Sneak Peek Inside What Happens In The Walsh Home
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
204.20209
Summary
In this episode, I talk about a few parenting scares I've had over the years, and how they've shaped who I am and shaped who my kids are, and what they do and don't do. I also talk about the time my daughter accidentally ate a whole bag of chocolate covered raisins, and my four-year-old son eating wild beans.
Transcript
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all right you know i've been going through a tough time at home there was um i had a difficult
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moment with my daughter few last week we were sitting down on the couch it's kind of a kind
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of a parenting scare i guess we were sitting down on the couch and uh she turns me out of the blue
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and she tells me my seven-year-old daughter she tells me that she wants to be a vegetarian
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and now the and she didn't know the word actually at first she said that she's she said daddy what's
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the when someone only eats vegetables and i said vegetarian and she said yeah i want to i'm that
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that's what i want to be of course i'm thinking to myself no daughter of mine no daughter of mine
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is going to be a vegetarian but i you know i realized that there were there were signs leading up to this
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like for example uh earlier last summer we were out i was out fishing with her and she caught like
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it was like a bluegill or something and she pulled the hook out and i guess caused some internal
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bleeding it happens threw the fish back in catch and release and the fish bob back up to the surface
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and was just laying there right and then she pointed to the fish and said daddy why is the fish laying
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there i said oh he's probably uh probably sleeping you know it took a lot out of him when you caught
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him and then it started bleeding and she said what but what's the red why is it bleeding and then i had to
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admit well he's yeah you might have killed him it's okay though don't worry she she was devastated by
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that absolutely devastated i think that was the beginning of her animal rights activism but anyway
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fast forward she tells me she's a vegetarian and i'm pretty distraught over that because i can't
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imagine having a vegetarian in the house but um the next day i'm talking to her again and she tells me
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that uh she decided that she's a vegetarian but she can still eat chicken nuggets so she'll make an
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exception for that and the day after that she said that well i'm a vegetarian but i can eat
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chicken nuggets but also of course like sausage and bacon with breakfast i can have that and then
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each each successive day she started adding more meat products onto her vegetarian diet until now
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she's just back she's a vegetarian who also eats meat which is fine which is perfectly valid that is a
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self-identity that i can respect uh and you know and her trajectory of vegetarianism i think follows a
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similar trajectory of a lot of people who you know announce themselves to be vegetarian
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you know one of the one of the the the small joys of parenthood is uh just seeing the kinds of
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names and labels that your kids come up with for things um as they're as they're sort of like making
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sense of the world and that could that could always be a lot of fun and so i i didn't it could be fun
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but it's also a little terrifying at times so i did this experience a couple days ago um i was at
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home we were in the living room at night and my my four-year-old son who he's always got a ton of
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energy he's like a rabid raccoon running around the house at all at all hours of the day uh just
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full full of of energy but this was it was getting late it was like eight o'clock and he he was had
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more energy than usual and i was trying to figure out what was going on with him and then he said to me
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he said uh hey daddy guess what and i said what they said uh i i found some i found some wild beans
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i ate some wild beans and they've made me strong and crazy that's what he said
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and i thought for a minute like wild beans that you ate that have made you crazy
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what the hell did this kid find and eat and i'm racking my brain now because i'm thinking was he
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did he finally did he eat like poison berries from outside did he was he in the medicine cabinet
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this is a four-year-old he ate something that he considers a wild bean did he find like a crack
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rock and eat it i don't think so i don't smoke a lot of crack at the house so that he shouldn't
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have been able to find that um and then my but my wife quickly put pieced it all together and
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realized that he had somehow invaded our uh our uh our pantry and we had a whole bag i guess of
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chocolate covered raisins and he had ate the entire bag i don't know how he got up there where he found
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them i didn't even know we had them he ate the whole bag and then he was on a sugar high so that
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was the answer that could be with it with a four-year-old though that could be anything wild
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beans that's just a great you know it's just a it's a great way of looking at chocolate covered
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you know one of my favorite things uh about little kids is the way that they question things well that
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could be my favorite thing and also my least favorite thing it depends on the questions they're
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asking and how many times they ask the same question in the context and everything um but the good thing
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with kids is their minds are always working and they're trying to figure stuff out and um you never
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know what exactly is going on up there until they open their mouths as my four-year-old did last night
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while he was sitting on the couch and um and he he turned to me and he asked pointing pointing to his
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older brother he said daddy if me and luke switched heads what would happen and i said well i mean you die
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first of all so don't that's the first thing and you probably make a heck of a mess in the process so
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and he kind of goes silent and he thinks about it and then i start thinking about it too
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and now i'm now i'm now my wheels are turning and then i i asked him i said well okay what if you did
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switch heads with him would you now have luke's body or luke's head like would would would giving
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your head to luke mean that you go with your head or would it be more accurate to say that you remain
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with your body and now you just have luke's head you see what i'm saying very philosophical question
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and um and he he processed it for a while and eventually we both agreed that he would probably
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travel with his head but it's an interesting question and then later on when i was putting
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him to bed and we're still talking about this this question of uh removing heads and everything
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great thing to talk about at bedtime and you know and things are finally clicking and he goes wait a
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second daddy so so i'm in my head i'm in my bones in my head and he starts knocking on his head like
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he's knocking on the front door trying to communicate with himself and then we got it when we started
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talking about the mind body problem and neurology and the soul and it was all very metaphysical after
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a while um i say we were talking about that but it was like i was talking and he was just sitting
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there not understanding anything i was saying but i did make sure to emphasize putting all that aside
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don't actually try to do this please do not try to take your head off that's all that should be the main
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point here you know i was sitting down with my kids uh dinner last night and uh i asked them as i
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always ask them you know what did you learn today in their in their homeschool classes and in the past
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i've asked them uh i i would ask them a broader question like uh what happened today or you know what
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did you do today and i realized with kids you got to be more specific because if you ask a broad
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question i you know i would always ask what what happened today and uh the answer would always be
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something like uh well we went outside and we saw something in the yard and we went up to it and it
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was a squirrel he was dead and he in his his he didn't have eyes and i would say wow dead squirrel huh
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what else happened anything no that was it just a dead squirrel what did you do with the dead squirrel
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oh we played dodgeball with it oh dear god get away from you all the black plague now um so i i get
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more specific and now i ask what did you learn today and that can be a fruitful thing so i asked
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that yesterday and um my kids told me that they were learning about one of the one of the things
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they learned about was uh persuasion and uh what what is persuasion and how do you persuade people
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you know especially in the form of writing and they were telling me about that and i said well that's
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great so uh let's try this out can you uh persuade me of something just try to persuade me of of
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something and uh they couldn't figure out what they should persuade me of and then of course my wife
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was was there and she chimed in immediately and said oh kids you should persuade daddy to get a dog
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because we're still doing the dog thing and uh my daughter made an attempt and her attempt at
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persuasion was this daddy i am persuading you you are being persuaded get a dog get a dog you're
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persuaded and i try to explain to her that's not persuasion you can't just make your demand louder
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and louder but what you're doing here this is like an exorcism the power of christ compels you that's
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not persuasion but then i also realized that um that is basically how arguments go on twitter this
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is she's she's she's ready for her own twitter account i think because that's that's the way
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persuasion works not just on twitter but in society generally