The Birthday Post That Sparked A Sharenting Debate

0:05Speaker 1:Welcome to Parenting out Loud, the podcast where, well, we don't talk about your everyday parenting stuff, we kind of talk about parenting news and culture and trends and take a good hard look at it. I'm Monique Bowley.

0:15Speaker 2:I'm Amelia Last, and I'm Stacy Hicks.

0:18Speaker 1:Coming up on today's show.

0:19Speaker 2:An influencer wore a white dress to a boxing match ten days postpartum and everyone lost their mind. But not for the reason. You might think you love that story, don't you.

0:28Speaker 3:I do?

0:28Speaker 2:I do. It's my Roman Empire.

0:30Speaker 3:Megan and Harry's daughter had a birthday recently and they marked it in the most millennial way possible a photo of the back of her head. Can we once and for all talk about this very weird generational habit.

0:43Speaker 1:Yeah, and our school's absorbing hr workplace culture, because it feels like nowadays every playground incident requires an email trail and a call to management.

0:55Speaker 3:At first, Japan's national soccer team was raised right. The Samurai Blue were in Texas for their first World Cup game and they drew with the Netherlands. It was two two, but they won everyone's hearts with what they did after the game, which was leave their locker room spotless. I don't know if you saw these photos. They were everywhere all over the internet, verified by the BBC. They had stacked the chairs neatly, they had collected the rubbish, they had folded their bibs and their towels neatly in the center of the room.

1:29Speaker 1:Yeah.

1:29Speaker 3:Now, if their parents aren't proud enough already, and the fact that they are playing in the World Cup, can you imagine the pride you would feel as a parent looking at those photos?

1:37Speaker 1:National pride.

1:38Speaker 3:Japanese sports fans. Look, they're non for tidying up stadiums after sporting games. This is Yeah, there's actually a Japanese principle which is return it the way you found it, except I'm sure there's a much more beautiful word for that in Japanese, and that concept is taught in primary school. I learned this when I lived in Japan, that there are no cleaners in primary schools in Japan because at the end of every day, the children clean the classroom and the school facilities themselves.

2:04Speaker 1:I love that. As a principal.

2:06Speaker 2:Yeah, it's great because then you're not raising little slobs who are just leaving everything behind.

2:11Speaker 3:Mom's you have been an elite athlete. Just how unusual is this behavior from the Japanese soccer team.

2:16Speaker 1:Very unfortunately. Locker rooms are a pit. I would describe them as just angle tape and dirty towels, and they are not left in the best conditions, so.

2:27Speaker 3:That makes it all the more extraordinary. Yeah, Gambaro, which means you go Japan.

2:32Speaker 2:Nice, awesome. Now I want to talk about someone who's got nine million followers on Instagram, and I know that neither of you are going to have heard of her. Her name is Molly may Haig. So she was on Love Island UK. She met her partner on that who she's now engaged to and has two children. She made bank off this show, Like I'm talking two million YouTube subscribers Love Island off Love Island, she was one of them, very likable, very likable, very beautiful, classically beautiful. She became the youngest creative director of Pretty Little Thing at twenty two.

3:03Speaker 2:Like Pretty Little Thing like a big fast fashion brand in the UK, so huge, huge deals that she got out of this. And Tommy is a boxer, so she went to his match ten days postpartum after the birth of their second son, Midas which is just a cool name. Their daughter's name is Bambi. Yes, all of this is coming from my head. Sadly, I know a lot about these people. And people lost their minds because she walked into that arena in a skin tight white dress.

3:31Speaker 1:No, looked with high.

3:33Speaker 2:Beautiful, with high heels. Beautiful. But that wasn't the most common commentary. Most of what the comments were saying was, Oh, she doesn't look very happy to be there. Oh, she could smile more. I'm like, would you That woman is bleeding and leaking, leaking like she would not be in a good way, and yet she showed up for her partner.

3:53Speaker 3:We're still in the messhonderpants.

3:54Speaker 1:Yeah, he hasn't slept.

3:56Speaker 2:No exactly, and she admitted that after And I don't don't like the had to give the quantifier afterwards, but she must have felt the need after she saw all of the commentary around her, and she put out something saying, I pulled it together for a couple of hours, but this is what I actually looked like ninety percent of the time, like a human cow. She posted a photo of her meeting and she said, I'd like to give a shout out to Spanks and a giant pad that got me through that night, and a link to the dress, which was from her own label, So very smart.

4:23Speaker 1:I just feel like I see through it, Molly may Hay. We're in an attention economy, and this is what you I know, this is what you're doing to get clicks and to get engagement, and then you yeah, it's just yeah, I kind of feel bad that she's trapped in this attention economy and has to do this, yeah clicks in the life.

4:41Speaker 2:I meanry it worked. I am sure that dress would have sold off the shelves.

4:45Speaker 1:That was her reason for going, supporting her husband.

4:48Speaker 2:Supporting her husband, so he was boxing in the match, so she was there to watch him, and she said she only went for a few hours and then went home. Now, the fact that she even has to say that, we would never do it if it was the other way around, we all know that. But yeah, I just thought it was I thought it was clever though, because she got adoration for looking so gorgeous ten days postpartum, But she also was very relatable afterwards by being like, look, this is what it normally looks like. That wasn't what I normally look like. She managed to do that balance. I thought it was a very smart, very smart move.

5:18Speaker 3:Megan and Harry's daughter Lily Bett, had a birthday last week. She turned five, and her parents did what they do every time she or her brother Archie have a birthday or it's Easter or some kind of special holiday event. They post a.

5:33Speaker 1:Photo or they have a jam to sell.

5:36Speaker 3:Where the kid's face is artfully obscured. Yeah, sometimes you see a little bit of a nose, sometimes you see a lot of hair, or it's a movement shot. We're all familiar with that. Because guess what, it's not just Megan and Harry doing that. Everyone is doing that now, putting these photos of their children up on the Internet where you cannot see the faces. And I get why people do it because or I get why they're obscuring the faces because the risks now are known about surveillance and AI and scammers, and you don't want to put your child's face out there to be preyed on in that way. But it does beg the question of why not just not why not not post your child? Yeah, why are you trying to come up with this unique composition where I can just see a part a tantalizing glimpse of their face. Stacy, you're looking guilty because you do this and.

6:33Speaker 2:I do this.

6:33Speaker 3:My uncharitable interpretation is that people feel the need to perform their parenting. Yeah, and that's why they keep doing it.

6:42Speaker 1:Before we go down that path, can we just just for funsies, can we compare it to what the Prince and Princess of Wales did. So each of their kids at five had an official portrait that was then released via Kensington Palace, and it feels very public duty. Here is our child front and center, here's their face. I guess it's kind of this public duty, it's institutional, kind of I no need for them to do it. So in contrast, the Megan and Harry stuff feels kind of pointed.

7:15Speaker 3:Oh for sure, I mean, and they get a lot of criticism for it, which, let's face it, they get a lot of criticism for everything they do, and I'm not inclined to take all of it seriously, but one criticism is, if you really did want your children to remain out of the public eye, stop kind of providing these little clues or tidbits for people, because it just heightens the public's curiosity.

7:40Speaker 1:It actually does, because the scarcity mentality fires up there and we go, I want to see the face if I would pay any amount of money to.

7:47Speaker 3:Because it's almost like an unsolved mystery at this point.

7:50Speaker 2:Yeah, and even now you do see ai versions of what their children look like up. Yes, so people will use those little glimpses and make portraits that gets circulated on Facebook or wherever. It's weird because there is even with that, even with that measure of safety, they're still using that then, So you're right, it totally is making it worse.

8:11Speaker 3:And I feel that way about all the celebrities who do this. Yeah, there's plenty of homegrown celebrities here in Australia who do exactly this too. It's not just people who are like seventh in line for the throne who are doing this. And it does make me more curious about something that I had never thought about before seeing that photo.

8:30Speaker 2:Yeah, and when you brought this up and I said to you, I was like, I do I do this? And I don't know why I do this? And I had to really think about it because I'm not famous obviously, I do have a public profile for work, so my Instagram is open for anyone to follow me. And I think it's that your natural instinct is to want to show every part of your life with your kid, because of course you think they're the cutest thing ever. But it feels like at this very moment, we're in that messy middle of well, I'm seeing people withdrawing their kids and I'm seeing less and less of that, and I'm seeing celebrities hiding faces. So should I be doing that?

9:09Speaker 2:Is this something where we don't know what the consequence will be in ten twenty years time and what our children will say about what we did. So that's where I'm kind of sitting, is in this weird middle grammarre. I'm like, oh, well, that person's doing it, so do I need to do it? When you interrogate it like showing it's weird, half their face is weird. It is weird, but I think it's wanting to show I am with them, I am mothering, Like here's this fun thing that we did, but I just can't show you the full picture.

9:36Speaker 1:I don't think it's weird at all. But I think I'm going to challenge something that you said, Amelia before. We said everyone is doing this, and I don't think it's really hit. I think it's still early adopters that are doing it, and I think it is what you were saying, it's kind of a coded parenting flex. It says, yes, I am educated, I'm woke, I understand implications of my child's privacy. Yes, I don't dress my child in poor patrol t shirts. Everything's artfully and tastefully.

10:07Speaker 3:Don't know what would be even more of a parenting flex, not feeling the need to show me that you, a celebrity, are spending time with your children.

10:15Speaker 1:But they still need to show the work right, Like for Megan and Harry, their brand is Harry does a lot of work advocating for men's and dad's mental health. Meghan has this brand American Riviera Orchard, which doesn't seem to have produced anything, but it seems quite wholesome.

10:32Speaker 3:Transition to as ever.

10:33Speaker 1:Oh yes, I'm way behind on laws rebrand, but they still need to be to brand themselves as wholesome, and I think children are part of that brand. But it is so they want the cachet that a child has and being cash.

10:53Speaker 3:What you're saying is they also want the cash in addition to the cachet. The child is a marketing technique.

10:58Speaker 1:Yeah, completely completely, but they want to show the parenting but not the face.

11:04Speaker 3:But then, okay, I get that. With the celebrities, it makes me a little bit cynical because it's like, could you not build a brand that doesn't depend on your children, who may or may not in years to come want to be part of as Ever's jam empire. Setting that aside, I'm more interested in why civilians, non celebrities are starting to do this, And I guess part of it is, as you say, Stacy, they're seeing celebrities do it, so they're kind of assuming that they should do the same thing. Yeah, but if you're a civilian, you don't need to make money of your children, so why bother posting.

11:38Speaker 2:I still think that social media is your highlight reel. It is your this is a representation of my life. This is a scrap book of my life. Really, in terms of I would scroll back on this one day and look at what's there. And if there's the absence of your children when there's such a big part of your life, that also feels weird to like purposely delete them entirely from that presence. Also a bit strange.

12:01Speaker 1:I think it's privacy, the panic around you see, and I think it's the backlash to sharenting. So we've seen in the last five years or so, all these children that were children of influencers have now come out. They're suing their parents. They're saying, I had no rights here, You've ruined my life. How dare you? And I think that we know more now about everything you put on the Internet lives there forever. It can be scraped and saved and shared and turned into a weird AI things.

12:30Speaker 1:And I just think parents have started thinking, is it really responsible of me to upload my kid's face to the internet forever?

12:39Speaker 3:Okay, I get that, And you know, I'm sorry to keep like pushing you on at stage.

12:44Speaker 2:Oh, I love it.

12:45Speaker 3:I genuinely want to understand why you're doing it me too, because why wouldn't you. Stacy just shared those parenting moments in say the close Friends facility within Instagram.

12:56Speaker 2:Yeah, and that is what I do with the stace. Yeah, that is what I do a lot of the time. But I think, as you said once, it is that fear based thing of Oh but even if it's like in the ether, does that matter? Is that also going to get scrape. So I'm also thinking, like, I've just got to make sure that this is something that in twenty years time is a good reflection of her and not something that she would be embarrassed so that i'd share.

13:20Speaker 3:Are you even sharing those face obscool pictures with like your close friends?

13:23Speaker 2:No, no, I show them, but I would never show something where she was upset or not, you know, in a good position. But you're saying it might not have gone as mainstream. I had a look because I was interested in what like photographers family photographers are seeing because they're obviously capturing families and it's kind of like if a tree fell in the woods and no one heard it. You know, you're getting these photos done, probably you're intending to share them. And a lot of them now are saying that they've changed their style so that they're taking more candid photos where children's faces aren't shown, because those are the photos that the families will share on their social media for their.

14:00Speaker 1:Social media package, where the children's face do it.

14:03Speaker 2:It is a thing, And there's also it's changing the way they market their business because they can't use the photos of your children on their social media, so they're having to take ones that artfully show your children without showing your children, So you'll give permission for them to be shared for them to show what they can do.

14:20Speaker 3:I actually wonder what that means for the generation that is growing up now, how that changes their attitude to their own face, capturing their face, because they will have grown up having these photos taken of them with their hair in front of their eyes or from their back. Yeah, and maybe they'll internalize that and that's how they'll start just taking their own candidates.

14:39Speaker 1:Maybe so interesting, But don't pick on Stacy. I don't show my kids either, And in fact, I was the only one at the school that ticked, no, do not take photos of my child and put them on Facebook.

14:48Speaker 3:Pure No, I'm not picking on her, No, I just wanted to step back and like remind us all that this is like a new you know. I think one thing that we try and do on this show is kind of like step back and say, this is a trend, is it's happening and why? And I want to remind everyone that five years ago we weren't doing this. Nice is a new thing and it's on every form now. Don't you feel like if you sign up for swimming lessons, if you sign up for soccer, it's an optional thing.

15:11Speaker 3:Do you give permission or do you not? And I don't think that would have been there five ten years ago. So it is very much a new thing that's coming around, and we're probably going to continue interrogating it every day, month, year as we go on and as they grow.

15:25Speaker 1:I've been on the celebrity beat, guys, you'll be pleased to know. And I saw something this week from Alec Baldwin. Now he has eight children. I had so many I did not realize. And yes, seven of them are in the primary school years. He had his last child at sixty four years old.

15:40Speaker 2:Yeah, they are little. And I have watched which won't surprise you, in particular and merely. I have watched the doco I have watched about their life. They did a reality show about them and all their children.

15:54Speaker 3:It's because I'm low key obsessed with Hilario of Baldwin, who people may remember got in trouble because she kind of walks around with a fake Spanish accent.

16:03Speaker 1:Yes, I don't think you can call her Hilario. You have to call her Laria. Hilaria Ilaria Well.

16:08Speaker 2:In every scene of that show, Alec Baldwin looks exhausted. I have never seen a more tired man in my life. You are not meant to have kids at sixty four. Probably it's that many at least.

16:19Speaker 1:Well, Alec Baldwin does what Alec Baldwin wants and he's on the Red Carpet this week talking to E News and I asked him, what is the one message that you want to give your children? What do you want to impart to them? And he said this, I want my kids to grow up having hope because it was right now it's it's more hopeless than I've ever seen, and like, I love that hope is lovely and I don't disagree with them, but it's just like how it feels very live, laugh love on a cushion, doesn't it?

16:50Speaker 1:Like how are you doing this?

16:52Speaker 3:I'm surprised that I'm listening to Alec Balden and being like the guy makes a good point because I don't think of Alec Baldwin as my parent, and girl obviously Stacy's parents in Guru is Hailey b Bu. Yeah, we knew that. I thought mine would be more like a Mandy Moore, But I guess it's maybe Alec Baldwin because I agree with him. Hope is such an important thing to pass along. Do you have ways to impart hope having tips for us?

17:15Speaker 1:Well only maybe Danny Go could do a hope song where it's like you're running, You're running, keep on having hope. Oh my god, it's an el Nino. Oh my god, it's a climate crasis. Oh my god, it's cuts of letting duck. That's what we need. Danny Go is the only one that can save us this point. But I did look into it, and there is a program that a children's advocacy place called. It used to be called Save the Children. It's now called fifty four Reasons. It's an organization. They run a program called Journey of Hope.

17:47Speaker 1:It's a well being course. They run an in Victorian and Queensland schools. It's currently not being run.

17:52Speaker 3:Oh dear, there is a lack of hope in the program.

17:57Speaker 1:Yeah, all right. The thing I want to chat about today is hr culture in the schoolyard, because there was an article doing the rounds this week that I want to unpack. It's from the Age and the City Morning Herald. By Kimberly Gillen, and it was called what Teachers Wish the parents of Problem Children Knew. Now, first of all, problem children is in quotation marks for anyone that's listening to this. We don't love that phrase, because often problem children are children who are struggling, or who are neurodivergent or I disregulated, or are being bullied, or their brains aren't fully developed. But I digress, because the article actually isn't really about problem children. What it's about is how parents and teachers have stopped trusting each other. And it opens with this school principle Ryan Martin saying that when his own son got a detention and his son came home and said, Dad, I got this detention for this thing.

18:51Speaker 1:His first response was, well, that is ridiculous. I am calling the school and he had to kind of take a beat, which actually I found that comforting to know that even a school principle, like someone that would react like that in defense of their own child. But then he takes a beat and remembered the thing that teachers often know is that a child's version of events is not always the full story. And so this principle's point in the article was if you go in as a parent, if you're gone with curiosity instead of combat, then you almost always get a better outcome. But here's the bigger thing I want to talk about today. We keep hearing these reports of teachers and principals who are just so burnt out or they're leaving the profession early, and no one wants to be in the profession anymore. And the line you hear again and again is I love the kids and I love the job, but it's the parents that I cannot handle. And parents are contacting schools more wanting answers, wanting accountability, often very ready to take their child's side immediately, and it's real us versus them mentality which has really shifted. So my theory is this, it

20:00Speaker 1:feels like schools have sort of absorbed this now in response to this, this kind of overly documented hr workplace culture of paper trayals and of escalation to principles and looping in principles of visibility. And I just feel like no one is any better off from this. And I really noticed it at the last parent teaching interview I went to. And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus here, but I remember parent teaching interviews. It was like my parents would go and it was like, how's it all going? All good, thumbs up, how can we help educate this child together? But the thing I noticed in the last parent teacher interview I went to was the level of documentation that I had to kind of cite was we've done this, and we are at this point of the documentation and here's this policy on this.

20:48Speaker 1:And it felt very kind of workplace performance review, which I thought was really interesting. So I've also heard from teachers who are all about the email trials and saying, yeah, a lot of them, we spend less time teaching and more time managing parents and this kind of culture of compliance of paper trayals, And I just feel like the dynamic has shifted from where a community educating this child together to parents are customers. The school is providing a service and a lot of parents just want to speak to the manager.

21:26Speaker 2:Yeah. So it feels like there's a correlation between like how involved that generation of parents were with their children generally and then how involved they are with school. Like I feel like boomers were pretty free range, like hands off. They'd go as you say, like once a year and be like, Yep, any major issues, Okay, yeah, great, we're done, Whereas millennials are overinvolved and feel like the more effort we put in, the better the result back, and so therefore then you're up in everyone's grill.

21:52Speaker 3:And then that.

21:53Speaker 2:Leads to mistrust between the teachers and the parents, which is just so unhelpful all round.

21:58Speaker 3:I'm going to defend the parents for a bit. I completely agree with everything you said, Mon's and no one gets into education and being an educator because they want to answer emails from annoying parents. Totally agree with that, But I'm a little torn because I do think that the balance between annoying the teachers and advocating for your child is a tricky one to strike. I agree, and it's not as though we're living in an era now where we have more complex challenges facing children then we've had, certainly in our lifetimes. Is what I would say, things like AI and climate change and issues that feel kind of existential and for which we don't have solutions. Teachers, children, parents, No one has solutions governments, so I don't think there's any I don't want to judge parents too harshly for thinking, well, I've got to make sure that my kid is getting the best possible chance at navigating this extremely turbulent world.

23:04Speaker 3:And sometimes it feels as though I really try not to contact my kids teachers because I know that they're overextended and underresourced. But then I sometimes worry that it's a squeaky wheel situation and that the parents who are constantly haranguing them at school pickup or who are sending them emails because their kid had this problem the other day, are those the parents that are ultimately smoothing the way for their children.

23:37Speaker 1:Yes, they are, which is a problem.

23:39Speaker 3:Well, let me rephrase that. Are they the children who are actually getting the attention and the opportunities because their parents are advocating for them?

23:50Speaker 1:Well, I agree, it's tricky, because advocacy is really important if your child has difficulties always being bullied, or falling through the cracks, or needs extra learning attention, or whatever it is. But I think what this article talks about is how when parents step in for every uncomfortable moment, kids miss the chance to learn huge and very important life lessons. They miss the chance to learn how to apologize, how to be accountable for behavior, how to talk to an adult that's not their parent, and how to solve a problem with that adult, how do hear feedback, how to tell the truth even when it makes them look bad, how to tolerate embarrassment. And it just creates so much more work for everyone. So yeah, I feel I think I agree with your point about advocacy, but I also want to talk about, like, do you think schools have shifted from being a community relationship to like a service one.

24:50Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I think there probably is a little bit of entitlement there, maybe from families, which I can understand as well, especially if you're paying a lot of money to put your child into a school where you're hoping that you're going to get a really good outcome for them. If it feels like that's not happening, I can understand why parents would feel the need to get involved there and advocate for their kids. We actually on Mama Mea this week ran an article by Anita McCurdy and she it was titled I'm a parent and a teacher and I'm scared of both sides. So she was talking about like being in this position of being able to see it from both sides and going we're really in this lose lose situation because she said that how dramatically education has changed now, and that schooling has become so much more complex. She said, the way families show up has changed because of technology and AI, and the demands are higher.

25:42Speaker 2:So it feels like everything's heightened on both sides for the parents and the teachers. And she said somewhere along the way, education became a space where schools were expected to solve almost everything well being behavior, mental health, academic outcomes, social challenges, and growing complexity. Often while I'm enormous scrutiny themselves.

26:01Speaker 3:Well, I wonder if part of that is private schools, in particular their fees and not keeping chrack with inflation. They've in fact increased beyond inflation, particularly over the last two decades. So those private schools are in a way setting themselves up for situations like this because when you're charging and by the way, that money is not flowing to the educators. I don't know where it's going, but it's going on the school grounds. We'll talk about that in a bit. It's not going to the people who are teaching children. So I wonder if by setting up that kind of consumer relationship. You also set up as you say, mones like consumer like demands.

26:40Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it does feel like that.

26:42Speaker 3:Yeah.

26:42Speaker 2:And then the more paperwork there is for the teachers, like it's like any job kind of where you end up in middle management, where you got taken away from the thing that originally brought you into it. Like all these incredible teachers that we have in this system are leaving because they're exhausted by the part that's not the part is why they started the job. They're there because they want to engage with your children, educate your children, make a difference for them. And what they're getting is having to send receipt emails after a phone call and having to tick boxes for a four year old or a five year old that they've gone through this whole curriculum with them. Like it does feel like everything's made it so complicated, and I don't know what the answer is to bring that back down, like to drop the stakes.

27:25Speaker 3:There were a couple of like sort of actionable things in that article that I really that stuck out to me. One of them was if you are able to kind of spend time volunteering at your kids' school, I guess They've done research that shows that that makes kids feel more secure and comfortable in the school environment, which makes this kind of conflict situation where the parents is sort of swooping in to talk to the teacher for the first time all semester to shout at them a little less fraught. And another thing that said that was really interesting, which I actually tried to implement the other day, is when you do have to talk to the teacher about something, if you can loop the child in, then they can be learning how to advocate for themselves in hopefully a curiosity driven and respectful manner. So I did have to write an email to a teacher and my child has to read it, so I read it to her, and I was trying to follow the advice in the article.

28:23Speaker 1:There can I just finish with a really positive story from a school please obsessed with and I think about a lot. It's probably my Roman Empire. The school that my kids go to has two female principals who job share the principal role, and they each work four days a week, so they overlap on many days, right, And they had to take this concept to the board and say, hey, it's gonna mean now. Budget is higher. That's going to mean we cost more. But we think all these benefits, you're gonna all these benefits. You're gonna get two leaders, two amazing female leaders who have who are working mothers, who have primary school as children in other schools, and we think we can make this work. And it has transformed that school. Every day when I see them together out in the school yard, I'm like, you girls are nailing it. And I just wish more school boards, more educators would understand, like it can be done. You don't have to fit into this mold of like burning yourself out every five seconds. And because they're so visible in the school, they've sort of set this culture of collaboration and what we're talking about before, of like we're in

29:32Speaker 1:this together, it's not on us versus them. It's just been so remarkable to see like people breaking outside of the box this job share situation. It is time for recommendations. So yeah, my first recommendation is job Share Job Sharing Principles, four days a week. Stacy, what are you recommending this week? Okay, I'm recommending a recipe. This week's very rogue for me, but I wanted to make something that was like healthyish for breakfast. That wasn't because it is toast one hundred percent of the time, which is fine.

30:03Speaker 3:Toast is great.

30:04Speaker 2:Toast is fine. But I was like, I want to make something that I can just like chuck in the freezer and I could pull them out when we need them. So I found a recipe so organized it's a bit, but it's actually not. It's because I'm not organized because we've run out of bread a few times and I'm like, I need like a backup, or I need something where I can be like, I don't have time to butter your toast. You're bringing this in the car while we're in motion to school. You can eat. So it's actually the opposite of that. But I found a recipe just like from a small creator on TikTok, so we'll link it in the show notes to the one I used.

30:36Speaker 2:Their breakfast sprinkle muffins is what I call them. So it's just banana oats, egg flour, and then you sweetenet with cinnamon and honey to however much you want to put in with sprinkles on the top, and it's like they got dessert for breakfast in the car, but everything else that's in. It is great, and I've actually eaten half of them. This is the second time I've made them, and my tip is to chuck it all in a Therma milk, or if you've got like any of those, like a bullet. What did I say, firm, I do not own a Thermo mix. I love that. I've just said that. I wish I owned a Therma mix. I mean a neutrab bullet. But it's exactly what I meant.

31:12Speaker 2:Just use a blender, like any type of blender. Just blend it all up, because then the oats have gone. They don't even know they're there. There's no texture to it. It's the banana no texture either. All they say is sprinkles on the top and they'll think it's the best thing ever. So that's my recommendation. They're actually delicious. You will like them.

31:30Speaker 1:Put a little bit of vanilla essence in it.

31:31Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I forgot. You're a master baker. We pulled that out every now and again, don't we. Why am I telling you a recipe? Nice?

31:38Speaker 1:Well, I am recommending a something a bit bougie. Actually, I'm such a crocodile in winter. I'm all scally right, but I want to recommend this thing. It's expensive, but it's amazing. It's called loss of ton. Yeah I pronounce it, but like you look at it and it's like lock, can't lock. That one's pronounced lots of time. It's called almond shower oil. They sell one every like three seconds or something. I was like, right, I'm going to see what the hype is. It is the goat. It is so good. It's so moisturizing. It smells like you're in a stacepark and oh my god. It's the kind of thing you would never buy for yourself. But if you want to gift something to a mum, or if you're a husband listening, who's like, what should I get my wife for a birthday? This? Get the almond shower oil.

32:27Speaker 2:It is my mom Christmas. Also buy it for yourself. Yeah, just buy it.

32:31Speaker 1:Yeah okay.

32:33Speaker 3:Also, you don't need to then put.

32:36Speaker 1:You're so moisture, you just slip out of the show winter.

32:39Speaker 3:You don't want to put on lotions.

32:41Speaker 2:And actually, if you're really on a budget, they do do a version of it in coals and woolies do just like a more there's a jupe. It's not as good but there is a and it's quite good, still smells the same.

32:54Speaker 3:There's a mid range tube Curium has a body oil shower gel that is very similar. Doesn't have that alm and smell, but it has that same.

33:02Speaker 1:Really feeling smell of it that I need. Yeah, who's that time to go to a day spar Not me. I don't need it anymore. I just need five minutes in my show.

33:12Speaker 2:I mean, I wouldn't knock it back. Yeah, yeah, take the days bar, we take the shower.

33:16Speaker 3:I'm glad that you both had very practical recommendations because my recommendation this week is a little bit of a recommendation to private schools. Oh a little bit salty. So across Australia we're seeing this thing of more and more sporting deserts, which is basically means that kids don't have enough access to sporting facilities. This is especially true in sort of outer suburbs of big cities, like It's particularly acute there, and it seems to me that there is a very easy fix for this. When I used to live in Washington, DC, we had a number of private schools nearby that just routinely opened up their grounds on the weekend for the public to use. So there was one that had the most amazing adventure playground and it was just open on the weekends for the oh.

34:05Speaker 2:So it's just like traded like a park. It's just like you can just go there whenever.

34:09Speaker 3:Yeah, oh cool. And part of the reasoning there was that like schools get all sorts of tax breaks and special treatment from the government, and so this is one way they can kind of give back to the community that they are getting these kinds of financial benefits from. But in Australia, I think it's even more acute because many private schools in Australia, more than half in New South Wales, and I'm sure it's true in other states too, are getting more money from the government than public schools.

34:42Speaker 3:It were very unusual in terms of like rich countries that give more money to private schools than public schools. So my taxpayer funds are going to fund these beautiful grounds, and why not open them up on the weekends and enable kids to enjoy the facility.

35:00Speaker 1:I don't think it's that simple.

35:02Speaker 3:Well, what happens in the US, and the US is a highly litigious society.

35:06Speaker 1:That's what I'm amazed at that it happens there. Because if you think about like I think in emotionally amazing idea and practically a great idea too, But when I think about like staffing, booking.

35:19Speaker 2:On damage, if someone damage, yeah.

35:21Speaker 1:The public liability.

35:23Speaker 3:Oh, it's a really good question. I guess. I guess they probably have some sign somewhere that says you were entering this playground at your own risk. And I'm sure they have security cameras up, but it's just routine there.

35:36Speaker 1:There's such a good point about if there are if there's public money going towards the building of a facility, there should have to be some sort of like community pathway for that facility to be at some percentage ought to be publicly available.

35:51Speaker 3:What really galls me is that I live around the corner from a private school which has a beautiful twenty five meter pool which all summer literally sits there empty. Yeah, And it kind of breaks my heart because I happen to know that that school has been given government funding to at least partially fund that beautiful half sized Olympic pool, and all some are just sitting there. So I'm just saying private schools have a think about it.

36:21Speaker 1:Like The other side of the coin is some private schools fund buildings works via themselves, so I fundraisers or building levees, and like they might say, well, hang on, I've helped fund this. Our private school fees have funded this, and now you're opening it to the public like some of them do.

36:39Speaker 3:But like I say, Australia is unique among OECD countries for giving federal government funds to private schools. In the US, the government doesn't give any money to private schools. They get the tax breaks, but they get zero money from the government. So I just think we should think about it.

36:58Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm surprised it's not some sort of pilot program.

37:01Speaker 3:Have your two principles think about it. Put their heads together.

37:05Speaker 1:They can solve anything. I think getting kids playing more sport is very, very, very important. So thank you for bringing that, Amelia. All right, that is all we have time for this week. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next Saturday. Momama acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.