Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #585 Bare Minimum Parenting With James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn)

Transcript

#585 Bare Minimum Parenting With James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn) · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers Now. Hello, this
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: is doctor Justin Colson. In the lead up to Father's Day,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: we've been having some great conversations as part of the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Happy Family's podcast, talking with people who have just got
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: so many great insights. Osher David Campbell, and today somebody
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: that has entertained me for a number of years. Now,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: every now and again, in the Uff Post or any
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: number of other news outlets will do kind of like
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the best tweets on Twitter this week. And there's a
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: whole lot of parenting tweets articles that you can find
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: when you Google. And there's one guy who comes up,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: perhaps more often than any other parenting tweeter. I don't
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: even know if he intended to become a parenting tweeter
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: or not, but the man's name is James Brakwaill. He's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: based in the United States, and James tweets under the
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: handle at exploding Unicorn exploding Unicorn with an X as
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: opposed to an EX. James joins me now to talk
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: about life, tweeting to more than one million followers about
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: his four daughters. James breakwill the Exploding Unicorn on Twitter.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome to The Happy Family's podcast.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks for being here, Thank you for having me very excited.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So before we even get started, you and I were
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: chatting just before I press record here, and it turns
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: out that there was a bit of an issue with
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the timing of organizing our conversation. You're not supposed to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: be here talking to me right now. Where should you be?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I should be at my wife's birthday dinner, right right
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: at this exact moment. I turns out I don't understand
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: how time converts from Australia to the US, and rather
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: than rather than being safely before we needed to go
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: out to eat it, this is precisely in the middle
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: of when we need to eat. But the reason I
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: was able to get away with this, it's the same
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: reason I'm able to get away with tweeting about my kids.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: My wife is very understanding of my shenanigans.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I really hope that she forgives you. This is terrible.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: What I find even funnier is I messaged you because
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: you were having trouble with getting the conversion right, and
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I made a mistake with the conversion, and I offered
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: to come into the office two hours earlier to make
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: this happen at the time that was more convenient for you.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: And you said, no, no, no, no, it'll be fine. It'll
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: be fine if we just do it at the wrong time.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: You know, there were a lot of things going on,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: and I didn't make the connection, and I woke up
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: this morning I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: That was not a good thing to say. But that's
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Those are the best kind of mistakes, the ones that
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: slap you in the face and in a moment of
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: total panic in it. Yet here we are.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I just hope you don't get another one slap that
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: is a little bit later. So let's talk about your
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: family and your tweets and your dad to four daughters.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if my EP, Craig Bruce, would he
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: arranged for this conversation. I don't know if he told
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: you I have six daughters.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah he did. You uped me by fifty percent, So
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I've that's my whole shick has four daughters. You should
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: have ten billion followers on Twitter with six that's like
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: a superpower.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe we should work together. I'm actually thinking next time
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I'm in the United States, I'm gonna bring the whole
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: family just so that we can, Oh man, get the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: ten girls together. Like, how awesome would that be?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: It would be so much, so much girl power in
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: one place. It'd be overwhelming.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: You had a funny beginning to your dad experience and
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: your Twitter life. The thing that you do. You've said,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not great at being a dad, so tweeting about
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: being bad at it felt natural. The difference between you
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and I is when I realized I was not good
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: at being a dad, I went back into a PhD
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: in psychology. Oh, you got onto Twitter and started just
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: saying I'm going to celebrate my badness as a dad.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I feel like my approach was a lot easier and
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: a lot more time efficient.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: And it's probably worked out better for you as well.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Baby number one is now how old?
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Twelve twelve, seventh grade over here? Yeah, she's a middle
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: schooler now. It makes me feel a million years old.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do when she's old enough
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: to sort of get onto Twitter and realize what you've
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: written about her for the last ten years.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, they are aware. I mean we do YouTube videos
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: together and things like that. In fact, that's the only
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: thing they really appreciate about my internet career. Twitter means
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: nothing to them, newsletters means nothing to in the books, Yeah,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I can take her to leave it. But that YouTube account,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: which is not very big, that's a big deal to them.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And all the time like dad, dad, can we make
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: a video about this or that or That's they you know,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: they're growing up in the YouTube age, so they understand
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: what internet attention is. So I've given her a head
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: start in that arena, and she's also kind of given
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: me a little bit of leeway on that. She understands.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: I'm a comedy writer. That's what I do, so I
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily take the It's not like I'm making fun
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: of her or taking like the whole truth. It's like, ah,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: this is kind of a funny situation. Let's let's portray
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: this in a funny way, but not necessarily exactly as
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: it happens in real life. There's that little bit of
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: separation there that they kind of saves us all from humiliation.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: How do you find the humor? So a lot of parents,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: we get so earnest, and we get so serious, and
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: we get so triggid. How do you spin that so
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: that you find the human What makes your kids so
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: funny even when they're not being funny.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: You know, the bigger to the disaster, the better the joke.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: That's kind of the model I've adopted over the years,
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: and it really helps me keep everything in perspective that
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: you know, things are going wrong, everything's in chaos, and say,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: all right, what's the what's the gem I can grab
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: out of this that people are going to relate to,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: And it kind of it helps me focus in. It
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: helps me realize that, you know, we're going to get
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: through this moment, just like you know, I look back,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: I've got says sixteen thousand tweets, twenty thousand tweets something
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: like that. I don't even check the number anymore. But
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: it's like, just just like those other twenty thousand moments,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: we're gonna We're gonna survive this one too.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Do you find it difficult to create the psychological distance
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: sometimes that like, sometimes you're in the moment you've got
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: to get out the door, you're supposed to be a
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: u wat's birthday party, everything's gonna everything's going wrong, and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: do you do you struggle to pause and go this
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: will make a great tweet. Sometimes are you so in
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: the moment that you're like, I'm just going I'm gonna
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: be exploding dad rather than exploding Unicorn.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, And that's why I so rarely do YouTube,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: because on YouTube you have to like, you have to
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: look the part, you have to compose yourself. For Twitter,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: you can be having an absolute meltdown. It's like, but
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: I can probably type two hundred and eighty characters, like
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: you don't have to put yourself back together for that,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: and that is that is what saves me there.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite tweet? You know when you're right something
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and you just know that you've written something absolutely brilliant.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes as a writer, you put a few words together
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: on the page and think, I really created something excellent here,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I really. I remember one time I talked about how
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: one of my children's jokes landed on my funny bone
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: like a plane touching down, and I just thought that
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: was brilliant at the time. I'm not so convinced as
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: i'm repeating it now that it was that good, but
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: at the time I thought, I've done something so good.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: When you think about your tweets, do you have a
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: favorite one that just still melts in your mouth?
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: As you say it, yeah, and I won't be able
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: to quote it exactly. But the situation was I was
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: teaching my kids to play a child version of Dungeons
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: and Dragons because I'm doing my best to raise for nerds.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And the situation was that this town was surrounded by wolves,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: and obviously the solution is you just go out and
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: fight the wolves. That's what it's set up for. And
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: instead of going out to fight the wolves, they decided
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: to befriend the wolves and ride the wolves and make
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: a wolf army. And so I wrote about this about
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: how I tried to get them to fight the wolves
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: and instead they befriended the wolves and now they had
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: their own private wool farming. And then the punchline was girls, man,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: They're going to take over the world. And that one
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: still is bouncing around the internet. I see it all
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: the time, pop up on nerd sites and stuff like
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: that circulating, But it really kind of encapsulates who my
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: kids are. They just they look at the world a
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: little bit different than I do, and I think everybody's
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: children do that. I think that's the advantage of having children.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: You get that fresh look, you get that fresh enthusiasm.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And things that to you and I seem so obvious.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: So rote so this is how it is, and that's it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: They turn that completely on its head, and that's what
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: keeps me coming back.
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  Speaker 1: When people find out that you have full girls, you
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: just wait about them all the time. Obviously, how many
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: times would you say that you've been asked do you
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: know how that happened? Or did you keep trying for
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: a boy? Do you get those questions a lot? And
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: what are your best responses?
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Either they say, oh you poor thing, or they say
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: are you going to try for a boy? It's always
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: one of those two responses. And my response is I
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: could have one hundred more kids and they would all
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: be girls. I just make girls. That's just how it's.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Going to be.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And so I had the wisdom to stop at four.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: You kept going to six. But I'm guessing it's the
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: same deal with you if you had nine or ten
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: or twelve, if you'd be the guy with twelve daughters,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: which is something wrong with that, But logistics start to
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: get complicated if you don't fit in one vehicle anymore.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: My sense is that you're calling me a slow lena.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: You know it took me four to get there. We're
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: all in the same bought. Actually, my wife and I
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: when we got married, our life plan was to have
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: four boys, so you can see how well that worked out.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: You're on fire. I love it. Tell me what's your
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: parenting style? If everyone loves to talk about parenting styles,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: how they work, Whether you're a helicopter parent, or an
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: authoritarian parent, or a gentle parent, or an attachment parent,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: whatever it might be, do you like what is an
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: exploding unicorn parent?
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: I tend to be very laid back, and the title
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: of my second book was Bare Minimum Parenting, The Ultimate
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Guide to not quite ruining your child, and I really
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: try to encompass that. Sometimes I think you can parent
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: more by parenting less and just let the kids work
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: it out for themselves. I'm more of a referee in
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: most situations, is how I kind of view it. And
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: oddly enough that kids have turned out to be super
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: responsible and I can't let them hear this, but they
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: do the dishes every night, they do most of the chores,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: they do their own laundry, they make their own lunches
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: for school, and like I didn't do any of those things.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: I didn't do any of that stuff.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Taught.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: It was in my twenties and they're already there now.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: So my loving neglect has gotten them to the point
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: where they're kind of semi capable adults at a very
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: young age. That at the same time, sometimes they turn
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: my back and they try to murder each other. So
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: they are also still children, so you have both aspects
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: of that going on. But so far, so good.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Brought after the break, we got to find out exactly
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: how to raise children who want to clean the dishes
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: without being asked and well, speaking with James Brakll, James
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: is the Twitter the tweet behind the beyond the handle
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: at exploding Unicorn on Twitter. I think I got that right.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Dad's pretty awesome. Just to ask me today, your dads
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: are more involved with their children's lives than ever before,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and research shows that their children are really benefiting from it.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: But too often dads don't realize just how vital they
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: really are. In the Dadding Done Right webinar join me,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: is I examine how dads can be a fantastic support,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the ideal role model and an excellent all round best
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: dad ever. Check out Dadding Done Right at the Happy
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Family's webshop. It's the Happy Family's Podcast, the podcast for
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: the type or parent who just wants answers. Now we've
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: got Father's Day days away, In fact, just just a
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: couple of days here in Australia. In the United States,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: you've already had Father's Day, James, how do your four
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: girls treat a Twitter celebrity? I mean you, I don't
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: know if Twitter has influencers so much, but you're a
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Twitter celebrity. Everyone follows you, knows who you are, sees
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: your tweets. What did the girls do for you on
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Father's Day? What makes Father's Day great for you?
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: So I try not to make a big deal out
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: of Father's Days. If you make a big deal out
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of Father's Day, you have to make a big deal
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: out of Mother's Day. Just you're here any more work
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: for yourself. So we tend to be pretty low key
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: about everything, birthdays, holidays, everything else. But they do try
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: to be nice to me. They'll try to make an
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: extra dessert or something on those days. And I always say,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: what I really want is for them to be nice
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: to each other and be quiet. That's the one thing
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: that's absolutely impossible. I might as well ask them for
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: a real unicorn.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I kind of feel like you are me, except for
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the fact that I've got two extra daughters. That's literally
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: what I ask for for Father's Day every year. Can
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: can you all just be nice to each other? And
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: if you can give me a little bit of peace
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: and quiet and we just spend some time together, that'll
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: be fine. And instead they give me gift vouches for
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: massages and bobs and the promise that they will actually
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: do the dishes. And yet when I try to use
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: those gift vouches, they scream at me and say, no,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: not now. It's a bad time. And you don't understand
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: what it's like to be a girl. It's challenging. You
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: don't have any girls that have gone through puberty. Yet
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: what are your greatest fears?
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: You know, my father in law talks to me about
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: this all the time. He raised three girls, and he
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: keeps telling me that basically his daughters they spent some
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: years hating their mom, but they were always fine with him.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: And like, I feel like that's the best case scenario.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: If mom is the bad guy and I'm the good guy,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: we'll work it out one way or another. People always
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: tell me they're like, oh, man, there's gonna be so
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: much drama in the teenage years, and it's like, what
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: do you think my house is like now? Like the
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: quote of the ratio of tears to not tears, the
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: ratio of screaming to not screaming. There's a lot of
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: drama going on every second of every day. And I
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: kind of wonder if maybe we've already hit peak drama.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe we get to the teenage years and it's just
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: more of the same. I mean, that's my naive hope,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: that's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: So please, please don't tell me the.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Truth, James. My eldest is in her twenties and married.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I've got another one who's about to turn twenty, another
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: one's finishing her senior year of high school as we speak,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and then I've got a fifteen year old at twelve
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: year old, and an eight year old. And I can
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: assure you, as much as you just told me not
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: to that it's not even beginning yet. It's all still
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: to come, and your tweets are going to become potential
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: missiles aimed at your own hid the more you tweet
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: about the girls as they enter those adolescent years and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: move through them. The more likely is that they got
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: to start to threaten you. I know that your wife
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: has told you not to share pictures of the family
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: or get the family killed with what you're tweeting. But
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: the difficulty that you've got to be facing soon is
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: friendly file what the girls will do and say.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right now, they still find it a novelty, still
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: actually tell me, you know coming we do do pictures
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: online and things like that, take pictures of this, you know, kids,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: kids love attention. But yeah, I'm sure there'll be a
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: shift there, and as they get older, if they don't
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: want their pictures online or they don't want to be
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: part of my shenanigans, that's that's fine. I've I've branched
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: into other things over the years. I've got my I
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: have a science fiction book that came out in January.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: So it's not like it's not like if the kids
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: are like, okay, Dad has been fun, but we're not
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: going to be part of this parenting thing anymore. It's like,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: all right, you guys can go your own way and
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I'll go mine. It's so not that I'm cutting them
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: out of my family, just that if they don't want
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: to be in the tweets anymore. That is a that
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: is a perfectly fine outcome, and I will not It
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: will not ruin anybody's life.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think tim a question, and we'll wrap this
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: up for you really quickly. James. First of all, what's
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the most viral tweet you've had? What's the one that's
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: gone bonkers better than any others? The one?
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: It was the wolf tweet. I was telling you run
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: her up to. That one was probably one of my
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: way early on, before I was even that big on Twitter.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: It was something to the effect of, to anybody out
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: there who's thinking about having kids, my two year old
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: just threw a temper tantrum because she can't get rid
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: of her shadow. And that was We were out at
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: a restaurant. Her shadow was like going in four different directions.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: She was freaking out. It took us a while to
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: figure out what it was. And then when we figured
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: out what it was, it was like, oh, well, okay,
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: then I guess we can't stop physics here. This just
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: is what it is.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: It's a great one. I can see why you have
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: a million plus followers on Twitter. James. Last question for you,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: what are you eating for dinner? At your wife's birthday.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Oh sorry, you're not eating anything, you hear with me. Yeah,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: we need to let you go.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll go over there. I think it'll be okay,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: but I do appreciate you talking with me today. I
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: will go over there and try to save my marriage.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: You need all the luck in the world. I guess
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: based on the way you've responded to these questions, James,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: tell me if people want more information about you and
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: about your books. Obviously your Twitter handle is easy at
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: exploding Unicorn. People will find you on Twitter easily. But
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: if they want to have an absolute hoot of a
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: laugh while they're reading about parenting and not feeling so
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: bad about themselves and their parenting experiences, how can they
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: find more about you and your books.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: James Breakwell, Just search for that on Amazon or your
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: favorite book retailer of choice. I also have a newsletter
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: in it's both print and podcast forum. You can listen
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: to it. That's James Breakwell dot substack dot com. James
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: Breakwell dot substack dot com. There's a free newsletter slash
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: podcast that comes out every Monday with my greatest disaster
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: from the week before that makes you feel very good
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: that you are not me perfect.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: We'll link to every one of those items and more
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: in the show notes. You've been so generous. I feel
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: so terrible. Go and have some connected time and maybe
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: we can catch up again one time when disasters aren't
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: looming in your life.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Al Right, it sounds good. Thanks so much.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: Wonderful to talk with James Breakwell Exploding Unicorn on Twitter
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: about everything great about being a dad. The Happy Family's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Bruce is our executive producer. Father's Day A couple of
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: days await, hope you're all set for it. If you'd
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: like more off about making your family happy, visit happy
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: families dot com Today you