Name: 2437 - Are You Good Cop or Bad Cop?
Uploaded: 2025-07-03T10:20:32.000Z
Duration: 14 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited to record with you today.

Guys, Lindsay is away, but she is coming back.

That's right. Aubrey and I are having the fun opportunity to record together.

And, Lindsay, we'll see you when you get back.

Awesome. This is so fun recording with you, Michelle.

And as soon as I saw the question at the top of the episode, I got really excited.

We'll go ahead and answer it here, but it's interesting for me and my husband.

Are you the good cop or the bad cop when it comes to parenting?

Yeah. So this has been really interesting for us.

And then my husband comes in. He's more strict.

That's how it's always been when we had younger kids.

And I'm sure some of you out there who had younger kids that are now growing up have been in this boat where you might parent toddlers, young kids, very differently from teenagers.

So now we're sort of having to redefine the good cop, bad cop role.

Because, yeah, I would say right now I'm the good cop.

I don't know if that counts as a good cop.

But, yeah, I'm very much the gentle parenting, you know, oh, we have to apologize if we say – you know, I'm very much like that.

I'm not – I mean, of course, I have my moments, but I'm the good cop.

You definitely seem like a good cop type of gal.

I would be kind of surprised if you're like, I'm the bad cop.

And, of course, the bad cops, as parents, that doesn't necessarily mean they're mean, but they are better able to maybe hold a boundary.

They are able to get things – like bad cops get things done.

That's true because sometimes you have to be strict in order to, yeah, create good habits to – really, for me, it's about following through on consequences because it's usually more difficult for me to follow through with whatever I've threatened, right?

Because if you do – there's a lot of empty threats, I think, that parents make.

Yeah, this is something you don't really intend to do.

Like I have threatened to sell my children's iPads because I want them to have less screen.

I'll be like if – you know, sometimes I'll hide them, and then they'll find them and sneak it.

And so then I'll say, if you do that again, I will sell your iPad.

That's an empty threat because I need them to have them on road trips.

I need them to stop sneaking it when I don't want them to have it.

Right. Or like – this is my favorite one.

Dan is famous for the empty threats, and it just cracks me up.

Like right now the Knicks are in the playoffs, and we are watching every single game religiously.

It's the only sport I truly, truly care about, and my son is watching.

And so like if there's – I will not not watch a game.

And I want to watch with my son because it's fun to watch with him.

And so Dan will be like, all right, well, we're not watching the next game if I – blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, we're not going to actually do –

Do you think there's no way you're going to follow through on that?

Well, I would – like that would be punishing myself, you know.

It reminds me of like the most famous empty threat is I will turn this car around when kids are fighting in the backseat.

Yeah, or Dan – yeah, he'll be like, we're going home.

Or like don't make that threat because I don't want to.

Wherever we're going, I'm the one that wants to go.

So my problem is then I don't make any threats, and I just let them boop, boop, boop, walk.

Because you're not going to follow through on it.

Yeah, but that's what you're supposed to do.

That's what I – that's what the Instagram accounts tell me anyways, that you're supposed to show that boundary, show that you're serious.

Maybe you'll connect with friends to ask if they're the good cop or the bad cop.

And this can be about parenting for sure, but also in relationships, a lot of different things about your life, you might be the good cop or the bad cop.

So Lindsay and I recently had this expression come up on an episode of Business English, and that's why we decided, oh my gosh, we have to cover it on All Ears English.

So I'm excited to talk about it with you, Aubrey.

But it sounds like you use this expression.

It sounds like this is pretty common, right?

It's often if like one person's acting really nice or is really nice, and then the other person is either strict, lays down the law, acts like the tough one or sometimes the mean one, right?

It actually happens – you see this a lot in like true crime shows when they bring in whoever's been accused of a crime, and you have the good cop go in and be really nice, and then the bad cop comes in.

The good cop comes in and they trust them.

So one is kind of acting like the tough one or is the tough one.

So that's this idea of good cop, bad cop, and it's usually a purposeful approach maybe to get someone to act in a certain way, to do something, sign on to something.

I mean, again, Aubrey, we were talking – this just made me think of parenting right away, of course.

So an example could be maybe a kid wants to sleep over at a friend's house, and one parent says no, and the other might say, oh, it's okay if you do whatever, if you do your chores, something like this.

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2437 - Are You Good Cop or Bad Cop?

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