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“A Boy Named Sue:” Parenting Genius or Deadbeat Dad?

The Dads break down the Johnny Cash Classic “A Boy Named Sue.” They talk about the song’s uniqueness, its backstory and its cultural significance. 

Mentioned in this Episode:

Show Notes:

8:48 – Dad Life Sound Check Mick shares how water represents so many of the things we like about summer, with help from Brad Paisley. Dave is burning the candle at both ends and just needs some quality sleep, with help from Koe Wetzel.

14:40 – HARDY Report Dave talks about HARDY’s latest single “Psycho”.

17:33 – Farm Boy Update Mick has lightened his load around the urban homestead by teaching his son to use the chainsaw.

19:45 – The Dads get into whether or not “A Boy Named Sue” is a parenting triumph or failure. Along the way they discuss some parenting techniques and habits that may have run their course and no longer work in today’s world. You will also learn some of the backstory of how this poem written by Shel Silverstein became a song in the first place. Be sure to watch the clip of Johnny and Shel singing it together. 

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Transcript

I don’t want my sons to be weak.

I want them to be strong.

And there’s this tension where I’m like, all right, how do I teach them to be strong?

Do I teach them to be strong by making things tough for them so that they can overcome those challenges or is life already going to be challenging enough?

And should my role instead be to help to guide them and help them put themselves back together?

That’s kind of what I think about with this song.

The dad knew that life was going to be tough for his son.

So he made it even tougher by giving him this name and by leaving.

When in reality, like life was going to be tough already.

And maybe what the son actually needed was just a father figure who was still there.

This is Country Music Dads, the parenting podcast with a twang.

We’re bringing you highly subjective, sometimes questionable, but always 100% authentic country music analysis as only two dads in the trenches of modern parenting could do.

My name is Dave, and I’m a country music dad.

My name is Mick, and I am also a country music dad.

Thank you for joining us.

Today, we’re going to break down the Johnny Cash Classic A Boy Named Sue.

The question is, is this the work of parenting genius or the stereotypical example of a deadbeat dad?

But before we get to that, Dave, how has dad camp been going?

Well, dad camp kicked off last week, and I hit the ground running.

It was great.

The first day was fantastic.

We were locked in.

I took the boys outside.

We rode bikes in the morning, got all the energy out.

I even got a little exercise chasing them on their bikes.

It was great.

We even, like you suggested, we should have some kind of quiet time in the afternoon.

My oldest has a summer reading challenge.

The challenge was if you read a thousand pages during the summer, you get a popsicle.

An Otter Pop?

Not an Otter Pop.

Those are free.

Those are freely available at home thanks to previous bribes and issues in the household.

We have Otter Pops.

You do not have to apologize for having popsicles in your house.

I mean, it’s just one of the four food groups in the summer.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yes.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you for giving me permission to have popsicles in my house.

Bomb pops are our choice.

I think I remember those.

But yeah, the school will give him a popsicle when he comes back, if he reads 1,000 pages.

Okay.

Gotcha.

So on day one, I gave him this challenge.

There you go.

1,000 pages, you should start.

You can build up.

And he got this look in his eye, like I’m going to do it right now.

And so he read 1,000 pages in one day, the first day.

And I mean, he’s just coming out of kindergarten.

So these are picture books.

But still, I don’t know if I could read 1,000 pages of picture books in one day.

Yeah, I’m impressed with the determination.

But I think the biggest challenge for somebody who just finished kindergarten would be remembering to write it down and, oh, this book has 13 pages, this book has 36.

And just keeping track of that’s what needs to be celebrated more than worrying about where there are 3 sentences on each page or whatever.

Just the drive to tabulate everything.

That’s impressive to me at that age.

Yeah, he logged every single one and he was strategic about it.

He was going around the house trying to find the thickest books possible so he could get more bang for his book.

Which books have the most pages?

Sounds like he might be ready to jump a level in his reading game here.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I got to start upping his complexity in the books he’s picking.

It was very impressive, though.

He’s built different.

He’s very competitive.

He spent hours reading to get to his thousand pages.

I had to suggest to him, like, maybe you should stop reading and do something else.

But he was locked in.

And once he got to a thousand, he was like, all right, I get a popsicle.

What if he reads another thousand?

Has that question come up?

I mean, does he get a popsicle per thousand?

I think they’ll have a ranking for each grade.

Which kid read the most during the summer?

They get a certificate or something.

But Kim and I also challenged him personally because I want to read more.

I’m not a great reader.

And so I told him, like, if you beat me, I’m going to log my reading for the summer, too.

And if you beat me, I’ll buy you a new video game.

He’s got an extra carrot.

I had a feeling that he was going to get to the thousand.

I didn’t think he’d get to the thousand on the first day.

But I did challenge him, like, all right, if you beat one of us.

But I also didn’t expect him to totally bury me on the first day.

I don’t know if I have a chance.

That’s a lot of reading.

I’m going to have to pull some all-nighters.

I think the only way you can catch up is if you read the same books he did.

And you count those like when you’re just storytime reading to the other two boys.

I think that’s about the only way you can catch up.

Yeah, I know.

And you still might not.

Like I said, I don’t know if I could read a thousand pages of picture books.

I would fall asleep or stab my eyes out.

That was just day one of dead summer camp.

And then on day two, I got COVID and I was just down for the count.

So my in-laws actually took the boys for the weekend so that I could rest and they could avoid getting infected.

Very appreciative of that.

It’s taught me that even if I have all the all the plans for my activities and things I’m going to do with them, at some point, plans are going to go out the window for me.

That was day two.

And you just have to be ready to adjust, re-plan and just go with whatever happens.

So an early first lesson.

Well, I’m sorry you got sick.

I’m sorry that wiped you out a little bit.

But I’m glad you were able to have some help because a lot of parents don’t have help when things go sideways.

Yeah, that was huge.

If I didn’t have that, we would have spent a whole day with me just laid up on the couch watching every movie we could think of.

And it would have been miserable.

So I actually got some reading done while I was laid up.

So I’m going to catch them.

How’s Dad Camp going for you out there?

Well, my version of Dad Camp involves sending Kate to theater camp.

Oh, fun.

Yeah.

So it’s like double bonus.

She gets to do something.

She’s a little performer, mostly enjoys dancing, does enjoy just performing around.

So one of the local dance studios has a theater camp that they do in addition to some of their dance camps.

The owners have been just big in the performing arts for years and years.

So they put on a performance.

It’s two weeks and they make the kids obviously learn the performance and it’s full on costumes.

They have to memorize their lines.

They get involved making the sets.

So it’s the full on experience and then it just ends with a performance for the parents at the end of the two week time.

And this year, the session that she’s going to, they’re doing the movie Annie.

So Kate is one of the orphans and then she also plays the FDR role.

Yeah.

So she’s enjoying it.

She’s coming home exhausted and that’s a win.

I had these Grandoise plans that I was just going to get so much done.

And it’s not that things have gone sideways.

It’s just other little things keep coming up.

So while I’m accomplishing some things around, I think I set myself up with unrealistic expectations of how much I was going to accomplish without my youngest supervisor home all day.

I get that.

My parents are taking the boys for a whole week next week.

And so I’m trying to keep my expectations low because there’s a temptation when I have a thought of anything that I want to accomplish for myself or for the house or whatever.

I’m just pushing it to next week.

I’ll do that next week.

I’ll do that next week.

I am acknowledging that I will get done just a fraction of what I have in my mind for that week, even though I don’t have any distractions.

I definitely feel that.

I don’t want to end the week disappointed.

I do it all the time.

I should know better.

I have unrealistic expectations for myself at times, and it’s the bummer.

But it is what it is.

That is the key to happiness is low expectations.

All right.

So let’s move into the dad life sound check.

The song that I heard on the radio the day.

This is going to fall into the category of it came out before you were listening to a whole lot of country music.

So you may or may not have heard it.

But it’s just it’s a great little song for summer.

It’s called Water by Brad Paisley.

Oh, that one.

You know that one.

Okay.

It’s got a lot of reviews.

I saw him in concert once.

Oh, very good.

All right.

He’s got some staying power.

Yes, I like Paisley, especially because he seems like a funny guy.

A lot of his songs are very lighthearted and like this, this one kind of qualifies to.

He’s got a range of he’ll put out.

Yes.

A lot of it’s lighthearted, but then he’s done some, just rip your heartstrings out with a, was it Whiskey Lullaby with Alison Krauss?

Oh, yeah.

Ever heard that song?

Oh, yeah.

I love that song.

You just said that song.

Oh, my God.

That’ll tear you up.

Anyway.

Yeah.

So, Water by Brad Paisley is just a great summer song, in my opinion, because it just talks about the journey through life.

You’re starting off with a little kid, and you just want a pool in the backyard, and then you graduate to the rope swing.

And next thing you’re doing is you kind of get into the little spring break aspect.

And then it just talks about finding your special someone and skinny dipping.

So it just runs the gamut of just all the life things that you can do around and find some joy being near the water.

So I think it’s just a great song for summer.

It kind of walks through life, then it stops at the skinny dip.

It doesn’t get into middle age.

I want to hear the sequel to Water, like what happens after spring break and the skinny dipping is in your past.

When you leave those days behind, then is it chilling in the hot tub with a cigar?

I mean, I know what you’re saying.

I think he does kind of wrap it up just with that last little verse.

He’s just basically says, just all you need is the water.

I think the song works just because it’s open-ended, but it’s simple.

You come up with your own aspect of what you need in and around the water.

The water is just the driving force.

With the summer, our driving force is go into the lake on vacation or go into the water park.

We’re not a big fish and family, but I know that is for some people and that is fantastically awesome.

I think the song is just, this is a less is more song.

Yeah, I got you.

It was a really nice day yesterday out here.

We went to the beach.

The boys are at a point where there are swimming skills where they can go in and be relatively safe.

You got to watch them and everything.

But there is a lot of joy in being in the water out there too.

Take them to somewhere with some water and that’s all you need.

They were just so content splashing around in the waves.

You don’t even have to take kids anywhere.

I remember the first time we brought out, somebody gave it to us, one of those little water tables.

When Luke was like three years old, somebody gave us a water table and that was just hours of entertainment.

All right, you’re up.

What have you got?

My Dad Life Sound Check is not really a song for summer, it’s more a song for my current state of affairs physically.

It’s called Creeps by Koe Wetzel.

I haven’t talked about Koe much on the podcast, but he’s one of my favorites.

He’s not really a country artist, he’s kind of country adjacent.

I bring it up because part of the chorus is a line where he says over and over again, I just need some sober sleep and that’s what I need right now.

I am worn out.

I mentioned getting sick and just the last month has been real busy coming out of May.

I have to find some time to prioritize my sleep because it is so important for just your general health.

Kim’s been listening to the Huberman Lab podcast and a bunch of sleep scientists talking about how important it is for your health.

That’s in my consciousness that I need some more sleep just to reset my body here.

I just have not been getting it.

I mean, I’m an expert in bedtime procrastination.

Late at night, I think of every excuse not to go to sleep, but this last week, especially after getting sick, I’m a little worn out.

So, Koe Wetzel is also someone that probably needs some more sleep.

He’s a hard partying rock star.

But even Koe knows that he needs some sober sleep to rest up for the next all-nighter he’s going to spend with the boys.

When my sleep is really poor, my parenting skills go down the tubes also.

I just don’t have the patience.

Not just you, man.

Everybody’s tired.

That’s just facts.

It’s a universal thing.

It’s a difficult ask for parents to get sleep.

But I’m going to work on it because I want to enjoy my summer.

I don’t want to just be all cranky and tired all summer.

I want to have a good time.

So one of these nights, it’s going to happen.

Maybe next week.

Maybe, yeah.

Maybe next week, yeah.

I’m mailing it in for today, but maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.

So someone else that probably does not prioritize his sleep, is Hardy.

I would say that is a fair assessment.

He and Co, they track together in my mind.

They have similar styles, be a similar look, tatted up rock star.

So for the Hardy Report, it’s my mission to bring you way more information about Hardy than you ever needed.

Hardy has a new single, a new-ish single out.

It’s called Psycho.

The new single will be on his upcoming new rock album, which is slated to release sometime in July.

I forget what the actual date is.

I’m looking forward to it.

I’m bringing up Psycho because Psycho is a Hardy song through and through.

I love Hardy songs.

He’s released some songs lately.

I talked about his Gin and Juice cover a while back, where I’m like, maybe you’re getting out of your lane a little bit, Hardy.

Let’s get back to some of the reasons why I love him.

Psycho has a lot of those reasons.

For one, Hardy is a really clever songwriter.

Psycho is a breakup song.

He’s describing how if his girl breaks up with him, he’s going to be so upset that he’s going to turn into a complete lunatic.

So he describes all the ways that he’s going to demonstrate that he’s actually a psycho at heart.

It’s a clever take.

It’s really lighthearted.

It’s funny.

That’s what I love about country music in general.

There’s lots of opportunities for that.

We’re talking about A Boy Named Sue, which is in that category.

It’s a fun story.

It’s a funny story.

Hardy paints that picture in Psycho also.

The song is also, although it’s not appropriate for kids, I’m very thankful that the Hardy team released an edited version of the song.

They bleep out the two F words at the end.

That way you can listen to it in the car.

I can listen to it in the car.

The boys love it.

They’ve been asking for it, particularly because there’s a line in the chorus of Psycho where he says that one of the things he’s going to do, he’s going to show up to her birthday party in my underwear.

That’s what he says.

I’ll crash your birthday party in my underwear.

But he screams party in my underwear.

And obviously my little knuckleheads in the back seat of the car love that line.

They want to have an underwear party.

Yeah.

They’re like, I get this.

I understand this.

Party in my underwear.

They do that most nights as they’re getting ready for bed.

It’s a fun song and thanks to the edited version, I can share that joy with the boys also.

I’m glad Hardy’s getting back to the true value that he brings.

A little irreverent, slightly twisted, humorous songs that I can enjoy with the whole family in our underwear or more.

Certain songs with the family in your underwear.

It’s getting warmer, so clothes are optional around the house right now.

Especially after they’ve been splashed with some water.

Any farming going on in your underwear.

I generally try to have a little bit more appropriate attire than just my underwear on when I’m working outside, generally.

Now, let’s see, what was the highlight of this last week working outside was that I finally got around to teaching Luke how to use the chainsaw.

He did pretty well.

Kind of stood there and guided him through some things and told him what you have to really, really be careful of and all the safety habits that you need to use when using said chainsaw.

So that’s going to be really helpful as we go out through the rest of the summer, because I got a lot of trees that need to be trimmed down and cut up for firewood and everything.

Then I’ve got a bunch of big logs that I lost a big locust tree last year.

The wind blew it over.

I mean, this thing is big.

We’re talking like about a two-foot diameter on some of these.

And now I can send him out there and say, all right, chop these up a little bit and move them over to the woodpile so I don’t have to.

That’s the highlight because anytime that you can teach your child a new skill so you don’t have to do it is a win around the farm.

And that seems like a huge win because he’s seems very capable, you know, physically.

He’s a big dude, a lot of labor out of them.

So you just equip him with the right tools and the right skills.

I can see why the chainsaw training didn’t happen earlier, though, that that’s a big tool.

So that thing is a beast.

And I my chainsaw is it’s a steel, a zero to nine steel.

And it’s it’s not a small saw.

And I told him, I said, I don’t remember how I phrased it, but it was something to the gist of pound for pound.

This is probably one of the most dangerously powerful tools you will ever operate because it can be your best friend or it can be your worst enemy.

18 year old kid.

That’s probably a lot of fun.

I’m sure he’ll enjoy himself now that he’s been trained properly.

We’ll find out.

On to our main segment.

So this week, we’re talking about A Boy Named Sue.

It is one of Johnny Cash’s most famous songs.

When I was three and he didn’t leave much tomorrow and me just this old guitar and empty bottle of booze.

So it was released in 1969 off of Johnny’s live At San Quentin album that was filmed at San Quentin Prison out here in California.

It’s a great album with all the guys in the prison in the audience reacting to the songs and everything.

But this song in particular was his highest charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 of his entire career, which is crazy.

So it was written actually by Shel Silverstein, the same Shel Silverstein who authored a bunch of children’s books and books of poetry.

And that was a surprise to me when I first learned that Shel Silverstein was a songwriter and he wrote this song.

Not only did Shel write this song, but he won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1970 for A Boy Named Sue.

So it was a big hit, it was an award winner.

Johnny even won the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Performance for this song.

So critically acclaimed, very popular and there’s a lot to this song.

It tells this story of a boy whose father left at a young age and he named his boy Sue.

And the boy kind of has a grudge.

So our goal is to kind of break down this song and talk about our interpretations of it, some of the messages behind it, and it definitely has a parenting connotation to it.

There’s definitely a lot of different avenues to explore in this song, but before we get into those, I want to make sure that people understand why a little bit more of the background of this song.

This wasn’t written to be a song.

Shel Silverstein wrote this as a poem.

And part of the reason that this song I think has been so popular is it’s just so completely different than anything really kind of people had ever heard before.

It’s the free flowing story.

There’s no chorus.

And when Johnny sang this song, I’m using the aircoats.

I can’t remember the, I can’t think of the specific way that I’ve seen it described, but he didn’t really sing it.

He kind of just read the whole thing.

Spoken word.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s how I think what I’m looking for.

Spoken word prose and not singing.

And I think it was just so completely different.

That’s why it was so popular.

And then just one more little story about the background.

It was Johnny’s wife, June, who pushed Johnny to record this song.

She had heard it.

Well, they both heard it together as the story goes at a house party that Johnny had for a whole bunch of people in the music industry that were in and around Nashville.

And they started passing a guitar around.

And the idea is that people would just share what they’re working on, either their favorite song they’re working on or something that they wanted to share, or maybe something that they wanted some feedback on.

Well, Shel Silverstein plays this song and June was the one that asked for the lyrics.

The rest is history after that.

Kind of like I mentioned in our opening, I think the place to start with this song is really, is this parenting genius?

Or is this just an example of a deadbeat dad who said, I don’t give a bleep and moved on down the road?

You could make probably a strong argument that it could be both.

When I first heard the song, I mentioned in a previous episode that Johnny Cash was kind of my introduction to country music.

It was his later recordings when he was older that I kind of latched on to at first because my college roommate listened to a lot of the American recordings.

The San Quentin album, it was like kind of his greatest hits, the first time that I was able to kind of go back and listen to a lot of the songs that he was most famous for.

He plays a lot of the hits at that show and A Boy Named Sue was one of those and I remember my roommate and I were all about that song.

I think because it’s just it’s so clever, it’s just a good punchline at the end of the song where the dad, after he’s fighting with his son.

I wasn’t going to be around so I gave you that name so that you’d have to grow up being tough.

I wouldn’t be there to teach you how to be tough.

I’m raising three boys so I at least have that desire in me also that I want my boys to be tough and resilient and gritty.

Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m going to teach them that.

I don’t have any game plan for that.

Well, you may not be sure how you’re going to do it, but you’re not just going to run away.

You’re not going to just give them a different name and say, I’m done, I’m gone.

I mean, you’re going to be present there in their lives.

Although I’m a millennial, so I did give my kids interesting names.

They’re not common names because that’s what we do.

So who knows?

Maybe they will get bullied for the unique names that I gave them.

Yeah, I don’t think so.

But the counterpoint to everything you said, I’m doing this on purpose.

Was that just a cop out?

Was that just something that he came up with in the middle of the street just to keep his boyfriend kicking his ass?

Yeah, that’s true.

Self preservation.

No, no, no, I did that on purpose.

Self preservation, right?

I’m actually a very, very wise good father, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

That kind of brings up kind of a point that I’ve been thinking about.

Is it okay to be cruel, to be kind?

So far, my kids are really young.

And even so, in my limited time, being their father, especially on my oldest, I think I’m pretty tough on him.

Like my expectations are pretty high.

I want to be an authority figure and I want to correct him with the goal of I want him to be a well adjusted, kind person.

I wouldn’t say that I go to the point of cruelty, but I am hard on him.

I think that I’m hard on him.

I could kind of see some of that tendency when I started coaching the kids in sports, especially in baseball, which is my favorite sport.

Growing up, sometimes the coach’s kid gets better treatment.

But I think more often than not, the coach is a lot harder on his own kid than he is on the other kids.

And I kind of caught myself doing that with my kids also, or some of the kids are goofing off, and I’m very kind with them.

But if my kid is the one that’s goofing off, I come down on him really hard.

That’s not acceptable.

I’d have to catch myself because it’s just not fair in the team environment.

So there’s some part of me that thinks that kids do need a father or a parent that is going to be enforcing the rules, teaching them with kind of a strong hand, not physically, but with setting clear boundaries and following through on consequences.

So from that perspective, I can kind of see where that comes from.

And I think back in the 60s and 70s, when the song was written and performed, there’s a lot more tolerance for the strong hand.

You kind of expected dad to be the one that you were more afraid of, that would deliver the message if you slipped up in a very firm way.

At that time, when the song came out, this kind of a song made sense.

Well, dad’s going to be kind of a harsh critic and someone who’s going to come down on you hard to make sure that you stay in line.

The song goes a little bit farther than that.

A dad who left, but I’m going to teach my kid how to be tough by throwing more obstacles in his way.

Where do you think kids learn more from?

Did they learn more from overcoming embarrassing situations?

You know, he had to overcome being called Sue all of his life.

He had to overcome being referred to as a girl.

Well, I make a stronger person by making them overcome physical challenges or overcome mental challenges.

Well, he had to overcome not having a father.

You’re right.

He had to overcome the aspect of not having a father.

So he didn’t have to overcome said father who was probably not going to be a good father.

And back in the 60s, probably would have whacked him upside the head.

He didn’t have to overcome that.

But let’s just for conversation points say he did.

Would that have made him stronger getting whacked upside the head?

Or is Sue stronger because he learned to accept his lot in life, so to speak, with a name such as Sue?

You know, let’s talk for a little bit about the holding on to the grudge for so long, the accepting, you know, the accepting of his lot in life.

And then carrying that on to the end where he accepts the explanation that his dad gave him.

You know, there’s a lot of acceptance themes in this song.

You know, this fictional son carried that grudge for his whole life, vowed to hunt down his dad someday.

So it was either the leaving when he was young or the name or a combination of both that affected him enough that this became his life mission to go and hunt down his dad and deliver vengeance.

From that perspective, this is an obvious failure of this dad’s parenting.

If his son has spent his entire life, his entire youth, resenting his father and resenting his name, that’s not a good thing.

No, no, it’s not, because he does make the point, you know, at the end where it’s like, okay, lay down my gun, I called him my boy, called me his son and saw things with a different point of view.

If I ever have a son, I’m going to name him Bill or George or any damn thing from Sue.

I still hate that name.

If I ever have a son, I think I’m going to name him Bill or George, any damn thing but Sue.

Yeah, that’s right.

And you always hear about generational trauma of being passed down.

So he’s like, he’s trying to stop that trauma right there.

Like, I’m not going to repeat my father’s mistake.

I’ll give my son a clearly masculine name.

I read this book recently.

It’s called A Better Man by Michael Ian Black.

And it’s a great read.

If you haven’t read it, Mick, it’d be a good book for Luke to read too, actually.

Like, maybe have a chance if you suggest it.

Okay, yeah.

I’ll have to come from a third party.

Dave said you could read this book.

Yeah.

Michael Ian Black has a son, and Michael Ian Black’s a comedian.

So he wrote the book as a letter to his son as he’s going on onto his adult life.

He tackles a lot of really complicated subjects in the book about what it means to be a man in the modern world.

It seemed like just a really tough book to write, but a really good balance of advice and kind of reflecting on the state of society and what our culture has done to boys and men.

These pressures to be hyper masculine or to be tough or to be gritty that are kind of baked into our culture.

But there’s one chapter that is about that term like man up.

If things are hard, you got to man up and get through it.

And in the chapter, there’s a line.

He says that, I suspect that when fathers hurt their sons, it’s an expression of their own terrors.

In a perverse way, they’re trying to prepare their boys for a world that will treat them even more harshly than they did.

Be strong, they’re saying, because the weak do not survive.

It stood out to me, there is something to my own experience of fatherhood where I don’t want my sons to be weak.

I want them to be strong.

And there’s this tension where I’m like, alright, how do I teach them to be strong?

Do I teach them to be strong by making things tough for them so that they can overcome those challenges?

Or is life already going to be challenging enough?

And should my role instead be to help to guide them and help them put themselves back together?

That’s kind of what I think about with this song.

The dad knew that life was going to be tough for his son, so he made it even tougher by giving him this name and by leaving.

When in reality, like life was going to be tough already and maybe what he what the son actually needed was just a father figure who was still there.

Back to the original kind of points we were talking about.

That is a great, a great way to look at it.

I don’t think there’s a clear cut answer of which way works because everyone’s situation is is just completely different.

Maybe in this hypothetical situation for a boy named Sue, maybe the doubling down was I mean, I kind of deviate from my point originally about how he was just a deadbeat dad who just copped out and quit.

Maybe I’m rethinking this.

Maybe the doubling down was the way to do it based on this hypothetical situation where he knew he wasn’t going to be able to be there.

I don’t know because I’m not in that position and I never have been.

And, you know, I am grateful for that.

As I was kind of thinking about this conversation, I remembered that there was kind of a conversation recently in the media about grit.

And a lot of it came from this professor of psychology named Angela Duckworth.

She wrote an article.

I think I know she wrote a book about grit because she got kind of famous talking about grit.

There is a kind of a viral TED Talk that she gave about the topic, and she’s done some research as a psychologist.

And so she wrote a book about grit.

I haven’t read it, but I watched the TED Talk.

And it’s interesting that when she was studying students and adults, the ones that had gritty tendencies were the most successful.

Even if they weren’t the smartest or the most talented, there’s a component to being able to persevere over a long period of time in the face of obstacles and challenges.

But what’s interesting at the end of the TED Talk, everyone’s waiting.

I was waiting to hear her say, like, all right, so grit is important.

So here’s how you teach it.

And at the end of the TED Talk, she admitted, I don’t know how to teach grit, actually.

So if you’re looking for answers, I don’t have it.

And no one does.

Well, that seems a rather anticlimactic end.

Everyone’s going there looking for some revelation and some aha moment.

And that’s like saying, here’s the problem.

I know that’s all you get.

You just get a problem.

Maybe it’s the teaser because you got to buy the book to find out.

Anyway, my takeaway from that also is that I think we’ve talked about it before that as parents, we want to have our act together and we want to know what to do.

And yeah, I do want to teach my kids to be gritty and resilient, but I actually don’t know what I’m doing.

I’m just I’m just trying some things.

And this professor of psychology, she doesn’t know what she’s doing either because she’s just like us.

You try something, you experiment, and then you adjust.

Well, and then the other part too is what works to make you gritty and resilient may or may not work for your sons or daughters, because every situation is different, whether it be family situation or societal situation.

I mean, go back to the whacking your kid on the butt like Sue got.

He got whacked on the butt.

And would have got probably whacked on the butt more if the guy hadn’t run away.

You don’t whack on the butt anymore.

Norms change, I guess, is what the Ultima is trying to say.

You know, just behaviors change, norms change, culture changes.

You’re right about one way of motivating might work for one kid, but doesn’t work for another kid.

I’m already seeing that.

Oh, believe me, it’s yeah.

Yeah, like I thought that I had it figured out.

I knew how to motivate my oldest.

These are the things he cares about.

I can challenge him with the thousand pages and he’ll knock it out of the park on the first day because he’s very goal oriented.

Whereas my oldest would be like, the popsicle is great, but that thousand pages, if I want to, I will, but not to get a popsicle.

My middle son, he is the exact opposite.

He would get that same challenge and be like, that’s fine.

I don’t need a popsicle.

Yeah.

And then I’m like, oh, well, okay.

So you’re going to read zero pages.

Every child has their own currency.

And when you figure out what that currency is, then you’ve got something.

But the problem is the currency changes and sometimes it changes quickly.

Kind of like a favorite food.

You go to Costco, you buy the case of macaroni and cheese because macaroni and cheese is their favorite food.

And they requested it three days in a row.

And so you’re at Costco, you’re like, oh, macaroni and cheese.

Should we get macaroni and cheese?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get home two days later.

I’m going to make you some macaroni and cheese.

I don’t want that.

And then you’re eating all the macaroni and cheese yourself.

Pretty much.

We’ve all been in that boat.

Yes.

And back to the song, I mean, humiliation is not an appropriate way to motivate.

Because it does, it does or can breed resentment.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I would agree with you.

And I think that there’s going to be so many opportunities for my kids to feel humiliated about something.

I would never want them to feel embarrassed because of something that I said about them.

Like I want them to always be accepted for who they are and to be comfortable with who they are.

I want them to have a safe place at home so that they can have a refuge from the humiliation they’re going to get at school or today with social media.

Like I can’t even imagine what that era is going to look like when my kids get to that age.

That as a parenting technique, I think is a clear miss from my perspective, probably for any generation.

I mean, that is hopefully something that we have learned through just our education and experience as parents that that’s not something that I’m going to be doing.

Yeah, because it goes back to the you want your people and by your people.

Well, your people, your spouse, your partner, your kids, your loved ones.

You want them to feel as if you are a person that they can try to communicate with in whatever way, shape or form, whenever they want that safe space.

And when you are just putting somebody down constantly, that feeling will not be there for you.

Pure and simple.

TED Talk about grit.

She did mention that having grit is being able to kind of play in the long game.

It’s also something that like if I’m going to teach my kids to be gritty and resilient, you have to be consistent over a long period of time and know that even if you don’t have success in something right away, they’re going to need the encouragement to keep going back and trying it.

Having an environment where it’s okay to fail at something temporarily so that you’re building yourself up for future success, I think is something that is just, it’s difficult for even me to do as an adult.

But it’s a healthy atmosphere, I think, for a family to have so that you can build up the longer term view of struggles in your kid’s life.

It’s so interesting that you mentioned that long game aspect because that is kind of, in my opinion, where, and I’m going to use my teenagers as examples, talking about kids that have grown up with just massive increases in the use of technology in their everyday life as compared to their parents.

It is a real challenge right now for teenagers and even younger to understand the concept of playing the long game, because so much of their everyday world is built around quicker, faster results.

And kids these days, and I know I sound like an old fuddy, but in some aspects I am.

If the shoe fits, Mick.

Yeah, kids these days oftentimes don’t have to wait for things.

And that is really a challenge that I think that we are kind of doing our children a disservice.

And I really just don’t think it’s healthy that kids have not learned how to be patient.

Yeah, it’ll be really interesting to see where things go when my kids get teenage age, because I hear the stories about social media.

And I think there’s kind of a correction.

People are trying to push back on that and limit social as much as they can.

But some of it’s kind of inevitable, like we have the technology, we’re going to use it, and kids are going to be exposed to it.

So how do you manage it?

I’m pretty lucky in the fact that my kids are not big social media junkies.

So that’s not to say that they’re not addicted to their electronics, because they do like to go down YouTube rabbit holes about God knows what.

But it’s not the TikToks and the Instagram that you hear a lot of teenagers really struggling with.

So for that, I’m grateful.

So from A Boy Named Sue to YouTube Rabbit Holes, here we are.

If you want to go down a YouTube rabbit hole, a good one is to look up some of the videos because there is video footage of Johnny Cash performing A Boy Named Sue at San Quentin.

I saw that.

Which is great.

You get some reactions from the prisoners and everything and it’s very cool.

At some point, I found video footage.

I’ll have to find it for the show notes of Shel and Johnny performing the song together.

Shel Silverstein has a really interesting voice.

It’s very high-pitched and a little gravelly, very unique voice.

It’s not as deep and smooth as the man in black.

So you could see why Johnny won for male vocal performance and not Shel Silverstein.

So Shel Silverstein may be a songwriter is what you’re saying, but he’s not a song singer.

That’s right.

He did release an album with a boy named Sue on it.

Shel did.

Not as critically acclaimed as Johnny’s.

We’ve gone all over the place and ended up on YouTube, rabbit holes as you mentioned.

Ended up opining on the state of technology and social media for the youth, like any couple of old guys would get to eventually.

Some people would say I do it too often, but that is a cross that I know that I must bear because that’s the life I live.

We would expect nothing less from an IOF farm boy than to opine on the perils of technology.

Exactly.

It’s on brand, Mick.

Yeah.

No, I am who I am.

That’s all I can say.

Well, everyone, we do thank you for taking some time out of your full, because remember we don’t use the word busy on this show, we use full.

So thank you for taking some time out of your full lives to spend a little time with us as we opine on A Boy Named Sue and whether that dad was a parenting genius or an abject failure.

If you want to go back and listen to any of our back episodes, just go to countrymusictads.com and you can find all of our previous episodes on there.

This song will be on the Country Music Dads playlist, which you can find on Spotify.

If you want to give us any feedback on the socials, Instagram and Facebook, drop us a line, ideas for upcoming shows or tell us your opinion on the parenting style of A Boy Named Sue’s father.

A classic country music dad.

Thank you all for joining us and we’ll see you next time.

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