Keep Your Head Above Water
Care and Feeding | Slate's parenting show
Slate Audio
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2019
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode: Dan, Jamilah, and guest host Greg Lavallee answer listener questions from a parent whose daughter is afraid of the water and a mom who needs a response strategy for a disrespectful kiddo. For Slate Plus, the hosts strategize date night. Are microdates the solution to a busy schedule? Or is it worth the effort of hiring a babysitter to go out? Sign up for Slate Plus here.
Recommendations:
Jamilah recommends a newfangled entertainment destination… a place where you could spend hours without spending any money…. The MALL.
Greg recommends Shashibo, a mesmerizing magnetic puzzle.
Dan recommends Boom Blast Stix for little kids and Telestrations for bigger ones.
Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to tell us what you thought of today’s show and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes. Got questions that you’d like us to answer? Call and leave us a message at 424-255-7833.
Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson.
Hosts
Dan Kois is an editor and writer at Slate. He’s the author of How to Be a Family and the co-author of The World Only Spins Forward.
Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and communications strategist based in Brooklyn, New York.
Greg Lavallee is the director of technology at Slate.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains explicit language. |
| 0:06.0 | Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting Podcast for Thursday, November 13th, the Keep Your Head Above Water Edition. |
| 0:13.7 | I'm Dan Cois. I'm a writer and editor at Slate and the author of the book How to Be a Family. |
| 0:18.3 | I'm the dad of Lyra, who's 14, and Harper, who's 12. We live in Arlington, Virginia. I'm Jimi LaLamue, a writer, contributor to Slate's care and feeding parenting advice column and mother to Naima, who is six, and we reside in Los Angeles. Hi, I'm Greg LaValley. I'm the director of technology at Slate. I'm the father of Nina, who's almost seven, and Hugo, who is definitely four. I live in a neighborhood of Washington, D.C., called Mount Pleasant. |
| 0:42.6 | Welcome, Greg. We're glad to have you. Thank you for sitting in today. No problem. My pleasure. Today on the show, we have a swimming lesson conundrum. |
| 0:50.4 | Should you push your child to do something that she fears because it's for her own good? |
| 0:55.0 | Also, how do you deal with it when your kid talks to you like your child to do something that she fears because it's for her own good? |
| 0:55.0 | Also, how do you deal with it when your kid talks to you like you're some kind of asshole? |
| 0:59.5 | Plus, triumphs and fails and recommendations. |
| 1:02.1 | Let's start with triumphs and fails. |
| 1:03.7 | Jamila, what do you have for us today, a triumph or a fail? |
| 1:07.3 | I definitely have a fail, fail, and more fail. |
| 1:12.1 | We have talked previously about how easy it is for my child to convince me that she's too sick to go to school. |
| 1:21.2 | I think she's done at least two episodes of the podcast since the new school year started because she was sick. |
| 1:30.1 | She's our unofficial fourth co-host. |
| 1:37.6 | Yes. And we got a letter from the Department of Education. I also apparently didn't know that when you call in an absence that's not enough, you also have to follow up with the letter. I'm like, |
| 1:41.9 | but if we didn't go to the doctor, you just need a letter from me saying what I said to the guy on the phone. That seems like a waste of time. |
| 1:47.7 | I thought we'd progress as a society beyond that and that you could take me as my word. And when I say my child is sick, she's sick. But we got a note and her father's kind of freaking out about it. and I have officially been called by the people. |
| 2:00.6 | The people have been called on me. |
| 2:02.4 | It wasn't a note from the school. |
| 2:03.5 | It was from the board or the... about it and I have officially been called by the people. The people have been called on me. |
| 2:02.4 | It wasn't a note from the school. It was from the board or the Department of Education. |
... |
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