The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting Slate's Parenting Podcast for Thursday, April 18th, the Frank Edition.

I'm Gabriel Roth. I'm the editorial director of Slate Podcast, and I'm the father of Eliza, who's eight years old, and Leo, who is four and three quarters.

I'm Rebecca Levoy. I'm a journalist and podcaster

in New Hampshire and I am mom to Henry who is 17, Teddy who is 16, and my stepdaughter Lily, who is 18.

And I'm Carvaux Wallace, a writer and podcaster in Oakland, California, and I'm the father to

Georgia who is 13 and Ezra who is 60. Today on our show, we have a question about passing

on your own insecurities to your kids

and another about keeping birthday pictures off of social media. Plus, as always, we'll have

triumphs and fails. We'll make recommendations. And on Slate Plus, we've got some follow-up on Rebecca's

racist summit. Stay tuned. Let's start with triumphs and fails. Rebecca, do you want to go first?

Yeah, there's something that I just want to talk about, and I think that this is a fail, you know, not necessarily of mine, but just sort of like, kind of just like of a system and also just our acceptance of it. So I guess I can say it's my failure. So Teddy and I were talking this week. We've had a lot of deep talks lately. And one of the things that we were talking about is how, you know, he really struggles with, and by the way, he did give me permission to talk about this, this part of it. He really struggles with just sort of feeling like people see him as being like below average because, you know, his grades are not great and because he has this high achieving brother. And, you know, he's just, he sort of sees himself that way. But more so he thinks that every single person he meets him that way because most people that he knows, you know, are people that he knows through school.

And he kind of feels like everybody sort of just has this picture in his mind of him.

And we're talking about this.

And we're talking about, of course, all the ways in which he's like decidedly not below average.

Like he's an exceptionally talented musician.

He's exceptionally empathetic. He's exceptionally funny. He's probably the funniest person in our family. You know, as an example, the other day, Henry was looking for this, like, T-shirt that he loves that's, like, black and white stripes. And Teddy was like, oh, you mean your felon t-shirt? The one that makes it look like an incarcerated person. I could see why you'd want to wear that today, Henry. He just is a very like sharp, like in the moment, like very like quick-witted

and, and, and chill, sense of humor. I just, I adore him so much and he's so, in many ways, like,

the most wonderful person in our family and like one of the best people I know. But like the only assessments

we get of kids that play into their self-worth as far as whether they're average or above

average or below average is report cards. And somehow along the way, when they're in school and

they're little, the report cards contain assessments of things like personality and

...