You Think Your Loud Kid Isn’t Disrupting Everyone？ Let’s Talk.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
182.7884
Summary
A church in Pennsylvania is encouraging families to bring their loud children to church, and all of them are welcome. This is supposed to be a heartwarming church policy, but I'm actually against it. I talk about why you should be able to have a church that is young and vibrant, but also quiet and well-behaved.
Transcript
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When you let arrow truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.
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Like that pile of laundry. You didn't forget to fold it.
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Feel the arrow bubbles melt. It's mind-bubbling.
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This week we talked about the issue of loud children in public.
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We talked about a church in York, Pennsylvania, that was getting a lot of, getting some good press
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because they posted a loud children policy where they were inviting families to bring their loud children to church
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and saying that all children are welcome and all this sort of thing.
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This is supposed to be heartwarming. I said I'm actually against it.
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I talked about it on the show. I'll show you what I posted on X.
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I said, I don't love it. I'm actually considerably less tolerant of loud kids in public now than I was before.
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I had my own. Your children should not be allowed to disrupt a church service or any other public gathering
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if they're being unruly, remove them. If they're old enough to know better, take them out and discipline them.
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If they're too young to control themselves, then again, remove them.
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I've had to do this many times in many situations. It blows my mind when parents just sit there
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and let their kids totally disrupt and irritate an entire room full of strangers.
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A lot of comments, a lot of conversation around this point, and I'll read some of the comments now.
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You've already lost me as a grown man typing the word oof.
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You're a grown man typing the word, not even oof, but O-O-O-F.
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Should your children be obedient and well-behaved?
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There's a difference between being unruly and making a little noise.
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If you have children, you know that under a certain age, different for each child,
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they do not have any recognition of appropriate noise level.
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There are two unmistakable sounds that signify a healthy church.
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One, crying babies as they represent new life and families.
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Two, singing men as they represent joyful and loving leadership and not stodgy piety.
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Help them learn to participate in the service appropriately,
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This is one of those things people do where I say something and then they react like they totally disagree,
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but then you read what they're saying or you listen to it and they're basically agreeing with you.
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Should your children be obedient and well-behaved?
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You want a church that is young and vibrant, young families.
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Young families in a church are what you want to see.
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I bring my family to church and that's what you want to see.
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When I walk into a church and the average age of the congregant is 70, I know that this is a church that is in every sense dying.
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This is not a vibrant church community and that's not what you want.
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But this is a lot of the responses I'm getting to my points.
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You set up this false dilemma, this false dichotomy where either we have old, dying, quiet churches
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or churches that are loud and boisterous and the kids are constantly crying and making noise.
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I'm saying that you can actually have the best of both worlds.
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It's like there's a, there's another, there's a third option where it's a church that is young and vibrant and energetic,
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but also during the church service, during the mass, kids are quiet and well-behaved.
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Like the crying, the crying baby thing in particular.
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Like when I, when I hear babies crying in church, that's what blows my mind the most.
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Because that, you just, you, you take the, I don't blame a baby for crying.
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Uh, no one gets, I don't get mad at a baby for crying.
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I'm not asking anyone to do anything I haven't done.
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Take them out, calm them down where other people can't hear it.
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Again, I don't like the first couple of moments of the baby crying.
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But you're just sitting there and letting the baby cry and disrupting everyone else's time.
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What you're saying is, okay, um, yeah, the baby's crying and guess what?
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So now I can't enjoy the church service or I can't enjoy my meal and sound.
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So now none of you will, I'm going to make it so that none of you can enjoy it.
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We were in a restaurant the other day, just a couple, a couple of weeks ago.
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I was with my wife and, um, there was a, a family that came in and they had a baby
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And like I said, for the first, I don't know, minute or something, I'm not getting annoyed
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Like, I don't, I don't blame you for bringing, you want to go out to eat.
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There's no reason why you can't do that in theory, but the minutes drag on and they're
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Like they're just sitting there and letting the baby cry so that the rest of us have to
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hear it, take them out, leave the, the, go back into the lobby.
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There are at least solutions that will make this only annoying for you and not for the
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If your kid's going to be annoying in public, uh, it's understandable.
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I get it, but you should make it so that it's only annoying for you and not for anybody
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Yano says, I agree in all situations where it's possible to remove them somewhere like
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Now, obviously me and my spouse would try every possible thing to keep the child quiet.
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Uh, fortunately I'm past that phase by sympathizing with young parents, especially on planes.
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I do sympathize with the, uh, I mean, it is annoying to hear a baby crying on a plane,
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I actually feel, I feel really bad for the parent in that situation.
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Cause yeah, in that case, there's nothing you can do.
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You can't obviously leave the plane while it's in the sky.
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And I'm not going to sit here and say that families with kids under a certain age just
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It's unreasonable to say that if your baby cries on a plane, you should like jump out
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Uh, it's unreasonable to say that you should never fly if you have a baby.
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If you're going on a plane, you should have everything ready to try to keep your children
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entertained and satiated so that they don't cry.
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Um, but in situations where you can remove the child, then that's what you should do.
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UK All Day says, of course, Matt, run off people in the church with families and kids.
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Churches are shutting down the doors because they can't keep, get people to come anymore.
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Now I have a four-year-old and I don't let her disrupt church.
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And I do remove her if she gets carried away or starts talking loudly during prayer, then
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This happens all the time where I say something and people disagree, even though they agree.
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All I'm saying is, if your kid's being loud, remove them.
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And you're saying, yeah, Matt, you're running them off.
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Yet if I go to a church and they make a comment about my child being loud, when I obviously
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But don't forget that children being brought up in church is our future and the only way
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Like I said, as I said, we talked about this earlier in the week.
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Like, I actually weirdly have become less sympathetic to these complaints by parents now that I am
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And the longer that I am a parent, the less sympathetic I become to it.
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It's sort of, so it's maybe the inverse of what you would expect.
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But when you have parents that say, I felt so unwelcome because people said my children
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You know, the first thing I think now is like, yeah, well, they were probably being loud.
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I mean, it's, look, I, I, there have been a few times in my life when we had kids out
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in public, maybe at church, maybe somewhere else.
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And I think that they were legitimately being like really well behaved and not loud at all.
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And somebody made a comment and I felt that like, actually, that's unfair.
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You know, it seems like you just have a problem with kids being around you at all.
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So that, that's happened a few times, but it's pretty rare.
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I mean, my, my actual experience as someone who's has a lot of kids, as a big family, um,
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my experience in actuality is that when you're out with a lot of kids and they're, and they're
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really being well behaved, you're much more likely to hear people praising you for it.
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I mean, you're much more, if anything, the annoying thing is the patronizing praise you'll
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Uh, so I don't, I don't get mad about it, but yeah, I think you're more likely to hear
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people remarking on how well behaved your kids are.
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And if you never hear that in public, but instead you hear unfair comments about how your kids
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Um, and so maybe you should just listen to the feedback.
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I mean, if you go to a church and, you know, afterwards you, someone talks to you about
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how the fact that your kid's kid was disruptive, rather than saying, I feel unwelcome.
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Maybe instead of that, maybe take the feedback, maybe consider that actually your pay, maybe your
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Remember my take that just said, if your kid's being loud, remove them.
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And, and then when they quiet down, come back in the most reasonable thing on the planet.
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If they're being loud, take them out, calm them down, bring them back in.
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Like what's the other take aside from the one that I expressed?
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Nearly two hours in a quiet service is a long time for very small kids.
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And you have to train them to be quieter and reverent when they're older.
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We started that for all five of our kids when they were about one or two.
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And by about four, they're perfect angels for the entire service.
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We've always gotten a lot of good compliments out of on them, but it was only because we
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were allowed to keep them in the service for the first few years of their life.
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So you let your kids be very noisy in church for years?
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So then it's, then it's just everybody else's problem is what you're saying.
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You just expect everyone else to put up with it.
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Uh, if your kid's being noisy, then you take, and this is an important point, part of it
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Uh, if your kid's being disruptive in public, not just, we keep just talking about church.
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It's anywhere, grocery store, restaurant, movie theater, anywhere in public where you can
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So it's pretty much anywhere, but a plane, um, if they're being noisy, you remove them.
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But an important part of that is that it can't be a reward because in some cases, like they're
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And so if you take them out, you're rewarding them.
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Um, and so you just have to make sure that it's not a reward and that that's where consequences
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That's where punishments come in depending on the, the age of the child.
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I mean, I got to punish a baby, but as the kids get a little bit older, there's punishments,
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So we, what we have done with church and the way that we've gotten it so that now we're,
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our youngest kids are three and, uh, they can both almost make it through an entire
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We usually have to take them each out like once.
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Um, and I think by the time they're four, you know, by the time they're four, all of
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We'll be past all this and all of our kids will be fine and we don't have to worry about
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But the way that we do it is that if I got to take you out and I got to take you back
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into the lobby or something, you're not going to go back in the lobby and like run around
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We're not going to, you know, we're, we're not bringing toys for you to calm you down because
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then we're rewarding because then you've learned that, okay, if I want to get a toy, I just have
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You see parents, they bring snacks and toys for their kids.
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And if they want to keep them quiet, terrible move, bringing a tablet or something even
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worse because not only are you forming in that case, the tablet habit, but also you're
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training your kid that if they want to get a fun treat, all they have to do is be disruptive.
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It's like, no, if you're disruptive now, now you're going to, you weren't having fun before.
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And so what I've done when it comes to church, I take them back and, uh, and we go to the
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I say, okay, you see that little square right there, that little tile stand right there.
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You're going to stand right there in that spot.
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And if there's got to be consequences when we get home, then there's gonna be consequences
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The problem is that parents don't want to do this because it's annoying for them.
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When we were listening to the crying baby in the restaurant, well, it's because those
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parents, they wanted to eat their meal and they didn't want to have to miss out on their
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If one of them has to get up and take the baby out, then their food's going to get cold.
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And now they got to miss out on the food that they paid for.
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And so they stay there and make everyone else deal with it.
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You know, that's the sacrifice you're supposed to make so that you can raise kids who will
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be, uh, you know, eventually productive members of society.
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That that's, that's the sacrifice you were expected to make.
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Don't, don't force the rest of us to deal with your parenting inadequacies.