How To Stop Freaking Out | Carla Naumburg, PhD (Mom of 2, Best-selling Author of 5 books)

Carla: To all of your listeners out there, do not give this book to your kids. Oh, let's be clear. Like you should buy it. You should buy like 27 copies, a hundred percent, but don't hand it to them. Don't express any interest in it. Say nothing about it. Just, you know, put it next to the toilet, put it out on the table, put it wherever your kid is likely to find it.

And then if they ask you about it, be like, oh, and just walk away.

Adam: Welcome to Startup Dad, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of dads who are also leaders in the world of startups and business. I'm your host, Adam Fishman. In today's conversation, I sat down with a mom, Carla Naumburg. Carla holds a PhD in clinical social work and is a bestselling author of several parenting books, including “You're Not a Shitty Parent, How to Stop Losing Your Shit With Your Kids,”

“Ready, Set, Breathe,” and Parenting in the Present Moment.” Her forthcoming book and the reason for this conversation is a middle grade companion book called, How to Stop Freaking out, the Ultimate Guide to Keeping Cool When Life Feels Chaotic.” She's a wife and the mother of two teenage daughters. In our conversation today, we spoke all about her newest book, which was just released on September 10th.

We talked about how she got into writing in the first place, what it takes to write and research a book and the inspiration behind this newest one. She discussed the five different types of freak outs, why kids freak out in the first place, and how to model and teach emotional regulation in our kids. We ended with an extensive discussion on kids, smartphones, and social media.

I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Carla Naumburg.

Adam: I would like to welcome Carla Naumburg to the Startup Dad podcast. Carla, coming back, second tour of duty on the pod. Welcome back, Carla. It's a pleasure to have you here today.

Carla: I'm so excited to be here.

Adam: I will also point out that the first time you were on the show, I had you with your significant other, Josh. And he did not get the invite back, yet.

Carla: We're gonna be talking about that a lot in our family by which I mean I'm gonna be reminding him of that all the time. He's gonna love it. It's gonna be great for our marriage.

Adam: I'm sure I won't hear a thing from him about it. He's just going to take it like a champ. But I'm excited to have you today because we only touched on this briefly in the last episode that we recorded but you are a writer and a social worker or have a background in social work and you've written now four books, right?

Is that right?

Carla: This is my fifth. The one we're gonna talk about is my fifth.

Adam: Okay. And so I am inviting you on in your capacity as writer and your background in social work to talk about your book, but before we get into the book let's talk about your background as a writer. How did you get into writing?

How did it start?

Carla: So I think the story was when I was like six or seven, I told my grandfather that I was going to write a book one day. Cause you know, someone was really smart if they published a book, because that's how six year old things. And he was like, you should definitely do that. So like life plan age six. I think at eight, I wrote my first book that I illustrated on my dad's like Apple two E computer with Mac paint.

I'm really aging myself right now. And it was about like these twin kids whose father had an addiction problem.

Adam: You were eight. Just wanted to confirm?

Carla: And their parents, 

Adam:This is your graphic novel at age eight.

Carla: Yeah, their parents were like divorcing, but then everything turns out okay in the end. It's fine. And just so you know, I was like very soon after found Sweet Valley High and was like, that was the rest of my, you know, reading life. But you can see in that moment in that eight year old Carla's book, how I might become a social worker and a writer. And so then my first book called Parenting in the Present Moment, I started a blog when my daughters were young, because parenting was so hard, and the way I process things is by writing, and everybody at that time was writing blogs And it turned out that a publisher, a small publisher in California saw my blog and invited me to write a book.

And I was like, oh, a hundred percent I can do that. Cause I had written long things before for my master's degree in my dissertation. And it was a very, very steep learning process, but that was my first book. And then I wrote three more parenting books. And now I have this kid's book coming out.

Adam: Cool. Wow. What a journey and the foreshadowing at eight years old of your future career is pretty new. Do you still have that book that you wrote at age eight?

Carla: I might, I think my dad, oddly like put it in some kind of old school 1980s cover and it might be in the basement. I don't know. I'm sort of terrified to go find it and be like, oh my god, what was eight year old Carla thinking?

Adam: Show your daughters. Read this. This was…

Carla: Oh, they already know I'm crazy. It's fine. But they would definitely laugh at me because they're both super artistic and I'm still drawing the same way I was when I was eight years old.

So.

Adam: Stick figures and yea…

Carla: A hundred percent stick. Yes, yes, absolutely.

Adam: Before we get into the book, tell me a little bit about your life growing up. Where are you from? What was life like

Carla: Oh, how much time do we have? Should I get out the PowerPoint right here? I live in Massachusetts now, but I grew up out West. So I spent about half of my childhood in California in the Bay area. And I spent about half my childhood in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I was born. And my parents divorced before I was a year old.

And there was a lot of back and forth and a lot of chaos. I have an older sister who thankfully really took care of me, was a huge support. We're still very close sending each other inappropriate memes all day long, because that's how I find meaning in life these days, apparently.

Adam: As one does.

Carla: As one does, obviously. And so just a lot of chaos. I've mentioned this in my books, but like mental illness, substance abuse, Multiple marriages, not mine, my parents, not a great childhood, you know, I have good relationships with my parents now, but childhood is pretty messy, which I think is one of the big reasons why parenting was so challenging for me early on is I sort of had this sense of like, I don't want to go down that particular path, but when all you know, is the way you don't want to take.

What it means is that there are endless ways you could take. And I just, had no idea. Also a whopping case of postpartum anxiety. That too.

Adam: Yeah.

Carla: So that was my childhood. Sort of, living in some beautiful, amazing places. Having wonderful people in my life, but really chaotic.

Adam: And that led to many books.

Carla: Yes. It's true. Like bad childhoods can lead to really good books. Yes.

Adam: I do want to talk about your newest book, which comes out very soon. I have it right here. You also have it. There it is. We can hold up our twinsie books. Your newest book’s called How to Stop Freaking Out the Ultimate Guide to Keeping Cool When Life Feels Chaotic.

And it's not for parents. It's for their kids. So it comes out in the fall. This is the middle schooler companion-ish to another book of yours.

Carla: yes!

Adam: Or what was the range for this that you're intending?

Carla: I would say like 8 to 11, 8 to 12. I think adults might actually really enjoy this book, especially if you're like, I need to deal with my freak outs, but I can't handle big words right now. Which I definitely resonate with that vibe. But really I do think that if you hand this to an older middle schooler or a high schooler, they're going to be like hard pass on that.

And the reason I know that is because when it came in the mail, when we got an early copy, my daughters who are now 14 and 15 got their hands on it and just like, oh my God, Adam, they went to town. They were doing like dramatic reenactments of like, dialogue in the quizzes and it was a lot. It was amazing.

I loved every moment of it, but I do think by the time your kids get to like eighth grade and above the voice in this one is probably a little too young for them.

Adam: Got it. And I refer to this as a companion book. Cause you did also write a book called How to Stop Losing Your Shit with Your Kids.

And so, you know, I guess I wanted to ask a little bit about your inspiration for this book.

So you just mentioned you have two daughters, your mom of two kids. They're both in high school, but they were in middle school. As I understand, that comes first. Was you Kind of observing your daughters watching them go through this time in life. Was that an inspiration for the book or was there more to it?

Carla: I 100 percent wish I could take credit for the inspiration for this book. And I cannot, it was my actually my brilliant and amazing agent, Jillian Mackenzie. She was the person who really made how to stop losing your shit with your kids come to life. I sent her about a bajillion book proposals that I thought were amazing, but with her savvy, she was like, pass, pass, pass, reject, reject, deny.

And then finally, this was the one she's like, this is the book we're going to sell. And we did. And I'm so pleased with how it's doing. I had so much fun writing it. I know we're not supposed to have favorite book babies. I totally do. Of my four parenting books, this is my book, baby, my favorite.

And then she came to me and she said, why don't we put together a middle grade version of this for kids? And I was like, oh, that is brilliant. And then when I started just looking around, because at the time I was hanging out with middle graders, I was doing pickups, I was doing drop offs, I was at hangouts.

'Cause we don't call them play dates anymore in middle school. I was hearing stories from my daughters about kids freaking out and I was like, yeah. We could definitely use this. And so as we talked about it, I was thinking, look, this has to be delightfully illustrated and it is.

And I just want to give a quick shout out to Letizia Rizzo who illustrated the book, she did an incredible job. And it has to be full of color. I want full color. Which is me being a pretty, pretty princess because that's a tall order. And I was like, and we're going to do quizzes and fun facts, and we're not going to have what I call the wall of words, which is what many books, including some of my adult books kind of have where you open it up and it's just like so many words. Kids don't like that. I sometimes don't like that. So that's how the book came out. And I'm thrilled. I'm just so excited by the final product. I think it's great.

Adam: Awesome. Well, This is your fifth book now coming out soon. And so you've written and published four prior to this. I'm always curious about the process. I've heard that writing a book and researching a book and thinking about a book is a demanding thing. And you kind of mentioned this.

You're like, yeah, going from a blog to a book was. A journey. So tell me about the research and prep that goes into writing a book. And then I'm curious, was number five more or less challenging than prior ones and why?

Carla: So writing a book is a painful, horrible experience that I do not recommend to anyone unless you have this insatiable need to write books, which apparently I have. It takes longer than you think it will. And you probably will earn less money than you think you will. And so unless you are truly in love with writing books, oh my gosh, take up a ukulele or something.

Um, but having said that I'm so grateful I get to write books because apparently it's what my brain wants to do. Writing, this book was easier in a lot of ways and harder in one particular way. So the easier part was that I totally got to let loose with my juvenile sense of humor and, you know, researching like fun little facts about various things and thinking about ways to really dig into my kid voice.

And I mean, I had fart jokes in all my previous books because who doesn't, but I really like, I just, I got to lean into like the juvenile part of me, which is absolutely my sense of humor in case anyone couldn't tell. The part that was hard is that I use a particular metaphor in how to stop losing your shit with your kids.

And I realized it didn't translate perfectly for this one. And I agonized about this. I mean, I was like, Josh, we're going for a walk and we're talking about the book. And he's like, grumble, grumble. But he's, he would do it because he's got an amazing brain and he's really thoughtful. And so we'd go out for a walk and I'd be like, okay, does this metaphor work?

Does that one work? Cause I like metaphors. I think they make potentially fraught topics much more accessible. And so finally we sorted it out and I had an amazing editor at Workman and my publishing house. And so ultimately it was fine, but really, I really like a tight, cohesive narrative in a book and the voice and the ideas in this one, like they have to be accessible to kids and it worked out great in the end, but it was a moderately painful process getting there.

Adam: Can you tell me about the metaphor that didn't translate from How to stop losing your shit with your kids to this book. I don't want to spoil anything,

Carla: There's so the Butler did it, Adam. Oh, spoiler alert. Sorry. No, there's no spoiling. There's no spoiling.

Adam: With the candlestick in the living room. Yes.

Carla: Yeah, totally. 100%. No, there's no spoiling. So in how to stop losing your shit with your kids, the main metaphor is this idea that we all have buttons, right? And these are these invisible buttons that are connected to our thoughts and feelings and our kids are the primary button pushers in our life, not because they're little psychopaths.

It's just because that's what they're wired to do. It's how kids operate. And so the point I make in how to stop losing your shit with your kids is many parenting books are all about sort of controlling or managing your kids and how to get them to be cooperative and that's important.

And there are skills and strategies that can make parenting easier in that way, but it's not the best killer strategy, because kids have no prefrontal cortexes, and they have no ability to, like, manage their own behaviors and make good choices all the time. And so we need to tolerate the fact that our kids are always going to be pushing our buttons.

And so our job as the adults with the functioning prefrontal cortex is this adulting part of our brain is to take care of our buttons and make them smaller and dimmer and less pushable. So when our kids come at us with their shenanigans, there's no buttons for them to push and we don't lose our shit.

So that just got a little messy when I was trying to think about how do I distinguish what a button pusher is in a book about how to stop freaking out for kids because I can't say, like, it's not so clear. There wasn't a clear relationship between this is the adult with the buttons and this is the kid who pushes the buttons.

But I actually ended up using the same metaphor and just talking about the people or events or experiences in our lives that push our buttons.

Adam: Mm.

Carla: Which is true for all of us, whether it's a colleague at work or a really loud ambulance going right past you or, you know, physical pain, all of those things, unfortunately, can both make our buttons more pushable and actually also push them.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Very, very, very interesting. I wanted to ask you about teaching kids because that's what this book is designed to do. It's designed to teach kids some stuff about how to stop freaking out. I find, I am not a teacher at least of children. I do sometimes teach adults various topics.

But I find that teaching kids, especially middle schoolers, which is my daughter's now middle schooler, pretty impossible, pretty, pretty, pretty tough. I'm not great at it. How did that change how you had to approach writing this book? Like, how did you think about how you educate and inform and teach as part of this?

Carla: So first of all, Adam, I agree with you.

From my perspective as a parent, not a teacher, I can't teach my kids anything. They are unteachable by me. And actually the kindest thing my grandmother, a mother of seven ever said to me when I was fretting about not being able to teach my like six month old to swim.

because I'm like, we're all like, we need to teach a six month old to swim um, is instead of chastising me for being like you don't need to teach a six month old to swim, just keep her out of the water. What my grandmother actually said to me is go find someone else to do it. You can't teach your kids everything. And this actually coming from a woman who was not only a mother of seven, but a lifelong high school teacher. She actually was an educator and it was such a gift. So parents hear this news from my incredibly wise grandmother, you cannot, and you do not have to teach your kids everything. Either they will never learn it, such as me and Greek.

I never learned to speak Greek. It's fine. I'm fine. Like, no offense to Greek. Or you can just pay someone else to teach them or find someone else or get a neighbor. Like, we asked a good friend to teach our kids to ride their bikes because I was like, I'm not getting involved with this craziness.

So yeah, it's really hard to teach your own kids stuff. So I, I don't know that I was using a framework of teaching when I thought about this book. I think initially I thought of it kind of like, I just want to give them information and I want to make the information funny and relatable. And then my editor who was amazing said, we also want the kids to really start making connections between the information in the book and their own experiences.

And I already had an idea to do that through quizzes. Cause my daughters were like, you have to include quizzes. Everybody loves the quizzes, which is true. We all love a good quiz. And Also sort of asking questions in the book, like, you know, have you ever felt this way? Has this been your experience? So I think I was trying to get the kids to engage with and understand some pretty complex material by making it funny and relatable and simplifying it a little bit.

I was trying to get them to connect with it. And to be honest, I think this idea of self help books for kids is a big and really exciting and really fun experiment. Because for a long time, this wasn't a thing. I mean, for a long time, self help books for parents weren't a thing. They just weren't a thing for most of humanity.

And then in recent decades, they've exploded. Now we're seeing a lot more of these for kids. And I'm curious to hear what the kids think. I mean, so far, with the exception of my two children who mocked me relentlessly, what I've heard from other parents is that their kids enjoyed it. But it feels like a big experiment that I'm thrilled to be a part of.

And I think there are many ways to transmit information to kids and the more we can get it to them from different angles and different and in different ways, the more that hopefully kids will start to integrate these ideas and these practices.

Adam: I love that. And I will use my daughter, my middle schooler as a guinea pig on this book and we'll let you know what she thinks. I think she'll love it.

Carla: Adam, we talked about this.

Adam: Yeah. We're just going to leave it out. We're just going to leave it out. And, and she might see it and be curious about it and then pick it up.

Carla: To all of your listeners out there, do not give this book to your kids. Oh, let's be clear. Like you should buy it. You should buy like 27 copies, a hundred percent, but don't hand it to them. Don't express any interest in it. Say nothing about it. Just, you know, put it next to the toilet, put it out on the table, put it wherever your kid is likely to find it.

And then if they ask you about it, be like, oh, and just walk away. Okay. Like, I'm not kidding. Like it's hilarious and I am hilarious. Thank you. But in this particular instance, don't give it to your kid because they're not going to want to read it. Nobody wants to read a book their parents hand them. I'm 47.

I still don't want to read the books my parents recommend. So just leave it out. It's got a cute little kitty on the cover. Like it's adorable. And just be like, I don't care. I don't care if you read it. Don't even talk about it. Just walk away. If you want to read it on your own time, that's fine.

Don't tell your kids you read it. Okay. Don't get involved. It's the best way to get them interested in the book.

Adam: Yeah. Just pretend, play it cool.

Carla: Play it cool.

Adam: Pretend like you're not interested.

Carla: You don't even care.

Adam: Yeah, don't even care. Cool. 

Carla:Not your jam.

Adam:So I shouldn't like make a bunch of TikTok videos and memes and go and like, you know, put it out there on, on the TikToks,

Carla: Of course I want you to do that!

But then when your daughter asks about it, be like, you know, I thought it was great. You can read it or not.

Adam: Yeah, take it or leave it.

Carla: Take it or leave it.

Adam: I love that. I love that. Well, I have read some of the book. Haven't read all of it. I read first few chapters. And in your opening chapter, you have a very fun illustrated quiz. We talked about quizzes.

Carla: Love a good quiz.

Adam: And this quiz is supposed to help kids learn about the different types of freakouts that can happen. There are five of them. Can you tell me about the different types of freakouts that afflict kids of this age.

Carla: Afflict, that's such a Victorian word. We are all afflicted. We are suffering from afflictions.

Yeah. And just to be clear, this isn't just about kids, right? So everything we write in this book adults could definitely benefit. It's all relevant. So I, for the purposes of this book, decided to categorize freak outs in five different ways.

One is fight, obviously. Well, we've all heard of fight or flight, right? But fight and flight, this idea came out of the ways in which we think our, you know, ancient ancestor, primordial. I don't even know the words. I'm just making up words now. You know, the ones who were like a long, long time ago, prehistoric.

Sure. Let's say prehistoric, even though I think that's dinosaurs. I don't know.

Adam: I think so. You're right.

Carla: I don't know. Let's just make up words. So the people who lived a long, long time ago and we're dealing with like saber tooth tigers, right? Their skill set or their options in the face of one of these woolly mammoths was to either fight it or run away.

So that's where fight or flight comes from. And before all your listeners call in to point out that some researchers do note that women in those cases who were less likely to be out facing the woolly mammoths, their response was often what we call tend and befriend. Basically managing their relationships, because by staying like in the cave with others, that's how they would stay alive.

So we'll just move on from that. Anyways, so there's fight or flight. So fight in this book is like literally picking a fight with someone. And that can be a way of freaking out as like, my husband definitely knows cause he'll be home and I'll be doing like angry sweeping. And then the minute he walks in the door, I like jumped down his throat, literally like, I'm going to pick a fight with you.

And it may be because he did something that's like extremely annoying and 100 percent worthy of me picking a fight. Or it could be because of something that has nothing to do with him. And just in case your listeners are wondering, we've been married for almost 21 years. So apparently the strategy is working well.

So there's fight, there's flight, which means, you know, in the old fashioned term, it means literally running away. In the modern day and age, it can also be just checking out from a situation. If you're like freaking out so much and you just like, and you can either like leave the room and slam the door or hop into your phone and just start like madly scrolling or whatever.

But that can actually be a form of freak out is to just checking out. Freeze is a thing that, you know, in some situations as a trauma response, like a deer in the headlights type things. But in other cases, it really can be kind of an internal freak out where your nervous system just kind of buzzes out again.

That's a very technical term, glitches out. Maybe glitch is a more technical term and you don't even, you can't move. You can't think you can't respond. You're just like checked out frozen in that moment. And then I added a couple of other ones. One is flip out, which is where, and I think we see kids do this a lot.

It can look a lot like picking a fight, but it's just like a tantrum. Yeah. Right. And actually, the more I think about it, it's like kids and politicians. I don't know. I think a lot of adults have tantrums, especially online. And then the last one, which I think there might be a gender difference in this one.

And I'm curious about your perspective, Adam is fixing where we rush into this fixing behavior of like, it's okay. Whatever you want. I'm sorry. I'll just do whatever you want. You can have my toys. You can have my cake. You can have whatever it is. Just like, don't be mad at me. And there's this, this real intensity behind it that I think it can actually be a form of freak out.

And I've seen it. I tend to see. Girls and women do this more than men. Maybe I'm just more attuned to it in a woman. I'm not sure, but at the end of the day, so the five are fight, flight, freeze, flip out, and fix. And I mean, the truth is if a reader feels like their type of freak out doesn't perfectly fit into one of those categories, that's okay.

Like we all flip out in different ways at different times. And the point is just to start to get some insight into the different ways that we can feel really out of control that aren't helpful.

Adam: And what I loved about that first chapter is you kind of walk through scenarios and you say, hey kid, what would you do in this scenario? And then you give them a score and you're like, if you answered in this way primarily you're a freezer, or you're a fighter, or a flip outer or something. So that was super helpful.

'cause in the beginning I was like. I don't know, let me go through this and see, what am I? You know, I don't, I think I'm more of a freeze kind of person.

Carla: Yeah, that's kind of your vibe. I I'm, I'm for sure either a fixer or a flipper outer.

Those, those are like my two go to.

Adam: Okay. Okay. I think have different spikes at various points of time. But,

Carla: And a hundred percent it's context dependent because how I behave with my husband at home or my kids at home is going to be really different than how I freak out in like a professional workplace or in the grocery aisle. Right. And our kids are probably the same. Like, and if your kid is freaking out in different ways at home versus school versus the soccer field. That's probably good because it means, ideally, they're freaking out in ways that are a little more attuned to what's going on around them and the context they're in. And so if you're like, oh my God, my kid loses their shit all the time at home and doesn't do it at school and what the hell, that's a good thing.

It means they're working hard to hold it together at school, which we want them to. I mean, it's not a good thing they're freaking out at home, but you know what I mean?

Adam: Right, right. So why do kids freak out? Imagine this is a central tenet in the book and you could probably talk to me about this for two hours, but what causes of freak outs in kids?

Carla: So that's the first reason they freak out. It's just part of the human experience. And. Literally, our nervous systems are developed this way, because if you go back to, again, our woolly mammoth prehistoric making up words about ancient times days, our limbic system, which is this really old sort of reptilian part of our brain that's way in the back here above our neck, was designed to keep us alive.

And if there is any real or perceived danger, it takes the reins, it takes control and just launches us into like all systems go, freak out, whatever that looks like to stay alive. And so we really need this part of our brain. It's crucial for survival and passing along the genes and creating other little humans who also freak out.

I think what happens is that kids freak out more often than adults. Although I don't know if that's true anymore. I don't know. I'm feeling really jaded about humanity in this particular moment, but I think on a day to day basis, kids probably freak out more than adults. And there are a few different reasons.

One is that their prefrontal cortex, which I've mentioned a couple of times, it's the part of your brain right behind your forehead that I think many of your listeners know by now isn't fully online until people are about like 22 or 23 years old, which is why we see college students lighting things on fire and throwing them out the window.

Cause. I don't know. I have to be sure. Yeah. Did that, I feel like that happened like a lot when I was in college.

Adam: Or setting couches on fire

Carla: Why, why, why are we setting things on fire?

Adam: I mean, apparently we like it. Yeah. I don't know.

Carla: Like really dumb stuff. Anyways, because there is still this part of their brain the part of your brain that's like, ooh, don't do that, buddy.

That's not always like, that's not fully there yet. So when something happens, that triggers them that pushes their buttons, right? The part of their brain that's supposed to be there and say, hey, This isn't the end of the world, you don't need to freak out, nothing truly terrible is happening, it's just kind of unpleasant.

That part of their brain isn't fully functioning yet. And that prefrontal cortex kind of behaves like a muscle. It's not a muscle, we don't have muscles in our brain. But it gets tired. And so the more we use it over the course of a day, the less available it is to us towards the end of the day. So  you know, this is why little kids are losing it completely right before nap time because they're exhausted and not only they're physically exhausted, but this part of their brain is exhausted or it's why if you're an adult and you get to the end of the day and you've been adulting all day long and you've been managing the kids and paying the bills and being at work and following rules and doing a million things and all of these prefrontal cortex activities, managing spreadsheets, whatever, like listening to your boss and not losing it with him or her.

And then you get to the end of the day and you're like, okay. I literally can't figure out what to have for dinner. Like this thing I have done every single day of my adult life now currently completely eludes me. It's because your prefrontal cortex is toast. Like your brain is like, I got nothing for you, lady.

So those are a couple of the reasons. I think also this is my working hypothesis and I don't think I said this directly in the book because I haven't seen enough research to support it, but I'm going to say it now. I think everybody is more anxious today than we have been and that's not to say the previous generations haven't had excellent reasons to be anxious like polio and world wars and nuclear explosion, like horrible, really scary things to be worried about.

When I was a kid in the early 80s, it was the AIDS crisis and kidnapping, right? Those were the things that made us really anxious. But I think with kids today, thanks to social media, thanks to constant news availability, and thanks to more anxious parents of which I am absolutely one of them.

I think human beings are just generally walking around a little more triggered, I think, than we used to be. And so already that level of triggeredness is going to make your buttons bigger and brighter and sensitive and more pushable and COVID, COVID triggered the crap out of all of us.

And like, are we ever going to get over that? I don't know. So I think kids are more triggered than they used to be and more likely to have their buttons pushed and freak out.

Adam: Well, and then underlying all of this is modeling and teaching emotional regulation, right? And you mentioned the prefrontal cortex, that sort of like voice of reason isn't really there until you're 22, 23. And so you're like limbic systems, the thing that's like driving you wild. But how do you model and teach emotional regulation to middle school kids? Or eight to 11 year olds, like how, or 12 year olds. How do you do that?

Carla: So I think there's a few different strategies. First of all, if you're the parent, don't try to do it explicitly. Don't tell your kids what to do, because especially about emotional regulation, any words you're using, basically what you're saying to them is relax. That's annoying. Nobody wants to hear that.

Every once in a while, Josh will tell me that and I'm like, I lose it. It doesn't make things any better. Right? And I think often we parents, because we're busy and exhausted and trying to do all the things, it doesn't occur to us to try to teach our kids these things when they're calm and happy.

It's not like we're having a beautiful moment on the beach, you know, the kids are happy, everybody's great. And we're like, okay, now we're going to talk about emotional regulation. We try to do this, right? I mean, I kind of do cause I'm a nerd, but just to be clear, it doesn't work any better. My kids don't want to hear it from me.

What we do is we wait until our kid is flipping out to try to teach us. And the thing is, Nobody can learn anything in a crisis, whether it's a major crisis or a mini crisis, you can't learn new things when you're flipping out. It's just not how our brain works. So what I would say is if you're the parent, modeling is really the way to go.

And so here's how I model. I try to be explicit about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. So the very first time I tried this was when my girls were quite a bit younger, and I was working on like how to stop losing your shit with your kids by which I mean, I was researching it professionally and trying to live what I was learning personally.

And I think what I said to my kids is mommy needs a break to take a few deep breaths. Otherwise I might bite your head off. And they flipped out because they didn't know what bite my head off means. And they thought I was somehow literally meant I was going to like chew on their face. I don't know what they thought.

And it a hundred percent made the moment completely worse. So then I learned to be a little more precise and concrete with my language. But now what I will say is, you guys, I'm having a really bad day. And I'm not in a great headspace, and I am likely to lose it with you. Let's figure out a plan. Whether we just need to sit down and watch a show, or we all need to go to our separate rooms, which is an option now because my kids are older.

But I try to be really explicit with them. Or I'll say, I'm exhausted. I didn't exercise last night. And so if you give me a hard time about this topic, I don't have any patience, and I'll probably end up snapping at you. And I like that because I'm owning it, right? I'm owning my behavior. I'm telling them I don't have the bandwidth for that.

It's harder with little kids sometimes for them to put it together, but even with, you know, with middle graders, 8 to 11, you can 100 percent say that. And it felt like a real win when, so our daughters went off to summer camp for 7 weeks. The whole summer, they abandoned me. So rude.

Adam: This summer?

Carla: Yeah, this summer.

Adam: Wow. Party.

Carla: you have no idea.

It was, as my daughter said, it's like one giant long sleepover with their best friends. They had an amazing time. Josh and I rocked. We got COVID, so that was really fun. For the first time ever! We made it like four and a half years. COVID sucks.

Adam: I am impressed.

Carla: Here is my expert advice to your listeners. If you have to get COVID, do it at the same time as your partner.

So you don't have to isolate from each other and do it when the kids are out of the house. So you don't have to parent. That's all it takes.

Adam: Love that Just plan. Just plan your COVIDs.

Carla: Oh my God. So fun. So fun. So anyways, we're going to pick up our daughters and I ended up on the phone with my daughter, like 24 hours before we got her.

And she said to me, mom, I just need you to know, I'm so sad about leaving my friends and we're not sleeping and I'm going to be really exhausted. So I'll probably be incredibly cranky the whole car ride home. And to me, that was a total parenting win. Not spending six hours in a car with a cranky teenager, but having a teenager who could say to me, I'm going to be a mess.

And like, To be honest, it was still annoying. Like it's annoying. Nobody wants to be around cranky people, but it didn't trigger or bother me at all because I was totally in a headspace of like, oh yeah, they're exhausted. They like stayed up all night pulling pranks on the camp. And they have this amazing summer that's now coming to an end and they're cranky.

I get it. And so when we can model that for our kids, I also try to say to them, I'm cranky. Let's go out for a walk. Let's take a deep breath. Let's turn on some music. Like the point is, I just try to make it transparent because otherwise it's a totally internal process and they don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing. How's that? That was a lot. Does that make sense?

Adam: I love that. I love that. And I, you know, I think, a lot of people ask me like, what's the, you know, number one thing that you learned as a parent, because they like to parry my questions back at me. And I talk a lot about modeling, modeling behavior, not that I have mastered it.

Far from it in fact. But using some of the examples that you just gave, like, you know, I will say something like that. Like, hey, dad's feeling pretty frustrated right now. We need to take a minute.

Or I'm going to leave this room for a minute and collect myself and come back. You all will be fine without me for a little bit now, of course, when they're like, you know, nine months old, you can't really do that, but because they might, you know, crawl themselves into something, but at the ages of the middle grades, And even a little bit younger, you can, which is cool. Love that. Love that. Okay. I want to talk about the intersection. So I, we're parents, you and I both, parents listen to this show. So not surprising. I want to talk about the intersection of this book. And how to stop losing your shit with your kids. We talked about modeling, which is kind of like when you know that you're getting, you know, you let them know that it's going to happen, but how do you shrink the size and brightness of those buttons?

How do parents stay calm when our kids are freaking out, what's the appropriate reaction? Like, how do you navigate that?

Carla: Okay. So those are two different questions and they're both really awesome. Important. One is about how do we shrink our buttons, make them nice and small and dim and more resilient so that when our kids, you know, or life pushes them it takes a lot more pushes before we lose our shit. Right. So that's like prevention.

I actually go through the A to Zs. I give the whole alphabet of strategies in how to stop freaking out. And then I have a bunch of very similar strategies, but written in more salty adult language in how to stop losing your shit. Look, Adam, this is basic stuff. I don't have, it's not rocket science.

It's figuring out what works for you, what you have the time and bandwidth and ability to do on a regular basis, and then actually doing it. So for me I call these burps - button reduction practices. As again, see previous re: you know, juvenile humor um, burps, but in reduction practices, they're in both books, My primary ones are sleep. I have to sleep. It is not negotiable. So last night my, I went to bed at 8:30. I was like, you guys, I'm toast. And my kids were still up. And I was like, bye, I'm going to bed. Cause I had to sleep has become absolutely non negotiable for me. Another one is exercise for, I mean, my mood is so much better.

I'm so much less bitchy. I'm so much less irritable. My anxiety goes down. So, you know, I've got my Peloton literally next to my bed. Like everyday I’m going for a walk I’m doing something. And it's just self preservation spending time outside is really important for me. So sometimes I'm just sitting on our porch.

It's not like I'm climbing Mount Everest. I'm just sitting on the porch.

Adam: Sun on the face.

Carla: Sun in the little sun on face.

A hundred peeping at the neighbors because I'm a busybody, whatever, like, you know, whatever it is. I found these things, these really basic life skills that I absolutely have to do.

And when I was younger, before I had kids, like I was spending the night on the park bench in London, what do I care? And now I'm like a pretty, pretty princess with everything. And I have to have my little fan and the lights, whatever, I don't care. It's worth it. So, For some people, there's a spiritual practice in there that needs to happen.

For other people, you know, whatever it is, there's a whole list of things, but there are things we need to do, and kids need to do them too. So I wrote out a whole list for kids. Okay. Now, that was the first part of your question, was about how do we keep the button small. What was the second part?

Adam: This, so the burps help us with the keeping the button small. The second part was how do we as parents stay calm when our kids are freaking out?

Carla: Yes. Okay. This is crucial and it is incredibly hard. So if you as a parent are struggling with this, it's not because there's something wrong with you. It's because you're trying to do a really hard thing. If you're like me, your kids freak outs trigger you. If you are like my husband, they don't.

So in an ideal world, I would just hand the freaking out kid over to my husband every single time and like walk away and be like, bye. But It doesn't always work that way, sadly. So for me, keeping up with my burps is the number one strategy. If I am well rested, if I've exercised, if I've gone outside and had some fresh air if I've watched a sufficient number of law and order episodes also, or really, why are you laughing?

It's true. It's true. Also NCIS. I'm like an old lady. I watch NCIS and cross stitch, whatever self care. So, I'm pretty good at staying calm. If I've been overworked, haven't slept well, haven't exercised, been eating too much sugar, had too many people like in my face and in my space. I'm much more likely to be cranky.

So that's one point is like staying on top of this stuff on the regular basis. The other thing I do is I do a lot of breathing

Adam: Mm.

Carla: When my kids are freaking out. And it sounds like such a cliche. Everybody tells you to breathe and to be honest, this is my number one strategy. And yet. Anytime someone's like, do you need to breathe?

I'm like, no, I need you to shut your face. I don't want to hear it from other people. Like, I don't. Josh will be like, do you need to take a deep breath? And I'm like, do you need to go into a hole? Like leave me alone. What are you saying?

Adam:I will dig it for you.

Carla:Here's a shovel buddy. Even though he's right.

Right? But here's the way I think about it. When my kids are freaking out, my nervous system gets triggered and something in my nervous system is saying, this is not an okay situation, like the deepest parts of my genetic code are screaming, like your offspring is unhappy, which clearly means they'll never get married and have more babies and pass along your genes, which is the stupidest thing, but it's like this really deep like nervous system issue.

And so when I am breathing and just focusing on my breathing. It's like sending a text message to my nervous system saying, this is not the end of your genetic line. It's not the end of the world. Your kid will be okay. And the more we practice staying calm during difficult situations, the easier it gets.

So I do a lot of breathing. I can also now say to my daughters do you need advice or do you just want me to be with you? Do you just need me to listen? And sometimes, not often, Adam, they will actually ask for advice. Most of the time, they just want me to be present and listen. And then, that really helps because it takes away this pressure to fix what is often an unfixable situation.

Like if I could fix adolescence, I wouldn't be talking to you. I'd be on Oprah. Right. But I can't fix adolescents. but for me, every parent has to find their thing, but it's so helpful and important when we can stay calm and let's be clear, it doesn't always work. So the other night my kid was really sick.

It was really late. She was a mess. She was sobbing. She was so beyond exhausted. And I stayed with her for an hour. And then I was so tired. It was late at night. And finally I said, look, kiddo, I've tried for an hour to help you stay calm. I am now losing it. That's not going to help you. So I think tonight you just need to cry yourself to sleep.

And that's okay. That's the thing that happens sometimes. And that's what she did. And it sucks. It sucks, but we've all done it. And she was okay. But I was like, I'm done. I have tried to be your prefrontal cortex for an hour now and it didn't work. So you just got to cry yourself to sleep. And she woke up the next morning and she was okay.

Adam: There you go. The kids are alright. 

Carla: Kids just cry yourself to sleep. The message is just cry yourself to sleep. It's fine.

Adam: In that one in that moment, yes.

Carla:Whenever, it's a good parenting strategy. Sometimes it's all we got.

Adam: I’m going to go right after this pod recording and just have a good cry

Carla: Just have a good, that, that is definitely the vibe you were hoping for, for your listeners. I know. I know.

Adam: I have loved talking to you about the book, but I do want to deviate for just a second.

Carla: Okay, let's do it.

Adam: Because you have the perspective of someone who has, 14 and 15 year old 9th and 10th grade, I think.

Carla: Yes, exactly.

Adam: So I want to talk about kids and social media and smartphones, which is a big hot topic. And I want to talk to you about this, not because I think that you are necessarily an expert on this, but I'm curious as someone who is getting into that phase for me personally.

You know, there's been a lot said about this author, Jonathan Haigts book, An Anxious Generation. And you have a background in social work and also lived experience seeing young high school kids. So I'm curious to hear your take about the presence of smartphones and social media in kids lives and what your lived experience has been like here.

Carla: It is such a mixed bag. And so what I want to say is first, I want to acknowledge that we are literally the first generation in the history of humanity. to deal with this issue. So anybody who says they have it figured out, doesn't. They're deluding themselves or they're lying. We are all struggling with this.

You mentioned the anxious generation. I haven't read that book. I tend to find those books to kind of be fear mongering. I've read some other people I really respect who didn't love the research that he based that book on. And I have an anxiety disorder. I don't need more. Like

Adam: Right. You don't need 300 pages just shoveling you anxiety into your brain.

Carla: No, 100 percent not. Like, thank you. I know this. But also, you know, like when we sit down to watch a TV show, I'm like, is this going to give me feelings? I don't want feelings. Feelings are like, no, I don't need books that are going to give me feelings. And interestingly, my daughter's high school, which is an independent private high school have started a new policy with the ninth graders where they have to check in their phones at the beginning of the day.

They have to hand them over into this like little locked locker and then they get them back at the end of the day. And the kids are grumbling and life is so unfair and blah, blah, blah. And I think it's great. I think it's going to be a very bumpy transition because like a lot of the teachers and people are used to kids having phones.

So there things they do that require a child to have a phone. I think it's phenomenal. And I know a lot of other schools have been experimenting about this. I think giving a kid a smartphone is a very tricky endeavor and our plan had been that our children would not get smartphones until 8th grade and then happened.

And so we ended up giving each girl her smartphone at the beginning of seventh grade. And for my older daughter, that was actually, she got it on her bat mitzvah for my younger daughter. She got it at the same time of year. Her bat mitzvah was later. And so here's how we've handled it. They do have access to social media.

We have set some social media rules. Like for Instagram and one of them's on TikTok, the other one isn't they can't have people following their private accounts that we couldn't call up and have a conversation with that person. And I'm not talking about after 10 hours of Googling them and finding people's agents and whatever, like this needs to be someone, you know, well enough that if I need to talk to their parent, I could.

So that's one way of trying to protect who's following them in terms of who they're following. It's a little trickier. And so we did not choose to tell our kids that we would be like looking at their phones all the time, which I think if you're a parent who feels like you want to review the content on your kids phone, and you're going to do it when they're not with you, you need to tell them that ahead of time. That's an informed consent piece. That's like, hey, buddy, this is part of the contract of having a phone is that from time to time, dad or I, or whoever are going to pick it up and scroll through your stuff. But if you haven't said that to your kid ahead of time you need to tell them that before you start doing it.

That's a major trust issue. And the way we handle that is that my husband, because he'll get on these social media apps, like, just long enough to figure them out, and I'm not on many of them, is he'll sit down next to our kids and just say, hey, what you looking at?

Like, let's look at it together. And we trust them enough. And who knows, Adam, I might come back on this podcast another year and be like, well, that was a giant failed experiment, but so far it's going okay. That like, you know, my younger kid follows a lot of cat videos on Instagram and the bands she likes, and my older daughter likes to look at drawing videos.

She's into like art and drawing and Taylor Swift. And so, so far. It's been okay, but we keep a close eye on it. No phones at dinner, no phones in their bedrooms, like at eight or eight 30 at night, I'm like done phones off. And I know the kids are missing a lot of conversations that are happening late at night and I don't care.

They don't seem to care either too much. They get up in the morning and check their phone. It's okay. We also, from Friday night to Saturday night. We don't use phones for like social media or anything if you need to text to schedule something right now, that's fine. We'll do that. But for any of us no sitting and scrolling at your screen.

None of us can do that. We kind of give ourselves a break and you know My kids went off to summer camp for seven weeks, had zero access to phones and I think that was a big part of why? They were so happy. So on the flip side, I think I'm making a decent argument for why kids shouldn't have phones. And on the flip side, I remember being a kid growing up in a house where we were not allowed to watch TV at all, ever.

Zero. One of the homes I grew up in. And it sucked going to school. And that was back when everybody was watching the same thing,

Adam: Right. Because there were only a couple of things to watch.

Carla: And it was all on network TV and it was every Tuesday at 6 p. m. or 8 p. m. or whatever and we'd go to school and all the kids would be talking about this stuff and I really legitimately felt left out and it was a problem.

And so I think that it is a way kids feel included, not only by having access to the trending content, and I'm not saying the trending content is good, but I was reading Archie and Veronica. So it's not like we were consuming great content when we were kids. But kids are really communicating as we record this in 2024, they're using Snapchat and they're snapping a lot and your kid is going to feel left out if they're not on it. And I think they need to learn how to use it and it's, you know, if they go off to college and they've never had a phone. They're not going to have any idea how to moderate their own use. They're not going to have any idea to how to handle like a group text chat conversation that blows up. So it's really a good opportunity for us to try to model with our kids.

So if your listeners are looking for books, I can recommend First Phone by Katherine Perlman.

And this is like a graphic novel type book for the kid, but also the parent to read. And I think it's something that I know I say, please don't hand books to your kids. This is an exception. I would recommend, Adam, that you and your daughters can read this book together before they get a phone or when they get a phone. Katherine Perlman's also a social worker. I think she does a great job and it's written for the kid but you can really discuss it together. So that's Katherine Perlman's First Phone. The other book I like is Devorah Heitner's Screenwise and Devorah is a I think she's a sociologist, but she's basically a researcher and a really smart person.

This book is for the adults and it's really about how we need to model and educate our children rather than just setting restrictions. And obviously, you know, there's going to be some restriction setting. We all have it, but really learning how to model healthy phone use to the extent that any of us have healthy phone use and also educating our kids.

So those are the two books I would recommend.

Adam: Okay. Now, quick follow up. We will link to both of those books in the show notes. I love that. I'm gonna go read those. You know, you mentioned that you had a plan and then Covid happened in the plan. You deviated from the plan a little bit on timing of,

Carla: Yes.

Adam: If Covid hadn't happened, would you have tried to wait until eighth grade or a little bit later?

Not saying never, because I agree with you. I think your kid can't go to college not having had a smartphone. It's like going to college and, you know, never having had a sip of alcohol. And then, you know, your kid fails out in the first semester or whatever.

Carla: Yes. Yeah.

Adam: But if you could have delayed a little bit more, if COVID wasn't a thing, do you think you probably would have, or, you know, seventh grade still was good for your fam?

Carla: I think both. 7th grade worked out. I think it worked out well. I mean, my kids thankfully haven't experienced any horrible outcomes, but I'm sure their brains are rotted a little bit more because of all the phone use. And I just quite honestly, I'm still figuring out how to handle that. So if you have listeners who are feeling confused or unsure about how to manage this, join the club.

I'm the president. We're all in it together. I do think if COVID hadn't happened and technology hadn't become such an important part of how kids were staying in touch when they couldn't physically be together, I think we would have waited till eighth grade, but we were also our kids were in a pretty small independent school where the parents were pretty committed to this idea of waiting until eight, which meant not that you weren't giving, yes.

And the idea isn't that you don't give your kids phones until eighth grade. The idea is that they're not on social media until eighth grade. And the thinking behind that is that if nobody's on social media, it kind of loses its appeal. But if everybody's on social media, except your kid, then it stinks.

But I'm so mixed about phones. There's so many benefits and so many drawbacks. And I'm not going to lie, like texting inappropriate memes to my, okay, here's what I do, Adam, with my daughter. When I'm cranky and I want to pick a fight with her, I pick a picture of some random blonde celebrity and I send it to her and I tell her it's Taylor Swift. And then she like, is like, no, it's, and she totally takes the bait. And then I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure it is. And she's like, that's not Taylor Swift. That's Emma so and so. And I'm like, pretty sure it's Taylor Swift. And I, this brings me deep joy in my life. Like this gives me meaning or just sending random cat stuff to my other daughter.

Like she's totally into that as am I. And so it can be a really useful way to connect with older kids, and we really need to find ways for them to live life without their phones, one of the reasons I'm so excited about this experiment my daughter's high school is doing, where the ninth graders just don't have access to their phones during the day.

I think it's great. She's so unhappy about that, and I'm okay with her unhappiness, because I think it's worth it.

Adam: Are they doing that across every grade?

Carla: Not yet.They're rolling it out with the ninth graders.

Adam: Uh huh. Then it'll kind of follow them through if the experiment is successful or

Carla: I think so, but this is a thing that's happening all over the country and I've heard some great pieces on NPR about like a school in Colorado that did it very successfully.

Like a lot of schools are really tackling this and I'm all for it. It's not easy and I think it's very worthwhile.

Adam: Yeah, it is something that our district is considering. And in fact, I think the governor of California is considering potentially a statewide law about this.

Carla: Yeah, there's a couple pieces on NPR about statewide laws and stuff. And I think one thing I want to say to parents and kids is one of the first things we hear is what if I need to reach my kid in case of an emergency? So my understanding from educators is that what they don't want in case of emergency on campus is kids madly trying to text their parents are staring at their phones instead of following directions and they don't want parents like racing to the scene when it's potentially unsafe for them to be there and they don't want false information or things getting out. So your kid having access to a phone in an unsafe situation isn't necessarily a good thing. And I actually think kids and parents having unfettered 24 hour access to each other is part of what's making us all more anxious.

We just can no longer tolerate not having instant access to our kids or our kids can't tolerate their parents.

And I think that's a problem. I think parents need to learn to trust other adults to keep our kids safe and kids need to learn to trust other adults to keep them safe. And as a parent, you know. being able to truly disconnect from my kids when they were at camp. I mean, other than the COVID part, which sucked, I wasn't worried about them.

And even if I was, there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, I guess I could call the camp and harass them, but my kids were fine. I knew that if they weren't fine, I would hear about it. And it actually felt like a real sort of emotional break from parenting, which I think we all really need. So I think that it's okay if kids and parents can't immediately reach each other.

Adam:Yeah. Ok, I love that. Good note to end on. The book. I'm going to do the podcast thing. The book is called Stop Freaking out. It comes out when? September 10th.

Carla: September 10th, 2024.

Adam: Okay. September 10th. We're only a few, a mere few weeks away, but I have my advanced copy, so I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Carla: Anybody can pre order right now. It'll just land on your doorstep, at which point you will promptly ignore it.

Adam: Okay. Yes. Let's just leave it on a table, you know, read it if you want.

No big deal.

Carla: Don't talk about it.

Adam: Don't talk about it. Alright, well, I have learned a lot in this conversation and now it is time for our lightning round if you have a few minutes.

Carla: Of course I do.

Adam: This one is gonna be a slightly modified lightning round from when you and Josh did it, and that I've. I've worked in some more questions.

I obviously am not going to ask you the question about parenting books because you write them. Are you ready?

Carla: I'm ready. I'm ready.

Adam: Finish this sentence. The ideal day with my kids involves this one activity.

Carla: Oh, going to see a Marvel movie in theaters.

Adam: Awesome. Which one of your kids is your favorite?

Carla: My cats, obviously.

Adam: What is the better time in your household? 6am to 8am or 6pm to 8pm?

Carla: Better time for me? Morning. Better time to, like, be with my kids in shenanigans? Evening.

Adam: Okay. Most frustrating thing that has ever happened to you as a mom?

Carla: Oh, the first time one of my kids pooped her pants in public and I was like, I have no idea how to manage this. I, nothing. I got nothing. I can't handle this.

Adam: What has been the most embarrassing thing you've ever done in front of your kids that they would describe as embarrassing?

Carla: I know I have been more embarrassing than this, because I'm basically a constant embarrassment to my children. But I had like a meltdown at a doctor's office when they were really young, and they still refer to that as the time mommy cried like a baby. In front of the doctor. Yeah, that was great.

Adam: What is the most absurd thing that one of your daughters has ever asked you to buy for them?

Carla: Oh, Taylor Swift tickets! Are you kidding me with those things? Those are insane!

Adam: I love that. Most difficult kids tv show that you've ever had to sit through?

Carla: Oh, Caillou. Do you remember that bald little horrible thing? He's the worst!

Adam: That was banned in my household after the first few episodes just teaches kids how to whine. Terrible.

What is your favorite kids movie?

Carla: Does like watching two hours of Bluey episodes strung together count?

Adam: Sure. Why not?

Two Hours of Bluey. Okay. Um, What nostalgic movie was the first movie that you forced your daughters to watch with you?

Carla: It might've been, it was either a MacGyver episode or My Fair Lady.

Adam: Okay. Okay.

Carla: They oddly were not into 1980s MacGyver there’s something wrong with those kids.

Adam:Weird. Is there another nostalgic movie that you were just like clamoring to make your daughters watch with you?

Carla:Okay. So I just made them watch The Breakfast Club. Which we loved and up next on the docket this weekend is Dirty Dancing.

Adam: Oh boy, it's time. Yeah. Oh, that is such a, it's two great films. How often do you tell your daughter's back in my day stories?

Carla: I think like every five minutes according to them, constantly.

Adam: Do you have a favorite that you like to tell them or a favorite time period you like to hearken back to?

Carla: Yeah. It's usually like some back in my day, we didn't have smartphones. So I had to wait an hour for my parents to come pick me up and it was fine back in my day. We didn't, yeah it's always about the pre screen. Like back in my day, we had to wait until 8 PM every Thursday for our favorite show to come on.

And in the summer it was all reruns and you only knew what was on. If your mom went to the grocery store and bought a TV guide. So don't whine to me that there's nothing on TV. It's all about how hard life was before screens and the internet. That is a hundred percent the back in my day

Adam: Okay. And finally, because Josh is not here, how many times have you said, go ask your father this week?

Carla: Oh, just this week or two, because literally while you and I are on this podcast, the texts keep popping up from my daughters at school being like, are you here yet? Are you here yet? Are you here yet? When we discussed 27 times that daddy's picking them up and why would daddy pick them up because daddy always picks them up.

Adam: But they text you first?

Carla: 100%.So it's not how many times have I said, go ask your father this week. It's how many times have I like barely not said it during this podcast, Adam, it's constant. My favorite, my husband makes dinner every single night. Ladies, ladies out there, he's taken, but every single night he cooks dinner.

Adam: He's got the note card system, right?

Carla: Oh my god, the notecard system.

He's the best chef. I can't boil water. Every single night, my kids say, they look at me and they say, what's for dinner? And I'm like, what? Are you kidding me with this? Like, I literally have nothing to do with dinner. I'm not on that committee. I do not get involved. And every single night, they're asking me what's for dinner.

I'm like. Why? Why?

Adam: When are you picking me up and what's for dinner and you're like, I'd never do any of those things. Why would you…?

Carla: And yet oddly, you know the one question they have never asked me? Mommy, how do I stop freaking out? Not once!

Adam: I am an expert on that.

Carla: So rude! Not once have they asked me that question, Adam! 

Adam: Oh, well. On that note, I got you all worked up now. You're going to need to go angry sweep.

Carla: And my kids are literally on the way home, because I'm assuming my husband actually made it. So they're gonna walk in, and I'm gonna be angry sweeping. They're gonna be like, what's the problem? I'm like, you never asked me how to stop freaking out! 

Adam: Oh, my goodness.

Carla:Thank you Adam, thank you for that.

Adam: Well, on that note thank you so much, Carla, for joining me again. The book How to Stop Freaking Out comes out September 10th. You can preorder now. We'll put the link in the show notes. This was awesome. I'm going to take some of these lessons and try to keep my 11 year old from freaking out.

Carla: You cannot keep her from freaking out but this will help. Great conversation. Love it that you asked me back before my husband still keeping that one in my pocket for later. And thank you for your podcast and for everything you do for parents and dads out there.

We need more of it and I'm so glad you're doing it.

Adam: All right. Thank you.

Adam: Thank you for listening to today's conversation with Carla Naumburg. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, share, and leave me a review on Apple or Spotify. It'll help other people find this podcast. Startup Dad is a Fishman AF production with editing support from Tommy Harron.

You can join a community of over 11,000 subscribers and stay up to date on my thoughts on growth, product, and parenting by subscribing to the Fishman AF newsletter at www.fishmanafnewsletter. com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.