what
parents do. They pick a pull a consequence out of
their rear end and it has nothing to do with anything.
A consequence needs to be related to what the misstep was,
and more times than not, it will work. Okay, let's
say a kid hits another kid. What's the consequence? Am
(09:35):
I at home or I'm at school? You are at
uh pool party? Okay? Hitting is a I mean that's all.
That's one of those topics because I ask you, if
you're child, how is his language? Is he communicating? How's
his frustration level? I mean, I'd be asking you lots
of questions. But if we've walked into the party and
(09:57):
I've said i'll be we're going to this party, there
will be other kids. If there is a problem, you
come and get me and I will help you. We
do not hit. If you need to hit, we will leave. Now.
The other part of this is maybe he doesn't want
to be there and he wants to leave, So maybe
(10:18):
he's goes, okay, we're off. No, But I understand that's
a logical consequence, right. It has to do with the
situation you are in. Although question, if the two things
your kid loves the most are dessert television, would it
go to say that when you take those away? Sometimes
(10:41):
those are the only things my son will stop for.
We were having issues where he's the kid that always
rips a toy from another kid, and we've been practicing.
It's gotten a lot better. But I do have to say,
there were a couple of days where I was at
my wits end and he had made so many kids cry.
That's such a bad way to say it. So many
(11:02):
kids had cried because he had pulled their toys away.
He didn't make them cry. It doesn't know what I
was doing. I had was at my wits end and
had said, if if we're going to go somewhere and
you are are having a very hard time, and and
it happens over and over again and you don't get
the toy and you don't come get me, I'm going
to have to take TV away tonight because I know
(11:22):
it's your favorite thing, but that's not great behavior. And
it worked. It worked that time. So did he to
stop taking toys away forevermore? Yeah? No, So it's that's what.
Oh so it's bullshit. Well, you're trying to look at
the big piece. You want your kid to understand that
it is his choice that you're choosing to make this happen.
(11:43):
That's the thing of it. Now, let's go back to
the pulling the toy away. First of all, just developing
those social skills, it takes time. So if I knew
that my kid was a grabber. I would be by
his side. I would be shadowing him, and he would
see him walking and say, oh, you see that Stevie
(12:04):
has an airplane. Do you want to turn with that?
He's gonna say yes, You're gonna say, let's go tell Stevie. Stevie,
when you're done, can I'll be have a turn? Okay,
And when you're done, will have a turn. And then
you turned, I'll be and say I know you want it,
and you are going to have a turn. This is
so great. But it's not like I can just be
(12:25):
like drinking by the pool. I have to shadow myself.
Those days are over. But there's nothing quite like it,
Tequila sunrise. I get one more thing here. The two
mistakes that parents make too often when it comes to
the kid who is not listening. They warn too many times,
(12:46):
and they don't follow through with their threats. That's it,
you guys, That's it. When parents say I tell him
ten times, I say, well, who's the fool? What are
you doing? Give ten? You tell him once? Doesn't do what?
You follow through? Tell him once an act on it.
What about when a kid this is not yet happened
to me, but I cannot wait says something, Oh it did,
(13:09):
but I wasn't there. He asked a woman when when
a baby was coming out of her belly and the
woman is not pregnant. So when a kids says something inappropriate,
like why is that person fat, like in the grocery
store line, what are we supposed to say? Young children
(13:30):
haven't learned to finesse situations. They don't understand that that's
an unkind thing to say. So let's say, let's deal
with your first question, second, second question. First for that lady,
My kid just said, why is that woman so fat?
I get down on my kid's level and in a
very quiet voice, I say, you know, I'm going to
(13:52):
answer your question when we go outside of the grocery store.
Don't forget to ask me, because I'm going to answer.
And then as soon maybe you go right out, or
maybe you wait, and as soon as you walk out,
you say, remember you wanted to know why that woman
was so fat, which is a word I tried never
to use. It's the new effort. But did you hear
(14:14):
that I'm using a very quiet voice when I'm answering.
I don't know how that lady feels about her body.
Maybe she likes being fat. Maybe she doesn't like being fat,
but I don't want to be unkind, so I answered
that question very quietly. I don't know why she's fat.
Maybe she's growing a baby, maybe she had that's just
(14:37):
the shape of her body. I don't know. It's a
good question. God, are your children just in? Are your
children just amazing? Well? Truth, yes, it wasn't so easy
to raise them. Triplets are hard, but you know, and
I had. I could tell you every hard moment I have.
But really, this is the payoff. I have such great kids.
(15:02):
They're really good people. I'm so proud of them. Now
I am hearing how eloquent, studied, experienced you are than you.
Did you raise your triplets with um, a spouse, a partner?
(15:24):
Did you guys always line up? Was it really hard? Two?
Because sometimes I think I'm doing a great job and
Adam is fucking this up. By the way, anything bad
that happens, it is Adam's fault. Let's be clear. Okay,
I've been married you ready fifty years five? Oh, we
(15:44):
had our fiftieth anniversary last December. Congratulations. Isn't that crazy?
And it's a huge, huge I agree, I really I
married a great guy. It was just I did a
great job, and we are communication is excellent, and we
have been in and out of therapy a few times
(16:06):
more than once. I believe in therapy. I believe in talking.
My husband is he honestly knew buccas about child ering.
He was an only child. He didn't know anything. He
everything he learned he learned from me, he will say it.
And he was a great daddy. He really enjoyed being
with the kids. And I feel that one of the
(16:28):
reasons they've done so well, as they had a present
mommy and daddy. It seems to me that you're very patient,
you use communication, and you have a great vocabulary with
how to speak to little ones. But also you have
really um strong boundaries. M hm. Did you guys ever
come into place where he where he we disagreed, yeah,
(16:52):
or he was more lax than you, And so now
you're getting mixed signals. Like Adam and I always try
to have a united front in front of the children. Always,
so it usually goes to who's ever setting the harsher boundary.
The person whose boundary isn't his, hard has to go
to that person, if that makes sense, Like if Adam
(17:13):
sticks to his guns that we're doing shower in three minutes,
and Alb's having a ship show. It's like, no, no,
we gotta do shower in three minutes because Daddy, because
because that's what was set. Is that sort of the
best way to go, Katie. You are really wise. Your
instincts are really good. I often say to parents, the
strongest feeling needs to win. Not always I say that,
(17:38):
and I say, he who starts it finishes it. So
if daddy says three minutes till beat, he can't say
to you, Okay, come on, help me out here, do this. No,
he starts it, he finishes it. But we don't. I
don't believe in contradicting parents in front of children, but
I do believe that sometimes you say, you know, this
(18:00):
is really important to daddy, and I agree with him.
I'm goletna give me an interesting example. When my kids
were like around four or five. You got a picture,
there are three of them. They started saying, I hate this,
I hate that. And my husband grew up with a
woman who was so gentle and soft that she would
(18:21):
never let the word hate be said, and he would
hear it and it would like he would cringe. I,
on the other hand, grew up in a household where
you could say the effort before you could say shut up,
shut up. Was like so that if when I hear
somebody say shut up, I say, don't say that. My
mother's gonna smite you. So I would say to the kids,
(18:45):
look at your dad really doesn't like it when you
say hey, it bothers him. You can say it in
front of me, just not in front of him. You
can say shut up in front of him, not in
front of me. It wasn't I never said, never do
this for me. It's always about when you can do it.
(19:06):
You know, poopy language, toilet talk, Yeah, what are we
talking about that? Because good lord, my son is into
it right now. He had his first day of toddler
preschool and I was making a video like and he
loved it so much. And I was like, what did
you love it? He was like, I loved it so much.
And I was ready to send the video to the
whole family. I loved school so much. Poopy farty, but
(19:26):
diarrhea was the video and and and and I mean,
that's so perfect. And that's when you could have said
and those are the words that you can use in
the bathroom because those are bathroom words. Let's go click
and you walk into the bathroom and say letter, that's
a great idea. That's a great idea. I also think
(19:50):
quarantine COVID has really messed stuff up. To go a
year at home with two children and not have my
foul language was it's asking me for the impossible. And
we were just coming out and being around a few
kids outside in recent weeks for the first time in
a year, and my son had an audience which he
(20:12):
has not had in a year, and he said to
them all, get the funk outta here. Yeah, And I
was like, oh my god, and everyone laughed. And now
he's got him. He is psyched about it. And he
also used it in the right context. He said it
like in my mother's accent, so it sounded something like
(20:32):
get the funk outta here like that. But he probably
heard somebody say that me. I'm gonna bet, I'm gonna bet.
Here's the thing of it, with the S word, the
A word with a hole in it, I mean, any
of those words, you're always best to ignore it if
(20:54):
it and it really will go away. So when he
says something, you ignore him completely ignore it, and then
you say what did you want to say? Hen, and
and he won't say it again. I mean, they really
get it. But when people left at it, are you
kidding's going to say it again? You've got a little
showman on your hand. Ham He was like, this is
(21:16):
the fastest way to get like great attention. I'm in okay,
so we have to ignore it. What about he's a
very picky eater. And I know this is going to
get worse. And you know what else, I know not
only is it going to get going to get worse,
it's going to completely mess up my daughter. I'm already
seeing the writing on the wall. Dinner time is between
(21:38):
the two of them. Like, I don't want to make
a hundred things. I always try to have one thing
on the plate that I know he loves, and then
the other things. One might be an experiment that I'll
try a bunch of times, the green vegetable, praying to
God that he'll have it. Whatever. But like my poor
daughter is just walking into this, like you know, with him,
(22:01):
because he was the first, I like tried everything and
now we're right where American kids are. We've got chicken
nuggets pizza, grilled cheese, cucumbers. Except for the cucumbers. You
are on what I call the orange diet. Anything nuggeted pizza,
mac and cheese, cheese, it's goldfish. Yeah, just like every kid.
(22:25):
I'm gonna tell you a couple of things you'll find interesting.
All over the world there are picky eaters. I mean
maybe the kids somewhere somewhere else is saying, no, I
only want seaweed. I'm not gonna eat candy. I only
want you know, it depends on where you're being raised.
But the pickiness is really interesting. First of all, this
is kids learning. They have taste, they have choice, they
(22:46):
have power. Second of all, this is kids developing taste
and power, you know, and they do have things that
they like and that they don't like. We feed into it.
So please remember this. Here's what I never fight about
with kids, clothing or food. Never you want to wear
(23:09):
your bathing suit and you just go ahead and wear
it and pray for snow. Wait, hold on, go back.
My son wants to wear his pajamas all day. I can't. Well,
here's what you can say. Tim at school says you
may not wear pajamas to school if you want to
wear them at home, that's fine, but that's the school rule.
(23:32):
I can't wear him to school and then when he
gets My son used to come home from school and
put on a suit and a tie because he loved
to dress up at four years old a little bit
with his tie and his in and out burger hat
and his tool belt. Oh my god, it was fab.
So we don't fight about clothes. Yeah, I don't care
what he wears in the morning. This is what I say.
(23:54):
You've got to brush your teeth. I'm going to have
breakfast here for you. I would like for you to
eat something. And I'm just starting the fight of brushing
your hair. But good lord does he hate it. Well,
let's only have one fight at a time, so you
can only work on one thing at a time. You know,
you have to ask yourself, is this the hill I
want to die on? Now? Okay? So that's what we've
(24:17):
said about clothes with clothes. With regard to food, people
who know this stuff, nutritionists who do research, will tell
us that it is highly likely that in the days
when you know, dinosaurs roamed the earth, when the cavemen,
children learned to have an adverse reaction to anything that
(24:37):
was different or sharp tasting, because they were left home
to forage for food while mommy and daddy went out
finding food and killing dinosaurs and things whatever they killed,
so they stayed away from food that was strong tasting.
So they have a taste for plain pasta with butter
and bread, and it's not unusual. We fff it up
(24:59):
because we give into it. So doing exactly what you
did is what I suggest one way of going. Make
sure there's something on the plate he'll eat. If he
doesn't want to eat the rest of it, you have
to eat. It's your call. But this is all we're
having until bed, until tomorrow. So that's number one. Number two.
Sometimes when kids have gotten to be four and five
(25:21):
and they're not eating anything, I will say, as I
just did today to a parent, is there something he
will eat? Yes, he'll eat a peanut butter sandwich. I said,
all right, every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I want
you to make a peanut butter sandwich. Put it on
a little plate, Cover it with seran, even though that's
not ecologically desirable, but I want him to be able
to see it. Put it next to his dinner plate.
(25:43):
Put it next to his breakfast plate, next to his
lunch plate, even if he has a peanut better, but
it's there. He sits down at dinner and there is
two tablespoons of pasta too, baby trees of broccoli, and
a finger of salmon. He said, I don't like that.
I know that's touching. I don't want to hat you
whatever he says. And then you say, well, then eat
(26:04):
your peanut butter. How about those Dodgers. Don't talk about it.
Let him eat his peanut butter every day for ten years.
I don't care. You're not a special meal chef. Yeah,
I would think that just fighting over food all the
time cannot be a great recipe for your relationship with food.
(26:28):
I was really lucky growing up. Look, we've all had
our childhood experiences that has gotten us here, and battles
we've had with our parents. My mom literally a plus
on food. I have friends who are in Hollywood, who's
who you know? They can They say they remember their
mom always talking about diet. They remember always fighting about food, this,
(26:51):
that and the other thing. My mom made me finish
every plate like that. Like my mom never like this
is what we're having, eat it or not? And like
that's it. I'm getting this overall vibe of ignoring or
don't make a big deal, like if your kids having
a tantrum, or your kid said the curse word or whatever.
(27:15):
It's like, the more attention you'll give it, the bigger
it will get. You play such an important role in
how your kids respond and what becomes important to them
because they're looking their little power mongers. Where am I powerful?
We give our kids too much power. And I don't
(27:35):
mean by giving them too much permission. I'm saying we
react to it. Don't react. You sit down at the
dinner table and he says, I don't like this. You
can say, okay, so did you see the zebra that
was walking down Ventura Ble of our today? It was amazing.
Whoever thought you don't talk about food, you don't make
a big deal. This is so true. I can't tell you,
(27:55):
guys listening how many times I put something out for dinner.
Albie loses his mind that there's a green thing on
the plate, right, and he's all upset about it. And
I just say, okay, we'll just sit down and pretend
to have a date with me. Anyway, I'm going to
sit here and eat mine, and I just leave him
for three minutes and then he comes to the table
(28:16):
on his own and he eats the green thing because
I just didn't. You don't care, I don't care, and
he just wants to be with me. Anyway. I'm like, okay, well,
I'm just gonna sit here and have mine. He used
to come up and push the plate so that it
like all fell off, and I said, okay, I won't
let you do that. You can't push and throw your
food off the table because I worked hard on it.
(28:37):
You don't have to eat it. Just don't touch it,
you know whatever, It's fine. You can just sit here
and talk to me. And then I start talking something
that and then I'll look in three minutes and I'm like,
oh my god, he's eating. You know. Parents also mess
dinner up. Dinner is the hardest meal for most people.
They mess it up because they attached dessert to it.
(28:58):
I am right up there with the biggest sweet. I
like all kinds of cockaf food, but I never attached
dessert to our meals because I didn't want to raise
kids who would say how many bites till I get dessert?
How many bites? So I did. I mean, I had dessert.
I just didn't have it with dinner. They could have
an ice cream in the afternoon. So smart? Is it
(29:19):
ever too late? Never? Okay? So even if you have
a four year old and you've been doing that crap,
you know the kid says he's full, even though you
know he's not because you've always given him dessert after
Is there ever a time we're like, guess what the
rules have changed starting today, There's no more dessert after dinner.
(29:39):
And look, you might give them dessert at a different
time in the day. Here's what I suggest my clients say,
which seems to work. The ones who are in my
groups always say, you know, I was in my Betsy
class last night and blah blah, blah blah. Ones who
are not, I'll say, just say to them, you know,
I was talking to my teacher Betsy, and I am
so cuckoo. I made a crazy mistake. Do you know
(30:01):
that we're not supposed to have dessert with dinner. I
don't know what I was thinking, but dessert doesn't go
with dinner. We're going to have dessert at another time.
You could have it in the morning for your morning snack.
You could have it in the afternoon. We're just not
having at dinner time. It makes addiction to sugar, and
you know you don't want kids to have all that
sugar right before they go to bed. So so you
(30:24):
could just say I did it wrong, dummy, me. I
didn't know, But now I'm going to change. And your dessert.
By the way, it's like two Hershey's kisses or three
jelly beans or vanilla. It's not like a big good
thing of ice cream. It's a little something. Yeah, by
the way, that's something with all food and kids. Like
when I really started to follow on Instagram and we're
(30:44):
going to have them on the podcast. But people who
specialize in kid foods, and I actually saw what portions
look like for a three and a half year old.
I'm like, why am I putting out this mountain of
maccar this mountain of food. It's ridiculous. Their stomach is tiny.
So just for mom's listening, it's a huge win. If
your kid has two pieces of cucumber, one little baby carrot,
(31:05):
you know, a fourth of a grilled cheese sandwich, and
like that's like a lot of food for their little stomachs.
Like it's not what you think it's going to be like,
oh my god, he didn't eat because he didn't have
the entire macaroni. You know, he had half a slice
of pizza. Do you know that your stomach hold up
your fist, your hand in a fist like this, that's
how big your stomach is. Yeah. So a bait a
(31:27):
kid is like asking a kid to put all that
masticated food in this. Nobody wants her child to starve.
We're all a little bit nervous about that, but children
won't starve. Sometimes parents just can't bear the thought of
putting their kid to bed hungry. Yeah, I have a
lot of friends with that. You can have a system
in your house where whether he's eating dinner or not,
(31:49):
he can always have a string cheese before bed or
a baby banana because you give him something that he
can always have, not for him, it's for you, so
you don't have to worry about he's always hunty. Okay,
(32:16):
let's talk about for what's coming down the pipe. Which
scares the crap out of me. What happens when we
start getting into this, like my kid doesn't want to
invite a kid to a birthday party, stuff like this, Well,
it's gonna happen. And by the way, with my children
who shared the same birthday, I had three different birthday
(32:37):
parties every year after the after the age of two,
I know. So we'd have a Saturday and a Sunday
and a Saturday or a Sunday in the Saturday and
a Sunday every year. This is this the reason I'm
being so quiet, which I never was, because my jaws
on the ground. Could you guys imagine doing that? No?
Thank you? Okay? Well, and I would say, you don't
(32:58):
have to invite your sister to the party. You don't
have about your brother. But just remember, if you don't
invite him, he might not invite you. They learned the
word reciprocity very young, and they always included the other
guy because they didn't want to be excluded. So there's that.
But I believe that your birthday is the only thing
(33:19):
that's yours besides your name. So I would say to him,
let's say he doesn't want to have so and so
we'll talk to me about that. Okay, So you don't Okay,
So you don't want to have him because he's mean
to you. He always mean to you. Is he should
we have him over for a play date and let's
see how how you really feel about him, because maybe
he's mean to him at school or maybe when other
(33:41):
kids were around. But if he says no, he wasn't nice,
I don't want him to come. I could say, well
that it is your birthday, but I want to tell
you I feel very bad because I think it's hurtful.
And I know if you didn't get invited to his party,
you would feel sad. Now your kid might say no,
I all you can say, well, I think you would,
(34:03):
so I try to work on the empathy piece, try
to get them to understand. But if he's having twenty
other kids and he's saying no, I'm not going to
invite him and saying no, that's not fair. I can't
do it. Not kind. What about when siblings fight, because
that hasn't started yet, buddy, will what do I do?
(34:24):
My My mom used to put us in naughty chairs?
Right which which are these two swivel chairs? My mom
still swears by this, and I'm like, mom, I am
not doing this. She put me and my brother, who
are two years nine months apart. She would put us
in chairs and we would have to each face different
walls and not speak to each other. That's like teachers
(34:45):
putting kids in the corner for you. Oh, it's ridiculous.
We were, But why she liked it was because they
were swivel chairs. And in about ten minutes of sitting
there quiet, fuming at walls, we were ten minutes later
spinning towards each other and making each other laugh, and
all of a sudden we would come together against a
common enemy, which was my mother. So well, you're saying
(35:07):
something really important, because most sibling not getting a longness.
It's about three people. It's about the child, the child,
and the adult. So you take away one of the
kids child adult, there's no fighting. You take away the
other kid, there's no fighting. And usually if you take
the adult away, there's no fighting. We don't help sibling
(35:30):
fighting by saying I'll be what's going on in there.
We call one kid's name way too much, and he
thinks I'm the bad guy. Oh God, I already see
that coming. I'm so glad to speak to you about this.
Everybody says that, you know, everybody has that same problem.
You don't want your kid to think I'm Mommy thinks
I'm the bad guy. It's always my fault. By the way,
(35:51):
it could be your what's a little girl's name, Vera Zira.
You don't want Vera to think that it's always Albie's vould,
but you know you don't. But if you call his name,
that's what they think. So you're not the judge and
you're not the jury. So you might call out do
you need help in there, and someone will say he
took my daughter. So it's either about a parent or property.
(36:15):
Sometimes kids just need to bug each other. I would
say spend as little time involved in that as you
possibly can. My role with my kids was I only
got involved when there was blood because honestly, kids fight.
They're like puppies. They're gonna fight. If one kid is
being bullying, you say, what's going on it? Do you
need to You go in and you say, I'll be
(36:37):
tell me what happened. She took my toy, and then
little Vera tell me what happened. It's my toy. You
shouldn't love us. So what do you think we should do?
How should we solve this? Sit there and make them
figure out the problem. They'll love in lose interest. I
believe that playing together is a privilege. I think your
mom is not wrong in separating you. Sometimes I would
(36:57):
say you sit on that end of the couch, and
you say it, on that end of the couch and
sit on your hands, which sounds like a crazy thing
to do. But if they have to sit on their hands,
they're not thinking about anything except sitting on their hands,
and it's like swiveling in the chair. It's the same
kind of thing. But I really recommend not getting involved.
I think that's so genius. Now, shamelessly, I will tell
(37:23):
you another pay for view video I have on my website.
I have a little one in siblings. There's a big
video on my website on it along on an hour,
and then in my book there's a whole chapter on siblings.
The key is if your kids are spending enough time
with you alone without the other sibling. Kids need time
(37:44):
alone with a mom, not always together or the dad
or the other mom. Interesting that if they get their
own needs met, they will fight less anything else. Okay, sex,
Oh yeah, okay, real quick, three things sex, real fast, guys, sex, death,
(38:08):
cell phones. Well, let me assure you that all children,
when they get to be around four years old, it's
the age of questions. All children are going to wonder
what does it mean to be dead? What is dead? What?
What is that? I'm I'm afraid you're gonna die. I'm
afraid I'm gonna die. As a brief intro, children need
to understand that everything that is alive will die. So,
(38:31):
starting at age two, you're walking along. You see a caterpillar.
You say, oh, that caterpillar is dead. Look he's all
done living. You pick him up, you let him see
he's not living. You'll touch him, you whatever, go wash
your hands. You see the rose has fallen off the bush.
You say, look that rose died. It's all done living.
Use a real word, died, all done living. Started very
(38:52):
early on, and then as they get older they will
understand that in our lives people get very very very
very old. Everything that is alive has a life cycle.
It's little, it grows up, it gets very old, it
can't live anymore, and it dies. Are you gonna die? Yes,
I'm gonna die. Of course, I'm gonna die, but not
for a long, long, long, long, long long time. I'm
(39:16):
going to be alive for so long. My chapter on
death is really a good one. I'm I'm going to
recommend that to my friend right now whose dog just died.
And the dog was very very old, um, and it's
very very sad. See, when I was running a school,
we had goldfish. Of course, we only have them so
(39:36):
they can die. We like we like death, We like
to talk about it. The idea is we want kids
to understand, they want to deal with it. We want
kids to see that Goldie lived a long life. For goldfish,
people live a long long time, but goldfish were lying, don't.
So what do we do when a fish die. We
don't give him a burial at sea. We want the
(39:57):
kid to see he's dead and understand it. And then
we put him in a little Tiffany's box, nice blue box,
and we and we go out to the cemetery in
the yard and we dig a hole and we bury him,
and we say a few words. Goldie was a nice fish.
She swam so well. I'll miss you, Goldie. I'm sorry
you're not alive anymore. And then you bury Goldie. I mean,
(40:17):
that's how children learn everything we have. We don't want
to hide it from them. This mommy, had she called me,
I would have said, you tell the kids in the morning,
you know, in the middle of the night, Fido was
not having a hard time, so we took him to
the vet. We're going to see what the vet can do.
And then the middle of the day you say, well,
I just talked to the vet and the vet said
(40:38):
Fido was very sick and he's having problems breathing. And
then later that night you say, Fido is not doing well.
He's having a very hard time, and someone's gonna say,
is he gonna die? And Mommy says, I hope not,
but he might. And then the next day, I mean
Fido has been gone now for two days, to say
the vet just called to say that Fido died. His
(40:59):
body got so old he couldn't breathe anymore, so he died.
Of course, then they're going to say, well, where is he?
Without spending all of our time getting into this, I
will say to you, please do not say he's in
doggie heaven. I don't want to step on anybody's religious toes,
but I don't do the heaven peace until children are
(41:20):
old enough to understand the concept of souls and spirits
and all of that, because nobody believes that, you know,
Goldie swam up to heaven with their little goldiness. People
believe that souls gather. I mean, if you believe in heaven,
that's what you believe. But to tell a child she
went to heaven, her only thought of me. But why
would grandpa want to leave me? Absolutely? Yeah, that makes sense.
(41:43):
And did you do this with your kids? Tell me
about sex? Well, rather than telling you about sex, which
I will do, I will say that I got in
touch with my publisher, with HarperCollins, and I said, listen,
I got to redo my chapter on sex because with
(42:03):
people waiting so long to get pregnant, to get married
and pregnant, everybody's having in viv tro. So what we
say to kids is this is my tongue is in
my cheek as I'm talking to you. Mommy and Daddy
love each other, love each other very much, and they
do this thing called having sex, and they hug and
they kiss and Daddy puts his penis and Mommy's for Johnny.
Then they wanted to have a baby, so they went
(42:24):
to a doctor and the doctor it's a whole different story.
But when we talk about sex where babies come from,
we start with this. Everything that is alive comes from
two parts, apart from the male and apart from the
female that I don't say the mommy or the daddy.
I say boy, girl, male, female. And this happens when
(42:46):
you're very very old, after college and after graduate school,
and you say that apart from the female is called
the ovum, which is another word for egg. But I
don't say because children think. And I take a pencil
and I make a dot on a paper and I say,
(43:06):
that's how big the egg is. And apart from the
male called the seed or the sperm, and I do
a dot with a tiny tail. And what happens with
whether you're a flower or a zebra, or a person
or an art verk or whatever, apart from the male
joins with a part with the female, and it grows
in a special place in the female's body called the
(43:29):
uterus or the womb. It doesn't grow in a tummy.
And that's what you see when you see a woman
with a big tummy. It's not her tummy, it's her
womb or uterus that's growing. It looks like it's her tummy.
It's really next to your tummy. That's the only thing
that goes in your tummy is food or medicine or
water liquid. Usually that's pretty much enough. Yeah, because you're
(43:49):
so matter of fact about it. You're not giggling, you're
just saying scientifically what it is. So they must be
like they're just like great, sounds good, and they walk
out of the room. But then they come back and say, well,
how did it get there? How did they get together?
And you get to say, well, the seed lives in
the man's testicles. You have testicles, see them there right there.
(44:11):
You call him your nuts or your balls or your
nads or whatever you call him. And in a woman,
her ova live in a place and you point to
the place on your body where your ovaries are, and
they join together. It comes down through the man's penis,
and the man puts his penis in the woman's vagina,
and the seed swims up to find the ovum and
(44:34):
it starts to grow into a baby. If you tell
this to a six year old, he's going to go grow.
If you tell it to a four year old, it
won't make much sense. But I believe if a kid
hasn't asked you by the time he's six, you have
to tell him there's much more to this story. It's
all in my book. The Okay, last question, is this
(44:57):
cell phone thing going to kill it, Like, what's going
to happen? It's gonna kill It's gonna kill me. It's
it's horrible. Parents have to stop doing things because other
people are doing it. When your child says, but everybody,
your watchword response is going to be, don't ever tell
me to do something because everyone else is doing it.
(45:18):
We do things because it's right for our family. You
will get your cell phone first of all when you're
in middle school, no earlier. Second of all, when you're
old enough to earn money to pay for part of it.
And that's the way it goes there. You have it, folks.
It's the famous story in my husband's family when he
was like, but everybody has an Nintendo and his parents
(45:42):
were like, oh shit, no they don't. And they had
to really teach him not only did kids not have Nintendo,
I mean kids don't have anything, you know what I mean?
Like it was such an eye opening he remembers it
to this day. That's why I know the story this
was so how full in in parting words, is there
(46:03):
anything that you would like to say or any betsism
you want to leave us with? Yes? What I want
to say to you is not about your kids. It's
about you. We are not raising kids, we are raising adults.
You need to do the best you can do. And
some days that's gonna be good and some days it's
(46:23):
gonna suck. You need to do the best job you
can do. Taking care of yourself. I really believe in
the oxygen mask theory. If you don't take care of yourself,
you're not going to be the kind of mom or
dad you want to be. You'll be angry, you'll be snappy,
you won't be patient, and you won't be the kind
(46:45):
of mom you want to be. Take care of yourself,
get exercise, get sleep, do whatever it is you need.
But if you feel deprived, you will not be a
good parent. And with that, folks, that that was so helpful.
And I'm just so honored and thrilled to know you
(47:06):
and the work you're doing is God's work helping us.
Thank you. Thanks for coming to my closet crib. Well,
you are a kick in the pants. I gotta say
this was a trage. It was lots of fun. Thank you, guys,
(47:26):
so so so very much, with all of my heart
and soul for listening to season four of Katie's Crib.
I hope You've enjoyed all of the conversations that I've
had with so many wonderful celebrities and experts. I know,
I sure as hell did. I hope you guys will
stay and hang out with me again next season, and
look out for season five again coming early next year.
Make sure that you subscribe so you'll be the first
(47:49):
to know when the new episodes dropped. And as always,
if there are any topics or anything that you guys
want to talk about, please shoot me a message at
Katie's Crib at Shonda land dot com sea In twenty
twenty two, Babies Katie's Crib is a production of Shonda
Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more
(48:09):
podcasts from Shondalan Audio, visit the i heeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda land Audio
in partnership with I Heart Radio. An illogical consequence is
when you say, you know what, you didn't come to
dinner when I called you. We're not going to the
beach on Friday. I don't like the way you're you're
talking to me. Go to your room. That's what parents do.
(00:24):
They pick a pull up consequence out of their rear
end and it has nothing to do with anything. A
consequence needs to be related to what the misstep was,
and more times than not, it will work. You guys,
Welcome to the final episode of the fourth season of
(00:49):
Katie's Crib. I know, I know, Okay, it is super sudden.
We didn't give you guys too much of a heads
up here, but thank you so very much from the
bottom of my heart for continuing to tune in for
the next a few months. So you know, Katie's Crib
is going on a break because I'm working on some
additional creative content that you guys are gonna be hearing
more about. Of course, we have Inventing Anna coming out,
(01:11):
the Shanda Rhymes Netflix show that I will be on.
I also have this holiday season Christmas Takes Flight, a
holiday movie on CBS. And speaking of CBS, my sitcom
Smallwood starring myself and the one and only Pete Holmes,
who was one of my favorite guests from this season,
coming out also on CBS. To stay tuned and all
of that. But do not worry, guys, Katie's Crib Wait
(01:33):
for It is returning first season five early next year,
so stay tuned. Now to wrap up season four, we
are going to talk about I'm so proud of this
episode because it really gets in there. We're talking about
all the cringe, e complicated, nuanced scenarios that commonly come
up when you're raising kids, like when your kid asks
(01:54):
about death or sex, or like when your kid is
a really picky eater, or when your kid just goes
up to a random woman and asks her when the
baby is coming out and the woman is definitely not pregnant. Yeah,
that's happened to me. There is no one that can
speak better to all of these hot topic issues than
Betsy Brown Braun. Betsy is the best selling author of
(02:14):
the award winning books Just Tell Me what to Say
and You're Not the Boss of Me. Betsy is a
school consultant. She's a child development to behavior specialist, a
parenting expert. She's the founder of Parenting Pathways, which is
a consulting service for parents. Betsy's parenting expertise has been
featured on USA Today, in The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times, Nick Junior, and a ton of other
publications and like also from personal experience. Her and her
(02:35):
husband are parents of triplets, you guys, and she's grandparents
to six kiddos. Betsy, thank you so much for coming
on Katie's crib. Betsy Brown Braun, Hello, Hello Katie. I'm
glad to be in your crib. You have this incredible
website that I've also found to be so helpful. Oh yeah,
(02:57):
because in the same way, you have little videos on
these same things that I can watch very quickly of
like what to do. Can you just take us through
a little bit about how you come to know so
much about kids? Well, I um, I've been in the
field for a long time. I've taught lots of grades
of school. I started in nursery school. I was a
(03:19):
founding director of Wilshire Bullivard Temples School, and I've had
a lot of experience with kids. I have always loved kids.
I've always been interested in kids ever since my brother
was born. When I was eight years old, it was
a camp counselor. I mean, I worked in nursery schools.
I knew I was going to go into teaching, and
then wouldn't you know, I got pregnant with triplets. Everybody
(03:42):
take a moment for that. It's all breathe. But here's
the thing of it. This was before there was in
virtual My kids are turning forty three in two weeks,
so they're older than you are. I learned a lot
of what I know because I've lived it and I've
taught it, I've studied it. And I don't like a
lot of bs No, you say it like it is,
(04:05):
which is very very very helpful. What's a Betsi ism?
There are things that I'm known for saying, and I
didn't know what else to call them. Each age has
a certain behavior that typifies that age, and like I
call them the terrific twos because they're not terrible, they're
just the way they're supposed to be. And then there's
a theatrical threes. But then we get to four year olds,
(04:29):
and I call four year olds the fucking fours. Oh fuck, really,
it cannot possibly be worth than the theatrical threes because
I am in it, in it to win it. Well,
but here's the thing, so I'm known that's a betsism.
I say lots of stuff. So I talk about the
fucking fours and the Satanic sixes and all right, and
(04:50):
then I have other things I say, like, prepare the
child for the path, and not the path for the child. Damn,
that's good. Prepare the child for the path and not
the path for the child. When my life is falling apart,
I can like hear guests come into my head with
(05:11):
like a mantra. I will hear you say that for
the rest of my life. So thank you for that gift.
Well here's another one. Wait, let me give you another one.
You'll like, please give me all of them. Well, what
I do for my clients and my groups is I
print him in calligatory and I put it in a
bright color, and I say, hang this on your fridge
and it works. So here's my other, very favorite one.
(05:31):
The surest way to make life hard for your child
is to make it too easy for him. Yeah, are
you sensing? Are you sensing? I think you're giving me
exactly what I need. But I know how hard it
is to be a parent. It is really hard and
(05:53):
it's exhausting, and you have to be on your game
and sometimes you just want to say, put him back,
I'm done, I'm not too much. I get it. Or
sometimes you know when you have it, you know you
just want to break, so you give your kid the
inch and then he takes a mile. You have to
always never give an inch I mean in the in
my case for example, because he sniffs it out man well.
(06:17):
And the smarter they are, the more manipulative they are,
and they don't forget. So if some Thursday he's driving
you crazy, I when ice cream, ice cream, It's five
o'clock and you finally say, just have the goddamn ice cream,
right for the next five d thursdays, he's gonna ask
(06:37):
for ice cream. One yes will sustain him through a
thousand nose, another betsism, another betsism. So I know my
kid is hard now, but I also know that there's
gonna be really hard conversations in his future, like what
is death? What is sex? And I don't know what
(06:59):
to say? So can I go through with you a
few like key things like that, and you just drop
your truth knowledge on us and our listeners. I'm happy
to give you a taste of whatever you ask me,
I'll give you a taste. Okay, here's one. How do
I get my child to listen? That one will take
(07:21):
you only thirty years. Well, let's see, my kids are
forty three and they're not listening. Um, here's the reality.
You're a little guy, what's his name, Albe? So Albe
is not listening. I am sure his hearing is just fine.
The problem isn't that he's not listening. The problem is
(07:42):
that he's being defiant. I'm gonna give you a couple
of little hints on this. The word discipline the root
word in Latin disciplay ray. It means to teach. It
doesn't mean to punish, to make feel bad, to hurt,
to make cry, to shame. It means to teach. So
we're trying to teach our kids something. It is very
(08:03):
shortsighted to want to stop the behavior now because it
will come back, So you want to do something that
teaches him. We want our kids to understand that when
you choose a particular behavior, you are also choosing the
reaction to that behavior, so we give up consequence. That
makes sense. There are three kinds of consequences, natural consequences,
(08:28):
illogical consequences, and logical consequences. There are many people today
who say consequences don't work. I call bs they do.
A natural consequence would be when my son left his
water gun out on the grass and I said, taken in.
The dog's going to eat it because he eats plastic.
And he came out the next day and it was
in a million pieces and I said, oh well, and
(08:50):
I didn't buy him another one. An illogical consequence is
when you say, you know what, you didn't come to
dinner when I called you, We're not going to the
beach on Friday. I don't like the way you're you're
talking to me. Go to your room. You didn't clean
up your toys, no, I pad. Those are consequences that
(09:13):
have nothing to do with anything, and mainly that's what
parents do. They pick a pull a consequence out of
their rear end and it has nothing to do with anything.
A consequence needs to be related to what the misstep was,
and more times than not, it will work. Okay, let's
say a kid hits another kid. What's the consequence? Am
(09:35):
I at home or I'm at school? You are at
uh pool party? Okay? Hitting is a I mean that's all.
That's one of those topics because I ask you, if
you're child, how is his language? Is he communicating? How's
his frustration level? I mean, I'd be asking you lots
of questions. But if we've walked into the party and
(09:57):
I've said i'll be we're going to this party, there
will be other kids. If there is a problem, you
come and get me and I will help you. We
do not hit. If you need to hit, we will leave. Now.
The other part of this is maybe he doesn't want
to be there and he wants to leave, So maybe
(10:18):
he's goes, okay, we're off. No, But I understand that's
a logical consequence, right. It has to do with the
situation you are in. Although question, if the two things
your kid loves the most are dessert television, would it
go to say that when you take those away? Sometimes
(10:41):
those are the only things my son will stop for.
We were having issues where he's the kid that always
rips a toy from another kid, and we've been practicing.
It's gotten a lot better. But I do have to say,
there were a couple of days where I was at
my wits end and he had made so many kids cry.
That's such a bad way to say it. So many
(11:02):
kids had cried because he had pulled their toys away.
He didn't make them cry. It doesn't know what I
was doing. I had was at my wits end and
had said, if if we're going to go somewhere and
you are are having a very hard time, and and
it happens over and over again and you don't get
the toy and you don't come get me, I'm going
to have to take TV away tonight because I know
(11:22):
it's your favorite thing, but that's not great behavior. And
it worked. It worked that time. So did he to
stop taking toys away forevermore? Yeah? No, So it's that's what.
Oh so it's bullshit. Well, you're trying to look at
the big piece. You want your kid to understand that
it is his choice that you're choosing to make this happen.
(11:43):
That's the thing of it. Now, let's go back to
the pulling the toy away. First of all, just developing
those social skills, it takes time. So if I knew
that my kid was a grabber. I would be by
his side. I would be shadowing him, and he would
see him walking and say, oh, you see that Stevie
(12:04):
has an airplane. Do you want to turn with that?
He's gonna say yes, You're gonna say, let's go tell Stevie. Stevie,
when you're done, can I'll be have a turn? Okay,
And when you're done, will have a turn. And then
you turned, I'll be and say I know you want it,
and you are going to have a turn. This is
so great. But it's not like I can just be
(12:25):
like drinking by the pool. I have to shadow myself.
Those days are over. But there's nothing quite like it,
Tequila sunrise. I get one more thing here. The two
mistakes that parents make too often when it comes to
the kid who is not listening. They warn too many times,
(12:46):
and they don't follow through with their threats. That's it,
you guys, That's it. When parents say I tell him
ten times, I say, well, who's the fool? What are
you doing? Give ten? You tell him once? Doesn't do what?
You follow through? Tell him once an act on it.
What about when a kid this is not yet happened
to me, but I cannot wait says something, Oh it did,
(13:09):
but I wasn't there. He asked a woman when when
a baby was coming out of her belly and the
woman is not pregnant. So when a kids says something inappropriate,
like why is that person fat, like in the grocery
store line, what are we supposed to say? Young children
(13:30):
haven't learned to finesse situations. They don't understand that that's
an unkind thing to say. So let's say, let's deal
with your first question, second, second question. First for that lady,
My kid just said, why is that woman so fat?
I get down on my kid's level and in a
very quiet voice, I say, you know, I'm going to
(13:52):
answer your question when we go outside of the grocery store.
Don't forget to ask me, because I'm going to answer.
And then as soon maybe you go right out, or
maybe you wait, and as soon as you walk out,
you say, remember you wanted to know why that woman
was so fat, which is a word I tried never
to use. It's the new effort. But did you hear
(14:14):
that I'm using a very quiet voice when I'm answering.
I don't know how that lady feels about her body.
Maybe she likes being fat. Maybe she doesn't like being fat,
but I don't want to be unkind, so I answered
that question very quietly. I don't know why she's fat.
Maybe she's growing a baby, maybe she had that's just
(14:37):
the shape of her body. I don't know. It's a
good question. God, are your children just in? Are your
children just amazing? Well? Truth, yes, it wasn't so easy
to raise them. Triplets are hard, but you know, and
I had. I could tell you every hard moment I have.
But really, this is the payoff. I have such great kids.
(15:02):
They're really good people. I'm so proud of them. Now
I am hearing how eloquent, studied, experienced you are than you.
Did you raise your triplets with um, a spouse, a partner?
(15:24):
Did you guys always line up? Was it really hard? Two?
Because sometimes I think I'm doing a great job and
Adam is fucking this up. By the way, anything bad
that happens, it is Adam's fault. Let's be clear. Okay,
I've been married you ready fifty years five? Oh, we
(15:44):
had our fiftieth anniversary last December. Congratulations. Isn't that crazy?
And it's a huge, huge I agree, I really I
married a great guy. It was just I did a
great job, and we are communication is excellent, and we
have been in and out of therapy a few times
(16:06):
more than once. I believe in therapy. I believe in talking.
My husband is he honestly knew buccas about child ering.
He was an only child. He didn't know anything. He
everything he learned he learned from me, he will say it.
And he was a great daddy. He really enjoyed being
with the kids. And I feel that one of the
(16:28):
reasons they've done so well, as they had a present
mommy and daddy. It seems to me that you're very patient,
you use communication, and you have a great vocabulary with
how to speak to little ones. But also you have
really um strong boundaries. M hm. Did you guys ever
come into place where he where he we disagreed, yeah,
(16:52):
or he was more lax than you, And so now
you're getting mixed signals. Like Adam and I always try
to have a united front in front of the children. Always,
so it usually goes to who's ever setting the harsher boundary.
The person whose boundary isn't his, hard has to go
to that person, if that makes sense, Like if Adam
(17:13):
sticks to his guns that we're doing shower in three minutes,
and Alb's having a ship show. It's like, no, no,
we gotta do shower in three minutes because Daddy, because
because that's what was set. Is that sort of the
best way to go, Katie. You are really wise. Your
instincts are really good. I often say to parents, the
strongest feeling needs to win. Not always I say that,
(17:38):
and I say, he who starts it finishes it. So
if daddy says three minutes till beat, he can't say
to you, Okay, come on, help me out here, do this. No,
he starts it, he finishes it. But we don't. I
don't believe in contradicting parents in front of children, but
I do believe that sometimes you say, you know, this
(18:00):
is really important to daddy, and I agree with him.
I'm goletna give me an interesting example. When my kids
were like around four or five. You got a picture,
there are three of them. They started saying, I hate this,
I hate that. And my husband grew up with a
woman who was so gentle and soft that she would
(18:21):
never let the word hate be said, and he would
hear it and it would like he would cringe. I,
on the other hand, grew up in a household where
you could say the effort before you could say shut up,
shut up. Was like so that if when I hear
somebody say shut up, I say, don't say that. My
mother's gonna smite you. So I would say to the kids,
(18:45):
look at your dad really doesn't like it when you
say hey, it bothers him. You can say it in
front of me, just not in front of him. You
can say shut up in front of him, not in
front of me. It wasn't I never said, never do
this for me. It's always about when you can do it.
(19:06):
You know, poopy language, toilet talk, Yeah, what are we
talking about that? Because good lord, my son is into
it right now. He had his first day of toddler
preschool and I was making a video like and he
loved it so much. And I was like, what did
you love it? He was like, I loved it so much.
And I was ready to send the video to the
whole family. I loved school so much. Poopy farty, but
(19:26):
diarrhea was the video and and and and I mean,
that's so perfect. And that's when you could have said
and those are the words that you can use in
the bathroom because those are bathroom words. Let's go click
and you walk into the bathroom and say letter, that's
a great idea. That's a great idea. I also think
(19:50):
quarantine COVID has really messed stuff up. To go a
year at home with two children and not have my
foul language was it's asking me for the impossible. And
we were just coming out and being around a few
kids outside in recent weeks for the first time in
a year, and my son had an audience which he
(20:12):
has not had in a year, and he said to
them all, get the funk outta here. Yeah, And I
was like, oh my god, and everyone laughed. And now
he's got him. He is psyched about it. And he
also used it in the right context. He said it
like in my mother's accent, so it sounded something like
(20:32):
get the funk outta here like that. But he probably
heard somebody say that me. I'm gonna bet, I'm gonna bet.
Here's the thing of it, with the S word, the
A word with a hole in it, I mean, any
of those words, you're always best to ignore it if
(20:54):
it and it really will go away. So when he
says something, you ignore him completely ignore it, and then
you say what did you want to say? Hen, and
and he won't say it again. I mean, they really
get it. But when people left at it, are you
kidding's going to say it again? You've got a little
showman on your hand. Ham He was like, this is
(21:16):
the fastest way to get like great attention. I'm in okay,
so we have to ignore it. What about he's a
very picky eater. And I know this is going to
get worse. And you know what else, I know not
only is it going to get going to get worse,
it's going to completely mess up my daughter. I'm already
seeing the writing on the wall. Dinner time is between
(21:38):
the two of them. Like, I don't want to make
a hundred things. I always try to have one thing
on the plate that I know he loves, and then
the other things. One might be an experiment that I'll
try a bunch of times, the green vegetable, praying to
God that he'll have it. Whatever. But like my poor
daughter is just walking into this, like you know, with him,
(22:01):
because he was the first, I like tried everything and
now we're right where American kids are. We've got chicken
nuggets pizza, grilled cheese, cucumbers. Except for the cucumbers. You
are on what I call the orange diet. Anything nuggeted pizza,
mac and cheese, cheese, it's goldfish. Yeah, just like every kid.
(22:25):
I'm gonna tell you a couple of things you'll find interesting.
All over the world there are picky eaters. I mean
maybe the kids somewhere somewhere else is saying, no, I
only want seaweed. I'm not gonna eat candy. I only
want you know, it depends on where you're being raised.
But the pickiness is really interesting. First of all, this
is kids learning. They have taste, they have choice, they
(22:46):
have power. Second of all, this is kids developing taste
and power, you know, and they do have things that
they like and that they don't like. We feed into it.
So please remember this. Here's what I never fight about
with kids, clothing or food. Never you want to wear
(23:09):
your bathing suit and you just go ahead and wear
it and pray for snow. Wait, hold on, go back.
My son wants to wear his pajamas all day. I can't. Well,
here's what you can say. Tim at school says you
may not wear pajamas to school if you want to
wear them at home, that's fine, but that's the school rule.
(23:32):
I can't wear him to school and then when he
gets My son used to come home from school and
put on a suit and a tie because he loved
to dress up at four years old a little bit
with his tie and his in and out burger hat
and his tool belt. Oh my god, it was fab.
So we don't fight about clothes. Yeah, I don't care
what he wears in the morning. This is what I say.
(23:54):
You've got to brush your teeth. I'm going to have
breakfast here for you. I would like for you to
eat something. And I'm just starting the fight of brushing
your hair. But good lord does he hate it. Well,
let's only have one fight at a time, so you
can only work on one thing at a time. You know,
you have to ask yourself, is this the hill I
want to die on? Now? Okay? So that's what we've
(24:17):
said about clothes with clothes. With regard to food, people
who know this stuff, nutritionists who do research, will tell
us that it is highly likely that in the days
when you know, dinosaurs roamed the earth, when the cavemen,
children learned to have an adverse reaction to anything that
(24:37):
was different or sharp tasting, because they were left home
to forage for food while mommy and daddy went out
finding food and killing dinosaurs and things whatever they killed,
so they stayed away from food that was strong tasting.
So they have a taste for plain pasta with butter
and bread, and it's not unusual. We fff it up
(24:59):
because we give into it. So doing exactly what you
did is what I suggest one way of going. Make
sure there's something on the plate he'll eat. If he
doesn't want to eat the rest of it, you have
to eat. It's your call. But this is all we're
having until bed, until tomorrow. So that's number one. Number two.
Sometimes when kids have gotten to be four and five
(25:21):
and they're not eating anything, I will say, as I
just did today to a parent, is there something he
will eat? Yes, he'll eat a peanut butter sandwich. I said,
all right, every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I want
you to make a peanut butter sandwich. Put it on
a little plate, Cover it with seran, even though that's
not ecologically desirable, but I want him to be able
to see it. Put it next to his dinner plate.
(25:43):
Put it next to his breakfast plate, next to his
lunch plate, even if he has a peanut better, but
it's there. He sits down at dinner and there is
two tablespoons of pasta too, baby trees of broccoli, and
a finger of salmon. He said, I don't like that.
I know that's touching. I don't want to hat you
whatever he says. And then you say, well, then eat
(26:04):
your peanut butter. How about those Dodgers. Don't talk about it.
Let him eat his peanut butter every day for ten years.
I don't care. You're not a special meal chef. Yeah,
I would think that just fighting over food all the
time cannot be a great recipe for your relationship with food.
(26:28):
I was really lucky growing up. Look, we've all had
our childhood experiences that has gotten us here, and battles
we've had with our parents. My mom literally a plus
on food. I have friends who are in Hollywood, who's
who you know? They can They say they remember their
mom always talking about diet. They remember always fighting about food, this,
(26:51):
that and the other thing. My mom made me finish
every plate like that. Like my mom never like this
is what we're having, eat it or not? And like
that's it. I'm getting this overall vibe of ignoring or
don't make a big deal, like if your kids having
a tantrum, or your kid said the curse word or whatever.
(27:15):
It's like, the more attention you'll give it, the bigger
it will get. You play such an important role in
how your kids respond and what becomes important to them
because they're looking their little power mongers. Where am I powerful?
We give our kids too much power. And I don't
(27:35):
mean by giving them too much permission. I'm saying we
react to it. Don't react. You sit down at the
dinner table and he says, I don't like this. You
can say, okay, so did you see the zebra that
was walking down Ventura Ble of our today? It was amazing.
Whoever thought you don't talk about food, you don't make
a big deal. This is so true. I can't tell you,
(27:55):
guys listening how many times I put something out for dinner.
Albie loses his mind that there's a green thing on
the plate, right, and he's all upset about it. And
I just say, okay, we'll just sit down and pretend
to have a date with me. Anyway, I'm going to
sit here and eat mine, and I just leave him
for three minutes and then he comes to the table
(28:16):
on his own and he eats the green thing because
I just didn't. You don't care, I don't care, and
he just wants to be with me. Anyway. I'm like, okay, well,
I'm just gonna sit here and have mine. He used
to come up and push the plate so that it
like all fell off, and I said, okay, I won't
let you do that. You can't push and throw your
food off the table because I worked hard on it.
(28:37):
You don't have to eat it. Just don't touch it,
you know whatever, It's fine. You can just sit here
and talk to me. And then I start talking something
that and then I'll look in three minutes and I'm like,
oh my god, he's eating. You know. Parents also mess
dinner up. Dinner is the hardest meal for most people.
They mess it up because they attached dessert to it.
(28:58):
I am right up there with the biggest sweet. I
like all kinds of cockaf food, but I never attached
dessert to our meals because I didn't want to raise
kids who would say how many bites till I get dessert?
How many bites? So I did. I mean, I had dessert.
I just didn't have it with dinner. They could have
an ice cream in the afternoon. So smart? Is it
(29:19):
ever too late? Never? Okay? So even if you have
a four year old and you've been doing that crap,
you know the kid says he's full, even though you
know he's not because you've always given him dessert after
Is there ever a time we're like, guess what the
rules have changed starting today, There's no more dessert after dinner.
(29:39):
And look, you might give them dessert at a different
time in the day. Here's what I suggest my clients say,
which seems to work. The ones who are in my
groups always say, you know, I was in my Betsy
class last night and blah blah, blah blah. Ones who
are not, I'll say, just say to them, you know,
I was talking to my teacher Betsy, and I am
so cuckoo. I made a crazy mistake. Do you know
(30:01):
that we're not supposed to have dessert with dinner. I
don't know what I was thinking, but dessert doesn't go
with dinner. We're going to have dessert at another time.
You could have it in the morning for your morning snack.
You could have it in the afternoon. We're just not
having at dinner time. It makes addiction to sugar, and
you know you don't want kids to have all that
sugar right before they go to bed. So so you
(30:24):
could just say I did it wrong, dummy, me. I
didn't know, But now I'm going to change. And your dessert.
By the way, it's like two Hershey's kisses or three
jelly beans or vanilla. It's not like a big good
thing of ice cream. It's a little something. Yeah, by
the way, that's something with all food and kids. Like
when I really started to follow on Instagram and we're
(30:44):
going to have them on the podcast. But people who
specialize in kid foods, and I actually saw what portions
look like for a three and a half year old.
I'm like, why am I putting out this mountain of
maccar this mountain of food. It's ridiculous. Their stomach is tiny.
So just for mom's listening, it's a huge win. If
your kid has two pieces of cucumber, one little baby carrot,
(31:05):
you know, a fourth of a grilled cheese sandwich, and
like that's like a lot of food for their little stomachs.
Like it's not what you think it's going to be like,
oh my god, he didn't eat because he didn't have
the entire macaroni. You know, he had half a slice
of pizza. Do you know that your stomach hold up
your fist, your hand in a fist like this, that's
how big your stomach is. Yeah. So a bait a
(31:27):
kid is like asking a kid to put all that
masticated food in this. Nobody wants her child to starve.
We're all a little bit nervous about that, but children
won't starve. Sometimes parents just can't bear the thought of
putting their kid to bed hungry. Yeah, I have a
lot of friends with that. You can have a system
in your house where whether he's eating dinner or not,
(31:49):
he can always have a string cheese before bed or
a baby banana because you give him something that he
can always have, not for him, it's for you, so
you don't have to worry about he's always hunty. Okay,
(32:16):
let's talk about for what's coming down the pipe. Which
scares the crap out of me. What happens when we
start getting into this, like my kid doesn't want to
invite a kid to a birthday party, stuff like this, Well,
it's gonna happen. And by the way, with my children
who shared the same birthday, I had three different birthday
(32:37):
parties every year after the after the age of two,
I know. So we'd have a Saturday and a Sunday
and a Saturday or a Sunday in the Saturday and
a Sunday every year. This is this the reason I'm
being so quiet, which I never was, because my jaws
on the ground. Could you guys imagine doing that? No?
Thank you? Okay? Well, and I would say, you don't
(32:58):
have to invite your sister to the party. You don't
have about your brother. But just remember, if you don't
invite him, he might not invite you. They learned the
word reciprocity very young, and they always included the other
guy because they didn't want to be excluded. So there's that.
But I believe that your birthday is the only thing
(33:19):
that's yours besides your name. So I would say to him,
let's say he doesn't want to have so and so
we'll talk to me about that. Okay, So you don't Okay,
So you don't want to have him because he's mean
to you. He always mean to you. Is he should
we have him over for a play date and let's
see how how you really feel about him, because maybe
he's mean to him at school or maybe when other
(33:41):
kids were around. But if he says no, he wasn't nice,
I don't want him to come. I could say, well
that it is your birthday, but I want to tell
you I feel very bad because I think it's hurtful.
And I know if you didn't get invited to his party,
you would feel sad. Now your kid might say no,
I all you can say, well, I think you would,
(34:03):
so I try to work on the empathy piece, try
to get them to understand. But if he's having twenty
other kids and he's saying no, I'm not going to
invite him and saying no, that's not fair. I can't
do it. Not kind. What about when siblings fight, because
that hasn't started yet, buddy, will what do I do?
(34:24):
My My mom used to put us in naughty chairs?
Right which which are these two swivel chairs? My mom
still swears by this, and I'm like, mom, I am
not doing this. She put me and my brother, who
are two years nine months apart. She would put us
in chairs and we would have to each face different
walls and not speak to each other. That's like teachers
(34:45):
putting kids in the corner for you. Oh, it's ridiculous.
We were, But why she liked it was because they
were swivel chairs. And in about ten minutes of sitting
there quiet, fuming at walls, we were ten minutes later
spinning towards each other and making each other laugh, and
all of a sudden we would come together against a
common enemy, which was my mother. So well, you're saying
(35:07):
something really important, because most sibling not getting a longness.
It's about three people. It's about the child, the child,
and the adult. So you take away one of the
kids child adult, there's no fighting. You take away the
other kid, there's no fighting. And usually if you take
the adult away, there's no fighting. We don't help sibling
(35:30):
fighting by saying I'll be what's going on in there.
We call one kid's name way too much, and he
thinks I'm the bad guy. Oh God, I already see
that coming. I'm so glad to speak to you about this.
Everybody says that, you know, everybody has that same problem.
You don't want your kid to think I'm Mommy thinks
I'm the bad guy. It's always my fault. By the way,
(35:51):
it could be your what's a little girl's name, Vera Zira.
You don't want Vera to think that it's always Albie's vould,
but you know you don't. But if you call his name,
that's what they think. So you're not the judge and
you're not the jury. So you might call out do
you need help in there, and someone will say he
took my daughter. So it's either about a parent or property.
(36:15):
Sometimes kids just need to bug each other. I would
say spend as little time involved in that as you
possibly can. My role with my kids was I only
got involved when there was blood because honestly, kids fight.
They're like puppies. They're gonna fight. If one kid is
being bullying, you say, what's going on it? Do you
need to You go in and you say, I'll be
(36:37):
tell me what happened. She took my toy, and then
little Vera tell me what happened. It's my toy. You
shouldn't love us. So what do you think we should do?
How should we solve this? Sit there and make them
figure out the problem. They'll love in lose interest. I
believe that playing together is a privilege. I think your
mom is not wrong in separating you. Sometimes I would
(36:57):
say you sit on that end of the couch, and
you say it, on that end of the couch and
sit on your hands, which sounds like a crazy thing
to do. But if they have to sit on their hands,
they're not thinking about anything except sitting on their hands,
and it's like swiveling in the chair. It's the same
kind of thing. But I really recommend not getting involved.
I think that's so genius. Now, shamelessly, I will tell
(37:23):
you another pay for view video I have on my website.
I have a little one in siblings. There's a big
video on my website on it along on an hour,
and then in my book there's a whole chapter on siblings.
The key is if your kids are spending enough time
with you alone without the other sibling. Kids need time
(37:44):
alone with a mom, not always together or the dad
or the other mom. Interesting that if they get their
own needs met, they will fight less anything else. Okay, sex,
Oh yeah, okay, real quick, three things sex, real fast, guys, sex, death,
(38:08):
cell phones. Well, let me assure you that all children,
when they get to be around four years old, it's
the age of questions. All children are going to wonder
what does it mean to be dead? What is dead? What?
What is that? I'm I'm afraid you're gonna die. I'm
afraid I'm gonna die. As a brief intro, children need
to understand that everything that is alive will die. So,
(38:31):
starting at age two, you're walking along. You see a caterpillar.
You say, oh, that caterpillar is dead. Look he's all
done living. You pick him up, you let him see
he's not living. You'll touch him, you whatever, go wash
your hands. You see the rose has fallen off the bush.
You say, look that rose died. It's all done living.
Use a real word, died, all done living. Started very
(38:52):
early on, and then as they get older they will
understand that in our lives people get very very very
very old. Everything that is alive has a life cycle.
It's little, it grows up, it gets very old, it
can't live anymore, and it dies. Are you gonna die? Yes,
I'm gonna die. Of course, I'm gonna die, but not
for a long, long, long, long, long long time. I'm
(39:16):
going to be alive for so long. My chapter on
death is really a good one. I'm I'm going to
recommend that to my friend right now whose dog just died.
And the dog was very very old, um, and it's
very very sad. See, when I was running a school,
we had goldfish. Of course, we only have them so
(39:36):
they can die. We like we like death, We like
to talk about it. The idea is we want kids
to understand, they want to deal with it. We want
kids to see that Goldie lived a long life. For goldfish,
people live a long long time, but goldfish were lying, don't.
So what do we do when a fish die. We
don't give him a burial at sea. We want the
(39:57):
kid to see he's dead and understand it. And then
we put him in a little Tiffany's box, nice blue box,
and we and we go out to the cemetery in
the yard and we dig a hole and we bury him,
and we say a few words. Goldie was a nice fish.
She swam so well. I'll miss you, Goldie. I'm sorry
you're not alive anymore. And then you bury Goldie. I mean,
(40:17):
that's how children learn everything we have. We don't want
to hide it from them. This mommy, had she called me,
I would have said, you tell the kids in the morning,
you know, in the middle of the night, Fido was
not having a hard time, so we took him to
the vet. We're going to see what the vet can do.
And then the middle of the day you say, well,
I just talked to the vet and the vet said
(40:38):
Fido was very sick and he's having problems breathing. And
then later that night you say, Fido is not doing well.
He's having a very hard time, and someone's gonna say,
is he gonna die? And Mommy says, I hope not,
but he might. And then the next day, I mean
Fido has been gone now for two days, to say
the vet just called to say that Fido died. His
(40:59):
body got so old he couldn't breathe anymore, so he died.
Of course, then they're going to say, well, where is he?
Without spending all of our time getting into this, I
will say to you, please do not say he's in
doggie heaven. I don't want to step on anybody's religious toes,
but I don't do the heaven peace until children are
(41:20):
old enough to understand the concept of souls and spirits
and all of that, because nobody believes that, you know,
Goldie swam up to heaven with their little goldiness. People
believe that souls gather. I mean, if you believe in heaven,
that's what you believe. But to tell a child she
went to heaven, her only thought of me. But why
would grandpa want to leave me? Absolutely? Yeah, that makes sense.
(41:43):
And did you do this with your kids? Tell me
about sex? Well, rather than telling you about sex, which
I will do, I will say that I got in
touch with my publisher, with HarperCollins, and I said, listen,
I got to redo my chapter on sex because with
(42:03):
people waiting so long to get pregnant, to get married
and pregnant, everybody's having in viv tro. So what we
say to kids is this is my tongue is in
my cheek as I'm talking to you. Mommy and Daddy
love each other, love each other very much, and they
do this thing called having sex, and they hug and
they kiss and Daddy puts his penis and Mommy's for Johnny.
Then they wanted to have a baby, so they went
(42:24):
to a doctor and the doctor it's a whole different story.
But when we talk about sex where babies come from,
we start with this. Everything that is alive comes from
two parts, apart from the male and apart from the
female that I don't say the mommy or the daddy.
I say boy, girl, male, female. And this happens when
(42:46):
you're very very old, after college and after graduate school,
and you say that apart from the female is called
the ovum, which is another word for egg. But I
don't say because children think. And I take a pencil
and I make a dot on a paper and I say,
(43:06):
that's how big the egg is. And apart from the
male called the seed or the sperm, and I do
a dot with a tiny tail. And what happens with
whether you're a flower or a zebra, or a person
or an art verk or whatever, apart from the male
joins with a part with the female, and it grows
in a special place in the female's body called the
(43:29):
uterus or the womb. It doesn't grow in a tummy.
And that's what you see when you see a woman
with a big tummy. It's not her tummy, it's her
womb or uterus that's growing. It looks like it's her tummy.
It's really next to your tummy. That's the only thing
that goes in your tummy is food or medicine or
water liquid. Usually that's pretty much enough. Yeah, because you're
(43:49):
so matter of fact about it. You're not giggling, you're
just saying scientifically what it is. So they must be
like they're just like great, sounds good, and they walk
out of the room. But then they come back and say, well,
how did it get there? How did they get together?
And you get to say, well, the seed lives in
the man's testicles. You have testicles, see them there right there.
(44:11):
You call him your nuts or your balls or your
nads or whatever you call him. And in a woman,
her ova live in a place and you point to
the place on your body where your ovaries are, and
they join together. It comes down through the man's penis,
and the man puts his penis in the woman's vagina,
and the seed swims up to find the ovum and
(44:34):
it starts to grow into a baby. If you tell
this to a six year old, he's going to go grow.
If you tell it to a four year old, it
won't make much sense. But I believe if a kid
hasn't asked you by the time he's six, you have
to tell him there's much more to this story. It's
all in my book. The Okay, last question, is this
(44:57):
cell phone thing going to kill it, Like, what's going
to happen? It's gonna kill It's gonna kill me. It's
it's horrible. Parents have to stop doing things because other
people are doing it. When your child says, but everybody,
your watchword response is going to be, don't ever tell
me to do something because everyone else is doing it.
(45:18):
We do things because it's right for our family. You
will get your cell phone first of all when you're
in middle school, no earlier. Second of all, when you're
old enough to earn money to pay for part of it.
And that's the way it goes there. You have it, folks.
It's the famous story in my husband's family when he
was like, but everybody has an Nintendo and his parents
(45:42):
were like, oh shit, no they don't. And they had
to really teach him not only did kids not have Nintendo,
I mean kids don't have anything, you know what I mean?
Like it was such an eye opening he remembers it
to this day. That's why I know the story this
was so how full in in parting words, is there
(46:03):
anything that you would like to say or any betsism
you want to leave us with? Yes? What I want
to say to you is not about your kids. It's
about you. We are not raising kids, we are raising adults.
You need to do the best you can do. And
some days that's gonna be good and some days it's
(46:23):
gonna suck. You need to do the best job you
can do. Taking care of yourself. I really believe in
the oxygen mask theory. If you don't take care of yourself,
you're not going to be the kind of mom or
dad you want to be. You'll be angry, you'll be snappy,
you won't be patient, and you won't be the kind
(46:45):
of mom you want to be. Take care of yourself,
get exercise, get sleep, do whatever it is you need.
But if you feel deprived, you will not be a
good parent. And with that, folks, that that was so helpful.
And I'm just so honored and thrilled to know you
(47:06):
and the work you're doing is God's work helping us.
Thank you. Thanks for coming to my closet crib. Well,
you are a kick in the pants. I gotta say
this was a trage. It was lots of fun. Thank you, guys,
(47:26):
so so so very much, with all of my heart
and soul for listening to season four of Katie's Crib.
I hope You've enjoyed all of the conversations that I've
had with so many wonderful celebrities and experts. I know,
I sure as hell did. I hope you guys will
stay and hang out with me again next season, and
look out for season five again coming early next year.
Make sure that you subscribe so you'll be the first
(47:49):
to know when the new episodes dropped. And as always,
if there are any topics or anything that you guys
want to talk about, please shoot me a message at
Katie's Crib at Shonda land dot com sea In twenty
twenty two, Babies Katie's Crib is a production of Shonda
Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more
(48:09):
podcasts from Shondalan Audio, visit the i heeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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