Parenting is a JokeThis week Ophira revisits her conversation with Economist Emily Oster who reveals her obsession with sleep and the very unique pets in her household. Emily has a new book coming out, "The Unexpected" about complications in pregnancy.
It used to be chair.
It's all been still a thing of sales, fun pandas a joke. Hello everyone, this is parenting is a joke. I'm a very full dishwasher when you've run out of dishwasher tablets named Olfira Eisenberg. So I wanted to take a minute to tell you that the wonderful doctor Emily Auster has a new book out called The Unexpected, Navigating Pregnancy During and After Complications. While The Unexpected is a book that Emily herself says she hopes no one ever needs, the reality is that fifty percent of pregnancies include complications. And it's a fact that we don't really talk about very often. You know, I often get asked, after all of these conversations you've had with all of these parents, does anything stand out? And yes it does. And I will tell you what stands out is that no parents' birth plan went as planned. That is a deaf After all of these years, centuries, why don't we say that of women giving birth? It is still an elusive individual experience that can be harrowing, scary, isolating. You might feel desperate for answers and support, and you know what, that's where this book comes in, so we thought it'd be a perfect time to revisit one of our favorite conversations with Emily Auster. We talk about the lighter side of things and dig a little into how she brings her data driven approach to her personal life. So enjoy this episode and you can look forward to hearing me on Emily's new podcast series, Late Night Panic Google coming this summer. My guest today makes me feel more underqualified to be a parent than I usually do, but I am so glad that she's here to help me guide my choices with the thing I like the most cold hard facts. I am pleased to welcome back economics professor, parenting data expert, New York Times bestseller Emily Oster.
Hello, Hello, thank you for having me again.
My pleasure. So you know, I was thinking about you because I read that you really like board games, and I was playing Settlers of Catan with my child at home, the kids version, the kids version. What's your game?
Lately? We've been doing a lot of cards. I'm trying to like learn teacher like trying to poker.
Okay, So I was wondering as someone who likes board games and then also as a data scientist. I imagine you'd be a pretty good gambler.
No, economists are terrible gamblers because it's gambling is you know, you can't win, So it's actually, you know, it's interesting. So the American Economics Association, which is like the you know, professional association, they have these meetings every year, and for a while, one of the locations they would have the meetings in was Vegas. But the economists didn't gamble enough, and so Vegas like kicked them out and basically they told them like they could not have the meeting there anymore.
That's otherworth. So not even craps isn't that supposed to be?
I mean, but blackjack as you play it right, is like your best odds. Craps is just just it's crapshoot. That's where they came up with that.
It makes perfect sense, all right. So what are the ages of your kids?
They are twelve and eight.
That's prime poker time, prime poker time. Did you always want to have kids?
Yes, it wasn't that. I always wanted to have kids because I thought, like, the thing I love the most is being with kids, you know, Like that was fine. I mean, I worked as like a summer camp counselor like everybody else. But I just always imagined having a family with children in it.
And did you run any data analysis whether or not it was a good or not good decision for you of how many.
How many or when? So I don't think there was much data analysis. I mean, I think you know, my husband I definitely are pretty deliberate in our decision making until we spent a lot of time thinking about, like what was the right time. There's really no right time, So it's not you know what I mean, Like there's no eure like what what would be a good time to disrupt my sleep for the next twenty five years. Oh, there's really no good no good time like September, Like yeah, it's like exactly. I mean, I think sometimes you do sort of get lulled before you have kids into this idea that there could be a good time, like because this is like a three months period of like in which I don't know my job will be flexible or some some way in which you know this short several month period is going to be a good time for baby having, and then you forget that. You know, they don't leave, they don't like go after their English boarding school at four months like they like they stay, you know, they're just still there. So there was really no good time. But we did spend a lot of time talking about what was you know, the logistics and how we would do it and so on.
When you'd say you're talking about this, are you also spreadsheeting things? Are there lists?
We did get into spreadsheets once I was pregnant, but I don't think that there was And there were spreadsheets we were buying a house, but I don't think there were spreadsheets about the right time to have a kid. Okay, yeah, okay, Well we thought a lot about like with the second kid. You know, we had a particular idea about spacing, which then we had to edit and so you.
Know, I love the word then we had to edit. I mean, I totally get you. It's exactly all right, that is my entire life. Oh we'll delete that idea.
Already edit out.
So legend has it that you created a complex algorithm to determine the optimal bedtimes for your children based on age.
Is that not true? I think that's true. I mean, that is just lord, that's just Lord. I mean I can tell you a lot about how long children should sleep. And I can tell you a lot about my feelings about bedtime algorithms and I do. When we were sleep training, now I feel like I'm I'm I said no, but now I'm sounding crazier and crazier. When we were sleep training my son, we had a really detailed decision tree schedule about exactly what time was like permissible to go in and like how many times and how much time you you know, so to back up, we were doing this at a time in which we did not expect him to sleep all the way through the night. So it was like there's going to be some crying at the beginning, and then after some point it's okay to go in and like feed him. It was like if he's up before you know, time x, and then there was some amount of time between feedings. It's like, shit, is the account for the beginning between the two beginnings and anyway, I guess the answer is yes.
So and you know, I love that to make that kind of plan and throw it out there. We did it much more just you know, a little willy nilly, some fighting between the two of us as to what we should do depending on whatever. I would have loved just like, here's what it is. No one's strays.
So what was interesting is we did for the first kid, we did what you said. We did a little bit of this, little of that, little fighting, fight more fighting, a little bit of the you know, we kind of like it took us a very long time. With my parents, I think there was like a whole it took a while long time. And I think one of the things we realized between kid wanting Kid two was that there were much smaller number of things that we wanted to be on the same page about and that we wanted that we knew were going to be important, and that when we were going to talk about those, we really wanted to like have it out at the beginning and figure out how we were going to do it, because consistency and follow through tends to improve all of those things. So that was very much a Kid number two version of this.
Do your kids eight and twelve? Right? So are they going to bed at the same time?
No? No? Wow? Yeah, not at the same time, But like a similar I will say, one of my biggest like things is sleep, and I just have a lot of feelings that kids in this age range do not sleep enough, and so we are really militant about bedtime, and we have convinced our children that sleep is really important. What do you do, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what happened. Okay, one time I gave my daughter a caffeinated tea by accident at four o'clock in the afternoon when she was in the fourth grade. So it was like and I was like picking her up from school and I took her out, and she had this like very highly caffeinated tea at which we thought was not caffeinated, and she was up until I want to say, one o'clock in the morning, like and you know, you know, not like having a great time, like up upset. She couldn't fall asleep like we felt everybody. The next day she felt terrible. She only got seventeen of the math questions out of the fifty in the like math multiplication thing or whatever. And both of my children bring this up as an example of how like it's really important to sleep, because this is one time. This happened one time, Okay, it's not like I'm constantly it'sok one time, and it's just for both of them, it was like so ingrained and now they're just also you know, sleep crazies.
That's okay. So I wouldn't say, like, I'm not going to do that, but that's amazing.
You have to like use your mistakes in a positive direction.
Use your mistakes. So what time should I tell my eight year old is optimal bedtime? I mean based on the fact that he's going to get up at.
Sex, right, so you want to think so you want to work backwards. So a can in that age range needs between nine and eleven hours of sleep. So if he's going to get up at six, that would mean sometime between you know, seven and nine. Yeah, and so, And I think the thing is that's actually a pretty big range. And the key is to sort of figure out if he is getting enough sleep is to ask does he seem tired at school? So if your teacher say he's tired, and would he weekend oversleep? And that's like a big clue. Like basically, if you're if you let your kids sleep in on the weekend and they sleep much longer than their typical school wake up, then they are not getting enough sleep.
That's that's the moment, right, you know, that sounds very sane, easy.
To figure well, but then they don't want to go to sleep. I mean, that's the thing. And it gets harder they get bigger, right, it's hard to tell your you know, they get busy, stuff comes up and they don't want to go to sleep. And for older kids, it's even harder because teenagers melatonin is at a different time than little kids and that's why oh really yeah, so teenagers like the melatonin spike leader in the night, which is why they data like to stay up a lot.
You've done a great job of obviously guiding parents with data, but also one of the data points that you use, which is my favorite, is the pleasure data, as in what makes the parents life easier. There's all the data of like what makes the kids have you know, optimal success, and then there's what do the parents need in this situation. There's a point. For example, you wrote an article in The Atlantic that I love title is a glass of wine harmless? Wrong question?
Wrong question, yeah, wrong question. Yeah. I mean I think so that I think there's so much emphasis on or maybe de emphasis on pleasure and on the idea that it would be okay to say, like I'm doing this because I enjoy it, right, and the wine like the sort of This is an example. It's it's like somehow it's become seemingly taboo and not every but in some circles to say, you know what, I'm having discussed one because I would enjoy it, and instead it feels like you have to say, well, I'm doing it because it's good for me, right heart smart like yeah, like it's her heart health, it's for heart health. And it's like it's not like the data does not suggest that it's particularly healthy, nor does the data suggest that drinking at low levels is bad for you. It's just kind of neutral. It's like you know, peanut butter or something, just like some something's just a neutral. I don't know, it's not either a thing, it's a thing. It's just the thing. It's not either thing. And somehow we've gotten into this place where in that space, but also in parenting in general, everything we're doing has to be defended by it having some benefit, some like meaningful benefit. You know why, I'm doing this because my kid will perform better. I'm doing this because my So it's like I'm going I went to the playround because it's fun, or I went to the playground because like I wanted my kids to not talk to me, and that's where they don't talk about it. Whatever it is like that somehow, like we can't just say I'm doing this because it is the thing that I that I like and it comes up all the time.
Yeah, So you know to this part of the reason I think why you know, we need people like you. There's a reason you've been called one of the top one hundred influential people in the world. But it's I look at the way I was parented, super different, and I think you've mentioned that things have changed so much in the last thirty forty years because there is this idea that there is a right way to do things and it's out there. The answer is out there.
Yeah, that we could figure it out. We could somehow dive into you know what there and there would be and if we got there, then we would know what it is and everything would I don't know, somehow be predictable. I mean, I think part of this is a desire for control and the admission it's very difficult to just say, like you could do everything the right way, whatever that means, and things could turn out badly, or you could do it like it just like I don't know, they like, there's there's noise, and I think that's that's really hard when you care, when you care so much about something.
But is there anything from the past you specifically look at and go, you know what that is something within the parenting world that I wish we could bring.
Back physical freedom for kids. I mean, you know, I think that there is as part of our somewhat good and parts of it are very good. Sort of emphasis on physical safety. We have way dialed down how much independence, physical independence we give kids and the era of you know, I walk to school by myself or you know, like I play outside with my friends, that's really gone away for a lot of people. And I don't think that that's good.
Do you try to promote indepenance with your kids?
I do, and I yeah, I do, and I think, you know, we make some progress on that. I will say there's an example of something where it's actually very difficult to go against the grain. It's difficult to be the you know, to say, well, my kid's going to walk home from school and you know, in a world in which nobody else's kid is doing it, because then people are, oh, it's like what that's you know, that's what are you doing? Like, is that dangerous? You have to negotiate it. I mean it's like a fair amount of work to do something that people don't that people don't think is appropriate. Yeah.
So I let my eight year old go down the street, cross the street, and then buy a bagel at the bagel store on the weekend. He loves doing it. He's addicted.
You kids love this stuff. I mean, that's the other kids love that kind of independence.
But now he noticed that there's another bagel store and it's a block and an avenue further, and he's like, I want to do that, and I'm really like I can't. Like someone will bring you back to me with a harsh tone and tell me that I'm a bad parent, Like I think, I think I can't do it.
Yeah, And I think that's that's really I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I think it's really a it's really a shame and it's actually it's a thing my kids always ask. It's sort of like, well, if I'm walking home and like, what if somebody tells me I'm not supposed Like that's the thing they're afraid of. It's like basically being told that what they're doing is the wrong thing? Shame? Yeah, and you know it can be like, well you should tell them your mom's parenting experts. It's fine, don't they know who I am? Somehow that doesn't they're not they don't think of me as a parenting expert. Will know?
In fact, have you ever done something, you know, a guilty pleasure for yourself that maybe you're like, you know what, I've done the data analysis on this, and I'm allowed, Okay, I'm going against the grain for myself.
You know, I will. I will sometimes have a glass of wine. You know, that's it. I think, you know, my biggest like like self care at the moment is I do a lot of running and it takes away a lot of time that my family would like me to be spending with them, and that is I'm not sure that there's a sort of data piece of this, but I think for me it's been one of those things where like I had just learn to be like, I'm doing this because I like it, and they're like, why don't you like? That's it? I'm doing it because like for nothing, for no reason, I'm just like doing this because I enjoy it.
Yeah, yeah, well are you going like, you know, at dinner time, are you picking a time.
That is a The issue is that I take I've actually tried to so I've been training it for this marathon, and so there's like these long like run periods, and I do my long runs on Fridays, which means that people are at school, but I like to leave early so my kids have to walk themselves to school. And the other day, as I was explaining to my son, I was putting into bed, like Okay, you know, I'll see you in the morning, but then I'm going to be gone. You guys are gonna get off to school by yourself. He was like, you care more about your long run than you do about me. And I've had this I was like, I was like, well that's I was like, no, I love you, but in the for the morning, I'm going to be prioritizing my longer. I mean, it's like it's like one of those things where I think I got a great Like my mother was a good model on this because she just didn't put up with that kind of you know, she just like just like that's what you know, Like, as you understand, it's not he doesn't really think that I mean you know what that would even mean, right, Like he doesn't really think that, It's just they're experimenting with Like, how do you what happens if I say that? And I was just like, well, I guess I'll be taking my line run. But I love you so much. Many years ago I wrote a piece about working and about how even though I love you, know you love your kids kind of more in the broad sense that it might be appropriate to spend many more hours at your job because the value of time with your kids is diminishing. That has a faster diminishing utility. So the sort of marginal utility of time with your children is like this sort of example is like basically your job is kind of about the same amount of happiness in every hour. You know, the eighth hour is like about as good as the first hour. But with your kids, the first hour is like infinitely good. It's like the greatest thing you know. Of course you want to see them, and that's the total happiness is very large. But then the second hour is not as good, the third and the fourth hour is bad. And by the fourth hour you'd rather be at work for the eighth hour, and that that's somehow like even though you could if you if you ask the question which of these things would you give up? You would give up your job in a second. And it could be true that if I had to pick one, I would pick my kids. But also I'd rather spend eight hours a day at my job and two hours a day with my kids, and like that could be optimal. It's like that's you know, that's so well economics for you there.
You know, just with all of your research, is there a way that you've done things in your house or a parenting decision that you have made that then after, you know, coming across some data or studies or doing the work you do, you're like, uh, I got to change this. I was going down the wrong path.
So I think that there are or I would say there's a couple of things. So one one is that when I was when my kids were younger, we sort of iterated through a bunch of different versions of discipline. And then when I was working on which is hard, and then when I was working on Cripshet, I spent a bunch of time in this like kind of one two three magic sort of discipline space, which is one of these like counting and timeouts kind of version of this, And the main thing I took away from that we ended up using a version of that. But the main thing I think we took away from it is the idea of just like importance of consistency. And so I think there was a there was a large sense in which we were messing up by basically like digging around and doing a different thing all the time. And that was something where we hadn't had as much of an issue with my first kid, was she was less complicated in some ways, and we had been not doing this correctly with the second kid. So that was one that was one thing.
Consistency in itself is very hard. Yes, it's made my I think the most daunting. Yeah, but did you find that once you were consistently like, oh, we're just reaping the rewards of this?
Yeah, it worked better, but it's still hard, right, I mean still I think that you know, for me, this kind of consistency and sort of following through one discipline stuff is so much harder than anything else. My husband is very good at it. I'm a disaster, but I I just can't fall like I'm not I don't have a good follow through.
Yeah, are you do you put post it notes around?
Are you?
Like?
I know, you know, it's just in the moment. It's very difficult, you know, you know, like yelling. I don't know, it's just hard. I mean it's hard.
It's hard. It is hard. What advice do you give parents about, you know, keeping your kids safe but also not being paranoid or irrationally over protective.
What I think is very difficult about these choices is that the one of the risks is much more salient than the other. Right, So if you think about like sending your kid down the street to the to the bagels, you can see the and like put aside the risk of like getting in trouble. Just like think about if you were sort of worried about some actual risk, Like it's easy to imagine what those things would be, you know, I don't know, he gets snatched or somebody like whatever fall is. That's something like there are a set of things which are really low probability events like vanishingly vanishingly unlikely, But are the things that you're thinking of. What you're not thinking about is the other side, is the kind of what is being lost? What is the risk in not doing this? And So this is why I wrote about once under the title no option is completely safe. That sort of like locking your kid in the house and never letting them do this. That's also not safe, And it's not safe in a very different way. But it's not safe in the sense that, like they aren't going to develop skills that will let them, you know, navigate complicated situations in the future. Maybe it's not safe for mental health reasons, like there's all kinds of potential downsides of not doing something. We are very good at thinking about the potential risks of doing something, of having our kids do something, and very poor at having them think about think about the potential risks of not doing something. So I think just that kind of frame sometimes helps people think about, Oh, actually, it's not that by not doing this, I'm choosing the safe option. None of these options are safe. I'm just trading off different risks. Yeah.
Right, nothing is going to be one hundred percent in a that's a it's almost being positive. It's like there's a little bit of positivity there. I know that, you know, there's there's ways that we talk about how we should pairent the North America. I'm putting this in context, and you know, globally there are people that are doing things in vastly different ways. Is there anything from another country that you're like, I wish we did how France does this? Or so?
I do think, you know, there are a number of European countries in which some of these kinds of you know, particularly sort of like how much freedom of the kids have, like how much independence kind of change a lot. And then I think in general most of Europe is way less into this kind of culture of achievement that dictates a lot of you know, certain socio demographic groups in the US. So this idea of like you know, pre professional sports when kids are nine, I think that's not doing that much. I mean, you know, maybe the Dutch are into like the speed skating or something, but like like in a sort of fundamental sense, I think that happens to a much lesser extent outside of the US.
Yeah, So you think it would be beneficial for us to dial down trying to turn all of our kids into geniuses and Olympic athletes under ten? Yeah? I do.
I mean I think that it's you know, we know something from the data about the benefits or vestor curriculars and what we know is that, you know, there are some socio emotional benefits that kids tend to like to have another social group. And you know, if your kid loves to play soccer, and then that's like a nice thing for them to have a community where they can play soccer and do this thing that they're good at and they like, and so there's some benefits to that. But those benefits are crew and the data at a much lower intensity than the kinds of intensity that people are that people are doing. And I think it can be sort of it. You know, you can get near fir with sleep to go back to my main thing, which is sleep, and I think it can it can sort of get to a point where it's it's really not serving kids, it's serving something else. And as I often remind people, your kid's not going to the Olympics. So if that's what you're going for, that's not going to happen for you. I mean, it's interesting because I now have some friends who themselves went to the Olympics, and so sometimes I'll be like, well, your kid's not going well, actually your kid might go to the but like broadly people's kids are not going to the Olympics. Right, you're like, oh wait, oh wait, actually probably go to practice, but still I think they should sleep.
Do you have any extracurricular activities for your kids that you were like, no matter what, I need you to whatever, learn an instrument.
Let's say, yeah, so we have a view that our kids should have an instrument. My daughter is like super into the violin, which is great. Actually, I would recommend it as an extracurricular activity because although it takes a lot of time, you don't have to stand outside and watch them do it. So my niece is really into soccer, and so one day last weekend I had a thing where like first I had to do a violin thing, and then I like went to watch my niece's soccer game. And I was like thirty degrees. It was like nighttime, and we were standing outside, and I was like, wow, going to this high school and standing around while my kid plays the violin. It's like, so I would recommend the violin.
Right, you drop them off, you pick them up.
Yes, exactly, you drop them off, you pick them up. That's it. You know, I hear about it. But you know, like my younger one doesn't do much plays the piano in a kind of light touch way that presumably will end up with him putting. And that's okay, that's fine.
So do you have family meetings? I might understand that.
We have family. My husband and I have some family meetings, and then sometimes like we'll have family meetings with the kids if we have to, like you know, we'll like schedule a meeting we have to talk about something.
But you describe him as someone who is very good at following, you know, very consistent, or you're like, here's the roadmap.
Rigid. I believe the words you're looking for is rigid. And yes, he's very rigid.
So if he's a rigid one, does he consider you reckless?
I think he would sometimes describe me as inconsistent, I ask him. I don't think reckless is the word we used, but uh yeah, probably messy, disorganized. You know, I'm like the one who leaves my stuff around the house, like I lost my kid, loose my keys. That I'm kind of like the person who loses there.
And my favorite I got an Apple Watch. My favorite function of it is just find my phone.
That's like, yes, right now, I'm like, I mind doesn't have I have a garment watch. But it will show me when I'm like when I'm like in like, it's only connected on my phone a relatively small range, so I'll just be like wandering around the house like looking at my watch to see when it finds me. I'll be like, Okay, it's somewhere around here. It's always like it's like always like in my son's like snail cage, and I'll be like, You'll be like, why did I put it with the snails? Wait?
So your son is snails?
Yeah, we have snails. That's our pet. Okay, Yeah, it's like garden snail.
Right, I like a slugs, a slug with a shell shell.
It's not a slug because the slug.
Like an this cargo something you serve with butter on a ticket.
Yeah, but they're interesting, they have they they reproduce quite a lot, so you have to be a little careful.
Yeah, how did the snail pet thing? I've never I honestly, I will just admit I've never heard of anyone with pet snails.
Right, So my kids wanted a pet. We had a lot of rules about the like level of maintenance that one needed for the pet, and also we wanted a pet that would be that would not be on. After a lot of PowerPoint presentations in which different pets were proposed, uh, we settled on snails because they are actually happy to live in captivity and they don't require huge amount of maintenance. Yeah.
Well, I mean I've never seen a snail expression in my life, so I can't imagine.
You can tell that they're happy because they have sex. That's what I think. Like you can see, like you can see that they'll have and snail sex is grown. So it's like no, no, one snail like shoots like a penis out of its head into the other snail's head and they just like sit there.
Penis in the head. Amazing. Okay, well that makes forect sense because you only have a couple options.
Right exactly, like wait, where would you put it?
And just sticks onto the female's head.
They're not gendered, they're not They actually cannot they can reproduce it.
So the non binary snails, right, one of the shoots a.
Thing I guess maybe I think it is. I think it is called I don't know, actually probably has another names.
Let's call it a projectile, A projectile at the other one's forehead.
Yeah, if they stay attached and then uh then eventually I don't know tog.
How many snails are reproduced at a time.
There are like one hundred eggs. They'll lay a lot of eggs. But then you have to fortunately, you have to like get in there. We don't want them hatch. You just like freeze.
You say, freeze the eggs. What kind of operation do you?
No? No, not like for later usage. That's just the humane way to them. It's not like it's not like some kind of ivy snail click.
You're not doing some snail in utra.
I'm not doing snail in utro. Not not at the moment.
Okay, snails what what came second? In this power point presentation.
Of snails were not first? I mean they wanted a dog, they wanted a gerbil, they wanted a hamster, they wanted a lizard, they wanted a snake, you know, they wanted hermit crabs. Were like, we're like seven PowerPoint presentations in before we got discussed a book.
You have a new book coming out, another book. Yeah, your new book is called The Unexpected, Navigating Pregnancy During and After Complications. You've said you wish this was a book that no one needs, which I completely understand. And I will tell you that, you know, including myself, pretty much on this podcast, all of the women I have talked to, everyone has had to deal with something. No one has had nothing, and in the you know range, some of it relatively minor, too completely harrowing and scary. I don't know why it feels like it's more common, and I don't know if that's true.
So I think it is the range of things we talk about in this book is from kind of miscarriage to birth complications, to things like hyperamesis or just stational diabetes or conditions within pregnancy. And all told that half of pregnancies are affected by one of these conditions, which means, of course more than half of women people have multiple pregnancies will be affected in some way. And I think some of these things have gotten more common over time because many of them are correlated with age. I also think we've gotten to discuss this more, which is good, although I think we could afford to discuss them quite a lot more than we are because one of the things I hear from women when they go through this is just how alone it can feel. So that's kind of one part of the book. But I think the other side of this is to try to bring some attention to saying, hey, like, these are things that might be happening to the women that you love, to the women in your life, to the people that you know who are pregnant, and you know they are real and they are really can be really debilitating. I mean, I always think about this example we sort of talked about earlier in the book around hyperremeesis, which is severe nausea and vomiting pregnancy, which is one of these conditions where people think, oh, I was also sick, and so some we have a quote from a woman who said, you know, at some point my friend texted me to say, you know, had I tried the ginger choose from Trader Joe's and at the time I was in the hospital getting ivy fluids. And there's just sort of this like huge disconnect between the experiences that some people are having and kind of how other people are processing them, and there's a need to close that gap.
A bit and and also differentiated. It's like, no different, these are completely different situations.
It's not Trader Joe's gummies. It's delicious as those are.
Yeah, they're great, but it doesn't solve everything. I have so many questions. But to end this off, I just want to ask you some rapid fire And by that I mean you can answer short, you can answer long. They're rapid fire from my point of view, Okay, yeah, should I get my eight year old and Nintendo Switch for the holidays?
Maybe there's a thing person say wrong with the Nintendo Switch here that they're fun When you think about got it, I don't have one. When you think about, you know, time that kids are spending on these kind of video games, the most important thing is to think about what it's substituting for. So if you're not going to be able to set boundaries, or if you think your kid's going to be on this for twelve hours a day, then I would not get it. If you think that this is something they could spend an hour doing a day or whatever is the amount of time that you think they would otherwise just be sitting and you know, staring at the wall or bothering you. It seems fine?
Okay, that would be a no. Yeah, okay from okay, do I give my kid like do I reprimand them or or basically tell them that it's not okay if they say words like butthole in public or how about damn it hmm.
When you tell kids things like don't say that word, it makes the word super fun powerful, and so you think you want to be careful. There are some words we absolutely do not say, like racial slurs, and there are some words like butthole, which I would just let it go because butts are fun and people enjoy butts. And you got to figure out where your where your line is and make sure your kid understands why. I think we often under underestimate how good even little kids are at understanding why we're asking them to do something. And you know, if you if the answer is like, people perceive that as rude or that's you know, that could make people feel bad. That's something I think kids can understand if the answer is just like butts are like adults don't think butts are funny, Like but butts are.
I'll tell you right now, I work in comedy. Butts are always They're always fuddy.
So I mean in my kids. At at some point with my kids kindergarten class, they had some rule about like no potty words, and that was just a disaster because if you tell kids no potty words, like that's just like potty words the funnest you just like made them really fun and so you got to be careful.
That's true, Okay, having kids clean their rooms important or who cares?
Certainly nothing in the data would say you should do this or not do it again. I think it's something that you know, you could decide it was important.
What do you do in your house?
One of my kids cleans their room, and one of my kids doesn't clean their room at all, and do ask. It drives me insane and I hate it, but I can't. It's not really like a thing. It's not a hill I've decided to die.
So you're just like, you know what, don't worry about it. Your room's messy. I'm going to tell you to clean it up. You don't do it.
Oh well, I don't even tell him to clean it up, because that's not consistent. I mean, if I was going to tell him to clean it up, I would tell him that, like, you have to clean it up, we would like work out how you have to clean up. Instead, I just occasionally colorado and throw away the trash on the floor, and like with some things, will do like a larger clean.
All right, any allowance? Tips? Do you do allowance?
We do allowance, okay, for both kids. Yeah, we do allowance for both kids, No same amount. I like it because it means that I can sometimes say I'm not going to get you, that you have to use your allowance, and then they will have a somewhat better sense of the value of money.
And what do they have to do to earn nothing.
We don't have a we don't have an allowed We spend a lot of time thinking about this, and we don't have a thing for allowance. You. We have a set of expectations for the kinds of things they will that they aren't responsible for, which don't include cleaning their room, but do have other features. And then you're allowed. But your allowance is that contingent on doing those because I think part I don't like the idea of like paying them to be responsible members of the household.
You don't want to link money specifically to that.
Yeah, exactly, Okay.
So would you rather your daughter be a DJ or a big oil salesperson?
Gosh, that's extremely difficult, I guess I would say DJ.
Okay, So living at home, Yeah, that's.
The part of it that I'm a little bit unsure about, to be honest, a little hard.
Yeah, you know what, I feel a great amount of satisfaction in just having you go. This is the worst question.
It's not a great question, not a great question. Yeah.
Finally, just because I drink a million coffees? Are you a coffee drinker?
Oh? Yeah?
Yeah, Like I feel like through the course of even the last of my own parentinghood, it's like, coffee is bad for you, Coffee is great for you. Where are we with coffee right now?
Yeah?
To me, this is fine?
Is that coffee is. Coffee is like the best example I have of how you can get any result you want based on just manipulating who you're asking and what else you're adjusting for. And so I think on net coffee is just does it matter. It doesn't kill you, it doesn't make you love forever. It's just something that makes your day more enjoyable because you don't feel so exhambed.
That's right. Sometimes you just have to make your own data. Your body is your data. My friend's body is your data.
Do you feel after you have your coffee verses before there's your data?
Thank you so much. You are gift to all of us.
Thank you, thank you for having me. This is such a treat, my pleasure.
Listen to parent Data with Emily Oster. Also there's a great newsletter that is full of helpful tips and also questions from other parents that you can enjoy. So you can find Emily on Instagram at prof Emily Oster. Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you haven't yet, subscribe to this podcast, pass it along to a friend, to your mom group, dad group, all of your groups. Just want to keep making more of these and that's how it happens. Also, if you listen on Apple Podcasts, they have a new way of having you subscribe. In some browsers it says follow others.
It's just a down arrow. I know, so subtle.
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