Honey You're Ruining Our Kid - S2 Ep4 My Kid's Imaginary Friend Is Melting My Head, Haircuts & The Silent Treatment

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Tina needs all 20 years of her experience in child behaviour and teaching to find answers for this week's questions. Honey! You're Ruining Our Kid - the zero judgement parenting podcast - returns for ...another week of anonymously submitted questions from listeners across the world. Everyone thinks their kid is the only one with oddly specific difficult behaviours. You are never on your own.Question 1 An imaginary friend who is leading a child astray. How do you get your child to engage their conscience so that they can know the difference between right and wrong?Question 2 A kid who won’t stop cutting her friends' hair at school. How do you make her stop? Tina suggests more cutting opportunities at home with different textures. Finding a way to fulfil this child’s sensory need without it resulting in another unwanted haircut is the challenge.Question 3 A parent gets in touch worried their child is being bullied. This is a concern that is shared by just about every parent at some point or another. Tina and Jarlath offer some guidance in how to find out for sure. Thank you for listening in to our show. Please get in touch anyone but emailing - honeyyouareruiningourkid@gmail.com. Pop over to www.patreon.com/irishmanabroad for extra large episode, bonus pods and much more.Find us on instagram https://instagram.com/honeyyouareruiningourkid?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Honey, you're ruining our kids. The parenting podcast from an Irish man abroad. It's all about helping you with this challenge of raising kids. I am a stand-up comedian and Tina is a child development expert with more than 20 years of experience in the business. There's actually zero judgement here and everyone does it their own way. At the end of the day you have to do what suits your family and I'm just here to try and help them. You gotta come down to the level and give them a chance. You gotta give them a warning and say that is not okay what you did. Here's what's gonna happen. This sounds a lot like our relationship. If you do that again there's to be no basketball for the rest of the week. And then I go and soak in my room for a bit. My son takes shits in our sink.
Starting point is 00:00:50 He says he likes to put the poo in the toilet. For himself. I've never seen this before. It is awful, but it's not awfully unusual. You only have to say to your child, I can't trust you to be independent and vote in the way that I'm doing. So until you start, until I know that you are now not using the sink anymore, I have to come with you.
Starting point is 00:01:10 Her son is obsessed with his willy. He will not stop talking about his willy, asking questions about his willy, touching his willy, showing his willy. What does she do? It is one of the hardest questions we've had, because let's be honest, when does that stop for a boy group? It's only You're Ruining Our Kid,
Starting point is 00:01:32 the parenting podcast from the Irishman Abroad Podcast Network. It is late. It is so late. Sunday night. So late. And we are back from one of those weekends where you go down and you stay in a hotel
Starting point is 00:01:43 and then you have to gather everything and you put it in the car. I always that louis ck joke about loading up the car and you know that moment where you have it all in the family's in the car you slam the trunk and you walk around the back of the car he said that's my vacation right there that moment so true it's like that tiny bit of calm yeah and you do a little breathe and you look into the air that 10 seconds that's your rest but it like it was a great weekend i hope you had a great weekend we were down in killarney yeah the inec it was gigging and it was great fun the tour show and for the very first time we were you know really conscious that you're leaving your kid
Starting point is 00:02:27 alone for a period right we had to leave mikey up in the hotel room while we went and did the show yeah well the show was on in the hotel yeah exactly it was like upstairs yeah it felt like a safe situation a good time to give him that taste of yeah what is like calistar yeah he's never been on his own in his life which makes such a difference from our own childhoods it's funny yeah exactly but it was so funny i didn't expect him to be in touch but he was in touching me all the time to the point where i had to be like stop texting me yeah wrapping my head but isn't that wonderful yeah uh that with the consciousness that he that we needed the reassurance yeah he was great i was really
Starting point is 00:03:06 impressed with him actually i ran up and checked him maybe three times and he was fantastic i think he loved it i think he loved the experience of having his little bit of time by himself i was alone a lot as a kid like a lot part of it was that i traveled from school to home, got a train, got a bike to walk a couple of miles. Like, compared to your existence of little city slicker Tina, who's like, just going downtown with the money. And like, five minutes later, I'm in my house eating sandwiches. It was still a bit of a walk, to be fair. I lived on the outskirts of town. I think it's so funny the difference between what you thought was a walk
Starting point is 00:03:45 when you were 12 yeah versus what you think is a walk now like even when i feel like i was the opposite to you because i had siblings so you had siblings too but maybe because we were in the town it was always busy those moments if i came home and found the house empty oh my god i was like savor this you're on your own It's just you in the house. This is magic. You know. You really made me wonder, though, whether we have listeners out there who have only children.
Starting point is 00:04:13 There's obviously more and more of them nowadays. There's also more and more twins nowadays. Yeah. So we're putting the call out to start this episode for people who have only children and twins because i'd imagine in both cases you think oh nobody wants to hear about this or you know that we're the only ones going through this honey ruining our kids is built on the idea that whatever you're going through there is thousands if not millions of parents going through exactly what you're going through so get
Starting point is 00:04:46 the email into honey you are ruining our kid at gmail.com and what do you want them to say well we might do an only child episode okay and we could do a twins episode and if you have any tips for dealing with an only child that'd be great too let's get straight to the questions and to start things off we have a doozy i definitely wasn't the only person who had imaginary friends i certainly one of my siblings who will remain nameless had an imaginary friend named nisha who got blamed for a lot of them but I always thought Nisha was such a scary name really Nisha did it it was Nisha terrifying name to choose for also we didn't know anybody called Nisha and it's a very old Irish name like the changeling named Nisha oh god you're making it very scary like our first question maybe is this
Starting point is 00:05:45 the first time we've had an imaginary i think we had i think we had one before because i remember you bringing up the nisha thing okay you're telling me i'm repeating myself okay cool let's go to dear tina and jarrett my child has an imaginary friend that they are blaming everything on their imaginary friend is called tony Tony? I mean, straight away, I'm like, has this person watched The Shining? Like, Tony was... Tony is the name of what? Tony is the kid's imaginary friend
Starting point is 00:06:14 who is actually a ghost in the hotel who's telling him what to do. Oh, God. Maybe not something this parent needs to hear right now. I'm too frightened of movies like that. Okay, well, Tony is up to all sorts. Oh, God.
Starting point is 00:06:30 Now I'm really freaked out. Tony tells my little boy he doesn't have to do what he's told. Oh, I love Tony, fella. You rascal. Tony encourages our son to take things from people's houses or shops that definitely do not belong to him. And Tony is melting our brain how do i get my kid to stop with this tony nonsense any help would be appreciated very tired dad i mean i'd imagine they've tried a few things like what's the first like i'd imagine you've had this a lot you must have had imaginary kids in your time as a Montessori
Starting point is 00:07:05 teacher and all the way through what do you do first well when somebody says never quite heard of an imaginary friend encouraging a child to steal I mean that's a hard one like that's pretty tricky that'll be the next Donald Trump go-to yeah my imaginary friend told me that the election was still i mean like because there's so much going on there the child definitely knows it's wrong enough to be doing to that he he knows to blame it on someone else i mean yikes that's this question yikes what great help for these parents yikes is the advice guys well like if i could throw in there i think you threw me with your shining scared to life maybe your kid has the shining no i definitely was i my imaginary friends only existed in one room of the house you never told me you had
Starting point is 00:07:59 oh yeah several and again it was a it was a group what you hung out and could you see them you couldn't even see your imaginary friends i wasn't having like hallucinations that's not what an imaginary friend is i'm pretty sure children who have imaginary friends really believe that they can see they don't they're literally playing pretend and when it comes to an imaginary friend who you're blaming stuff on, like, surely you have to go to. Come on now. Let's be real. There is no Tony.
Starting point is 00:08:40 Well, I don't know. It depends on the age of the child. Did they mention? I don't know. I on the age of the child did they mention i don't know i don't hear you say an age if they're really young i don't know because you're tampering with their imagination there's no age given here i mean if they're seven or over i would be like cut the bull it's you know we love you have an active imagination and you're going to tell great stories and we've got to channel that imagination somewhere. But we know that it's you doing this
Starting point is 00:09:10 and you need to stop blaming it on Tony when really it's you. But if it's a very small kid, that's way harder. But surely you're better off to just ignore it. And when they go... You can't ignore stealing. Yeah, true enough. When you're down the to just ignore it and when they go you can't ignore stealing yeah true enough when you're down the garter station yeah you've got you've got you've got to do something i guess this is hard but with the stealing thing i guess what would i do this is what i would do and i
Starting point is 00:09:38 suggest is that you say well this is wrong whoever did it this is wrong and since tony's not here we can't see him you have you're you were in charge you're responsible for this so you're gonna have to bring this back so to an extent you treat it like well if somebody tells you to jump off the roof of the school you don't listen to them yeah so it's actually this is very dangerous this is worrying because the kids are being influenced one way or another by a voice in their head yeah that is telling them to do because like so much comedy does come from this idea that like one part of me was telling me ignore this another part was telling me just elbow him in the face i think that might be an angle to take look whoever tony is i know I can't see him but I do
Starting point is 00:10:26 have voices that tell me to not go to work in the morning yes yeah and it's a good time always a good time to talk about the conscience your conscience with your child and what we know is right and what we know is wrong yes now is that the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do how there are rules and we all need to follow the rules for society to work and community and our family. And that's a really good angle, actually, coming around it that way in terms of what is right and what is wrong. And if Tony is telling you to do something, you have to think to yourself, well, is that
Starting point is 00:10:58 OK or is it not OK? And what should you do? Because stealing is not OK. And every time you come home with something that isn't yours, we're going return it no there is obviously a risk like with anything that if you make too much out of it yeah it could get bigger yeah yeah you're so right so that's why i just i think picking the conscience angle is the best because then you're like just explaining right and wrong rules of the world and the consequence is every time this happens i can't see tony so you're gonna have to be the one who brings this stuff back you know well did you i think we talked about this before
Starting point is 00:11:36 about like stealing things because you know if it's stealing is the kind of high end of what your imaginary friend can get you to do obviously after that it's burning stuff yeah and after that i guess it's actually hurting other people directly stealing though there's some weird psychology behind that now this to me from my uneducated position just having done this podcast with you for so long whenever we've encountered stealing there is one an attention-seeking element to it yeah and two there's weird rush not yeah there's a rush but there is some odd version of ownership that there's insecurity around my stuff being taken or things being taken lack of respect for other people's property yeah yeah and understanding what ownership means and earning something and possession yeah yeah that
Starting point is 00:12:31 when you take that somebody else has to pay for it and i guess in those situations you do have to get the child to empathize by things that they love how would you feel if this was taken away from you well this is what you're doing when you take something that doesn't how would you feel if this was taken away from you well this is what you're doing when you take something that doesn't belong to you that person is now feeling this sadness i always end up making crazy suggestions if people aren't familiar with the podcast this is often the role i play i am not sure that tina enjoys the crazy suggestions but i do like to throw them in is it an idea to take something special from the child's room and be like i guess somebody must have stolen it no no like it no well i know that's a punishment no i don't experiment
Starting point is 00:13:13 oh you bring it back well all you're doing is modeling modeling stealing and no i'm not it's gone but you get to feel what it's like to have things gone. No, I wouldn't suggest doing that. Clear out the room, like literally like the house has been ransacked and robbed completely. I think going to like a punishment. So sorry. I think going to a punishment like that is always too much. And if you go really big with the negative, you're just giving them more attention. Like, that's so much attention.
Starting point is 00:13:48 Of course they'll do it again. I would bet any money this kid has siblings who are getting more attention than them. I wonder if there's a new baby in the house. Because a lot of the time, I think that when kids go with the mad stuff yes it's because it's like well i'm special too you're right i'm a bit tired because we're recording this so late but i think you know you're right look around the behavior has anything changed at home what is going on and also i'm a bit blown away by these head plan journals they're changing our life this if you can get your hands on or even create your own one.
Starting point is 00:14:25 The Head Plan Journal is a reflection journal with leading questions about how your child feels or things they did that day and how they feel, what they're grateful for. That's a really good way for them to start thinking about their actions and what they're doing and what they're leading into. And even if they can't write in it,
Starting point is 00:14:41 you can do the questions with them. Tony can write in it. Yeah, Tony can write in it. You know, we're in the territory now of teens. Like, we're moving into that phase. And you never think that's coming. You really don't think that's coming. Like, I was going back through my Instagram for a reason that I don't want to go into.
Starting point is 00:15:00 And I was, like, remembering how long him being a toddler went on for. I don't feel that way. I feel like it all went so fast. I was always aware of how older he was getting and soon he wouldn't want to hold our hands or soon he wouldn't want to be seen with us. Not at all. Always on my mind. Maybe this is a male perspective because I just remember like being on all fours so much time you really did play a lot with mikey it's gorgeous and you said it was too much nearly that i was too in character
Starting point is 00:15:31 playing the games but i do you i know people go oh it flies by oh you're sure you won't know yourself but it didn't it it didn't fly by and i wanted to say this to anybody out there who's listening to this going ah god it's work i guess it's so joyful and all the rest you will wake up and it's done yeah that's the flyby that you it's like a melting piece of ice yeah you'll turn around and it's gone well i turned around this weekend and i was looking eye to eye with our son and i thought oh my god my son is as tall as me he's straight in the eyes and he's his own yeah doesn't need his mommy i know that even when people would say that to me oh sure you won't know you're maybe 13 tomorrow and you're like no he won't i mean he's three i got another decade of this but then here he is
Starting point is 00:16:31 here he is yeah i don't know if that's any comfort to people but i will say that i do look back on those photos and i'm like why didn't i cherish that a little bit more probably because we were both bollocks tired you can't appreciate things when you're bollocks tired Tina and Charlotte I love your show you make me laugh and you make me feel better about everything that's a good start to an email I don't feel like I'm failing at life anymore my child though won't stop cutting her friend's hair at school. I don't think that's on you. I don't think. Unless you yourself, as a parent,
Starting point is 00:17:11 are cutting people's hair as they arrive at the house, unless you are a hairdresser, and that is her design for life. Anyway, his mom is saying that this is happening every single day. Every single day. She gave those each a sentence. The teacher has tried to hide the scissors, make them request only, and is very close to having to remove all the scissors from the whole school.
Starting point is 00:17:40 So this kid is hunting down scissors to give haircuts. You know I had a child in my class like this. Oh, right. We've got to get to this. Let me finish the email. Why is she doing this? That's a very good question. And people rarely ask that in the emails.
Starting point is 00:17:54 Why would my child be doing this? And how the hell can I stop it? Yeah, well, I mean, I did have this in my class. And that same little girl is still doing it. Isn't it her hairdresser? No, she's not still doing it. Her mother is always sending me pictures. She's still doing it.
Starting point is 00:18:11 She is, yeah. She's still doing it. They didn't get on top of it. Well, that's fill this person with loads of hope, Tina. You definitely can stop your child from cutting people's hair. Yeah, no.
Starting point is 00:18:21 Well, I know exactly what you have to do. You actually have to trust her with the scissors more taking it away just makes it even more of a like a i know it's a sexy thing yeah but also it's more attractive she she wants to cut there's something inside her at the moment that wants that movement in her fine mother so let's just give her other ways to get there let's do lots of cutting paper arts and crafts let's do lots of uh i mean wool play-doh cutting and wool cutting oh the play-doh cutting
Starting point is 00:18:52 where you remember that play the thing where you put it through the press and it came out like hair yeah and then cut that you know and also just like will that work? Lots of different techniques. Are kids that thick? Kids are not thick, Charlotte Regan. I don't like you saying that. But no, like she's, kids go through these periods called sensory periods where they are attracted to a certain kind of movement. And it happens most at like three, four or five. And they will repeat and repeat this one thing
Starting point is 00:19:23 that they enjoy doing. And that's how they perfect. Oh, my God. If we're talking at the start of this question about repeat and repeat, that was definitely a skill I had in those years. That these kids will be entertained. Yeah. If you have the capacity to repeat it.
Starting point is 00:19:40 To do the same joke again and again. The same joke again and again. To the child, sorry i was like so sensitive about that topic it's it's not even a joke it's like the like you say this kid wants cutting yeah they want cutting you've nearly got to max out their cutting want yeah and it like it really is just that like you will see some kids who just want to play in the water all the time or some kids who need to scrunch paper and or they're like obsessed with walking in lines or walking in circles there's a sensory mood there's an actual
Starting point is 00:20:17 need inside them to perfect these skills weird and and this is just this child's phase of that development and yeah they're cutting hair is not okay she has to be told that you cannot do that to people did you have a sensory period where you were obsessed with something i can't remember that back therefore why did you i definitely think cutting out shapes and that really yeah i did i definitely had a period of just i seem to have scissors in my hand at all times but i wasn't walking around cutting kids hair yeah but it is like i think don't make the scissors any more taboo right actually be like empower her show her how to carry the scissors show you how to hold the scissors tell her that they're very you know i'm trusting you because these are quite dangerous but i know
Starting point is 00:21:10 i can trust you and you know what's right and what's wrong so let's say they follow your advice now this is a teaching situation because obviously this isn't happening at home well we don't so when you say yeah but the email isn't saying that she's cutting her sibling i'd imagine the poor teacher just doesn't have time. Exactly. To think about, oh crap, what they're thinking about is all these other parents giving out about their kid's hair being cut. Yes, exactly. So this is what I'm saying.
Starting point is 00:21:33 They're very fast when they do it. For this mom or this dad, who was it? The dad to go in to the teacher and say, listen, I listened to Honey, You're a New York Kid. Yeah. And Tina Reganan i'm sure you know her now she she says i know that she's cutting all the kids hair she reckoned you need to give her the scissors more
Starting point is 00:21:57 she's gonna mate would you ever stick your broadcast you know what I'm saying how is this vice gonna work like but like if she's in an early years setting which I'm sure she is she's in baby infants
Starting point is 00:22:15 or senior whatever they call it now they're going to be doing loads of cutting just give that child more opportunities so what's happening so his
Starting point is 00:22:24 the issue here is that every time a scissors is put in this child's hand, someone's getting a haircut. Yeah. Yeah. So the teacher has to say. You're asking them to give them the scissors. And look, I know that the teacher's probably laughing about it. And the mom probably finds it cute. I know where the trouble is.
Starting point is 00:22:40 Oh, I very much doubt that they're laughing about it. Maybe in the pub, smashed on a Friday night going, this fucking kid is making my life a nightmare. But I know it's the other parents. It's the parents who pick up their kids with fresh haircuts who are going nuts. Like, that's where they're going nuts. But, like, this child is getting so much attention for this. And now it's like, she probably has a reputation.
Starting point is 00:23:04 So maybe, maybe this is the suggestion when you come home from school we are going to do so much cutting you're not going to believe it let the school follow their observation at the moment which is we've got to get scissors out of the classroom and that well i can't cutting something you have to look forward to in the evenings but if i hear that you cut somebody's hair in school we will not be cut do we do not be doing the cutting look i can't in good conscience go over the school and say tell them not to take the scissors out the classroom but like if it was my class i wouldn't take the scissors out the classroom i would have a moment in that day where i gave this child opportunities to do more coaching with different textures and stuff and get whatever need is out of her system but i get it this might
Starting point is 00:23:54 be a teacher on her own who doesn't have an a teaching assistant or something and doesn't isn't able to do that so i think your idea is a good one no i mean we need a klaxon we need a i think your idea had a decent suggestion and i think you could also even go further and say to the child and then soon i'm going to be able to tell your teacher that she can trust you now you're ready for this responsibility of the scissors i actually helped also podcast rather than making wouldn't be suggestions like rob all the stuff out of your kid's room and say how do you like it also probably not a bad idea to bring her to a hairdresser's and have the hairdresser explain to them that they had to get trained up you know the hairdressers with the sweeping pan and brush
Starting point is 00:24:38 gather up all the hair i went too far i lost it i lost it i went too far i lost it i lost it i've often thought that if the cia or the fbi was low on operatives that they could hire irish children or any children to keep their state secrets because prizing information from your child about their day at school is a fucking impossible, especially if it's a boy. Like maybe I'm,
Starting point is 00:25:17 maybe that's just me, but I feel like the girls will sit down with a baby Chino and tell you everything. And that might be just a bit of sexism on my part. No, it's not sexism. It's generalizing.
Starting point is 00:25:27 Yeah. It's a sweeper. Because I'd imagine there's quite a few lads that will do that too. Well, you know what gets me? Is that because I've been in the classroom and a teacher and stuff. Yeah. I know that they spill everything in the classroom. About us.
Starting point is 00:25:40 About us. And the teachers are getting the lowdown on everything. Like things you don't want to know they just won't stop talking and telling you okay okay cool thank you you know like what daddy was up to last night or you know there was a lot of banging and clattering coming out of the bedroom upstairs no things being hidden daddy sometimes pinches mommy's bum no what are you talking about i don't know no kid has ever said that to me but you know your stuff like mommy and daddy were shouting last night or and you're like i saw daddy sleeping on the couch this morning things like that and you're
Starting point is 00:26:16 like oh or my daddy doesn't sleep in the same bedroom as my mommy and you're like okay well sometimes that happens i don't know it's awful and like the other kids are looking around going so i know all i'm saying is i know from in being in school you cannot get these kids to stop telling you stuff and yet so it's so frustrating yeah because that's what this question's about question number three today tina and jarliff i have a strange one for you and we're here to tell you that it's not that strange i can't get my little boy to tell me anything about school one word answers a total shutdown is all i get i'm worried all the time and that is that is what happens that it leads to worry yeah you're just like can you just set my mind at ease why wouldn't he want to share his day with me that's what i want to know do you think he might be getting bullied or finding school hard i really need some help
Starting point is 00:27:13 fair play to you first of all for emailing i always think yeah hats off to people we know the answer though the answer consistently is when you ask any child, why aren't you telling your parents stuff? They honestly don't think their parents will understand. Or they don't think that their day is newsworthy. Yes. They're like, what's the big deal? Well, day's a day. Or is that school?
Starting point is 00:27:39 So it's like they don't even know why you want to know. First of all, they're like, well, how am I going to explain that to my parents yeah and then also it's boring why would they care they just don't get why we'd want to know so how do you get them to know well i guess play play you want to talk to your child about anything sit down on the ground and build lego with them or draw with them and when they're in that activity for a little while start gently asking questions that's why play therapy is so amazing because kids relax and then they'll open up yeah you were the first person i ever heard talk about this parallel play thing no that's not parallel oh yeah okay that's different well what i was to say was we definitely had this.
Starting point is 00:28:26 Oh, yeah. I get it way more than you. But at least if there's one parent that can get it out of them, like you're very good at getting stuff out of Mikey. You either play with him or you go on a very special coffee walk where you let him shout on about other stuff and then you ask him a question. Well, I've been talking about these coffee walks for a long time and i don't think that i've cracked anything or i think that i've got a parenting figured out in any way and that's also at the heart of this bloody podcast is nobody knows all kids are different and there's a million ways to skin this cat and try and raise your kid not to be a gobshite or to get yourself around the idea
Starting point is 00:29:05 that your kid isn't finished yes is the thing and certainly when i started actually taking an hour in the week to go for a long uninterrupted walk it's a luxury it's a luxury but you have made time you've carved out time for it and and you know i feel bad every week that we don't find time for it yeah but when we do you'll find that stuff comes out yeah but you know it's a practice like honestly because sometimes when i'm out of practice it doesn't all together happen and we do end up talking about nonsense but even i can get if i sit down and build i go yeah or if i take an interest in whatever he's doing and just talk a little bit about nonsense and then ask him something gentle while he's relaxed he will open up now the question
Starting point is 00:29:56 of the bullying right am i is my kid having a hard time at school and when you're dealing with a secretive kid who won't open up how the hell do you find out well you that's what that's what teacher meetings are for that's what asking requesting a meeting with the teacher is about and going in and getting your mind put to rest by talking to the teacher and saying to them is are they okay like is there anything no well if they're good at their job they should know they're supposed to observe every child all the time what they will playground well yeah they are there's always a teacher on the playground and what they will be able to tell you is do they have friends what is it well how do they interact with their children what are they like
Starting point is 00:30:41 when they're playing and also you can say i'd like you to spend the week observing them and come back to me on friday and let me know what you think you know i think there isn't a parent out there that doesn't wonder about their kids ability to interact socially and those that aren't wondering about it probably would if they actually reflected for a minute. Well, I think if you like this person have a child who's not opening up, it only leads to worry. You only go to straight away. Oh, why aren't they telling me? What aren't they telling me? What's going on?
Starting point is 00:31:18 Why doesn't he want to talk to me? What have I done to make him not think he can talk to me? I also think that if you are worried your kid is being bullied or having a hard time at school, there will be other signs other than not telling you what's happening in school. Like there would be other... You saw me, Tina. Yeah. It would be reflected in other ways.
Starting point is 00:31:43 Yeah, sometimes. It depends on the kid. Some kids are experts at covering this stuff up. I really do think that the best action there is to go into the teacher. That's the person seeing your kid at school. That's the person you've trusted. Because some kids are having a tough time in this first month with we have honey rooney our kid goes out in term right so we'll always have an episode for you on a monday first thing even if it means
Starting point is 00:32:14 recording it late on a sunday night when we're both bollock start because that's life and that's parenting sometimes that's what happens right we did this is the first chance we've gotten september is a uniquely tough month. Yeah. In terms of fatigue, in terms of the settling in. Yeah. And sometimes your kid can be having issues with actually getting on with these teachers or their teacher for that first month.
Starting point is 00:32:39 Yeah. What do you do, Tina, if your kid comes to you and goes, I don't like my teacher and that I'm not being bullied but my teacher is not nice now this can start like at five and can go all the way up through their teens what do you do that's a very tricky one because you can't change the teacher it's like an institutional bullying yeah to them in their experience what you can do is like sometimes you do have to explain to your child you're not going to like everyone in this world and sometimes going to school is learning how to manage different personalities yeah sometimes you're going to find yourself working with somebody you don't particularly
Starting point is 00:33:17 like yeah oh charlotte i'm joking not in this situation but it is true that is life that is life but also you can say talk to me about the times where you feel like the teacher's getting cross or upset with you go through them what are you doing in those moments and then maybe your child is finding something hard at school that you can suddenly help them with or maybe your child's going to tell you well it's i'm always talking to my friend and you you're going to be like, well, stop doing that. Or the criticism Tina got on her report card. Tina smiles too much. Smiles too much in class.
Starting point is 00:33:52 Do she teach her? Says Tina smiles too much. I was seven. Do you ever look back on, I hope that answered your question to this listener. And please do get back in touch. There's going to be more over on Patreon. Yeah. If you want to listen in we've got much more stuff coming for you over there and we're actually
Starting point is 00:34:10 gonna put it up well the last few weeks we haven't because we want people to get a taste of what a full episode feels like but you know there is a deeper dive and some return business from people who are telling us how they got on but we do want to hear how this stuff pans out like it's one thing to give out the advice but tina always follows up yeah and tries to find a resolution if the first piece of advice doesn't work definitely sorry just hurt my back there definitely if the when people get back and they say we've tried this it's not working i'm like okay give me some more information let's see what we can do we can definitely find a way here and if we can if it's a bullying issue i will come down to the school and push some kids around if needs be the bullying issue is so tough but i always
Starting point is 00:34:55 think go to the teacher go to the person who sees your child the most they'll know if they haven't noticed they'll start noticing and then let the eyes peel yeah let me ask you this before we go call this one a day do you have your school reports anywhere because i have every single one of them back at my parents that's because your mom files everything she has a filing cabinet yeah i'm sure they're around they're just probably stuffed in love to read them my school reports i just love to look back when you see how your life has worked out and the criticism you were receiving and the things that were viewed as criticisms that are now your greatest strength well i know that i was always tina needs to stop talking so much and here you are talking for a living although one of my teachers from mercy went to
Starting point is 00:35:46 your show in navin and sent me the most lovely email afterwards and uh she said i was great but also she was my favorite like i loved history and i know it was her that sparked the interest and we need to get emails from the teachers that didn't like tina if you're listening honey you're ruining our kid at gmail.com is the place to go come on over and join us on patreon for the price of a pint each month you're going to get a ton of content for whatever times you have to yourself extra content on the honey you're ruining your kid podcast and of course three other podcasts each week come on that's pretty good value. Support the show. That's the only way we support the show is on patreon.com forward slash Irishman.
Starting point is 00:36:30 Have a great day.

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