Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda land Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. Following through is the
Speaker 1: most important thing I have found with my son. It's
Speaker 1: also a lesson in like making sure that the threat
Speaker 1: that you made is something you can follow through that.
Speaker 1: We were sitting in front of some people on an
Speaker 1: airplane once and they told their kid, if you keep
Speaker 1: kicking the seat like, we're going to leave you on
Speaker 1: the airplane. Guys, I am so excited about today. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Katie's Crib. You guys. I have someone who's
Speaker 1: like pretty much a big deal in the parenting space today.
Speaker 1: Her name is Emily Aust. She might be the most
Speaker 1: different brained person I've had on this show. Emily Astar
Speaker 1: is an economist and her brain works, let's just say,
Speaker 1: on the left side, whereas I'm sort of more on
Speaker 1: the right side creative arts, fartsy type. But she and
Speaker 1: I talked so much about her books Expecting Better and
Speaker 1: Crib Sheet, which were staples in my house during my
Speaker 1: pregnancy and when I had small, small babies. We talk
Speaker 1: a lot today about her third book, The Family Firm,
Speaker 1: a data driven guide to better decision making. In the
Speaker 1: early school years. It's out now be shorted by your
Speaker 1: copy wherever books are sold. She also has been hugely
Speaker 1: helpful to me during this time because she has a
Speaker 1: newsletter and on Instagram. She focuses a lot on helping
Speaker 1: us parents small unvaccinated children through COVID and is helping
Speaker 1: us cipher through all of the information during this COVID
Speaker 1: time of parenting. She and I talked a lot about
Speaker 1: how to run the family in the early school years,
Speaker 1: why a business model might work for big decision making
Speaker 1: within your family. She's a professor of economics at Brown University.
Speaker 1: Her academic work focuses on health economics and statistical methods.
Speaker 1: Her work has been featured in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, of The Atlantic, CNBC Ian Moore.
Speaker 1: She's married to an economist, Jesse Shapiro. So I guess
Speaker 1: somewhere far, far far distant, she and I might be related,
Speaker 1: or our husbands are related. Who the hell knows. She
Speaker 1: has two children, Penelope and Finn. Emily Welcome to Katie's crib.
Speaker 1: I am so thrilled and honored today to have the
Speaker 1: one and only Emily Auster here, And it's so weird
Speaker 1: because I'm so woo woo and emotional and like actory
Speaker 1: and you're an economist, which I don't even think I've
Speaker 1: said that word in my life. But what I find,
Speaker 1: what quiets and eases my emotional headspace is your fact
Speaker 1: finding and your cut and dry factual nature is so
Speaker 1: relatable and accessible to new moms, moms with toddler's and
Speaker 1: now moms. Thank you to the Family Firm for the
Speaker 1: early school years. Can you just tell us for those
Speaker 1: listening who don't know who Emily Astar is? First, follow
Speaker 1: her on Instagram, Second, subscribe to her newsletter. Third, get
Speaker 1: her books and tell your friends to get her books.
Speaker 1: How's that? How's that? That's great? That's a good in
Speaker 1: that's a good good for us? Okay, but first, like,
Speaker 1: just in short, because I want to spend most of
Speaker 1: the Today's talking about Family Firm, But can you tell
Speaker 1: us just a little bit for anyone who may not know?
Speaker 1: Expecting better and crib sheet the quick pitch, Good luck,
Speaker 1: the quick pitch. So I think it's easiest to sort
Speaker 1: of say why I wrote them, um, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: I am a person who likes data and facts and
Speaker 1: who more than anything else likes to understand why. And
Speaker 1: when I got pregnant with my daughter, who is now
Speaker 1: like ten, there was a lot of do this without why.
Speaker 1: This was a sort of like here's your list of
Speaker 1: things not to do, and you'd be like why, and
Speaker 1: they'd be like, well, it's on the list. Didn't you
Speaker 1: get the list? We can get you another copy. It's like,
Speaker 1: not have the list, And so, you know, expecting better
Speaker 1: is really kind of like what the data behind pregnancy?
Speaker 1: It's a sort of like crazy neurotic ladies like dig
Speaker 1: in too, you know, how do we think about that data?
Speaker 1: What's good data, what's not good data? Why do they
Speaker 1: tell you not to have sushi is the same reason
Speaker 1: they tell you not to have Deli turkey? It's not
Speaker 1: the same reason. It turns out, like, how can you
Speaker 1: sort of parse those different, um, those different things to
Speaker 1: make choices that are that are informed, um, that are
Speaker 1: sort of your choices. It's like, guys, here's the list
Speaker 1: of why eating sushi during pregnancy factually might be bad,
Speaker 1: and here are the statistics and numbers of what could
Speaker 1: happen if something goes wrong. And here's the list of
Speaker 1: people who do eat sushi during pregnancy. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like, I'm just going to give you
Speaker 1: all the hard, fast, true criteria so that you can
Speaker 1: make the decision that you want to make rather than
Speaker 1: what we're told, which is no caffeine, no sushi, no
Speaker 1: alcohol whatever. Now between us, I had sushi and and
Speaker 1: then again here I am seeing like I had sushi,
Speaker 1: and I drank wine for both my pregnancies, and I
Speaker 1: had turkey meat. All I craved was DELI me like
Speaker 1: craved it. A weirdly large number of people create delling
Speaker 1: meats who like to will be like, well, normally I
Speaker 1: don't like to. For me, it was like tuna melts.
Speaker 1: That was like, I was just like in normal life,
Speaker 1: I don't I mean, I don't really like a tuna melt,
Speaker 1: but it was just like I don't know, like the
Speaker 1: baby is just like I love tuna. Oh hilarious. So
Speaker 1: Expecting Better really focuses on a lot of these pregnancy
Speaker 1: knows we're getting and you must and you have to
Speaker 1: in all of this. And because you're an economist and
Speaker 1: your parents are also both, and my husband and your husband,
Speaker 1: everyone's an economist. And also, by the way, you married
Speaker 1: Jesse Shapiro, the economist, and I'm married Adam Shapiro, the actor. Nice,
Speaker 1: So our children are all Shapiro's. They're all Shapiros. Your
Speaker 1: kids are all Shapiros. Even though you're still alot and
Speaker 1: I'm still in Austra. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. Okay, so everyone what I love? Expecting
Speaker 1: better but quickly, even though it deserves so much more time.
Speaker 1: Are there actually things to be afraid of? Because like,
Speaker 1: if you're just have a little iota of critical thinking
Speaker 1: in your head and you're curious, I find that information
Speaker 1: is power. When I know I'm all of a sudden
Speaker 1: not nervous about it, it just makes more sense. I think.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, you know, I, particularly as you
Speaker 1: sort of move to like end a pregnancy and thing
Speaker 1: about childbirth and all this stuff, I think that there's
Speaker 1: like such an information asymmetry that it's almost hard to
Speaker 1: have those conversations about like what kind of birth do
Speaker 1: you want to have with your medical provider because you
Speaker 1: don't know anything. And I think there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of this book which is like, look, I am not
Speaker 1: a medical doctor. I do not you do not want
Speaker 1: me in the delivery room. But you know you read
Speaker 1: this you can get a better sense of like how
Speaker 1: should I think about induction? How do I think about
Speaker 1: an epidural? Like how should I understand labor? So then
Speaker 1: your questions you're just not like, well where does that
Speaker 1: come out of? You know, and it's more like, okay,
Speaker 1: now I understand some of this data and we can
Speaker 1: be having more informed conversation. It's so great and oddly
Speaker 1: goes very well with my emotional woo woo l a
Speaker 1: actory mind. So there you have it, okay. And now
Speaker 1: then we had thank God for crib sheet? Did I
Speaker 1: get it to you? In times? And I s people
Speaker 1: are like you like miss me, my hear you get Okay? No,
Speaker 1: I have a three and a half year old and
Speaker 1: I have a seven month old, so I would I'm
Speaker 1: in the crib sheet wonder years like I'm like in
Speaker 1: the perfect spot, but tell us about crib sheet. So
Speaker 1: crib sheet is really sort of this equel so like
Speaker 1: expecting better kind of ends in the delivery room. Grip
Speaker 1: sheet starts in the delivery room. I think the last
Speaker 1: chapter in the first chapter actually really similar. And then
Speaker 1: it goes through all this early child like early baby stuff,
Speaker 1: sleep training, co sleeping, breastfeeding, you know, kind of ending
Speaker 1: around potty training with all the same idea about like
Speaker 1: let's think about what the data is. You know, people
Speaker 1: tell you if you don't breastfeed your kid, they'll never
Speaker 1: have superpowers, and in fact, like that's not true. They're
Speaker 1: not going to have superpowers even if you do a
Speaker 1: breastfeed them. Or like I love the chapter on like
Speaker 1: will TV make your child an idiot? It's like, in
Speaker 1: truth like this, the actual studies that exist in the world,
Speaker 1: Emily Austar has looked at them, has gone over them
Speaker 1: with a fine tooth comb, Like what's out there when
Speaker 1: you study thousands and thousands of kids in the amount
Speaker 1: of TV they've watched, Like right now, thus far, there's
Speaker 1: nothing out there that really says ship. To be honest exactly,
Speaker 1: my husband was allowed one hour of TV and the
Speaker 1: one hour he chose was The Cosby Show. I watched
Speaker 1: TV on my teenage Mutanta Turtle Dinner Tray every day
Speaker 1: from four to seven Monday through Friday. And I'm an actor,
Speaker 1: so who the hell knows, but we're both actors. See,
Speaker 1: my parents are like very regimented. We could have one
Speaker 1: hour of TV a day. It was like only MPBS
Speaker 1: we get to watch Square one and my husband like
Speaker 1: watched TV all the time, he like, and so now
Speaker 1: you know, we have the same job. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that stuff in that time where
Speaker 1: it's sort of like we don't know that much, but
Speaker 1: what we do know suggests that like for the most part,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit dealer's choice, Like you kind of
Speaker 1: should feel confident in whatever the choices are that work
Speaker 1: for your family, because you know, is this an opportunity
Speaker 1: to mess up my kids? Like no, it's not neither
Speaker 1: an opportunity to mess get up or like optimize your kids.
Speaker 1: You gotta do what what makes you happy. So good
Speaker 1: and now this past year, I feel like you are
Speaker 1: part of my everyday life. Emily A. Stir has taken
Speaker 1: her incredible economist fact seeking, fact finding deciphering all of
Speaker 1: the information in the information age for us regarding COVID
Speaker 1: and children, the CDC has kind of left the kids
Speaker 1: have been left out of the equation. So just right
Speaker 1: like because they're not the ones getting very very sick,
Speaker 1: they're not vaccinated, we don't know if they can be
Speaker 1: around grandma and grandpa. We don't know if we can
Speaker 1: take them to visit family they haven't seen in two years,
Speaker 1: and no one's giving us the answers. Your newsletter has
Speaker 1: been such a game changer. Are you like the only
Speaker 1: person helping us? Is there anybody? There are many, I think,
Speaker 1: really good, really good people who are sort of writing
Speaker 1: about this, people in this space, But what there isn't
Speaker 1: is like the CDC, which is kind of what we need.
Speaker 1: So interesting to think about how, particularly in the kids stuff,
Speaker 1: like the difference in attitudes between the US and Europe.
Speaker 1: Europe it's not just that they had more in person school,
Speaker 1: which of course is true, it's also then I think
Speaker 1: the whole attitude was like, Okay, kids are not high risk,
Speaker 1: and you know, but we're gonna need to make some
Speaker 1: sacrifices to protect some older people. But we're going to
Speaker 1: try not to make kids sacrifice if we can. And
Speaker 1: then you know, once old people are vaccinated, like we're
Speaker 1: going to kind of like let kids do you know,
Speaker 1: do their thing. And I think here we're willing to
Speaker 1: make kids sacrifice more and are kind of then having
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble backing away from some of the fear.
Speaker 1: Their fear has outpaced there their reality I completely agree.
Speaker 1: The thing that I tried to do a lot of
Speaker 1: this this year was the sort of like here's the data,
Speaker 1: and here's the decision framing around it. It's gonna tell
Speaker 1: you something. It's not gonna tell you everything. People are
Speaker 1: going to have different risk tolerances. You need a way
Speaker 1: to take that data and translated into a decision, and
Speaker 1: that that's the piece. It's so hard. It's not that
Speaker 1: you can't see what the case rates are. It's just
Speaker 1: like some abstract number. And I think that's that's been
Speaker 1: the really hard thing. Did you have a newsletter before? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So what happened is my publisher at some point was like,
Speaker 1: this is like December, and they were like, look, why
Speaker 1: don't you like start a newsletter. You can like write
Speaker 1: every month or so. It'll be like a good way
Speaker 1: to just like stay in contact and when the book
Speaker 1: comes out, you can you know, right a little more
Speaker 1: and like people can. Okay, fine, So I was like
Speaker 1: all right, So January I started the newsletter and then
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote two things and then like maybe
Speaker 1: the fourth post is like, hey has anyone a lot
Speaker 1: of people are asking me about this coronavirus thing? And
Speaker 1: then I started writing much more about that, partly because
Speaker 1: people were like asking and asking and asking, and I
Speaker 1: sort of started thinking about the data and so and
Speaker 1: I think the sort of big pivot was like at
Speaker 1: some point in May, I wrote this really long post
Speaker 1: about should I see my camp parents? And that post
Speaker 1: had like a half million views. It got people in,
Speaker 1: and then here we are eighteen months later, and I
Speaker 1: have so much giant peanut butter. And also it's a
Speaker 1: totally different job. You know. I spent the whole last year, like,
Speaker 1: while I was doing all this stuff, I was also
Speaker 1: the chair of the Tenure and Promotions Committee at the university,
Speaker 1: and I had, like, I have like a real job.
Speaker 1: I read everybody's tenure packets the whole university. How do
Speaker 1: you sleep and you have two children? Correct? We even
Speaker 1: talked about this. I did not do a lot of
Speaker 1: economics research over the last year. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of this other COVID research and family firm situation. How
Speaker 1: old are your children? Six and ten? Okay, so this
Speaker 1: brings us into your most recent book, The Family Firm.
Speaker 1: I just had my first conversation about like, what are
Speaker 1: you lottering into for public school? And I was like,
Speaker 1: B B b b B. This sounds like hell on Earth.
Speaker 1: And so I'm about to embark into the family firm situation.
Speaker 1: So this is your new book. It's called The Family
Speaker 1: Firm and Data Driven Guide to Better Decision Making the
Speaker 1: early school years. You do use the things that we
Speaker 1: know and love about you from krypteet and expecting better
Speaker 1: than data driven stuff. But things have had to shift.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about this book. This book,
Speaker 1: I think is in some ways really quite different expecting
Speaker 1: better kryptiet. These are kind of like p says of
Speaker 1: this that are sort of exactly that. Next you know,
Speaker 1: there are pieces like, Okay, you know I told you
Speaker 1: about the party training dat or I told you about
Speaker 1: the screen time data in little kids. Now let's look
Speaker 1: at this, you know, how do we think about the
Speaker 1: screen time data and big kids? What do we know
Speaker 1: about social media? And then there's some stuff on schools
Speaker 1: and extracurriculus, and like there's you know, there's pieces that
Speaker 1: are kind of the data pieces. How much sleep does
Speaker 1: your kid need? How do I learn to read? Like
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. But the thing about this
Speaker 1: era of like parenting is it is hard in a
Speaker 1: different way. It's almost like the primacy of logistics, sort
Speaker 1: of logistics and unexpected decisions, right, and sort of, so
Speaker 1: much of my job is like, like who's going to
Speaker 1: drive my kids and stuff? Should they go to things
Speaker 1: that we have to drive to? Right? And I think
Speaker 1: part of what happens is we aren't always as intentional
Speaker 1: about those choices as we might be. For example, which
Speaker 1: rank very true to me in the book, but like
Speaker 1: my nephew was like, I want to play soccer. He's
Speaker 1: like seven or something, and he got on the travel
Speaker 1: League and then all of a sudden, it's what you said.
Speaker 1: His parents spent like six months driving their child all
Speaker 1: over the state of Virginia to play soccer, and the
Speaker 1: kid doesn't like soccer anymore. And I'm like, well, that
Speaker 1: was really ridiculous. I mean you could say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe travel soccer is what you envisioned, but if you
Speaker 1: didn't envision travel soccer and you sort of said yes
Speaker 1: because you kind of didn't think that much about or
Speaker 1: you know, you just sort of like they were whining
Speaker 1: or for whatever reason, like the sort of choices that
Speaker 1: we make, that's going to matter a lot. And so
Speaker 1: I think there's a sort of argument here for intentionality,
Speaker 1: and so there's a big part of the first part
Speaker 1: of the book which is like kind of how do
Speaker 1: you scaffold that intentionality? And so actually there's some work
Speaker 1: and I think this is a thing that like for
Speaker 1: the people who are like I thought you were the
Speaker 1: lady who told me I could have sushi, and I
Speaker 1: read your first book and you said that I could
Speaker 1: have sushi and that my kids could watch the TV
Speaker 1: and it would be okay, And then like that was great,
Speaker 1: and now you're now you give me worksheets. Like now
Speaker 1: you're like the worksheet lady. I'm asking people to come
Speaker 1: along a little bit, like to say, like, listen, you
Speaker 1: trust me on that stuff. Come along a little bit.
Speaker 1: Let's try. I suspect that for more people than realize
Speaker 1: this that was sitting with this a little bit and
Speaker 1: thinking it wouldn't be so hard to like write down,
Speaker 1: what are the three things in the day that I
Speaker 1: really want to have? So tell me about this business model.
Speaker 1: Now that you're asking us to come along and do
Speaker 1: a little bit of like some business e organization for
Speaker 1: your family, walk me through the framework in the family system.
Speaker 1: The analogy to business is just that businesses do not
Speaker 1: make their decisions on a whim. When you are running
Speaker 1: a business, you do not just sign up for travel
Speaker 1: soccer just to appease your kid who's winding that minute
Speaker 1: exactly when your employee comes in winds to you about
Speaker 1: wanting like you don't just do things. That's the most
Speaker 1: important sort of business analogy. And then there are some
Speaker 1: other like more more really businessy things, which is like, okay,
Speaker 1: businesses have like systems for follow up or assistance for
Speaker 1: decision making, and so I've got this basically four step
Speaker 1: system for big decisions. Oh, the four fs. Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: the family board meeting is happening. Take us through the
Speaker 1: four FS of if you were going to decide to
Speaker 1: send your kid to sleep with kid. The first F
Speaker 1: is to frame the question, think about what are the
Speaker 1: realistic alternatives? The question of sleepway camp has been raised
Speaker 1: your kids, like I want to go, you know, Matilda
Speaker 1: win whatever it is, you know, and you know, so
Speaker 1: you want to say, like, okay, a is this realistic
Speaker 1: like sleep we camp course money. There are some constraints
Speaker 1: in it, maybe that that's like that feasible and we're
Speaker 1: not having that conversation, and that's fine. You kind of
Speaker 1: want to get to a question of like are we
Speaker 1: doing extra y? In this case, it's probably are we
Speaker 1: going to sleep away camp or not? And I think
Speaker 1: then or not? Sometimes I tell people like or not
Speaker 1: not an option, but here like we're not kind of
Speaker 1: is an option because it's sort of obvious what the
Speaker 1: default is. But I think there's a there's a sort
Speaker 1: of space there for saying there to take a moment
Speaker 1: at the beginning and just ask is this really a
Speaker 1: question that we can answer that we would be able
Speaker 1: to answer in a concrete way, So are we going
Speaker 1: to sleepway camp or not? Second f is fact find,
Speaker 1: which is a rapper for get all the information you
Speaker 1: need and it's something like sleepaway camp. I put that
Speaker 1: in sort of a couple invent more categories. One is
Speaker 1: like the question of like what is the data say about?
Speaker 1: Is the say good idea for kids? What are the
Speaker 1: risks and benefits? You sort of dig into the data
Speaker 1: on sleepaway camp, which is actually super interesting and it's
Speaker 1: actually quite good. There's some very positive aspects of sleep
Speaker 1: wey Camp, but they're mostly about belonging. Sleepaway camp is
Speaker 1: a place that you can be with other kids that
Speaker 1: are not your peer group that are not your school peer.
Speaker 1: But then there's also like in this fact finding, this
Speaker 1: is a wide space and that information, that data can
Speaker 1: shape a little bit. So if you sort of said, okay,
Speaker 1: like you know, is there something in particular that my
Speaker 1: kid really likes, like something you know that they want
Speaker 1: to so part of their identity, spend some time getting
Speaker 1: that information. And then the third thing here is a
Speaker 1: final decision. There's a sense in which with a lot
Speaker 1: of these big decisions, and Sleepy can maybe less than
Speaker 1: some others, but like where you just let it dribble
Speaker 1: and drabble on, like you don't make it, you know,
Speaker 1: we sort of like talk about it and talk about
Speaker 1: it and talk about it like here's this other I
Speaker 1: got this little piece of information, Well maybe that should
Speaker 1: change our decision or what about this other thing whatever?
Speaker 1: And so I think the idea here is to say
Speaker 1: there's one step where you get all the information and
Speaker 1: another step where you have the information and you're going
Speaker 1: to make a decision. And it doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: be a meeting, but I like, I like a good
Speaker 1: meeting where you kind of like sit and you decide
Speaker 1: and then you try to like implement and you try
Speaker 1: to move on. The last f is follow up. This
Speaker 1: is the piece that you're the travel soccer situation, some
Speaker 1: nice misses. We often make these decisions. We're just like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make it, and then we're like, not gonna
Speaker 1: have a plan to revisit it. But almost all the
Speaker 1: decisions you make of this type could have some revisiting,
Speaker 1: even if it's like what school do I choose or
Speaker 1: something sort of bigger, you can change your mind. We're
Speaker 1: always going to have the follow up. Let's also talk
Speaker 1: about the importance of following through. In your book, you
Speaker 1: note that if rules aren't enforced sooner than later, that
Speaker 1: eventually the actions are going to need to occur anyway, Like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know you use that example of a mother trying
Speaker 1: to let go and let her kids make breakfast for themselves.
Speaker 1: Like what other sort of tips in research do you
Speaker 1: have that can encourage us to stick to following through.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say, so. I think a toddlerhood is
Speaker 1: about where that starts toddler on down. Like consistency is
Speaker 1: like a huge thing for behavior and for security. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think that kids kids like to know what
Speaker 1: the rules are. They do not like the idea that
Speaker 1: the rule would change in the middle. That doesn't you
Speaker 1: have have rules for everything. But I think that it
Speaker 1: is um there is that value in consistency. It's also
Speaker 1: a lesson in like making sure that the threat that
Speaker 1: you made is something you can follow through on. So
Speaker 1: it's like a very salient moment to me was that
Speaker 1: we were sitting in front of some people on an
Speaker 1: airplane once and they told their kid, if you keep
Speaker 1: kicking the seat, like, we're gonna leave you on the airplane,
Speaker 1: which is like, first of all, is me and but
Speaker 1: also like that's like another nice thing to say, but
Speaker 1: also you couldn't do that. I mean, this is just
Speaker 1: forgotten about because you know, for some reason, when you've
Speaker 1: made the decision, it just seems I just seem so
Speaker 1: hard to make a change. There's a huge amount of
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance because changing is like a way of saying
Speaker 1: that I made it wrong. If you send your kid
Speaker 1: to sleep what camp and they don't like it, and
Speaker 1: then you don't do it again, you're kind of like saying, like,
Speaker 1: I made the wrong decision. I think this is why
Speaker 1: I'd like to have it as part of an initial
Speaker 1: decision process is to plan the follow up. Like my
Speaker 1: kids school, I love it so much. Every year we
Speaker 1: make sure to discuss are we going to enroll them again?
Speaker 1: Even though it's obvious what the answer is. I want
Speaker 1: the like the sort of like symmetry of even if
Speaker 1: that conversations two seconds, even if it's like, let's check
Speaker 1: in on this, okay, like the deposits, do are we
Speaker 1: doing it again? Yes? We are, okay, Like let's move on.
Speaker 1: So explain this to me. For family planning purposes, you
Speaker 1: use a sauna, but a lot of families use trail.
Speaker 1: Oh people like trail o ye, tell me about that?
Speaker 1: And do you use it every day? There are sort
Speaker 1: of big project based things where we use it all
Speaker 1: the time. So we did, like a house renovation, at
Speaker 1: some point it was like we were using it every day.
Speaker 1: We're using it all the time for us, there's like
Speaker 1: a huge amount of value and having things written down.
Speaker 1: A sana is like a good way to track like
Speaker 1: for big projects, to sort of like track things, and
Speaker 1: it can remind you and put some of the same
Speaker 1: reasons you use it at work. That is just an
Speaker 1: efficiency game. There's no particular reason that we're not doing
Speaker 1: that at home, except that we don't. There's no reason
Speaker 1: why loving each other should mean that we can't have
Speaker 1: test management software. And I think when kids get bigger,
Speaker 1: like this stuff comes up and you want to be
Speaker 1: able to deal with it in a moment that is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the moment that it comes up. People want
Speaker 1: to like deal with things right away, but like that's
Speaker 1: that may not be a time that I'm like equipped
Speaker 1: to deal with something, even if it's not that complicated.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's the sort of value of writing.
Speaker 1: I love that I'm going to use this saunt it too.
Speaker 1: Right now we're using Google calendar. Value calendar is like
Speaker 1: that's like a huge thing for me. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have no idea where anyone is unless I look at
Speaker 1: that thing, like who's taking to where? What's happening? You
Speaker 1: have everybody has their own calendar, do you? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone has their own calendar and their own color. Yep,
Speaker 1: me too. Now you're running your family like a freaking
Speaker 1: board meeting at the dining room table, and you're not
Speaker 1: talking about having to do this for every single little thing,
Speaker 1: but you're talking about like doing this for the bigger things.
Speaker 1: Would travel, soccer, be an example, how would I know
Speaker 1: a decision was big enough to like really give it?
Speaker 1: And the answer is like, if it will impact a
Speaker 1: lot of your hours, are you going to experience this
Speaker 1: every week in some significant way? So would be things
Speaker 1: like school or major extracurriculars, sleepaway camp, day camp, like
Speaker 1: a big picture of things, not kind of day to
Speaker 1: day stuff. People always say what are your values? And
Speaker 1: I always look at it like, Okay, well what do
Speaker 1: I spend my time doing? If you're spending your time
Speaker 1: doing it, then it's a value to you and your family.
Speaker 1: That link. People are often not good at making. They
Speaker 1: sort of they think of values is something very abstract
Speaker 1: and not connected to the thing you're doing. But if
Speaker 1: you know, if you're doing something every day, I hope
Speaker 1: that it's something that you value because it's every day,
Speaker 1: you know, and you're you're like, what should your Tuesday
Speaker 1: look like? That's a really important question because that happens
Speaker 1: every week. Every week there's a Tuesday, and if you
Speaker 1: hate every Tuesday, like that's not gonna be that's not good.
Speaker 1: So a lot of parenting weighs heavily on a relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, especially if you guys feel the same are
Speaker 1: different about things. And I think that this approach with
Speaker 1: the four fs and running your family with this sort
Speaker 1: of business model, especially when it comes to decision making,
Speaker 1: is really helpful when you're co parenting. Can you explain
Speaker 1: that a little bit? There is this tendency when we
Speaker 1: like our partner to sort of think that like everything
Speaker 1: is going to work out because we love each other,
Speaker 1: and that you know, sort of we are like we're
Speaker 1: always going to agree, but sort of loving each other
Speaker 1: is not the same as as always agreeing. And I
Speaker 1: think that many of the kinds of conflicts that we have,
Speaker 1: we have them in little pieces, but they were reflecting
Speaker 1: some like underlying difference in what we think is important.
Speaker 1: Like if I think it's really important to sit down
Speaker 1: for dinner every night and you don't think that's important,
Speaker 1: then you may be willing to go along with it
Speaker 1: some of the time, but you're not going to necessarily help.
Speaker 1: And you know, if I think it's important to happen
Speaker 1: even if I'm not there, maybe you're not going to
Speaker 1: do it because you don't think it's important. You know,
Speaker 1: if we've surfaced essays agreement and we've decided that there's
Speaker 1: like some compromise that we've come to, or or that
Speaker 1: it's so important to me that we're both going to
Speaker 1: do it, or whatever it is that is. I think
Speaker 1: of some value. If it's just that I'm doing it
Speaker 1: every day and you're like resentfully kind of not helping
Speaker 1: or something like, that's that's an ongoing conflict. And so
Speaker 1: I think there's a little bit of a pitch in
Speaker 1: the book almost too, sort of surfacing those conflicts, surfacing
Speaker 1: those differences in in values and priorities or how we
Speaker 1: want our data look or whatever it is, Surfacing those
Speaker 1: at a moment that we're ready to talk about them,
Speaker 1: rather than surfacing them just in all of all of
Speaker 1: the moments when they're happening, when you know we might
Speaker 1: get might get mad. A lot of this book is
Speaker 1: about like how you're on the same page with your spouse. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that is the biggest thing. I very much personally appreciated
Speaker 1: that many things about having kids are like high stressed,
Speaker 1: but like this this kind of time, I think there's
Speaker 1: so much hidden conflict because you didn't ever think about this,
Speaker 1: Like you probably never talked about what is your priority
Speaker 1: about bedtime? Like are you an early bedtime or like
Speaker 1: before you had kids, before you married somebody, you weren't
Speaker 1: like time, we're gonna put our kids to bed. If
Speaker 1: you disagree about that, you may be fighting about it
Speaker 1: almost all the time. So I think there's like a
Speaker 1: pitch here for like bring those you know, sort of
Speaker 1: how do you think about managing those conflicts or at
Speaker 1: least like bringing them to the four at a time
Speaker 1: you can discuss them. I think this is all so great.
Speaker 1: And in your book you go through, you know, things
Speaker 1: like what is the right age to get your kids
Speaker 1: a cell phone? Oh my god, you guys, I am
Speaker 1: absolutely terrified. How many extracurricular activities are too much? Should
Speaker 1: my child go to public or private school? You talk
Speaker 1: a lot in your book about, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: a big decision which I'm going to have to make
Speaker 1: a lot of times people have summer birthdays and they're
Speaker 1: a little bit on the cusp, and as a result,
Speaker 1: they don't know whether to have their kid be the
Speaker 1: oldest in their grade or the youngest in their grade,
Speaker 1: and so you know a lot of people have them
Speaker 1: hold back for a year. You know, they they start
Speaker 1: kindergarten a year later, which possibly makes them bigger, smarter,
Speaker 1: or stronger um. What you emphasize is that the biggest
Speaker 1: thing is how we measure success. So does the data
Speaker 1: find that if you hold or red shirt is the
Speaker 1: term you red shirt your kid a year behind starting
Speaker 1: in kindergarten? Does that actually mean that they will test better?
Speaker 1: Does that mean that they will have more loving, fulfilling relationships?
Speaker 1: In that question, we're kind of running up against some
Speaker 1: of the limits of like what people can measure. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, in the case of returning, the one place
Speaker 1: where people you know, where the sort of I think
Speaker 1: would push in the direction of doing it is if
Speaker 1: you know you think kids are going to struggle the
Speaker 1: cist still. So, I think a lot of people think
Speaker 1: about this, like about academic readiness, but I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the wrong set of considerations. It is more that
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of like focused demands of kindergarten
Speaker 1: in the modern era that we're not there. Kids are
Speaker 1: supposed to learn to read somehow in kindergarten, and learning
Speaker 1: to read involves like sitting still for long periods, and
Speaker 1: when kids are very young and they're compared to their
Speaker 1: older peers, there can be like an increased diagnoses of
Speaker 1: learning disabilities, which are basically just because your kid is
Speaker 1: not sitting still, which is age appropriate but is missed.
Speaker 1: So that's part of that what the hell? When I
Speaker 1: talked about this off my book, it's like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a consideration for parents. But I think then stepping back,
Speaker 1: it's like, that's like a way to be running things
Speaker 1: like we shouldn't and it exacerbates inequality in all kinds
Speaker 1: of ways because some people have these choices and some
Speaker 1: people don't. So I think basically a better way to
Speaker 1: say this is like, look, some kids cannot set still
Speaker 1: at five, and like, uh, we should not be expecting
Speaker 1: them to do that for nine hours a day. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm terrified because my son, he's in the thirteen percentile
Speaker 1: of height and weight and he's you know, she's a
Speaker 1: little and my brother and husband they were both those
Speaker 1: real lay bloomers. Yeah, so what five endings or approaches
Speaker 1: have changed you going through your pandemic parenting? I had
Speaker 1: to realize some loss of control, like all of us,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean, I think it comes across
Speaker 1: like I'm a person who likes structure. We had to
Speaker 1: give up some of the of the structure. I think
Speaker 1: The other really big thing for me is like until
Speaker 1: my kids were out of school, which thank god was
Speaker 1: only actually the spring of ties, so they were back
Speaker 1: in school, but sort of over that, you know, several
Speaker 1: months period, I think I had a lot of realization
Speaker 1: about how important in person school is, which in some ways,
Speaker 1: like getting influenced a lot of what I did over
Speaker 1: the last year in the in the policies, but not
Speaker 1: so much about learning. Actually, it wasn't as difficult to
Speaker 1: scaffold the learning for my kids because we have some
Speaker 1: resources and so on. But I hadn't realized how much
Speaker 1: being with other kids and sort of learning to navigate
Speaker 1: the like socio emotional aspects of of being a kid,
Speaker 1: how important that was um And I think that's something
Speaker 1: we were going to learn. I think there's going to
Speaker 1: be more fallout for how that was as we sort
Speaker 1: of think about policies that going forward. But even for
Speaker 1: my kids, the kind of piece of this where sometimes
Speaker 1: with their school I'd be like, why aren't they doing
Speaker 1: more worksheets? When they went back to school last fall,
Speaker 1: I was just like, Coop fucking cares. I don't care
Speaker 1: if they do it sure doesn't really matter. Just like
Speaker 1: have them hang out like they can do worksheets and
Speaker 1: other you know. I mean, I think the way I
Speaker 1: put is like I taught my kid to read and
Speaker 1: it was terrible and he could totally have learned to
Speaker 1: read later and been happier, and that would have been
Speaker 1: like completely fine. I know that you're someone that really
Speaker 1: likes a lot of structure. Me too. The loss of control,
Speaker 1: you know now that we're in this weird space of
Speaker 1: questioning like are we in a pandemic? Are we not?
Speaker 1: Are you right back to gripping control because I am, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I find I'm fine. I'm really hard.
Speaker 1: There are sort of many more moments where I'm just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just have to accept it, like I know what
Speaker 1: I know about this. I just gotta like, I just
Speaker 1: gotta wait. I cannot like plan my way out of this.
Speaker 1: I spend so much time talking to my therapist about
Speaker 1: my desire to plan my way out of and she's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's doesn't really sound like something you can play your
Speaker 1: way out of. Okay, thanks, I love your therapist. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's your biggest mom fail? I freak out a lot.
Speaker 1: I don't believe it. Oh my god, all the time,
Speaker 1: and like we're like going somewhere and I was pagging.
Speaker 1: We're trying to pick somebody up, and there was some
Speaker 1: like time pressure of somebody that I couldn't find my phone,
Speaker 1: and I like pagged up the cars. It was probably
Speaker 1: like in the luggage somewhere. And I stood in the
Speaker 1: middle of the like mud room of our house and
Speaker 1: I was just like ah. I was just screaming and
Speaker 1: dropping up and my daughter was like my daughter was like,
Speaker 1: don't do that. We don't like I love it. Okay,
Speaker 1: what advice can you offer our parents? It's gonna be fine?
Speaker 1: Is it? The Emily Austar is it? Is it going
Speaker 1: to be okay? It is? It's gonna be okay, It's
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: Finish this sentence. Parenthood is joyful. I love it coming
Speaker 1: from such a left brain human being. And maybe I'm
Speaker 1: a little more I'm like, I really missed my kid
Speaker 1: right now. I'm like, because she's as sleepaway can It's
Speaker 1: like that's what it's on my mind. I'm picking her
Speaker 1: up on Sunday. I'm picking her up on Sunday. You've
Speaker 1: made it I keep whenever I say that, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: we just have to make it to the sleepaway years.
Speaker 1: I think it's been really good. I mean, not that
Speaker 1: she writes to us, but there's like a great Tina
Speaker 1: Fey thing where she's trying to get her teenagers to
Speaker 1: like sit to dinner with her and like how it's
Speaker 1: like dating. And I feel like that's what it is.
Speaker 1: When you're like wait for letters, you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like, oh, maybe like a text, like oh do
Speaker 1: they write me? Oh? Do they write me? She never writes,
Speaker 1: you know. And then and then like for a while,
Speaker 1: I was worried. They occasionally make them right and they
Speaker 1: have to call once a week. But like then, like
Speaker 1: I was like very worried something was wrong. And at
Speaker 1: some point we got a lot of it's like I
Speaker 1: didn't write because I'm too busy, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you are such a gift to all of us parents
Speaker 1: out here. Congratulations on the family firm. It's amazing, and
Speaker 1: everyone again listening, run don't walk to get all three
Speaker 1: of Emily Austar's books and subscribe to her newsletter so
Speaker 1: you can be a parent during these especially ethically wild
Speaker 1: fucked up times. Thanks Katie, this is great, This is
Speaker 1: super fun. Thank you Emily, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being on. Thank you guys so much for listening. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed Emily Austar as much as I did.
Speaker 1: Um I want to hear from you. How are you
Speaker 1: guys liking the season? What do you want to learn about?
Speaker 1: What do you want to talk about? You can always
Speaker 1: find me via email at Katie's Crib at Shawnda land
Speaker 1: dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of Shawonda Land
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from shawna Land Audio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You never
Speaker 1: know you know until you try. You con you need
Speaker 1: to ride