The Will We Overcome Boredom Edition

Care and Feeding | Slate's parenting show

Slate Audio

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, Parenting

4.4 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2020

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s episode: Dan, Jamilah, and Elizabeth discuss updating your will. It’s important to have an updated contingency plan in these uncertain times. But how can you be sure if you are leaving your kids to the right people? They also answer a letter from a mom who is going stir crazy after a few days at home with her child. How can parents be stimulated while playing, sometimes boring, games with their kids? For Slate Plus, we have quarantine schedule mutiny! We’ll hear from the mom who received a three page letter of protest AND the son who wrote the manifesto.

Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on MADAF each week, and no ads. Sign up now to listen and support our work.

Recommendations:

Dan recommends A Hard Day’s Night, the 1964 Beatles documentary.

Jamilah recommends dating apps, especially if you are looking for a male partner. Quarantine is forcing them to up their convo game. But steer clear of those looking for quarantine buddies.

Elizabeth recommends raising caterpillars, ladybugs, and praying mantises, oh my!

Additional Links:

“Yeah, We Should Have Our Wills Ready”: What Happens When Both Parents Get COVID-19 by Ruth Graham

Death Over Dinner, a resource for having difficult conversations.

Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas for what we should talk about in future episodes.

Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains explicit language.
0:05.8	Welcome to Mom and Dad are Fighting, Slate's Parenting Podcasts for Thursday, April 2nd.
0:11.0	The Will We Overcome Boredom edition?
0:13.6	I'm Elizabeth Newkamp. I write the homeschool and family travel blog, Dutch Dutch, Goose,
0:18.1	a mom to three boys, Henry 7, Oliver 5, and Teddy 3. I'm currently
0:24.1	socially isolating in our Lego room in Navar, Florida. I'm Jamila Lemieux. I am a writer,
0:30.8	communications consultant, and Shuddin, and mom to Naima, who is 7th. And we are hunkering
0:36.6	down in Los Angeles, California.
0:54.4	I'm Dan Coice. I'm a writer at Slate and the author of the book How to Be a Family. I'm the dad of Lyra, who's 14, and Harper, who's 12, and we're currently stationed in our emergency bunker in Arlington, Virginia. Today on the show, we have a question from a parent looking to update their will, which is a heavy task at the best of times, and even more pertinent in these uncertain times. What happens if you don't
1:00.0	have a go-to person to look after your kids if the unthinkable happens? We also have a question
1:05.1	from a mom who's feeling guilty about being bored when she hangs out with her toddler. Now, social
1:10.2	isolation has significantly increased the amount of time spent together.
1:14.2	Plus, triumphs, fails, and recommendations.
1:17.5	Jamila, do you have a triumph or fail for us this week?
1:20.2	I have an ever-rare triumph.
1:23.7	All right.
1:24.8	Naima's seventh birthday was on Sunday.
1:32.3	We had a Zoom slash IG Live celebration for her. I went to her father's house.
1:34.3	She's still been going back and forth.
1:36.3	She's doing pretty much two days here, two days there.
1:39.3	Since we've been doing that, I have not been going out at all, especially in anticipation
1:43.3	of going to their house. I was like, okay, when she's with me, I go to a grocery store when she's not here, I don't take her anywhere. Like, I am flattening this damn curve. So this was my activity for the week as well, because I hadn't been out in six days. So I went to her dad's house. So it was us, her father, her stepmother, and her younger brother.
	...

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