A Conversation Between Dads

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

In today’s episode, Dave and Jim discuss a wide-range of parenting topics. 

During this episode we’ll discuss:

• How we taught out kids to ride bikes

• How we manage picky eaters

• What we do to prepare for parent teacher conferences

• How we deal with social interactions at school

• Dave asks for advice on a school-theft

If you like what you heard, please consider subscribing, writing a review, and sharing the podcast on social media.

TRANSCRIPT

[music]

Dave: In today's episode, we're discussing some smaller parenting topics like advice for learning to ride a bike all the way up to managing picky eaters.

[music]

Dave: Everyone, welcome to the Papa est Fatigué podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. When we started this podcast, we wanted just to be a reflection of the kinds of conversations we're having as dads. Some of the topics that we discuss are beefy enough to be the standalone podcast, but there are often some more through smaller podcast topics that are much shorter conversations. Today, we're going to bring up some of those smaller topics. First, here's my deal. I'm Dave. I have a seven-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy.

Jim: I'm Jim. I've got a seven-year-old girl and a five-year-old girl.

Dave: Jim, why don't we just jump into it? We're going to be covering a bunch of different topics. Just right off the bat, I'd like to discuss a little bit about how you taught your child to ride a bike and how they're both doing if they're both on bikes.

Jim: The younger one hasn't quite figured out the bike and she doesn't show a lot of interest in it unfortunately because I think she's the last one of the family. If she learned how to ride bikes, we could be taking the family bike rides. The older one was interesting because we had balance bikes. We had the scoot bike when she was two years old or something around that, and then we had another balance bike, and then I took the crank out of her first bike so that she can use that as a balance bike.

She never really took to any of those. I guess at the end when we took the crank out of the oldest bike or the most mature bike, whatever it is the biggest one, she could figure out how to scoot along on that and keep her balanced. What happened is she decided one day that she was going to learn how to ride her bike. I think we had been hanging out with her cousins. The cousin that's the same age learned how to ride the bike and so I think she was jealous or wanted to catch up or whatever.

We came home. I think it was the next day and she just had this fierce look of determination on her face. She just liked that was it. That was the day that she was going to learn how to ride a bike and she did. I think the balance must have helped because I don't want to jinx it, but she's never had a significant bike wreck, which I think is just amazing. That's way different than when I learned how to ride bikes. The dad gave me a push. I wobbled a little bit and fell down and did that a couple of times and that's how I learned it.

Dave: By the way, I love the determination that's going to serve her so well later on in life to say, "I'm going to do this and that's going to happen."

Jim: It was almost like a cartoon. The look on her face was just like I've never seen it before. Just sheer determination.

Dave: Focus face. [chuckles] For us, we started off our daughter on the balance bike and she went back and forth. There was a while where she had both, but she really preferred the scooter. She got focused on the balance bike and we said, "Okay, look, if you can really nail this thing down, then we can get you a big girl's bike." She focused a little bit more. To a certain point, you just knew where you could just see like, "All right, she's good to go."

We bought her a big kid bike and this was the beginning of the pandemic. Of course, there are no bikes to be had anywhere and so we found a used bike that was a pretty good price. She paid for it herself. Within, I would say, five minutes on getting on that pedal bike, she was golden. Those balance bikes really, I think, do the job and to see how quickly she was able to-- Literally, just five minutes, and then she was gone. That was it.

I've seen older kids in the past who have just gone straight to-- Based on what I'm seeing of them, they've never gone the pedal bike route. They don't have any training wheels or anything like that and you can see them struggling. I remember we were at this open parking lot where we were just playing with the kids and there was this older kid. He must have been, I don't know, 10 or 11.

He was clearly learning to ride a bike and that kid just got frustrated after just a couple of minutes. I'm like, "Man, just--" if nothing else because he's much older, I'm like, "Take the pedals off and call it a balance bike and call it a day. That concept of just focusing on the balancing piece and not having to worry about the forward momentum and getting your feet rolling and everything like that, I think it really does wonders.

Our youngest, he's still on the balance bike right now. We've also dangled that carrot like, "Okay, look, if you want a big boy bike, you got to nail down that balance bike." I think that one thing that does seem to help and we've heard this from other parents too is that to find an area that's just a little bit hilly so that they have the fun of rolling down the hill, but not so hilly that it takes forever to climb back up.

At least it gives them a little bit of momentum and speed to build up, so they're not constantly like moving their feet. I think like you, he's the only one that's left. When we do go for a bike ride, we have two very different scenarios where my wife will go with the daughter usually. I'll stick with the boy and we cover maybe a quarter to half of what my wife and daughter can do.

We're used to the ones like, "All right, turn around. We'll get the car and we'll go pick you guys up when they're at the other end." It works for now, but it does open up a whole new world of experiences when everybody can jump on the bike. We're looking forward to that. The other thing we just picked up recently, my wife's like, "We're getting rollerblades." I'm like, "Whoa, okay, we can do that."

I grew up playing hockey. My wife, she can ice skate. Our daughter used to ice skate as well, but the rollerblades haven't taken us well. I think that to get back to the point about the bikes, I think the balance bike really does wonders. At least for us, it was that carrot of like, "Hey, big kid's bike once you nail that thing down," but there's always the tendency. They always prefer the scooter. I think it's easier and they have that mastered at this point, so there's that push and pull.

Jim: Yes, the bike. I forgot to mention that the scooter was a good start to get that balance. I thought both of them had training wheels at one time or another, which as a grown-up, as an adult, they're pretty much worthless. Those aren't the things you need to-- You don't need to learn how to pedal and steer. The idea of riding the bike is the leaning over and the physics of how a bike works. You just can't do that with training wheels. It's just like a giant tricycle.

Dave: I forgot the story that I had about the training wheels. I learned to ride a bike very late in life. I was, I think, in eighth grade. My dad bought me training wheels for 40 pounds.

[laughter]

Dave: An eighth grade on 40-pound training wheels. Actually, what happened, what really worked out for me is that as I'm riding this bike, I'm bending the training wheels up because I'm way overweight. Naturally, the wheels just disappeared. I learned on training wheels very effectively as a matter of fact. If you do go the training route, maybe buy something that is totally not rated for your child. Eventually, those wheels would just bend out of shape. The next thing you know, your kid's golden. That's how I learned.

In some cases, I suppose it can work for you. All right, cool. Switching gears. Another thing that I wanted to ask you about is, how do you manage a picky eater? My son, that kid, we can get him to eat pizza most of the time, grilled cheese, and then peanut butter and jelly. Of course, peanut butter and jelly, our school is a nut-free zone. It's like a struggle. Even at home like pasta, fine, but it is a struggle to get him to eat. I'm curious as to what you guys do at home if your kids are picky and how you handle that.

Jim: I try not to cave to their demands too often. The problem is that it becomes our problem that the kids don't eat, then it ends up being my problem because it becomes a behavioral meltdown and things like that. How hard am I going to push to get them to eat what I made before I break down and make something that they want to eat? I guess we're pretty lucky in that both the kids are fairly adventurous.

For example, we had salmon the other night. I didn't like salmon when I was a kid. They like avocado. The younger one likes to eat asparagus. Just like French fries, she loves it. We got lucky in that respect, but there are days when they want something very specific. Usually, during the week, about half the week, I'll cook for the whole family. I guess they'll call it a grownup dinner and they'll have some of that.

There are other nights where it's just either my wife or I are not eating at the same time or one of us isn't there, then I'll make the chicken nugget meal or something like that. The deal is I will make what they want to eat within reason so long as they agree on what it is. I'm not making mac and cheese for one- [crosstalk] for the other. They have to agree on what they're going to have and then I'll make that thing.

Like I said, they're pretty adventurous and they'll eat the grownup meals, the grownup dinners because they were at a daycare and the daycare provider would make them lunch. She would make this-- I mean, it looked delicious. They're like quinoa bowls with shredded kale and tomatoes and all this stuff. They come home and they say, "I don't eat vegetables" or "I don't--" I'm like, "Huh-uh."

[laughter]

Jim: I saw the picture that she said, "You had a salad and you had a salad for lunch, so no excuses. Eat your veggies."

Dave: Our kids also were in a daycare where they were exposed to a lot of foods. I know for a fact they would eat them, but yes, coming home-- and, actually, I would try and get recipes from the daycare provider and she was like, "Here it is," and they wouldn't touch it at home. Like I said, our son is super picky. Our daughter is, I would say, a little bit more than 50% of the time, she'll eat whatever I make.

Generally, the way things work at home is I handle all the meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I like to cook, so that's part of it. Long ago, I recognized that I was running a restaurant. You know what I mean? "Oh, what do you want to eat for dinner?" Okay, make that. It came to a head a few weeks ago when I made four dishes for one meal, which really was supposed to be a single dish.

It just kept turning into things and things and things and I'm like, "I'm not doing this anymore." At that moment, I realized that-- I mean, I've always known that I've effectively trained the kids that this is a restaurant and you can ask for what you want, so that's on me and I recognize that. The way that I've started to pull back from that a little bit is I don't ask about breakfast anymore. I just put stuff on the table.

This is how I grew up. It was like, "You're eating what I'm making or you're not eating." What I thought was interesting is that since I've been doing this for a couple of weeks, no one has complained about breakfast. They just sit down and they eat. Whereas before, I used to be, "Oh, do you want to eat this?" "No, I don't want to eat that." "You won't eat this?" "No, I don't want to eat that." They took five or 10 minutes just to figure out what they were going to eat for breakfast.

Just the fact that I'm like, "Here it is," and nobody's complaining and they eat that. That already has changed my world. Lunchtime, I'm not there to deal with the, "I don't want to eat this," and it is a little bit different. I think when the kids are eating with other kids, they'll either tend to eat or they tend to not complain about it is my guess. There are times when he comes back and I'm like, "You literally have eaten nothing for lunch," and so he's starving. I give them snacks, which, of course, now, he's not going to eat dinner.

What I've been doing recently is I'm like, "Okay, if you're hungry, it's because you didn't eat lunch. Before you eat a snack, you have to finish your lunch," because at least, that's more nutritious than, "Here's a bag of goldfish." Also, I feel like I haven't wasted any groceries that way. That seems to be working for now, which is good. As far as dinners go, I generally don't plan for them, which I guess is maybe part of the problem. I make whatever I want to make, and then our oldest is always required to at least taste it. If she doesn't like it, that's different, but you got to do--

Jim: You advise them everything?

Dave: Yes. Now, the boy, that can be difficult. We're still working on getting the tasting thing going. I would say, again, like a little bit over 50% of the time, she'll eat whatever we're eating. My goal is to have this list of recipes that I can basically pick and know that I've made it before and it works. My goal is to have a hundred recipes that I can literally just close my eyes, put my finger on one, and know that that recipe works.

As I've been doing that, I've been collating a list of recipes that the daughter likes. What we do now is every week when I'm planning out for the meals, one meal is hers. She can pick whatever she wants to eat because our son's not quite there yet in terms of saying, "Yes, I want that." She gets to pick something and that seems to work out well and then I can give that to her for lunch.

I told her that on her eighth birthday, that is the cutoff. "Happy birthday. I'm not making any more special food for you. You are now eating what the adults are eating." In truth, I should've done this a long time ago. I know this is not a unique problem. You see this all the time on Reddit and TikTok. People are like, "I made this thing and the kid didn't eat it," and then we go out of our way to then try and find something that they're going to eat.

The truth is because I remember this with our daughter when she stopped eating, we went to the doctor. The doctor says, "Look, your kid's not going to starve." [chuckles] They might be hungry or if they don't like the dinner, but they will eat something. I certainly remember growing up where there were meals that I didn't like, but you eat it because that's what it is. That's where I need to get the kids also.

Plus, again, I want them to have variety. We cook all sorts of stuff. We cook Asian, Italian, French, Indian, and I think that's also important for them to get that background as well and to have that exposure. We're still working through it. I'm not sure how it's going to work as well with the boy. Like I said, our daughter's doing okay. The four-year-old, he's still a little iffy. Slowly but surely.

Jim: It's interesting to hear about the breakfast. I recognized a while ago that the girls will hit a point of decision fatigue. "What do you want for breakfast?" They pick something. "What do you want for lunch?" They pick something. "What do you want for snack? What do you want for bedtime snack?" By the end of the day, I don't think they can really handle another decision. Frequently, I'll pick it for them. At least half the time, maybe even more than that, nobody says a word. Whatever you put in front of them, they don't have to think about it and they just end up eating it.

Dave: Yes, and I think the big surprise, I guess, for me was that I thought that they would complain about it. Literally, no one has said, "Boo," for the last few weeks that I've been doing this. They literally just sit down and eat it, which is great. One of the things that I do for our son because he likes pancakes is I'll make a whole batch of pancakes. Right now, we're into fruit pancakes.

I think the last one I made was strawberries, but that's enough to give him breakfast for maybe seven, almost the full school week because he'll eat a couple at a time. I just make them and throw them in the toaster oven. It's great that I'm not constantly making new breakfast and we made a batch of muffins over the weekend with blueberries. I think also for me like having some baked goods where you could make a whole bunch of them and whenever my dad makes waffles, he sends a batch over.

We freeze them and then it's easy. I think those things to also-- That morning routine is just a little bit easier to get them out the door. That's one of my tricks is just baked goods because you make them once. The pancakes are easy enough that you can make them in the morning, bang out a few, and then refrigerate the rest and then he'll get through it during the week. That's something that I've certainly learned.

Switching gears a little bit away from, I guess, more of the social stuff and into more of the academic type things. We're a little bit out of parent-teacher conference. Every time this comes up, I always think about it. I always forget to ask other parents and I'm curious as to what you have to say of it. How do you prepare for parent-teacher conferences? Again, to give that reference point, our oldest are in second grade and the youngest ones are preschool, so it's a little bit different for them. Do you do anything in particular to prep for it? How does that work for you?

Jim: I haven't done anything in particular to prep for the conferences. I haven't really been concerned about academics and I think that's going to change in third grade. It's going to become a little bit more serious. Until through second grade, I think it's really fundamental and elemental things that they're learning. I think that the teachers would let me know if something wasn't clicking with the girls. I'd make myself available. If they get something that they need to tell me, I want to hear it.

So far, I've just been concerned about socialization, social interactions. What are they doing? What are they doing with friends? Are they polite? Are they sharing? All that stuff that helps me understand that they're having a good day at school. Whatever it is that they're doing, it's fairly smooth and it's working out. They're not crying all day or causing problems or throwing paints or whatever. I think you and I had talked about this before too. I like to go early to pick up, particularly with the younger one, and just watch him with the other kids and just to know that that part's working out.

For the older one, towards the end of last year, we did take the report card, which was fairly thorough and just scanned those things, looked at where they were, looked at, where she was the prior semester or the prior year, and see if there's any significant changes or if she was tracking the same way. A lot of those things are not academic. They are things like knows the difference between whatever it is, knows how to do XYZ. I think in third grade and going forward, it's going to become a little bit more intense. For the most part, I just want to know that they're doing okay.

Dave: Do you, when you get report cards back to you, talk to your daughter about the report card or you just say, "Hey, we heard from your teacher. Good job," or how do you guys handle that?

Jim: We've been really encouraging that, "We got your report card. You did great. Your teachers think you're doing great generally." If it's something really egregious, we're not going to lie to her. "I'm not going to nitpick you. You got a four on this, three on this. You should really work on that." She's doing fine.

Even some of the things that maybe are below tracking or whatever, those are things that the teacher will give us some reassurances about like, "It's not a problem." Usually, by the end of the year, they'll catch up. Again, maybe it'll change as they get older. For the most part, the report card is for me and mom. We're the ones that need to have that information and they just need to know that they're doing a good job.

Dave: I think we're very similar in that concept. We look at the report card, but we don't go through it with her line by line like, "You need to work on this and good job on that," but it's just a general sense of like, "Hey, I think you're doing well." It's like a human being as part of it that you're not like a terrible person. You're not the kid that's starting fights or the one that's stealing stuff or whatever it is.

I think part of it is the social-emotional stuff, all that social-emotional learning things that, "Okay, she's becoming a productive little person." For the parent-teacher conference things, my wife and I will sit down and talk about any questions that we have to prep for the meeting and we'll write them down. I think sometimes if things are going pretty well, the parent-teacher conference ends up going like the teacher goes, "Your kid's doing okay," and then you're like, "Great. Now what? I have another 15 minutes."

I think part of why we do it too is just for the teachers that maybe need a little bit of prodding about how my kid's doing that it gives us some checkpoints. They're always, I think, a few things that we want to check in on. You're right. Generally, we don't spend too much time on the academics at this point. I think starting in third grade, I think there is a point of inflection there where things start getting pretty serious.

You'll start to see some kids excelling, the kid's in the middle, and then some kids slowing down. I think you'll start really seeing the stratification of kids based on their skill sets. One thing we're hearing from our daughter right now is a little bit in the math. She seems to feel like the math is starting to stratify a little bit in terms of what I thought was interesting. She said, "Hey, the boys are really good in math." I'm like, "Mm-hmm." Especially--

Jim: This is the age for that. We try to stay on guard.

Dave: Yes, and you hear so much about how part of it is-- There's this pivot point to like, "Oh, boys are better at science and boys are better at math," which is based on nothing, right? I think we want to be doubly careful about making sure that she doesn't feel discouraged and that her math skills are good. It's not like, "Oh, well, math is a boys thing and science is a boys thing." Those are the antithesis of what we want her to grow up with.

Anyways, to get back to the point about the teachers, we plan through a few things that we want to talk about. Going back to the point that you made earlier about dropping off the younger one and seeing how they're doing, what I also like about the younger ones is that there's-- at our school, you can drop the child-- well, pre-COVID, you can drop the child off directly into their classroom, which always gives you that daily opportunity to just check in with the teacher.

I remember specifically in a few years past with our daughter where the teacher would just pull you aside during the morning and just say, "Hey, I just want to let you know about this thing," which is so much easier. I think that had you not drop that child off, it's a small enough thing, they might not send you an email about it. It's nice that you have that opportunity to talk about it.

I feel like in the lower schools when you're able to do that, that certainly, by the time parent-teachers conference comes around, there shouldn't be any surprises. The communication should be free-flowing enough that you should basically know exactly what that teacher is going to say. When we discussed this, our kids are two different physical buildings. Where our older child is, they run a bus where you can go back and forth for the smaller kids to go.

My wife and I decided that, again, this is all pre-COVID, we would do a separate drop-off because, again, that's opportunity to check in with the teacher, especially the younger teacher on a regular basis as our youngest acclimated to a new school. That kind of thing was, I think, very, very important. If those are opportunities that people have in their own schools, I would highly recommend that.

I think the point that you talked about, just being able to observe the kids and we've talked about this in other podcasts, is if you have the opportunity to do any volunteer work, that's when you really get to see how your child is away from you and all the dynamics of how all the other kids, I think, also react to your child. It's not simply how your child is playing, but is your kid the one that's been ostracized? If so, why is that? Is that something they're doing? Is that something the other kids are doing?

You can learn a lot just by going on a field trip and seeing all the interactions between the kids. It's so fascinating. I guess that was one of the things that we learned about parent-teacher conferences. Sometimes it helps to have the questions prepared because you need to draw the teachers out sometimes where you're like, "If the kid is doing okay, then there's nothing to talk about."

Jim: Yes, and those quiet moments when you run out of things to talk about, we have used that as an opportunity to get some direction from the teacher, "Now, what sort of books should she be reading?" Most importantly, the last one was, "Who's a good fit for playdates? Who's got similar personality styles that you think would be good for extracurricular socialization?" That was really helpful.

Dave: I hadn't thought about that. That's a nice one. I think this is a good segue into the next question that I had because I hadn't realized this, but we're going in order of, I think, easiest questions to answer to the more complicated stuff now. We've moved away from bicycling and food into the realm of social interaction and education. I'm curious as to how you guys deal with social interactions at school.

Just last week, I picked up my daughter at school. The minute I picked her up, I knew something was wrong. We're walking into the car and I can just see that there's something welling up inside her. We get in the car and I'm like, "What's up?" and then she loses it and she starts crying. She said, "There are these three girls that say they don't like me." The funny thing is that she's friends with at least two of them. I can't remember who the third girl was, but she does play with the other two. It's just that very complicated.

I think we're starting to see the beginnings of the social complexity, especially for girls. Obviously, you and I are not girls. Those are things that we just don't necessarily know about. I think there is something different between how boys and girls are interacting at this point in time. To see that, there are a lot of times when she comes to me now and I'm at a loss for exactly how to talk about these things with her. I'm curious if you guys had any experiences like that and how are you addressing that?

Jim: I am genuinely concerned about bullying just because that's something that I can't control. I don't know if this event that you're talking about qualifies as bullying. Just the anti-social or exclusionary behavior, it's really hard for me to deal with because it's not something that I can handle directly. It's all something that we have to deal with indirectly. Similar to you, I'll ask her at the end of the day when I pick up, "How was it today?" Sometimes it's very quiet answers.

If there is something that's been of concern, she'll generally share it. I feel like I'm getting good information from her. I don't take any credit for this, but there was an experience where there was an exclusionary event that, "She was my best friend," then, "She's not my best friend." What was very interesting to see is that she didn't internalize it. It was much more matter of fact. She didn't think like, "Well, nobody likes me" or "I'm a bad person."

It was like, "This just isn't working out," which was nice to see. What I will take credit for is there are two things that we practice. One is that I tried to encourage her to be a friend. If you want to have a friend, you need to be a friend and look to be of service. See if you can help somebody out. If there's somebody who's standing alone, go talk to him and try to be a friend. There's an acronym that we use and I think it's SMART.

I don't forget what the last one is. When you see somebody or you meet somebody, smile, you make a compliment, you ask questions, and you respond. I guess it's S-M-A-R and I don't remember what the T is. That's a really helpful practice. Just basic social formula for how to interact with other people. On the flip side, back to the bullying thing, particularly when the girls were younger and there are kids that would hit at pre-school or that would do touching and things like that.

We practiced the mean girl face. "Show me your mean girl face." From the gut, "Hey, don't touch me. Hey, stop hitting me." We say, "The first time it happens, let it go or talk to the teacher. If it happens again or it happens a third time, you start standing up for yourself." I explained that like, "I don't want anybody picking on my girls and I'm not there to stop it, so you have to do it. You have to stand up for yourself and make sure that people are respecting your boundaries."

Dave: For the bullying thing, we teach the same thing. It's like, "Look, the first time, you say 'stop' or you go talk to the teacher." The second or third time, like, "Go ahead and take a swing at him."

[laughter]

Dave: "You have my blessing. If the teacher is not interceding, then feel free to do what you need to do." I know that there's a child in her class right now who is a little problematic. My understanding is he doesn't have a lot of friends. Maybe that's part of it is that because he's trying to do all this stuff, that's why he doesn't have a ton of friends. I think with respect to this particular instance, I'm not clear that it was bullying per se, but there's certainly was almost like this.

There was definitely like, I don't want to say a social pecking order, but there is certainly something about this. One girl in particular. I think part of it is that one of the girls feels very much protective of the other girl in terms of, "That's my best friend." I think that that's really where this came about is that maybe my daughter was trying to play with this girl. The best friend of this girl was like, "Hey, I don't want to share you, and so I'm going to tell you I'm not your friend."

I think it was more like the head game stuff. For me, I told my daughter this story a couple of times as these kinds of things keep happening. I said, "Look, at this age, this does happen. A lot of times, it blows over." I very distinctly remember when I was in first grade, my best friend and I had just a knock-down-drag-out fight. Not a physical fight, but it was like, you know. The story behind it was that he wanted to be Han Solo. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker, but we needed a Darth Vader and no one would be Darth Vader.

He went around telling all of our friends don't be friends with me for the whole day. Literally, the next day or a few hours later, we were playing again. That concept of like, yes, these things do happen. A lot of times, the kids don't really mean it as they're starting to learn about themselves. I try and tell her like, "Look, we've seen this before. This is not the first time it's happened to you where somebody says, 'I'm not going to be your friend,' and then literally hours later, they're your best friend again."

I hope that by illustrating something from my own example that it will help her go, "Okay, I can believe what daddy's saying because this has happened to him before." I try and reference like, "Oh, remember last year, we had the same thing. Remember like a day later, it was all fine." Like I said, literally, the next day, less than 24 hours later, she was playing with the girl because I saw it. I was at the drop-off and they were talking like they were best friends all over again.

It seems kind of come in and out and so I'm trying to explain that the kids don't really mean it at this age. I don't know. I might have to pivot that when they get a little bit older and the kids actually do mean it, but it does feel like they don't really understand what these things mean because, again, just a few hours later, it's like nothing happened. I think that's part of it.

Jim: Something about what you said, the social pecking order. I had this vision of when my girls were younger and I think I did it with my younger brother as well. I just reach over and smack him just to see what would happen. What are mom and dad going to do? What is my little brother going to do? Something about that experience that your daughter had, it kind of feels like that like, "Let's do this mean thing or say this thing and see what happens." Maybe there's not some real intention there other than like, "Let's just see what this social power is, see how that works and what to do with it."

Dave: At least in terms of how our daughter has been interacting with us, it does feel like they're trying to find out what the boundaries are. That's just part of growing up. She's stolen some candy from-- Not stolen, she snuck some candy, right? It's like, "Okay, what are mom and dad going to do or how long can I get away with this? If I get caught, what is the repercussion?"

We were talking about this recently where she snuck a bunch of iPad time and then went to school sleepy. Now, she's on a three-month hiatus from screen time because of it. Now, she knows that we're pretty serious about, "If you try and sneak in screen time, the repercussions are significant." At this age, I think they're starting to understand that concept of a social structure, but also just, again, like all of these social norms and trying to figure out what these things mean like what really is a best friend and like, "Can I turn off my bed--"

It is like a light switch like, "You're my best friend right now, but in a minute from now, you're not." I really feel everybody's trying to push the boundaries. I guess the other complicated thing, which will lead us into maybe the next question here, is I think one concern is also how the parents are, what the relationship is with the parent, with their child. If your daughter's having a problem with another child, what is their parent talking to and how is that interaction going?

Jim: The best friend thing, I forgot to mention that. Early on, we tried to steer away from the best friend, obviously, because if you're not the best friend, that doesn't feel great, right? We tried to say we have good friends. They're my good friend or maybe even a better friend, but they're a good friend. The best friend feels very exclusionary in that if you have a best friend, then everyone else is not your best friend.

That could be different, but I feel naïve because kids do have a best friend. They've got a first friend or a preferred friend and it's trying to figure out, how do you frame that in a way like maybe that's your favorite friend? The idea of, "You're my best friend," putting a title on it or a label on it can be exclusionary. Again, maybe that's just something people are trying out.

Dave: I think also at this age, it's unclear to me really if that's the best best friend. I think the kids are going to go through like I can see how in middle school, there is somebody that you're tied to the hip with, right? At this age, I think also it's important to have a bunch of friends. That should be part of their actual growth as a little person of like, okay, understanding the complexities of having multiple people in your circle and the ins and outs and the sharing. As you talk about, like best friends but to the exclusion of others.

All of these things, I think, that having a bunch of friends does build more of a wider social structure. Whether or not as parents, we're actually able to influence that, I think, is a question because they're going to do what they're going to do on the playground. They're going to ask for playdates with whoever they want with playdates. I think it is difficult, but in as much as we can say, "Hey, try and find a bunch of friends." Over time, you'll start to narrow down the point of the pyramid as they get older.

Jim: We talked about this in the extracurricular conversation in that podcast where I feel if my daughter is maybe in a swim class or a martial arts class, and then is at school and maybe that's an afterschool program, maybe she's got a favorite friend in each of those places. That's a way to have a much wider circle of friends rather than the close clique that may be in the class if we can diversify, I guess, is an interesting word to use, but they could have friends from different arenas or different forms of their life. I think that helps, as you say, balance out that socialization.

Dave: I think we've discussed this on other podcasts as well. The fact that I think it's good that at our school, they're constantly moving the kids around. What we're starting to see now is the kids are able to maintain their relationships even if they're not in the same class. Whereas before, it was like, "My best friend or my friends are going to come out of whatever class I'm in."

To be able to have a more permanent tie, it's not just like, "I see these kids every day. Therefore, I'm going to find a friend in here," especially when you're moving into classes where you don't necessarily know any kids. Last year, my daughter was in a class and I looked at the class. I'm like, "Who are these kids? We've been here for four years. I know a quarter of these kids. Where did all the rest of these kids come from?"

It was interesting because going back to the field trips, the very first field trip we went on, I noticed there was a huge clique of girls. That year was interesting. I think it was almost 50/50 girls, boys, but the clique of girls was maybe 80% of the girls were in this one clique. My daughter was friends with a couple of other kids outside, but I think being able to have friends that are from outside the class, I think, also helps you just in general like understand how those relationships are going to evolve over time.

I think it's important, at least for us, that we don't try and intercede in the class selection because I think a lot of times, it's easy to just be like, "Oh, I know this family. They're good people. I want to make sure my daughter stays with them." I think there is something to being forced to go through the whole thing over and over again even though I'm sure my daughter would prefer to stay with her closest friends year over year. I think it is important to have that mix up every year.

I guess this then brings us to the last and I think I don't want to say the most pointed, but this to me is the most sticky of all questions because it deals with parents. Kids stealing at school. Again, I'm going to take another example. Some of it just happened. I'm still in the process of working through the specific example, so I'd love to hear your input. Basically, my daughter went to school. She had some Pokémon cards on her desk and then she came back and they were gone.

One of the girls said, "I saw this boy take them from your desk," and I asked my daughter, "Did you tell the teacher?" I can't remember. Whatever reason, teachers are not involved in this conversation. I'm like, "You know what?" and this goes back to a little bit about the bullying thing is that I know that my daughter doesn't particularly like this boy because he's one of these kids that hits kids and just does. He's one of the annoying kids.

I wouldn't say it's like full-on bullying because some of it is not bullying. It's really just, he's the annoying kid. Maybe he's lashing out. I don't know. I don't know what his deal is. I already have a sense in my head that like, "Look, my daughter doesn't like this guy and I know for a fact that he does kick her." I don't think it's like a kick that hurts, but it's still something that is unacceptable, right?

She tells the teacher and she's like, "He does it to everybody." He's not just picking on my daughter. It's everybody. Already, my spidey senses stuff. I'm like, "Look, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go tell his parents to go find out what's going on." Already, this creates a level of complexity now that we're getting parents involved. I'm really cautious about how I phrase this email because I don't want to be like, "Your kids stole a bunch of stuff from my daughter. Bring it back," for a number of reasons.

I think one is that parent is not going to react super well if I just come out straight up and accuse her child of doing something, A. B, truthfully, I don't know this kid that accused this other boy of taking my daughter's cards. If it was a girl, so one of her friends, it was a girl. If I knew this girl and I knew her family, I might be more willing to be like, "Okay, I can trust this girl," but I don't know this girl who told my daughter like, "I saw that boy take those cards."

There is a little bit of like I'm hearing third hand. For all I know, she took the cards herself and I'm going to make this boy the scapegoat because everybody hates him anyway. I tried to be really cognizant of that in the email that I sent to the mom. I was like, "Look, here's the situation. My daughter had some cards. This other girl said they saw your son taking the cards. I don't know if this was a misunderstanding. I was just wondering if you could check in with him and see if he knew anything about it."

I sent that email off and I'm like, "I probably shouldn't have sent that email off." I sent it off and I'm waiting for a response. I'm like, "This is a mistake. What a terrible thing to do." The woman responds to me later and she's like, "Oh, I just got this. My son's asleep. I'll ask him tomorrow." I'm like, "Okay, let's see what happens." She gets back to me and she's like, "Look, we asked him about it. He said he didn't take it, but we took all of his cards away. If you can tell us which card she's missing, we can make sure that it's not in the deck."

Now, there's a couple of problems with that because it's like baseball cards. He could absolutely have the same card my daughter's missing and it wouldn't be him that stole it. To me, I appreciate that that was her solution and my daughter's not enough into Pokémon to be like, "I'm missing the chars hard level 56," right? She can't do that. The woman said, "Hey, if he's lying to me, there's going to be hell to pay."

I'm like, "Okay, that feels good to me," and then she's like-- What did she say? She said, "If you can give me a little bit more understanding of what happens before we accuse him again, I'm happy to jump on a Zoom call." I was like, "Okay." Again, this is the complexity of you just don't know how other parents are going to react and whether they're going to take it seriously and feel defensive. I'm like, "Okay, the first hurdle has passed," so then I responded to her.

I said, "Look, if he says he didn't do it, I'm going to take him at his word because, again, this is a third-hand story. I just wanted to check in," and I said, "I appreciate you looking into this. Again, I want to be sensitive to the fact that this is third hand, and so I'm not accusing him of doing anything. I just wanted to see what he had to say." I sent that email on Thursday. I haven't heard back yet. My guess is that it didn't go over real well. [chuckles] I suppose at least she didn't send me a really pissed-off email. Anyway, that's the story.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, what you might've done differently. I think for me, the big thing is I guess I would say that thinking about it again, I feel like it's one of those pick your battles that, ultimately, I'm not clear that if I had to do it over again, it would've been worth it because I do feel like I was hopefully pretty clear about, "I'm not accusing your son of anything. I just wanted you to check in," but I guess maybe that, in and of itself, is an accusation. This is where things get sticky. I would really love to hear what you think about this.

Jim: Oh, man, I wish I could help. That is a heck of a situation, but I think you did a lot of things that I would do. I'll obviously bring the conversation with the parents rather than grabbing the kid by the scruff of the neck.

Dave: "Give me the cards."

Jim: "Hand them over." You're right. It's definitely a conversation for the parents. The three-way accusation with the other girl who said, "That kid took it," that's really tricky. I really don't know how I could help. I was trying to think of a comparable event. I think I've forgotten some of the details, but there was-- so our older daughter, there was a time where she just took the things that she wanted.

In a way, it almost felt like it was an obsessive thing. She couldn't help herself. There was these little plastic phones that her cousins had. We got home one day and they were in her backpack and like, "Where did these come from?" She's like, "They gave them to me," or whatever, and they didn't. She had just pocketed them and taken them just because she was so attached to them.

We talked through that. We figured that out and she was a little bit younger and it was family. It wasn't a big deal, but there was another event where, similarly, there was something that another girl had that she just liked. She was very attached to it and just took it. The other parent did contact us and say, "This is what happened." It wasn't a gift and she didn't have permission to take it essentially.

We had to bring it back to the school the next day obviously and say you're sorry and work it out with the parents. That night, the day that she brought it back, she came back and she had it again. I had this moment of just-- I felt like it was a preview of some teenage year of like, "You lied to me. I felt just betrayed." We marched over to the other houses like, "You're bringing this back right now." We got there and she said, "No, she said I could take it home." I was like, "No, it happened twice already."

Dave: "You're lying to me now."

Jim: Exactly. We walked over to the other family's house and they said, "Yes, she said that she could take it home tonight." I guess we got lucky in that respect, but that's not nearly similar enough to your experience other than, I think, dealing with the parents is obviously the way to go. I don't know how you would resolve it otherwise.

Dave: I feel like where I went wrong is that this is a third-hand accusation effectively, right? It's one thing if my daughter says, "I saw that boy take that thing off my desk." I think that's where it went wrong, at least where it just gets a little bit more complicated. Because if I think about it again, I'm like, "I don't know that I have a real justification to go at--" Again, if it was a child that I knew really well and I knew the parents really well to be like, "Okay, that girl never lies."

Again, I'm not saying this girl's lying, but I don't know what the truth is, right? I think that was the mistake is acting on what is effectively a third-hand story. This is actually not the first time it's-- I remember it was two years ago. Somebody took something out of her backpack like straight-up unzipped the backpack and took something out of it. I can't remember how we resolved it.

I think that somebody saw her take it-- somebody saw the kid-- I don't know if it's a boy or girl take it and then told one of the monitors out on the yard and the monitor squared it away and make sure that it was returned to my daughter, but this is the age, right? All of these things are just starting, all of the social stuff. This is just going to get more and complicated.

I think, in hindsight, if I look at it from the other parent's perspective, the mistake was, "Hey, look, you're telling me that my kid took something and you don't even know if the story is even remotely true." I guess part of it was that I acted off information that I already had about this boy, right? I was already predisposed to thinking this kid was going to do this because of the kinds of stories that my daughter has been telling me which, again, it doesn't mean that he's stealing stuff.

Certainly, a kid that's going around, kicking, and punching kids, you make your assumptions. It's just that. It's an assumption. I think in fairness to the kid, just because you're going around punching people doesn't mean you're stealing, although it does seem like there might be a correlation. Again, I think that if I had to do it over again, I would not have done it and I would have simply just let it go.

I think the lesson for my daughter was like, "Like, you got to put your stuff away and you got to know that anything that goes to school might not come back with you. Even if you know who took it, it doesn't mean it's coming back with you." I think that was the mistake that I made. The challenge too is that these are young kids. Also, you just don't know how the parent is going to react.

Are they going to just fly off the handle going, "Look, you're accusing my kid of doing this thing. I know my kid," or whatever? It's a very sensitive topic when you're dealing with somebody's kid. Was it really worth all of this? I have a ton of stress, probably more stress than the mother who may or may not be pissed off at me. I have a ton of stress about it. At this point, what? Do I apologize?

I don't know. The whole thing is just weird, right? Learning process for me. It's funny because we have podcasts about like advice on raising newborns and stuff like this. Now, I think it's like a whole new world of the social interaction and how to deal with that and, again, how to deal with other parents and not knowing the intricacies. I was at a field trip one time and I saw these two parents. They were talking about their kids.

It was right after a parent-teacher conference and the kids were younger. I remember these two parents were like, "Yes, the teacher says our kids are out of control and it's because we're not--" I think both sets of parents are doctors or lawyers. It's just like, really, people that don't have a ton of time. It sounded like the teacher was like, "My guess is you as parents are not spending enough time with your kids and they're acting out at school."

The parents are like, "Maybe we need to do a playdate or do drop-off like maybe we should carpool." They're just trying to strategize on ways to help their kids. Again, it's just that the complexities, you don't know what everybody's home life is like. You're just not clear how that email that gets sent off is going to be responded to. All of a sudden, you're the bad guy.

Again, even if my daughter was like, "Hey, I saw this kid take these cards," I would fight for that. The other parent might be like, "My little angel would never in a million years take anything," even though he or she is like the greatest defender that the school has ever seen in their lifetime. You just don't know. I think that was the complexity, but ongoing story. [chuckles] I'll fill you in if there's an update to it.

Jim: There's something else about just standing up for your daughter, I think, that makes sense. I'm forgetting what we had read, but there was some times when the girls were younger and they'd be at the playground, just the neighborhood playground. There'd be some kid who did something mean or threw sand or something. My feeling is just walk away. Just don't play with that kid. Just don't worry about it.

There was something that we had read or my wife had read that it's important for you or for us, for me, I guess, to take my daughter's hand and come over there and say, "Look, you did this thing. Can you apologize?" or "That wasn't a nice thing." I don't remember what it was, but there was something about doing and it was totally a pointless exercise other than having my daughter see that I had her back. In some ways, I think that's what you've done with your daughter. It is a very sticky situation with the accusation and all that. For your daughter to know that you're taking it seriously and that you believe her and that you're doing what you can, that's got its own merit.

Dave: It's an interesting point though that you make because, generally, like stuff on the playground, I'll just take the girl and go like, "All right, let's walk away from this." Because, again, you don't know how parents are going to react. I think you're right. There is something that is important to show the child that you're there for them. As an adult, oftentimes, I'm like, "This is not worth it."

I remember this one time, we were at one of the museums and they had this little playground thing. The kids were all like, whatever, two or three. This three-year-old went up and just slammed this other kid. The kid went down crying and the mom just went and quickly take her child that was hit. Meanwhile, this other three-year-old is just like throwing stuff around hitting kids. I'm like, "That parent doesn't care at all."

Going up to that parent and saying, "Your kid just took a swing at this other kid and just knock them off their feet," you're not going to get anywhere with that, right? All you're going to do is you're going to have a confrontation with this parent who clearly, in my opinion, is not a good parent because they're just not at all paying any attention. Really, all your risk is basically getting into some major altercation. Generally, I'm like, "All right, turn the other cheek," because, whatever. I think you're right. It does make sense in those instances to confront and whatever.

You get into a verbal altercation, you get into an altercation. Maybe it went over two or three, it doesn't matter. Certainly, second grade, the kids can understand the complexity of what's happening. I liked to bring it up. I still think I'd probably pick my battles. Certainly, I would think twice about turning the other cheek for certain things as opposed to like, "Okay, is this a teachable moment for my daughter to understand, to stand up for herself, or that her parents are going to stand up for her?" It's definitely something that I would think about and move forward.

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