Parent, Adult & Child

This week Richard & Fiona have a natter about the concept of "Ego States" in Transactional Analysis. The idea being that we can break our personality down into 3 different states of Parent Adult and Child.

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Transcript

Richard: 0:10

Hello, therapy fans! Hello, psychology fans! Hello, everybody out there! Welcome to another episode of Therapy Natters, the podcast series where two psychotherapists answer your questions and natter about something that hopefully can improve your life in some way because you're never too old to learn. Hey, Fiona! Have you been learning anything? You've been learning bridge.

Fiona: 0:34

Oh gosh, bridge.

Richard: 0:37

Are you done with it?

Fiona: 0:38

seem to be going backwards on bridge. Oh, the more I learn, the more I realise I don't know. And then, then I compete in something and I get it all wrong and oh dear. It's a good job I'm quite happy being wrong. I don't know if my family would agree with that statement, but I don't mind losing, shall we say, which is as well. We do always learn, don't we? Well, I hope we do.

Richard: 1:06

Yeah. Well, I don't ever want to stop learning. But in order to be okay with that learning of something new, you've got to admit to yourself that you don't know everything. And people like to think that they do, sometimes. I've met a lot of folk who, they think they know everything, they act as if they know everything, and they want to prove that they know everything. Have I done that before? I think when I was younger, I didn't like being wrong about things. I think maybe I had something stuck in my head that says, being wrong is wrong. But when it is wrong... But it's okay, which makes it right. So being wrong is right. It's right to be wrong. Now I've confused myself, Fiona.

Fiona: 1:51

Confusion's good. I like being confused. Do I? I don't know. But,

Richard: 1:56

I see what you did there.

Fiona: 2:00

I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't know. Yes,

Richard: 2:03

you can, any, hypnotherapists often become psychotherapists, but we always stay as the hypnotherapist deep down, don't we?

Fiona: 2:10

We do. We do. Yes, language. But I don't know what I'm doing. But then that's part of the not knowing is not knowing what you're doing. And it is okay. But, you know, when you get a situation where one person says the, Next Commonwealth Games were due to be in Australia and they've been cancelled and the other person says, no, they were due to be in Canada and they've been cancelled. Well, one is right and one is wrong. It just happened on that occasion that I was right and my brother was wrong, but,

Richard: 2:38

Oh, I

Fiona: 2:39

no big, no big deal, somebody has to be wrong.

Richard: 2:42

I thought that was a bit specific. Well, if he listens to this episode, he can he can recognise himself there, I'm sure.

Fiona: 2:50

I did say to him the other day, how many times have you listened to my podcast, and he said none.

Richard: 2:55

That's okay.

Fiona: 2:56

But he also has not listened to any other podcast, so.

Richard: 3:00

It's clearly no reflection on you. And that's the same with my wife. Dawn has never listened to any podcasts from anybody. Why would she listen to mine?

Fiona: 3:07

And when you said at the beginning of this one, welcome to therapy fans and psychology fans, I was thinking, well, I wonder how people do find us sometimes. I wonder if people just accidentally come along. I hope so. Hello, if you've just accidentally come along.

Richard: 3:23

Welcome to something that's been going on for a year and a half or more, and you're new to the show. Where you been? But yeah,

Fiona: 3:32

been listening to True Crime.

Richard: 3:34

There's a lot of those about. There's a lot of true crime podcasts. There really are.

Fiona: 3:39

thing from a psychological perspective, isn't it?

Richard: 3:42

It is. But since I became a therapist, certainly over the last 15 years, I'm not good with true crime anymore.

Fiona: 3:50

Oh, I love it. Court TV, I've mentioned it before. I find it just fascinating. I think there's an element because it's in the States and we're not, there's a detachment. So, I can see it, yeah, from that detached place. Don't feel it the same way.

Richard: 4:09

I'm always interested in the defense mechanisms, how we react in particular ways to try and protect our ego. And you do see that a lot in those sorts of shows. Whether it's reality TV, well particularly reality TV, but you'll see it I guess in some of the court stuff maybe. Where people genuinely do believe and respond in a particular way because it feels like the right thing to do. And they're just protecting their ego. Ego, as in a, well, it was Freud I suppose, that, did he actually term the word ego?

Fiona: 4:46

That's not fair.

Richard: 4:47

Because that sounds quite Latin.

Fiona: 4:49

don't, it is. Ego is. I, in Latin.

Richard: 4:53

of course it is.

Fiona: 4:54

And Id is that.

Richard: 4:56

That.

Fiona: 4:57

So, ego is I, id is that, and superego is above, super being above ego.

Richard: 5:05

what did Freud call the super ego? Was it uber ego? Probably. I can't remember. All my stuff's translated. Yeah,

Fiona: 5:11

German, I, I would imagine it was über Ego.

Richard: 5:15

Oh, good accent there. Very good. Bit of Austrian. That was that was

Fiona: 5:19

one, yes. I couldn't do that again.

Richard: 5:22

And it's the ego part of Freud's tripart that we're going to talk about today.

Fiona: 5:29

We are. And on that I would basically say, I mean, they use the term ego states in the theory we're going to talk about, but it's the self. Fundamentally. In most therapy, ego just means self, and this is a slight tangent, but I hope it's relevant. There's a technique in hypnotherapy mainly but it can be any type of therapy, which is called ego strengthening. And it's a technique which is about strengthening the self, building resilience, but I would never say to a client, we're going to do some ego strengthening right now, because in common parlance, ego tends to represent something that's negative, it's, oh, you've got too big an ego, you're egotistical. So, let's just take ego equals self.

Richard: 6:27

I'd forgotten that, and I remember thinking the same thing, probably 20 years ago. And yet, because of the Freudian terminology, I've kind of got lost in the word. But of course we do. No one says he's got a good ego.

Fiona: 6:43

Not in, not in, not in normal

Richard: 6:47

no, we don't. People don't. Not sitting around a table in a pub, going, oh, he's got a good ego. But they'll definitely reference the ego in a bad way.

Fiona: 6:55

how's your ego feeling today?

Richard: 6:58

Ha ha. But somebody will say, oh, their ego. Oh, he's got an ego, has he? Brr. Of course he has an ego. Ha ha. But that, they're meaning... Oh, it's pretentious. It's, egotistical.

Fiona: 7:14

their own trumpet.

Richard: 7:16

Well, actually sometimes that's okay. Shouldn't we be proud?

Fiona: 7:20

We should blow our own trumpets. What's the point of having a trumpet if you don't blow it

Richard: 7:24

Stick that on a t-shirt.

Fiona: 7:26

I've got the giggles now. But it's true, isn't it? I mean, seriously, seriously, she says, she's giggling. It, it's, it's a valid point. What is the point of having a trumpet if you don't blow it? You should be allowed to blow your own trumpet. You should be allowed to stand up for what you're good at and say, Hey, I'm okay. Now, there are ways to do it. And there are ways make it socially unacceptable. Would that depends on your culture. But still to use another metaphor, we, shouldn't have to hide our light under a bushel, should we? If we've got a light. Let it shine.

Richard: 8:07

Yeah. We do as children, I hope, I know there are some children that have been told they shouldn't. Children should be seen and not heard. It's a phrase that, Hopefully is fading away, and I hope that the next generation, because this is going to sit on the internet forever, so maybe in 30 years time, another generation down the line, somebody will listen to that and go, children should be seen and not heard, never heard that phrase before. I hope that's the case. In fact, hey! Youngsters? Anybody out there that's only 20? Only. I wonder if this is the first time you might have heard that phrase that children should be seen and not heard. If I speak to my son about that when I see him tomorrow, because I'm not going to see him tonight, he's off out. I'll ask him, because I wonder if he would be aware that that was part of what it was to be

Fiona: 8:59

Hmm.

Richard: 9:00

a parent. That

Fiona: 9:01

I'll ask, I'll ask my, my kids as well who are sort of in between generation with Billy. Yeah, see what they, know of that. Actually, I mentioned talking to my father yesterday. He, he did a speech at my school speech day, which was exceptionally embarrassing. He was invited to give the keynote speech when I was about 14 and I can't remember how we got on to talking about it yesterday, but he couldn't remember what he talked about. And by the way, it was embarrassing because I didn't like to be the centre of attention at all, I didn't want any spotlight on me, so the fact that it was my father and people knew it was, that was the embarrassing thing. He was excellent. He was a really good public speaker. He did not decide what to talk about until he was driving there. But what he, what he did talk about was the generation gap. And that's a phrase that's disappeared, isn't it?

Richard: 9:57

Generation gap. Yeah.

Fiona: 9:59

We don't talk about a generation gap, although... It's quite clear to me as I think about it that there definitely is one, and I wonder if it's perhaps even more than it used to be.

Richard: 10:13

Well, language changes over time. Every generation comes out with their new words, new phrases, and catchphrases, and things like that, and ways of describing the world. And because of that, I do think there are people in an older generation that really get quite scared about the changes that they see. And feel that they don't fit in. it's on my podcast topic list of things to talk about, which in my mind is the problems with nostalgia. Nostalgia might be great, but I think it can also cause some problems. Because there's this desperate need to try and repeat the past, and try and bring things that happened in your past into the present. And that's not always a good idea. Sure, learn from the past, but don't repeat the past.

Fiona: 11:02

I tell you what, you do that podcast and then we can follow up on it, and now let's follow up on the one that you did do fairly recently, which we said we were going to follow up on, which is

Richard: 11:15

About ego states,

Fiona: 11:16

Ego states. Oh, we're so good at tangents. I mean, we could rename this Tangent Natters. but

Richard: 11:23

Tangent natters.

Fiona: 11:26

how many tangents can you fit in half an hour? There is form of therapy, which we have mentioned before, and we've used a few bits from it in past episodes. Which is Transactional Analysis, a form of therapy developed by Eric Byrne in the 1960s in America, and it is full of jargon, absolutely full of jargon, but don't let that put you off. The basis of this, which strangely we haven't actually talked about, is the title, Analysis of Transactions. What is a transaction, I hear you ask, because I presume you know what analysis is. A transaction is a communication or a little element of communication between two people. So, if I was to say, Hello Richard,

Richard: 12:12

Hello, Fiona.

Fiona: 12:13

that is two transactions. One from me to Richard, one from Richard to me.

Richard: 12:19

One adult to another.

Fiona: 12:21

One adult to another. Absolutely. So, the way that Eric Byrne viewed the world is that at any given time, each of us, every single one of us, on this planet. Or in an aircraft, or a spaceship above the planet. Is in either parent, adult, or child mode. And those are called ego states, which is why we were waffling on about egos earlier. It's forms of the self. So, let's start with the middle one. The Adult, and you can see it if you, if you conceptualise things in diagrammatic form, you can see three circles, one above the other with a P at the top, an A in the middle, and a C in the bottom circle. Parent, adult child. So the middle one, adult being in adult mode is where you are responding, using the information that you have around you right now and interpreting things with logic. And, you know, usually it would sort of be an appropriate sort of response. So, most adults, most of the time, the theory says, should really be in adult mode. Then we move up in the diagram to the parent mode, which is behaving as your parents or other authority figures did when you were a child. So it doesn't necessarily mean being parental, although it can do but it's a sort of modeling process of how those people were with you as a child. And that Mode is divided into two. Adult isn't divided. Adult is just adult. Parent is divided into two. There is nurturing parent and controlling parent.

Richard: 14:12

Oh, controlling, I've always called it critical.

Fiona: 14:14

You could use that. I, I think that that either word is absolutely fine. But it's important to recognise, and I should have said this earlier about adult, but it'll do now. That all of these modes have their place, they have their time, they are appropriate at times and inappropriate at others. So let's look at I mean, I think that the terms nurturing and controlling slash critical are quite clear. Let's look at times when they're appropriate. If I fell over tripping on my doorstep, which really needs replacing because it's very unstable, and broke my arm, and my neighbour came round and was looking after me, if she was in nurturing parent, that would be appropriate. If, however, doing some work and I'm struggling to get it completed by five o'clock and my partner were to say Oh, you poor thing. Oh, don't worry about it. It's okay. It's okay. That's not appropriate because I'm in Adult trying to get that work done and I don't want somebody going into we will complete these transactions, by the way, in a bit, because we need the other side. But that's not appropriate. Let's look at controlling parent. If you have a boss who is telling you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, all the different things with a fierce voice, that's a controlling parent and likely to be inappropriate. If, however, you're walking along a street in a major city and a policeman says, Turn around, go the other way, that is controlling parent and very likely to be appropriate. Those are the two types of parent.

Richard: 16:03

The important thing there is to recognise that what's healthy is that when somebody's in either of those parent modes, you can stay in adult mode yourself, in adult state, adult mode. But there's always the concern that you would slip into the... Child state. Because in transactional analysis, that's the thing. These, they're, these are transactions. There's a, there's a call. I'm being the, I'm being the parent. So. If you're not careful, you hear that, and then, okay, I become the child, and the child state, if maybe you think about your own childhood, about who you were, how you felt as a child, that can go one of three ways, rather than two, because there's a third one. With the, with the child state, we have free child, where you're free just to be you. And you can play, and you can be creative, and you can be that free child. But if your childhood felt more controlled, and you were adapted by people around you, then you become that adapted child. Or, the less common one, but you'd have all experienced people like this, there's the rebellious child. Where, when somebody's in parent mode, whether they're being controlling and critical or not, it's very easy to slip into the rebellious child, and I'm not doing anything just because somebody told me to, no matter who they are, and to stay in that rebellious child mode. And, ah, I've met a lot of people like that over the years.

Fiona: 17:48

Just to say a little bit more about that the adapted child... I'm going to say this, everybody should have an adapted child because the adapted child is the part that knows how to behave and how to respond in certain situations. So, if you were to be invited to have tea with the king, Richard, Which, uh, the invitation is probably in the post. But,

Richard: 18:17

If you don't ask, you don't get.

Fiona: 18:19

if you were, would your behaviour adapt? I think it probably would. Most people would. We need to know how to do things. We talked recently about being in an interview. Adapted child is quite a good element of what you need to do to be in an interview. It's a sort of really behaving place. But it can go far too far. Free child. I always think of free child for an adult being in free child, as the person who's able to jump over the waves that are coming in on the beach, and run up a sand dune, and just be themselves. So free works really well. So going back to what you were starting to say, The transaction is between two people, each have their ego state that they are operating from at the time. Those can fit, they can work together. They can be complementary. So, most adults, most of the time, will be communicating in adult to adult mode. Sometimes, when it's appropriate, like if I fell off my doorstep, I would go into, hmm... Actually, probably knowing me, I'd probably go into a little bit of an adapted child, because I wouldn't be screaming. But I would be in child, because I'd need somebody to look after me, So, that's an appropriate transacrion between the

Richard: 19:50

There are plenty that would stay in adult mode and they'd be very logical about it and then they wouldn't seek out any nurturing from anybody. They'd be like, right, practical, come on, let's just get this sorted out, come on, into a taxi, can't drive, can't change gear. Wow, look after yourself, mate, what are you doing?

Fiona: 20:06

and, and I would do that if there wasn't a nurturing parent who appeared,

Richard: 20:11

Ah, okay.

Fiona: 20:12

you know, but then you get to the hospital and the chances are you get a nurturing parent because that is, hopefully, I mean, seriously, hopefully, that is what medical staff are in. Quite a lot of the

Richard: 20:26

If they're not burnt out.

Fiona: 20:27

I recently spent a lot of time in hospital with my father. And there was a lot of nurturing parent going on there, and it was really, really lovely to see. Very, very nice to see. And then it can mix up in that context, because that wasn't necessarily saying my father was childish, but he was just the weaker one who needed some support. So, that's all appropriate. The whole

Richard: 20:57

Yeah, let me just, let me just shine a light on that, because that's really interesting. You don't have to be childish to be in child mode.

Fiona: 21:06

because you're as you were as a child, and Some of the time when you're a child, you're childish and that's absolutely

Richard: 21:13

I'm free child almost all the time.

Fiona: 21:16

Yeah. Oh, so as an adult you're in free child I was just thinking about when I was on Brighton Beach the other day I really wish I'd thought about this and I might have let my free child out. My free child did not come out

Richard: 21:28

Oh.

Fiona: 21:29

No, the pebbles were too painful.

Richard: 21:33

Oh, fair enough. Yeah.

Fiona: 21:34

Actually, that probably was a little bit of a it was a bit of a free petulant child. It was a bit of petulant child. There was a bit of petulant child, though, where they said, well, we've all got to have a photo down at the water's edge. Everybody, everybody get your shoes off and it, oh, it it hurts. So I wasn't a bit of that. I was not jumping over the waves in a free, childlike manner.

Richard: 21:59

But you weren't, being the rebellious child who says, I'm not doing that.

Fiona: 22:04

No, I don't have much of a rebellious child, I don't think, but going back to when there were problems. The problems come when one person is pushing another into an inappropriate state. So somebody who's, let's say it's a two partners in a relationship. Husband and wife or whatever they may be. And one goes in to child, Poor me, I need this. And it's aim, although it's not conscious, well usually, might be, but It's not usually conscious. The aim is to push the other person, their partner, into nurturing parent to look after them. Now, sometimes, yes, sometimes that might be appropriate. Go back to my falling off the step example, I really need to replace this step. I didn't realise how much it was bothering me.

Richard: 23:03

Clearly is, isn't it? Yeah.

Fiona: 23:04

is but if I had a husband then that would be an appropriate time for, for a nurturing parent, but it can be in all sorts of ways. If somebody, you know, Perhaps worrying about something, then the partner could go into a nurturing parent sort of role. And then the other side of it is people who go into either nurturing parent or controlling parent and pushing the person they're communicating with into child when that's not appropriate. So somebody who's, oh, poor you, poor you. When the other person is... What? What do you mean poor me? I'm absolutely fine or controlling telling. Why are you telling me what to do? Now the beauty of this theory is that the idea is if you are in that transaction, if you're seeing it is a diagram with two circles of P two A's and two C's and arrows going between them in terms of the transactions. If you cross it, so if you're put into either a parent or a child mode when you do not want to be, if you cross it and respond adult to adult or possibly Parent, child, child, parent, the opposite, but it's easier to think of adult to adult. If you cross it, one of two things will happen. Either it will switch the other person to respond from adult to adult and resolve the problem. Or it will end the communication, in which case you move away. And I tell you, it works. It works. It works!

Richard: 24:48

You look, you gotta look on your face that says I'm living proof of that.

Fiona: 24:53

Yeah, well, I mean, anybody who tries this will tell you, if you do that, it works. Somebody can't carry on. They've got nowhere to go. They, they, well, they have

Richard: 25:02

cause it doesn't fit.

Fiona: 25:04

They, they can switch and then they can carry on or it

Richard: 25:07

yeah. yeah. It's, it's discordant. There's this clang. Oh, this doesn't feel right for me to carry on being in this mode. Like, a, a critical boss who is in that controlling parent mode, if their member of staff responds in adult mode, then, well, what would happen then? They're, hmm,

Fiona: 25:33

Well, this, this might be an instance where it's not immediate because then the, the boss might keep trying, but with consistency. Responding from adult. Always respond from adult. Always respond from adult.

Richard: 25:49

if you, if you're both in critical parent mode, there'll just be an argument.

Fiona: 25:53

oh, well, two people who are communicating from parent to parent that's going to be problematic. It doesn't happen very often, though, because that's not the way that it works.

Richard: 26:05

But the, but a manager would not know which way their team member is going to go. They wouldn't know how that person would normally respond. So if you act like a controlling parent, is that then going to make your team member become the adapted child? Possibly but maybe it'll make them turn into the rebellious child. Or maybe it'll make them turn into the, into a controlling parent themselves. And you need to both be in adult mode, please, in order to get the work done.

Fiona: 26:35

And likewise... two people who are in child mode can communicate from place and if we're thinking about adults in their child mode, that can be absolutely brilliant. That's about having fun playing. as an adult in all sorts of ways that you might choose to play as an adult. That can be, oi oi, that can be, that's, that's a good thing. But it can also be not such a good thing if, if perhaps those two children were with the controlling parent in a work situation and they sort of collude as the poor pathetic children and it's, it's not going well. I also just wanted to add on well, two things. One is the adult within the child. Which is a great one, so I'll just throw it in just because I think it's really fascinating, is that children, actual children, as opposed to adults in child mode, actual children have an adult. And the jargon for that is the little professor. And when you see that, and any parent will have seen that, it's so sweet when the child is being the adult. And they can also, of course, be the parents, because they play games of being parents, but one child might parent another child, either in a controlling way or a nurturing way. Understanding that dynamic is really helpful to do your best to make sure it's appropriate. Nobody's going to be appropriately in mode all the time. So, you know, it's, it's only a way of seeing things and looking for patterns and seeing what could be improved. The other bit was the word or the phrase grown up. We might have mentioned this before, but it fits here even if we have. I haven't actually seen this written down anywhere, so it may be, or it may not be, but to me, a grown up is what a child thinks an adult is.

Richard: 28:36

Ah,

Fiona: 28:37

an adult is not what a child thinks an adult is.

Richard: 28:42

yeah,

Fiona: 28:44

watch out for yourself when that phrase grown up comes into your mind,

Richard: 28:50

yeah, you have a, phrase that you use from time to time which is, Have a little look. And I think that's really, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really

Fiona: 28:58

I didn't know that.

Richard: 28:59

Yeah, have a little look. And I think we do

Fiona: 29:03

has a

Richard: 29:04

a little look.

Fiona: 29:05

with it, you did the gesture, it has a little gesture, which is funny because you don't look, you don't look with your fingers, but it was a rummage, it was a sort of rummagey. It's a rummage gesture.

Richard: 29:16

Rummaging into your history. But we do. Have a little look. And see what your childhood was like. Were you controlled? Were you free? Were your parents particularly critical? Because they would have modelled how to be as well. And I do wonder if a lot of adapted children become critical parents, controlling parents, whether they're with their own children or with the wider society.

Fiona: 29:50

I'm going to go back to selling the idea of Adapted Child. If you're not in Adapted Child, how do you learn at school? If you have a classroom full of free children, which I hear from teacher friends is what happens quite a lot these days, they don't tend to use those terms, but if they're in Free Child or Rebellious Child in the classroom, How do they learn? To me, adapted child is not by default a problem. It's actually a useful thing. It's only if it's too much or in the wrong place. So, going back to the example that we gave of playing where you made your little noise. If you were an adapted child in that setting, Not so good.

Richard: 30:39

One thing we've not mentioned is how these three can live in our head at the same time and have a conversation with each other. And the example I was thinking of the other week was of eating healthily. And the parent in your head says lots of salad, high protein, less carbs, less sugar. You got this, come on, you can do this. And the child in our head says, but I want chocolate cake, and we need our adult to step in and be logical and go, well, let's just see if that's a good idea or not, because sometimes it is, because healthy people eat chocolate cake, just not every day. So let's have a look. Let's be logical about this. But the adult might say, Oh, actually, no, not today. That's, that's probably a bad idea today. But we need to have those three people in our head at any one time having that conversation.

Fiona: 31:38

It can also be that a nurturing parent is saying to the child, have chocolate cake.

Richard: 31:45

huh. Hmm.

Fiona: 31:47

And it would be separate, I think. I think it would. There can be an adapted child, who's, no, no, no, no, I can't have that. So that could come from an adapted child place of, That's not the right thing to do. You should only have a sweet after a meal or you should only have this if you've been good. That's Adapted Child. Or could be. It could be adult, because the adult could have thought it through and decided their regimen as to what is right for them. And that's what adult is. Adult is the thinking things through and deciding. So not just saying, Ooh, cake! I'll have it. And the Adapted Child says, it's not. Sunday afternoon or whatever it might be.

Richard: 32:34

It's not your birthday,

Fiona: 32:35

so you don't have that. The adult will have thought it through and be able to make a decision appropriate to that time and that circumstance.

Richard: 32:46

Well, I hope that's given everybody a little bit of psychological education, opened a little window into what goes on in the world of transactional analysis. And if you've got any questions about it, ask us. We're happy to, happy to natter a bit more about it because it's really quite interesting. The more we natter, the more we learn. I might be 47, I'm still learning.

Fiona: 33:05

well I'm 62 and I'm still learning, there are very few situations where a little bit of parent adult child can't help shed some light.

Richard: 33:15

Watch it play out. When you sit back and watch your interactions with friends and family members, not necessarily with yourself, just with others. Just watch it. It's quite the eye opener. Oh yeah, Try it. Yeah. To influence other people then. Not in a malicious way. But no, because it's not malicious, is it? It's in a helpful way.

Fiona: 33:36

Hopefully, I mean, you could do it in a malicious way, but that's not what we're suggesting. But you can try, just jokingly almost, to switch somebody into another mode. See if you can get somebody to go into nurturing parent.

Richard: 33:52

Yeah.

Fiona: 33:52

See if you can get them to go into child. Obviously, it needs to be appropriate and that it's okay. But yeah, and break a transaction or two and see how that works.

Richard: 34:03

Right, we'd better wrap up. We're definitely back next week, as this is what we do every week. let's go. Have a great week, everybody. As always, link in the show notes, form on my website, fill it in, ask us some questions, give us some topic ideas, and we'll natter away. You can't shut us up.

Fiona: 34:21

No, we're going to continue in Free Child for the rest of the day. Well, I am.

Richard: 34:25

yes, I am. Yeah, I'm gonna be in free child all day now. We've set the ball rolling. In fact, all weekend. See you next time. Bye,

Fiona: 34:33

Bye.