Hal: The first time I have him out alone really.

(door shuts)

(drum beat)

That's the wrong lever, come on ...

(drum beat)

Come on, you bitch!

Buddy, you awake?

Behind the glasses, he was like ...

Michael: My guru, [uintelligible],

he came up with a concept of what he called

"the good-enough parent" and it was his effort

to try and say to parents,

"You don't have to be perfect," which means

somewhat self-forgiving and to know that

you made mistakes.

Every other parent has made mistakes because

that's why the good Lord sent us children,

to mess with our brains, right?

(laughter)

(theme music)

Bryan: It's the one job we have where there's

no pretraining, really.

You just have to be there and do it.

It's a hard job.

You love it, but you don't have any tests to take,

you just dive in.

It's an enjoyable work and a work in progress.

Voiceover: Are there any mistakes you feel you made,

any regrets, any moments you're like,

"Oh jeez?"

JK: Oh yeah, oh every day.

Mike: There were thousands of things,

not only that I though I did wrong,

that I did wrong.

Neil: We spend the first year of a kid's life

teaching them to walk and talk ...

And the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.

(laughter)

Doug: I think one time I threatened to take a hammer

and smash his Wii if that's what he's

going to continue to do. (laughs)

Rainn: I thought refrigerators had a handle

on the inside so the kids could let themselves out.

I guess any of the regret that I have is

refrigerating Walter, what ...

I have tons of regrets, are you kidding me?

(subway sounds)

Willie: I lost Nathan on the subway.

We get on the platform and there's a train there,

and he's running for the door and I'm like,

"Go ahead, go ahead," but that's where [inaudible],

so I'm going through this door,

he runs to that door, when he gets to the door,

he changed his mind, stopped and turned

to go to this door, I'm standing in the car

(laughs) and the doors close.

I go to the next stop.

Every scenario is going through my head;

is he gonna go upstairs?

Is he gonna get on another train?

Is he gonna go try and call me,

but of course my phone doesn't work in the subway,

on and on, I'm a mess.

A train comes pretty quickly and I go down

and he's standing there with an old Chinese man.

I'm hugging him and squeeze-,

and all I can say is thank God he wasn't with a Korean.

Voiceover: Yeah.

Willie: Exactly.

(music)

Hal: All right, Pally. Is anything squished in there?

Cynthia: Some of it, you do have to make mistakes.

A lot of parents have children later,

they've had careers where they know

exactly what do to and they excel at it,

and then this child comes and

they don't know what they're doing.

Voiceover: Yeah.

Cynthia: They face that inadequacy and

all of that shows up and they don't know

how to handle it.

Bryan: That's to thing they tell young parents

that, "It's okay. It's okay. Make little mistakes,

it's all right, you're going to do that.

Don't think you have to be perfect.

You'll learn along with your child and

you'll be just fine."

Voiceover: My wife was eight months pregnant

when we moved up to the suburbs and

we got a house with an alarm system.

Two mornings a week, one of us would open the door and

WHOOP! WHOOP!

So his first year of his life being awakened like

he was on a nuclear submarine.

(rushing water sound)

(music)

Hal: He's looking at everything but the ducks.

Joshua: My son, at five or six, was having

a ridiculous meltdown about something,

freaking out and screaming,

"AAH!AAH!" and he turned away for a second

and I'm (mouths), "Shut the fuck up," to my wife

and she laughed and I made the horrible mistake

of going for two ...

Voiceover: Ooh ...

Joshua: And the second one, he was like,

"You told me to shut the fuck up,"

and I turned to my wife ...

And she was like, "I can't believe you did that."

I'm like, "You laughed at the first one!"

Instant sell-out!

Wendy: A perfect environment with no mistakes

is not the way to raise a child to prepare him for life.

Jean: To be able to admit that you know what,

"I'm sorry I yelled. I shouldn't have done that.

I should have found a different way of talking to you,"

is always a good thing to tell children.

Michael: Kate, when parents come to me

and it's often a business kind of parent,

and they want the bottom line, they say,

"But tell me one thing, just give me the one thing,"

you just know you're with a business person.

I say, "Enjoy it. Enjoy your child. Enjoy your child."

Katie: [inaudible]

Voiceover: An outcome.

(music)

Phil: My biggest regret, ever, the moment

that killed me was he was bullied at camp.

He was like nine years old.

I said, "You gotta go, Ben, the bus is here.

I told you how to handle it and

you're gonna handle it. I know you'll be great.

Come on," and I was a wreck because

he really didn't want to go.

It was the toughest thing I ever did as a parent ...

To this day.

Years later, I told him how I felt about this,

that this was the toughest moment ever as a parent,

he didn't remember it!

(laughing)

Doesn't remember being bullied, doesn't remember ...

So go [inaudible].

(theme music)

Hal: How do you think this works? That's not it.

That is really not it ...

But I just locked the wheels so I can't push it anymore.

Yeah, how did this collapse?