Family Time Failures
Jamilah Lemieux: This episode contains explicit language. Welcome to Mom and Dad or Fighting Slate’s parenting podcast for Thursday, July 7th. The Families Time Failures Edition. I’m Jamilah Lemieux, a writer, contributor to Slate’s Care and Feeding Parenting column, and mom to Naima, who is nine. And we live in Los Angeles.
Zak Rosen: I’m Zak Rosen. I make the Best Advice Show podcast. I live in Detroit with my family, my oldest known as four, and my youngest, Ami, is one.
Elizabeth Newcamp: I’m Elizabeth Newcamp. I write the homeschool and family travel blog, Dutch Statues. I’m the mom to three littles. Henry, who’s ten, Oliver who’s eight, and Teddy who’s five. And we live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Jamilah Lemieux: We’re tackling a lot on the show today. Some of us are still on vacation, so we did record some of this show a bit earlier in June, just so you know. First, we’re going to do a round of triumphs and fails. And then y’all sent us a number of follow up questions about how pregnant people are going to be affected now that abortion bans are in effect in some states. I took those questions to Dr. Allison Black, who will give us some important insight. We’re also going to tackle an old fashioned listener question. And finally on Slate, plus something a little lighter. We’ve got summertime arts and crafts ideas. Be sure to join us in order to hear that. All right. We’re ready to share some triumphs and fails. Elizabeth, why don’t you go first?
Elizabeth Newcamp: Okay. So Henry has been at diving camp, and last week Henry gets in the car after diving camp, which ends at like 4 p.m.. And he is insisting that we need to make doughnuts when we get home, which is something Jeff and the boys bake these doughnuts. We have little donut molds. I don’t think it’s very fancy, but it’s not really an activity that I do with them.
Elizabeth Newcamp: And so I was like, can I? Do you want a doughnut? Can I take you to get a doughnut? Can we buy a doughnut in the morning? And he is just like, I can’t understand why you won’t do this. Like, I need to bake these doughnuts, and I am just in my head thinking, like, what is the deal with the urgency and the doughnuts? And he just won’t talk to me, right? So I, I said, okay, I need to understand why these doughnuts are so important. I’m not saying yes. I’m not saying no. I just feel like I’m missing a piece of the puzzle.
Jamilah Lemieux: Mm hmm.
Elizabeth Newcamp: And he takes this big breath, and he goes on to tell me the story that there is this girl who is at diving camp, and some of the older divers stay there boarders. And he is, you know, comes and goes because he is not the age to say, well, this girl is staying there and she’s not really happy with the food. And essentially she got into a conversation where she was like, my mom bakes these doughnuts and I really miss them. And Henry was like, Oh, I bake doughnuts. I would love to bake you a doughnut. I know. And so all of a sudden he’s telling me the story and I just was like, yes, we’ll figure out how to bake the doughnuts. Right. Like, the story changes everything.
Elizabeth Newcamp: So we already had kind of a crazy day. We were picking up at four, and we had plans to meet all these people at the neighborhood concert series. We go there, we get home, it’s like close to nine. And I’m and my kids go to bed early. So I’m like, okay, I’m going to get the little two down. Can you start baking the doughnuts? And he’s like, Yes. So he’s getting everything out. We get the first load into the oven and I’m like, You go to bed, I will finish them off and I finish baking them. And in the morning he made the icing while I was getting the kids ready to go, and he picked out the best looking one and put it on a plate and brought it to this to this girl and was just like so happy about it.
Elizabeth Newcamp: And when he when he got home, I was like, have a donut, go. And he was like, Oh, she loved it, you know? He said, Thanks for letting me stay up late and doing the doughnuts with me. I know it’s not really your thing. And I was like, This is great. Like, it’s I just feel like I’m hoping, right? Like, maybe this is a fleeting moment of all the mistakes that I make and all the times when I am just like I do not have the mental capacity to add one more thing. The idea that he like shared with me why it was important to him and then immediately it became important to me. And I hope says to him, like, continue to tell me the whole story, because that may really change. You know, my reaction to this, I don’t know. I felt like a great mom when the donut thing about.
Zak Rosen: Well, I’m thanking you for it is him acknowledging that you went the extra mile for him.
Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should feel like a great mom. That that was very good stuff.
Jamilah Lemieux: All right, Zach, how did you feel this week?
Zak Rosen: I don’t know if this this is just another failure of of COVID. And it’s not even I don’t even want to call it a failure. It’s just a recognition that two and a half years on, we are still dealing with this shit. So we’re going overseas. We’re going to Tel Aviv this week where my wife’s family is from, where we both have family and friends. We’ve been looking forward to this trip for like months and months. It’s. Actually my wife. But me too. We’ve been planning it. And like just a couple of days ago, we started to see that COVID cases are going way up. They’re like up 100% in the last week.
Zak Rosen: So we just had that conversation yesterday. Should we really consider not going and we’re still going to go, but like we probably won’t be going into restaurants, which is fine. Like we can eat outdoors there. Like, I feel like a totally privileged, very lucky person to be able to go on this trip, but it’s just like, Damn, this thing is not going away. I feel like kind of an idiot complaining about this. But Tom Phelan, what about you, Jamilah?
Jamilah Lemieux: Well, I have you know, it’s not really a feel. It’s just kind of a thing, you know, like one of those things just sort of sucks. But I took my emails to the doctor yesterday for her annual checkup, and one thing they do when you’re nine is they check your cholesterol and they do that by pricking your finger. And Naima is. Pain avoidance, to say the absolute least. Like she has no pain threshold. She knows this about herself and owns it. But like just the idea of any sort of, you know, like I got to be very gentle putting her earrings in, you know what I mean? Like any sort of things, sticking her like, ouch, ouch, ouch. She was right. Kill me.
Jamilah Lemieux: So finally we get her to the point where she submits her finger. But because of the wiggling that she did immediately afterward, because, oh, it hurt so bad, by the way. Like it hurts so bad, you know, like she didn’t produce a ton of blood. And the blood, like, some of the blood that she did produce, like, got wiped into the nurse’s gloves because of her wiggling around and we weren’t able to use it. So this was all for not because it wasn’t enough blood.
Jamilah Lemieux: So we have to like, you know, that was like it’s not urgent per say it’d be a good thing that no you know so like yeah you can try this again at some point and some kids do it at ten. And I wanted to do it because I wanted to know, you know, and so we’re going to try this again maybe in six months, I don’t know. But like what sucked the most? Because at one point that was like, you know, maybe we just give her a break today and try this another time. You know, obviously she’s but I’m thinking I’m like, bro, this is every time. Like, she’s showing up with this energy tomorrow. And Amy and I am with him saying, we can come back tomorrow. I was like, We’re going to the just like an hour drive from camp. I’m like, No, we’re not doing this long drives like 30 minutes coming home. But like to get there is always a solid hour from no matter where we come from. So like going there is a pain and she was like, We’ll go tomorrow. I’m like, So you can do this again tomorrow.
Elizabeth Newcamp: It’ll be tomorrow and tomorrow.
Jamilah Lemieux: So probably tomorrow. And we still have to go to Target and get the toy that she was promised because she did uphold her end of the bargain.
Elizabeth Newcamp: Oh, gosh, that’s the thing. You can’t change how they are. Like there’s nothing. If it hurts her, it hurts her that we don’t get to say, like, well, these other kids are less hurt, you know?
Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah, because.
Elizabeth Newcamp: That’s just not how bodies work.
Jamilah Lemieux: When she reminds me in the moment, you can’t tell me it doesn’t hurt that bad. That’s right. It’s like some very clear.
Elizabeth Newcamp: Maybe it’s a lesson, though, of like if you had just gotten it done, we wouldn’t have to go back.
Jamilah Lemieux: Right? Like, if you just do it without the wiggling and stuff, it would have been over just the one time.
Elizabeth Newcamp: But I think next time. Not enough blood for the test. No, Tori, no.
Jamilah Lemieux: You gotta. You got to do it.
Elizabeth Newcamp: Your terms have been renegotiated. I always feel so embarrassed in those moments. Like, I know the doctors see it all, but, oh, it’s. It’s like this, you know, like, why can’t my child do this thing?
Jamilah Lemieux: She he knows that when he sees the Lemieux child’s name on the chart, it’s going to be a party every time they’re preparing.
Elizabeth Newcamp: I love it.
Jamilah Lemieux: All right. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I’m going to be joined by Dr. Allison BLOCK. Don’t go anywhere.
Jamilah Lemieux: So in the last week or two, we’ve gotten a lot of listener comments about the Supreme Court officially overruling Roe versus Wade. We wanted to share some of them with you.
Speaker 4: Hi, mom and dad. So I just wanted to respond to the brief discussion you guys had about the Roe versus Wade decision. And I just wanted to say, as a woman of color, as also as an adoptee not wanting to, like, talk about these harsh truths with kids, parents sometimes not wanting to parent or, you know, babies sometimes being unwanted. A It just reminded me a little bit of, you know, parents who don’t want to talk to their kids about racism. And they’re like, oh, if we just, you know, raise them right, you know, that will take care of it. And we don’t have to actually say the word racism, don’t have to actually talk about hate crimes. And and I don’t think that’s true. And I don’t think it’s true in this case either. I think, you know, that parents should be empowered to to have those hard conversations with their kids.
Speaker 4: And like I said, I’m an adoptee and I feel like, you know, all of us other adoptees who grew up knowing that we were adopted, who wasn’t you know, it wasn’t kept from us, you know, like we we had to have that knowledge at a very young age that in some way we were not wanted and and that sometimes people aren’t ready to be parents. And, you know, our parents, you know, with varying degrees of success, you know, had to impart that knowledge to us somehow and help us through that. I hope that adds to the conversation. I appreciate you guys so much for having the conversation at all.
Jamilah Lemieux: We also got an email from someone who’s been a clinical director at a Planned Parenthood. She says she’s been extremely transparent with her kids. Here’s a quote. The key is grounding the conversation and bodily autonomy. When I talk to my kids about abortion and talk about how they have a right to control over their bodies, these principles applies to abortion. I’ve consistently found that my kids get this principle so innately because it’s ideologically consistent with our other conversations about consent and bodily autonomy. Another listener who’s an abortion, doula says. She says with people who are having an abortion before, during and after the procedure to provide non-medical support, recommended having a few resources for brushing this conversation with kids, which we’ll put in the show notes. But we’ve also gotten quite a few questions. So we’re continuing the conversation. And I’m glad to be joined by Dr. Allison Black, who is a family physician and abortion provider, the executive producer of the podcast and activist and a mother of three.
Jamilah Lemieux: Allison, welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me and so glad to be here.
Jamilah Lemieux: So about two months ago, you had an op ed in The New York Times about your work performing second trimester abortions in Oklahoma City after Texas’s SB eight bill went into effect. The bill gave us an idea as to how systems will be taxed and the effect it’ll have on patients and doctors. Can you talk about what it was like being in Oklahoma City then? What did you learn and how did it perhaps prepare you for this moment?
Speaker 5: The clinic where I was working Trust Women, has sites in both Oklahoma and Kansas, and ever since SB eight went into effect in Texas almost a year ago, they have had a crazy influx of patients. Their volume has more than doubled that they’re getting more than 500 calls a day from people all over the region needing abortion services. And mostly what I saw and part of the reason that I decided to get the additional training is that they just had a much higher volume of second trimester abortions than anything that I was used to seeing in California.
Speaker 5: And the reason for that is they had all these patients coming in from Texas that had been facing weeks and weeks of barriers to care. So they had gone to multiple clinics in Texas and found out that they were too far along. They had to arrange childcare and get time off work and find transportation. And by the time they got to us, they were much further along in their pregnancies. And the result of that is essentially a higher risk procedure for them. And just a lot more, again, strain on the clinic and on the providers and on the staff at the abortion clinics.
Speaker 5: So I think that’s what we’re going to see all over. I mean, in some ways, SB eight has been a test case for the whole country. And what Oklahoma was absorbing and some of the other neighboring states to Texas, like New Mexico, was really sort of giving us a little bit of a preview of what we’re dealing with now, which is just going to be a crazy influx of patients from the 26 or 27 states where abortion will be illegal into mostly the coasts, and Colorado and a couple other states in between.
Jamilah Lemieux: Can you talk to us about how you care for patients who are making this decision and how to care for those who you can’t do anything for anymore?
Speaker 5: I think that a lot of the same principles apply as in the rest of my practice. So I’m a family doctor, so I see patients at all walks of life, all different types of disease processes, you know, through healthy, normal pregnancies, end of life, everything. And I think all the same principles apply, which is validate their feelings, normalize their feelings, and let them know that we’re here to support them, whatever decision they’re making.
Speaker 5: So I think it is really important to recognize that for many pregnant people, getting an abortion is a very clear and straightforward decision. There’s no ambiguity about it at all, but for a lot of people, it’s more complicated and that that’s okay, that that doesn’t mean that they’re making the wrong decision. So something that I think we say a lot to patients is it’s really normal to be emotional during this time. This is a big decision and often this is the best decision for you and for your family and for the children that you do have. So I think just helping people recognize that just because they’re having a lot of big feelings about something doesn’t mean that it’s the wrong decision for them.
Jamilah Lemieux: So there are a lot of other concerns that are raised by and the ROE and the ripple effects that we can anticipate coming stretching into things like fertility treatments, appetite, the pregnancy treatment.
Speaker 5: When I talk to colleagues who are in some of these states where abortion has already been outlawed, they’re seeing a lot of really negative health consequences for women, particularly when it comes to miscarriage management and ectopic management. I ran a clinic where we did early pregnancy care for about eight years, where we were taking care of women often who had first trimester bleeding in pregnancy. And the reality is that you just don’t know for a long time whether that is an early viable pregnancy or an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage pregnancy. And you’re just operating with the best information that you have.
Speaker 5: And so I think now a lot of pregnant people are essentially being told, you know, there’s still an embryo there, it still has a heartbeat. I don’t know what’s going on. And I’m scared to treat you because I could be committing a crime, essentially. And so pregnant people are basically being told, go home until you get really sick, go home until you get sepsis or until you’re hemorrhaging or until you have a ruptured ectopic pregnancy and then come back and then I can treat you. And that’s just we know that that’s going to harm women and result in a really big increase in maternal mortality in this country. And it’s just really heartbreaking.
Speaker 5: And then in terms of the fertility issue and IVF, I think nobody really knows. I think there are some obvious implications for fertility treatments in terms of if you really pass personhood bills and say that life starts when the sperm meets the egg, then that would apply to these frozen embryos. So that what that means for people’s ability to get safe fertility treatments, I think that still kind of remains to be seen.
Jamilah Lemieux: So we’ve gotten a lot of questions from our listeners about how to talk to their children about this subject. And one of the things we do on this show is we provide listener advice, and we know you have three kids, so you’ve got some experience with talking to children about difficult subjects, including this one. So we’ve got a letter from a listener, and how about the two of us take a swipe at giving her some advice? That sounds great.
Jamilah Lemieux: So here’s the question Do your mom and dad are fighting? I had a later abortion of a much wanted pregnancy five years ago at what was supposed to be a routine ultrasound. A scan revealed extensive brain malformations in my developing son’s brain. After follow up tests revealed I contracted the virus called CMB. Early in my pregnancy, we decided to terminate. I lived in New York but had to travel out of state to receive this medical care. At 28 weeks of pregnancy, it was heart wrenching and difficult. But to this day I feel strongly that we made the right choice for our family later. Abortions like mine are exceedingly rare. I’ve always been pro-choice, so my personal experiences only make me feel more deeply committed to the need for safe and legal abortion care in this country.
Jamilah Lemieux: I have a ten year old daughter. She was four when I had my abortion and only knows that she has a brother who was very sick and died before he could be born. Since the SCOTUS decision, I have explained to her what abortion is in the context of women and family being able to make decisions about when to be parents and how such decisions should remain in the hands of women and their care providers. But what about my abortion? Do I need to tell her how abortion care has shaped our own family very grave? The loss of her brother deeply. And we still talk about him, but it’s hard. I’m sure it would be possible for her to understand that we chose to end this pregnancy, and I’m not even sure I’ll know how to tell her. But at the same time, I don’t want this experience to become some deep family secret that I keep from her and her little brother who came after our loss.
Jamilah Lemieux: Does this new political reality make these? Relations with our kids more urgent. So many articles online. Outline how to discuss abortion generally with our kids, but not how to talk about the abortions we ourselves had. Maybe most parents find that information too personal to share, but I do think it can be so powerful to be able to discuss these things with our kids. If only we knew how best to do it. We’d love to hear what you all think. Thank you. A parent who thinks abortion shouldn’t be secrets even from our own kids. Alison, what do you think?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I just want to say I’m so sorry for this listener for what she had to go through. It sounds like it was really emotional and heart wrenching for her whole family. And second of all, it sounds like she’s just already doing a great job. She’s talking about the child that they didn’t have. She’s talking to her kid about abortion. So I think that’s kind of my first advice is that she can go a little easier on herself and not worry too much about sharing so many personal details with her child right now. But I will say that I think talking to kids, normalizing abortion like she’s already doing is definitely the way to go, the same way that it is for so many complicated topics that we talk to kids about.
Speaker 5: I think that one thing to remember is that it’s often scary talking to kids about complicated topics like this. And then I think as a parent, I’m usually really pleasantly surprised and amazed by how much my kids get it and how much they intuitively understand concepts like this. I think especially when it comes to something like abortion, kids have such a heightened sense of justice and bodily autonomy and consent. I mean, these are things that we’re teaching kids from the time they’re in preschool. So I think the idea that a person should be able to have a baby if they want to have a baby and not have to have a baby if they don’t want to have a baby is just really intuitive to kids. And I think they’re not going to push back on that.
Jamilah Lemieux: I agree. I you know, I think that ten is at the age where the conversation about sex and reproduction, you know, should have taken place, should be, you know, or if it has, then it should be on the menu pretty soon. And, you know, I think between the timing that this is someone who is that, you know, the dawn of puberty and who needs to understand these things somewhat urgently. But also, like you said, that having that sense of justice, you know, if children would talk to about abortion from nine or ten years old, there wouldn’t be as many adults that are, you know, perhaps not vehemently against that, but have been apathetic for so long. Right. Who have not taken this as a serious issue, who have not voted based on this issue, you know, who have been indifferent to the suffering that people who are pregnant can endure when abortion is not legal and safe and accessible.
Jamilah Lemieux: So I think it’s important that, you know, you have this conversation, but I also am considerate of your feelings that this may be difficult and painful for you to talk about. So give yourselves some grace and you know, time it where you have some, you know, time in the evening to decompress and relax afterwards. You know, I’m sure this is a difficult thing to talk about, but I think it would do a lot for your daughters sense of empathy and understanding of this really important subject for her to understand how it has figured in her own family’s lives.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right, Jamilah, because I think that, you know, a lot of times the conversation around abortion kind of gets split into this idea of like a good abortion and a bad abortion. And what we are seeing now with these laws.
Jamilah Lemieux: Is they don’t.
Speaker 5: Care and we shouldn’t care. We shouldn’t care why a pregnant person wants to end a pregnancy. The reality is that they don’t want to be pregnant and that should be enough. So I think that it’s really important for people to understand. I think like you’re saying, you know, there have been a lot of people that have said, oh, but that’ll be protected, you know, victims of rape and incest, that’ll be protected or when it’s for fetal anomalies that will be protected. And it’s not. And honestly, it shouldn’t even matter one way or the other. This is sort of a just a justice issue across the board.
Speaker 5: And the other thing I’ll say is, you know, you said nine or ten is a good age. Like two or three is a good age. You know, I think that the idea of these serious conversations you all on the podcast have done a really nice job talking about how to talk to kids about complicated subjects like race and racism or sex and sexuality or drugs and alcohol. And you all have said again and again this idea that it shouldn’t be the talk, it shouldn’t be this one conversation that you have. You know, when the kid is 12, when you sit down and you have this big reveal, it should just be kind of part of the water that everyone’s drinking. These are things that we talk about. This is part of life.
Speaker 5: And so, you know, obviously, for me, it’s been easier because as abortion as an abortion provider, when I come home at the end of the day and we’re sitting around the table and we’re talking about what they did that day, I’m able to just sort of easily incorporate in the words abortion and talk about how, you know, today I saw patients and I helped them have their babies at the hospital. And today I was at a clinic and help people who are pregnant not be pregnant anymore. But I think that there are ways of integrating those kind of conversations in from a really young age. So it doesn’t feel so big. Again, scary as the kids get older. And then there’s also a great resource. There’s a kids book called What’s an Abortion Anyway by Carly Means and Illustrator is Mar. And that’s also a really nice resource to to kind of introduced the concept to younger children as well.
Jamilah Lemieux: We’ll be sure to link to that book in our show notes. And thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Black. This has been great.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Jamilah Lemieux: All right. Well, let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll get into today’s listener question.
Jamilah Lemieux: We’re back and ready to dive into the listener question. Dear mom and dad, I have a weird family dynamic. We are two parent, two kid household. The little ones are three years old and six months. My partner and I are pretty great at passing the kids back and forth to accommodate our busy lives and work schedules. On the rare occasion, we do get time as a family of four. It’s a disaster. My husband and eldest kiddo are both very talkative and outgoing, so they end up competing for my attention, which I find quite overwhelming. I’m a little more introverted and have trouble filtering out competing auditory input. We are working on asking my son the way his turn to speak, but then my husband inevitably goes on for longer than is reasonable to wait for to make a three year old wait, which leads to more interruptions and stress. My husband end up in this weird sense mode of quietly sniping or making irritated faces at each other behind the back of our kid, which he is certainly at least peripherally aware of when we aren’t actually trying to spend time together but are all home.
Jamilah Lemieux: It’s also tough. My eldest has a strong preference for me, only made worse by the presence of the baby who is still breastfeeding. This results in the kind of mom gravity that means I somehow end up doing most of the parenting labor when we’re both around, despite the otherwise pretty equal split in our childcare responsibilities. It’s super frustrating. Maybe this is totally normal, but it makes me quite sad. Do you have any advice for making family time fun, or at least not miserable? Sincerely, family time failures. Zach, what do you think?
Zak Rosen: Well, family time failures. I feel you and I also know that this is totally normal and you’re in the thick of it right now, so you might need a reminder, but this is temporary. It sounds like you’re just kind of getting used to the four of you being on earth together because you have a six month old. So this is very new dynamics. You say that your husband and eldest are competing for your attention. I don’t think you can stop your kid from saying. Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am, ma’am. But your husband probably does have that self-control force, so it sounds like he needs to talk it over. Not going is wonderful. But it sounds like he needs to rein it back a little bit and just be more sensitive to the three year old. However, your three year old totally does need to learn to wait. But in the meantime, hubby, chill out just a little bit. You’re going to get to talk to your wife after the kids go to sleep, which is when we all get to talk to each other as partners.
Elizabeth Newcamp: Zach You’re absolutely right. He’s the other adult, so dad needs to figure it out. If that means that you guys need a weekly date night, however, that looks at home out whatever, so that you and him can connect so that the rest of the week he can yield to the three year old. Because your need to to parent and be together, especially if you’re out somewhere.
Elizabeth Newcamp: I mean, this happens to us when we go on these on these trips is that I have to say to Jeff, like, I can’t care for you right now. And that means that you need to have a conversation with him about how you’re you’re feeling. I, I like using, like, a hand-holding signal to kind of say, we’re going to talk about this later. Jeff and I do that a lot. We have kind of like a little signal that I can give him to sort of be like, I cannot handle this right now. We need to table this for an adult conversation. I’m struggling with even stuff that he might not understand because sometimes he doesn’t know that I have just been talked to and I can’t take any more input. And so just having a little signal is kind of like no questions asked. We’ll revisit and he’s like, cool, great. And then then we get back to it.
Jamilah Lemieux: I think it’s really important that all children get one on one time with their parents and that that is something you should also, you know, already work on integrating like your son is definitely going to be craving it from you more than ever because he’s giving less of your attention than he’s used to. So that one on one mommy time is going to be really valuable and is you know, he may gravitate toward you at this point, which is relatively normal, but that one on one time with his dad will be really valuable, you know, as well in terms of strengthening their bond so that he’s not always recently to you.
Zak Rosen: Yeah, totally. Two on one time and one on one time.
Jamilah Lemieux: Well, families and failures, we hope the. This helps and anyone else out there, do you have someone that you want us to yell at on your behalf?
Jamilah Lemieux: Email us at mom and dad is Slate.com. That is it for our show today. We’ll be back in your face on Monday. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it. And if you rely on this show for parenting advice, you should consider signing up for Slate. Plus, it’s the best way to support us. Members will never hear another ad on this or any other Slate podcast. To sign up now, go to Slate.com, slash mom and dad. Plus again there, Slate.com slash mom and dad plus. This episode of Mom and Dad of Fighting is produced by Rosemary Belson. Chrissy Teigen, Mac and Juliette and Jasmine Ellis Bird, Elisabeth Newcamp and Zak Rosen. I’m Jamilah Lemieux. Thanks for listening.
Jamilah Lemieux: All right, Slate Plus listeners, let’s keep going. Arts and Crafts is a favorite camp activity that’s known for keeping kids occupied while working on a variety of skills like creativity and hand-eye coordination. We thought we would share our favorite DIY arts and crafts ideas that are not too resource or labor intensive. Elizabeth. Of course I’m starting with you.
Zak Rosen: Yeah. I don’t think we need to even.
Jamilah Lemieux: Go like this.
Elizabeth Newcamp: You know, I’m always game for, like, a big project. But when I was thinking about this, I have a, like, old Tupperware that I throw all the, like, bits and pieces in. So, like, let’s say I bought craft sticks and there’s three left from the pack. They go in their tape that’s almost out. They go in there and I keep it in like the garage or a space that I don’t mind getting messy. And when I just need time, I’m just like, we get to play with the box of art supplies and I put out one of those tarps and they can build whatever the heck they want. There’s like some scrap wood and some nails and and they go into the space. The only rule is like we, you know, don’t hurt anyone, obviously. And they can build whatever they want as long as they stay on the tarp and they have a great time, like there’s pipe cleaners, there’s pompoms. It’s kind of like all that stuff. But there’s no rules about this. And they love like big box of art supplies, chaos day. I think that’s an easy way to spend an hour.
Zak Rosen: I love the outdoor idea that it would make me a lot less anxious to do arts and crafts outside. I don’t get excited about arts and crafts here does. And just the other week. No, no, I was doing arts and crafts with her aunt and uncle, which was very sweet. And they were doing the classic basic popsicle stick box, just popsicle sticks and glue. And there’s something very wax on, wax off about, just like stacking over and over, just making a very simple box. It’s meditative. No, I like, just. She was just, like, quietly doing it and concentrating. I really like how there is a utilitarian use of it after like she’s putting her, you know, her little beaded bracelets in it after. But just like make a really basic jewelry box, box or anything, but just popsicle sticks and glue. Simple, simple, simple. Yeah. It’s just. I just like that stacking. Just the mindless stacking. Stacking. I think it helped her just kind of slow her brain down a bit to basic.
Jamilah Lemieux: That’s a good one. And you can always paint them, put glitter glue on them. There are lots of ways to like jazz them up puff balls and you know, decorating them adds a whole other level of stuff too. It’s like when you can stretch an activity. I’m a big tie diyer I love tie dye. We did a lot of it last summer. We took some stuff that we had that, you know, light or, you know, light colored things that maybe had a spot on it or whatever, and that could be repurposed and reborn. And we also bought some things like they usually sell white T-shirts, shirts and light colored shirts and Michael’s or Joann.
Jamilah Lemieux: So that’s a fun thing that Naima enjoys doing, too. I also recently made a school. Pictures came out kind of weird. It was my fall. I think I tell the story like I picked the white background. So just this really awkward, strange photo. Like we’re just nothing in the background. Like, it looks like it was just so we’re just is.
Elizabeth Newcamp: In the void.
Jamilah Lemieux: She’s in the boy. But they also did like a three quarter shot, which is a really strange shot for a child’s school photo. So it’s like her whole t shirt. So it’s just like her like her teacher. It is weird. And so what I did was I was like, okay, well, I’m going to cut your cute little face because your face is adorable in these pictures and we’ll make magnets. So you can do this with like any picture of your kid. You know, you can photocopy some pictures or print out some pictures, whether they have, you know, sticky magnets at most craft stores.
Jamilah Lemieux: And what you can do is, like, you can cut out, you know, custom shaped magnets and you can like I put some I like, took the picture and put it on pretty paper and like, you know, then we made magnets of them and just put them in cards that we were sending out to people so friends and family can have them. You can. And I would recommend like putting what we did not do, which is put some clear contact paper on top of your finished magnet unless you have like stuff on there where you can’t. But yeah, like you can also do this with, you know, a piece of artwork from your kid or a small piece of artwork. But making magnets is fun. And, you know, the activity of sending them to loved ones is something that you can also do together.
Elizabeth Newcamp: In any craft that you can send is a great.
Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah.
Elizabeth Newcamp: So you don’t have 50 magnets in your own house as my image into the Rainbow Loom bracelets.
Jamilah Lemieux: She hasn’t gotten into those yet.
Elizabeth Newcamp: That’s like the craft I take with us camping and on trip. Because it has that mindless quality of just like almost any kid can do it because you’re just pulling stuff over and the kids can make it and it travels pretty easily. And I feel like we always end up with kids just like sitting around the table making these bracelets and then wearing them and being silly about it, which is is kind of fun and easy. And again, the clean up is pretty quick. I mean, the, the bands are small, but I just suck them up with a tiny little vacuum and then empty them back in, you know, as long as they weren’t in the dirt or anything like that. So I think the Rainbow Room is another good, easy craft with little clean up and they can wear them or give them to friends or whatever, which is always kind of fun.
Jamilah Lemieux: Very nice fun. Well, Slate Plus listeners, we’d love to hear what sort of crafts you’re up to this summer. Leave us a note on the Facebook page or shoot us an email. And be sure to join us on Monday for our regular show and on Thursday for another bonus segment. Bye bye.
