Speaker 1: Welcome to Parenting out Loud, the podcast for parents who
Speaker 1: don't always listen to parenting podcasts. We like to bring
Speaker 1: you the news, the trends, and the culture and what
Speaker 1: parents are thinking about. I'm Monice Boy, I'm Amelia Lesto.
Speaker 2: And I'm Stacy Hicks.
Speaker 3: And coming up on today's show, another celebrity child has
Speaker 3: changed their name to distance themselves from their celebrity dad.
Speaker 3: And it's a pattern that's feeling a little too familiar.
Speaker 1: And look, we are a show. We're pro dad on
Speaker 1: this show. We love talking about good dads. Today is
Speaker 1: not that day. Today it's dickhead dads. That's right.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 4: And look in this is not normal news. I bring
Speaker 4: to you a chilling warning from the government to schools.
Speaker 4: It's a real watershed moment, I think for kids online.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can't wait for that. Okay, news aside, I'm going
Speaker 1: to solve the what's for dinner tonight question with a
Speaker 1: two minute dinner hack buck. Yeah, girls, get excited. It's
Speaker 1: we can in a bag.
Speaker 3: Love it.
Speaker 1: But first, in case you missed it, a couple of
Speaker 1: little tidbits from the news cycle that you might have
Speaker 1: scrolled past this week. And it's our job to bring
Speaker 1: them to you. And first I present to you Megan
Speaker 1: Markle on Master Chef Our Duchess. She was on our
Speaker 1: screens this week. If you're still watching broadcast TV, I
Speaker 1: don't know many people who are, but look anyway. Then
Speaker 1: naturally the conversation on master Chef turned to how she's
Speaker 1: raising Archie and Lillabet, and she said, thankfully, they're very
Speaker 1: good eaters, and she mentioned a dessert policy in their house.
Speaker 1: Take a listen to this.
Speaker 5: The kids jump in a lot, especially with the Gordon.
Speaker 5: I think it's really it's such a nice luxury to
Speaker 5: be able to have so much space and things to cook.
Speaker 5: And if they say, Momma, can I have dessert? You say,
Speaker 5: if you can pick it, you can have it.
Speaker 2: He got pick chocolate.
Speaker 1: Now you can't pick that.
Speaker 2: You pick a nice pas phod or what not?
Speaker 6: Up.
Speaker 5: But now we always have a nace as my husband say,
Speaker 5: pud after dinner.
Speaker 1: Okay, what it's very sweet, it's very on BRANDI magna mons.
Speaker 2: Yes, you can't pick a magnum.
Speaker 1: Do you have a rule in your house, Amelia.
Speaker 4: Rule magnums on days that have been tough, maybe a
Speaker 4: mini one, but a magnam and mine is not.
Speaker 3: If you can pick it, you can eat it. Mine's
Speaker 3: just if you can reach it, you can eat it. Please,
Speaker 3: don't make me get up. You can grab it, you
Speaker 3: can have it.
Speaker 4: Aren't you from an unusually tall family?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Just makes everything fair game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't hide anything at the top of the shell.
Speaker 3: She's five and she's already reaching up there.
Speaker 1: But look, that's Megan over and done with. Because I
Speaker 1: actually think Amelia, you have found the parenting story of
Speaker 1: the week.
Speaker 4: Look step aside, Eastern rosella boy, we love your song.
Speaker 4: But there's a new musical prodigy in town and his
Speaker 4: name is Charlie Wu. He is thirteen years old. He
Speaker 4: is from the Melbourne suburb of Wheeler's Hill, and he
Speaker 4: has done It's all very proud because over his winter holidays,
Speaker 4: Charlie traveled to Russia with his mum, Ashley, to compete
Speaker 4: in the Grand Performance Piano competition, and Charlie performed what
Speaker 4: has been described as the hardest piano piece in the world.
Speaker 4: It's Rakmaninov's Concerto Number three. For people who remember the
Speaker 4: movie Shine with Jeffrey Rush back in the nineties, that
Speaker 4: was the piece that drove him crazy. It was so hard. Anyway,
Speaker 4: thirteen year old Charlie played it and he came in
Speaker 4: equal first in the global competition in Russia.
Speaker 1: In Russia, Russia. Can you imagine that? Oh, God, so intimidating.
Speaker 4: This is so good on so many levels, because number one,
Speaker 4: this kid has composure that any adult would wish for.
Speaker 4: Just take a listen to him talking about making mistakes
Speaker 4: when he's playing sometimes.
Speaker 6: Oh, I often make mistakes when I play piano, especially
Speaker 6: when I'm playing pieces that are more new. I try
Speaker 6: my best to ignore them, and I always try to
Speaker 6: focus on the line, the overarching story and narrative of
Speaker 6: the pieces I've been playing, and I try to express
Speaker 6: that instead of actually focusing on the accuracy of mind.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 4: I think the reason I really love this story, in
Speaker 4: addition to how impressive Charlie is, is that it highlights
Speaker 4: one of the best things about parenting is when your
Speaker 4: kids get really into something that you know nothing about,
Speaker 4: and you just watch them go, You watch them shine,
Speaker 4: and you're shrugging your shoulders and going, where did that
Speaker 4: come from? Because Charlie's mum, Ashley Wu is talking in
Speaker 4: this next clip about how that's how she.
Speaker 2: Feels about Charlie's success.
Speaker 4: And by the way, the sound that you hear in
Speaker 4: the background in this interview is the six year old
Speaker 4: Charlie playing Mary had a little lamb.
Speaker 7: And Benie, I did the hymn Sun and just pray
Speaker 7: for fun. His first piano teacher told me he might
Speaker 7: have perfect pitch because I don't know about music, and
Speaker 7: I don't really understand what does that mean.
Speaker 2: I mean, but I love that you.
Speaker 7: Can whenever music he listened, he can pray it all.
Speaker 7: And then I think he may have some parents.
Speaker 4: We think he might have some talent. Ashley, the world
Speaker 4: agrees with you.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I think everyone secretly wants their kids to be at
Speaker 3: Charlie where they are a prodigy without you having to
Speaker 3: push it. They just get obsessed with something and roll
Speaker 3: with it. It's kind of like a little bit of clout,
Speaker 3: but you have literally nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: This was such a beautiful story. Thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: this Last of Heaven to the podcast. The other piece
Speaker 1: I loved about it was he takes his skills to
Speaker 1: aged care homes in warthor and plays for their elderly residents.
Speaker 1: I know, can Charlie wou get any better.
Speaker 2: Well done, Charlie.
Speaker 4: He won a baby Gram piano at the competition, but
Speaker 4: the organizers said, look, we can't shit that to Australia
Speaker 4: and you know what, fair enough, Russian organizers. So instead
Speaker 4: he was given a cash prize of thirty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh great, well that's awesome.
Speaker 3: Well, this week I want to talk about two Hollywood
Speaker 3: megastar dads that were in the headlines for the exact
Speaker 3: same reason, but nothing to do with the reasons they
Speaker 3: would like to be in the headlines. The first was
Speaker 3: Brad Pitt, whose daughter, Vivian Jolly Pitt is now eighteen,
Speaker 3: which I just can't believe that she's eighteen. She legally
Speaker 3: filed to remove Pitt from her surname in Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: and this follows the pattern of her older siblings. So Shiloh, Zahara,
Speaker 3: and Maddix have all already done the same in the
Speaker 3: last two years, filed to remove Pitt from their names.
Speaker 3: And this is just an interesting tidbit that I didn't
Speaker 3: know on the pit kids. So under Californian law, you
Speaker 3: have to publish your intent publicly to change your name
Speaker 3: before you do so, so it's a really big statement.
Speaker 3: You can't just kind of go down to the local
Speaker 3: office or post office and change your name. So they
Speaker 3: are both Sahara and Maddix published their intent in the
Speaker 3: Los Angeles Daily Journal before their court hearings. They had
Speaker 3: to publicly say this will no longer be my name.
Speaker 3: My name will be this, and that just feels like
Speaker 3: such a huge statement to have to make before you're
Speaker 3: estranging from someone. Then, on the other side of the country,
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise's daughter, Suri Cruse, did the exact same thing.
Speaker 3: So records have confirmed that she registered to vote in
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania using the name Suri Noel, which is her mum,
Speaker 3: Katie Holmes's middle name, So she's using that as her
Speaker 3: last name. And that's confirming something that people have thought
Speaker 3: for a long time because Suri and Tom haven't been
Speaker 3: seen together in over a decade, basically since Tom Cruise
Speaker 3: and Katie Holmes got divorced. I just want to take
Speaker 3: you back because there might be people listening that don't
Speaker 3: remember this. It's kind of faded from their memory. There
Speaker 3: might be people that don't know this, that are lucky
Speaker 3: enough to be young enough to not know any of this.
Speaker 3: But there was a time where Suri Cruse was literally
Speaker 3: the most famous baby in.
Speaker 1: The world, like and she was everywhere and gorgeous and
Speaker 1: oh god, yes, squish a little face. She did a
Speaker 1: cover of magazines.
Speaker 3: Yes, this baby was debuted on the cover of Vanity
Speaker 3: Fair magazine. It was shot by Annie Leebel. It's and
Speaker 3: it was a twenty two page spread of the family. Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was that was big time even in those times.
Speaker 1: Story it was the girl from Dawson's Creek, the girl
Speaker 1: next door, Mary's the biggest Hollywood star mission, impossible, Maverick
Speaker 1: like it. It was just perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this very much became Tom Cruise's personality for
Speaker 3: a long time. Was the wife guy, and that he
Speaker 3: was the devoted dad to Suri already had older childrown
Speaker 3: because he was so successfully pivoted into my private life
Speaker 3: is mysterious and I just love making movies.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he was. He was the og wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was jumping on couches on Oprah and telling
Speaker 3: them how much he loved you know, Katie, And that
Speaker 3: was very much part of his personality. And then as
Speaker 3: I was saying, like they have not been seen together
Speaker 3: in years and years, but I think it's so interesting.
Speaker 3: Brad Pitt with this story as well, has been in
Speaker 3: the headlines for years around being estranged from his children.
Speaker 3: But for both men, I think they very successfully managed
Speaker 3: to make people forget that this is the relationship that
Speaker 3: they have with their children. In fact, both men have
Speaker 3: arguably have bigger careers now than they ever have. Like
Speaker 3: Brad Pitt was in F one, Tom Cruise was doing
Speaker 3: Top Gun, Maverick and Mission Impossible reboot. And yet the
Speaker 3: mothers of those children are the ones that have faced
Speaker 3: constant rhetoric about well, what did you do? You must
Speaker 3: have done something to turn those children against their fathers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I was having a look into this story because
Speaker 3: it's something that's like in my DNA, these stories from
Speaker 3: growing up, in you know, magazine, Times, but even in People,
Speaker 3: there was a quote from a source close to Brad,
Speaker 3: which means it was a very reputable quote at the time,
Speaker 3: saying that it was incredib sad that the kids had
Speaker 3: distanced themselves from Pitt, but not surprising after years of
Speaker 3: one parent weaponizing children against the other with no regard
Speaker 3: for the consequences. Referring to Angelina Shirley. So, I think
Speaker 3: it's just interesting that we're seeing this play out again
Speaker 3: with another high profile child where they're estranging from their parents,
Speaker 3: and yet it's still the women in those relationships that
Speaker 3: are copying the flak for that happening.
Speaker 4: I think that's so true, and I want to hear
Speaker 4: from Mond's about how the men have pulled off this
Speaker 4: magic trick. But I just want to add a little
Speaker 4: wrinkle in this theory, which is that if we go
Speaker 4: further back in time, Tom Cruiser's wife, Nicole Kidman is
Speaker 4: strange from reportedly estranged from the children from that.
Speaker 2: Marriage who seem to be.
Speaker 4: Involved in Scientology in a way that Nicole Kidman is not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was definitely the undertones of Tom cruisers
Speaker 3: split from k Holmes as well. She's never public spoken
Speaker 3: about that, but that the messaging then was that part
Speaker 3: of the divorce was protecting Surrey from the Church of Scientology,
Speaker 3: and there was real.
Speaker 4: Cloak and dagga stuff that Katie had to execute in
Speaker 4: order to get out of that marriage. If you remember that,
Speaker 4: I'm sure you do, actually, since it's in your DNA.
Speaker 4: But there was a secret passage from their apartment in
Speaker 4: the New York neighborhood of Chelsea through the Whole Food's
Speaker 4: grocery store that was in the basement of their building
Speaker 4: that she used to escape without the paparazzi learning about it.
Speaker 2: I did not know that bit.
Speaker 3: You've given me a new tidbit for this story.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm a bit lost. So I guess what we're trying
Speaker 1: to answer today or unpick, because we don't answer anything,
Speaker 1: we just analyze and think about things. Is like, there's
Speaker 1: this new brand of Hollywood dad that's rising up. It's
Speaker 1: the Chris Hemsworth, it's the Dwayne Rock Johnson's, it's the devoted,
Speaker 1: doting dad, and they use that to like elevate their brand.
Speaker 1: And then on the other side, there is this dad
Speaker 1: from maybe a generation ago, arguably who have the same
Speaker 1: level of star power, but there's an undercurrent of they're
Speaker 1: a bit of a deadbeat and yet it doesn't affect
Speaker 1: their career. They still kind of get away with it.
Speaker 1: Is that what we're trying to unpick?
Speaker 4: But I mean, these two men are I think the
Speaker 4: biggest jen X movie stars right Like I don't. I
Speaker 4: can't think of anyone else that would beat either of them.
Speaker 2: No, And.
Speaker 4: One question I have is is this just seeing a
Speaker 4: trajectory of a relationship and a family over a long
Speaker 4: period of time, or maybe it's just something inherent to
Speaker 4: that particular generation of deadbeat dads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it's all speculation, right, But I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things. And I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about family estrangement because I think that's really interesting
Speaker 1: in and of itself. But first I kind of want
Speaker 1: to talk about the blood Pit playbook of PR crisis management,
Speaker 1: which we have touched on before. But in case you
Speaker 1: missed that episode, when those allegations were bubbling around him
Speaker 1: about six years ago, allegations of him choking one of
Speaker 1: their children on a plane, it went, it was dismissed
Speaker 1: from court there, he was never charged for anything. But
Speaker 1: when that was all swirling around, he came out in
Speaker 1: GQ and did the World's Hottest photoshoot, and then he
Speaker 1: did this confessional interview where he talked about quitting weed,
Speaker 1: getting sober, and it was kind of a redemption arc
Speaker 1: for him of I'm cleaning up my act.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Nowhere in that huge feature does he name a single
Speaker 1: one of his children or comment on being a dad.
Speaker 1: And when he's pushed about Angelina, he uses very minimizing
Speaker 1: language and very generic, sort of unemotional language. He says
Speaker 1: he feels contained and secure in his new chap. This
Speaker 1: is a technique called bridging as well. You see politicians
Speaker 1: do it quite a lot. It's where if someone pushes
Speaker 1: you on a point, you kind of direct the conversation
Speaker 1: back to the key messages that you want to talk about.
Speaker 1: And you'll often see it with politicians where they will
Speaker 1: not answer the question, they will just kind of stay
Speaker 1: on the same track that they were on. And Brad Pitt,
Speaker 1: if you analyze his interviews, there's a lot of bridging
Speaker 1: that's going on. Well, that was twenty seventeen, he did
Speaker 1: that six years ago. He did an interview with Dak
Speaker 1: Shepherd in twenty twenty five. Now Dax's is known. This
Speaker 1: is a two and a half hour chat with a
Speaker 1: host who is known for pulling out a lot of good,
Speaker 1: kind of raw material out of guests. Brad Pitt talks
Speaker 1: about again AA, he talks about his sobriety, He talks
Speaker 1: about his relationship with his own father. But in that
Speaker 1: two and a half hours, the conversation does not go
Speaker 1: anywhere near fatherhood. And I think that's really deliberate. They
Speaker 1: had to have been a precondition for the interview.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because how do you do how do you conduct
Speaker 4: a personal interview with someone for two and a half
Speaker 4: hours talking about their relationship with their own father and
Speaker 4: their kids just simply don't come up in conversation. This
Speaker 4: was a directive from the pit camp.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And similarly, the Tom Cruise playbook is quite quite
Speaker 1: the same. Slightly different though. So he did as you
Speaker 1: said before, Stacy. When he first was with Katie Holmes,
Speaker 1: it was this fairytale romance. And he did this one
Speaker 1: interview with Oprah in two thousand and six where he
Speaker 1: jumped on the couch and the internet never forgot. He
Speaker 1: became widely mocked. He was the Internet's biggest meme. He
Speaker 1: was just his popularity took a massive nose dive, and
Speaker 1: that means real dollars in Hollywood, right, If you're not
Speaker 1: a popular actor, you can't sell movies. And so his
Speaker 1: comeback was talking about your personal life. That was the
Speaker 1: last interview he did that Oprah one and where he
Speaker 1: talked anything about his personal life. From then, it's just
Speaker 1: talk less, work more, do your own stunts, let your
Speaker 1: movies do the talking. There is no dad talk, there
Speaker 1: is no fatherhood talk, there is no love talk. And
Speaker 1: I think it's really deliberate to sort of distance themselves
Speaker 1: and it worked. It worked for a period of time, right,
Speaker 1: because no one else in the story could talk. But
Speaker 1: what we've seen, Stacy, as you've brought this today, Suri
Speaker 1: Cruz has turned eighteen. She now can legally change her name.
Speaker 1: These kids are now adults, with their own lawyers, their
Speaker 1: own social media followings, and their new names.
Speaker 3: It's interesting and their message is loud and clear that
Speaker 3: they want nothing to do with that person. And I
Speaker 3: think it's good that you acknowledge two monds like. Estrangement
Speaker 3: is complicated and messy, and as we've said, neither of
Speaker 3: these men have really publicly spoken about the situation. They've
Speaker 3: gone to great lengths to try and make us forget
Speaker 3: about that. But I think, as you said, we're seeing
Speaker 3: estrangement on the rise so much and so many people
Speaker 3: speaking more openly about that now. And it's rare that
Speaker 3: it ever comes down to one incident. It's usually a
Speaker 3: sequence of incidents, right that lead to the severing of ties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an Australian researcher, Kylie Aglius, and her entire
Speaker 1: job is looking at how and why estrangement happens, and
Speaker 1: she says there's usually three reasons. It's abuse, it's poor
Speaker 1: parenting and values differences, or a sort of an ongoing
Speaker 1: disconnection from the parent rather than one single incident that
Speaker 1: causes an estrangement, and most, she says, have cycled through
Speaker 1: periods of cutting off and reconnecting. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: going no contact usually isn't that sort of snap decision,
Speaker 1: and it's very rarely mutual or symmetrical. So very few
Speaker 1: people actually want to be estranged from their families, which
Speaker 1: is why part of the our kids these days just
Speaker 1: cut people off. Kind of rhetoric that we hear sometimes
Speaker 1: sort of under sells what's really going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well we see that with David Beckham and Brooklyn Beckham,
Speaker 3: like the Victorian, David have made that pretty clear that
Speaker 3: they don't want to be estranged, that it's a one
Speaker 3: way street, and that's kind of their play.
Speaker 4: I think everything you've said here Mon's about the double
Speaker 4: standards applied to the Hollywood dads is absolutely correct. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, I do think that the way
Speaker 4: we're talking about estrangement in our culture, it is getting
Speaker 4: more sophisticated. And exhibit A on this is McCauley Culkin.
Speaker 4: Because in the nineteen nineties, I'm sure you remember the headlines.
Speaker 4: Every newspaper ran a story saying that McCauley Culkin had
Speaker 4: divorced his parents. Do you remember this right? It was
Speaker 4: a huge talking point throughout that decade. And it turns
Speaker 4: out that the headline that we all remember from this
Speaker 4: is just wildly inaccurate.
Speaker 2: So basically, yeah, it's not right.
Speaker 4: Our understanding of this, our collective understanding of this story
Speaker 4: is wrong. So basically what happened was stories circulated that
Speaker 4: at fifteen, Coulkin sued his parents for millions and he
Speaker 4: divorced them as legal guardians to stop them from controlling
Speaker 4: his finances.
Speaker 2: But what actually happened, and McCauley has talked about this.
Speaker 4: He's now forty five, if you can believe it, he's
Speaker 4: talked about this quite a bit in recent years. He
Speaker 4: took his parents' names off his trust fund and he
Speaker 4: found someone to manage it who was not related to him,
Speaker 4: which you might say is a fairly savvy business move. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he hasn't spoken to his father kit in thirty years though,
Speaker 4: and he's described him as a monster.
Speaker 2: He said that he was abusive.
Speaker 4: McCauley has two kids himself now with Brenda Song, and
Speaker 4: he's spoken about how he doesn't want to be like
Speaker 4: his father. His father was a frustrated actor, and McCauley
Speaker 4: has kind of intimated that he took out his frustrations
Speaker 4: on McCauley. But meanwhile, when McCauley sued his parents, they
Speaker 4: were locked in this costly breakup battle in the courts.
Speaker 4: Their relationship was breaking down, and his mum, Patricia Bentrap
Speaker 4: one custody of the Coulkin kids and McCaulay and incidentally
Speaker 4: his brother Kieran, who you know from films and TV.
Speaker 4: They are still close with Patricia, and Kieran thanked her
Speaker 4: when he won an oscar last year. So in a way,
Speaker 4: this is another deadbeat Hollywood dad's story. But in the
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties both his parents were just painted with this
Speaker 4: very broad brush of irresponsible, exploitative and were not given
Speaker 4: that new once. I guess we just have to understand
Speaker 4: that these kids, as we might want to refer to
Speaker 4: them as these are adults. Now they're making adult decisions
Speaker 4: that are not based on their mothers manipulating them. That
Speaker 4: are not based, as you pointed out, monds on single incidents.
Speaker 4: They're based on a lifetime of experience. And we wish
Speaker 4: them all the best because it's not going to be easy. Yeah.
Speaker 4: This week Australia's E Safety Commissioner has released what can
Speaker 4: only be described as a chilling warning for Australian schools.
Speaker 4: I think this is absolutely a water shared moment for parenting.
Speaker 2: The warning to.
Speaker 4: Schools is that there is simply no safe way to
Speaker 4: share images of children online. And this is because pictures
Speaker 4: of students in school uniform are especially at risk of
Speaker 4: AI manipulation and of being turned into deep fakes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not just kids, teachers, tea teachers in school and
Speaker 1: in school photos are being turned into deep fakes. Yeh.
Speaker 4: Australian schools and education facilities are already acting on this.
Speaker 4: So one of Australia's largest childcare providers, it's called good
Speaker 4: Start Early Learning. It has six hundred and sixty centers
Speaker 4: across Australia. It's announced the end of class photos and
Speaker 4: it's cited child safety reasons. And the problem is, and
Speaker 4: I hadn't even really thought about this, but once the
Speaker 4: photos are taken, they then are the property or they
Speaker 4: handed over to the commercial providers of those photos, and
Speaker 4: it's incumbent on those individual commercial providers to store and
Speaker 4: process the images safely.
Speaker 2: So that's the issue.
Speaker 4: The fact is that images of children, especially high quality
Speaker 4: resolution images of children, now have an additional currency and
Speaker 4: valance they didn't used to have. Is the quote from
Speaker 4: Australian crime professor Michael Salter in the Nine Newspapers, which
Speaker 4: I cannot get out of my head. I want to
Speaker 4: get to some of the practical implications of this, because
Speaker 4: there are many, but I just I guess I wanted
Speaker 4: to just ask you first one, how did this story
Speaker 4: make you feel disturbed?
Speaker 1: Amelia? This is the turning point. This is the canary
Speaker 1: in the coal mine. This is people who see shit
Speaker 1: saying we have seen some shit and we know some shit,
Speaker 1: and we are telling you now stop doing this now.
Speaker 1: They can't say those exact words, right, That's what they
Speaker 1: probably love to say, but instead they say things like
Speaker 1: it is so important to carefully assess the risks when
Speaker 1: posting imagery online, imagery that may later be digitally altered
Speaker 1: without consent, and in the case of good start they say,
Speaker 1: until we can be certain that every photography session is
Speaker 1: conducted by a photographer who has strict controls on the
Speaker 1: storage and security of photographs of children, we won't be
Speaker 1: allowing commercial photography in our centers. And in the case
Speaker 1: of the police and the AFP, they say, we have
Speaker 1: witnessed an increase in AI generated child abuse material in
Speaker 1: the past year, and that includes multiple ars across multiple operations.
Speaker 1: Mind you, now, we are not here to wave a
Speaker 1: big red flag and sound an alarm and say holy shit, stop,
Speaker 1: stop stop. We don't want to panic anyone, do we.
Speaker 1: We just want to say, hey, the people at the
Speaker 1: top are seeing things and they are started to advise
Speaker 1: schools and places to really take a good hard look
Speaker 1: at the risk of this. And because I mean, aside
Speaker 1: from the legal side of it, schools and childcare centers,
Speaker 1: these places are highly regulated, but they also have a
Speaker 1: duty of care. They have a duty care of the
Speaker 1: people that work there, for psychosocial safety for the teachers
Speaker 1: that work there, and there are cases of teachers faces
Speaker 1: being turned into pornographic deep fakes and then being widely distributed.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine what that's like to go into a
Speaker 1: workplace that's it's just unimaginable. And then childcare centers also
Speaker 1: have a duty of care to the children that attend,
Speaker 1: and so I think institutions do not usually remove something
Speaker 1: as culturally embedded as photos just on a whim. They
Speaker 1: are saying, this is a risk that we can't take anymore,
Speaker 1: and I think we need to pay attention to that.
Speaker 4: And you're right, Ones, I'm glad that you mentioned that.
Speaker 4: I'd I don't bring this up to scare people, although
Speaker 4: it is scary. The reason I felt strongly about this
Speaker 4: as a watershed moment is because this show is about
Speaker 4: making parents feel seen and heard through what is, by
Speaker 4: any objective measure, an extremely complicated time to be a parent.
Speaker 4: This particular issue AI deep fakes of your children in
Speaker 4: school uniforms. I'm sorry, Why do we have to deal
Speaker 4: with this?
Speaker 2: It just makes me.
Speaker 4: It validates this feeling of this is a really hard
Speaker 4: time to parent in because that's an usherly unique and
Speaker 4: utterly depraved thing that I have to be thinking about
Speaker 4: that no parent in human history until this generation has
Speaker 4: had to think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is very much uncharted waters and I think
Speaker 3: that's why we wanted to bring it up. On the show, right,
Speaker 3: because it's something that no one before us has had
Speaker 3: to deal with, and it's been bubbling away. Like I
Speaker 3: think we've seen like the big great influencer removal of
Speaker 3: family content on TikTok a couple of years ago, where
Speaker 3: all those really big creators started like slowly removing their
Speaker 3: children from their videos because of the amount of saves
Speaker 3: that they were getting that they couldn't kind of regulate
Speaker 3: and know where those videos were going. But now we
Speaker 3: are in this time where it's impossible, like we're having
Speaker 3: to think about these things that we never thought we
Speaker 3: would have to think about, and it's so great that
Speaker 3: it is being put out there for us to know
Speaker 3: about before it gets any further down the line.
Speaker 2: So there's a couple of knock on effects that I
Speaker 2: want to run.
Speaker 4: Past the two of you, because, look, first of all
Speaker 4: possible and to traditional class photos, there's a certain sense
Speaker 4: of understandabrief around that because those photos are iconic. I mean, look,
Speaker 4: we can all take a picture of our kids ourselves,
Speaker 4: but there was something about that yearly visual progress that
Speaker 4: was really nice. And I think it's sad that that
Speaker 4: looks like it's going away. Childcare centers are instituting various
Speaker 4: reforms banning staff from carrying four or smart watches or tablets.
Speaker 4: And I think back to how important it was when
Speaker 4: my kids were in childcare. I was at work and
Speaker 4: I could watch little updates from them and their days
Speaker 4: and those photos. I don't think parents now are necessarily
Speaker 4: going to get.
Speaker 2: Those same updates. Yeah, and that's sad too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's probably an extreme way that it
Speaker 1: could go. But I think what the advice is right
Speaker 1: now is actually hopeful if I may bring some hope
Speaker 1: to this. So number one, it's we're not going to
Speaker 1: take this risk on. So these companies that do store
Speaker 1: images of children online need to really lock down the
Speaker 1: way that they're storing photos, which is great, right, that's
Speaker 1: probably really great thing to be doing and to be
Speaker 1: wisened up to. The second piece of advice in this
Speaker 1: article was from New South Wales Independent Schools and their
Speaker 1: advice is, hey, you can still take photos, but just
Speaker 1: make them from behind, don't make them the children's faces. Like,
Speaker 1: there's all these schools now that feel the need to
Speaker 1: have this social media footprint right obviously for marketing reasons
Speaker 1: and for community building reasons. And they're saying, sure, that's fine,
Speaker 1: you still do that. But the advice is, yeah, take
Speaker 1: the photos from a distance, take them from behind the
Speaker 1: children so you can't identify them, and those sort of
Speaker 1: just tiny little changes is kind of what they're encouraging
Speaker 1: schools to do. But I also had a look. I
Speaker 1: went on the e Safety Commissioner's website, which has got
Speaker 1: tons of resources for schools. It has all these info
Speaker 1: packs on how to talk to parents about it, what
Speaker 1: policies you should think about, and I actually felt exhausted.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this last week Stacy, where it
Speaker 1: was schools are now being asked to do more and
Speaker 1: more and more with not much more resource, and it
Speaker 1: just fully was in the back of my head of
Speaker 1: if I was a school principal with all the things
Speaker 1: I have to deal with and now this, I feel exhausted. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's interesting you say that about the extra
Speaker 3: work because the Sitting Morning Herald did an article last
Speaker 3: week which was brilliant on this exact topic of the
Speaker 3: fact that teachers are now being tasked with being influencers
Speaker 3: essentially for the schools that they work at. The school
Speaker 3: Instagram account is such a big piece of information that
Speaker 3: parents in the community use to know what's going on
Speaker 3: with their school community. But people who are curious about
Speaker 3: that school community are using too as a litmus test
Speaker 3: of whether that would be a place that they would
Speaker 3: want to join and send their children. And now teachers
Speaker 3: are arguably more visible than ever on social media because
Speaker 3: they're creating these videos that are getting hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of views, these viral moments. They're kind of jumping on
Speaker 3: these viral trends and it's all lovely and very wholesome.
Speaker 3: There's nothing sinister about what they're doing, but it's what
Speaker 3: can be done with that material. Like I looked at
Speaker 3: the New South Wales Department of Education's Instagram. It's got
Speaker 3: over fifty thousand followers on it and most of the
Speaker 3: videos are from different schools, something involving students and the teachers.
Speaker 3: So gorgeous videos like one of a teacher guessing which
Speaker 3: child in their class is standing behind them based on
Speaker 3: them saying good morning mister blah blah, Like it's so beautiful,
Speaker 3: classic Australian shows that they're really connected with their kids
Speaker 3: in their class. But now, as you're saying, the advice
Speaker 3: is do not have the children in it. It needs
Speaker 3: to be done in a way where they're not But
Speaker 3: then the teachers aren't protected. The teachers are the ones
Speaker 3: that are making this content. And this article in the
Speaker 3: SMH by Emily Cowell is brilliant. She was talking about
Speaker 3: how some principals are sitting up at eleven pm at
Speaker 3: night on canvas making these you know, they're really trying
Speaker 3: to do the right thing for their school and show
Speaker 3: their school. And I was thinking about how now in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, you know, before I go to a restaurant,
Speaker 3: I'm looking up the social media account of that restaurant.
Speaker 3: Before I would choose to, you know, go to a cafe,
Speaker 3: I'm looking that up. Before i'd stay at a hotel,
Speaker 3: I'm looking that up. I'm looking up a person if
Speaker 3: I'm planning to hire them on their social media. And
Speaker 3: so that's what people doing with these social media accounts.
Speaker 3: That's what schools are trying to give to those people.
Speaker 3: And yet now we're being told no, that puts everyone
Speaker 3: right in the line of four.
Speaker 4: Celebrate the work that they do every day and the
Speaker 4: relationships that they're building in school.
Speaker 1: Yes, do that in a school newsletter. Do it in
Speaker 1: a newsletter that goes out to the community. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like I know this is going
Speaker 1: to make me sound really hippie. But if my school said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're bounding iPads and screens in the classroom, I reckon
Speaker 1: I'd be bloody happy with that. I wonder if the
Speaker 1: worm's going to turn to the point where we're going
Speaker 1: to see schools going drastically in the other direction and saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're going analog. We're not going to
Speaker 1: give you updates all the time. We're putting one newsletter
Speaker 1: in the school bag every five weeks or whatever it is. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, is that what we're Is that the
Speaker 1: next promet?
Speaker 2: You think? Yeah, I do think that's it.
Speaker 4: Mons and schools across Australia are d screening. But I
Speaker 4: guess look, if you take anything away from the segments
Speaker 4: that knowledge is power.
Speaker 2: Australia is, as.
Speaker 4: Usual, at the forefront of understanding technological change and its impacts.
Speaker 4: We were the first to lead the world in the
Speaker 4: under sixteen social media ban. I think now the e
Speaker 4: Safety Commissioner is breaking new ground in this area of
Speaker 4: images of children online. So I'm just glad that we're
Speaker 4: getting the rewards from that research and knowledge.
Speaker 1: All Right, it has been a hefty show. Let's lighten
Speaker 1: things up maybe if we can. It's time for recommendations.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff we bring you that we have read, watched, eaten,
Speaker 1: listened to, obsessed with. And may I begin, Please go first,
Speaker 1: I want this recipe. Okay, yeah, So a little bit
Speaker 1: of background. I hate cooking. I hate it, which is
Speaker 1: shocking because I was on the Great Australian Bake Off.
Speaker 1: But I think baking is very different to cooking.
Speaker 2: Yes, don't ask.
Speaker 1: It is what I am bringing you is ForWords that
Speaker 1: are going to change your life. Chicken in a bag.
Speaker 1: This is you. This is a viral dinner hack that
Speaker 1: I cannot believe more people don't know about. This is
Speaker 1: how it goes via TikTok. You grab you got it.
Speaker 1: You get your warm rotisserie chicken, your bachelor's shambag as
Speaker 1: bachelor's hambag. Take the chicken out of the bag, leave
Speaker 1: the juices in the bag. This is crucial. You take
Speaker 1: the chicken out, you chop it up, and then you
Speaker 1: put all the meat back in the juicy bag. Okay,
Speaker 1: Then you take a pouch of microwave rice, you know
Speaker 1: the ones that you pure the top and you put
Speaker 1: it in the microwave for two minutes. Cook it in
Speaker 1: the microwave, then dump it into your chicken bag. Then
Speaker 1: go to your fridge and pull out all the kind
Speaker 1: of leftovers you have that you can put whatever sort
Speaker 1: of herbs you have in the fridge, spring onion, coriander,
Speaker 1: chopped up spinach, red capsic, you know that red cabbage
Speaker 1: that's been sitting there. Chop that up, pop that into
Speaker 1: You can then put like frozen peas or at a
Speaker 1: Mummie peas in it. Nothing is wrong in the bag.
Speaker 1: Just throw it in the bag, seal the bag, shake
Speaker 1: the bag, okay, open the bag, dump it straight into
Speaker 1: a bowl. That's dinner. I swear to you. It is
Speaker 1: so amazing because the chicken juices all soak up into
Speaker 1: the rice. And here's an elevated piece. An elevated hack
Speaker 1: is you can buy microwave rice that has like infused
Speaker 1: with ginger or coconut. Do that. It's mind blowing. And
Speaker 1: you know the best part you get like it gets
Speaker 1: better on day two and three, Like the flavors get better.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I highly recommend.
Speaker 4: The supermarket near my place on Mondays sometimes has one dollar.
Speaker 2: So this is what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love this. The only hurdle in this is
Speaker 3: the chicken inck. I don't like pulling a chicken apart.
Speaker 3: It gives you the eck. I can't fully concentrate on
Speaker 3: what I'm doing. I have to be distracted.
Speaker 1: Is it the bone noise? It's the noise of the bone.
Speaker 3: When you say that actually makes me feel bit sick.
Speaker 3: So that but bart that said, I would eat one
Speaker 3: of these every week every Saturday. We have a bachelor's
Speaker 3: handbag without fail. So I love this trying to make it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I will, I promise I will.
Speaker 1: That sounds delicious, Stacy, what are you recommending?
Speaker 3: Yes, Okay, this week, I am going to recommend an
Speaker 3: article that's on mom and me. I'm sorry, I'm doing
Speaker 3: it an interests of my own job. I want you
Speaker 3: to go to momamea dot com dot au. But the
Speaker 3: reason I want you to go is because I want
Speaker 3: you to read this beautiful story that Natasha shol has
Speaker 3: written for us, and it is a letter to the
Speaker 3: siblings of kids with additional needs. So, her son Ezra
Speaker 3: was twelve when he was diagnosed with cancer and a
Speaker 3: rare neurological condition. Overnight. He became wheelchair bound overnight. But
Speaker 3: this is not a story about that. This is a
Speaker 3: story about her three younger children and how they handled
Speaker 3: that situation and how the kind of the DNA of
Speaker 3: their family changed after that night. So Ezra is fifteen
Speaker 3: now and he's got these three younger brothers. And she
Speaker 3: speaks so beautifully in this piece because a lot of
Speaker 3: well meaning people, and she doesn't say that this is wrong.
Speaker 3: She's saying, it's lovely that people say this. But even
Speaker 3: doctors in the hospital when he was unwell were saying this,
Speaker 3: Your boys will learn so much about being compassionate from
Speaker 3: having a brother with additional needs. And she said, he's
Speaker 3: not a lesson to be learned if he teaches them anything.
Speaker 3: It's about music and movies and age inappropriate humor. And
Speaker 3: it also doesn't give his brothers the credit they deserve either.
Speaker 3: When you see them in full flight, and indeed, it
Speaker 3: is a thing to behold. It's not that they have
Speaker 3: become compassionate or mature because of his illness and disability.
Speaker 3: They've always been that way. They're just showing the world
Speaker 3: what they're made of a little bit earlier than most.
Speaker 3: And I know that everyone is so busy and that
Speaker 3: reading a full article actually feels like a lot these days,
Speaker 3: but please get to the end for the tooth Fairy story.
Speaker 2: It made me weep.
Speaker 3: I just think it's a beautiful, beautiful piece of writing.
Speaker 3: So we'll link.
Speaker 1: She is a beautiful writer. Natasha show is yes, gorgeous writer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a mother of four and just powerhouse. Yeah like yeah, incredible.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm recommending a book which came out twenty six
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 3: I am breaking with you, cutting everyone get on it.
Speaker 4: But I have a story about why I'm recommending it
Speaker 4: this week. So, now that my kids are a little
Speaker 4: bit older, we're trying to do this thing after dinner
Speaker 4: each night called deer, drop everything and read. Not a revolutionary, dear,
Speaker 4: but you basically said a timer. Twelve minutes is about
Speaker 4: our maximum. And everyone just sits on the couch and
Speaker 4: reads their book. Which is good because I'm reading a
Speaker 4: fabulous book right now, fruit Fly, which is a very
Speaker 4: adult novel. But so I'm getting to read that every
Speaker 4: night for twelve minutes. My eight year old has been
Speaker 4: less into the whole dear program. But a couple of
Speaker 4: nights ago he'd brought home a book from school called
Speaker 4: Just Crazy. It's in the Australian author Andy Griffiths series
Speaker 4: of Just Books.
Speaker 1: Andy Griffith and Full Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's just this little page. It's got nine stories illustrated
Speaker 4: by Terry Denton, like a chapter book. And as he
Speaker 4: was reading it the last couple of nights, I have
Speaker 4: seen him just chuckling away to himself and then like
Speaker 4: whispering to his sister some of the funny bits, and.
Speaker 2: I realized that he thought he was.
Speaker 4: Getting away with something by reading this book because it's.
Speaker 2: A bit naughty.
Speaker 4: It's a bit it's disgusting, and he thinks that he's
Speaker 4: like transgressing, like doing something naughty, which is great because
Speaker 4: he thinks like it references bad words. It doesn't say
Speaker 4: bad words, but it references the concept of bad words,
Speaker 4: talks about farts, you know, other stuff that kids think
Speaker 4: is naughty. And I just hope that he continues to
Speaker 4: believe that I am actually genuinely bothered by this book
Speaker 4: and its contents, because there is nothing that is going
Speaker 4: to encourage a child to read more than a feeling
Speaker 4: that they are getting away with something. Yeah, it brought
Speaker 4: me back to when I was a kid and I
Speaker 4: picked books off my parents' bookshelf that I probably shouldn't
Speaker 4: have been reading it, which were not even vaguely aged appropriate,
Speaker 4: probably had a sex or two, and I felt like
Speaker 4: I was just really the most mischievous kid and I
Speaker 4: was doing something I shouldn't be doing, and it kept
Speaker 4: me reading. So thanks, Andy Griffiths, you are really making
Speaker 4: our deer sessions hum along very nicely.
Speaker 3: Indeed, I love the deer session concept. That is like
Speaker 3: top tier mumming from you amally, it's an American.
Speaker 4: School's stalwart, like deer drop everything you read and you
Speaker 4: just set the alarm on your phone for twelve minutes.
Speaker 4: Twelve minutes is ambitious, I will say, But see your
Speaker 4: mileage may vary on that.
Speaker 1: That is all we have time for this week on
Speaker 1: Parenting Out Loud. Hey, thanks for joining us. We know
Speaker 1: that you're busy and you've got heaps of other podcasts
Speaker 1: that you could listen to. It means actually a lot
Speaker 1: to us that you keep coming back every Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: and we are trying to sort of like grow the show,
Speaker 1: spread the word, find others. Tribe of smart parents that
Speaker 1: are also overwhelmed by everything but want to feel informed
Speaker 1: about stuff. So we're not going to ask you to
Speaker 1: share it because you don't want to add shit to
Speaker 1: your to do list. But if you're not following the
Speaker 1: show yet, it would be amazing if you could just
Speaker 1: like hit the little plus in your podcast app, because
Speaker 1: what it does is it sort of like shoots us
Speaker 1: up the charts and more people can sort of discover
Speaker 1: the show. It's a big old thumbs up and doesn't
Speaker 1: cost you anything. It's just like, come, why not say?
Speaker 4: Look, I know these parents listening are busy, but if
Speaker 4: you do want to share in at least one group chat,
Speaker 4: we wouldn't say no, Like, I think that's a reasonable
Speaker 4: as these smart people live a.
Speaker 3: Review telling us we're wonderful. That's all so fine, that's
Speaker 3: so fine to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, but what would what would it say about
Speaker 1: you to share this particular episode if you don't everyone
Speaker 1: be like Sarah's trying to tell us that we're Sarah
Speaker 1: is panicking about the school photos again.
Speaker 4: But just this episode. And I would say an underlying
Speaker 4: thesis of this show is this is not normal. If
Speaker 4: you're a parent who looks at the world and says
Speaker 4: this is not okay.
Speaker 2: This is not normal. This is a good podcast view show.
Speaker 3: And plus they get to learn about the musical talents
Speaker 3: of Charlie Wu Are you kidding?
Speaker 2: This is the show to share.
Speaker 1: Let us not forget Charlie wo. Yeah. All right, thanks
Speaker 1: for the pep talk, have a great week. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in this feed chatting to you next weekend. See then,
Speaker 1: Mummy acknowledges the traditional owners of land on which we
Speaker 1: have recorded this podcast.