Latest / The Parenting Podcast / When Others Criticize Your Parenting and Social Media & Kids (archived from Ep. 28) | Ep. 85

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When Others Criticize Your Parenting and Social Media & Kids (archived from Ep. 28) | Ep. 85 · The Parenting Podcast

• 0:06
  Hi, and welcome to the Parenting Podcast.
• 0:09
  I'm your host, Cheryl Lane.
• 0:12
  When our family goes on a road trip, along with packing and buying fun junk food to eat, As my children got older, part of our preparation is a tradition that we each make playlists of fun road trip music we want to listen to.
• 0:31
  We often play a game of karaoke to songs we don't know, or speed, can you name that tune, which I always lose.
• 0:43
  Of course, the songs on my playlist are from the incontestably best rock music ever from the 60s and 70s.
• 0:54
  So, all my grown children now have all that great music in their music registries in their brains.
• 1:01
  Sometimes it's just really good when you go back and listen again to something you've heard before.
• 1:07
  And today, we're doing that on the podcast.
• 1:10
  No, we're not going to play some Gladys Knight or Sly and the Family Stone, but we're going to go back into our archives and repost a popular episode.
• 1:24
  We deal with two subjects.
• 1:26
  One is social media, not kids.
• 1:29
  And the other is what to do when people are critical about your parenting.
• 1:35
  It's extra fun because Tanae is back with Ellen and me in the studio.
• 1:40
  Listen in again as we re dive into these very interesting, timely topics, no matter what the age or stage of your children.
• 1:55
  Cheryl: We're excited because we are back in recording studio.
• 2:02
  Cheryl: And Denae and Ella and I are here around the table again
• 2:07
  Cheryl (2): I brought something in today, I read about a study that came out in the New York times and it's related to parenting and teenagers.
• 2:15
  Cheryl (2): And I just thought I'd read it to you and see what y'all thought about it as we start today.
• 2:20
  Cheryl (2): So the New York times report the study suggesting adolescents are most susceptible to damaging effects of social media during to particularly vulnerable ages.
• 2:32
  Cheryl (2): And this is their quote analyzing survey responses more than 84,000 people of all ages in Britain.
• 2:39
  Cheryl (2): The researchers identified two distinct periods of adolescents who in heavy use of social media spurred, lower ratings of life.
• 2:49
  Cheryl (2): Satisfies.
• 2:50
  Cheryl (2): First around puberty that's ages 11 to 13 for girls and 14 to 15 for boys.
• 2:57
  Cheryl (2): And then again, for both sexes around age 19, and then the guy reporting on it, well, this is sort of what he concluded from it.
• 3:07
  Cheryl (2): Um, for all ages participants who felt bad about their lives wound up spending more time on social media a year later.
• 3:14
  Cheryl (2): To him.
• 3:14
  Cheryl (2): It suggested that to some people, the technology might be a coping mechanism rather than the cause of their gloom.
• 3:21
  Cheryl (2): So I just thought interesting those time periods of what do y'all think?
• 3:26
  Cheryl (2): What are your responses to, uh, this idea of increased social media around these crucial bookends to the teen years?
• 3:37
  Ellen: Well, I think.
• 3:38
  Ellen: Most of the time, I feel like it's unhealthy.
• 3:41
  Ellen: And the reason I say that is because you're in a way artificially, um, Communicating with others.
• 3:53
  Ellen: And in those vulnerable years that you're talking about, those are years that without social media have traditionally always been hard years.
• 4:02
  Ellen: And you learn how to communicate during those years.
• 4:05
  Ellen: Oh, the pros and cons.
• 4:08
  Ellen: Oh, I said this to my best friend.
• 4:09
  Ellen: Now she won't talk to me.
• 4:11
  Ellen: But you have a dynamic when it's one-on-one.
• 4:14
  Ellen: If I say something to my best friend, On the internet or on Facebook or just through a text, it can be taken in so many different ways as to opposed to if I'm standing in front of my friend.
• 4:27
  Ellen: And I say, you really made me mad when you said this in front of everybody, then that allows that person to learn the skill of responding and you work together.
• 4:37
  Ellen: If you value your friendship, whether you get in a fight or not, you learn how to do that in those years.
• 4:44
  Danae: Yeah, I think it's interesting.
• 4:47
  Danae: Those times are when people are thinking the most about their identity.
• 4:53
  Danae: Yeah.
• 4:53
  Danae: You think puberty, and then also after you've graduated from high school, you're in a new setting typically of college, or might be going out in the workforce and, and you're asking yourself, who am I?
• 5:06
  Danae: And that those were the two age brackets where people were really leaning into social media.
• 5:13
  Danae: To maybe, you know, see how they measure up or who they should be.
• 5:17
  Cheryl: That's really good.
• 5:18
  Cheryl: Cause I don't think I agreed with his insight.
• 5:22
  Cheryl: You know, it's possible like coping mechanism.
• 5:25
  Cheryl: It's a coping mechanism.
• 5:27
  Cheryl: Sure.
• 5:27
  Cheryl: It might be, but That's why I ask you all, because I wanted to hear what you thought.
• 5:33
  Cheryl: And I ain't, I wasn't suggesting
• 5:34
  Ellen: that they were interacting.
• 5:36
  Ellen: He said they were just on.
• 5:38
  Ellen: And so you wind up kind of perusing everything.
• 5:42
  Ellen: And I think at those ages, some of it would make you feel worse about yourself because you would see what everybody else is
• 5:48
  Cheryl: doing.
• 5:49
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 5:49
  Cheryl: Well, and here we use the phrase, even with moms, struggling with the Pinterest perfect, whatever, being the Pinterest perfect mom or Pinterest, perfect birthday whatever it is.
• 6:00
  Cheryl: And we're talking with grown adults.
• 6:02
  Cheryl: And then here we have these incredibly formative crucial points, and there's not a filter on all that coming in.
• 6:11
  Cheryl: And I agree with you tonight.
• 6:12
  Cheryl: I think those are identity forming moments and to have
• 6:17
  Cheryl (2): that
• 6:17
  Cheryl: bombardment increased.
• 6:20
  Cheryl: It's artificial.
• 6:21
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 6:22
  Cheryl: And there's no filter.
• 6:23
  Cheryl: There's no mom, you know, I really think this about me because of this as, as parents we're excluded from that.
• 6:30
  Cheryl: So we're not speaking into that struggle.
• 6:33
  Cheryl: And so the struggle is private and that set anonymous intimacy with whoever that social media.
• 6:41
  Cheryl: Um, because
• 6:42
  Ellen: when we were kids, teenagers, we could look at, oh, she's the most popular girl in school.
• 6:48
  Ellen: She might be approachable and you could go up and then you get to know her a little bit and you realize, oh, well she's popular for all these reasons.
• 6:56
  Ellen: Some are legitimate, some are not.
• 6:57
  Ellen: And it helps you to, yes.
• 6:59
  Ellen: It helps you evaluate as opposed to what you want to present.
• 7:03
  Ellen: On your social media,
• 7:05
  Danae: right?
• 7:05
  Danae: I have to admit going back to the part that he talked about, the coping mechanism I do that I'll catch myself.
• 7:14
  Danae: If I feel stressed, that I'll be scrolling through on, on Instagram, you know?
• 7:21
  Danae: And so I know that it's true for me that if I'm already stressed or maybe feeling low.
• 7:27
  Danae: I can go to that.
• 7:28
  Danae: And I've yeah, many times gotten off of Instagram because I had to kind of discipline myself.
• 7:34
  Danae: I knew I wasn't handling that stressful moment or that maybe a time I was feeling bad about myself and was looking to, to others to see how it's measuring up.
• 7:44
  Danae: And I'd have to go in and turn it off for awhile
• 7:48
  Cheryl: This is why I wanted just to present it to you and share with the moms to realize.
• 7:53
  Cheryl: This may be their kids' reality and to be sensitive to it.
• 7:57
  Cheryl: And McGahn are our go to is always have the conversations.
• 8:01
  Cheryl: So mom, she might want to bring this study up to churn up the conversation with your kids and open the doors.
• 8:11
  Cheryl: Come on.
• 8:11
  Cheryl: Let's talk about it.
• 8:13
  Cheryl: You know, I want to, to be a sounding board.
• 8:16
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 8:16
  Cheryl: And
• 8:16
  Danae: I would say also just, that's why I shared with you all my struggle, because I think one of the best things we can do for our children is to model to them what we're doing.
• 8:27
  Danae: And even.
• 8:28
  Danae: Modeling to them, what you're not doing.
• 8:31
  Danae: Well, you can go to your children and say, Hey, I'm struggling.
• 8:35
  Danae: I had to go off my Instagram account for a little bit because I realized I was on it too much.
• 8:40
  Danae: It's a good way to walk with your children and to make it real, not just that you're being heavy handed with them and you don't understand.
• 8:48
  Ellen: I don't know if you turn it on, but for me on my phone and my social media stuff, every week, I get a print out a print out, but I get a report of how much time I've how much screen time.
• 9:00
  Ellen: And I'm assuming it's for parents, but I use it for me because I realized, oh, I didn't realize it was realized.
• 9:06
  Ellen: I spent that much time this week or, oh, I did good.
• 9:09
  Ellen: I was only doing this much.
• 9:10
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 9:11
  Cheryl: And when my kids, my girls were first giving me on Facebook years ago.
• 9:16
  Cheryl: My son who was post-college walked in, he said it will suck two out as your hours, and you'll never know it.
• 9:24
  Cheryl: So moms just more for your discussion and your thoughts.
• 9:29
  Cheryl: Okay.
• 9:30
  Cheryl: I have a question that has been written several different ways by moms.
• 9:36
  Cheryl: And this one is how to deal with grandparents and or family members who are critical of your parenting choices, a lot of moms I've talked to struggle with this and they don't know what to do because even in their presence, Grandparents will correct the children and correct the mom.
• 9:55
  Cheryl: So it's not just, you know, why are you doing that type comment, but they are actively will be doing it in their presence.
• 10:04
  Danae: and there's so many options out there.
• 10:08
  Danae: Yeah, how to teach your children and how they should dress and what they should eat.
• 10:13
  Danae: And we went through several different ways of eating, you know, in my home, we had the no wheat time, the no dairy time that, you know, eat only these vegetables and fruits, you know, and, and, um, a lot of people had grace for me, but I remember, you know, being insecure because of all of the options.
• 10:33
  Cheryl: And you talk about options.
• 10:34
  Cheryl: Options are through the roof nowadays.
• 10:36
  Cheryl: It's just so many opinions.
• 10:37
  Cheryl: Yes I mean, this is the best parenting podcast, but there are probably 10,000 out there and you can be.
• 10:45
  Cheryl: In any different direction of how it's all being handled.
• 10:48
  Cheryl: So the options.
• 10:50
  Cheryl: You know, information overload, all that pressure.
• 10:53
  Danae: And I mean, what I would want to tell myself back then, And tell, moms is to, you know, just trust yourself and, and, um, to not be so insecure, but that's so hard, you know, it's so hard.
• 11:07
  Danae: We, we want support.
• 11:09
  Danae: We want people who are around us, encouraging us and, and, you know, helping us out.
• 11:15
  Danae: Maybe they think maybe something better would work, but it's hard when you have critical people in your lives.
• 11:21
  Cheryl (2): Well, sharing with someone who had that active, critical literally disciplining the children and correcting her for how she wasn't disciplining.
• 11:33
  Cheryl (2): And so, uh, we talked a lot about.
• 11:36
  Cheryl: try to not take it personally.
• 11:38
  Danae: right Yeah,
• 11:39
  Cheryl (2): And remember, these are your children and God gave them to you.
• 11:44
  Cheryl (2): You're the primary person responsible,
• 11:46
  Danae: yes.
• 11:46
  Ellen: For me, that was, you know, my mom very critical about a lot of things.
• 11:51
  Ellen: And I just had to.
• 11:52
  Ellen: This is an over-simplification, but I just kind of had to resolve not to get bugged by all of the little things she thought I wasn't doing.
• 12:01
  Ellen: Right.
• 12:02
  Ellen: And that's a whole other talk, I think is, you know, if you have someone in your life, that's a harsh person and how you learn to deal with them over time.
• 12:11
  Ellen: Roles never stopped changing.
• 12:13
  Ellen: That's always your mom and your now you're a mom and you have to sometimes rework your relationship with your mother as she's aging, as she's becoming a grandmother, all sorts of different things.
• 12:30
  Ellen: That's the hard part about human relationships.
• 12:32
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 12:32
  Ellen: It's not just, you know, mom, shut up and go sit down.
• 12:36
  Ellen: You know, it's complicated.
• 12:38
  Ellen: We have to remember And if you've had problems with your mother, they're not going to go away simply because you have grandchildren and those are the things you have to work on within yourself.
• 12:48
  Ellen: Cause we're giving practical advice, but you still have to go inward and say, how do I deal with my mother's criticism?
• 12:55
  Ellen: You've had a critical parent.
• 12:56
  Ellen: You have to weigh that and you know, am I going to take everything she says, as I did when I was younger or am I going to move forward?
• 13:05
  Cheryl: Wow, good things.
• 13:07
  Cheryl: when she looked at her whole life, her mother tried to control her whole life and had been critical.
• 13:12
  Cheryl: And she had been the responsive, a compliant child that wanted to please her mother.
• 13:18
  Cheryl: And then when her mother was critical, then she would adjust to doing it.
• 13:21
  Cheryl: So what she had learned to do.
• 13:24
  Cheryl: Evaluate realize it's the same thing going on just now another generation added.
• 13:29
  Cheryl: And then she began to have boundaries and talk with her mom about the boundaries in a good conversation.
• 13:36
  Cheryl (2): Go back to that rule about dealing with that once issue and then discuss it when it isn't and working with her to help her get where she could pull her mom aside when it's not an issue.
• 13:46
  Cheryl (2): And there's no emotion and chat with her about it, Hmm.
• 13:50
  Cheryl: And also
• 13:50
  Ellen: does it matter?
• 13:52
  Ellen: My mother was a very controlling person and so I just had to decide.
• 13:57
  Ellen: What she's wanting to control over here.
• 14:00
  Ellen: Isn't that big of a deal.
• 14:01
  Ellen: And I'm just going to blow it off.
• 14:03
  Ellen: It's not going to harm anyone.
• 14:04
  Ellen: It makes her happy in the moment and you know, it keeps peace.
• 14:09
  Ellen: I don't feel compromised.
• 14:11
  Ellen: Because I've agreed already with myself that I'm not going to worry about it because it's not that she's telling the kids to do something horrible.
• 14:18
  Ellen: She just wants to arrange it her way.
• 14:21
  Danae: Remembering that, especially in my kids were young.
• 14:25
  Danae: I know what would really bother me is when someone was critical about something, I was already being critical to my man.
• 14:35
  Danae: So I had five kids, eight and under, and, um, I spent a lot of time as we're talking about diapers and getting them ready for us to go places, feeding them.
• 14:48
  Danae: So.
• 14:49
  Danae: I was trying to make the best choices.
• 14:52
  Danae: I knew how, and so my house cleanliness, wasn't always the top of the priority because I was getting baths and teeth getting brushed and fights and all of that, but it was something I went to bed at night insecure about, oh, I should have, I should have, you know, swept and mopped the floor today.
• 15:12
  Danae: And yeah.
• 15:13
  Danae: Honestly, I didn't have time to do all the things that probably needed to be done, but I would beat myself up about it.
• 15:23
  Danae: So when someone would comment on it, someone would come into my house and say, wow, she's got a lot of toys everywhere.
• 15:30
  Danae: I took it.
• 15:31
  Danae: So personally I took it so hard because I thought I must be being a bad mother, a bad wife, a bad friend,
• 15:40
  Ellen: you know, That mother that we have in our hands.
• 15:43
  Ellen: That does all these tests.
• 15:46
  Danae: I should be able to cook the best meal play with all my children, fix every bite.
• 15:51
  Danae: Oh.
• 15:51
  Danae: And have the perfect clean yes.
• 15:53
  Danae: House,
• 15:54
  Cheryl: you know, and have all the conversations like TPP says and you sit down and you have the conversations, you know, it's really hard.
• 16:02
  Cheryl: In
• 16:02
  Danae: fact, um, just yesterday, one of my daughters made a comment about, well, you know, mom, I think the reason why we didn't learn how to, um, keep the house as clean as we would like to.
• 16:17
  Danae: And she keeps going and I started feeling that defensive.
• 16:22
  Danae: Come up in me.
• 16:23
  Danae: And I think I was a little short and she said, oh mama, I'm sorry.
• 16:28
  Danae: I didn't know.
• 16:28
  Danae: This was a sore spot for you.
• 16:30
  Danae: And I realized, shoot, it's still I'm better.
• 16:37
  Danae: But I still choose conversations over cleaning my house.
• 16:43
  Danae: It's a great excuse now,
• 16:47
  Cheryl (2): but this is complicated.
• 16:49
  Cheryl (2): We're talking about.
• 16:50
  Cheryl (2): The deep core.
• 16:51
  Cheryl (2): Isn't it interesting.
• 16:52
  Cheryl (2): It's not about the house.
• 16:53
  Cheryl (2): It's not about educational choices.
• 16:55
  Cheryl (2): It's not about the size of your family and those kinds of comments.
• 16:59
  Cheryl (2): It goes back to who we are as moms.
• 17:02
  Danae: right Yeah,
• 17:03
  Cheryl (2): I heard someone a long time ago, say this.
• 17:06
  Cheryl (2): There are only two kinds of people.
• 17:08
  Cheryl (2): They're insecure people and they're insecure people.
• 17:11
  Cheryl (2): And so you just watch out how they do it.
• 17:15
  Cheryl (2): Some people cave in and give in and kind of face themselves and other people get angry and whatever it is, what you're talking about is just our insecurity, which goes down to our core values of who am I and why am I valuable?
• 17:32
  Cheryl (2): Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:33
  Ellen: And the power of a parent is very strong.
• 17:36
  Ellen: The power of your mother's very strong in the word she says to you, or doesn't say to you is really powerful.
• 17:43
  Ellen: And those are for me, those are the things I have to work out in my own heart is, you know, my mom's a broken person and she has a life of sorrows.
• 17:53
  Ellen: So she took it out on the family and.
• 17:58
  Ellen: When I reached that maturity point, it really changed a lot of things.
• 18:03
  Ellen: And my mom and I became very good friends as she was aging, because I could see her in a different light in her hardships and that she was reacting to, um, to her childhood
• 18:20
  Cheryl: from her pain.
• 18:22
  Cheryl: And it was the same thing With my mother-in-law, to realize why she was doing it and that she really thought these were good ideas.
• 18:31
  Cheryl: And she also took it personally that if we made a choice, that was not her choice of the way she raised her family.
• 18:39
  Cheryl: She took that personally as criticism.
• 18:42
  Danae: Let's talk about that, Cheryl, because whether it's your, your mother, your mother-in-law.
• 18:46
  Danae: People on the street, people in the grocery store that is a lot of insecurity that comes out in their comments about other people's families
• 18:56
  Cheryl: and whether it's education or size or what vehicle.
• 19:01
  Cheryl: A lot of it like this when we one to love others, better realize they're speaking out of their pain, out of their brokenness inside
• 19:11
  Danae: so, you know, have you ever gone into a party and you wore pants to the party and everybody else has an address, you know, and its quick tendency is to think, why are they all wearing dresses to be critical of someone maybe because you're feeling.
• 19:28
  Danae: Insecure you know, about why am I the only one that is different?
• 19:32
  Danae: You know, it's just kind of a practical way to think of think when someone you're doing something different than someone else, it's easy to criticize that person because you're thinking about, about yourself.
• 19:43
  Cheryl: Yeah, And We've had several years mass, no mass VAX Novak's, whatever it is, just so many things.
• 19:51
  Cheryl: And we come back to a core value of TPP.
• 19:54
  Cheryl: And for us is that each individual, because they're created by God as inherent dignity worth and value.
• 20:04
  Cheryl: And if I can live out of that, it changes the way I treat other people, but I have to let that be fulfilling and me so I can turn around and try to love others, or not being critical back to them.
• 20:19
  Cheryl: If they're being critical to me, yeah,
• 20:21
  Ellen: it's almost a reflex.
• 20:24
  Danae: so I have above mine.
• 20:27
  Danae: Big full length mirror in my bathroom, a sign that says, hello, gorgeous.
• 20:34
  Danae: You know, and, and instead in this really pretty font matches my bedroom, but I put it there to remind myself to not be overly critical with myself.
• 20:44
  Danae: Wow.
• 20:45
  Danae: Yeah.
• 20:45
  Danae: So I think you're right, Cheryl, that it's, it's about how I'm really viewing myself and am I treating myself critical that then that comes on to other people.
• 20:54
  Danae: So it's, it's a goal of mine to.
• 20:57
  Danae: Not be that way with
• 20:57
  Cheryl: myself and I'd like that because what if we approached everybody in our life saying hello?
• 21:05
  Danae: Right.
• 21:06
  Cheryl: Okay, wait, wait,
• 21:07
  Danae: before we go, you know, I'm looking at you, two women here with me at my gorgeous friends.
• 21:13
  Danae: And I just want to say to all of you you are worth so much.
• 21:19
  Danae: You gorgeous moms.
• 21:20
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 21:21
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 21:22
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 21:22
  Cheryl: That's wonderful.
• 21:24
  Cheryl: That's how we feel about your listeners.
• 21:26
  Cheryl: Wow, good things.
• 21:27
  Cheryl: Thank you so much Remember, parents hang in there.
• 21:32
  Cheryl: Keep loving.
• 21:33
  Cheryl: Keep persevering because it's worth it.
• 21:42
  Unfortunately, because of copyright infringement laws, right now you aren't listening to a little Stevie Wonder in the background.
• 21:52
  But both of these topics we discuss today are really challenging, because there just simply isn't a quick fix or a one, two, three answer.
• 22:04
  As you heard, the three of us had to deal with them ourselves in our parenting.
• 22:10
  By the way, both of these subjects came from questions that parents sent us.
• 22:15
  Do you have a question you'd like us to talk about?
• 22:19
  Please let us hear from you.
• 22:21
  Just text us at contact at the parentingpodcast.
• 22:25
  com or DM us on social media, regardless of the topic or the episode.
• 22:34
  Remember parents, The Parenting Podcast is always here to walk alongside of you, helping you flourish and bringing your heart