- Were there any limits that you placed on screen time?
- Just Barney. I think that was a cult.
I love you, you love me.
- I'm Tee.
- I'm Adam.
- And we are dads of nine-month-old twins, Reve and Sky.
- And this week I tried parenting like my boomer parents.
No technology, no FaceTime and relying only on instinct.
This week, I traveled to Nebraska to visit my parents.
I took Reve and Sky with me.
Tee stayed in Chicago for a bit.
My brother and I drove the 450 mile road trip to get here.
While I was here,
since my parents always have a ton of advice,
We were like, hey, why don't we try
me parenting like a boomer for a whole week.
See how it goes.
We are somewhere in Iowa.
Given the girls their bottles, got uncle David here.
They've been pretty good so far. Just took a nap.
Now we're getting some food in 'em.
Gonna change their diapers, stretch 'em out a little
and get back on the road.
We are officially in the home stretch.
Girls are doing pretty well.
I made it home to see Mimsy and Grandpa
- Adam and the kids are gone.
They are in Nebraska.
I miss them so much!
but let me tell you this.
I miss them, but I am having a good time as well.
- In the 80s, there was maybe a little less worry
about every little thing.
- Just the simplicity of when it was in the 80s
and versus now, because now it's like,
you can't do this. You can't do that.
And it's just like, oh my God, they are kids.
They're gonna be fine.
- Hanging out in Nebraska with my mom and my niece, Ainsley.
Girls are still taking a nap.
We're coming right up on 11:30, which is normally
what time they wake up from their nap.
They sleep for about an hour and a half.
And if they go past that, then we will wake them up
to keep them on a schedule.
So when it came to nap time, my mom's whole thing is
- Never wake a sleeping baby.
- Which I was going along with
thinking that they would, you know
wake up within a certain amount of time, like
close to when they normally wake up
and they just kept sleeping.
It's 11:35 and it's really slowly killing me inside
that we're not waking the girls up
but we're doing it because we're what? We're boomers!
Okay. It's 11:45.
I said 20 minutes, we're doing 15 minutes.
This is, we're just asking for trouble with this.
So that was one time where I had to be like,
"Enough. Waking them up."
They are up from their extended nap
and they seem to be in a very good mood. So,
- [Adam's Mom] Told ya!
- I mean, I would be in a good mood too,
if I got sleep all day, but then what would happen?
I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Right?
One of the things that I'm doing is getting
canned baby food.
Up to this point all they've had is like
freshly cooked food that we've made for them.
They actually had a lot of choices.
They had sweet potatoes.
They had carrots and peas.
One of their choices was sweet potato and chicken.
Just the idea of like room temperature, canned chicken.
I'm sure it's fine, but I just couldn't do that to my girls.
So we're doing canned green beans.
And before I feed it to my girls, I have to taste it myself.
- [Adam's Mom] I never did that!
- I hope they like it more than I do.
I was actually nervous for them
'cause I thought they were just gonna reject it.
You wanna try it?
- [Adam's Mom] Mm.
- That yummy, Sky?
Do you wanna try these?
Well, it's not a rejection, so we'll take it as a success.
So even though this isn't something that we normally do
I think it's still pretty good.
We still went organic on it.
Even though my parents didn't do organic
I don't even know if they had organic jars as babies.
- [Adam's Mom] They didn't have organic back in the day.
- Back in the day we liked chemicals, extra chemicals.
- There you go.
They ate the whole thing.
They loved it.
We gonna do jarred baby food from now on?
Yeah, I don't think so.
- It's like the house is so quiet.
You don't hear anything. Nothing at all.
No kids crying, no one running around, like nothing.
- It is late.
It's like 11:45, just wrapping up the day.
Usually I finish the day by like cleaning up the kitchen
and making sure everything's set for the next day.
Since I am parenting like a boomer this week
I cannot use the dishwasher to clean the bottles.
And we always have a hefty haul of bottles
at the end of the day.
So, about to use a handy little bottle brush.
Washing all the bottles by hand is a chore.
After having our dishwasher routine down
it was just like, a nightmare. It's so much work.
Oh God, I'm becoming my dad.
I'm wearing sandals with socks.
This boomer thing is really taking its toll.
One of the lifesavers for me and Tee has been this
like automatic formula bottle making machine.
You just choose the ounce you want.
Choose the temperature you want. Push a button.
And it makes it, takes like 10 seconds.
But the way that I did it this week was,
you like, get out the can of formula.
You scoop it into the bottle
which already has the measured amount of water in it.
And then you heat up a separate cup of water.
Fill a cup with water
- Microwave it till it's boiling
and you immerse the bottle.
- So that it can keep the formula to a temperature
that the girls will accept but it can't be too hot.
Applying it to the wrist.
And it's cold, back into the hot water.
And it took forever.
This is torture.
Test number two, onto the wrist.
Ooh, that's body temp.
We're ready to go.
Like bathing, hygiene and all that.
What did you do?
- You always got a bath every single day.
Shampooed your hair, bathed you.
We used Baby Magic and then you got lotioned up afterwards.
- We normally use Tubby Todd or Kiehl's
or some nice baby shampoo, body wash.
It's bath time with the boomer soap. Here we go.
Johnson's baby shampoo. It's a classic.
As gentle to eyes, as pure as water.
This is not a paid endorsement.
So we're gonna try that tonight.
Instead of the fancy stuff that we normally use.
- When I was growing up my mom used
the same soap she used on herself.
There is nothing that is for kids.
Everything is for human being.
- All right, girls, it's time to call Papa.
Normally we would FaceTime him.
But since this is the week where I'm parenting
like my boomer parents,
we're gonna call him over the phone. No video.
Papa's on the phone, say hi.
- [Tee] Hello!
- Well, I guess that means they miss you.
- [Tee] Aww!
- Yep, they are both crying.
Sky!
Okay. Let's turn on FaceTime.
- [Adam's Mom] Instant gratification.
- Yeah. Mom was like, too much instant gratification.
You're teaching them bad habits,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And they wanna see their dad. What are you gonna do?
There's Papa.
Getting ready to put the girls to bed.
My boomer parents said that
they did not use sleep sacks at all.
We use sleep sacks to help the girls sleep.
A sleep sack is sort of a zip up blanket, almost,
that you just cover 'em in. The ones we use are
actually weighted, kind of like a weighted blanket.
And so that also is sorta, the pressure is supposed to
help them feel secure or touched or something.
- Never had sleep sacks.
When they were babies, we swaddled them
and when they got older we just had 'em in warmer pajamas.
- How'd that work for you?
- You made it.
- Did you guys use like white noise or anything?
- I snored.
- And what about baby monitors?
- I think we had like a walkie-talkie thing. No video.
- Do you still have any baby monitors?
- Probably, but I don't throw things away.
Another thing that a lot of boomers don't do.
- The OG baby monitor.
That's our normal baby monitor with the video
and all that wifi function.
And then here's this old one.
Okay. So I think it's on, I think it's working.
- We used to pick up our next door neighbors.
We could hear everything they said.
- It's also a spying device.
- All I can hear is their white noise.
I'm hoping that if they cry it will penetrate
and I'll be able to hear through the monitor.
So when it came to putting the girls in front of the TV
for the first time, that was definitely a step for me.
We turned on PBS, I think.
And they were both super into it.
As we knew they would be.
I mean, when we have the TV on
they try to watch it and we just stop them.
But this one we're like, okay, here you go.
You can watch TV.
So I feel like it was sort of like candy for them.
They were very into it.
Were there any limits that you placed on screen time?
- Just Barney. I think that was a cult.
I love you, you love me.
- I loved Barney.
- Yeah, well, that was limited.
- The girls don't get any screen time.
That's something that Adam and I have decided
from the beginning, that we are not doing screen time
for the girls probably until they are two.
- The most screen time they get is when they're Face Timing.
- Oh yeah.
- My parents or friends or family.
We've noticed that the times where we have the TV on
and they start watching it,
if we'll call their name or do anything
they like, are so zoned in on the TV that like
we can't get their attention. And it's like, ah!
- Yeah.
- This is why we're not doing it.
Another boomer pro tip is keeping 'em entertained
with random kitchen Tupperware and utensils.
Got some rubber spatulas here they've been loving.
The happiest they've seemed all day.
Entertaining the girls with bowls and utensils,
we have tried once or twice at home.
They were so into it.
I think it kept them busy for like 45 minutes.
It's safe, effective, inexpensive.
I've been parenting like my boomer parents all week.
It is exhausting.
I don't know if it's because
the boomer lifestyle is exhausting or if it's just because
parenting twin nine-month-old girls is a lot.
I have no idea how they did it. Like it's just wild.
The bottles alone, putting all the formula in the bottles
every time you have to make it
and heating it manually like that.
Wild.
- It is about seven in the morning.
I just made it to the airport to go catch my flight
to go see the kids.
I am extremely excited, and I can't wait to get there.
So when I get to Adam's parents' house
and Adam greeted me at the door
with plaid shirt, high rise pants and these socks.
Hello!
- Hello there!
- What the hell is this? What you got on?
- We're boomers now.
- What the hell is this?
- Just got the girls up from a nap.
It's their first time seeing their Papa in a week.
You ready to see him?
- Hi! Did you guys miss me?
Look at this smile!
You miss me?
You guys got so big.
I missed you.
- The 80s were a simpler time.
And I learned a ton about patience this week.
I took a lot of good things away from it,
but when it comes to twins, like,
technology just makes things so much easier.
- And we are not waiting to warm up bottles.
Those girls will not make it.
- I don't think we would make it.