Decision-Making Like a Boss w/ Emily Oster

back to Katie's Crib. You guys. I have someone who's like pretty much a big deal in the parenting space today. Her name is Emily Aust. She might be the most different brained person I've had on this show. Emily Astar is an economist and her brain works, let's just say, on the left side, whereas I'm sort of more on the right side creative arts, fartsy type. But she and I talked so much about her books Expecting Better and Crib Sheet, which were staples in my house during my

pregnancy and when I had small, small babies. We talk a lot today about her third book, The Family Firm, a data driven guide to better decision making. In the early school years. It's out now be shorted by your copy wherever books are sold. She also has been hugely helpful to me during this time because she has a newsletter and on Instagram. She focuses a lot on helping us parents small unvaccinated children through COVID and is helping us cipher through all of the information during this COVID

time of parenting. She and I talked a lot about how to run the family in the early school years, why a business model might work for big decision making within your family. She's a professor of economics at Brown University. Her academic work focuses on health economics and statistical methods. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, of The Atlantic, CNBC Ian Moore.

She's married to an economist, Jesse Shapiro. So I guess somewhere far, far far distant, she and I might be related, or our husbands are related. Who the hell knows. She has two children, Penelope and Finn. Emily Welcome to Katie's crib. I am so thrilled and honored today to have the one and only Emily Auster here, And it's so weird because I'm so woo woo and emotional and like actory and you're an economist, which I don't even think I've

said that word in my life. But what I find, what quiets and eases my emotional headspace is your fact finding and your cut and dry factual nature is so relatable and accessible to new moms, moms with toddler's and now moms. Thank you to the Family Firm for the early school years. Can you just tell us for those listening who don't know who Emily Astar is? First, follow her on Instagram, Second, subscribe to her newsletter. Third, get her books and tell your friends to get her books.

How's that? How's that? That's great? That's a good in that's a good good for us? Okay, but first, like, just in short, because I want to spend most of the Today's talking about Family Firm, But can you tell us just a little bit for anyone who may not know? Expecting better and crib sheet the quick pitch, Good luck, the quick pitch. So I think it's easiest to sort of say why I wrote them, um, which is, you know, I am a person who likes data and facts and

who more than anything else likes to understand why. And when I got pregnant with my daughter, who is now like ten, there was a lot of do this without why. This was a sort of like here's your list of things not to do, and you'd be like why, and they'd be like, well, it's on the list. Didn't you get the list? We can get you another copy. It's like, not have the list, And so, you know, expecting better is really kind of like what the data behind pregnancy?

It's a sort of like crazy neurotic ladies like dig in too, you know, how do we think about that data? What's good data, what's not good data? Why do they tell you not to have sushi is the same reason they tell you not to have Deli turkey? It's not the same reason. It turns out, like, how can you sort of parse those different, um, those different things to make choices that are that are informed, um, that are

sort of your choices. It's like, guys, here's the list of why eating sushi during pregnancy factually might be bad, and here are the statistics and numbers of what could happen if something goes wrong. And here's the list of people who do eat sushi during pregnancy. You know what I mean. It's like, I'm just going to give you all the hard, fast, true criteria so that you can make the decision that you want to make rather than what we're told, which is no caffeine, no sushi, no

alcohol whatever. Now between us, I had sushi and and then again here I am seeing like I had sushi, and I drank wine for both my pregnancies, and I had turkey meat. All I craved was DELI me like craved it. A weirdly large number of people create delling meats who like to will be like, well, normally I don't like to. For me, it was like tuna melts. That was like, I was just like in normal life, I don't I mean, I don't really like a tuna melt, but it was just like I don't know, like the

baby is just like I love tuna. Oh hilarious. So Expecting Better really focuses on a lot of these pregnancy knows we're getting and you must and you have to in all of this. And because you're an economist and your parents are also both, and my husband and your husband, everyone's an economist. And also, by the way, you married Jesse Shapiro, the economist, and I'm married Adam Shapiro, the actor. Nice, So our children are all Shapiro's. They're all Shapiros. Your

kids are all Shapiros. Even though you're still alot and I'm still in Austra. I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay, so everyone what I love? Expecting better but quickly, even though it deserves so much more time. Are there actually things to be afraid of? Because like, if you're just have a little iota of critical thinking in your head and you're curious, I find that information is power. When I know I'm all of a sudden not nervous about it, it just makes more sense. I think.

The other thing is, you know, I, particularly as you sort of move to like end a pregnancy and thing about childbirth and all this stuff, I think that there's like such an information asymmetry that it's almost hard to have those conversations about like what kind of birth do you want to have with your medical provider because you don't know anything. And I think there's a little bit of this book which is like, look, I am not a medical doctor. I do not you do not want

me in the delivery room. But you know you read this you can get a better sense of like how should I think about induction? How do I think about an epidural? Like how should I understand labor? So then your questions you're just not like, well where does that come out of? You know, and it's more like, okay, now I understand some of this data and we can be having more informed conversation. It's so great and oddly goes very well with my emotional woo woo l a

actory mind. So there you have it, okay. And now then we had thank God for crib sheet? Did I get it to you? In times? And I s people are like you like miss me, my hear you get Okay? No, I have a three and a half year old and I have a seven month old, so I would I'm in the crib sheet wonder years like I'm like in the perfect spot, but tell us about crib sheet. So crib sheet is really sort of this equel so like expecting better kind of ends in the delivery room. Grip

sheet starts in the delivery room. I think the last chapter in the first chapter actually really similar. And then it goes through all this early child like early baby stuff, sleep training, co sleeping, breastfeeding, you know, kind of ending around potty training with all the same idea about like let's think about what the data is. You know, people tell you if you don't breastfeed your kid, they'll never

have superpowers, and in fact, like that's not true. They're not going to have superpowers even if you do a breastfeed them. Or like I love the chapter on like will TV make your child an idiot? It's like, in truth like this, the actual studies that exist in the world, Emily Austar has looked at them, has gone over them with a fine tooth comb, Like what's out there when you study thousands and thousands of kids in the amount of TV they've watched, Like right now, thus far, there's

nothing out there that really says ship. To be honest exactly, my husband was allowed one hour of TV and the one hour he chose was The Cosby Show. I watched TV on my teenage Mutanta Turtle Dinner Tray every day from four to seven Monday through Friday. And I'm an actor, so who the hell knows, but we're both actors. See, my parents are like very regimented. We could have one

hour of TV a day. It was like only MPBS we get to watch Square one and my husband like watched TV all the time, he like, and so now you know, we have the same job. And I think there's a lot of that stuff in that time where it's sort of like we don't know that much, but what we do know suggests that like for the most part, it's a little bit dealer's choice, Like you kind of should feel confident in whatever the choices are that work for your family, because you know, is this an opportunity

to mess up my kids? Like no, it's not neither an opportunity to mess get up or like optimize your kids. You gotta do what what makes you happy. So good and now this past year, I feel like you are part of my everyday life. Emily A. Stir has taken her incredible economist fact seeking, fact finding deciphering all of the information in the information age for us regarding COVID and children, the CDC has kind of left the kids

have been left out of the equation. So just right like because they're not the ones getting very very sick, they're not vaccinated, we don't know if they can be around grandma and grandpa. We don't know if we can take them to visit family they haven't seen in two years, and no one's giving us the answers. Your newsletter has been such a game changer. Are you like the only

person helping us? Is there anybody? There are many, I think, really good, really good people who are sort of writing about this, people in this space, But what there isn't is like the CDC, which is kind of what we need. So interesting to think about how, particularly in the kids stuff, like the difference in attitudes between the US and Europe.

Europe it's not just that they had more in person school, which of course is true, it's also then I think the whole attitude was like, Okay, kids are not high risk, and you know, but we're gonna need to make some sacrifices to protect some older people. But we're going to try not to make kids sacrifice if we can. And then you know, once old people are vaccinated, like we're going to kind of like let kids do you know,

do their thing. And I think here we're willing to make kids sacrifice more and are kind of then having a lot of trouble backing away from some of the fear. Their fear has outpaced there their reality I completely agree. The thing that I tried to do a lot of this this year was the sort of like here's the data, and here's the decision framing around it. It's gonna tell you something. It's not gonna tell you everything. People are

going to have different risk tolerances. You need a way to take that data and translated into a decision, and that that's the piece. It's so hard. It's not that you can't see what the case rates are. It's just like some abstract number. And I think that's that's been the really hard thing. Did you have a newsletter before? Yeah? So what happened is my publisher at some point was like, this is like December, and they were like, look, why don't you like start a newsletter. You can like write

every month or so. It'll be like a good way to just like stay in contact and when the book comes out, you can you know, right a little more and like people can. Okay, fine, So I was like all right, So January I started the newsletter and then you know, I wrote two things and then like maybe the fourth post is like, hey has anyone a lot

of people are asking me about this coronavirus thing? And then I started writing much more about that, partly because people were like asking and asking and asking, and I sort of started thinking about the data and so and I think the sort of big pivot was like at some point in May, I wrote this really long post about should I see my camp parents? And that post had like a half million views. It got people in, and then here we are eighteen months later, and I

have so much giant peanut butter. And also it's a totally different job. You know. I spent the whole last year, like, while I was doing all this stuff, I was also the chair of the Tenure and Promotions Committee at the university, and I had, like, I have like a real job. I read everybody's tenure packets the whole university. How do you sleep and you have two children? Correct? We even talked about this. I did not do a lot of economics research over the last year. I did a lot

of this other COVID research and family firm situation. How old are your children? Six and ten? Okay, so this brings us into your most recent book, The Family Firm. I just had my first conversation about like, what are you lottering into for public school? And I was like, B B b b B. This sounds like hell on Earth. And so I'm about to embark into the family firm situation. So this is your new book. It's called The Family Firm and Data Driven Guide to Better Decision Making the

early school years. You do use the things that we know and love about you from krypteet and expecting better than data driven stuff. But things have had to shift. Tell me a little bit about this book. This book, I think is in some ways really quite different expecting better kryptiet. These are kind of like p says of this that are sort of exactly that. Next you know, there are pieces like, Okay, you know I told you about the party training dat or I told you about

the screen time data in little kids. Now let's look at this, you know, how do we think about the screen time data and big kids? What do we know about social media? And then there's some stuff on schools and extracurriculus, and like there's you know, there's pieces that are kind of the data pieces. How much sleep does your kid need? How do I learn to read? Like all that kind of stuff. But the thing about this era of like parenting is it is hard in a

different way. It's almost like the primacy of logistics, sort of logistics and unexpected decisions, right, and sort of, so much of my job is like, like who's going to drive my kids and stuff? Should they go to things that we have to drive to? Right? And I think part of what happens is we aren't always as intentional about those choices as we might be. For example, which rank very true to me in the book, but like

my nephew was like, I want to play soccer. He's like seven or something, and he got on the travel League and then all of a sudden, it's what you said. His parents spent like six months driving their child all over the state of Virginia to play soccer, and the kid doesn't like soccer anymore. And I'm like, well, that

was really ridiculous. I mean you could say, like, you know, maybe travel soccer is what you envisioned, but if you didn't envision travel soccer and you sort of said yes because you kind of didn't think that much about or you know, you just sort of like they were whining or for whatever reason, like the sort of choices that

we make, that's going to matter a lot. And so I think there's a sort of argument here for intentionality, and so there's a big part of the first part of the book which is like kind of how do

you scaffold that intentionality? And so actually there's some work and I think this is a thing that like for the people who are like I thought you were the lady who told me I could have sushi, and I read your first book and you said that I could have sushi and that my kids could watch the TV and it would be okay, And then like that was great, and now you're now you give me worksheets. Like now

you're like the worksheet lady. I'm asking people to come along a little bit, like to say, like, listen, you trust me on that stuff. Come along a little bit. Let's try. I suspect that for more people than realize this that was sitting with this a little bit and thinking it wouldn't be so hard to like write down, what are the three things in the day that I really want to have? So tell me about this business model.

Now that you're asking us to come along and do a little bit of like some business e organization for your family, walk me through the framework in the family system. The analogy to business is just that businesses do not make their decisions on a whim. When you are running a business, you do not just sign up for travel soccer just to appease your kid who's winding that minute exactly when your employee comes in winds to you about wanting like you don't just do things. That's the most

important sort of business analogy. And then there are some other like more more really businessy things, which is like, okay, businesses have like systems for follow up or assistance for decision making, and so I've got this basically four step system for big decisions. Oh, the four fs. Yeah, so okay, the family board meeting is happening. Take us through the four FS of if you were going to decide to send your kid to sleep with kid. The first F is to frame the question, think about what are the

realistic alternatives? The question of sleepway camp has been raised your kids, like I want to go, you know, Matilda win whatever it is, you know, and you know, so you want to say, like, okay, a is this realistic like sleep we camp course money. There are some constraints in it, maybe that that's like that feasible and we're not having that conversation, and that's fine. You kind of want to get to a question of like are we doing extra y? In this case, it's probably are we

going to sleep away camp or not? And I think then or not? Sometimes I tell people like or not not an option, but here like we're not kind of is an option because it's sort of obvious what the default is. But I think there's a there's a sort of space there for saying there to take a moment at the beginning and just ask is this really a question that we can answer that we would be able to answer in a concrete way, So are we going

to sleepway camp or not? Second f is fact find, which is a rapper for get all the information you need and it's something like sleepaway camp. I put that in sort of a couple invent more categories. One is like the question of like what is the data say about? Is the say good idea for kids? What are the risks and benefits? You sort of dig into the data on sleepaway camp, which is actually super interesting and it's actually quite good. There's some very positive aspects of sleep

wey Camp, but they're mostly about belonging. Sleepaway camp is a place that you can be with other kids that are not your peer group that are not your school peer. But then there's also like in this fact finding, this is a wide space and that information, that data can shape a little bit. So if you sort of said, okay, like you know, is there something in particular that my kid really likes, like something you know that they want to so part of their identity, spend some time getting

that information. And then the third thing here is a final decision. There's a sense in which with a lot of these big decisions, and Sleepy can maybe less than some others, but like where you just let it dribble and drabble on, like you don't make it, you know, we sort of like talk about it and talk about it and talk about it like here's this other I got this little piece of information, Well maybe that should change our decision or what about this other thing whatever?

And so I think the idea here is to say there's one step where you get all the information and another step where you have the information and you're going to make a decision. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a meeting, but I like, I like a good meeting where you kind of like sit and you decide and then you try to like implement and you try to move on. The last f is follow up. This is the piece that you're the travel soccer situation, some

nice misses. We often make these decisions. We're just like, okay, we're gonna make it, and then we're like, not gonna have a plan to revisit it. But almost all the decisions you make of this type could have some revisiting, even if it's like what school do I choose or something sort of bigger, you can change your mind. We're always going to have the follow up. Let's also talk

about the importance of following through. In your book, you note that if rules aren't enforced sooner than later, that eventually the actions are going to need to occur anyway, Like, okay, you know you use that example of a mother trying to let go and let her kids make breakfast for themselves. Like what other sort of tips in research do you have that can encourage us to stick to following through. It's interesting you say, so. I think a toddlerhood is

about where that starts toddler on down. Like consistency is like a huge thing for behavior and for security. Right, So I think that kids kids like to know what the rules are. They do not like the idea that the rule would change in the middle. That doesn't you have have rules for everything. But I think that it is um there is that value in consistency. It's also a lesson in like making sure that the threat that

you made is something you can follow through on. So it's like a very salient moment to me was that we were sitting in front of some people on an airplane once and they told their kid, if you keep kicking the seat, like, we're gonna leave you on the airplane, which is like, first of all, is me and but also like that's like another nice thing to say, but

also you couldn't do that. I mean, this is just forgotten about because you know, for some reason, when you've made the decision, it just seems I just seem so hard to make a change. There's a huge amount of cognitive dissonance because changing is like a way of saying that I made it wrong. If you send your kid to sleep what camp and they don't like it, and then you don't do it again, you're kind of like saying, like,

I made the wrong decision. I think this is why I'd like to have it as part of an initial decision process is to plan the follow up. Like my kids school, I love it so much. Every year we make sure to discuss are we going to enroll them again? Even though it's obvious what the answer is. I want the like the sort of like symmetry of even if that conversations two seconds, even if it's like, let's check in on this, okay, like the deposits, do are we

doing it again? Yes? We are, okay, Like let's move on. So explain this to me. For family planning purposes, you use a sauna, but a lot of families use trail. Oh people like trail o ye, tell me about that? And do you use it every day? There are sort of big project based things where we use it all the time. So we did, like a house renovation, at some point it was like we were using it every day. We're using it all the time for us, there's like a huge amount of value and having things written down.

A sana is like a good way to track like for big projects, to sort of like track things, and it can remind you and put some of the same reasons you use it at work. That is just an efficiency game. There's no particular reason that we're not doing that at home, except that we don't. There's no reason why loving each other should mean that we can't have test management software. And I think when kids get bigger, like this stuff comes up and you want to be able to deal with it in a moment that is

not necessarily the moment that it comes up. People want to like deal with things right away, but like that's that may not be a time that I'm like equipped to deal with something, even if it's not that complicated. And so I think there's the sort of value of writing. I love that I'm going to use this saunt it too. Right now we're using Google calendar. Value calendar is like that's like a huge thing for me. I mean, I have no idea where anyone is unless I look at

that thing, like who's taking to where? What's happening? You have everybody has their own calendar, do you? Yeah? Yeah, everyone has their own calendar and their own color. Yep, me too. Now you're running your family like a freaking board meeting at the dining room table, and you're not talking about having to do this for every single little thing, but you're talking about like doing this for the bigger things.

Would travel, soccer, be an example, how would I know a decision was big enough to like really give it? And the answer is like, if it will impact a lot of your hours, are you going to experience this every week in some significant way? So would be things like school or major extracurriculars, sleepaway camp, day camp, like a big picture of things, not kind of day to day stuff. People always say what are your values? And I always look at it like, Okay, well what do

I spend my time doing? If you're spending your time doing it, then it's a value to you and your family. That link. People are often not good at making. They sort of they think of values is something very abstract and not connected to the thing you're doing. But if you know, if you're doing something every day, I hope that it's something that you value because it's every day, you know, and you're you're like, what should your Tuesday

look like? That's a really important question because that happens every week. Every week there's a Tuesday, and if you hate every Tuesday, like that's not gonna be that's not good. So a lot of parenting weighs heavily on a relationship, you know, especially if you guys feel the same are different about things. And I think that this approach with the four fs and running your family with this sort of business model, especially when it comes to decision making,

is really helpful when you're co parenting. Can you explain that a little bit? There is this tendency when we like our partner to sort of think that like everything is going to work out because we love each other, and that you know, sort of we are like we're always going to agree, but sort of loving each other

is not the same as as always agreeing. And I think that many of the kinds of conflicts that we have, we have them in little pieces, but they were reflecting some like underlying difference in what we think is important. Like if I think it's really important to sit down for dinner every night and you don't think that's important, then you may be willing to go along with it some of the time, but you're not going to necessarily help.

And you know, if I think it's important to happen even if I'm not there, maybe you're not going to do it because you don't think it's important. You know, if we've surfaced essays agreement and we've decided that there's like some compromise that we've come to, or or that it's so important to me that we're both going to do it, or whatever it is that is. I think of some value. If it's just that I'm doing it every day and you're like resentfully kind of not helping

or something like, that's that's an ongoing conflict. And so I think there's a little bit of a pitch in the book almost too, sort of surfacing those conflicts, surfacing those differences in in values and priorities or how we want our data look or whatever it is, Surfacing those at a moment that we're ready to talk about them, rather than surfacing them just in all of all of the moments when they're happening, when you know we might get might get mad. A lot of this book is

about like how you're on the same page with your spouse. Yes, yes, that is the biggest thing. I very much personally appreciated that many things about having kids are like high stressed, but like this this kind of time, I think there's so much hidden conflict because you didn't ever think about this, Like you probably never talked about what is your priority about bedtime? Like are you an early bedtime or like before you had kids, before you married somebody, you weren't

like time, we're gonna put our kids to bed. If you disagree about that, you may be fighting about it almost all the time. So I think there's like a pitch here for like bring those you know, sort of how do you think about managing those conflicts or at least like bringing them to the four at a time you can discuss them. I think this is all so great. And in your book you go through, you know, things like what is the right age to get your kids a cell phone? Oh my god, you guys, I am

absolutely terrified. How many extracurricular activities are too much? Should my child go to public or private school? You talk a lot in your book about, for example, you know, a big decision which I'm going to have to make a lot of times people have summer birthdays and they're a little bit on the cusp, and as a result, they don't know whether to have their kid be the oldest in their grade or the youngest in their grade, and so you know a lot of people have them

hold back for a year. You know, they they start kindergarten a year later, which possibly makes them bigger, smarter, or stronger um. What you emphasize is that the biggest thing is how we measure success. So does the data find that if you hold or red shirt is the term you red shirt your kid a year behind starting in kindergarten? Does that actually mean that they will test better? Does that mean that they will have more loving, fulfilling relationships?

In that question, we're kind of running up against some of the limits of like what people can measure. I think, you know, in the case of returning, the one place where people you know, where the sort of I think would push in the direction of doing it is if you know you think kids are going to struggle the cist still. So, I think a lot of people think about this, like about academic readiness, but I think that's

probably the wrong set of considerations. It is more that there's like a lot of like focused demands of kindergarten

in the modern era that we're not there. Kids are supposed to learn to read somehow in kindergarten, and learning to read involves like sitting still for long periods, and when kids are very young and they're compared to their older peers, there can be like an increased diagnoses of learning disabilities, which are basically just because your kid is not sitting still, which is age appropriate but is missed.

So that's part of that what the hell? When I talked about this off my book, it's like, Okay, that's a consideration for parents. But I think then stepping back, it's like, that's like a way to be running things like we shouldn't and it exacerbates inequality in all kinds of ways because some people have these choices and some people don't. So I think basically a better way to say this is like, look, some kids cannot set still at five, and like, uh, we should not be expecting

them to do that for nine hours a day. You know, I'm terrified because my son, he's in the thirteen percentile of height and weight and he's you know, she's a little and my brother and husband they were both those real lay bloomers. Yeah, so what five endings or approaches have changed you going through your pandemic parenting? I had to realize some loss of control, like all of us, and you know, I mean, I think it comes across like I'm a person who likes structure. We had to

give up some of the of the structure. I think The other really big thing for me is like until my kids were out of school, which thank god was only actually the spring of ties, so they were back in school, but sort of over that, you know, several months period, I think I had a lot of realization about how important in person school is, which in some ways, like getting influenced a lot of what I did over the last year in the in the policies, but not

so much about learning. Actually, it wasn't as difficult to scaffold the learning for my kids because we have some resources and so on. But I hadn't realized how much being with other kids and sort of learning to navigate the like socio emotional aspects of of being a kid, how important that was um And I think that's something we were going to learn. I think there's going to be more fallout for how that was as we sort

of think about policies that going forward. But even for my kids, the kind of piece of this where sometimes with their school I'd be like, why aren't they doing more worksheets? When they went back to school last fall, I was just like, Coop fucking cares. I don't care if they do it sure doesn't really matter. Just like have them hang out like they can do worksheets and

other you know. I mean, I think the way I put is like I taught my kid to read and it was terrible and he could totally have learned to read later and been happier, and that would have been like completely fine. I know that you're someone that really likes a lot of structure. Me too. The loss of control, you know now that we're in this weird space of questioning like are we in a pandemic? Are we not? Are you right back to gripping control because I am, Yeah,

I mean it's I find I'm fine. I'm really hard. There are sort of many more moments where I'm just like, Okay, I just have to accept it, like I know what I know about this. I just gotta like, I just gotta wait. I cannot like plan my way out of this. I spend so much time talking to my therapist about my desire to plan my way out of and she's like, yeah, that's doesn't really sound like something you can play your way out of. Okay, thanks, I love your therapist. Okay,

what's your biggest mom fail? I freak out a lot. I don't believe it. Oh my god, all the time, and like we're like going somewhere and I was pagging. We're trying to pick somebody up, and there was some like time pressure of somebody that I couldn't find my phone, and I like pagged up the cars. It was probably like in the luggage somewhere. And I stood in the middle of the like mud room of our house and

I was just like ah. I was just screaming and dropping up and my daughter was like my daughter was like, don't do that. We don't like I love it. Okay, what advice can you offer our parents? It's gonna be fine? Is it? The Emily Austar is it? Is it going to be okay? It is? It's gonna be okay, It's gonna be okay. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's gonna be okay. Finish this sentence. Parenthood is joyful. I love it coming

from such a left brain human being. And maybe I'm a little more I'm like, I really missed my kid right now. I'm like, because she's as sleepaway can It's like that's what it's on my mind. I'm picking her up on Sunday. I'm picking her up on Sunday. You've made it I keep whenever I say that, and I'm like, we just have to make it to the sleepaway years.

I think it's been really good. I mean, not that she writes to us, but there's like a great Tina Fey thing where she's trying to get her teenagers to like sit to dinner with her and like how it's like dating. And I feel like that's what it is. When you're like wait for letters, you know, it's sort of like, oh, maybe like a text, like oh do they write me? Oh? Do they write me? She never writes, you know. And then and then like for a while, I was worried. They occasionally make them right and they

have to call once a week. But like then, like I was like very worried something was wrong. And at some point we got a lot of it's like I didn't write because I'm too busy, and I was like, Okay, you are such a gift to all of us parents out here. Congratulations on the family firm. It's amazing, and everyone again listening, run don't walk to get all three of Emily Austar's books and subscribe to her newsletter so you can be a parent during these especially ethically wild

fucked up times. Thanks Katie, this is great, This is super fun. Thank you Emily, Thank you so much for being on. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed Emily Austar as much as I did. Um I want to hear from you. How are you guys liking the season? What do you want to learn about? What do you want to talk about? You can always find me via email at Katie's Crib at Shawnda land dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of Shawonda Land

Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from shawna Land Audio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You never know you know until you try. You con you need to ride