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Welcome to Behind the Drapes. I'm your host Brent Draper aka Drakes, and I'm Sean.
Lee Draper and we're here to talk about stuff according to us.
Hey guys, it's Draper here.
And I was naked on the Golkos Highway.
Yoh, buddy's made to give you are a strong woman. Welcome to another episode Behind the Drakes. Today's episode it's for you parents out there. Look, you can be on either side of the fence of this one what we do. You can look at it as evil parenting, or you can be on the other side of the fence with us and look at it like, yeah, go you guys, take a stand for yourself. It involves a five year old who was getting naughtier and naughtier by the day, a trip away in the caravan and the East Bunny.
I feel when I brought this up to you, I said, I think we need to talk about this in the podcast.
He usually.
I was like, I think people are going to be like really annoyed and probably going to try and cancel us because they're going to think about their parents. I just wanted to cavey out the conversation by saying we love our son very much. I feel like we're very good parents. We talk about kind parenting all the time. I'm the fucking queen kind parenting. I've read all the books, I've got all the course, I've spent a million dollars in me a kind parent, but it doesn't fucking work.
Sometimes.
I don't think you. I think you're overthinking it a little bit.
No, I'm not, because there are gonna be Karens that come for us that are like, how dare you do that to your child?
You have ruined him?
Yeah, but if you don't do anything, that would be Karen's coming for you. Doomed if you do, and you're doomed if you don't.
True.
All right, So let's get into the story. So today's just a little bit of story time, I think. And we just wanted to catch everyone up with where we've been lately, what we've.
Been up to.
And this is something that has been playing a very big theme in our life, which is parenting and how hard it actually is. And I actually feel a bit naive because I feel like with alf just having one kid, it was so easy, was it? Not?
Like the fuck?
It was easy?
Just like do everything whatever we wanted. It was just even when he was a baby, he was just a very easy baby. And now we're in this stage of life where we're finally, like you know, going to the birthday parties and parents are like, oh my god, parenting's so hard, and we're like, yes, we are here for the journey. We are on the ship, all going in the same direction.
We get it.
So anyway, we wanted to talk to you about what happened with Easter one this year. If they're a little ears listening, you might want to turn this episode off and play.
It at the time. That's right, you didn't give that disclaimer. Start, you're about to jump right in a right.
All right, So let's paint a picture here. Look, Alfie's not a bad kid at or. He is one of the smartest, kindest kids that I know, and naughty. I think YouTube kids had a lot to do with this too. There's a few brady kids on there that make videos whatnot.
We don't usually have let him have YouTube kids for this exact reason. However, we had it because we had Bowie. We let him have it as as a distraction, and we went to Japan and so we had the iPad in Japan, and this is kind of where it all started.
I feel so, yeah, he just you know, to get naughtier and defire us a bit and argue back, and I think, just what five year olds do. It's nothing like sinister in it, but it feels it sometimes it feels like he's trying to wreck my life. But obviously Easter was coming upon us, and we've booked into Red Rock Caravan Park, which is the first caravan park we went to when we did the trip around Australia. We loved it, it was awesome. We also only had one
kid then. I think we're trying to think of those memories. But yeah, we had the new caravan. We were heading down. Life was good until sort of it wasn't because Bowie cried the whole way down there. It's like three hours of driving and he cried anyway, So yeah, we get down there, we set up and I just know I can tell, Like usually with Alfie, I can just see it in his character. He just was on another level. Wasn't listening, running around, running away, and I was like, oh, man,
like it's not going to be fun this trip. I can see just yelling at each other and you're trying to like not be too loud because you know, you're in a caravan park, there's people right next to you. But he is just on another level.
He started doing this thing probably just before Bowie was born, where it's almost like he skipped the Terrible three thing and whatever you call it. And he started having tantrums when he was five. That was the start of it for us, the tantrums.
So the screaming, that's the main thing, was the tantrums.
What you're referring to is like the yelling. It's the yelling from him. He literally has learnt to, I don't know, this weird two or three year old behavior at five turning six where he just chucks himself on the floor and screams and yells and until he gets his own way, which he doesn't get right, and so then it escalates. And so yeah, you're in a caravan park and you're like, oh my god, this kid is like on one like going off and people probably think that, you know, he's
getting hurt inside this caravan. No, it's just that he was losing your shit. He wasn't happy again, guys. We just come back from Japan. Japan was a really wild, whirlwind time. It was a really tricky time. Alfi was not happy, and you know what, babe, we weren't either, Like we had our mental state was not good. I was probably the most depleted I've ever ever been, I think for our family.
We were just already having a hard time.
And Alfie's behavior that was so extreme was just the icing on the cake, the icing on the shitty cake really, because it wasn't a good cake. It was tough for me. The final stroll with alf I was inside cleaning up and drapes is outside and Draper's mum was holding Bowie and I didn't see this.
You were there, You saw what happened with him.
Alfie went over and was cuddling Bowie and his nonna and he bit Bowie on the leg. Now, it wasn't like a chomp, you know two to three year old bite where everyone, you know, someone screams.
Because it's like so Bowie didn't even make a noise.
But we didn't make a noise, right, so we actually didn't know that he had. I didn't know he'd done it. He's obviously walked over. His little leg's been hanging down when your Mum's been holding him, and he simply just like opened his mouth and put Bowie's skin in his mouth and chomped down.
So it wasn't like a hard chomp. It was just like a slow burn of a chomp.
I like, he's just put his leg in his mouth and then this burst of energy come. I already went.
Literally yeah, So I didn't see it, but we didn't cry. The only reason I knew this had happened is because later on, when I was changing him, I saw a little bite mark on his leg. That for me was enough because previous to this, Alfie's never done anything to Bowie.
He adoores that baby. He's obsessed with him too.
Much so sometimes to the point where we're like, oh wait, chill out. But for me, I was like, Okay, that is behavior that I do not want to see continue. He's gotten away with it in the moment because we didn't know what happened, and I don't want to see that happen again. So I said to Draper, like, I'm not good with that.
There needs to be.
Consequence with this, and we had to talk to him about it and he admitted it, you know, but it just felt like at that point in time and parents are listening will get this that like no consequence means anything. Sometimes for these children, they don't.
Give a shit.
You don't like care anymore. If you take the iPad of him, doesn't care. It hurts him for like two minutes, and then he's like he even goes like that doesn't even worry me. Yeah, he's cotton onto it, like there's nothing we can do and we're not going to smack him because we don't smack.
No, send him to his room. We've tried that.
He goes to his room for two minutes and then I mean.
He doesn't like that, to be honest, he actually really doesn't like being sent to his room. And we time it and then we're like, you know, you can come out after five minutes or whatever it might be. But nothing was really working, you know when like you have a kid and they just look at you and they've got that look in their eyes like lights are on no one's home. Like he just looked like angry. Hey,
he liked a little demon look on his face. Like whole like there's five days, so things were not going well. He bit bowie, this is the day before Easter.
And then that night.
We had some neighbors next to us, and there were young people like you know, in their like mid twenties. I had a kid of their own, really lovely. Anyway, I look at the window and I see the mom having him go at Alphie, not in a bad way, just like I could tell she was telling him off.
Yeah, And I was like, shit, what's happened there? Don't know what's happened?
So I went out, and as I went out, Alfie was walking across and he had his head down and he looked really sad. He just got in trouble. And I said, oh, you know, mate, what happened? And he lied to me and said something like I called the man a mango, remember or.
Something like that.
And I was like, okay, so something's gone down. So I was like, you know what, I'm finishing getting dinner sorted with drapes, so I think I was doing the dishes. I'll go back and have a chat. Sim later on, I asked Alfie again, what happened. I'm going to go talk to them. He told me some little lie. So I went over and had chat to the guy and I was like, did.
Something happen before?
And he was like yeah, he just called me a name. He's like, it's you know, it's all good, and I was like, no, that is todd. So he didn't swear at him, but he called him an inappropriate name. He actually said it to the guy twice because the guy was like, what did you say? And then he repeated it like fuck me seriously, going to repeat it again. He's got balls, that kid, soed god, very very inappropriate.
I came back, I apologized on half VALFI, and then I came and spoke to you about it and we were like, nah, this has just gone too far now. Like it was almost like the straw that broke the camel's back. It was like, Okay, this kid's getting away from us at this point in time, he's five years old. If he gets away with this, what else is he gonna think is okay to get away with? And I, you know, both of.
Us crews, i'stealing cars.
Oh my god, he's not gonna oh my god. Yeah no, but it was that moment of Okay, we actually need to do something here that we think is going to be.
Impactful, just like to reset everything, you know, like something that hits him really hard. And he goes, oh, and then starts to think about his behavior. Now that's what we needed.
Yeah, And in our house, we're big on consequences, like, you know, okay. So for example, this morning, he was crying because I gave him a dollar yesterday to take to school so he could buy an ice block, and he lost the dollar and he came in crying to me, and I said, and he wanted another dollar, and I was like, no, the consequence of your action that you lost the dollar, that you didn't take care of the dollar, is that you don't get another one this week.
And he was crying, carry on.
He then walks into the bathroom tells the same story to Draper.
He comes back out and goes, Dad said that he's got another dollar that he's going to give me. I was like, no, that is.
Not no consequences, So in this moment we were like, nah, that's not good enough. Also, he's just disrespected an adult. And I feel like he's at this really impressionable age where you know, what do they say? Like they get to seven years old and they kind of their little brain has shaped their like values in life and the things that are important to them, and they know right from wrong in some ways, like.
Okay, this morning, he knows his teacher loves mandarins. So we dropped Bowie off to daycare and on the way through at a fruit market, he stopped ran in bought a bag of amandarins for his teacher. He's the kindest kid is. He's just got a temper and we.
Need to stop caveat and we need to stop talking about how wonderful kids. We're telling you this story.
We're telling him how bad he is.
Yeah, he was a little shit and that's okay, children.
Are we what was our plan? All right?
So what happened was we obviously apologized. I had a conversation with him. He admitted what he'd said. He was really upset about it. He said he would apologize, but he didn't want to go back on his own, So it took him a long time to go back and apologize. Even when we went over there, he wouldn't apologize. He was holding on to me. He was head down, really embarrassed, and you know, as a parent, like, firstly, not that I wasn't embarrassed, but absolutely there's a part of you.
It's like the ego, I guess, but you're like fuck. I can't believe my kid did that. By the way, that word he said, we don't say that in our house. By the way, it was idiot, so we don't say idiot in our house. We knew he got that from YouTube. Yeah, I guess the ego was a bit bruised in that moment. So it was very hard standing there and having to force him essentially to apologize. I just went, I'll wait until you already and then I reckon. I waited there
for like three to five minutes. Ay, he finally apologized to this guy. The guy said, don't worry, mate, it's all good moving on. But for me, it wasn't all good. And for me it was like I just felt like he needed a consequence in that moment. So we got home and I remember, sorry, go back to the caravan and I was outside. You and I were talking, and you just go in front of my mum. You know what, fuck it. Maybe the Eastern money doesn't come this year. And I was like silent for a change.
It was an empty threat from me.
Yeah, king of empty threat.
I am the king of empty threats. I just said it to make myself feel a little bit like you have the power. Yeah, we'll take the East. Yeah, I can take it away, don't worry.
But I took it kind of seriously and I was like, all right, well, I was like, that's actually not a bad idea, and You're like, oh really, and I'm like, seriously, the one thing this kid loves in the world is.
What chocolate, thank you loves it.
Loves chocolate, loves sweets is definitely my child. So we were like, all right, well, maybe there's something in that. And listen, that's a big call. Like we're aware we're sitting here and we're laughing and we're kind of making jokes mayb because we feel a bit uncofortable with this conversation. But it's a big call because you only have a certain amount of Easters with your children when they're little.
You only have a certain amount of Christmases with your kids and they're little, so it is kind of like a specially important day.
And we had this chat and I was like, nah, I think we actually need to do this, and Jope was like yep, right, oh, but you're also pissed off in that moment, so we're like, yeah, yeah, cool, Easter one, he's not coming to my when.
You come up with a plan when you've had like three beers that night, and then the next day when you wake up, you're like, oh, no, I can't do that. It's a bad idea, idea.
But we didn't wake up and say that. We woke up and we were like, okay, we actually have to go through with this. So we talked about it to my mum that night and Mom was like, guys, I think it's a really good idea. I've witnessed, you know, what's been going on with him lately, his behavior. He's definitely not himself, like something's changed, and he does need some consequences. He's kind of getting away with a lot and he's ruling the roost and he's you know, biting
Bowie is obviously not okay. So we decided that's it. Not that we had a lot for him anyway. We honestly had like one freaking bunny and like a little tiny but.
That's not the case. That's not the issue is for him, There'll be all kids everywhere else eating chocolate at six am, and he won't be.
That wasn't my motive. By the way, I didn't actually even think about that. I just thought about he will wake up and not have anything. I didn't think that other children would be like putting in his face. That was not a part of my thought product.
But that's the one that will hurt the moment.
Yeah, definitely.
So that night we stayed up talking about it, and Draper started backing out.
He was like, oh, like maybe not.
I was like, just maybe we give him more one and say that you only got one this time.
Yeah, And I was like, nah, you're either all in or you're nothing. You can't just give him one because I doesn't teach any lesson at all, And you definitely were like, nah, I don't think we should be doing that.
By the morning I was out, I'd be like on thisline, like how shit's your mom not giving you Easter eggs? That's where I was that I'd fully come out of plan, like oh shit, this.
Is doing me dirty.
No, So we decided together we were going to go through with it, and then I stayed up all night, not even joking, like, could not sleep properly.
I was just tossing and turning, thinking like what if I'm gonna fuck my kid up?
What if like I'm the reason my kid's gonna need therapy? What if like he talks to a psychologist one day and he's like, I remember one time and my mom and dad.
You know, it was just it was honestly.
I feel it was the easdemer So yeah, honestly, a lot of back and forth, and then I was just like, you know what, really, really, what's the worst that can happen? He got to learn a lesson here, like it might hurt us, And to be honest, I actually feel like I knew it was going to hurt us just as much as it was going to hurt him. But I knew that you have to be cruel to be kind sometimes. But that's how I felt about the whole, and he needed a consequence. So the morning comes, I have written
him a letter. By the way, I've got the letter here it Oh my god, Yeah I kept it. I was like, I want to keep it.
Just like one.
Day, Oh my god, he's writing looks a lot like your chicken scratch.
I wrote this letter to him.
And the idea was the next morning he would wake up and I would find this letter and I'd read this letter to him. Can I just say one more thing, I honestly, I'm scared. I'm scared that people are going to come for us and be like, oh my god, why's parents ever. It's not like we were like, oh my god, how wonderful the easter money's going to come to morow Alfhi.
We didn't gee him up.
We weren't like we didn't leave a basket out for him, you know, like they didn't get full. Like we just kind of moved on from Easter and in our minds it wasn't happening, and we didn't even talk about it. So I don't wan people to think like that's so awful. They g this kid up in the morning, he woke up and there was nothing. He honestly didn't even know until he opened the caravan door that next morning.
So here's a letter. Oh this is so cringe.
Dear Alfie. I've been watching you and your behavior, and I'm not happy with how you've been acting. Screaming at your mum and dad, biting your brother, answering back and not listening is bad behavior. As you know, I only visit children who have been good and well behaved, and unfortunately this year I haven't been able to leave you any chocolates. Hopefully next year I can, I can what you're good show me.
Hopefully next year I can.
Visit at night. I was traumatizing my son depending.
On your behavior. You are a kind boy, Alfie, Please show us more of that boy. Love Easter, buddy, what a dog? Easter money? He even said love. He's the bunny of us saying you're not going to get any chocolate.
Listen.
We wanted him to feel loved, you know, like, and that was the thing. That's why I wrote that you know you're a kind boy. I'll be please show us more of that boy, because I didn't want to like make him think that he's the worst kid in the world.
He's not.
It was just like we wanted to make sure that he knew in the letter what it was about. It is about screaming, biting your brother and then obviously being inappropriate to the neighbor. So he gets up in the morning, you hear the little pitter patter of the feet down the caravan.
I've like looked at draper.
I turn over.
I felt you did you.
Covered your head down, you buried your head in the pillow.
You can't do that.
And I was like, okay, cool, I'm on here, which you know I'm the one that pushed it. So that's okay, so get up. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went because honestly, it was such a blur in time, but he kind of didn't even really notice to start with, and then he opened up and so then he was like, I just remember the easter Bundy came last night. And we were like, oh, I did it, and I, honestly, I promise you. I felt like, come on to spew. Yeah,
they're in the top and you tried to. You said let's leave him one. I said nah. Yeah. We both felt sick. Honestly, it was such a shit feeling, but we decided and we'd committed.
He had a little look around and.
He was like, oh, there's nothing in the caravan, and then we were like oh, And as I'm about to give him the letter, he's like, oh, maybe there's some stuff outside, And before we could stop him, he's opened the caravan door and he spotted this fucking easter egg like. He walked outside and we were like, okay, that's fine, there's none outside.
We're all good here. He'll come back inside. He didn't.
He looked at the caravan next to us, and there's this little fucking Easter egg sitting on top of the wheel of next door neighbors caravan because I had a bunch of kids. So he runs over, he picks it up. I go out and I go, no, darling, come inside, that's not yours. And he thinks that there's an Easter egg hunt now in the caravan because he's found an egg. So we had to quickly get him inside. And then I had the letter. Remember I said, no, no, no, that's
not for you. He shoved that e thro eggs so fast into his mouth and ate it, and I'm going we're gonna win the war, but we're losing the battle anyway. He comes inside and that's when I was like, hey, I actually found this, and he was like, what's that? And I sent a letter from the Easter Bunny. And remember he was like, the Easternboody left me a letter. And I was like, I am dying on the inside.
This could not honestly like we're joking about it, but this was really hard. This is so hard.
I felt like a piece of shit. I read the letter to him, and I was worried about the timing because I knew it was early in the morning. This is only about Steven, I think, so it wasn't too early, but I was worried about his reaction, and I was worried.
He was going to hell and screwing the house out.
You know, every other kid's out there collecting Easter eggs, skipping around with their fucking baskets, and he's just screaming you. You had your head down in the blanket in the pillar.
You weren't even looking. I read it to him. His little head just drops and he.
Doesn't scream, he doesn't act out like he had been. Like honestly, we're talking Alfi's had four, you know, Jack's biscuits, and there's one left, and Dad eats it and he actually he melts down. That's how bad his reactions were. I'm trying to paint the picture of like any tiny little thing. He was having these hugest reactions to you. He was so emotional. So we were preparing for this really really scary melt down in the middle of the caravan in our new caravan.
Too.
It didn't happen. He just put his head down, and which was even worse.
It's like that I'm not angry at your I'm dissappointed It was that moment where he just put his head down and he just kind of like started quietly sobbing, and we were like, oh my god.
That was hard. Hey, that was really hard touching him.
Really, I see kids sad like that.
No, that was sad for me.
I was trembling and shaking as I was reading that letter because I was trying not to cry.
He was absolutely devastated.
And he was like, I feel even emotional thinking about now because I just felt like so sorry for him, but also I knew we're doing the right thing. I was like, you know what, We've made the impact here and I felt that immediately. I felt that reaction immediately.
Did you Yeah, well he's straight away his behavior changed and it's however, months later his behaviors just shifted. It's different.
It did.
It shifted that day. So we explained to him what happened. He was like, I can't believe the easter. My never left me anything. And we were like, I know, like, that's not what usually happens. You know, he always leaves kids stuff like that. You know, he must really not be happy. Alfie and we had a chat then about his behavior and certain things and listen he's five years old. We're not looking for perfection. He's never going to be perfect.
No child is. But it was just the screaming and the tantrums and the huge emotional reactions and obviously the biding in those kind of things. They're the things that we were like, nah, we need to really get rid of this behavior and work on it.
He was devastated.
We kept him inside as much as possible that morning because we didn't want him out with everyone like seeing them all having fun and playing and all the rest of it. Now, in true Alfi fashion, he took it all in his stride. He took it seriously. Yeah, he took this negative and he turns it into a positive because then what he did was start telling people and the caramera bark how he didn't get any Easter eggs, but the Easter bunny left him a letter.
And he didn't leave anyone else a letter. He only left me a letter. And then he came back and took the letter and read it to the neighbors. That was mortifying.
I was like, oh my god, oh my god, people are going to think we are the most evil parents on the planet. Do you remember when he came back and started running away with it and I was like, no, no, no, bring it back, and he.
Was like gone, So he won. He won.
He thought he was special because he got a fucking letter from there had written oh my god, he was.
Yeah.
He was telling everyone about it, which was very embarrassing for us. But moral story is I think it made it really positive.
It did.
There needed to be like a big moment in where it's sort of made him second guess. He would go to throw himself down and stop and go, oh see that day, I was just about to throw myself down, and you know, he started to like it started to click for him. He's behavior and he does that. Now he'll go, you know, Dad, you don't want to be going like jumping on the around like wee wee we because you just don't get.
Things in life. Yea.
And so he says these little things now, yeah, because of that moment, he'll be like, you know and it was all my idea.
Oh my god, yeah, that you almost bowled on forty five times putting your head down in the pillow.
I like remember looking over you being like are you happy a laugh?
Oh you came up.
With the idea. You made me fucking execute it and now you are crying.
Has to read it there. I don't think you'll ever miss out on another Easter next year Easter when it comes in and he hears the first little whispers of Easter, I know for a fact he'll be like, I need to put my head in here.
No one's a parenting.
Also, guess what Santa's coming. I got Sanna's number. I'll give him the call.
That's actually a really good one. But I think with children, you do need to give him consequences. And for us that was a consequence. You know, other parents will send them to their room. You know, they will take things off them, you know, yell at them, whatever it is. For us, that was what we felt was appropriate to do at the time, and we did it, and I don't regret it at all.
I got a great little kid now, well behaved.
He definitely definitely has changed the behaviors, and even our family members have seen that. I've noticed that he said things like, you know, he said to the other day, it makes me happy when I'm good, Mum, And I said, yeah, me too, Dylan and hers, because I just feel so much more love, Like I love being good because then I get more love, And I thought, isn't that interesting that he equates behaving with feeling like we're giving him more love, time, attention, all those kind of things that
he crazed from us. And that's all children want.
That's it. Like toys are just flashy little things, but at the end of the day, the toy ends up in the yard in the rain and forgotten about it. But yeah, all they want is just time attention you watching them. Yes, it's a hard juggle, but they're only small for you know, a wee amount of time.
They're only small for a small amount of time.
So take the Easter Bunny off them for one of those years, dra and you're going to get a good kid.
M