How Andy Griffiths Dads - Bum jokes, imagination and loving what is

[00:00:00] Before we begin, we, as always, would like to say thank you to Hertz for supporting this podcast in the sense that they facilitate making it happen. So, they're not just limited to supporting podcasts. In fact, that's actually not their business model. Their business model is renting cars and they'll make that happen for you if you do need a car, for business, for pleasure, for any of your adventures, go to hertz.com.au forward slash h-o-d-d as in How Other Dads Dad and you can get 25% off the base rate for a car.

[00:00:30] Terms and conditions apply to that. Hertz, always there for us whenever we need a car, whenever you need a car. Thanks, Hertz. Let's get into the show.

[00:00:40] Hamish is a dad who loves to be a dad, but he knows there's more to learn about being a dad. So, he makes this show where he talks to Other Dads so he can find out how Other Dads Dads.

[00:00:59] All right, this is a very exciting episode of How Other Dads Dads. I mean, they're all exciting and they're all terrific.

[00:01:05] But we were lucky enough to have the wonderful author Andy Griffiths. If you've got a kid who is or has been anywhere between the ages of, I don't know, let's say 5 and 13, you'd be very familiar with Andy's work.

[00:01:20] From his very early stuff, the just tricking, just annoying range, The Day My Bum Went Psycho.

[00:01:26] Then, of course, there's the 13-story treehouse series that he did with Terry Denton.

[00:01:32] These books are in, I would say, every single household in Australia, whether you've got all 13, all the way up to the 169-story treehouse,

[00:01:40] or you've got a selection of them.

[00:01:42] If you've ever read one of these books at bedtime to your kids, you know that it's jam-packed with adventure, with possibility, with creativity,

[00:01:51] and it's a beautiful experience to read them with kids.

[00:01:55] So, when the opportunity came up for us to have Andy sit down and talk to us, Tim and I were super stoked.

[00:02:01] A, because he's a person and a creator that we're fascinated with, but B, also we know he has adult kids,

[00:02:07] and we know that there's, you know, sometimes on this show it's so, well, we find it particularly useful because we've got young kids

[00:02:14] to talk to someone that's kind of on the other side of this thing that we're entering into in the next sort of 10, 15 years of our own dadding.

[00:02:21] Andy has a new book out, The Land of Lost Things.

[00:02:24] You may well own a copy of this if you have kids.

[00:02:26] We have a copy at our house.

[00:02:28] Just rocketed to number one on the book charts.

[00:02:30] It's a really cool idea for a book, and we talk a little bit about that in this coming chat,

[00:02:34] but really what I loved about getting to talk to Andy was, you know,

[00:02:37] here is a man that is responsible for something that I think is just so,

[00:02:42] I just put such a high value on the idea of imagination and play and the places that our kids go to in their minds

[00:02:49] when they dare to dream or they dare to kind of imagine different possibilities.

[00:02:53] Like, we know as adults, it's such a, like, I don't think there's anything more special than that place in a kid's mind

[00:03:00] where they have little ideas about the future and you're kind of hatching plans of the way the world might be.

[00:03:06] And books are an amazing way into that, and he's responsible for being that person for so many kids.

[00:03:11] So, awesome chance to talk to a man that spends a lot of his time in the minds of kids and being able to meet them there.

[00:03:21] And I think, you know, whether you're a dad, a mum, someone interested in becoming either one of those things,

[00:03:27] there's so much that we can take away from this chat.

[00:03:29] So, very fun.

[00:03:30] Very grateful that I got to sit down with him.

[00:03:32] Please enjoy How Andy Griffiths Dads.

[00:03:42] Andy, mate, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:03:44] It's a pleasure.

[00:03:45] I want to tell us something that I hope is not weird.

[00:03:48] I mean, it is weird, but I hope it's not too weird.

[00:03:50] I have a note, I have a message from my wife.

[00:03:53] Yes.

[00:03:54] And I want to see if this makes any sense to you.

[00:03:56] Have you read it?

[00:03:58] I know what it is, yep.

[00:03:59] But Jill's bum with a picture of a bum.

[00:04:04] Love, Zoe.

[00:04:05] Does that make sense to you?

[00:04:07] Because it's a return message from a few weeks ago.

[00:04:10] Absolutely.

[00:04:11] I signed a book for you and your children.

[00:04:14] That's right.

[00:04:15] Our friend was at a Westfield, saw a book signing.

[00:04:17] We're like, oh, yeah, that's a new Andy Griffiths book.

[00:04:19] We'd love to get it.

[00:04:19] And he went up and he said, oh, I'm actually doing it for my friends.

[00:04:22] It's Sonny and Rudy.

[00:04:23] And then, you know, I think he mentioned Zoe's their mum who's in the same world as you.

[00:04:29] Yeah, yeah, and has written books on bums.

[00:04:31] And you just wrote, I think you wrote to the kids, you know, look forward to going on an adventure with you.

[00:04:37] And then just wrote Zoe's bum and just drew a picture of Zoe's bum.

[00:04:42] And Zoe opened the book and he was like, what a power move.

[00:04:49] No, because I write for the whole family.

[00:04:52] And I knew Zoe had published Bums and I have published famously The Day My Bum Went Psycho and his sequels, The Zombie Bums from Uranus, Bumageddon, The Final Pong Flicked.

[00:05:05] And it brought me a certain notoriety, which I then spent the next 20 years trying to get away from.

[00:05:12] Yes, that's it.

[00:05:13] Well, Zoe, yes, from someone else in the fart world, she was.

[00:05:16] That makes total sense.

[00:05:17] Thank you, Zoe.

[00:05:19] We got a huge laugh out of that because I think she, because, you know, mate came over, fucking came over and he was like, oh, yeah, I got a note.

[00:05:25] She's like, oh, great, I wonder what Andy wrote.

[00:05:28] Here's a picture of your bum.

[00:05:30] Well, speaking of The Day My Bum Went Psycho and we're talking about dating.

[00:05:34] Yeah.

[00:05:35] When we did the first book, I had a picture of a baby's bum from a chemist's catalogue.

[00:05:41] It was just this big baby's bottom and I thought, oh, this would be really funny if I take that and put it against a city landscape.

[00:05:49] It'll look like a giant bum is attacking the city.

[00:05:52] It'll be a great cover because I'd been showing it to the kids I was talking to and they'd all fall about laughing at the sight of this baby's bum.

[00:06:00] And so that was the first cover.

[00:06:02] They got a photo image from a library of a baby's bottom against the cover and became very famous very quickly.

[00:06:09] And then when we went to do a reprint, they said, oh, the zombie bums from Uranus, the sequel that nobody was demanding but needed to be written.

[00:06:21] They said, no, you can't have that baby's bottom anymore because we've sold it exclusively to another company.

[00:06:28] What, that bum?

[00:06:29] That image of the bum.

[00:06:31] That particular image.

[00:06:31] Yeah.

[00:06:32] And so me and Jill were like, Jill being the editor and co-writer, long-suffering co-writer of this particular book.

[00:06:41] We looked at our daughter Sarah who was three years old at the time running around without her pants on and we went, what do you think?

[00:06:51] Should we commercialise that bum?

[00:06:53] Yeah.

[00:06:54] Yeah.

[00:06:55] Screw it.

[00:06:55] We'll do it.

[00:06:56] Pretty cheap copyright.

[00:06:57] Right.

[00:06:57] So she was in the photo studio the next day and that's her bum on all the covers.

[00:07:05] How does she feel about that now as a grown woman?

[00:07:07] Well, she's been on a journey with it because at three she didn't care.

[00:07:11] She thought it was funny.

[00:07:12] She was pulling her pants down a lot because bums are funny.

[00:07:17] But then, oh, they put a billboard up over the Westgate Freeway, a giant billboard with her bottom.

[00:07:23] And so we'd drive past it.

[00:07:25] Hey, Sarah, there's your bum.

[00:07:27] And she goes, yes, I know.

[00:07:29] So she was already jaded by the time she was three and a half.

[00:07:32] She thought it was normal.

[00:07:34] And then when she was in primary school, the kids were always asking, whose bum is it?

[00:07:39] Whose bum is it?

[00:07:40] And I'd always do a session for her grade, whatever grade she was in.

[00:07:44] Around grade four or five, I noticed she was really freezing up at this question.

[00:07:50] Yeah, that's interesting.

[00:07:51] And the kids go, whose bum is it?

[00:07:53] And I'm going, well, if I was to tell you.

[00:07:55] And I noticed she was there just crying.

[00:07:58] Oh, really?

[00:07:58] Thinking I was going to reveal the embarrassing information.

[00:08:02] That's very interesting.

[00:08:03] And I said, well, obviously I can't tell you.

[00:08:06] It's a professional bum model.

[00:08:07] And now at 23, she thinks it's very funny again.

[00:08:12] What a perfect little analogy, though, of the way our self-consciousness develops and

[00:08:20] then matures throughout life.

[00:08:23] That's fascinating.

[00:08:25] Well, on fathering, let's start with your dad stats.

[00:08:27] So how many kids do you have?

[00:08:29] Two daughters.

[00:08:30] That's Sarah, who's the daughter of Jill and myself.

[00:08:34] Jill was my first editor I met back in 1997 as my first marriage was breaking or had broken up.

[00:08:43] And we have, my first wife and I had Jasmine, who's now 32.

[00:08:51] And so Jill was stepmother to Jasmine.

[00:08:56] I became a single dad for a little while there, a couple of years.

[00:09:00] How old was...

[00:09:01] She would have been three or four at that stage, yeah.

[00:09:05] Okay.

[00:09:06] And so two, now two adult, you know, adult daughters.

[00:09:10] All right.

[00:09:11] One thing we do like to start with this show, and it's probably like, it is probably a good place to start,

[00:09:16] is your three words that would sum up your philosophy, almost your tenets of dadding.

[00:09:23] Um, well, I was going to say do no harm.

[00:09:27] And I don't, it's a loaded game because you are going to do harm in some way.

[00:09:32] Yeah.

[00:09:32] But I've always thought just get out of the child's way.

[00:09:36] Yeah.

[00:09:37] And let them develop free of your ideas and expectations about what should or should not be happening.

[00:09:45] Not that you can't expect, you know, have certain standards of behaviour and...

[00:09:50] That's such a good... I mean, I feel like I'm, this is extremely pertinent.

[00:09:54] I mean, I'm sure lots of parents listening to this go, any friction points I've had, when I review it,

[00:10:01] like it's because I'm in some way, with best intentions, trying to impose or predict the next step

[00:10:09] or encourage the next step into what I think is a better development.

[00:10:13] And I think it's one that I do have to...

[00:10:15] And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you're sensitive to the child and you're thinking,

[00:10:21] is this really what they want or need?

[00:10:25] I always used to say to my daughters, I don't mind what you do in life, you can do anything,

[00:10:32] you're free to do anything, as long as you form an all-girl punk band.

[00:10:37] I'll be happy.

[00:10:39] I'll drive the damn van, just form an all-girl punk band.

[00:10:43] Do they get close to doing that?

[00:10:46] No.

[00:10:46] No.

[00:10:48] Although Jasmine is partnered with a drummer from a band called the Fuck Ups punk band.

[00:10:57] So that's pretty close.

[00:10:59] I'm pretty happy with that.

[00:11:00] I'm sure there's some roadieing that you can do to help out the band.

[00:11:03] Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:04] Okay, so in the vein of Do No Harm, you know, yeah, at its core, as you say,

[00:11:10] you're talking about development, right?

[00:11:11] You're talking about letting kids develop.

[00:11:15] As parents, we look back and we're, you know, I'm always,

[00:11:17] we're all super passionate about wanting our kids to feel the love and support

[00:11:22] to develop in any which way they choose.

[00:11:25] But then a part of that is putting the, sometimes putting the pieces in front of them,

[00:11:28] not even a trail of crumbs, but making sure there's stimulus in front of them

[00:11:32] to allow them to develop.

[00:11:35] Was there anything that you look back on and be like,

[00:11:38] that was a, you know, to provide fertile ground to allow kids to experiment

[00:11:42] and to play and to find them, their voice in themselves?

[00:11:47] I think we always prioritised space and free time and we're very conscious

[00:11:54] about not filling their calendar up with, you know, dance or whatever,

[00:12:01] whatever, sport or whatever, I think.

[00:12:04] A lot of adult-directed activities can fill up a child's time.

[00:12:10] But Jill and I both grew up in the 70s where we had a lot of free space

[00:12:14] and we didn't have parents who were particularly concerned

[00:12:17] about filling up our calendar.

[00:12:19] It's so interesting now because, yeah, these days you, that's what it is.

[00:12:23] It's sports games and it's like drama and it's…

[00:12:26] And this is good for you and it'll help them develop.

[00:12:30] Do you think to some degree a little bit of that sometimes is for the parents

[00:12:35] to feel like, great, we're ticking the boxes

[00:12:36] and we've got extracurricular stuff scheduled?

[00:12:38] Yeah, and there's a terror that the child will be bored.

[00:12:41] If something's not happening, they'll be bored

[00:12:44] and then trouble will happen of some sort.

[00:12:47] But it's that – I don't like the word boredom as such.

[00:12:51] It's just space to play and to – in our case it was to pick up a book

[00:12:57] or in mind a typewriter and just start entertaining myself in my way,

[00:13:03] which was a bit odd to my parents.

[00:13:05] You know, my dad thought boys should be out playing sport.

[00:13:09] Doing physical things.

[00:13:10] Cricket and football and proper stuff.

[00:13:12] And he's got this weirdo in his bedroom typing

[00:13:16] on an Underwood 1920s typewriter joke magazines for my classmates.

[00:13:23] But that was – you could feel that was already your thing.

[00:13:26] That was the thing that –

[00:13:26] It was just coming through me and it's like, I'm sorry,

[00:13:29] I can't get that excited about football and cricket,

[00:13:32] but I can't force it and I can't make it.

[00:13:36] So I just did my own thing and I was lucky in that.

[00:13:40] I didn't really – I noted what my parents thought I should be doing.

[00:13:45] Yeah.

[00:13:46] And I went, interesting.

[00:13:47] I'm just going to keep doing what I do.

[00:13:50] But I do notice when I talk to young writers or people

[00:13:54] who would like to have a creative life,

[00:13:56] they're often worried about what their parents will think.

[00:14:00] Is it going to make money?

[00:14:02] Is it going to lead to a career that I can boast about to my friends?

[00:14:06] That was a big pressure on my parents.

[00:14:08] What will our friends think?

[00:14:10] And I would say that still exists, you know, of course today.

[00:14:13] It's a very real thing that exists in society of, you know,

[00:14:19] consciously or unconsciously going, oh, this is what my kids are up to

[00:14:22] and having either pride in that looking like it's the right path or,

[00:14:26] you know, or not.

[00:14:28] Yeah.

[00:14:28] But again, from the kids' perspective,

[00:14:31] they're looking to try and find their thing.

[00:14:33] I mean, it's something we talk about in the house a lot

[00:14:34] and that some things pull you and then other things just don't interest you.

[00:14:40] Yeah.

[00:14:40] And that is totally okay.

[00:14:41] And there was a great saying I heard and it was on a podcast

[00:14:45] and I wish I could accredit it,

[00:14:47] but it was the saying was everybody can't do something,

[00:14:50] everybody can do something else.

[00:14:52] Right?

[00:14:52] So it's this thing of like just that's what life is about.

[00:14:56] Like we all just are finding our thing.

[00:14:59] And so for you really, you know, space is the ingredient to find that thing.

[00:15:07] Yeah.

[00:15:08] You'll find something to do when you're...

[00:15:10] Are we running out of space a little bit in this day and age

[00:15:13] because it is a bit busy in kids' lives?

[00:15:15] I think so.

[00:15:16] And I think adults too.

[00:15:18] We notice many, many adults that we associate with have got very full calendars.

[00:15:24] Yes.

[00:15:24] And Jill and I's idea of well-being is nothing on for the weekend.

[00:15:32] And when people say, are you going away on holidays?

[00:15:36] We go, nah, we're just going to hang around the house and read

[00:15:40] and listen to music and I'll write a bit.

[00:15:42] And that's where life bubbles up.

[00:15:45] That to me is true wealth.

[00:15:47] Yeah.

[00:15:47] Time wealth.

[00:15:48] Yeah.

[00:15:49] Well, and look, I couldn't agree more.

[00:15:51] Like the ability to spend the day the way you would like to spend the day

[00:15:56] is a real treat.

[00:15:58] I guess it gets easier as you get older.

[00:16:00] You let go of some of the shoulds.

[00:16:02] I should be doing this.

[00:16:05] What do I want to do?

[00:16:07] One thing that I'm sure you have a pretty unique perspective on is kids,

[00:16:13] you know, the connection they have with your books, right?

[00:16:16] Because it's imagination and it's...

[00:16:17] We talk about space.

[00:16:18] Like, I mean, books are incredible for this very thing.

[00:16:22] And one of the magical activities that a kid can just go to their bedroom

[00:16:26] and be in another world.

[00:16:28] And because you're able to connect with so many kids in that space

[00:16:33] and I know they write to you and stuff and they say things to you like,

[00:16:36] what do you glean from the feedback you get from younger kids?

[00:16:40] What comes through that you would like the rest of the adult population to know?

[00:16:45] I think, well, what books represented for me was little portals into a whole other realm of being

[00:16:52] and way of seeing the world.

[00:16:55] So magical, chaotic, fascinating that was far removed from my upbringing in suburban Melbourne

[00:17:04] where things were pretty straight and the adults had it all figured out

[00:17:08] and these are the rules and this is what we do.

[00:17:10] And I was fortunate my mother was on the secondhand book stall at school for the fate.

[00:17:17] So every year for a couple of months our spare bedroom would fill up

[00:17:21] with all the neighbourhood's unwanted books and they were wild.

[00:17:25] You know, there was many books and I would spend hours just in this room

[00:17:30] going through all the books, psychology books,

[00:17:33] The Magic Power of Your Mind I remember reading.

[00:17:37] Really?

[00:17:37] At the age of 10.

[00:17:39] Which I love because I just, again, it's that thing of like so much of creativity

[00:17:43] is the unexpected stimulus, right?

[00:17:45] Yeah.

[00:17:46] It's a magic cocktail of the more things you can just cram into a space,

[00:17:50] amazing connections are formed.

[00:17:52] Yeah.

[00:17:52] And there was one book called Worlds to Conquer which was Reader's Digest collection

[00:17:58] of all these chapters from different books of, you know, external conquerors,

[00:18:03] mountain climbers and people who discovered medical cures

[00:18:08] and there was one guy, Memoirs of a Sword Swallower.

[00:18:11] His name is Dan Mannix and I'd recommend him.

[00:18:16] He wrote in the 40s and he was a carnival sword swallower.

[00:18:19] He learnt to swallow swords and he described the process.

[00:18:23] So how old are you as a kid reading this?

[00:18:25] I'm 10 years old going, my mind is being blown.

[00:18:28] There's so many other ways to live and see the world and that's a real gift.

[00:18:33] And meanwhile I was reading Enid Blyton, The Far Away Tree

[00:18:37] and The Magic Wishing Chair and going on all these fantastical,

[00:18:42] slightly disturbing, scary adventures.

[00:18:46] And so this was just my second life and when I became an English teacher

[00:18:52] and had all these kids assuring me that reading was for losers and chumps,

[00:18:57] I said, no, no, no, no, you are missing the opportunity to see what else is out there

[00:19:03] beyond your little world.

[00:19:05] And so that became my mission statement.

[00:19:08] I've got to write, I can't give them a lecture.

[00:19:11] Reading's good for you children.

[00:19:13] That's not going to work.

[00:19:13] I've got to write something that demonstrates, that sucks them into it

[00:19:19] and before they know it they're on that magical journey of endless possibilities.

[00:19:25] And so that's what I'm looking for in the kids who read my books

[00:19:30] and they'll come with their eyes shining going, I just love.

[00:19:33] They can't often tell you what they love.

[00:19:35] I just love.

[00:19:37] And I think what they mean is the freedom, the possibilities.

[00:19:40] Yeah.

[00:19:41] It's the most beautiful thing when you see kids connect with a book

[00:19:46] and it's certainly in our house happened with yours and you would see it a lot.

[00:19:51] I know there will be people listening who are thinking,

[00:19:53] how do you get kids into reading?

[00:19:54] And I think your books are actually a great gateway because they're amazing stories.

[00:20:00] There's enough for the kid if you're reading beside them in bed to look at.

[00:20:03] There's enough to kind of keep their eyes busy and their attention held.

[00:20:06] You know, is there advice you would give to parents who are like,

[00:20:09] I would love my kid to read more but we're finding it hard to get them there?

[00:20:14] Well, yeah, try one of my books.

[00:20:18] They've been designed very much with this in mind and also to bring in the adults

[00:20:24] because that's where a lot of books are shared at bedtime

[00:20:27] or as a teacher reading to a class.

[00:20:30] So, I've always been aware of that and I've had a long association

[00:20:34] with Terry Denton for 25 years.

[00:20:37] We were able to experiment with all sorts of different comedy,

[00:20:42] disgustingness, sweetness, mixtures.

[00:20:44] And then we finally hit on the Treehouse series where I went,

[00:20:47] oh, I can get Terry to draw half the book.

[00:20:51] And that's…

[00:20:52] I'll be done in two days.

[00:20:53] Yeah, I know it sounds good but I don't have to do all the describing.

[00:20:58] He can just show you a 13-storey treehouse.

[00:21:01] The emerging reader inhales it without me needing to go

[00:21:06] and there was a bowling alley and there was a shark tank.

[00:21:10] That's all I have to say actually and Terry's animated it.

[00:21:13] So, that was just really fortunate that I've had this, you know,

[00:21:19] adoring audience for so long that we could find this new way

[00:21:24] of telling that story and then the audience really expanded worldwide

[00:21:28] at that point because I'd done away with the words.

[00:21:31] But it's actually harder to write less words than it is to write more words

[00:21:37] because you've got to pick them quite politically

[00:21:40] and they've all got to count.

[00:21:41] And I can tell quite a complex story in those books with a minimum of words.

[00:21:47] So, you've got high interest and yet high accessibility.

[00:21:53] One thing I remember reading a quote from Dr. Seuss once was you should always

[00:21:57] be talking up to your audience instead of talking down to them.

[00:22:00] Do you think kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for?

[00:22:04] Absolutely.

[00:22:04] Well, they're not always smart.

[00:22:06] I mean, I was a kid, I know.

[00:22:09] I wasn't that smart.

[00:22:11] I speak to them directly.

[00:22:13] I don't care if they're young or old.

[00:22:17] I take them.

[00:22:18] They are listening to me and I respect them and I let them know we're going

[00:22:23] to have fun that I don't take myself too seriously as any good stand-up comedian

[00:22:28] would do the minute they get on stage.

[00:22:30] And it's play.

[00:22:32] And I always remember that.

[00:22:34] And I'm saying to the reader, I'm going to play with you.

[00:22:38] And this is a collaborative game that we're playing.

[00:22:41] I'm going to say certain things and you're going to imagine them and they're

[00:22:46] going to be silly or funny and exciting.

[00:22:49] But I rely on you to hold up the other end of the deal.

[00:22:53] To hold up the other end of the deal.

[00:22:54] Which I really love.

[00:22:54] And I love that about play.

[00:22:57] I was thinking about play the other day and I was talking to Zoe about it.

[00:23:00] And some of the best stuff that I find funny as an adult,

[00:23:05] because I think it reminds us of playing as a kid.

[00:23:07] Tell me what you think about this phrase, is committed to nonsense.

[00:23:11] So it's like play is a commitment where it's sort of like whatever the world

[00:23:16] is we've imagined, you buy in.

[00:23:18] It's about commitment.

[00:23:19] And I find that when I play with my kids, the harder you commit to the world,

[00:23:25] the more excited they get.

[00:23:27] But I think we lose that as adults.

[00:23:30] We don't all lose it, but it sometimes requires a little bit of work to get back

[00:23:34] into that mindset.

[00:23:36] Yeah.

[00:23:37] Well, the essence of play is in the word nonsense, I think,

[00:23:40] that there is no purpose to it.

[00:23:43] Yes.

[00:23:43] There's no identifiable purpose.

[00:23:47] Like I often think two kids playing in a sandpit,

[00:23:50] just making little castles or making roads or whatever.

[00:23:54] I think that's pure play because no one's expecting anything of them.

[00:23:59] We're not going to grade them on their sandpit play

[00:24:02] because that would shut you down pretty fast.

[00:24:05] Oh, shit, I'm going to be assessed on this.

[00:24:09] So pure play is play for its own sake, seeing where it goes

[00:24:14] and just enjoying that process.

[00:24:16] I like that.

[00:24:16] And that's its own reward.

[00:24:18] And that's enough for me if a kid reads one of my books or a family

[00:24:23] and they just laugh and, you know, there's lots of wonderful benefits

[00:24:27] from that.

[00:24:28] But they're secondary.

[00:24:30] Just to have a pleasant hour or two.

[00:24:33] Just to enjoy the journey.

[00:24:34] Enjoy the journey and trust that the results will look after themselves.

[00:24:38] We can't even know what those results might be.

[00:24:41] So, yeah, I think often sometimes as parents we're trying to see,

[00:24:45] oh, well, if they enjoy this, they'll get literacy

[00:24:48] and then they'll get a good job and, you know, on it goes.

[00:24:54] But if you're not enjoying the journey, what's the point of the good job?

[00:24:59] Totally.

[00:25:00] What – as both a teacher and an author that speaks to kids a lot,

[00:25:03] what do you think the most powerful thing you could say

[00:25:06] to a young – a budding young mind is?

[00:25:09] That's a really tough question.

[00:25:12] A budding young mind.

[00:25:13] Well, let's say a kid that's –

[00:25:16] Let's pretend.

[00:25:18] Let's pretend.

[00:25:19] Let's pretend.

[00:25:20] In fact, the new –

[00:25:20] That's a great answer.

[00:25:21] The new book, we've finished the Treehouse series now

[00:25:25] and there was kids writing to me all the time

[00:25:28] and one of the most common questions was can you put me in the book?

[00:25:32] And so I was like how do I get all the kids in the world

[00:25:35] as one of the characters?

[00:25:37] And Bill Hope, this illustrator I'm working with,

[00:25:40] he comes from the Blue Mountains.

[00:25:42] He's young, he's energetic and he's brilliant.

[00:25:46] And he said, well, we'll just dress them in adventure suits

[00:25:49] and we'll put a cardboard box on their heads.

[00:25:51] It's a disguise.

[00:25:52] Yeah.

[00:25:52] And then that you can be anyone.

[00:25:55] Because that's what I really like about your book.

[00:25:57] It's written to the kid.

[00:25:59] It's like do you remember?

[00:26:00] And then you said this and then I said that.

[00:26:02] It's in that tense.

[00:26:03] You and me have been on a lot of adventures together.

[00:26:05] I remember when we went to the bottom of the ocean

[00:26:07] and we fought that giant Electropuss and remember this.

[00:26:11] So I'm already assuming great familiarity with the reader

[00:26:15] from the very first page.

[00:26:17] And I think if you go in confident as a reader,

[00:26:22] sorry, as an author, as a reader, we just submit to that confidence.

[00:26:26] We go, okay, you seem to know what you're doing.

[00:26:29] That's, yeah, that's really interesting.

[00:26:31] Because it's got, I suppose, would you say the same thing

[00:26:34] about parenthood a little bit as a father if you're kind of coming to go,

[00:26:36] okay, guys, I think, you know, sometimes you have to go,

[00:26:39] this is what we're doing even though you're like, well,

[00:26:41] I've only really got the next two steps figured out.

[00:26:43] But if you can project an air of confidence,

[00:26:45] you can get the team to move with you.

[00:26:47] I think so.

[00:26:47] And too much consultation is not a good thing because.

[00:26:52] That's really good.

[00:26:53] I do believe children respond to parameters and limits.

[00:26:58] They need to know where the limits are.

[00:27:00] So too much consultation in regards to like, hey,

[00:27:04] what do you want to do today?

[00:27:05] Do you want to go to the park?

[00:27:06] Do you want to do this?

[00:27:07] A little bit doesn't hurt.

[00:27:09] A little bit, yes.

[00:27:09] But I agree.

[00:27:10] But rather than going, hey, we're going to go to the park and, you know,

[00:27:13] let's go.

[00:27:14] And then you end up on an adventure you never saw coming because you just

[00:27:18] kind of kicked it into action.

[00:27:19] Yeah.

[00:27:20] I've got, I had a book called The Bad Book and The Very Bad Book.

[00:27:24] I wanted to ask you this.

[00:27:25] I read a little bit about this.

[00:27:26] They were quite notorious because that's when Terry and I were learning

[00:27:29] to collaborate and write a book together rather than me write words

[00:27:34] and then him come along later and do pictures.

[00:27:36] We'd meet every week and we said, we'll just play and we'll do

[00:27:40] the baddest stuff possible.

[00:27:42] Everything will be bad.

[00:27:43] Bad children, bad parents, bad animals.

[00:27:47] Everything is bad poetry.

[00:27:49] And we just gave ourselves total permission.

[00:27:52] But we had these characters, Bad Mummy and Bad Daddy,

[00:27:55] and those strip cartoons.

[00:27:58] And they'd always start with the kids saying, hey, mummy,

[00:28:00] can I run across this very busy six-lane highway with my eyes shut?

[00:28:04] And the mother would say, oh, I don't know.

[00:28:06] That sounds a bit dangerous.

[00:28:07] And the child would say, oh, please, please, please.

[00:28:12] And the mother would say, okay, but be careful.

[00:28:17] And then the child would say, thanks, mum, count me down.

[00:28:20] And so the mother counts him down and he runs across the road and gets hit

[00:28:24] by a truck and explodes for good measure for no apparent reason.

[00:28:30] And the mother just looks at it and goes, oops, and turns a shopping trolley and walks away.

[00:28:36] That's right.

[00:28:38] Now I got accused of encouraging children to run across the road with their eyes shut.

[00:28:44] Yeah.

[00:28:44] And I said, can we look at the cartoon?

[00:28:47] The child pays a very high price for this.

[00:28:51] Totally.

[00:28:51] I don't think any kid reading that's going to go, that's the way to do it.

[00:28:54] And the mother should have said no.

[00:28:57] You know, there are times when you need to say no as a parent.

[00:29:00] And this is one of them.

[00:29:01] Well, that's actually quite a clever, you know, I hear that.

[00:29:03] That's quite a clever way to subvert it because you get the kid doing the teaching.

[00:29:07] You get the kid going, no, no, no, don't let the kid do that.

[00:29:09] Yeah.

[00:29:10] Kids implicitly realise that that kid is breaking a rule.

[00:29:14] And that's the fun of books and the freedom of them is that we can do a little thought experiment.

[00:29:20] What if you did run across the road with your eyes shut?

[00:29:22] And so I was quite confident with that and kids loved these characters.

[00:29:27] Mummy, can I, Daddy, can I jump into this volcano?

[00:29:31] I don't know.

[00:29:31] That sounds a bit dangerous.

[00:29:32] Please.

[00:29:33] All right.

[00:29:34] And then a little plaintive speech bubble coming up from the volcano.

[00:29:38] Mummy, Daddy, I'm burning up.

[00:29:40] And the dad just goes, oops.

[00:29:44] As you had girls that grew up into young women and they, you know,

[00:29:50] you go through the teenage years, which is fraught with risk taking.

[00:29:54] What did your relationship with that, you know, looking back on the teenage years,

[00:29:58] let's say, with rules and the importance of breaking them,

[00:30:01] the importance of adhering them to them, what did you learn through that?

[00:30:05] Well, I'd been a teenager who broke rules.

[00:30:08] And there's a certain amount of, you need to do that.

[00:30:13] Yeah.

[00:30:13] It's not a terrible thing.

[00:30:15] Obviously, you don't want to be doing life-threatening things or stupid things.

[00:30:20] But we would share these memories of our own teenagehood with them.

[00:30:26] We were quite open.

[00:30:27] And do you think that helped lay a realistic boundary?

[00:30:32] A communication that is real rather than don't do this thing that I used to do

[00:30:39] but I now am too old to realise the thrill of it.

[00:30:44] And it's not going to stop them anyway.

[00:30:47] If you are going to do this thing, take precautions, you know.

[00:30:52] Absolutely.

[00:30:52] As far as you can.

[00:30:54] But there is a certain amount of parenting where you just have to let go.

[00:30:58] You know, you talk about keeping the lines of communication open

[00:31:00] and definitely with other men that we've had on the show

[00:31:04] that have now had kids go through teenage years and they're adult.

[00:31:09] Keeping the lines of communication open seems to be almost the top priority

[00:31:12] for the teenage years.

[00:31:14] Yeah.

[00:31:15] If they feel they're just going to get judgment and prohibitions hurled at them,

[00:31:21] they're not going to see you as someone they can say,

[00:31:24] look, I've got this situation.

[00:31:26] What do you think?

[00:31:28] And Jill was telling me the other day one of her techniques that she learned

[00:31:32] was not to give advice to Sarah.

[00:31:36] She would just listen and repeat back to her everything that Sarah was saying.

[00:31:42] And so Sarah was telling her about some friendship drama.

[00:31:46] And so Jill was just saying, ah, so this happened and so you felt that.

[00:31:52] And yeah, yeah.

[00:31:54] And at the end of it, Sarah was thrilled.

[00:31:57] She just went, mum, you are the best.

[00:32:00] You always know exactly what to say.

[00:32:02] I've sorted it.

[00:32:04] No, it seems like one of, it seems like, you know,

[00:32:07] I don't want to use the word hack, but it's like as a technique,

[00:32:09] it really does, you know, it obviously is just about holding the space

[00:32:14] for them to talk.

[00:32:15] Absolutely.

[00:32:15] And it's really hard because we all want to give advice.

[00:32:19] But advice can shut things down before the child's had a chance

[00:32:23] to process what they're feeling and recognise what they're feeling

[00:32:30] and recognise what they really should do.

[00:32:34] But if you tell them stay away from that kid,

[00:32:38] you're only increasing their likelihood.

[00:32:42] Totally.

[00:32:42] Totally.

[00:32:42] Yeah.

[00:32:43] So many, well, so much of what your books are about to me too

[00:32:47] is the spirit of adventure.

[00:32:51] And, you know, on a personal note, like I look at the Treehouse books

[00:32:55] and I'm like, oh, I have an Andy and I've gone on adventures with my Andy.

[00:32:59] And I think actually early days my son even noticed that.

[00:33:02] He was like, oh, you've got a friend called Andy

[00:33:04] that you've got weird adventures with.

[00:33:06] I was like, oh, yeah, that's very true.

[00:33:08] What do you think are the ingredients for a great adventure?

[00:33:11] Well, there has to be both pleasure and danger.

[00:33:16] You can't – and I fought against this in the early years of my writing

[00:33:21] was that people were trying to clean up books so that there was nothing nasty

[00:33:28] or no bad behaviour and everything was nice.

[00:33:32] Like what would an example of bad behaviour be?

[00:33:37] Pretty much everything I wrote about in my early books.

[00:33:40] Right.

[00:33:43] It's still going on.

[00:33:44] I mean we're hearing all the censorship that's happening with books in America.

[00:33:49] Yeah.

[00:33:49] People have got an idea.

[00:33:51] What a book should be.

[00:33:52] What a book should be and what it shouldn't be doing.

[00:33:54] But a true book is going to open up possibilities and let the reader decide.

[00:34:01] So, I was arguing no books should be wild places of creative freedom.

[00:34:09] They shouldn't be all nice.

[00:34:11] In fact, you can't have an adventure if something doesn't go wrong

[00:34:14] or you're not transgressing some common sense rule.

[00:34:18] Yes.

[00:34:19] Things working out is not funny or adventurous.

[00:34:23] Like things going to plan is not funny or adventurous.

[00:34:25] It's bad storytelling because we go to a story wanting to see if something go wrong

[00:34:31] and how are the characters going to respond to it.

[00:34:33] So, Hansel and Gretel was an early model for me.

[00:34:36] I just went, why is this story so famous?

[00:34:40] That's when things go really wrong when you meet a witch.

[00:34:42] It involves parent – well, first, parental abandonment.

[00:34:46] That's right.

[00:34:46] Yeah, they're abandoned in the first one.

[00:34:49] A child is very vulnerable and dependent.

[00:34:52] That is a really dark thing for a kid to get their head around.

[00:34:55] You're right because the book starts with Hansel and Gretel's parents took him

[00:34:58] into the forest and left him.

[00:34:58] There's not enough food so we better go and leave them in the forest.

[00:35:02] Yeah, there's some dark themes in Hansel and Gretel.

[00:35:04] These are really dark themes and yet we all remember this.

[00:35:07] And I think it's a good children's story because it's putting a name

[00:35:12] to certain fears.

[00:35:14] And base emotions and desires.

[00:35:17] And we see Hansel and Gretel resourcefully fighting against all these things

[00:35:23] so that they come home.

[00:35:26] The only problem with that story is the father whose stepmother has died

[00:35:32] and he says, oh, come home, children.

[00:35:35] It's all good now.

[00:35:36] Oh, it was the evil – that's right.

[00:35:36] It was the evil stepmum, wasn't it?

[00:35:38] It was the evil stepmother's idea to abandon them.

[00:35:40] Yes.

[00:35:40] So you think that's too convenient a plot?

[00:35:43] Well, they just got rid of her.

[00:35:45] That father, I think he's culpable.

[00:35:47] He doesn't deserve the children and all the jewels and the diamonds

[00:35:53] that they bring back from the witch's hut.

[00:35:56] That's true, yeah.

[00:35:57] He gets off the hook a bit easy.

[00:35:58] But I also, to come back full circle, I do love pleasure and danger

[00:36:02] as equal bits of an adventure.

[00:36:04] Yeah.

[00:36:05] Whether it's a story that you're creating or a real-life adventure

[00:36:09] you're hoping to create for the family.

[00:36:12] Yeah.

[00:36:13] Something's going to happen that you're not expecting or didn't plan for

[00:36:16] and that's true of when I'm writing a book.

[00:36:19] I think I know what I'm going to write but it's the pleasure

[00:36:22] of the unexpected discoveries.

[00:36:24] I think that excitement of the unexpected,

[00:36:27] a lot of people are nervous about the unexpected but I would – it seems to me,

[00:36:32] and I'd hazard guess that you get very excited about the unexpected.

[00:36:36] Yeah.

[00:36:36] And I think that's a good precondition for an adventurous mind.

[00:36:40] Yeah, and an adventurous life too.

[00:36:44] It's like when are we – the worst thing people can tell you is when life

[00:36:50] just seems like a predictable drudge and you know everything

[00:36:54] that's going to happen.

[00:36:56] And there's a great spiritual teacher or spiritual entertainer.

[00:37:00] He calls himself Alan Watts.

[00:37:02] He says, what we all think we want is certainty but we don't.

[00:37:06] If we can predict the outcome of something, we're bored already.

[00:37:10] And he says, look at a game of chess.

[00:37:12] The minute you can see that you've lost and that someone has checkmate,

[00:37:17] you don't bother finishing the game.

[00:37:19] Yeah.

[00:37:19] You need to start again because you want that unpredictability.

[00:37:22] You want the dance.

[00:37:23] And you want the dance.

[00:37:25] And children are an ultimate form of unpredictability in our lives.

[00:37:31] We don't know what they're going to be like.

[00:37:32] They might like the same things as us.

[00:37:35] They might be completely different.

[00:37:38] And they're going to introduce a measure of chaos and uncertainty but –

[00:37:42] That's the fun.

[00:37:43] Gee, we're going to be involved and yeah, the juice –

[00:37:49] there'll be highs and lows but there'll be life.

[00:37:52] Yeah.

[00:37:53] Did you do anything as a dad when you were raising the kids to kind of –

[00:37:57] and I'm sure you did – foster a spirit of adventure on a small scale

[00:38:02] or on a larger scale?

[00:38:04] Absolutely.

[00:38:06] Yeah, again, a perfect day with both the daughters would be just to go

[00:38:11] to a playground and just let them have at it.

[00:38:15] Yeah.

[00:38:45] Anything funny or exciting or out of the ordinary happens,

[00:38:49] you write down in the book.

[00:38:52] I love that idea.

[00:38:54] So, that's what his family did and it became something the whole family

[00:38:57] could come back to over and over.

[00:38:59] Anyone can contribute.

[00:39:00] It can be a picture.

[00:39:02] It can be something stupid that dad said or something cute that the kids said.

[00:39:07] That's awesome.

[00:39:07] And I brought one in.

[00:39:10] You brought the family book?

[00:39:10] Oh, my God.

[00:39:11] Show and tell.

[00:39:12] Well, I love this.

[00:39:13] I mean, okay, please teach us how to do the – like, you know,

[00:39:17] give us your tips on what makes a good family book and –

[00:39:20] Well, it's probably going to be injurious to your pride and dignity as an adult

[00:39:26] because the kids are going to write down the –

[00:39:28] They like to rip into you.

[00:39:28] – and things that you've done.

[00:39:31] Wow.

[00:39:32] Famously, I went for a run around the block and I failed to put my running pants on.

[00:39:37] I was just running around in my underpants, which looked, in my defence,

[00:39:41] a bit like running pants.

[00:39:43] Kind of like running shorts.

[00:39:44] Yeah, yeah.

[00:39:45] And so, that's been immortalised.

[00:39:47] That's a legendary –

[00:39:50] And, you know, seriously, I think they realise that you can fail too.

[00:39:55] Oh, mate, this is so beautiful.

[00:39:57] That's beautiful.

[00:39:57] When did this start?

[00:39:58] What year?

[00:39:59] This sort of started very early on.

[00:40:01] Because I see some pretty, you know, young writing in there.

[00:40:05] Yeah.

[00:40:06] Some of mine too.

[00:40:08] Sorry, I hope that's a kid's writing.

[00:40:12] Well, my drawing has not advanced since I was a kid.

[00:40:16] And so, what would be – and I'm sure that the answer is it's different for every family,

[00:40:20] but what would be a great moment?

[00:40:21] We'd be like, you know what?

[00:40:22] Because it's kind of like it's the diary version of the pool room.

[00:40:26] Like it's the sort of – what's the moment where you go, okay, that's going in the book?

[00:40:30] It can be big or small.

[00:40:32] What have we got here?

[00:40:34] Sarah said – oh, Jesus on August the 21st.

[00:40:40] Must have been 2003 or something.

[00:40:44] Jesus was the first one to come alive in the world.

[00:40:47] He made up all the swear words because his name is like a swear word.

[00:40:54] What a great – that's literally Genesis of the book.

[00:40:58] It's like verse one, chapter one.

[00:41:00] This is amazing.

[00:41:01] I mean, we have a digital version of this.

[00:41:04] Like so and I'll write down quotes in a notes app.

[00:41:07] But I would much rather switch it over to analog because it's so beautiful seeing that now,

[00:41:14] that book.

[00:41:15] Like what a precious tome that you get to keep for your life.

[00:41:18] And I noticed there too there's even like little flyers to like shows that you've been to.

[00:41:23] What's the story behind a Magnum classic rapper?

[00:41:27] It's 26th of August 2014.

[00:41:30] It's called Fun Dad.

[00:41:33] On the day of the launch of the 52-story treehouse,

[00:41:36] Andrew was so busy signing that he ran out of time to buy dinner for Sarah.

[00:41:42] Jill's written this because she was at tennis.

[00:41:43] So he just bought her home a Magnum for dinner.

[00:41:50] It's about the same calories.

[00:41:54] You've never forgotten it.

[00:41:56] Actually, the biggest one was – and this is Jasmine's favourite memory.

[00:42:04] These are many volumes.

[00:42:06] How many do you have of the family book?

[00:42:08] Eventually, we went to a whole year diary form, a page a day.

[00:42:14] That's good.

[00:42:15] And did that work as a pretty good system?

[00:42:17] Yeah.

[00:42:17] And it's not – you don't have to put something in every day.

[00:42:19] Do you know what?

[00:42:19] Just as a slight aside, I have a thing with my kids where they have email addresses

[00:42:23] and I email them from when they were really little

[00:42:25] and then I give them this email address when they get older.

[00:42:27] Yeah.

[00:42:27] But I find I slack off, which is horrible.

[00:42:30] And then you feel like it's gone on for like,

[00:42:31] oh, it's been six months since I've emailed.

[00:42:33] And it's like, oh, now I've got to kind of include everything.

[00:42:36] And then it builds up and it feels like homework and then you hate yourself

[00:42:39] because you haven't emailed and you're letting this thing slip.

[00:42:41] Yeah, yeah.

[00:42:42] So maybe – I mean, I will still keep doing the emails

[00:42:45] but maybe moving it to this book form.

[00:42:48] It's there.

[00:42:49] It's always there for the family.

[00:42:50] And it's just an invitation for creativity.

[00:42:53] It can be the drawing or the magnum wrapper.

[00:42:55] Because we had a – Ben Quilty, who was on the show The Artist,

[00:42:58] he had a similar – well, an adjacent idea, which is a portrait book.

[00:43:05] So go out to dinner, everyone has the book and you all take turns

[00:43:08] in drawing portraits of each other.

[00:43:10] Funny that the same – so often the same theme is the parents absolutely

[00:43:15] get roasted by the kids in the book by not getting flattering.

[00:43:21] And I think that's how you share your vulnerability with them

[00:43:25] and teach them that it's okay to laugh –

[00:43:28] At ourselves.

[00:43:29] At ourselves.

[00:43:29] That's such an important lesson too.

[00:43:30] With each other.

[00:43:31] And I feel like that's like a critically more of an important lesson.

[00:43:35] It's certainly an asset to be able to, in a safe environment,

[00:43:38] learn how to laugh at yourself and to not need to be invincible.

[00:43:42] Absolutely.

[00:43:43] Absolutely.

[00:43:43] And I think it's when you see someone trying to be rigidly in control

[00:43:48] and I'm doing it the right way.

[00:43:52] That's when kids will go in to attack you and try to bring you down.

[00:43:59] As a teacher, I would watch a visiting speaker come into a classroom

[00:44:03] and within 30 seconds those kids have worked out,

[00:44:07] what's that speaker's attitude towards us?

[00:44:11] Does he think he's great?

[00:44:12] Is he a big shot?

[00:44:13] Does he think he knows more than us?

[00:44:16] If so, we're going to mess up and bring him down, cut him down.

[00:44:22] It's instinctive.

[00:44:23] Yeah, it's really interesting.

[00:44:24] Whereas if that person comes in respectfully of the children

[00:44:28] and then makes a joke against themselves and says, you know,

[00:44:32] we're just –

[00:44:33] It gets them on that wavelength.

[00:44:35] You're going to listen because there's no point bringing them down.

[00:44:38] They're already down.

[00:44:39] So in the family book, I mean, I suppose it's just as a family you find the rhythm.

[00:44:45] But, you know, there's some simple things like it has to stay like next

[00:44:48] to the fruit bowl or like it's always front and centre or it stays in your –

[00:44:52] Needs to be on the kitchen table or on the bench.

[00:44:54] Needs to be easily accessible.

[00:44:56] And then it becomes a little thing.

[00:44:58] Oh, that thing that just happened, we should put that in the family book.

[00:45:02] That's family bookable.

[00:45:04] But I love it as a way of making memories too because our memories are fallible.

[00:45:09] And, you know, I think we use phones a lot now just to take – you know,

[00:45:13] I've got 150,000 photos and it's a love-hate with the phone.

[00:45:19] But I'm like I have to – I'd love taking these photos because, you know,

[00:45:22] I'd probably take 10 photos a day of the kids or I'm videoing them

[00:45:25] because I'm like I'm sorry guys.

[00:45:26] It's how I remember.

[00:45:27] And we really do – we have classics that we go back to.

[00:45:31] But I love the written form.

[00:45:33] There's something, you know, there's something really special about seeing

[00:45:36] the handwriting from that day and that it's analogue.

[00:45:39] Well, and obviously it suits our family culture being writers and editors.

[00:45:45] But do you think anyone – I mean anyone, right?

[00:45:47] We can all write.

[00:45:48] We can all note down.

[00:45:49] Yeah.

[00:45:50] And it's a way that you're teaching literacy with your kids too which is at the base level

[00:45:56] that's sharing stories for the sheer fun of it.

[00:46:01] And this is the greatest thing I ever did as a dad.

[00:46:05] On 22nd of January 2001 down in St Kilda, corner of Inkeman Street and Chapel Street,

[00:46:12] a truckload of Sprites, a truck carrying cans of Sprite,

[00:46:17] lost a pallet of Sprite cans all over the road.

[00:46:22] And we pulled up at the red light and I just opened the door and it's just a truckload

[00:46:30] of Sprites on the road.

[00:46:32] Dad opens the door and gets one out of outside.

[00:46:36] And then when he goes back and gets – oh, we must have driven on because I'd given her

[00:46:41] a can of Sprite.

[00:46:42] Do you want a Sprite?

[00:46:43] Have a hot Sprite that's just come off a truck.

[00:46:46] And then we went back and got three more.

[00:46:50] That's the sort of dad I am.

[00:46:53] But one was leaking.

[00:46:56] Go ahead and pick it first.

[00:46:57] No, I think it was just pissing Sprite.

[00:47:00] That was the day I learned how to shotgun a Sprite.

[00:47:05] Oh, that is really special.

[00:47:08] That's such a good idea.

[00:47:10] Yeah.

[00:47:11] I did think of three other words I would use and it's for life really but works for family

[00:47:19] and dating.

[00:47:20] Loving what is.

[00:47:23] It's the name of a book by Byron Katie.

[00:47:27] And it's just brilliant because it says whatever your ideas about things, the situation, what

[00:47:35] should be happening, make sure you're checking in with what is actually happening because that's

[00:47:42] what's happening.

[00:47:43] And you might as well love it.

[00:47:46] Because nothing else is happening anyway.

[00:47:48] No.

[00:47:48] And the thing that should be happening is not happening.

[00:47:51] So, let's assess this clear-eyed, get the fun and the joy out of it and make the best out

[00:47:58] of it.

[00:48:00] But I love that too because it's, you know, as you say, I can think even just again from

[00:48:06] this last week, many examples of my own life where I'm like, no matter what you wanted

[00:48:10] it to be, this is what it is.

[00:48:12] Yeah.

[00:48:13] And no matter what you think your child should be or what you wanted your child to be, this

[00:48:18] is who they are.

[00:48:19] Yeah.

[00:48:20] And there's the challenge for you to bend with that and to go, well, maybe I don't understand

[00:48:26] this completely.

[00:48:27] But this seems to be a strong pull in a thing in my child.

[00:48:33] And I'll do what I can to facilitate it without judgment, without saying, oh, you know.

[00:48:40] Just let them be.

[00:48:42] Yeah.

[00:48:43] Let them be and love them for who they are.

[00:48:44] I mean, it's funny that we always come, we circle back to stuff like that, but I don't

[00:48:49] think you can hear it enough.

[00:48:50] I don't think we can have enough ways to describe all the angles of what those sentiments really

[00:48:56] mean.

[00:48:56] And it keeps coming back at you in different ways.

[00:48:58] You think you've learnt the lesson, but a developing child is...

[00:49:04] We'll keep reteaching it to you.

[00:49:05] Yeah.

[00:49:05] When was the last entry in the family book?

[00:49:08] I mean, does it still get entries?

[00:49:11] No.

[00:49:12] Look, it's probably shifted to a WhatsApp group now where we'll share things.

[00:49:17] I still love the idea of a book.

[00:49:19] I know there'll be many digital temptations, but I still love that idea of the book because

[00:49:25] it's just so...

[00:49:26] Even just seeing you pull it out, you're like, what a great investment for the family if

[00:49:30] you could put years and decades down into having it as a book.

[00:49:35] Yeah.

[00:49:35] Well, I mean, it's very intense during the childhood years and the teenage years.

[00:49:41] So you're all around in the same house too.

[00:49:44] So that's perhaps why we've moved to WhatsApp.

[00:49:46] That does make more sense.

[00:49:48] Yeah.

[00:49:48] On that note, quickly, just because I know we have to wrap up in a sec, but one thing

[00:49:52] that was sort of struck me is maybe accidentally, whether you like it or not, you probably are

[00:49:57] involved a little bit in being at the forefront of something that I know a lot of parents care

[00:50:01] deeply about, which is kids not being on screens.

[00:50:04] The book isn't the ultimate not a screen device.

[00:50:09] Same distance from the head, same hand geography, but it's not a screen.

[00:50:16] And do you find yourself having those conversations with parents a lot or the power of books to

[00:50:22] engage a mind and more and more, I think one of the values of books, and I don't know if

[00:50:28] this is something that you think about, is the ability to foster long form attention rather

[00:50:34] than short form attention.

[00:50:36] Yeah.

[00:50:37] I tend to think of it, it's a bit like a junk food snack, which can be really enjoyable

[00:50:43] in small doses.

[00:50:46] But after a while, you crave a proper meal and long form storytelling is that for me.

[00:50:53] It's something you fall into, something you're looking forward to at the beginning or the

[00:50:59] end of each day or in a reading break.

[00:51:02] And it lives with you and informs your whole day.

[00:51:07] I couldn't agree more.

[00:51:08] And I think that's why fiction is so important.

[00:51:10] I probably, I read a lot more fiction now than I maybe used to five years ago.

[00:51:14] Right.

[00:51:15] Yeah.

[00:51:15] Just as an, as a, sometimes I'm full sleep within two minutes, but as a bedtime habit.

[00:51:21] But one thing I've noticed is that exact thing you, it stays with you.

[00:51:25] A good book you're thinking about during the day.

[00:51:28] And that is so different to what our phones give our brains.

[00:51:34] Yeah.

[00:51:35] They're giving you instant information and controversial opinions and they get you riled up and there's

[00:51:43] a place for that.

[00:51:45] You do need to keep in touch with what's going on in the real world.

[00:51:49] But having that secondary deep world is an incredible antidote to getting too upset about real world

[00:52:00] stuff because this has been going on for thousands of years.

[00:52:03] Yeah.

[00:52:04] And people like Shakespeare have written everything that happens.

[00:52:10] It's all happened before.

[00:52:12] Yeah.

[00:52:12] And having that deeper perspective is an incredible advantage.

[00:52:17] One of the things when you're reading stories, you're watching people solve problems in all

[00:52:22] sorts of creative and sometimes destructive ways.

[00:52:26] So I think it gives you just a wider.

[00:52:30] Yes.

[00:52:31] Toolkit.

[00:52:32] Toolkit for, you know, if you're feeling like you'd like to murder the king because it'll

[00:52:37] help you get to be the king a bit sooner, you might remember Macbeth and you might go,

[00:52:42] ah, that didn't really work out for.

[00:52:44] Secondary effects.

[00:52:45] Yeah.

[00:52:46] Yeah.

[00:52:46] There was a lot of subsequent killing that you had to do.

[00:52:49] So maybe I'll just let time take its course and maybe being the king isn't the great

[00:52:55] thing it was meant to be.

[00:52:57] That's a pretty crude example.

[00:52:58] Yes.

[00:52:59] No, no, no.

[00:52:59] Not too many people sit around.

[00:53:01] I don't know if any of our listeners are like, oh my God, I was thinking about killing

[00:53:03] the king today too.

[00:53:04] But I know what you mean.

[00:53:05] I mean, we talk about this a lot.

[00:53:07] Like I'm a big fan of, I don't know if you've ever come across his work, but Seth

[00:53:10] Godin.

[00:53:10] You know, he's in the world of marketing, but I would say pretty close to philosophy.

[00:53:16] And he's written some great stuff about education.

[00:53:18] And one of his tenants is he comes back to him.

[00:53:22] It's exactly what you just said.

[00:53:23] He was like, we don't need to train our kids to be these, you know, memory machines and

[00:53:27] rote learning and any of that.

[00:53:28] The best thing you can give your kid is the ability to solve interesting problems.

[00:53:33] That's the fun of life.

[00:53:34] And finding books that have already given you the solutions.

[00:53:38] And I think that's, you know, no, I think about the, I'm happy to make this just a pure

[00:53:43] ad for how good books are.

[00:53:44] But I mean, that is what reading as a kid gives them.

[00:53:47] Dr. Seuss said a couple of four lines that I love.

[00:53:53] The more you read, the more you know.

[00:53:55] And the more you know, the more places you can go.

[00:53:58] And those places are metaphorical as where, they can be literal.

[00:54:03] My writing's taken me all over the world.

[00:54:05] But how did I learn to write?

[00:54:07] I started getting books on how to write, you know, and I'd read them because, and that

[00:54:13] gives me an enormous advantage.

[00:54:17] Because all these people have solved all these problems already.

[00:54:20] And then all I have to do is apply them to myself.

[00:54:23] And I remember bringing it full circle.

[00:54:25] The Day My Bum Went Psycho was just a title for a long time that made kids laugh.

[00:54:31] When they'd say, what are you going to write next?

[00:54:33] I'd say, oh, a serious book.

[00:54:35] And they go, well, what's it called?

[00:54:37] And they go, oh.

[00:54:38] And I go, The Day My Bum Went Psycho.

[00:54:41] And then they'd laugh.

[00:54:42] And I go, no, there's nothing funny about when your bum detaches itself and runs away.

[00:54:47] And they'd laugh even more.

[00:54:48] But so then the publisher said, are you ever going to actually write this book?

[00:54:53] And I said, I don't know.

[00:54:54] I've never written a novel.

[00:54:55] I just do short stories.

[00:54:57] They said, well, if we think you should write it, it'd be fun.

[00:55:00] And I was up for mischief and provoking the children scene at that point.

[00:55:05] And Jill unexpectedly got pregnant with Sarah.

[00:55:10] And so there was a ticking clock before Sarah was born.

[00:55:14] And it was about four months.

[00:55:15] I went, how am I going to write a novel?

[00:55:17] And I was walking past Borders Bookshop in Chapel Street.

[00:55:22] And they had a bargain bin out the front.

[00:55:24] And there was a book, How to Write a Novel in 52 Weekends.

[00:55:27] And I was like, well, I'll just crunch that to about 12.

[00:55:31] And I followed the method exactly.

[00:55:34] That's amazing.

[00:55:35] And out came the novel and three million copies later.

[00:55:41] It certainly did take you some places.

[00:55:43] Yeah.

[00:55:44] So that's just one tiny example of the power of literacy to teach you anything.

[00:55:53] And if you have a familiarity with books and language, then that's all at your resource,

[00:55:59] at your disposal.

[00:56:00] It's such a turbocharger.

[00:56:02] And psychology as well.

[00:56:03] You can find out what's going on with yourself through so many great books.

[00:56:10] Yeah.

[00:56:10] I love it.

[00:56:11] I mean, Andy, thank you so much.

[00:56:12] It's like your gift of knowing how to meet kids where they are and to be on their level

[00:56:18] is really awesome to watch, both in person and in your books.

[00:56:22] I think it's on behalf of all the parents that have had you go into their kids' minds

[00:56:30] and take them on great mind-altering adventures.

[00:56:33] Thank you, mate.

[00:56:34] Thank you.

[00:56:35] And it's a great honour to be that guide for all those people too.

[00:56:39] And I don't take it lightly.

[00:56:41] I think it's...

[00:56:42] But I think that is the beautiful thing about this conversation today too.

[00:56:44] I can tell.

[00:56:46] The desire to meet them where they're at and to let them be who they are is an awesome,

[00:56:50] awesome legacy.

[00:56:51] Thank you, mate.

[00:56:52] Thank you very much.

[00:56:55] Hamish is glad that he talked to another dad.

[00:56:58] Now he's going to say some other stuff, but he will be by himself.

[00:57:03] Such an awesome chat.

[00:57:04] So just what a lovely guy.

[00:57:06] What an amazing guy.

[00:57:07] And let's just all admit that we're going out to buy a day a page calendar.

[00:57:14] Tim and I both are immediately like we were in here.

[00:57:17] We saw the book.

[00:57:19] We were through the conversation.

[00:57:20] We probably could have just spent the whole podcast actually delving into each of the stories

[00:57:26] on the pages of the book.

[00:57:27] But I think as we all sort of know, I always have this conversation with comedian friends

[00:57:32] where you're like, it's actually, it's this funny thing about stories about your kids.

[00:57:36] It's just never that funny.

[00:57:38] Like you find them hilarious and adorable and they're the absolute greatest things you've

[00:57:42] ever heard.

[00:57:42] But it's actually not that funny to anyone else to just say what your kid said.

[00:57:46] And then there's always this weird moment where you're like, okay, that's not quite

[00:57:49] as funny to you as it is to me.

[00:57:51] But that is the point of the family book.

[00:57:53] It's a book for a very limited audience and it'll be the most special book in the world

[00:57:58] to that audience.

[00:57:58] And I can tell as Andy was flicking through it, that that certainly is to him.

[00:58:02] So what an awesome tidbit, but there was so much great stuff in that chat.

[00:58:06] Yet again, just a beautiful reminder of the basics, I think, of let your kids be who they

[00:58:13] are, you know, be intensely aware of who they are rather than who we were wanting them to

[00:58:18] be in any moment and loving what is.

[00:58:21] I think he, not surprisingly, he's very good with words and he put it very, very elegantly.

[00:58:26] So thank you so much, Randy.

[00:58:28] Thank you for listening.

[00:58:29] Thank you, sorry, to you for listening, listening to this.

[00:58:33] And we'll see you next time.

[00:58:40] How Are The Dad's Dad is produced by myself and my mate Tim Bartley.

[00:58:47] The theme song is thanks to the incredibly talented Tom Carty.

[00:58:53] You can find him drenched throughout the internet.

[00:58:56] We recorded this episode on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin

[00:59:01] Nation and we pay our respects to their culture of storytelling that's survived for thousands

[00:59:05] of years.

[00:59:05] If you want to say hi, head to our website, howarethedadsdad.com.

[00:59:09] But most of all, thank you for listening.

[00:59:11] Hamish is a dad who just spoke with a dad and it blew his tiny mind about what he learned.

[00:59:17] So he'll keep burning dads and forcing them to talk to other dads' dads.

[00:59:27] Okay, last of the thanks, last of the credits.

[00:59:29] And there is one last thing we need you to hear and that is our thanks to our sponsor,

[00:59:32] Hertz.

[00:59:33] Hertz, step up to the plate.

[00:59:35] We kind of had a deal where we were like, look, if there's going to be a sponsor, we

[00:59:37] just want one sponsor for the whole season.

[00:59:40] Hertz are legends.

[00:59:41] We stand for the same things.

[00:59:42] We love the idea that they are memory makers, they're weekend away facilitators, they're

[00:59:47] adventure facilitators, they're holiday facilitators.

[00:59:49] So if you do need a car, contact Hertz.

[00:59:53] If you don't need a car, look, they're still lovely to talk to, but you're just not going

[00:59:57] to have as much value, I think, in the interaction as someone who did need to rent a car.

[01:00:02] So that's primarily the market they're going for.

[01:00:05] And on top of that, Hertz are also offering listeners of How Are The Dads Dad 25% off the

[01:00:11] base rate when you hire a car.

[01:00:13] Just go to hertz.com.au forward slash H-O-D-D and check out the terms and conditions.

[01:00:18] Enjoy your 25% saving.

[01:00:20] Thanks again for listening and thanks, Hertz.

[01:00:22] Thanks.