Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Your Kid Doesn't Feel Unsafe When You're Not In The Room (Unless You've Created An Environment Of Fear)

Transcript

Your Kid Doesn't Feel Unsafe When You're Not In The Room (Unless You've Created An Environment Of Fear) · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show, today, I'm going to be talking about the culture
• 0:12
  of fear in which we are raising our children, and how that's
• 0:15
  perpetuated by social media. But before we get to that topic,
• 0:20
  please do subscribe. My most recent one is, when you
• 0:23
  get married, when you're young and dumb, you cannot access that
• 0:26
  unless you are a subscriber. Also, please follow me on
• 0:29
  YouTube and Tick-Tock, and Instagram, and Facebook, and
• 0:33
  everywhere and all Also, please do join my Facebook group if you
• 0:38
  like talking to me and interacting with people that
• 0:42
  like talking to me anyway. So I saw this meme that was so
• 0:48
  enraged, zhing to me as a psychologist.
• 0:51
  So let me read to you, the quote, with some I dramatic
• 0:55
  inflection lying down with your kids, until they fall asleep is
• 1:01
  not a bad habit. Before we know it, there will be
• 1:05
  Closed doors and Independence. And then we will pine for the
• 1:10
  days when they needed to feel our hand on their back before.
• 1:16
  They felt safe enough to drift to sleep.
• 1:21
  Oh my God, oh my God. Like, where the fuck do I even
• 1:25
  start? I mean, I don't even know this
• 1:26
  shit made me so angry. Okay, like first of all, I've
• 1:30
  made like, super clear, I've talked to you guys a lot.
• 1:32
  I was raised in an anxious home which led to so so many anxiety
• 1:36
  issues when I was a kid at an adolescent and young adult and
• 1:41
  this type of garbage is really pernicious because when you
• 1:45
  first read it you just think as oh Mom's waxing rhapsodic about
• 1:49
  you know the tell the passage of time it's not it's not just that
• 1:54
  because of the word which were don't, I like safe safe.
• 1:58
  Why the fuck do you assume that your kid feels unsafe in his own
• 2:02
  room? Like you not going to feel?
• 2:05
  Safe in his own room unless you make him feel, unsafe in his own
• 2:09
  room. Like this is like that same
• 2:11
  thing when parents asked me, and I'm not angry with this person
• 2:14
  for posting the me, more for the woman who came up with a quote
• 2:17
  or anybody. What I'm angry about is the
• 2:20
  culture of fear in which children are raised that
• 2:23
  perpetuates, massive anxiety in children, and in the description
• 2:27
  of this episode, I cited statistics which show that
• 2:30
  anxiety disorder rates have like, you know, Ghana
• 2:33
  precipitously in. Owen and anxiety is horrible.
• 2:37
  You know, if you've ever suffered from anxiety, it feels
• 2:40
  constricting and paralyzing, and makes you feel like you cannot
• 2:45
  have a normal life like that, the world is dangerous and - and
• 2:49
  like, just all these terrible things that prevent you from
• 2:52
  from kind of feeling free and confident in the world.
• 2:57
  So women have higher rates of anxiety than men that's a
• 3:00
  biological thing and so and they're also Mary caregiver more
• 3:06
  frequently. So you really got to watch your
• 3:09
  rhetoric of anxiety, so you don't pass it on to your kids.
• 3:12
  And you got to look for these Insidious ways that anxiety
• 3:15
  shows up in the ways that that we talked, because language
• 3:20
  perpetuates, you know, ideologies.
• 3:22
  So in this it like okay. Like why don't you just say
• 3:25
  something like, I don't know. I like cuddling with my kid, or
• 3:30
  my kid likes, me cuddling them until they go to sleep, but I'm
• 3:34
  totally leave. Going to the side for the moment
• 3:37
  or possibly for the entirety of the podcast.
• 3:39
  Because I have bigger fish to fry here.
• 3:41
  How shitty it is for your marriage?
• 3:43
  If you spend every night falling asleep with your kid, because
• 3:46
  that's actually what happens, you know?
• 3:47
  Like you're a grown-ass exhausted adult.
• 3:50
  So if you're staying in there long enough for them to fall
• 3:52
  asleep, guess who else is ass is falling asleep?
• 3:54
  Yours. So then you're not getting out
• 3:56
  there and being with your partner in The Limited bit of
• 3:59
  time that you have at night. But let's just shove that
• 4:02
  because culturally plenty of people closely find.
• 4:04
  That's cool. Whatever you do you you know,
• 4:06
  maybe This Woman's a single mother you know maybe there is
• 4:09
  no relationship for her to erode by hyper fixating on the
• 4:15
  children. I don't care.
• 4:16
  So what's the point though? The point here is that the child
• 4:20
  themselves themselves? The is likely feeling anxious
• 4:27
  because you're saying they're supposed to feel anxious.
• 4:31
  Where is safety a part of this? Like you like cuddling?
• 4:35
  With your kit. Your kid likes when you're in
• 4:37
  the room. Guess what?
• 4:38
  Your kid feels when you're not in the room, they feel bored.
• 4:42
  They also may miss you. They also may miss the
• 4:44
  stimulation of being able to talk to you.
• 4:46
  They usually would not feel scared, thus necessitating the
• 4:52
  phrase safe enough to Drift Off to Sleep white.
• 4:57
  So, as soon as you were, you use the word safe.
• 5:00
  This is like, when I did that podcast, I like which words to
• 5:02
  look out for when you're dating women to make sure you don't end
• 5:04
  up with somebody. Bridget and anxious comfortable
• 5:07
  comfortable. Oh my God, somebody's not
• 5:09
  comfortable. Holy shit, you know, batten down
• 5:12
  the hatches nowadays, right? Safe is another one.
• 5:15
  The kid doesn't feel safe. Oh my god.
• 5:18
  Wow, stop stop the presses. The kid doesn't feel safe.
• 5:21
  Kids. Don't feel safe ever anymore
• 5:23
  because the parents are telling them constantly that they're
• 5:25
  supposed to feel unsafe. Hey, buddy, if you don't feel
• 5:29
  safe, it's like something like being alone in their fucking
• 5:33
  room in their upper middle class.
• 5:35
  As household surrounded by their toys in bed, in a better
• 5:39
  probably cost a thousand dollars from Pottery Barn kids, right?
• 5:43
  Why don't they feel safe? Like I was a child.
• 5:45
  It was so anxious. I was like proudly, vibrating
• 5:48
  with anxiety, the majority of the time even I didn't feel
• 5:50
  unsafe in my room. Like why the fuck would I feel
• 5:54
  unsafe in my room? However, in today's generation
• 5:57
  I'm sure I would because my parents who are very anxious
• 6:00
  would have then succumb to the ideology that even aloneness is
• 6:04
  unsafe. Right.
• 6:05
  Like which is not a way that anxious parents of that
• 6:08
  generation. Thought they were anxious about
• 6:11
  all manner of shit certainly but it me being alone in my room was
• 6:16
  not considered to be a source of anxiety.
• 6:18
  Thus, I did not interpret it as such, right?
• 6:21
  So they thought that, you know, it was a good thing, they had
• 6:26
  not had rooms to themselves, you know, this was a marker of
• 6:30
  being, you know, middle class, you know, versus lower middle
• 6:33
  class, right? The child could have.
• 6:35
  Their own room. Of course I was an only child so
• 6:37
  it's easier to provide one room but you know in the apartment
• 6:40
  that we had I had my own room that was considered a good thing
• 6:43
  and in fact I was told you are lucky that you have your own
• 6:45
  room. So I thought of all the things
• 6:47
  that I don't like at least I have my own room, this is
• 6:50
  supposed to be a good thing. So thus a child who is malleable
• 6:54
  and absorbs, their parents perspective, thinks whatever the
• 6:59
  parents things. If a if a parent is constantly
• 7:02
  saying shit and I talk about this all the time as opposed to
• 7:05
  Called Don't compulsively validate and verbalize your
• 7:07
  child's emotions for exactly this reason, because you
• 7:09
  frequently get it wrong and you project your own anxiety onto
• 7:13
  them. So, parents always tell me when
• 7:15
  they're trying to get their kids to sleep in their own bed.
• 7:17
  They're like so I said to him now, buddy, if you're scared of
• 7:22
  the dark, what the fuck, already?
• 7:24
  We're starting badly. If you're scared of the dark,
• 7:26
  give him something else. Why don't you?
• 7:28
  Why don't you ask him, if he's scared of the fucking walls, you
• 7:30
  know, likewise he couldn't be scared of the dark unless you
• 7:33
  tell him, he's scared. The dark, he's not designed to
• 7:36
  be scared of the dark Darkness Falls evolutionarily, animals
• 7:41
  are supposed to be in the dark, and in the light nighttime is
• 7:43
  dark. If you say, are you scared of
• 7:47
  the dark? Well, guess who's going to be
• 7:49
  scared of the dark children are infinitely.
• 7:52
  Suggestible, you're talking about creatures that believe in
• 7:54
  Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, right?
• 7:56
  Yeah, you're talking about people.
• 7:58
  You know how suggestible kids are.
• 8:00
  I have grown adults at say to me things in session that
• 8:04
  obviously, come from A parent's mouths, that make absolutely no
• 8:08
  sense because they learned them when they were suggestible as
• 8:10
  kids. Like, I have people who come in
• 8:12
  and say, yeah, my father had a lot of health problems, he would
• 8:15
  lay around a lot during the day and, you know, this and that.
• 8:19
  And then finally, we'll be talking, will realize the guy
• 8:21
  was an alcoholic, right? But I mean, holy shit, the kid
• 8:24
  was taught, the daddy was sick. So a grown-ass adults who makes
• 8:28
  a lot of money and is very smart.
• 8:31
  We'll still that that's the power of suggestibility and
• 8:35
  Children, you will still follow whatever was told to him as a
• 8:39
  child even if it makes no logical sense at all, such as
• 8:42
  not realizing. That one's father is an
• 8:43
  alcoholic because one was told that instead he was sick.
• 8:46
  Right? So so children are infinitely
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  suggestible and there's this whole idea, nowadays, this whole
• 8:53
  philosophy that like, children make their own like, decisions
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  about shit. Like, people use this very, very
• 9:00
  unhealthily, right? So, like, Say to me stuff like
• 9:07
  yeah, my my daughter, yeah, she's starting to understand the
• 9:11
  dad's a bad guy yet. She's starting to understand
• 9:15
  that that that dad is just meaning her, you know, the, the
• 9:19
  woman's husband, right, or ex-husband is just not a good
• 9:23
  guy, and I'm like, oh, it does he yell at her?
• 9:27
  No, no, no. She's picking up on the passive
• 9:30
  aggressive behavior. I'm like, how old is she?
• 9:32
  Uh, she's for, she's four and a half.
• 9:33
  She's a very Very, she's gifted. I think you she's an old soul
• 9:38
  what in the name of, fuck, fucking four and a half.
• 9:40
  Year old child, is going to think that Daddy's
• 9:42
  passive-aggressive. Unless the kid is picking up on
• 9:46
  the mother saying, Bob you're being so passive aggressive.
• 9:49
  You're making the kids hate you, right?
• 9:51
  I'll be like let's be real here. Kids pick up on exactly what
• 9:55
  their parents tell them. So in this case this parent,
• 9:59
  with the best of intentions, who I'm really not maligning,
• 10:02
  despite how it may sound like that.
• 10:03
  I'm really not like She is just a, she is just somebody who is
• 10:08
  in this culture. You know.
• 10:10
  She's probably saying something to the kid like oh honey, do you
• 10:13
  feel safe when I'm here? Well shit.
• 10:16
  Yes, then he will write. I mean, then he'll be like I
• 10:20
  guess I feel unsafe when she's not here instead.
• 10:23
  What if she said something like, I know that you're bored when
• 10:26
  I'm not here. I know that it's more
• 10:29
  interesting and exciting when I'm in bed with you, however, I
• 10:31
  have to get to sleep and so do you, you know, and you gotta go.
• 10:35
  Learn to go to sleep by yourself, right?
• 10:36
  I mean, you got to go to sleep by yourself.
• 10:38
  I got to go to sleep by myself and I'll see you in the morning.
• 10:42
  Good job. You know, staying in your own
• 10:43
  bed, and if you stay in your own bed like this, a lot, then we
• 10:48
  can do more fun things. You know, one day, you'll be
• 10:50
  able to go to Sleepaway Camp and stuff like that.
• 10:52
  You gotta learn to sleep without me in the bed.
• 10:54
  That's something she could do. If of course, she wanted to
• 10:56
  train him that way, it's a wonderful skill to learn to
• 10:59
  sleep on your own. And to do really anything on
• 11:01
  your own independence is good. Pendant is good.
• 11:06
  That should be a mantra for today's parents, but let's say
• 11:09
  she doesn't. Let's say she wants a cuddle up
• 11:11
  with him every night and they're plenty of cultures that co-sleep
• 11:14
  so cool. So, she doesn't still have to
• 11:17
  say safe. She could say happy like I like
• 11:21
  cuddling with you at night and he said, I like that to Mommy
• 11:24
  and I'm we go to sleep. It doesn't have to be the safe
• 11:27
  thing. You can say that maybe she says
• 11:29
  it to herself or she says it in a mean, but she doesn't say it
• 11:32
  to him. I mean, I don't know.
• 11:34
  That would be a hard sell if that's accurate than, okay.
• 11:37
  But most people that have this language that, that uses a lot
• 11:41
  of words, like safety and comfort and comfortable, they're
• 11:45
  saying it to the kids and that's where the kids get it from.
• 11:47
  You know, this idea we're at and then I'll say to the, to the
• 11:51
  kids, I took the kids, I say to the adult as they did, you feel
• 11:55
  unsafe sleeping alone but like, oh no, no II didn't but you know
• 12:00
  I'm not my kid does, what the hell?
• 12:02
  I your kid is any different than you, you know?
• 12:05
  But he tries to think that they as a child were like somehow
• 12:08
  more mature than their child is. No.
• 12:11
  This is not true, you know. And this is why people fight in
• 12:14
  front of their kids because they're like, oh, he doesn't
• 12:16
  understand anything. He's just playing his video
• 12:17
  game. Lego, did you notice when your
• 12:19
  parents fought? Yeah, what's different?
• 12:22
  What is different? Not things different.
• 12:24
  It's just, you would like to believe that he doesn't notice
• 12:26
  that you fight. So you tell yourself in your
• 12:28
  mind that he's less mature than you were at the same age.
• 12:30
  It doesn't make any sense. It's inaccurate and it's purely
• 12:34
  putting your In the sand. So my point in this entire thing
• 12:38
  is look for these ways in which safety, this this fetishization
• 12:43
  of safety comes out in your everyday discourse to, and about
• 12:47
  your children, because this is linked to anxiety and children,
• 12:51
  this idea and the children will use the parents exact words.
• 12:54
  You think that kids come up with this idea by themselves, they
• 12:56
  come up with no ideas by themselves because they're kids,
• 12:59
  you know, it's as ridiculous as a four-year-old knowing that
• 13:03
  Daddy's passive-aggressive, right?
• 13:05
  So the the point is how often you're saying be careful.
• 13:09
  What is be careful. Do nothing except inculcate
• 13:11
  fear, right? What is stay safe?
• 13:14
  Do what is our or we are you comfortable right now?
• 13:18
  Do you know what to do? If you're not comfortable.
• 13:21
  Like what why are you got to say that?
• 13:24
  One time you have to say to your kid one time basically in their
• 13:27
  lives. You know, like if somebody ever
• 13:30
  touches you in a place where you should be in your privates or
• 13:33
  however you say it, Then you should tell Mommy and Daddy,
• 13:36
  because that's not okay, you know, how many that's a weird
• 13:39
  fucking thing for a kid to hear. So they're going to remember,
• 13:41
  they don't ever need to hear it again, right?
• 13:44
  So the doctor asks, it every year, by the way, at least my
• 13:47
  kids, pediatrician says now, you know that nobody's supposed to
• 13:50
  do this except for Mom and Dad, right?
• 13:51
  And then do and me with Mom's permission basically before the
• 13:54
  genital examination and the kid says, yes, you want to say to
• 13:58
  your kid live and be well, say it one time, but it is such a
• 14:01
  Bizarro idea for a child that an adult would touch their privates
• 14:04
  that Leave me. They're going to remember it.
• 14:07
  You do not need to say this more than one time, you know?
• 14:11
  And there's some parents who say it all the damn time they say.
• 14:14
  It's like the weekly check-in. Like You Remember, by the way,
• 14:18
  like as though a child could forget the the craziness of like
• 14:21
  the bizarreness of this, you know, you do remember that
• 14:25
  adults aren't supposed to touch your genitals, right?
• 14:27
  I mean, it's like, oh yeah, he remembers like no fucking shit
• 14:30
  like of course he remembers because it's so weird for you to
• 14:33
  say it, you know. Do an all you're really doing at
• 14:36
  that point is like an obsessive compulsive thing on your end
• 14:41
  where you're thinking that. If you say this enough, you can
• 14:43
  basically prevent it from happening, you know?
• 14:46
  And that is basically called magical thinking, which is a
• 14:49
  symptom of OCD. OCD is an anxiety disorder.
• 14:52
  So, if you find yourself consistently talking about, what
• 14:56
  makes your child safe and comfortable, and if you're
• 14:59
  constantly talking about danger and stranger danger, and all of
• 15:03
  these things, and there's like a Harmon part of how you talk,
• 15:07
  then it is likely that you through no fault of your own
• 15:10
  suffer from anxiety. We're likely raised in either a
• 15:13
  similar climate or ironically, one in which you were sadly,
• 15:18
  neglected. And therefore, you develop
• 15:20
  anxiety from truly being neglected and either emotionally
• 15:24
  and or physically. And then you are you have
• 15:26
  resolved that your children should feel the safety that you
• 15:29
  did not, unfortunately, and sadly get to feel yourself.
• 15:33
  However, as I've discussed many times, Times people who try to
• 15:36
  parent in opposition to how they were raised frequently, make an
• 15:39
  equally bad 180, degree flip to something, also, extreme such as
• 15:47
  hyper-vigilant coddling of children and and and pushing on
• 15:53
  them a fear-based safety focused worldview, that does not allow
• 15:59
  them to feel free and unconstructed and their movement
• 16:02
  through the world. Nor allows them to think of the
• 16:04
  world. As generally a positive, good
• 16:07
  place. And instead they think of it as
• 16:10
  a place filled with fear danger, all lack of safety, Etc.
• 16:14
  That I see those people, you do not want this to be how you
• 16:19
  view, how you cultivate, you don't want this to be the
• 16:22
  worldview, you cultivate for your kids because they end up in
• 16:24
  therapy, and they are not in a good place, right?
• 16:28
  And they think the world is terrible.
• 16:29
  People are out to get them and they think all kinds of bad
• 16:32
  stuff. All right.
• 16:34
  So, So, this is obviously, as you could hear topic, I am
• 16:38
  quote, passionate about AKA makes me really mad on behalf of
• 16:41
  the children that end up with the anxiety.
• 16:44
  You know, when I don't see young kids anymore, I used to see them
• 16:47
  on it on internship. I have three kids, I did it.
• 16:50
  It was too sad to work with kids that put them back into a
• 16:52
  situation with parents that may or may not do the things that
• 16:55
  they need for them to get better.
• 16:58
  So I focus more on the parents, on the adult side of it and it's
• 17:03
  you I see kids from Sickly very late teens up and they struggle.
• 17:09
  I'm telling you, when you're, you're trying with the best of
• 17:12
  intentions to make them feel safe.
• 17:14
  Quote-unquote, they don't feel unsafe until you tell them that
• 17:18
  they do. So, really go through how you
• 17:21
  talk to the children about safety.
• 17:23
  Really, really make sure that you don't talk about it too much
• 17:27
  that it isn't. This default way of viewing the
• 17:30
  world to lump things into safe versus unsafe.
• 17:33
  This does not not allow for a child to experience at later an
• 17:37
  adult to experience their full range of potential as a human
• 17:40
  being on this planet. If they're always like in this
• 17:44
  in this guarded, you know, fearful posture toward the world
• 17:49
  quite so that that is that is your pep talk, you know?
• 17:53
  And if you do feel anxious, then and and you really you you
• 17:59
  haven't worked on your anxiety. Then you need to get into
• 18:01
  counseling and counseling can really, really help with
• 18:04
  anxiety. I mean, it's like one of the
• 18:06
  major things CBT can work on his anxiety, and if you work on your
• 18:11
  own anxiety, Then you will not perpetuate it and pass it on to
• 18:14
  your children, you know? And that is, truly an admirable
• 18:17
  thing. That's something that all my
• 18:19
  anxious young adult clients or older adult clients wishes that
• 18:22
  their own parents had been in therapy.
• 18:24
  That's like what every person in therapy wishes is that their
• 18:29
  parents had been in therapy. Thus saving them from possibly
• 18:33
  having to do this much fucking In therapy right?
• 18:35
  Which is time intensive. Alright well hopefully you guys
• 18:40
  got something out of this. Even like a minor curious shift
• 18:43
  in your worldview. Vis-à-vis saying safe would be
• 18:47
  great and have a great day guys. Please do subscribe and I'll
• 18:52
  talk to you all soon.