Your mother in law and your wife are about to be in the same kitchen. Uncle Jim has had a few too many, and the kids have turned it up to eleven. Join Daddy Owen as he chats with Hal Runkel of screamfree.com on how to have a screamfree holiday. DadLabs Ep. 219 Daditude.

Daddy Owen: We’re once again here with Hal Runkel from Scream Free Parenting. He wrote the book Scream Free Parenting and runs a website screamfreeparenting, I wanna scream. So we have back here. We’re lucky enough to talk about the holidays that are coming up. Hal: Coming up, coming up.

Daddy Owen: And that for a lot of folks is a time of screaming.

Hal: That is not a scream free time.

Daddy Owen: Yeah, that is not a scream free time. Can you give us some recommendations of how to survive the holidays without…?

Hal: Screaming our heads off.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: And it’s hard because you know we can predict. It’s very easy to predict who’s gonna do what you know. Folks are gonna come over right and you can predict how long it’s gonna take before Uncle Joe gets drunk and exactly. You can predict how long it’s gonna take for your mother in law to something insensitive to your wife.

Daddy Owen: Yes.

Hal: Yup, about how she didn’t cook well enough for the house. So you know I swear to you this just happens.

Daddy Owen: Just like in the house.

Hal: Yeah. It just happened to a friend of mind where his mother in law came over and said to his wife, you know what your house is really clean. It’s almost as clean as mine. She really said that and that happens big time in the holidays because there’s so much expectation that’s put on that this needs to be the Frank Capra moment, right.

Daddy Owen: Right.

Hal: Right. And especially to dad’s out there if you and you’re wife are now hosting like the first time.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: So you’re gonna host this year.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: Oh, it’s this pressure, pressure, pressure and inside you may be smiling but I mean outside you may be smiling but inside you’re this guy, right.

Daddy Owen: You’re a wrestler.

Hal: Huge, the UFC champion guy, just going absolutely crazy because you cannot believe how rude this person is being, you cannot believe how many people. You know that Benjamin Franklin quote that fish and guests are the same because they both start to go bad after three days. We all start to stink after three days. That’s probably a good rule. You know what ultimately recognizing it’s not gonna be perfect, see.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: That’s what’s gonna happen if you scream. It’s gonna collapse. It’s not gonna be perfect.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: That’s the biggest thing.

Daddy Owen: Free yourself up.

Hal: Free yourself up and I know your wife is going to feel that even more than you. You can help free her up, which will make your life a lot easier by communicating to her you know what I think you’re doing a great job.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: Over and over again.

Daddy Owen: Maybe give her a positive reason to scream.

Hal: That’s scream-filled sex. That’s’ another book.

Daddy Owen: Really.

Hal: Yeah. Actually, my wife and I are writing it together.

Daddy Owen: Are you doing research?

Hal: It’s a work of fiction. There are things that you can do to help your life get a little easier.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: By communicating. You know what you’re doing a great job. Thanks so much. Thank you for the littlest things in that time.

Daddy Owen: That’s part of your scream-filled sex too.

Hal: Exactly. That’s what she says to me. She thanks me. See, you made a little small penis joke.

Daddy Owen: That’s what a dad’s life is all.

Hal: Absolutely. Small penis jokes.

Daddy Owen: Small penis jokes.

Hal: So yes, the holidays are difficult. What you’re gonna do is again remind yourself it’s not gonna be perfect.

Daddy Owen: Right.

Hal: Remind yourself also it doesn’t have to be.

Daddy Owen: Right.

Hal: And you’re not responsible. This is a big one but you nor your wife are responsible for everyone else’s happiness.

Daddy Owen: Right, that is, that’s hard.

Hal: Not even your kids.

Daddy Owen: Well, let me ask you about that with the kids because you know it is a time for kids. My daughter is two and a half and getting a little older close to three, my nephew is a bit older, and it’s a meltdown time. It’s you know and everything’s…

Hal: Yeah it’s overstimulation.

Daddy Owen: Yeah so you see.

Hal: It is.

Daddy Owen: What can you do to avoid whatever holiday you’re celebrating because Hanukkah is eight days of meltdown…?

Hal: Yeah exactly, it’s long.

Daddy Owen: And fire!

Hal: But you know what there’s actually, there’s a brilliant, I think the Hanukkah thing is brilliant because compared to the way we do it with Christmas in my family is Christmas is all at once.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: All at once tearing at the gifts or whatever.

Daddy Owen: Right.

Hal: Hanukkah is spread out and I think that helps create pauses…

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: To help people keep their cool.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: You know.

Daddy Owen: We do both so...

Hal: That’s right. That’s right. And one of my business partners they do both as well and it’s interesting to see the contrast but I think anytime you can interject a pause. That’s really what’s scream free parenting is about. It’s not a series of techniques to get perfect families. There’s no such thing. It’s just helping parents create a pause between stimulus, your kids pushing your buttons and response.

Daddy Owen: We can call it like a Santa pause.

Hal: That’s good, I like that, let’s write that screenplay, the Santa pause. That would be a lifetime movie. It’ll be good. Creating a pause between it so it’s, actually we got this from our daughter. All these kids around are ripping presents up and my daughter will just take one when she was like three years old and just play with one for a while. That should leave all her unopened presents, like wow look at that. It’s like self-regulation and so we now we started to do this and we take our time.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: Slow. Focus on each person you know things like that but also you gotta give yourself some breathing time. Sometime you got family okay. So the family is coming in or you’re going to stay some place for three days, right. You gotta find some time. You know what I’m gonna go to a coffee shop I got some work to do make up whatever excuse, take a really long shower just do something to give yourself some breathing time because the best thing for a dad especially to do is be the calmest one in the room.

Daddy Owen: Okay.

Hal: The calmest one in the room. Do whatever it takes and not be this guy, right. Now it might be helpful, it might be helpful to get with another dad and be this guy with each other and vent, right so that…

Daddy Owen: Those kids!

Hal: You don’t want to get with a guy in drag.

Daddy Owen: No.

Hal: Maybe, if that’s your vent you might want to do that.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: Yeah if that’s what you, want to do.

Daddy Owen: How about these kids today, I can’t afford.

Daddy Hal: I think, I think we’ve run out of time.

Daddy Owen: Oh, alright. Well, thanks Hal. There’s other good hints here at Dad Labs surviving the holidays with kids and family and also some sort of derivative ones from our stuff that you can find at screamfree.com.

Hal: I don’t have anything original but there is some good stuff, some articles written by me that’s basically copied from them.

Daddy Owen: Yeah.

Hal: screamfree.com.

Daddy Owen: We’ll see you soon.