The Stages Of Raising Kids

We debate which stages of raising kids are genuinely fun and which ones test your sanity the most, from helpless babies to toddlers on a mission to break everything. We also get real about teens and adult kids at home, and why rules only matter when we actually enforce them. 
• our favorite child stages and why 
• baby stress vs crawling exploration vs toddler chaos 
• how family parties feel with little kids vs older kids 
• teen attitude, privacy battles, and morning wakeups 
• adult kids living at home, rent talk, and “my house, my rules” 
• setting boundaries that stick and what happens when we cave 
• processed snacks, homemade fruit snacks, and changing habits 
• practical parenting consequences and consistency over speeches 
Thank you for listening to Top Shelf Stories every Tuesday. We will be back next Tuesday. 

Transcript

New Theme Song And Spice Talk

0:00

Top Shelf Stories with Jay, Chris, and Tony. Man, does that song get me excited, guys? I do like it when I hear it in my car. When I'm of course we review this before, of course we do all this reviewing before we release it out to the public, right? What what uh what seasoning company is gonna take this song next? Yep. For those that don't know, our last podcast had a different name and a different song. And that song got stole by McCormick's seasoning company. You know, that's gonna steal this one is definitely gonna be the sexiest name in spices. Everybody knows Penzies is gonna take it. No, not once they hear it, they won't. They'll be like, whoa, we can't be affiliated with those guys. What is Penzies? Spices. Is it really some of the best, too, actually? I heard. I mean, I know Do they make Lauri's? No, that's a different spice company. Yeah, that's Lauri's. Imagine what other seasonings they got. In fact, I think I've got one of their other seasonings, like a garlic salt. Who? Lowry's. I thought Lauri's is just Lauri's. No, that's their seasoning salt. They make their own seasonings? That's McCormick. They have gar they have there's a restaurant. I I don't know. I just always Lowry's Steakhouse. Unless I'm thinking that wrong. Every time I talk to someone and I ask them about like this my favorite seasoning, they always say it differently than I do. Like Lauries, Lauri's. I like to something. Like there's other things I can't even repla I can't even fucking say. I don't even know. I like to make it sound like there's a U in there. I don't even know if there is. Lowries. Lies. My my favorite seasoning, I mean, if we're getting into this, it's uh the Texas Trinity. Salt, pepper, garlic. Where do you get that from? Salt, pepper, garlic, that's it. That's all you need. Where do you get it from? Well, I make my own because it's you say just salt, pepper, and garlic. And garlic. Could you imagine? That wasn't seasoning. Could you imagine if you threw some uh uh damn, I forgot what I was gonna tell you to throw in there to change it. Minced onion? Nah. Nah. Gross.

Ranking The Stages Of Childhood

2:35

So uh I bring you guys here tonight to talk to you about your student loans. I wish I I wish I was that smart to have student loans. Stages of life. Stages. Stages of life. And when I say stages, I'm talking about from when you're born and until you're like just an adult. Like 18, 19, 20, 20s. And so the stages of children then. Well, I mean, 18, 19, you can't is that is that a child? Sort of. Are you sure? Nowadays, maybe yes, because everyone that's 18 or 19 in 2026 is living at home. And their parents are buying, are doing everything for them. My son is 19, doesn't even have a driver's license. Well, I don't think I had one until I was after 19. Maybe no, I did. Never mind. Well, you keep promising every summer that you're gonna teach them how to ride a bicycle. Do you have to be? Do you know how fucking terrifying a car's gotta be when you can't when you can't get three wheels? You've never gone over 15 miles an hour on anything. No, he has a um a I saw that coming a mile away, Jay. Yeah, for sure. I had fucking cord. The speed bike? What uh why don't you put the thing on the other side, Jay? It would make so much sense, and he would never do it. Like he will knock that iPad over 60 times. Yeah, now it's all wrecked. Thanks. If you see the recording, that's fine. Whatever. Anyway, uh no, not whatever. Do we need to hit me again? No, we're good. So yeah, my kid doesn't have a license yet, but like stages of life. So when I was uh when I was 13 years old, my my parents decided to have another child. So my I have a younger sister that's they're like one of these times we're gonna get it right, I swear. She's 13 years younger than me, and I I realized it at a at a young age. So I definitely be you guys have what your oldest is Chris is uh 10, right? Yeah, Tony, yours is 13. So you guys haven't gotten to the adult stage yet. I have a 19-year-old, and also I was born or I was 13 when my my sister was born. So I went through all the stages. So there's there's the baby stage, then you know, progressively on and on. So if you guys had it to decide your favorite stage of having a child, like what stage would that be like a baby? Okay, a baby. Baby or an age? Stage, like okay, say it's okay. I don't know. The toddlers when they're figuring everything out and falling into things and breaking stuff. It's a stage, a toddler stage. That's where I want to go again. You like the toddler stage? That's your favorite stage. They start running around, you can like play ball, and they make starting to crack their own first jokes and make sentences. What about you, Tony? What's your favorite stage? It's definitely not the toddler stage. It's definitely not gonna be 19 either, but I I would take, I mean, really like the 10 uh 10 to where I am right now. So you're in it. Well, you have one that's six or seven, right? Yeah, I don't even like him yet. He's just there eating my fucking fruit snacks and whatnot. So I uh so when they're a baby, obviously they can't do shit. You gotta feed them, you gotta burp them, you gotta make it. That's the hardest part. They don't die in their sleep, all these fucking crazy things. And then they get to the the age where they start crawling. That's before toddler age. That's a stage of navigation or um what's a better word for it? Exploration. There you go. Exploration of their life because now they can move. And that that point you're kind of where it things kind of suck a little bit more, but again, they're a little better because you don't have to do everything for them. We set up a claringhetti, we called it. It's all the we the whole house had all the the fencing to keep the kid from going anywhere. I did the same exact thing. I bought these little plastic uh like you say, fence, and I gated the shit out of my entire downstairs level. Yep. And just let him go when he's when he's when he's uh walk crawling. But that's before the toddler age. Because the toddler age, they know how to open gates, they can climb over them. So after that, or uh after the the crawling stage, the toddler age, you have to watch out more for cabinets. You gotta lock the cabinets, you gotta watch out for knives. Are they grab are they reachable for these little shits? Because they'll I mean, I had a kid, uh I think he was four. He started trying to cut his own orange with a very sharp sister, sister, uh, very sharp knife. And uh we caught him right before he got through the the the orange, but yeah, it could have cut his finger off. But yeah, them kids are resilient, little girl back. When I wouldn't when I used to go to uh family get togethers and I used to s when I used to uh when I had the young the younger ones, I used to um and then I would see like my older uncle or something with his kids that were like 15 to 20 something. I used to always be uh jealous because he didn't even have to do anything, he could just sit at the table or wherever he was, drink beer, and let the kids go. I had uh burp the kid, fucking make sure he didn't fall down the stairs because it's a new house we're at. Uh you know, just getting getting into trouble. Yep. And now my youngest is nine uh nine, and now it's kind of like I'm at that stage where I used to envy my uncle at an older age with older kids where I don't have to worry about it anymore. Because my my sister and my brother-in-law have a three-year-old, and and my wife, my sister is about to give uh birth to a new kid, and I'm like, fuck, I'm just I see them at parties. They're wrecked for another 10 years. And I see them at parties where my sister yells to my brother-in-law, get your get your kid, she's about to fall on the stairs, or you know, just like you can't sit down and just chill at a family gad together. And I hated that, and I couldn't wait for my kids to grow up. Oh, yeah, dude, it's it's something I laugh at regularly when I see now. You're like, I'm not, I'm not envy of I'm not I girls want kids to stay young, or they see videos of their their children being young, and they're like, Oh, I wish you were. Yeah, because you're recording the best times. Yeah, you're not recording the times where they're grabbing knives and stabbing them through walls. Is that what you're saying? Right. Pretty much. I mean I don't think so. I think they just like the fact that kids uh at that age are useless. There's a sweet spot in there though, where everywhere you go, people are like, oh, and they take your kid. That's true, and do all the things that you're talking about. Yeah, but there's a point where it comes back like swearing and smoking cigarettes. Every point, there's there's a point where everyone just they get sick of it and they give them back to you. You're saying at a party where you finally get a break, everyone wants to hold your kid. Yep. But there's a point where they get sick of it and they're like, just take them back. I I I've been to these years. I I'll take 15 minutes with them and then I mean you've you're there for five hours, so

Baby Proofing And Surviving Toddlers

10:20

there's not enough people to get to take out those five hours of pointless, you know. I don't know. So that then the next stage for me is uh because I have a 19-year-old, is past the teenage years. And then that's when they kind of they don't talk to you anymore. They're like kind of like my cats. Like you come home, they don't they don't, you know, run up to you and wag their tail like a dog would or say hi to you. They just they don't care about you at all. I think that varies by parenting style and child. Well, you you don't have a past teenager child yet. You'll find out. Yeah. I haven't gone through the rage years yet. I think my kids right on the cusp. What did they call it? A preteen? Tween? Well, at this age, like even if you go in their room, they yell at you, get out! Leave me alone! They don't want you to see them jerking off. Chris has a daughter. She's not jerking off. She probably never will. No, Chris is an amazing parent. No, she gets she's already in the she okay. We gotta wake her up in the morning for school, right? My wife would go in, go in there and say, Hey, good morning. Go away. You know, she's already there. Go away. So girls it got so bad that I because I was like, no, you don't talk to mom like that. Like, we're gonna come in and wake you up, and that's the way it is. And then she's like, just knock. No, you have to respond that you're up. So girls mature earlier, but the now she's on an alarm. We already're like, fuck it. You're getting an alarm then. You're waking yourself up. She won on that one because that's actually easier. I just didn't want to have to have my kids start using an alarm at that 10 o'clock at 10 you know, years old. My kid uh takes after me. He has an alarm, he has 55 alarms set for the entire day. He wakes up at about 4 p.m., 5 p.m. when we're home from work, and he's like, hey, what fucking days already done? Like, yeah, you had 55 alarms this to wake you up. When we come home, you can hear his alarm fucking ding and going off. But again, I uh You gotta fix that, man. Get these kids an alarm that wakes them up. I can't he's 19. I don't know. There's there's the room you stay in, right? He stays in there. How much is he paying you in rent? Uh huh. Okay, so we're getting somewhere here. Okay, how much will it cost him to leave? A lot. What does he want to do? Listen to dad and mom when he says get up or leave. Because you could fucking leave now. You could tell him to leave. You don't live here anymore. Goodbye. So does he have his own room? Yeah. So he's the only one in the house with his own room. Well, yeah. Yeah, we have three. Interesting. We have three. Why is it interesting? Interesting. No, tell me the interesting part of that. Because it's the math says the kid needed to leave at 18 in one day because you needed a new room to split the kids because you got now what? You said a 10 and or a 9 and a what? 13? 13. Dude, one second. Well, he's once till one of the older ones gets a girlfriend. That whole sharing a room thing is done. He might be gay. I don't know. Whatever, boyfriend. Whatever. He's not going to want his brother in the room while he's getting himself jerked off. Why don't you give him your closet upstairs and you take his room? Well, basically, his room is like a bigger closet. His room is the smallest room. It's considered an office. And uh the reason why we can't uh put anyone else in he doesn't share room because his room is tiny as shit. The master bedroom in our apartment, my kids, my youngest kids share. They have their own giant closet and bathroom. And then there's a there's a uh loft upstairs that my wife and I stay in, but they're actually it's just as it's like a master itself. Right. I know the layout kind of uh I get kicking the kid out's not that easy, but in reality, he has to listen to you now. Before he could talk and talk and talk because he knew I'm not even 18. I they like legally have to keep me here. Listen, but now it's like, well, guess what? Dinner tonight, kid, was seven dollars. If you want to eat it, your mom made it, it's seven dollars. I could even kick out my wife's dad. You had kick out my own son. Food's free when you come back to visit after you've moved out, but if you're gonna talk shit to me, food is seven dollars for dinner. Yeah. Well, most of the time he he orders his own dinner from Uber. And the kid he can't. Well, yeah, he can't drive there and get it. Well, he can. He just uses his, like I said, his little bike scooter thing. Uh he still drives that? Yeah. He has no brakes and it barely works, but even after his accident accident on it. Yeah, and he has no brakes. Damn. And I told him you gotta buy a new one or get a car. He wants a motorcycle. But I said you need a license to get a motor or even drive a motorcycle. I thought that was the loophole. No, I'll get a motorcycle so I don't have to have a license. I bet you you could find his loophole into a moped. But I think you still need a license. I don't think he'd want a moped. I think that's the thing that kids would make fun of. All this want don't stop. What's with this want thing? Okay, I would say it lives in your house. I won't say want. I would say the the necessity for a vehicle would not be a moped. So how's he getting back and forth to work? You guys? No, that that motorized electric bike. Okay. Just doesn't have brakes. Okay. So he's figured it out. Figured it out. Basically, babies. Uh before toddlers, I don't know what that's called. Toddlers, teenagers, and then semi-adults when we're talking now. Um my favorite uh era is the the toddler age. They're the cutest, they say the dumbest funny things. Yep. And even though they get into shit, you can still watch them and you know, tie them up sometimes. Sure. Or put them on a leash. Yep. And still have control. It's the timeout time. But when they get older to the teenage years where they're talking back and yelling, you can't I mean, I could probably do something, but it's getting harder. Yeah, but you've chose not to do something as well. What am I gonna do? Beat his ass? He don't listen. I can yell at him as much as I want to. He doesn't listen. You talking to the 13-year-old now? No, I'm talking about the the nine years old. He's an adult now, so I mean, if this was a stranger talking to you like that, would you fight him? Yeah. Fight him. What would your dad have done? He's an adult. I'm supposed to fight him. I want you to go fucking talk to Scott like that right now. I guarantee you he's gonna fucking slap you. He's gonna take his shirt off, throw it on the ground, and fight you. Lately, my dad has been stripped out through his underwear. He's been very short with me. If I do something that irritates him, he fucking bites me right away, just attacks me. See? Yeah. I'm like, dude. And so you got a healthy fear of it because you shut the fuck up and you move along. I do, but I mean, at the same time, like I want respect. You got you you can't get respect by being feared. You can, but I don't want that respect. So how did your you need to establish new boundaries? So, how did your dad gain your respect? Uh a dad is just you respect your dad. I mean, that's it. You you grow up respecting your dad. He doesn't gain it, just grow up respecting your father. So why is your kid not respecting you? This is what I'm trying to get to the bottom of. No, no, no. It's not like he talks back all the time. If I tell him to do something, he'll do it. I'm

Teen Mood Swings And Respect

18:30

just saying, like, when it comes to like waking up or something that you know make him do it. I can't make him do that. I can't. And I'd like I have to go to work or have something to do. I'm not gonna stand there and wait till he wakes up or just keep I'm gonna pull him out of the fucking bed. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. He's gonna go right to the bed and go back to sleep when I leave. I don't know, man. It might be a time for you to make a change. Start actually parenting this kid. Should I get a new family or what? New family. Uh you might as well start on. Suarez family! This is Jay. He's gonna be moving in. Would you ever do one of them like wife shop, wife swap shows? Swaps? Yeah, fuck yeah, that'd be good. You want to do it? I'll do it. All right, let's do it. I'll do it. I wonder if Katie would let it go. We'll do like three nights. Who's going to whose house? We'll swap. I'll go to your house, okay, manage your children and wife in all the situations that come amok, and then you come to my house. I kind of like to have a house, house. You have to live in an apartment, though. That's okay. I don't have to look. I'll make you have to mow the lawn. It's a trash day. You gotta take the trash out on the right day. If you miss it, you're wrecked. Let's do it in winter. I don't have to mow the lawn. No, the summer's better. I hate I hate mowing the lawn. There's more responsibilities in the summer. You gotta walk the dogs. You have more than one dog? I'm watching some other person's dog all the time. You gotta walk the cats. The cats don't need anything. I do have to probably clean the shitbox though. Because you probably don't have the wife doing that. Or does she do it? Actually, I'm I'm a I'm a the 19-year-old should be doing the shitboxes. Agreed. I'm a technological guy. So guess what? You got one of the fanner box that cleans all this poop for you? I have a smart cat litter fucking robot. They go in there, they shitter piss, this thing spins around, puts it in a fucking basket for you. So no, if you're there for less than a month, you don't have to change shit or do anything with the cats at all. And I have automatic feeders for the cats as well. Sweet. So actually, your dog would be a pain in the ass. They are a pain in the ass. You don't have to do anything with the cats. They are a pain in the ass. But yeah, I think uh you can set new boundaries, you can establish new rules and play them upon the home. I would like to see you try to do that with my kids. That'd be great. We gotta get cameras there. Does he have a key? Yeah. Every kid had all the kids have a key. Okay. Can you change? Does he have do you have can you grab the keys? Yeah. Yeah. You just have to establish what's going to be. And if it's not that, it's it's the end. And like put a line. Like, okay, you can fuck around and find out, but this is what's going to happen. And he's gone. He's gone. If you don't follow the rules, there's going to be a time where I've decided you've broken too many of my rules. It is time for you to leave or pay rent. How do you keep how do you kick them out if they don't go? I don't know. If you didn't have a lot of how come I ended up leaving, I don't know. My dad told me I had to fucking leave the house because I broke his rules. I broke his no, I didn't. When I was an adult and I lived in my dad's house, I broke one of his rules and he said, get the fuck out of here. Yes. I didn't know that. There's the fucking rules. I was an adult. He set the lines. He established he established the rules. He established the body. And I went across it and he was like, Get the fuck out of here. You got kicked out. What age were you? I don't know, probably twenty something. Wow. You know, the real thing. And I think it wasn't like you fucking made me leave that instant, I don't think, but it was fucking time to leave, and I left. I didn't want to not live there. It was free. I got free meals. It was awesome. The ones who pay the bills are the ones who get to make the rules. Like, you know, your kids don't want to go to school, right? Yeah, of course. No, no, no. Why do they go to school? Yeah, true. You make them. Well, yeah. It's a fucking rule. If the kid just says, I don't feel like going to school today because fuck my health teacher, do you go, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, my kid has done that. And uh usually it's uh Spanish class. He'll sit in the bathroom the entire Spanish class and then he'll go to the next class. So we get a call when I'm at work. Your son has been marked absent for I'm like, he's asked because he's got we got the fucking live 360. He's at school, he's hiding in the bathroom. He's just vaping in the bathroom, no big deal. Was he 10? Uh th the 13-year-old. Oh, the 13-year-old? Yeah. Yeah, definitely vaping in the bathroom. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don't have the answers. I don't have a 19-year-old, let alone a 19-year-old man in my house. So I don't know, but I feel like, in my experience, you just have to create the new reality. You explain it to him, lay it out, it's

Adult Kids At Home And Boundaries

23:35

fair. Like, yo, things are changing. I so I had this, I had this talk about something else with my kid, and I use the analogy with my wife. Like, so we we've stopped buying processed things. Oh, here we go again. Well, no, no, no, no. So here's the thing. So is this a treat tonight? Yeah. Well, this isn't in my house, so it's okay. No, I mean, like, is this something like when you eat it, do you feel different? Because you're saying you don't eat processed stuff and then you're eating Rocky Rococo. Rocky Rococo's is all natural. Heart pizza. Yeah. The heart shaped dough is a natural occurrence in the natural way. You won't feel different from eating something non-processed to Rocky Rococo's. I don't pay attention to my body enough to know. I probably do. My fucking kidneys are probably sore right now from it. I have no fucking clue. Your body's like, what the fuck are you doing? Tony's like, shut up. Yeah, just eat this fucking sausage. No, but uh she said something about uh because my kid's obsessed with fruit snacks. It's all he fucking wants, right? The youngest one? Yeah. Okay. So he's got like these like natural fruit roll-ups, he's got fruit snacks. The bear the bear ones. How did he I don't know? Some other they're not the bear ones, but they're one like it. You found natural ones? Yeah, they're supposed to say natural. Well, they're still bad, they're just but we got all these different like fruit rolls, fruit this, fruit that. They're all fucking gummies. And he doesn't like any of them. Because, of course, you know, the fucking Mott's fruit snacks are delicious because uh they they taste the way you see f uh color. Like yeah, like when you think cherry, like you don't picture the taste of an actual cherry, you picture the taste of a cherry-flavored item. Uh yeah, kinda. Definitely. Like when when you think a grape, when you think a grape, you're not you're not thinking of a fucking grape. Like in your head, you're thinking of like fucking drink. Yeah, something. I think of the little uh yeah, the actual purple drink, the little grenade-shaped cans with the foil tops. Yeah, those are good shits. You know, the poor people juice boxes to get 10 for 10 for a dollar. What are the yeah, what are those costs? Might even be 10 for a dime, for Christ's sake. I forgot what those are called. Um but uh juice jugs. We so we started making our own fruit snacks, me and him, because this kid really, this kid loves cooking. Like fucking loves it. So how do you make your own fruit? Yeah, where do you make it? How do you make a whole natural gelatin from? Yeah, and how do you keep the fruit from uh like do you have to how many days does it last? Because it's real real fruit, right? Yeah, lasts a long ass time. How? Actually. So we made a couple different flavors, right? We made uh uh, you know, I got this big fucking tub of of uh organic gelatin, which I mean it's just fucking pork fat, is all it is. That's disgusting. Uh that's what jello is. That's how you make fruit snacks? Yeah, it's bone or something. Sick. So I'm gonna show my kids that they won't eat them anymore. Good. Then then we bought all the fucking fruits. Pureed them up, strained them out, fucking made made this. I bought fruit snack molds, and you know, we'll make a fucking batch of them. Question. He doesn't like any of them. Question. If you're making something uh like a strawberry, do you have to use straw? Or if you're making grapes, you have to use grapes. If you make strawberries, you have to use strawberries. Yeah, that's what we're doing. We don't buy the extract, which I mean I'm not opposed to. I just figured it'd be better with fresh shit, right? So when you puree all that shit, it's not gonna actually taste like a strawberry or a grape. Right. It's gonna get rid of all of the flavor. That's what he's no, it's gonna taste like that. It doesn't get rid of the flavor. But it tastes like a blueberry, not like a blueberry fruit snack. It tastes like a strawberry, not a strawberry fruit snack. So it doesn't taste like a thousand strawberries. Yeah, in one little tiny concentrated bite. Yeah. With with corn syrup, caro. Yeah, with a little caro. But uh my wife's like, well, he's not eating this shit. And I said, Well, that's because we still have the shit he likes. But when that's gone and there's no option, he's not gonna choose not to have a fruit, whatever, fill in the blank, roll-up or whatever. He's he's not gonna choose not to have it because he doesn't like that one as much. He won't eat that one because we also have the other one. Yep. And uh, so now all this all this process shit that you know we bought pallets of at Costco when I didn't give a fuck about it, you know, like three weeks ago. It'd be gone in no time. Yeah. Now that shit's starting to run dry, and he's doing his little like his little week-long protest, like, I don't like this, but now now the shit I do like isn't in existence anymore, and uh, he's not old enough to go over by his friend's house where he can just have unlimited access to all that shit. So now he's slowly starting to like give little things more of a chance because he's sitting around like, well, I don't have any fucking uh whatever, Nutella biscuits anymore. So maybe maybe I will have this like peanut butter and banana that dad's always offering me. You've never seen the bottom of the Lucy bin until now, hey? The Lucy bin, the Lucy bin is starting to run dry. He's gonna be eating like three-year-old oatmeal graham cracker crunch bars instead of your like a week ago, uh he found he found this little bag. It got brought home from the camper. But it was like Joy's. It was like his little secret stash of fruit snack pouches. And there were like six of them in there. And uh he was like, hey, can I have these? And I said, Yeah, but just so you know, when they're gone, they're gone. You know, we're we're not buying those fruit snacks anymore, so I'm like, if you want, you should probably kind of like space them out and save them for emergency, save the good ones for emergencies, you know. Don't go, yeah, yeah, don't go ballistic on these things. And he's like, all right, and he's like, we're not getting them anymore. And I'm like, yeah, never. I'm like, I'll never buy them again as long as I live. And he's like, Oh, okay. And he goes over to the fucking couch and he cracks all six of them, puts them all in a heaping pile, which was like a fucking inch tall, because there's like four in a pack. Yeah. And uh he's like, I'm gonna eat them all at once.

Food Rules And The Fruit Snack Fight

31:10

He's fucking going through the house finding every fruit snack. I'm like, yeah, you're gonna be fucked tomorrow. Jesus Christ. No way. But you know, you know, this is all this cocaine in one big pile. This is the thing. But before going to rehab, I need one last hit. Yeah, he look he looked like Scarface with fruit snacks. But uh, but this is what I'm saying. Like, we we started this kid on a bad habit, which is eating these fucking terrible processed fruit snacks. Yeah, we allowed that, and we set that as the standard for so long. Now that we're changing that, it's becoming really difficult. But he's quickly realizing like there's a lot of resistance for a short amount of time, and then they just realize like this is how it is now. Where they adapt. Where instead of you know, the thing is, is if we tell him we're not buying fruit snacks anymore, and then he wants them and he throws a fit, and then my wife runs out and buys a couple fruit snacks for him so he can have some, but we're not buying them, you know, a hundred packs at a time, and she's giving them every once in a while. Well, then you're setting the president that that there is some flexibility in this new rule. Like, this new rule is not set in stone. Like, I want the fruit snacks, they say they're not getting me the fruit snacks. I act a certain way, I get a little bit more, I get some fruit snacks, not as many as I did, but I can get them still as long as I do this. So, what I'm telling you is that if you want your kid to follow rules, you gotta make fucking rules and enforce them. And and it it has to be fucking clear across the board, like and whatever the rule is, is if everybody in this house wakes up at 7 o'clock and 7 o'clock rolls around, everybody needs to be up. And it's not just like, okay, well, I'm gonna spend the next hour, I'm gonna spend until eight trying to get them up. I'm just gonna start this time. Doesn't your wife wake you up? Yeah. And I I get to fuck up when it's time to get up. I just need to be woken up. But but the fucked up thing is both of my kids have that same fucking issue. Like they need to be woke. There's no them just waking up, they will sleep indefinitely. Oh man, I No, yeah, my wife wakes them up too. And uh Katie will sleep forever, but me and the kid wake up right away. My nine-year-old wakes me up. He's like, Dad, the bus is coming. So I'm gonna go. So the thing is, is uh I don't know if any of your kids are like this, but our kids, like in a quest not to go to bed when they're told, yeah, have to have to make the production of I need water. So on their nightstands, they they both always have water, like a cup or a bottle or something. There's just there's just always water in their room. And it's because it got them an extra four minutes of fucking off before bedtime going down to the refrigerator and filling up a fucking cup of water, you know. So my kids, my kids know that if they're not up on the second try, they're getting whatever fucking cup of water is on their nightstand spilled on their face. And then they get the fuck up. So the first try, there's a little resistance, but the second try, they're fucking up. Did you spray it on them? No, I pour it. You pour it right on them? Right on them. Be careful. Be careful. Why? Yeah, you spoiled their self-water. Waterboarding them. Yep. Kids uh gonna call the police, but yeah, my dad's been torturing me with water. Perfect. Old rusty water that's been sitting around for perfect. Because

Morning Routines And Getting Kids Up

35:10

I'm gonna tell him this is the closest I can get his dirty ass to taking a shower. Yeah, I don't have a problem getting my kid up. No, I like I said, my kid wakes me up for the bus. I uh I'm terrible at waking up. My kid wakes me up for the bus to get him to the bus. So my wife wakes up both kids, she leaves early, and then I I I always leave late. Yeah, I think I think it's actually more of a mosey. You mosey. Mosey on. I mosey on. Mosey to the bus and then kind of mosey to work. I I put my sandals on without without socks, and I walk down there and you know, wait for him to get on the bus, wave goodbye every morning. But I always get up when he tells me to. I don't get up when my wife tells me to, only when my son does, because I know he has to be at the bus because he misses the bus. I gotta drive his ass to school, and that's fucking irritating. Everyone knows that. Don't wait in line for school for a for a fucking for anything. It's the worst. I'm surprised you don't just drop him off on the road to walk? Yeah. Like you're right here now. I can't do that. You know I can't do that.

Final Thoughts And Sign Off

36:22

So, uh, to conclude this episode of Top Shelf Stories T S T for short. I'm gonna tell you this. It took me a minute to figure that one out. T SS, but Top Shelf. Oh fuck, TSS. You're right. So if you want to do it, Jay. Yeah, it's fine, you know. Who cares? Uh, I'm gonna tell you right now, have kids, they're fun. They're fun through all the stages. I've always had fun, I've always had fun with kids. Sometimes they're annoying, sometimes they can be uh more than you can go ahead, Tony. Honestly, I love my kids to death. Yeah, they're my favorite things in the world, but I hate them until they're five. Yeah, fair enough. Like, I don't want to do shit with them. If they were adults, I would not hang out with them. So Tony and Chris are done with kids. We know that for a fact. Oh, yeah, it's all abortions from here on out. Abortions. That's how they get rid of the children. Thank you for listening to Top Shelf Stories every Tuesday. Yo yo. We will be back next Tuesday. And thank you for listening. Tony loves you. Good night. Boop, boop, boodo, boo.