Which is, most of them are annoying.

And they're just like annoying short people.

(music)

Then my girlfriend and I got pregnant.

That's preg and nant.

(woman laughs)

So I started this journey of asking everyone I could see,

Man: What's up in there?

Hank: Why did you want to become a father?

How did you handle it?

How did it change your life?

(baby's heartbeat)

Woman: No.

Hank: Oh, no way!

Woman: Oh, it's real!

Hank: And this is what people said to me.

Man: I'll talk to you again when he's in prison.

Kevin: The kid is doing something that you don't want them to do.

Hank: Mm hmm.

Kevin: You'd say, "That's one."

You do it without emotion.

They continue to do it, you say, "That's two."

They continue to do it, you say, "That's three."

You take them and you gently put them in their room,

and you close the door.

You don't yell, you don't scream, you don't throw them in there,

and you don't do anything.

Hank: Uh huh.

Kevin: And then they come back out.

They start to do it again, you say, "That's one."

It worked like a charm.

Hank: Really, that sounds good.

Kevin: It's really good.

Hank: Now, how old do you start this?

Kevin: Well, I mean, well soon as they learn to count (laughs).

(writing sounds)

Hank: We're in a phase with Hal.

He's been difficult.

The 3's, he's 3 years 7 months now.

3 and a half.

Very willful and he had no tantruming stuff going on,

as a 2 year old.

Hal: (laughs)

Hank: But he's been on kind of a tear.

Well now you've smashed (smashing sound).

Oh my goodness.

(smashing sound)

Oh wait.

Hal.

Let's not, because that actually could break it.

They get to an age too, where everything they do,

needs a certain amount of uh, uh, uh.

No, no, no.

Or that's not the way I want you to do that,

or I didn't, no, that wasn't how we were supposed to do it.

(typewriter sounds)

Bryan: We hear the terrible 2's and we go,

"Hey we made it through!

"No problem!

"We're in good shape."

And then 3 happens and it's like, no!

Rainn: No!

Man: (growling sound)

Hank: You do this now!

Hal: No!

Mike: No.

Man: (growling sound)

Hal: (crying)

Jill: I was just playing with the blocks!

Hank: (mock crying)

Bryan: No!

What?

No!

I hate you!

Rainn: He just says no to everything.

"Okay, put on your socks, it's time to go."

"No!"

It's like, "Well do you want to go?"

"Yeah."

"Well then you need to put on your socks."

"I don't wanna put on my socks!"

Joshua: She would physically like (yells), banging her legs,

lying on the floor.

It was like 'Nam.

I'd go in for a little bit, see what I could do.

Then I'd come out and be like, "Get in there!"

Hank: (laughs)

Joshua: "See what you can do. I'm done, like, I'm done."

Stephen: I saw him walk into the middle of the book shop,

and kind of go, "Where's the spot? There's a few people over there,

"there's a few people over there."

And then get down on the ground and wail.

He kind of positioned himself before doing it!

Mike: He just turns into like a sack of potatoes.

He'd get like 700 pounds heavier somehow.

If it's, "Daddy carry, daddy carry," he's like feather light.

Hank: Right.

Mike: But if it's, "No," it's like (roaring sound).

Hank: The second he turned 3 he was a maniac.

Hal: (yelling)

Dr. Berlin: And I think it's more 3's than 2's,

because in 2's they're still distractable.

They're also still small enough,

that if you need to physically remove them you kind of can.

Hank: Yeah.

Dr. Berlin: At 3 now, they're really savvy.

They're not going to be distracted by something shiny,

that you're going to wave in front of them,

and they're really invested.

They're going to dig those heels in,

and they're not letting up.

Hank: Well, you know what the main no-no of tantrums is right?

Man: I don't know.

Hank: Really?

Man: Yeah.

Hank: Well, you don't want to give in.

You don't want to give them what their tantruming over.

Man: Oh, got you.

Jill: What the child learns is,

I just escalate the intensity of my emotion,

and I will get what I want, okay?

It's literally Pavlovian and it works.

Michele: It's how you handle it the first or second time,

is whether or not it's going to increase or decrease.

Hank: Right.

Michele: That's the secret.

Wendy: I think you have to qualify it by saying,

"What has led up to it?"

Is the child sick, is he tired?

Tim: Something's off in their chemical make-up.

Hal: (crying)

That's physical.

What it isn't, is this little child is actually evil and hating me.

It's not that.

Jean: The first advice I always have,

is never respond to a tantrum with a tantrum yourself.

Michael: You're thinking, "Wait I'm loving this child,

"and this child is clearly enraged at his or her helplessness."

Maureen: We have to help them learn how to manage,

their emotions and their energy, and how to bring that into the middle.

For healthy social, emotional experiences.

David: All you can do is model positive behavior,

encourage positive behavior, create consequences for negative behavior,

and then hope that feelings are going to follow.

Hal: Noooo!

Michele: You know, a lot of power struggles can be minimized,

if parents say, "I know you're really busy playing,

"we need to stop in 5 minutes because we need to get ready,

"to go pick up your brother."

Hank: Mr. Hal, 5 more minutes of poker and then you got with Mama.

5 more minutes of poker.

Greg: They are looking for a rule book,

and they will push every button until they get no.

Michele: The longer you give a temper tantrum attention,

the longer it lasts.

Tim: Calm is a good way to approach it.

I'm calm, I'm sane, this is an insane person.

Make sure they don't hurt themselves,

but there's no way they can be rational right now.

Michele: And then you can talk about it when it's all done.

Hank: I got to count down from 5 and then I got to go.

Hal: Wait, wait, wait.

Hank: 5, oh don't take your mittens off, 4.

Hal: No, wait.

(toy dropping)

Hank: Here's the problem with what you just did,

now we got to clean that up.

Thank you.

Come on, out the door.

Two choices.

You can walk or I can carry you.

1, 2.

Thank you so much.

Jill: The best line I ever read in a book was,

"You can indulge your kids, you can give them everything they want,

"you can let them stay at the toy store when they want to,"

and this, that, and the other thing.

"Go to bed late," whatever, "but when they go out into the world

"they're going to get rejected by peers,

"and they're going to get into behavioral trouble with teachers.

"So either you teach them within the loving boundaries of your home,

or throw them to the wolves. What do you want to do?"

Hank: "You do this now!"

He'll just order you around.

Kind of like, whoa.

There's some things about him that are spoiled.

It's as big as you.

(toy dropping)

Hal: (laughs)

Hank: You smashed it.

Now we're going to have rebuild our whole city.

And actually I realized a second and a half,

like I missed an opportunity there when he smashed the train,

I was still playing with that.

In fact, I was mid-play.

That's what's hard for me.

You got to be concentrating and on it.

It's not for the faint hearted, this stuff.

It's things like this that I really feel like you need to pay attention to.

It's the whole point of what we're doing here.

Sort of bring these things to light.

Like, "Okay, made a mistake there. Let's try to get back on track."

(writing sounds)

That train, I think is, whoa!

That train's so big he's going to break everything.

Did you want to break everything?

Hal: (laughing)

Hank: Because now the bridge is coming down.

It's like Godzilla came.

You're like Godzilla.

Do you know what Godzilla is?

Hal: What?

Hank: Well, first of all, it almost ended Dada's career.

That's the first thing about it (laughs).