The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting Podcast for Thursday, August 9th, the Bad Grandpa Edition.

I'm Carvel Wallace, a writer and podcaster in the Bay Area, and I'm the father to Georgia who is 12 and Ezra who is 15. Gabe and Rebecca are both out this week, but I am holding down the fort with mom and dad are fighting all-stars. Two of them, in fact. Hey, I'm Dan Cois. I'm an editor at Slate. I'm the dad of Lyra, who is 13, and Harper, who just turned 11. And I'm Catherine Goldstein. I'm an independent journalist and

the mom of Asher, who is three, and I live in Durham, North Carolina. It's like a super group.

It's the traveling Wilburys a parenting podcast that's happening right now.

Dibs on Roy Orbison.

Today on the show, listener questions about a chauvinist grandpa and how to talk to your kids about the Confederate flag.

Plus, we're going to have endorsements and in Slate. Plus, we are discussing the things we learn from our summer vacation.

But first, it is triumphs and fails.

So let's get to it.

Dan, do you have a triumph or fail this week?

I have a fail, and it's the worst kind of fail.

It's a boring, bureaucratic paperwork fail, the kind that seems to really define my parenting in many ways.

So this fail, and I hope our listeners are wide awake for this one.

It's about flex spending for child care.

Those of you who do not use this may not know what this is, but so many employers,

you have the ability to take a certain amount

out of your paycheck, pre-tax each check, and then it goes into this fund, this flex-fending fund,

and you can use it for child care, for dependent care expenses, right? You can use it for daycare,

or for nursery school, or whatever, and you get reimbursed this tax-free money for the stuff that you spend on, which is in theory great, right?

It's a way to get this tax-free money to use for a valuable thing.

We've always used it.

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