Why Our Kids Don’t Have Social Media

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want from your relationship, available for preorder today. Pre Orders are available now at www dot p r H dot com slash we over me. That's www dot pr H dot com slash we over me. This is gonna be a little different than what people expect. But stop putting

your kids on social media. If you get upset when people have opinions about your kids, mhm, I mean, I guess, you guess, I guess, But I will say I feel fortunate to have been in the generation where social media was not even a thing and I was able to grow and thrive without unsolicited opinions. Hey, I'm Cadine and we're the Ellises. You may know us from posting funny videos without boys and reading each other publicly as a form of therapy. Wait, I'll make you need therapy most days. Wow.

And one more important thing to mention, we're married. We are. We created this podcast to open dialogue about some of life's most taboo topics, things most folks don't want to talk about through the lens of a millennium married couple. That ads is the term that we say every day. So when we say dead ass, will actually saying facts, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Were about to take pillow talk to a whole new level.

Dead ass starts right now. Jackson comes to me and says, your pops, because now he thinks he's grown, right, I said, what's up? This was? I said last year he's nine turning ten. So a couple of year and a couple of months because dad what always says? Can I get a TikTok? And he had just gotten the phone and I said absolutely not And he was like, why can't

I get a TikTok? And I was like, because you don't have the emotional maturity to deal with what comes with having a social media And he got upset and his eyes started to water and he was and I was like, what's the matter and he was just like nothing, nothing, nothing, And I said, no, no, no no, tell me it's the matter, Like, what's what's going on? There's nothing I don't talk aboutn't talk about it. I was like, you mad? He says, yes, I said exactly. He said, what you mean? I said,

you're proving my point? You want social media? I tell you know, I'm telling you something you don't like, and your first thing is to get mad. And now you're about to cry and you think I'm gonna let you have access to billions of people in the world. Funk out of here, period, like like seriously, like like you're proving my point. And you know what he said, he's

I promise you I won't cry. Bro, Bro, you you already failed the test, okay, but understand this, and I'm gonna leave you with this before we go into karaoke. The fact that you cried and you have feelings. It's good and it's important. I just need you to understand why. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. The why, not what happened, but the why. Sometimes I feel like somebody's why me no privacy? WHOA, what is it? I don't know what the words are. Don't ask me. That's

not my my forte ain't the words it was? It was. I'm like, WHOA, Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me. Well, motherfuckernat on there, that's true, right, And that's what I want to discuss today. But before we even get into well, you know what, let's take a break. Okay, let's take a break, Let's pay some bills, and let's come back and let's discuss this crazy world called social media. Sounds like,

I'm We're back. We paid some real fast. And I just want to preface this by saying that I don't believe social media is bad. I don't. I don't believe social media, But what I do believe is that social media has evolved into something that people don't understand, and because they don't understand what it is, people try to create try to make social media something that it's no longer is anymore. So, I mean, yeah, we we understand that social media can be a very weird or dangerous place,

right like the world. And yeah, and we do share our children on social media. That's pretty much how we started, and I will admit in the very beginning it was something that was pretty simple for me because I'm like, oh, we're just making little videos. Oh, you have a little

three hundred followers. Then you begin you know, then you get three thousand, and then became like three hundred thousand, and it's like, oh, shoot, we have three million collectively collectively three million eyes in our family and our children. And it was kind of a thing where I started to get anxiety about the fact that we were even having our children in this space. One because they didn't ask to be in that space. Um, I know you didn't.

I'm just saying while you're saying, I'm just saying so that people can understand that both can exist in the same house, one can feel something in one and it still happened. We still happen, Yeah, exactly. Um. So that so I had moments where I was just like, shoot, at what point do we start pulling the children back,

you know, because essentially now they are in the spotlight. Yes. Um. And although we are very transparent with our social media, the overarching topic with this today is not allowing our children to have their own right because there are two purposes for social media. One purposes to share and then one is to consume. So you're either a sharer of social media, a content creator, or you're a consumer. I mean you can be both. You can be a consumer

and also you know, receive social media. But at the same time we're we're both consumers, different types of consumers, but we're mainly creators, and I think that's what's important. Um. The first part is I wanted preface this by saying I saw a social media for what it was. It was an opportunity and a lane two create my own version of what I wanted to see on television. I

saw the phone as a mini television screen. And I remember on my on my profile, if anyone of the screenshot my profile when I first started it said, um, I'm devoured a boy from Brooklyn and creating my life with sixty seconds in an iPhone, creating the life I want with sixty seconds in an iPhone. So for me, I was purposeful about it, right. So when I viewed social media, I viewed social media as a medium that shared content like the theater, like TV. It wasn't real,

you know what I'm saying. So when when I saw it as that and I started to create content for it. I utilized it as a form of entertainment. And when I started to use it as a form of entertainment, I realized that people have the right to have their own opinion about what you share in the realm of entertainment. We do it in everything music, TV, film, theater, arts.

This is just another art form. So I started to say to myself, I can no longer feel a way when people share their comments about my content, because that's what social media is for. Right you share it, there's a comment section, there's a like button, so you're expecting to get likes and share and comments. Just because someone makes a comment you don't like doesn't mean that that person is a hater. It doesn't mean that that person

is against you. That's just how they feel in a moment, and that person has a right to share that comment. So as I started to navigate the space and realize that that's how we exist, I started to make my decisions about how I wanted my children to be raised around social media. I stopped putting the onus on everybody else to be kind or say the right thing, because

you can't control everybody's comments. And I started to realize if there was a comment section where we were growing up and watching The Fresh Prince or or watching Brandy and listen, if there was a comment section for music and stuff, we'd all be commented what we liked and didn't like. We just didn't have that access. So the same comments people are making about us and our children or whatever we posted, the same way they felt when they watched all least things. We just never got a

chance to see it. So it's not like people are really changed that much. We just get an inside look at what their you say, Oh my god, Like for example, you know, the murder between this one and that one, a group of people is up. The rates is up. It's not that the race is necessarily up. It's just that we can see it more instantaneously. So it makes you feel as if certain things are now more prevalent.

But this ship always been this way for years, you know. Um, So some facts for you guys, because you know, we always like to throw a little bit of statistics in there. According to the researchers at the University of Michigan, Michigan, about one third of children ages seven to nine use social media apps on their phones and tablets, which is very interesting to me because that's super super young um to have access to that in my opinion, But you know,

to each their own. The researchers found that most parents said they do some sort of monitoring monitoring of their children's social media involvement, but one in six parents were found to be using no parental controls because of lack of information on how to do so, or because it

would just be two time consuming. Now, before you say that seems a little young, you know, al four, you will use the social medi you right, because YouTube, YouTube and social social media, social media you can really every thinking about like Instagram and like Twitter. But YouTube is one of the first social media platforms. Is Facebook YouTube If you look at you look at Instagram. Now Instagram

has evolved into what YouTube is longer videos. But on social media, you can post shorts, you can create blogs, I mean on on YouTube, promote posts blogs, You've got comments into all of the videos. It literally is a community of commentary based on your art form. So cas has been using social media for essence for Yeah, I'm not even thinking of YouTube as social media, but that's

exactly what it is. Look at me, all, I guess some one of them people to each my own UM and thetcent of parents for twelve year old say that their channels on Facebook sent said that they helped them to gain access to Facebook. Of teens that they're that they of teens say they've witnessed someone being mean or cruel on social media. Teams have given out information to someone they don't know online. So now I'm glad you

said all of these things. Remember we talked about there being two types of social media users, consumers and then creators. Our children were presented to social media as creators. They were part of a show The ellis Is on YouTube, and we put clips of that same show. Because we had our vlogs that were fifteen minute long vlogs. We put those same clips on Instagram and Facebook. So when people say, oh, your kids are on social media, they're on social media as part of the show, you know.

And we supposed pictures of our life and post little like um. At the time, there was no live When we did something, we would create a video of it edited and posted, so it came across as if we were posting them every single day in real time. And when people ask me like, well, why wouldn't you let your kids get social media? But they're on social media. This is the reason why I can't control what you see about my children on social media now that they're older.

The reason why you don't see them as much is because I've also given them control of whether or not they want to be on camera. So sometimes you say, then we don't see the kids no much, just because Jackson is eleven and Jackson now has his own life and his own things he wanted to create, and I'm like, your bro, you want to post this and he's like nah, So I'm like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's a hard note for us, and the kids don't want to do something,

especially when it comes to this filming recording. There maybe moments that we may think, oh, it's cute for us and people might enjoy it, and if the kids are not with it, you know, And it's not that I'm heavily posting or we're trying deciding to heavily post one child versus the other. It just depends on who's with the ships in the moment. Dakota right now, he's with all the ships because he ain't got a way to tell me that he's not you know what I'm saying,

join the camera. But at his age, Kaz didn't enjoy the camera, and we didn't put him on as much. Right, he wasn't engaged. He wasn't at all. Kids don't be engaged with nobody know how anyways, So and he's enjoying his life, just living his best life, living his best life.

But um, I feel like it's important at this age to teach children, especially young black children, how to have authority over their body, their mind, and their likeness because for a long time, in well since forever, in this world, young black bodies have been the commodity for other people to make money and be exploited. So for Codeine and I were very um deliberate about the brands we partner with Number one and also number two, what they require

from us. So we'll ask the kids, Hey, we want to do partnership, they want to do all of this. If the kids are just like no, We're like no, we can't. Like they don't want to film, they don't want to do that, You're gonna either have to use codein and I or we're just not doing a partnership because I'm not willing and Codeine is not willing to force our kids to do something they don't want to do. Also, to get back to story time, emotional intelligence, it's extremely

important one thing I do know. And we're going to talk about bullying um on a whole another episode. We're gonna do a whole episode about bullying. But I want to say this, parents that grew up in the eighties, nineties, even grew up in the early two thousands have never experienced what cyber bullying is like. And there's a lot of parents who are not on social media to understand.

For example, when I was doing my mentorship program and prototype, it was mandatory that we did social media checks because I was helping the young men navigate what to post on their Twitter pages, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat at the time, because college coaches used to go on social media as other names to see what the people post. This is

what young people need to realize. You think the coach that's recruiting you or the job that's looking to offer you an opportunity is going to go under there as head coach from Texas University. No, they're going to create a different profile with a random person. They're gonna befriends you and see what you post when you think no one important is watching, and that's how they figure out

who you are. So, while I was doing this process of helping them navigate their social media as I had access to the content, and I had access and I had access to their messages and their g M, and I saw from as early as middle school twelve all the way up to eighteen, the amount of messages that a child gets. They do not have the emotional security

or mental fortitude to deal with it. For example, you remember going into high school and we talked about another episode and them calling your team wolf because he was hearing them telling me that I wasn't black because I was too light and I had pink lips, and calling them the Asian and calling me Mexican. Right, I learned how to deal with that on the bus because it was one person. Everybody laughed when it was funny, so

they might have been twenty to thirty people laughing. But imagine someone taking your likeness, posting a post and millions of people get to repost and comment on it, and you're twelve, and you gotta you read all of the comments, and then that comment takes you down a rabbit hole of other comments, and then you see your post, your picture is getting used in other things, and now you feel like everybody in the world doesn't like you and your twelve How are you supposed to deal with that?

How are you supposed to the mental fortitude? And that's what I was trying to explain to Jackson about him not being emotionally intelligent to deal with it. When I tell you, know, as your dad, will tell you something I don't like that you're doing, or something I don't like about you, you cry and you feel and you should because you're you're learning how to deal with that. But as your father, I should be able to help you through that emotion because I'm the one telling it

to you. So when when I tell Jackson about himself, I don't only tell him about itself. For example, Jackson was going through a phase where every time we questioned him about something, Hey did you brush your teeth? Hey did you finish your homework? He felt like we were undermining his ability to take care of himself, and he was taking it personal and be like, you guys, don't listen to me. And we would have hours and hours of conversation about what that feeling he's feeling, and let's

talk through that. While you feel that way. Imagine if he got thousands and thousands of comments telling him something about himself that he don't like, and he doesn't have his dad there because he's in his room just reading the continents. How does he learn how to deal with that? You know what he does, he'll internalize that, right. I mean,

it's virtually impossible to stay on top of these things. Yes, of course they have parental controls devil and I am very deliberate about making sure that if the children are on any version of social media, we have the parental controls.

For example, on YouTube, we sometimes have proven to not even be as as safe or as accurate because people who are predators, who will you know, put something on the topic of coco melon, but then start putting random things inside of the videos and it's like you really have to you know, And I'm not going to profess to be this parent that is just like my you know, my children only do like, you know, twenty minutes of video time during the week, and they only do this,

and we have these rigid regulations. Sometimes should be hitting a fan of we have thousand things going on it's like, yo, y'all sit down right here and put YouTube one and we're gonna watch a show together. You're gonna watch a show together. But I will say this though, our children, especially the young ones, are not allowed to be on the phones during the week. Or yeah, we do have that.

I am. I am very rigid with that. When you come when Monday starts and Cas knows even he's yeah, I see him with Mimi's phone because he doesn't have his own phone. Cairo doesn't have his own phone. Jackson got his own phone because he started traveling to school by himself. He got his own phone when he was not Yes, so when it comes to Kyra and cash they have to ask for devices, they know not to ask me for any devices during the week, so that immediately I know where you're going with this. I know

where you're going with this. Cass, that little one right there is one day, real quick story. I was coming in from running errands or whatever. So I went through the side door of the house and um, I don't think he heard in yeah in the door, you know when the door chime and stuff went off. And I came around the corner into the kitchen and he's standing there like at attention, and he's like mommy. He's like, mommy, Oh,

it's just you. And I'm like, what do you mean it's just but yes, it's just me, and and I'm not picking up yet on what's happening. He's like, it's just you, and he's just like peeking around the corner. He was dead Daddy night with you. I was like, no, And then I see his one little hand on top of the countertop and what's his hand on top of Mimi's iPad? So that's that, Cassie. Were you just watching

the iPad? Yes? I said what days today? And he gave me the date actually because he came up from school, so he said today. It was like, for example, Monday, September. And I was like, and it's a school day, right, and he said yes. I said, are you supposed to be watching the iPad during the week? No? I said, why you're being sneaky. You're being sneaky because Addy gave a specific instructions not to watch that. I said, should

I tell Daddy that you're not listening? No? I said, then you're gonna Are you going to tell Daddy that you weren't listening. No, I said, all right, well, let this be a lesson. I'm not gonna give you up this time. It's between you and I. I said, but when Daddy said that there's no iPad during the week, you have to listen or else it'll be no iPad ever again in life. Then he said, okay, mommy, But

he sneaky is out of just like he's very intellectual. Um, I always know because he's sneaky, but he's not the smartest because he's only four or four years of life. But I know when I come in the house, the first head that pops out the side of the world typically is cast and then he'll his head'll pop out. He'll see me in. Then he's running, right, So then I come in and he's like, I'm running from you,

And I said, what are you running too? And he's like running from He's not running from me, he's running to what he was just doing. To try to put it back, but that also gives me insight into who my child is, which means when he gets to that age and when he gets his cell phone, he's definitely going to be the type of child to have a profile on the side that no one ever knows about you know what I'm saying. And I'm not foolish enough to believe that all of my children are angels because

I wasn't an angel. You were an angel. You were doing a wild freaky ship to me when your parents didn't know. And I take that into account. But realistically, it's like emotional maturity and emotional intelligence is something that we don't spend enough time with our children, and it's

difficult in this world. Right, I'm going to give this example, right, and we're going to talk more about this example in another episode, But learning how to have empathy for people who are not willfully ignorant, but who are taught ignorance. For example, UM, someone like Dylan ruth Right. He's he was a child, I think when he was nineteen nineteen when he walked into the children's ath Carolina and killed

those people. But he did it because he said that he to start a race war, which means he was taught the things he was saying by people who who we trusted because they were older than his family. He was taught these things. Right also said he had a manifested and he did a lot of stuff on social media that right there, was a trigger for me because I said, wait a minute, what are we really doing or allowing from our children. When you have a social

media profile, you get to pick who you follow. Since you get to pick who you follow, you you are literally curating your world because most people spend more time on social media than they actually spend in the real world. So if you get to choose who you follow, and then the algorithm gets to give you people who are similar to the people you following, you're now following thousands of people who are only like the people you want to see. And if that person has one message, now

your whole world revolves around that one message. And they took it a step further. I feel like there was always the explore page, but then there's a function where within your feed there's um suggested follows that. So I remember scrolling one day and I was just like, why is it giving me all this page that I don't follow?

But I'm just and there's an option for you to opt out of that, So I think I asked it out of it for like thirty days, but then it comes back and it's just like, you're really pushing this stuff on me. But so imagine being a young child and you follow so for example, some right wing profile, or they're just spewing hatred and misogyny and and racism and sexism and and you know, just really violent, angry messages. And because you click this message, now they're giving you

suggestions of other people with the same message. So if you're young, in your mind, you think all of this is what the world is. You don't realize that it's an algorithm that's pushing forth a message and that becomes your reality. And then be upset at that child whose reality becomes something that they didn't even realize. So when I think about my children, I'm like, I'm not saving Mike or not. I'm not keeping my kids from social media because I'm worried about them getting marketed some blah

blah blah blah. I'm worried about the world curating an idea in their mind that I can't control when I'm not around. And if you get that message enough, easily persuaded in that. And that's the reality of it. Absolutely, And think about this. Imagine if we talked about the cyber bullying. Now you have all your friends in school who are saying something about you. They share stuff and

it gets out. This is what our generation never experienced having to deal with because because bullying was a big deal when we were growing Remember it was no bullying, no bully when we were growing up, but it was only kids in school. Imagine you have to deal with a whole generation of people who speak different languages sharing your picture and making funny comments and stuff. How does

the child deal with that? No, I totally understand, and I totally get it, and I, like I said before, being a mother unlocks this constant state of worry that you tend to have when it comes to your children.

And we had a conversation recently where you were just like, hey, I need you to stop existing in a space of always thinking of the worst that may happen, or you know, something negative might go wrong, or but I just feel like I can no longer exist in this almost utopia that I existed in when we were kids, or just even dating or in our twenties, where I'm just like, oh, we'll just do whatever and we'll be careless and we'll be reckless, because Okay, I feel like I have such

a soul responsibility to care for and nurtured these children. So I worry about what could potentially go wrong. But I have to learn how to not let that completely engulf my being, you know. Um. So I think a way that I am able to kind of help to lessen this worry a bit is by being very active in and present in whatever they're consuming. So Jackson's text messages between his friends, Yes, um, there was a group text that was with him amongst some other children in

his grade. And you know, there was some stuff going on in that group chat where I was like, bro, get out at that group chat, like, you don't even know who some of these kids are. You're the due to association. But I want to talk. I want to talk about that because we live in a time now where and I remember it started we we started family living. When I was in fourth grade. We had a family living teacher who came and told us that we are humans.

We have the right to our own opinion, We have the right to our own space, and our parents don't have right to come into our space without asking for permission and stuff like that. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. And I'm explaining to you why the law now will give children all of this leeway to do whatever they want to do, but you know who the law blames when your children does something sucked up you as a parent. If your

children damage property, you are responsible for it. Or if your child is within a certain age range, they are not responsible for it. So as a teen, for example, they do some thing wrong and they're at that age where they are now technically almost kind of adult or can be charged in an adult, then you, as a parent can't even intervene and do anything for your child.

I think that would be the most heartbreaking thing for me to know that God forbid, one of my children were in trouble and I was not able to come up with a solution. And it's not a matter of just bailing them out, because you want to, of course, make sure that they're taking responsibility for their actions and there will be life lessons that they have to learn without our intervening. But it's like, imagine being in a situation where it's just like damn, I can't even got

to imagine that. You want to know why if I am responsible for you, there's a certain level of control I have to have to protect you, period, And that's what that's where I stand with children, Right, this is my child. I am responsible from my child, which means I am responsible to control the environment around my child to make sure that they are available, able enough mentally and emotionally to take care and handle everything that goes on in their life, which means while they grow up

in my house. No, you don't have privacy to keep do is closed. No you don't know your phone is not gonna be locked and I'm not gonna happen. Know you ain't going to such a such house because I don't want my parents like And that's not just a social media thing. That's just controlling your child's environment so that you can curate what the world looks like for them, rather than letting a bot or letting an algorithm curated

for them. And I feel like if more people were responsible enough like that, we wouldn't have the cyber bullying issues that we have. But since we do have the cyber bullying issues that we have. I want to be clear to parents when you or your child because Kadina and I have struggled with this as well. Right, when you or your child post something on social media has a comment section if you don't want to hear any

comments about it. Turn the comments off, period. But if you left the comments open, that means you left the comments open for people to give their opinion about what they saw or what they watched. Now, if that's what you left it open for, you have to receive whatever people say. We all know everybody in the world is not kind hearted. Some people are mean spirited for whatever reasons, whatever they've gone through in their life. They want to

project whatever issues they have on other people. People like that exist. Since we know that, we can't be surprised when every single comment isn't kind and it's unfair to your children when you post them. It's unfair to yourself, and it's also unfair to the other people who post when you post something that you get upset every single

time someone says something you don't like. If you really want to be that uh, I don't want to say juvenile, but that guarded about what people say about what you post. Take the comments off, that's an option, or don't post them right. Well, I know that, Like I've spoken before about someone making a comment about Jackson and made feeling like I wanted to like rip the bit head off, right,

and that's happened recently. To where people particularly want to comment on this, and I get what you're saying, but in my feeling that way, I feel like, Okay, the context of the video was about, for example, us making a joke about, say, something that happened on a family trip. But then people will tend to, nowitpick about something in the video which has nothing to do with the context of it, or the context of the photo right, or

the context of whatever the caption was. But then they'll choose to pick out something to talk about, whether it be with our children or with us. Now, yes, you're entitled to your opinion, and I think some people are just genuinely mean. But we know that, and we know that, so if we know that, we have to make a choice prior to posting if we want to post it, and we have to examine, well, what maybe picked a part in these videos. Now I am of the mindset

and you and I disagree sometimes in this. I don't mind posting flaws. I don't mind posting myself with flaws. You were flaws. I mean, people have made comments all the time about my hair thinning. My hair has been thinning since I was in my late twenties. You know what I'm saying. People have made comment about Jackson's teeth, they made comment about Cairo not speaking proper English when

he is too. All of these things I've learned to not let bother me because these are flaws that my children are going to have to learn how to deal with anyway, and you and I are going to have to learn how to deal with personally. So I let them help us, help them navigate it, so I don't mind it. And if we're being honest, we may get maybe four or five thousand comments per pose it, maybe

twenty comments that may be best. May someone sends to us and be like, oh, this person said x y Z, because we know we do have a very strong support system for sure. But I do have to say, like if how you how people respond to what you post makes you feel a way you, then you then need to do more soul soarcing about whether or not you

want to post or not. You know what I'm saying, Because if you're expecting to have a hundred percent acceptance on all of your arts, all of your posts, on all of your blogs, you're gonna fail because nothing in life is a certain all the time. Like that doesn't happen to greatest shooter in the world. Stuff Curry still misses more than half the time. You know, the greatest baseball players that hit still hit between two hundred three you know, two hundred three hundred, which is about and

that means they miss and those are greats. So you have to understand that people are entitled to their own opinion. And once you come to that rationale, and if you teach your children to come to that rationale, they are more equipped to deal with what social media is. Right. You see what I'm saying. Na see, I see what you're saying for sure, because I mean they will come a point when they are going to be within their

right to get their own social media right. UM. A common conversation between myself and some of my mom friends are but what is that age that you are going to allow your kid potentially to have access to social media? There's no age. I don't feel like you have to know as a parent what your child can and can't handle, and you cannot allow for a particular age to dictate that, nor can you allowed for other parents to One child

may be equipped for, another child may not be equipped for. UM. So I think there's an age, you have to be equipped to have that conversation with your child. Like I explained to Jackson, it was I'm not the type of parent that's gonna be like, just listen to me, because I said so, I explained it. I explained it, and we talked about emotional maturity, and we had a very in depth conversation about and we even had a conversation about his teeth. Right, And I'm open to share this um.

Codein's Codein war braces. Codeine's sister, her brother war braces. So in her family, they just have narrower but You're family, in particular, have a narrower palette and it has to get adjusted, which means the front two teeth typically protrude. And we've known this since Codeine and I have met each other. She was wearing a retainer when I met her.

So I remember one of the things that Codeine says when Um, when we met together, just like, man, I hope you're children to get your teeth because you have a wider palette and they won't have to deal with the teeth protrusion. So all these people keep saying that you'll need to get them children's teeth fixed we are aware of that. But what I what I don't do is I don't let people's comments about my son's teeth or Jackson affect me, and I'm teaching him how to

not let it affect him. So rather than saying no, you can't get a social media and in not giving him a reason why, I'm explaining to him for sure, we're not telling Jackson that people are making these comments about him either. I am no, no, no no, this is what I told Jackson. I said, listen um because he had so on YouTube one time, like what what what?

It was wrong with my teeth? Right, And now that he's going through the process of getting braces, it's an easier conversation to have because he's going through the process of getting it fixed in real time, in real time. So I didn't tell him earlier because then it's like he was going to be worried about his teeth and walking around with a subconscious condition of everyone's looking at

my teeth. So when you started taking him to the endodontist and he was just like orthodont orthodontists, it was like that he asked me that why do I why I don't want to get braceist? I'm worried. So then I explained to myself, look at your mom's teth, look at your uncle Seth, look at your honestly, look at that. No no, no no, no, no no. And I was like, this will also help you with your bite. It will help you with your hygiene because if your your teeth

aren't in alignment. And this is how I explained. I didn't even use other people as a reason why he has to give his teeth fix. What I explained to him is if your teeth are in a line, it can cause migraines because your bite can be off. If you don't chew properly, you can have issues swallowing. So I gave him, I gave him reasons as to why his teeth needed to get fixed. But then I also said, when your teeth look different than everyone else's teeth, people

tend to poke fund at people who are different. You have to learn how to realize what's different about yourself, walk in it, on it, and don't let people define you by what's different in yourself. And then having those conversations, I'm helping him get tools to defend himself and be empowered even if something happens and I can't control it, because let's be honest, we can't control all the comments.

We can't control we can once he gets thirteen and stuff like that, he's probably gonna have a little secret profile and doing all this stuff because kids do stuff like that. We snuck out our parents house, we went to parties we weren't supposed to. But rather than just tell him, no, you can't have social media, I'm choosing to arm him with the emotional security to be able to feel strong enough to say, this is who I am. This is Jackson, regardless of what people say. I'm gonna

walk proudly in who I am. I love that you've done that with him. And we've also taken the approach like even just with simple things like for example, I'm sure other boy moms and dads can relate, but it's trying to instill proper hygiene, taking pride in oneself, how you look when you leave the house, maintaining just yourself overall.

And instead of taking the approach like, well, Jackson, you got to make sure that you, like, you know, brush your hair, because girls ain't gonna like you if you're hearing brushed like you don't got nothing to do with the girls. We want you to be able to make sure that you know you need to walk out of this house, door, house, this front door, looking your best, feeling your best, because that's something you need to do for yourself. You don't have nothing to do with nobody else.

So I've been that approach. Also with social media. I think has been great too, because now Jackson doesn't look at him getting braces as something that's so daunting and oh my god, I'm gonna have this for two years. He has now an excitement around it because he's just like it's progressing. You know, his expanders in now, so he's like, mom, like it's expanding. Can you see can

you tell you know? I got him his little water pick, he got his little system with how he can practice proper hygiene, and then I can speak to him from a place of Mommy has been here before, so here are the things that I did to help. I can now know certain foods to give him and not give him, because it can help to just make the process that

much easier. He even called my sister who had to deal with the same thing he hasn't now and yeah, she had the same issue with the narrow palace, you know, having to expand it, and you know, technology has advanced so much, even between her and I having braces. So she spoke to him one day. He was a little apprehensive and you know, scared about what was happening in the process, and she was like, buddy, like, YO, call me if you need me. Like, that's great to have

that support system as well too. So but that's but I think that's what people need to do more focusing on because you can't prevent your child from being on social media, but you can also give them proper social media etiquette. Right. So for example, when you used to walk out of the house before school, your parents used to say, sticking stones may break my bones, but names

will never hurt me. And also tell you if you have nothing kind to say, don't say anything at all, right, So they your parents also teach you how to treat people in person. We would hope that more parents would teach their children how to act on social media, but if we're being honest, there's a lot of parents in

this generation that never used social media. So when you speak to parents and they're like, you get your sons doing on social media, they're looking like well, I don't even know what this is, so they don't even know how to equip their children with how to be kind to other people. You understand what I'm saying. Not so for me, it's not only so much about protecting my child,

but it's also helping society and protecting other people's children. Right, don't allow your children to become part of the virtual lynch mob. Right. The virtual lynch mob is the same group of bad girls or bad guys in elementary school, junior high school, high school who find the weak person and they all gang up on the person. For us in high school, it was called a what was that

book they had? It was a composition book And people would would find a person and they would have a composition book and they would draw pictures of this person and might write bad things, and they would pass it around the school and then eventually the person would find out, like there's a book going on. It wasn't that a show that we were watching? Yeah? Why, But those things like that happened actually before social media was a big thing.

There was a big one in Madison. I mean when I was graduating, there was a young lady and there was a bunch of Um, a young lady was talking to this guy and all of his friends created a book. They drew pictures of her, you know, doing you know, scantily clad thing, drawing stuff with her with a penis in her mouth and saying things like that, and it was just guys being bullies, right, and it was a book,

but you had all of these guys doing it. So when she finally showed the book, it hurt her, you know. But now there's no book, there's social media. And when I think about it now, it was like, I never participated in things like that because my mom and my dad made sure that growing up, I always took care of the little person, you know what I'm saying, Like the person that everyone else seems to be going at. It was kind of like, wait, why can I just understand?

Why are we all ganging up on this person who seems to not know how to protect themselves? Like what is the fund in this? Like my parents used to my father, he's you're the oldest, you gotta protect your brother, you know what I'm saying, don't ever let nobody done that. And he used to tell me in the world, they're going to be people who can't protect themselves, like you can't. It is your responsibility to protect them if you can't, even if you don't know them. That was a teacher

from my father. I teach Jackson the same thing. Jackson is such a pathetic child, he really really is. Like it's amazing to see how he's able to have such empathy for people, regardless of who it is, and he wears his emotion on his sleeve. Um, and it's a beautiful thing to see that. I think the teachings from your dad has manifested itself into him and his spirit reminds me of my grandmother and my father. Yeah, who

is the same way. She just like everybody just loved her and um adored her and revered her because she just cared genuinely for people. And that's like the person at the very bottom of the bottom of the totem polls, you know, important to society standards, and then it could be the king, you know what I mean. Um, it's regardless of who the person is having that. So that's pretty dope. There are some parental parental control softwares out there that can be used. One that I'm particularly familiar

with more recently. Um, now that Jackson has a new phone and trying to install certain things. UM. This one called Bark and Bark is a really good one UM that gives parents more control over their child's Internet devices. And it also gives you the ability and to monitor like their social media, text messages, other activity UM to alert you when there are signs of possible cyber bullying, depression,

or inappropriate content. So I think UM any parents should be invested in making sure that they're finding some sort of software that they can then use, even if they're just doing random checks, but it can kind of lets you know in real time if something that's for example, search on their phone that's inappropriate, or they're receiving something inappropriate on their phone UM, or even if you're watching they're playing the game and sometimes those ads come in

and I've seen some ads pop up that looks kind of like sexual ba yeah, sexual base or something, and I'm just like, you know, scroll past that. But you know, do your due diligence with that. Even with all of these things, you still have to have these conversations with your children because all of these all of these like Bark and Stop and these things that these prevention and all this other stuff. My parents put all these things in place to prevent me from doing stuff, and I

had access to everything. You know what I'm saying, because you had the code for the box on cables and Spice plain something to you guys, right, alright, Spice Shandol channel sixty nine, great number, the channel on cable vision, right, and there was a little red dot in the back of the cable box, right. And I knew that if you hold the cable box and you hold the enter and the power at the same time you hold a little red button, the scrambled Spice Shandel will become clear band.

So I used to be watching all that stuff in middle school, right, And this is what my parents putting up the parental guarden. Everything I'm scrambling the house unscrambled all of that. So I was watching these chicks, right, But I know that our children are gonna find ways around it. The greater assets is to helping, is to making sure that they are empowered with the ability to handle the things they see, not just prevent them from seeing things, because you can't prevent them from seeing. That

is very what I'm saying. That's a very good point because if they're not finding on their phone. They're talking to their little friends. And I first learned about the Spice channel at a dude named Ian's house who we moved. We moved my back in. If I'm blowing you up, but I think you're good eno you probably I don't know. Yeah, so you're good now your parents will be fine. But I went to his house, right, and it's the first time we moved to Canarsi, and this is when I started.

This is the first time I ever lived around white people. This is the true story, true true story. We moved from Flatbush to Canarsi and I had a boy named Mark, and I never forget going by marks house. And Mark was in his room and I went by mark room. He's a little older than me, and his mother came in the room. It was just like, Mark, you gotta

clean this goddamn room. And he said, close my goddamn door, right, and she slammed the door, and I was like, well, what's happening here, Like he just said goddamn to his mother's about to be crazy. She's about to come back in here with a knife, right. So he's like he's like, yeah, let's get out of here. Let's get out of here, right. So he walks out of the house, leaves the door open, and he's like, Mom, close my damn door. Don't go on my room, right, And then she was just like Mark,

shut the funk up, like it was like communicated. So I was just like, man, this, yeah, this don't seem like this is gonna work in my house. I'm an refrain from doing that. But then we went by in so house, went by in his house and was like, hey, you want to see something cool? And I was nine, and he was just like he was like he's something cool, and I was like, yeah, let me sound cool. So he went in the back of the cable box and

he hit the thing. He did the thing with the internal power and held the button right and when in the beginning, all I saw was like scrambled gray lines, but I did see some titties, so it was like scrambles, gray lines, some titties, and then wants the thing cleared up. All I've seen was like titty and the lady she had on like a little plumber thing and she came in and she was just like hey, and it was like she was just like, my pipes are clogged. I need someone to clean my pipes, and I was like,

I was nine. I was like, what is this? So then he his dad comes in there. I was like, yeah, what I tell you about watching this ship? And then he like turned the TV off and told us to go outside, right, So I was like, wait, his father know he'd be watching this. Did his ass whooped and then he made us turn off and go outside. But at the time, I didn't, like, I didn't understand what was going on, and my father never spoke to me about sex because my father was like the parent controls

are my kids ain't watching? I'm good right right? Right? Then we get then we get older and little di he know we've been watching it all through high school and middle school. Then my brother ends up having a baby at seventeen. You know what I'm saying, because no, yeah, no one ever prepared us for what we were going

to see. Right, So I'm learning now that you know, not to say that my parents were bad parents, but rather than saying, don't do this, abstinence, you know, kind of like the black the Black Church, abstinence, don't have sex. Let's talk about these things and let's discuss how to navigate them. Properly. So let's say all we talk about communication all the time, and the show we talk about transparency, and it's not just between the val and I. We

exhibit these same practices with our children. And it doesn't start when they're old enough to comprehend whatever we think it may be. Naturally we have age appropriate discussions depending on what they can absorb and understand at that moment.

But these conversations continue to happen as they grow, and you divulge a little bit more and a little bit more detail as they get older, because in turn, you're able to then equip them with at least the knowledge to that now know how to make a decision, because we're not gonna be there to be able to make them.

As much as I want to be able to hand hold them through this life, I have realized the value in making sure that my children I'm hands off with sometimes because you're gonna have to learn Jackson being late to school in the morning, I'm not gonna be like Jackson, is this time? Jackson? Is this time? Jackson? You're Jackson? You know your ride is about to be outside. No, you missed, You miss your ride to school? Bro, how are you gonna get there. Let me figure it out.

You have to figure it out. Let me talked about figuring stuff out. This is how smart these kids our parents point For you to know, one of my kids I was mentoring got in trouble for content that he has shared on social media. His mom says, y'all got the wrong child, because my son doesn't even have a phone. Yeah, doesn't even have a phone phone. His cousin got an upgrade on his iPhone and still kept the old iPhone. Gave it to him and she said the line doesn't work.

He used the WiFi, created a profile and a password, and had a whole another separate social media life. His mom swore up and down that he didn't have so he was out there just stugging it. He never even took the phone home. You want to know why because his mom used to check his bag and check his room. Guess where he kept the phone? School in his locker. And I'm telling you this story because as much as you think you can prevent your children from seeing things

or doing things, you can't. And all you can really do is prepare them with the emotional intelligence to handle what they see accordingly. So yes, I'm not putting my kids on social media. I'm not letting them get up social media page. But on top of that, I'm preparing them. I love that. I love that. All right, y'all, this is a good segue to take a little bit of break, all right, and then we're going to get back to some listener letters after pay some bills. All right, see

you soon. All right, we're back. Let's dive into listener letters now we have to today we normally always have to that to one development. Let you read that because all right, hi guys, I hope you all are doing well. Thank you. A little tired, but you know, hey, I'm tired and pro Perpetuity already told you that. I often listened to your podcast and I've heard you guys speak

a few times about taking breaks in your relationship. What is your opinion on taking breaks and when you guys were in college, what led to those decisions of taking the time apart? Do you guys feel like those times benefited relationship? Absolutely? I think they did benefit our relationship a lot um develop I yes, we've spoken about at certain points in our relationship, particularly in the beginning, having

to take those breaks. Some of them were forced in that develot was you know, for example, in the NFL had to leave and go to Detroit and that's where he was then stationed, and I was still back in New York at Hofstra finishing grad school. So that was kind of like a forced break in a sense, although we were together break yeah, um, but I think those moments definitely kind of helped us to decide whether or not this was a space that we wanted to be in. Um.

It was very healthy for us to have these breaks. Um. And though at the time certain times that we had to take these breaks and they weren't frequent, they were maybe like two or three times over the course of our relationship. We got on a break twice in college, yeah, and that one time when I got back from the NFL. About three times, and sometimes, you know, either of us

were the ones to initiate it. So where one person kind of wants to have the break and the other doesn't want to have the break, I think it tends to complicate things, um in a sense. But they definitely were beneficial because it gave each of us the choice to decide if this is somewhere that we wanted to be and rather than trying to hold things together by force or trying to hold things together because of the

time that was already invested. Um giving the person the opportunity to go out there and just kind of not necessarily even be with someone else, but giving them the space to just kind of either clear their head or decide like what it is they really want out of life in general, and to see how you even fit into that equation. If you do, I think it's necessary to have those moments. Um Mine is really short for this.

Having those brakes every time made me realize that I wanted to be here because here I get an opportunity two as they say, a young man sold my wild olds. And when I had the opportunity to go and do that, something in me was just like I want to be

with Cadino, Like I'd rather be here. But having that option, in that choice to make that decision embowered me and made me realize, like, yo, I just want to be because I don't need to be there, But I'm still going over to her apartment, like I'm still going to her room. We used to fight it, man, I told you about That's how Develt left my apartment with all

his stuff. Like the suitcase. It was winter time, it was cold, it was it was windy, and he threw his scarf around his head like Mary J. Blige and not try video. It was one of the wool joints that looked like Burdberry, but it wasn't really burberry. It was furberry. It was the story did that has evolved into the person you see here today? He was not always like this okay, and I evolved to like what

you're You're that. We weren't always the one to wear a fake Burberry scarf and throw it around your neck like Mary J. Blosh all you were missing with the glasses? Who were you dating all this time? Because it was you took that you strowing out of my apartment with your suitcase, like this is it, I'm out of here, and then you turned around and came back within thirty minutes, like because yeah, I went back to my room and my dumbass took you back. Yes, that went to my

room when it was nothing in there. It was just Aloud and maybe some couple of noodles. It was bloud, sprites and old. It can make nuggets. But even even that, that was the time that I stormed out but that wasn't a break though. We actually did go on a break after that, and even in that break, I'm still at your apartment every day, and it was just like,

didout go away? You wanted this break, right? She was like, please stop stop, please stop waving me to come back, but um no, going on breaks actually just gives you an open choice. And when you have the opportunity to make an open choice and YouTube both collectively still want

to be there, that it doesn't do. So I do think breaks are healthy, especially and in those times where you know change happens, and then in a break, you have to be also willing and able and knowledgeable up to know that somebody may not come back after that break, that breaks might then make them decide, you know what, this might not be for me. Take that ship as

a blessing. Don't hold me here hostage just to hold me here hostage, because if you decide that this is not where you want to be, I'd rather you go find your happiness else, or actually find you're happy within you and then see how you can share that with somebody else. She didn't say that to me when I was in my break, but sure, that's growth, Like I said he wasn't the same person. I ain't the same person. In that moment, I had his ass in a choke hold.

I will say this. Never come back from a break and say I'm gonna be with that person because I don't want her to be with someone else. The reason for coming back to the break should be because you want to be there, not because you just don't want them to be with someone else. That's just selfish, because what typically happens is you didn't have resentment because you don't want that person to be with anybody else. But

you still don't want to be there. And now you say the only reason why I'm here is because of you, and that's not good. So make sure you're there because you want to be the right reasons, y'all, always the right reasons. All right on to number two, devote ahead. I mean we could break this up to I can rehaf and half because this pretty, this is a novel. This is we over me. Hey, guys, peace and prosperity

to you and your family. I know you can hundreds of letters daily, but if this happens to catch your attention, please help assister out. I seven year old female. I am terrified of marriage. I've been with my boyfriend year old for eight years. We have two bail for children, and he proposed to me years ago, but I keep

pushing the wedding back. Although I love this man with everything in me, and every obstacle we've ever encountered, we've conquered and pushed through, the thought of marriage scares me. I want to marry him, I really do. The problem is it's never something I've seen successfully accomplished. That's most people. Just to be clear, more than fifty percent of people that get married get divorced, So most marriages you see,

don't end well. Every married person I know talks negatively, negatively about marriage, not us, like they never bring up a positive moment, not us. His mother divorced her husband and all she talks about is how it's a negative experience. My mother has been married to my stepfather for over ten years and I've never witnessed a loving moment between them. You know, both of I have expressed, both of us have expressed that in our families we've watched marriages and

felt like the marriages just never seemed to be super positive. Ye, we can definitely relate to that. My grandparents still lived together, but they've never been married and seemed to be more of roommates than a couple of My biological dad. Ever since I told him I was pregnant with our first child when I was twenty, has repeatedly stated that my

fiance would leave me alone as a single mother. Once my fiance proved that he's in this for the long one, he still enforces his belief that once we get married, he will leave me and the children. And I am stupid for doing this to myself. Wow, you don't have a lot of You don't have a strong support systems. All of our friends hate that we don't talk about any issues with them about our relationship, and they say we think we're too good and they stay Yo. She

has no support system. I feel so bad for this person that if we get married, our relationship will crumble. He's willing, I mean, people told me and K the entire way willing to wait on marriage, but has expressed that he's not really happy that we're going to be into ours ninth year and I keep pushing things back. I guess my question is, do you believe that a successful marriage can be accomplished? Do you listen to that as podcasts, even when neither of us have seen a

successful marriage. Is my fear justified? Girl? Yes you can period like this is a short answer. That's a short answer, devil, and I literally and I mean, y'all. We divulge more about this in our book, UM that will be in hand February seve But you can pre order now, you can definitely pre order, please do UM. So we divulge more about this in detail. But you just have to curate the life and the marriage and the relationship that you want. You cannot lean on other people for their opinions.

And I had come to the revelation because initially I was putting the onus on, for example, my mother or my aunt's or my grandmother or just women who were in my household or outside of my household but had a hand in raising me. I was putting the responsibility on them to be the ones you give me. You know all the tea about marriage, Let me know the pros and the cons, Let me know what I should and shouldn't do, Like you feel like these women should then kind of lift you up and prepare you for

this marriage. And the more I think about it, the more, I realized maybe the blessing and not having that and then having to figure things out on my own because I was coming to my relationship with you kind of green and figuring things out along the way. Now, was it easy? Hell No, it wasn't. We're still twenty years in trying to figure out things as we continue to

grow and change. So I think about how much more jaded I might have been by hearing these instances from these women in my life and knowing, like, shoot, so many of them are living in a state of unhappiness within their relationships. Is that something that I necessarily want as just an energy around this space with me because I'm very protective of the energy that I have around me. So there was a blessing in disguise for that, And

I can't particularly blame them for not do that. I guess I have to see that this is something we curated on our own. Well, here's my thing. People seem to think that their unhappiness comes from marriage. I see unhappy single people. So you have to start asking you a question of the people you're speaking to, unhappy because they're married, or are they unhappy and happy to be married.

There's a big difference. There's a huge difference. It's because we've we've talked about this before the world's wealth is controlled by one percent of the population, which means most of the people in the world are not happy with their place in life financially right. Most people have stated that they don't know what their purpose is, so unhappiness

just lives in them not understanding what their purposes. Then they seek happiness through these fleeting things, getting married, getting a job, having kids, and then when they're still unhappy because they can't find their purpose, they blame their marriage, they blame their job, they blame their kids. It's like people always look to blame all the other fact there's in their life other than the fact that they haven't

put the working on themselves to be better. And I think marriage gets a bad rap right With that being said, if you want to be married right you, I mean, if you're in a relationship, you have to decide first if you want to be married right now. We don't sound like you want to be married, And you asked, is my fear justified? We're gonna do a whole another podcast. It's going to be entitled stay Out of My Feelings. I can't tell you if your fear is justified because

you woke up being afraid. You never woke up saying I want to be afraid of marriage. It just is so. So, yes, your fear is justified because you've seen um the negative aspects of marriage pretty much projected on you by your friends and family. So yes, it's justified. But does their

projection have to be your reality? No it doesn't. Because when I said I was getting married to k and I told my dad I wanted to get married, I was eighteen when the manage girt love for and he was just like, yeah, okay, you say that now, but wait when you get older. You know what I'm saying. Both of my moms told us we need to slow down the people when we were in college, or y'all y'all together, now, y'all freshmen, wait till senior year. Then

when I got to the league. Or you you you're real rookie, now, wait till you get in the league, you know, or you and TV Now it's like every aspect of my life. People have said watching the more famous Kadina and I get, people keep saying we'll see if their marriage last after all of this we never let anyone else's projection become our reality. We continue to nurture the relationship we want, the way we want, on

the timeline we want to have it. And as long as we continue to do that, baby girl, I'm telling you, our sex life is bomb. We enjoy being parents, we enjoy building an empire that we can afford to not only help our children and ourselves, but the people around us. And we've done all of this while being a married

couple and being happy like we enjoy being married. If you don't, you can't say you've never seen a married couple that enjoy being married, because you have Kadina and I. As much as we may complain about aspects of marriage, because we do. I complain and I'm I'm right now, Davis in the room, Matt is in the room, Josh is in the room, triple. I have complained about the aspects of my marriage. I have, but I've been happily married.

You understand what I'm saying, Like you don't wake up every morning and being like I enjoy every aspect of being a man. Sometimes you be complaining, like I don't want to be a man. For this reason, I'm saying women go through that all the time. Just because you don't enjoy every aspect of being a woman don't mean you don't want to be a woman. It's just this

part of being a woman is fucked up. It's the same parenting too, and you feel guilty for feeling bad because it's like, damn, I brought these kids, and now I would be mad at them because they're here over here tearing it up. Bro Yo, I picked we decided to have four kids, we didn't tired, and then wakes up in the morning to be pissed that we're tired, but then still be seeing our kids and picked them up. And I always tell them I seething. I tell you I love you today because I love them. I love

being a parents. But waking up at six in the morning to take somebody in school going and standing outside for football practice for two hours one of his rain and it's hot, and you still got to do content for for work and you haven't seen your wife in a couple of months. That should be annoying. But do I love it? Yes? Yes, So let that be a message to you. It can exist. It's not a utopia. Every day is not going to be rainbows and sun kids and diamonds and every No, some days it's gonna

be gonna be annoyed with that motherfucker facts. But if you want to be married, make that marriage the best marriage you can ye. Like I said, find your happiness with you and then go share that ship. I the world will be a better place, all right, y'all if you want to be a part of listening letters, make make our world a better place, you know. And you know what I just thought about two? She probably didn't even She doesn't know us personally, so she can't say.

So we can't say to her, girl, you know what a happily married couple, it's us because some people still do this. They think they were facade, right, they think that all is. They ain't really they ain't really happy. They're just doing this for cloud, they're doing it for social media, and they're doing it like so I can't even blame her for feeling like she doesn't see that

because she doesn't personally know anybody. And we can say how happy we are, and people really just be like, yeah, that's cap because you got to maintain this really not in the airport, there's plenty of seats We're in the airport. I'm sitting down. Cadine Goals gets coffee, comes down, she sits on my lap. And why she's sitting on my lap, I'm just squeezing on her, but you know, doing what I do, I'm giggling. She's giggling and stuff in. A woman comes over and says, you know, I follow y'all

on social media, and I'm not gonna lie. You know. Sometimes I'll be like, oh, this is fake, there's no way to do this, but I'm watching y'all right now, there's nobody here, and she chose to sit on your lap. She's like, that was the sweetest thing. And I don't think people realize you can argue with somebody and still be madly in love with that. You know, you can differ you you can have different ideals and still if you ask, ask our camera crew, ask trouble. When you

see trouble, what the ellises are like? Nigga's being here arguing mad at each other, but Becaudean will walk by me with some tight soon and I'll squeeze that. But I come here. I did. I'll tell you I love you today that that's not going to change you know, so don't better not change or I'll be what it

won't change shook in my little boots. But don't don't feel like if everything isn't perfect, that your your marriage or your relationship isn't worth going to that next step in being a married couple, because I freaking love being married. I do. I love it. I love it same, bro, you make it. You make it fairly easy, not completely easy, but fairly. That's being fair. I receive that. All right, good, I'm sure you can say the same. Be sure to

write to us on social media. Well, no, that's that's a lie, because that's not the point in the show. If you want to be featured as a listener letter. There we go back on track. Now, I just lovely that we should be having me at my mind or crazy since thence be sure to email us at dead s Advice at gmail dot com. That's d E A D A S S A d V I C E at gmail dot com. All right now, moment of truth time.

We had a lot of little like tidbits in this show, um, but ultimately what we were talking about because initially I'm like, oh shoot, we just had these really great listen letters that's my moment of truth. But no, going back to what the show topic is about, and it's about social media and our children and them having their own what's your moment of truth? Baby, it's my moment of truth, right, people, social media is entertainment. It is no longer what it

was originally created for. Our generation thinks about black Planet. You know, um, you have friends, so you can curate who is going to be on your page. It's now a public forum since it's no longer a place where you only have the people that you're close to looking at your picture and video. People who are watching it are watching it for entertainment. So the things they say

they're saying for entertainment. If you entertain the things they say and take it personal, you're doing yourself a disservice. Teach your children that social media's entertainment. The things they see on social media are not real. Give them the emotional intelligence to deal with the things people say if they choose to keep their comments up, and also teach them how to be good, have good social media etiquette and not be a part of the virtual lynch mob.

Be an individual while on social media, and have emotional intelligence that is a word and a mouthful, and it actually was a portion of what I was gonna say, which was just making sure that you're equipping your children at home to just understand what social media is and what they may be embarking on if they choose to then be involved in social media, because like we said, they may be unbeknownst to us as parents, but not having to micromanage their phone or their iPads, any devices

micro managing their social media. The best way to kind of counteract that is making sure we're equipping them with the like you said, emotional intelligence and just the acknowledge to decipher what's different. Um. But also if you think that your child is not on social media, you are damn ful, because these kids clever. That's how I t I was gonna say. Um. One thing that I've been doing is trying to stay in in order to stay up to breast with what's happening in the young people's forums.

Is having young people around us who may be a little bit older than Jackson, but younger than us. So it's like our nieces and our nephews, and you know, my younger sister who's just like, hey, what's coming on with this? Yeah, let me keep me in the loop of what's happening here, so I at least can know, maybe not all the lingo, but I can at least know that there's like this new platform or there's this new you know, way that people are interacting that we

may have to be mindful of. So as a parent, is your responsibility to make sure that you're doing that, that you're staying on top of things and not just saying, oh, this is not my generation, so therefore I'm just going to be dumb to what's happening, all right, y'all, So don't be dumb to what's happening, and be sure to

follow us on social media. And then when I was like, don't be a fool, don't be a fool, follow us on social media, dead As the podcast because we always post like cute little clips and you know, all that good stuff there, and be sure to follow me on social media. And I'm gonna share with y'all what I feel to share because you know, we have a relationship. Kadina I am and I am devouted. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe.

Dead Ass will see you next time. Dead Ass is a production of I Heart Media podcast Network and is produced by the Nora, Opinia and Triple Follow the podcast on social media at dead as the Podcasts and Never miss a Thing