Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow.
And I'm Catherine Hileco.
Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick from our archives, and a parenting or pop culture tidbit or two. Let's start with Catherine's library find of the week.
So recently I found myself without an audio book, and yes I was. I had several things on hold that didn't come in and I waited around for a couple of days because you know, usually I have them kind of cascaded so that when I finish one, there's another one, you know.
Uh huh. And I have like twenty waiting for me in my audible now if you ever need me to loan new one.
So I have them.
I have, you know, these holes, and I'm like, when I finish something, if I don't have the next one right on tap, I try to wait it out because as soon as I you know, download something else than the one that I was waiting for will show up. But anyway, so I waited a couple of days and I still didn't have anything. So I was like, okay, I gotta I gotta do something. So I went on the on the app and looked at just like what can I get right now? Yeah, and I ended up
with the Louise Penny. It's called Still Life, which is the first of the famous armand Gamache series.
All right, so these are like famous that I know who it is.
But yeah, well.
Gomash is a you know, inspector detective whatever in Montreal. But this is the first of a series that's basically set in this little village called Three Pines outside of Montreal, and it's it's very famous as like a cozy mystery.
Kind of deal.
So I was like, I know, people are really people really love these, so let me let me check this out.
And I loved it. You know, I'm not a thriller person. I get too.
Upset, and this this one is definitely like I mean, there is a murder and there's a bad guy, and you know, there's lots of secrets and all that stuff. But I still I enjoyed it quite a bit. And it's you know, set in Quebec, so there's French and it's just it's a fun, you know, introduction to this series. I think that if you like the Mazy Dabbs miss then you would probably keep me enjoy this. It's it definitely has a lot of those those type of vibes.
So, and there's I.
Believe the audiobook readers have delightful accents.
Well, I mean he he definitely could speak French, you know, I mean he could he could pronounce the French in a way that sounded no founded good to.
The mazy dabs has. They have good stories and no no aspersions cast on the writer whatsoever. But my favorite part of the audiobooks was listening to the reader do a variety of different British accents of people of different classes and ages and a chur de force I think, right of British accents, which I am partial to.
Yeah, this one is not that.
You know, he's not doing a lot of variety of voices, but he is. He is giving you the nice French pronunciations, which I enjoy hearing. So and like I said, there's twenty of them. I believe twenty of Wow these and the it's it's like a murder she wrote type of thing where somehow this small village is constantly involved.
In death in capital Yeah.
So, but I found it.
It was one of those cases of I hear about this all the time, Like I know, people really love these and also what is available on levy right now right?
So it worked? I think it worked out quite well.
So nice.
Yes, that is a fun way to put a cozy mystery the.
Desperation Fine, I recommend yes, yeah, And what do you.
Have for us?
Well? For my random recommendation of the week, I have yet another game for your time wasting needs, okay, and it doesn't take too long to do, and it's just another one to add to your cue along with your wordle and other things. It's called Waffle and I don't
know where I heard about it. I think maybe a Facebook reel or something, or just a random ad somewhere that I shouldn't have clicked on, but I did, and it's legit and it's every day they come up with a new one, and then you can also go back and play old ones that you have not played yet.
But it's a let's see a one, two, three, four, five by five letter grid with four blank squares in the middle or in the corners of the inner square are blank, and so it's like a little grid of words and you have to figure out what each word is. If it is a green square, then that letter is in the correct place. There's a yellow square that letter is in one of the words, either across or down, but it is not in the correct place. And if it is a gray square, that means it's just completely
in the wrong place. And you swap letters to eventually make make all these words one, two, three, six words, and you have fifteen swaps to do it. If you go past fifteen swaps, goes wah wah, and you're done. Doesn't make that noise just in my head. But you can't, you can't finish. So it's you know, it doesn't take long to do, whether you're successful or not, at the same amount of time as a whordle, maybe maybe a
little less. So it's just a little something like in the middle of the day when you need a break, just just click on over there, see if you can solve this thing, and then you're done. So, you know, if you just need just a little bit of time wasting, right, not a crossword puzzle's length of time wasting, not even a wordle's length of time wasting, not a pseudoko's length of time wasting. Just still just a couple of minutes.
It's very fun. I don't know who does it, who puts it there what their nefarious purposes are, right, but I have enjoyed doing them, So give it a shot. Will not take you long, and the more you do it, you sort of understand the tricks and stuff, but there are few. Go into the little there's a little menu in the upper left corner and you can get help and instructions and such should you need them, but you
could also just start doing it because it's pretty self explanatory. Yeah. Now, if you'll excuse me, I will be finishing today's Well. Catherine announces our what's in our archives this week?
Yeah, so our archive episode comes from twenty twenty.
It is called we should have known better and prompt It was.
Prompted, I believe by Nicole. I think it was Nichole's daughter said that she was going to paint her bedroom.
And she would do it oh by herself, and that did not help what could possibly go wrong? And Nicole was lamenting her own you know, she should have known that this wouldn't this wouldn't work out the way that her daughter thought it would, and she should have stepped in and you know, intervened at some point in this process, and she didn't. And then it became her problem. So, oh, yeah, we're quite familiar with this.
We are. Yes, it's never ending. It's happens when you. I mean, I think back on things when my kids were young, and I knew I shouldn't insert myself sort of the opposite, I knew I shouldn't have inserted myself and stuff, and I did right, and then then it was all my fault, right, and certainly situations where I should have maybe said or done something, but I was like,
let's just see how this works out. So either way, really, if she had inserted herself immediately, that would have been all I'm wrong to right.
Because then it would be like, why aren't you letting your kid figure things out for her?
And as we've talked we've talked about I think recently, it's like, if they do what you say, then you're gonna worry that it was wrong, and then if they don't do what you say, you're gonna know that it was right. So either way, you're gonna be swimming in a sea of worry and regret. Or maybe that's just me. I can definitely think of things where I thought, I'm just gonna let my child do this, or my young person do this and have the experience of doing it,
or really more like thought, well, this goes wrong. It was my idea, it's right idea, but then it goes wrong, and then you feel like you should have done you could have prevented this, right. So I don't know what the solution is to that, though I think there's no good way.
Yeah, because that's that's where I struggle, is like when at one point do you do you intervene? You know, because yes, you know, my kid, one of them cannot be told like this is this is what you need to do, this is how you need to do it. Like you they just will never ever ever listen. So they need to find things out the hard way.
Basically right, and that is so hard to up.
It is very difficult, yes, and it's it's hard to come to grips for them and for you. Also that oftentimes there is no right way to do it. There is no right answer. It's not like there's the shining path and the path of darkness and you just want to nudge them over to the shining one. It's like there's two paths that go into the jungle, and who the bleep knows, And so if you facilitate, you know, if they do their own thing and go into the wrong way, and you can sort of feel like, well,
at least it wasn't me that sent them there. That was their thing. But you're still going to have to clean up the mess. And then if you push them and then it turns out to not be right, is it because you pushed? Is it because it was always going to be wrong. It's fraught, man, It's fraught. It's like I I should have known better, but it's just like I really don't know. I don't know what better
is anymore. Maybe this is because I'm parenting older adults and I look back at the path and think, nah, I'm right, At.
What point did I?
I could have not done that thing that everybody told me not to do, but I don't know that the outcome would have been better. It would have been different, but it would not necessarily have been better. You know. I had lots of people telling me what the right thing to do was, and I didn't believe it. So I did what I was going to do. And it's like should I have known better? Or should they have known better? Or I mean, is it like nobody knows anything?
I think it's nobody knows anything except for Desmond. Desmond's got over here. Can you look gun to the future please and tell me and put a lightning rod up for me? Thanks, yes, thank you. Listen to our last episode. But you know, absent having been had a like an anomaly throw you into seeing the future. How do you know? You never know? I mean my daughter from high school time. Our high school is very college oriented. They do not want to acknowledge that anybody would not go to college.
And in fact, at one point they just eliminated all these sub college prep classes because apparently we were living in Lake Wobegon and everybody was above average. So she got the message right away that you got to go to college. Now, I would not have chosen that for her. I didn't think that was necessarily the most productive thing for her to be doing. But what the heck? It
worked out. Okay, she wanted to go, not me, not me pushing she wanted to And then she got an idea that you have a certain job she wanted and I'm like, I don't know, that seems kind of ambitious, but you know what it was hers, and I'm gonna encourage it. Good for you. Go to college for that, learn how to do that, go get a job doing that. And then it was a kind of a spectacular disaster. And should I have known better? Should I have looked at this and said, oh, honey, not for you, right?
Yeah, how do you? How could you possibly do that?
It seemed like I felt at the time like at least it not being me would be a benefit, because if it was me, everybody would blame me. Everybody's don't blame me no matter what. So this way I could say, well, it was her, I just let her choose what. Don't look at me, don't look at me. But now, looking back, I kind of wished I had just taken one for the team and said, sweetie, no, let's do something different. But what would it have been. I have no idea. Yeah,
it's not like I had an alternative. I knew from what one hundred percent certain would be good, and I just let her wander off in her own tangled way. Man, life is so hard to ten down.
Yeah, I mean, this is this is the way of you know, oh, your child's studying theater and coge Like, how's that going to work out?
Well? You know what?
The alternative was nothing like the alternative was I can't even like possibly not even graduating from high school, Like that's.
How right it was?
So yeah, well this gave me he wanted to do that, he needed to pass for Yeah, and that's you don't throw that away.
Right, And that was the option, So like, yeah, I don't want to hear you should have done no, you should have known better, Like well, okay.
Well when he's a big star, you'll laugh and laugh. I hope that day comes for you because it didn't come for me. But yeah, it's just especially raising kids with special needs, you get a lot of you should have known betters right all along the way.
And why didn't you?
Yes, and we know better. A lot of we know betters, a lot of we know everything. You know nothing, so do what we say and then you do something else and it's like, well you should listen. You should listen to the people who know things. And I didn't. And you know, my kids are in their mid thirties now I'm looking. I am not yet at a point where I could say, in your face, look how great things start out. I mean, could be different, could be better,
could be worse. I don't know, it's just life. It just I mean, I look back at my life and think, should I have done things differently? Maybe I went you
we are you know, nobody ever knows better. It's the takeaway here, you should have, but you didn't you have at the time we do exactly yes, And you know, it's it's interesting that this comes in the same week where we talked about this lost episode where somebody can see into the future and then fix it, right which, man, is there a match here somewhere I can turn a key and get thrown so to be loose in time and know what you know? And you don't have that?
But you know, flashbacks and flash forwards. I have flashbacks all the time. I have flash forwards all the time. Whereas it's gonna lead you know, that's kind of a potent metaphor all that most stuff for what parents go through is a constant state of did I do the right thing? And how is this going to turn out? And what is going to happen in the future? And would you want to know? I would want to know if it's good. I would not want to know if
it's bad unless there's something I could do about it. Hey, buddy, can I borrow your golf club. So it's it's it's fraught, and I mean talk about parenting like this and then you feel on my discouraging people from being parents. I mean it's like you're just in a soap opera for the rest of your life, and it's a you never know what's going to be the next thing. It's kind of exciting. Sometimes it's a comedy, sometimes it's a drama, and uh, you know, moment by moment you love it.
It's just these step backs to say, hmm, right, yep, try to avoid those whenever possible. That would be our Nothing good comes of those. You did what you did, Own it and move.
On, Yes, you know, until such time as you get hit in the head and.
Yeah, ye in the yeah, until we see see into the future. Yeah. I often think about if I could see into the future, would you want that or do you want to just just plod along putting one foot in front of the other and owning your choices? Right, that's an important thing for parents. Own your choices. Unless you were acting with malice, you did the best you could and you don't know what would have happened if you've done it differently. So the kind of I should
have known better. Regret is really useless, other than to make you lie awake at night and be crabby in the morning. Thank you for listening. You can find all our episodes on spreaker, app podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find recaps, links, and an opportunity to comment on our website at parentingroundabout dot com.
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