Outcome Unknown Is Not Alone
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I’ve been solo dad this weekend and I’ve only lost my shit a couple of times, which is an accomplishment for me. Kitchen is clean, lunches for tomorrow are kinda sorta made and I’m exhausted.
I was in Santa Barbara this week for work, as usual, and I had lunch with a colleague with two kids a little younger than ours. We talk about parenting if we’re not talking about work. He asked me something like, ‘Do you ever lose your shit with your kids?’ To which I replied, “Are you serious??” You know me and my love of parenting real talk. I dove into the conversation head-first and told him some of the latest stories. There were tales of making Cassidy cry and feeling like Asshole of The Year and scaring Ozzie with my yelling, causing him to hide in his room, not speaking to me for 30 minutes and other fine moments. It not only put his mind at ease, but it really opened him up to the fact that he’s not alone. He literally thought he was the worst dad ever. Clearly he wasn’t.
It was an unfortunately common exchange for me. In my experience a lot of dads feel kind of alone and isolated when it comes to talking about parenting overall, but especially when we lose our shit. I’m talking about dads here, not because I don’t ever have similar conversations with moms. I do. Some of them subscribe to this newsletter in fact, but I feel like moms often confide in other moms more often than dads confide in other dads. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d actually love to know what you think about it, so hit reply and let me know.
Anyway, the whole conversation reminded me why Outcome Unknown exists to begin with. I really enjoy talking to other parents about real life and real problems. If there’s one constant it’s that so many of us are out here just winging it, doing the best we can, drawing from good childhoods (what to do) and bad ones (what not to do). Some people go to therapy, but most of us don’t have formal support. In those rare moments when the kids are all watching a movie on a weekend night or someone is watching the kids and we’re enjoying a meal with other parents, getting the chance to talk about parenting feels cathartic. I often wish I the opportunity to talk with other parents that aren’t in my social circle to learn more about how they parent and the kinds of things that keep them up at night.
Quick story before I give you a bunch of links. Our nanny, Ada, relayed a message from Cassidy’s teacher on Monday. She informed Ada that they caught Cassidy handing out money to kids. Kinda sweet, right? I was left with the impression that Cassidy went into her piggy bank and was handing out some coins and maybe a little paper. When I asked Cassidy about it a couple days later, she seemed to confirm this, but that didn’t exactly match up with the email Laura received from another parent in Cassidy’s class. The parent informed Laura that they had $30 in cash that their daughter received from Cassidy and wanted to return it to us. One of her teachers further detailed that she had a few $20 bills in her wallet (Laura’s old wallet). What we came to find out was that Cassidy had gone into the drawer where we keep cash for farmers market visits, food delivery people, etc. and had taken some money from there. We still don’t know how much it was. I had a good laugh about it. Her heart was in the right place and it ended up being a good learning opportunity for her (and us). I’ve been jokingly asking her for money all weekend while we’re out. “Ice cream? Sure, you’re buying, right?”
Maybe skip the petting zoo. Apparently they’re breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria. Given that both our kids are habitual thumb suckers, even before reading this, I was anxious as hell whenever they visit a petting zoo.
Like most kids that get to enjoy screen time, Peppa Pig was a favorite of Cassidy’s. She has since outgrown it or just bored of it, but one of the funny results was that spoke with a slight British speech intonation. This is apparently common and quite entertaining.
Homework is a hot topic in our house and certainly among educators. The Atlantic had a good article on the topic. I remain thoroughly unconvinced that there’s benefit to the amount that many kids bring home.
I’ve started following Adam Grant on Twitter. I like a lot of his writing, even if I don’t agree with all of it. He suggests we stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. I have to confess to being allergic to articles with click-bait-y titles like this, but he makes some great points.
What kind of parenting newsletter would this be without a link to the bizarre story of the LA dad who exposed the college admissions scandal.
Thanks for reading down this far. Don’t forget to forward to your parent friends.
❤️ Brad