The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting Podcasts for Thursday, January

the 31st, the Pesto and a Tubb edition. I'm Gabriel Roth. I'm the editorial director of Slate

podcast, and I'm the father of Eliza, age 8, and Leo, who is four.

I'm Rebecca Lavoie. I'm a journalist and podcaster in New Hampshire, and I am mom to Henry, who is 17, my stepdaughter, Lily, who is 18, and my youngest son, Teddy, who has just turned 16. And I'm Carvel Wallace, a writer and podcaster in Oakland, California, and I'm the father to Georgia who is 13 and Ezra who is 15.

Today on our show, we have a question from a listener who has begun to envy her divorced friends.

And we've got another from a different listener who is anxious about being an older parent.

Plus, as always, we will share triumphs and fails.

We will make recommendations.

Let's start with triumphs and fails.

Rebecca, did you have a triumph?

Did you have a fail?

What did you have?

I think that the triumph of this week is that my youngest child has lived to be 16,

which is very exciting.

I always get very excited on birthdays. You do kind of feel like, wow, I kept this person alive a whole other year. But, you know, more triumphant than that around his birthday was that we just had a wonderful dinner out. Obviously, 16 is one of those ages where you're kind of beyond like birthday party phase. You're not quite at the phase where Henry is where he just like goes out and does stuff and I don't even know what's going on.

It's sort of that weird in between.

So what we did was we took Teddy out.

Henry came and Henry's girlfriend and Teddy brought three friends.

We went to Japanese restaurant. We got one of those little rooms. We sat with no shoes on.

His friends got to eat stuff they'd never tried before. And it's just really, really fun.

And I'll just say, like, put in a plug for, like, taking out your teenage kids with their friends.

...