Latinx Parenting and Chancleta Culture

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rate us five stars. Share this podcast with all your friends and family, especially if there's a topic that hits home for you or somebody is going through it or can relate. Share this podcast. Don't be stingy with the info like I always say when with that being said to do today, I want to talk about something. It's funny. Some people it may not have been as funny, and they may have really truly suffered through some situations. Battle it works for me. Today on the show, we're talking

about how to discipline your kids. In our being are very strict and they all have their own ways. Like back in the days. My mom told me that my grandmother used to put um mento like cement blocks in their hands and they would make them meal down and sit under the sun for hours. There's just so many questions and so many things that I want to talk about that. My guest today is the founder of the Latin X Parenting Leslie. Welcome to exactly a Madam I Live.

How are you old, Mada. I'm so so good. I'm so excited to be here with you. Awesome, Bueno, you've been listening to what I've been saying about. You know, the way that our parents used to discipline us back in the days are great. Great grandparents told them out. But things have changed, um and you know some people still use everything. How did your mom raise you or your dad growing up? Did you get the you know, the beatings that chantas, I'm gonna take this away. What

was their method for you? You know, my mom and I struggled in relationship, especially in my medal lessons, right, But when I when I was very very young, she tried really hard to parent me very differently than the way that she was parented, which is very similar to the ways that you're describeding, where that's like punishments where

they have to you know, kneel on bottle caps. She tells me, she's like, I wish I got the Chunklet that like, I wish I got the chunk because I got last solder, I got the whip, like the horse's whip, you know, things like that. And so when she was raising me, I think that she did, you know, the older I've gotten, I realized that she did actually make

a conscious effort to not raise me that way. Um, and she still did things because you know, immigrant women like deal with so much, right, There's so much stress that women deal with. Um. And so let's like get into that at some point too, because I feel like the parenting books are not made for black and brown folks, right, They're not made for people who struggle in different ways than these white parenting authors and the people that they were,

you know, the white people that they work with. But my mom raised me with a lot of love, but with a lot of uh, fear, right, Like, there was a lot of fear. She really tried to make me afraid of her and thought that that was a good thing, right, it was a good thing that my children' let's be clear, there's a difference in between respect me as your parents and fear me as yes, and so we don't necessarily have the privilege sometimes of having the time in the

space to have those conversations. Our parents didn't, right, so they're not talking like do you fear me? Do you respect me? In their minds it was the same. And I've worked with hundreds of parents, especially, let you know, parents that are telling me like, I never thought about that. I've never thought about the fact that there is a difference between fear and respect. I just raised my kids in this way because to me, it's the same thing. If they fear me, they respect me. M m, well,

you'se my mom's gonna hate this episode. Bet to beat my ass like on some real ship, like my mom. I really going back into my thoughts. The youngest thought that I can think of like baby thoughts. My mom was always very strict in that aspect. She always felt like and this and that, and she would really she used a couple of times, not mine. Um. She also used the wire hanger. I remember she also used the bell and see, oh my god, that bell. That bell

hurts so much for like three or four days. You still have, you know, like lot the bruises and stuff. And then my mom's favorite thing was to pinch me. Oh my god, this is so terrible because now I'm an adult and she ain't gonna go to jail. But in these times, your ass is going to jail if you do that to your kids. But she used to love to pinch me. And then I would get like these green purple bruises everywhere because you know, I'm black

or whatever. Oh my god, it was trash. But now there's something something she did do was after she would beat me, she would sit me down every time and she would be like, do you know why I beat your ass? And I'll be like no or yeah, She's like and think, so she didn't just hit me for

hitting me. She hit me and she would explain in these are the consequences of your actions because I warned you several times, um, and now that I am gonna be a mother soon of two girls, because I always felt like, well, if I have boys, I'm gonna feel more comfortable to be like Thoma. And just because you're a boy and boys are supposed to be tough, and you know, there's a hard world for men, but for girls, I feel like, oh, you have to be more gentle. But my mom beat me so much and it worked,

and it made me respect. There we have will it works for me because every every child is different and every parenting skill is different. Um. It made us very tight, it made us very together. However, they said, there's a lot of parents and there's a real big difference in between discipline, right and child abuse. Um and and I

would like you to talk about it. How how far you think, like, what is the difference in between disciplining your kids and then when it goes all the way to like now that's just how the ABU says just too much. Yeah, so I want to speak to if that's okay. Something that you mentioned earlier when when your mom was sitting down with you and actually having those communications. Um,

that's really beautiful. You know, it's really beautiful that at some point she got her nervous system regulated enough to be like, I'm gonna explain things to you, right, I'm gonna explain things to you. I'm going to communicate. And how powerful it would be if our parents had access to be able to do that right before, like right before they beat our asses, right because I got the wire hangars, I got the plastic, I got all the hangars.

Wouldn't like I remember one day my mom like whacked me so hard for like hours, and she thought it was funny. Like it was like funny to her, you know, she was just like, oh my god, like it's still there. It was entertaining to her. So that sounds so that sounds so fucked up, and we're laughing now, like, oh

it is imitating here. This is our point right with this conversation, is like we're laughing now, But like when you really sit with it, when you like really sit with not just like what the situation was, but like the feelings in the moment of getting hit in that way. Um, there's pain, right, there's pain and there's trauma. Would we

want that? Right? What we want that for? Virtual? We want that same feeling for our children, or are there other ways to teach those same values, Because what our parents are trying to do, and which is the definition of discipline, is to teach right. We want our children to learn the values that we share. We want them to understand the right thing to do, the things that they shouldn't do. All of these things like the intention behind the reason why our parents hit us, the reason

why we yell. Like I'm a yeller, right, Like my violence is not physical. My violence is verbal and loud. Right, it's like loud, So I yell at my kids, and I know that that might as well be a verbal chunk. Let that, So you know, like those are things that I think that one But because I have to give you props to first of all, it's already hard enough to be all in this world. And then on top of that, you have to be a mother, and that

means you have to be nurturing. You have to give away a part of who you are to came to you know, your children. So when people can be judgmentallyga first of all, and that's the most important part, because opinion and give their opinion about somebody's parenting. When nobody asked you for your pain. That's one and two what do you expect? You know, women, women as mother are only but human. You know, you better be glad if your parents are just screaming at you, Lucky you, lucky you.

It's hard not to tell my kids that, because you know, my mom was like, you're lucky. I'm only giving you the gun show You're lucky. I'm only giving you this, like my nozzle. You're lucky, you know, like the base you're those things were worse because things were worse, and they were worse for her, and I'm sure they were worse for my grandparents too. And so every generation you see us doing a little bit better because we have a little bit more privilege in being able to reflect.

Are these generations behaving better? Are we are the disciplines better? Are the kids reacting better than before? I will tell you that if you look at the statistics from people that are in prison right now, right, especially black and brown boys that turned into men that created violent situations um and even women right, even women, over of them experienced corporal punishment, over of them experience some level of trauma or abuse in childhood. And Dr Stacy Patton talks

about this when she writes her book. She wrote a book called Spared the Kids specifically about black parenting, right like I'm writing the one about Latino Latin experienting right now. But she talks about like how indigenous practices, like indigenous tribes in Africa, there's no record of corporal punishment. You know, these are things that we adapted historically from colonialism. We

were oppressed, and we adapted oppression into our homes. And so if you are thinking about as something that was is our culture, which is like the argument, right, this is our culture, this is funny, this is then you're not understanding the history of where some of that oppression comes from, right, and the stress levels and our people experience that prevent them from breaking through into trying to do something different. Right. And so do we have people

that have raised their kids differently? Yes? Are those kids good kids and turn into good adults? Absolutely? You know we don't have to raise it. And there's no judgment that I hold for parents. I do want to just say, like, there's no judgment because the message that I share a lot is like if you are if you were raised with fear and you haven't had the privilege should be able to like go to therapy, right, and you haven't had the privilege to be able to talk through some

of these things. Then when you are out in the grocery store and your child starts having a massive tantrum, and say you're undocumented for example, which a lot of our community is in the U S at least, Um, your priority is going to be making sure that you

are not calling attention to yourself. You know, your priority is going to be that your kid shut up in that moment, something worse can happen, right, And so we are raising our children still with a lot of fear, but that fear is warranted because there's things to be afeard of. That's crazy because well, in my case, um, not only I always say I have the best of both worlds because I am after Latina, and I am very proud of being Latina, and I'm also very proud

of being black. And you know you don't when when you have a black child, you need to raise your child letting them know what the rules and regulations are in the world that we live in be cause of the color of our skin. The same thing happens for those that are immigrants that don't necessarily have paper their their documents or whatever the case may be, where you have to explain this is how you have to behave and these are the things that we have to go

through because of our situation. So it's very difficult, and I understand it could be very frustrating. I personally, I said before now that I am about to have to discipline my children. Um, I almost feel like I shouldn't necessarily adopt the things that my mom did to me to them. But then I also feel like whatever she did to me worked out for me, so maybe I should just repeat the pattern and they'll come out good.

Because I've seen a lot of parents that do the you know, sit down in the corner, and they're the ones that would be like, Mom, shut the funk up, you know, like that's what the excuse me? See, Look, I guess someone Nina, don't come over here trying to acute because I will beat your ass. So I think there's a power. But I me and this is so bad that we're having this conversation because I know that you're like, pro don't beat the ass, and I'm pro

beat that ass. So I know there's a part of me that feels like uncle huh, because all all of our parents, when they've done it, they always feel like they're doing it for the best of us, to educate us, for for the best of us. But I know that deep down inside it hurts them to see you cry, to see you bruise, because a lot of times they can go a little bit over overboard. I remember one

time my mom was really upset at me. She was driving and I was sitting in the back, and she did that thing where they drive and then they have one hand in the back, and she started beating me while she was driving. He sink at it. She popped me so hard in my face that she busted my nose and I started bleeding. And there was a part of her she was trying to be tough, but she

felt guilty. She felt bad that her anger as an adult pushed her the way to you know, unintentionally, you know, doing that, um And I really want to know from your perspective, because see, and now I'm an adult, what are some of the traumas that you think that that these type of discipline or or for those what do you think are some of the traumas as an adult or as an adolescent that can happen based off the

way that they're being disciplined. So there's things that happen in the body, right, So there's things that happen in the body because our body is an animal, like we are, and we're an amanus, right, and so when we are under threat, we are going to experience certain things in our body that exists in order to protect us. So when we get hit by our parents, by anybody else, right, So like if you got hit by a partner, if you got hit by a stranger on the street, the

same thing would happen. Your cortisol level, which is your stress hormone. You're like primary stress harmonis cortisol, So that goes up. When your cortisol of wills go up, your brain starts shutting down because now your emphasis is on surviving that situation. Right, So when you are in survival. And it's interesting because disciplined to teach, right, you can't teach You can teach fear, You can definitely teach fear

and like trauma response. But when you are thinking about kids, for example, that are getting beat at home, right, and then they go to school, and like I was one, right, like I was one where I would go to school sometimes, and like my trauma necessarily it was not necessarily like physical trauma on me, but it was a lot of violence between my parents when I turned like nine ten alive, and a lot of verbal violence, a lot of you know,

physical violence. But I mean, so that's stressful for a child, right, That's really stressful for a child to experience, not just violence upon a child's body but me and violence that they're staying in the home. Right, that's stressful. That is potentially traumatizing, and that is definitely just regulating in the moment. So if you're experiencing something like that and then you have to go to school. Because a lot of my trauma from my mom was verbal, right, like later when

I was older. You can't hit a child when they're twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old anymore. You have to resort to other methods of instilling fear in them. And so my mom eventually, you know, she couldn't hit me anymore, but she could yell at me, she could shave me, she could call me all these names that she knew were going to hurt me in order for her to, you know, try to instill a level of respect that I don't want to respect her. I didn't like her that control. So

it's power. It's power, you know. And so for me, when I think about myself as a little girl experiencing violence, either watching it, witnessing it, or experiencing it, my brain shutting down. I'm not going to do well in school. I'm not gonna sit and listen to my teachers. I'm gonna focus on building attachment with other people. And that's exactly what happened to me. I was like, I don't give a fun Like I'm sorry, I don't know. I was like, I don't care about school. I just need

to feel like I belonged to something. I need to feel like I want, you know, I'm connected to somebody, to someone. So I started, you know, hooking up. I started using like a lot of weed, like early right, I started smoking cigarettes, like, I started doing all these things to like fill this whole that really was connect like directly connected with the lack of safety I was

feeling at home. What do you feel that? UM was more hurtful because I know how I feel about it, UM, And and you know, I laughing and joke about it because I I feel like, well, no, I see me, and I guess a certain extent it worked for me. I don't know. Maybe when my kids do come to this world, I will see them and I won't want to hit them or beat them or whatever, or maybe I will want to like and be like the men. I said you will because I saw my first baby

and I was like, oh, my precious little baby. I can't believe. How would anybody ever yell at you? How would anybody right? And I was just like, why didn't my momm you love me this way? And then they start growing, and then they start pushing those buttons, you know, and then all your ship comes to the surface and you're like, oh my god, I thought I was gonna be real chill, and I'm not real chill because I have more healing to do. Um and so that's what they do. But but but what do you think is

more damaging the physical or the verbal? Because for me, I remember my mom, uh, you know, her parenting skills at the moment, you know, immigrant no papers, doesn't know the language, has a small baby, single mothers, working three jobs, she's stressed out. And then there comes me, So you know, I I can understand and that's sometimes that I feel that as adults now we need to sometimes put ourselves in our parents shoes because we're too attached in the

way that we feel. But if we take two seconds to put ourselves in their shoes and try to understand all the things and the pressures of build's responsibilities everything you have a little kid, you're yelling your screen me, you're misbehaving, all everything that's on their plate. I'm a single child, but a lot of parents have three, four or five, six kids and they're dealing with all of this.

Sometimes I don't want to completely put all the pressure and all the fault on parents, because I tried to understand. It was a lot, and physical punishments were bad, and at the moment, I remember wanting to run away and you know, closing the door in my room and like a fucking bitch, you know, in my room, not in her face, never um, all those things, I'm gonna pack up, I'm gonna pack my book bag, and I'm just gonna leave, and you're never gonna see me again, and that and

all those things. But the verbal was more damaging because I can't get it out of my head. You know, the physical will heal. But the things that came out of your mouth when you were angry, when you were upset or whatever, I try to forgive and understand then now, But I agree, and I agree that they are equally right.

My mom says, you know, like she describes in detail some of the physical abuse that she received, like I remember getting you know, seemed though all of that, but I don't even remember why, right, But like though that verbal violence, like and I will call it violence. I don't call it abuse because it's too subjective, but it's violence. You're inflicting violence, right, um. And so that I do remember, and you're right, like I do, I do, I do forgive.

It sears you, you know, like it really sears you, like the Decona Marca and and some of those things that we were told are going to take a lot of time to undo, right, Like my mom's big thing for me was like we wona right, Like she would always tell me, wawona I know in different places means different things. For her, it meant flora like lazy, right. And so for me it's been a challenge to feel like if I'm resting that it's a cool right, Like I feel guilt just like laying there and like relaxing

for a little bit. It is hard. And so those are the things, right because all my life I was called Flojae Wonna like that, Like, all those messages become literally recordings in your brain, and so that informs who you are, that informs your identity, that informs how you feel about yourself. Right, I wasn't actively undoing that and actively noticing and being like, oh, actually, that's not a

message that comes from me. That's a message that was passed down because it was passed on to her, because it was passed on to them like that. It's like a generational trauma. They yeah, they goes on. But you know what, sometimes sometimes it even it even goes to the smallest things like eat. And it's hard to parent. I always say me that there's no guide book onto how to live your life. And there's no guide book single. Mainly you know books on how to raise your kids

and how to parent. Every parent has their own book that they create through their own personal experiences about how to raise kids. But um he I'll give you a perfect example. When your kid comes home and they tell you that somebody bullied them or somebody did something. What's the first thing? You know, people of color or Latinos say, if they hit you, you hit them back. And if you don't hit them, I'm gonna beat your asked. It's an automatic of so you know, you don't even know

how how to um. It's hard for you to stop. How do you stop this this generational um discipline format that they've taught us? Because we basically repeat what we know, We repeat what we've been taught, we repeat the way that we were raised. How do we stop this and

change the format? That is the question? Right? And like that is literally what I feel like I'm spending I'm having to spend the rest of my life working on not just personally, but with everybody that comes into the Latin experiencing space, like these are people like we are people who really remember ourselves. I think that's like the initial pieces, like you have to remember that little girl

that you have to remember that ninya, you know. And so what I what I really focus on in my work is like remembering the internet at right, and so you've heard of like in her child work. So I focus it specifically like for lt you know, families where we have this innernetia that is hurt, that is wounded, that like you know, yes, she came out really resilient. I'm a hard worker. I'm a really hard worker, Like

I am a Shungna. I have built this business. Like there are things that like I know are because I was given the model of working really hard. And also I don't lend myself rest, right, and so there's extremes to things, right, So like that served me. But now there's this other piece where I'm just like I just want to chill for a little bit, right, and I don't feel like I can. So those are extremes, But I feel like I always come back to being like

what is it that this nnya needs? Right, Like what is it that she is needing even just in this moment? And sometimes and this is like where my spirituality comes into right, because sometimes I'm like I don't know how to take care of her, like and I have to trust in something bigger, right, Like I have to trust in this like bigger vision of all of us, like not having to heal so damn much, not having to

survive so damn much. Like we really do want to move into a place because we were we were trying to survive. Our parents were trying to survive. I'm almost undocumented. She was trying to stay like there was all these reasons, right that our parents are grandparents like they have been in survival because of where they come from. Right, there's like so many generations of trauma. So do you not?

Do you not spank your kids at all? I really want to sometimes I really want to, Like I'm like, you know, I'm like I feel the fire in my hand, like I want to just like whack you so hard sometimes, but I committed, like I really did. There have been times where I just like I go like this like really quickly, and I'm like, oh that scares me. Hussey. I have three So I have a ten year old, I have a four year old, and I have a

two year old. The little ones asked me. They really yes, especially with like less sleep, you know, sometimes I forget to eat like things like that, like you know you and I you you just you know, like I want to, let's have this again when your girls are four or five, six, like every year we'll be like check in parenting, check in, how's it going. Yeah, I am saying this right now, and I want to save this episode and you know,

re re check it out later. I see myself doing that laser look where you know, you just gotta look at your kids and get the neck in the eyes and they know they know what time it is. I also see myself doing the boom real quick, because I remember wanting to do that to me and it worked. Um. I remember, I remember many things, many techniques that I see myself doing. However, I do see myself being more in control, Bama. But I do see myself being more

in control. Um. Definitely being a screamer, a cursor. I'm gonna curse your ass out, um, but I'm I. I think that because I am more prepared than my mom at the moment, I will do my best to be more in control and only do those things. Only have I seen myself pushed to the limit if necessary, not in a way of abuse, but in a way of discipline. UM. I do believe that there's things that you can take away,

you can do punishments. There's many things that do affect kids more and you can actually have a better result if you, you know, put them on time out or take something away from them or whatever without having to physically abuse them. I definitely definitely want to be careful with my words. I think words are very powerful, especially when they come from the mother or the father, or

someone that the child looks up to. If your kid looks up to you, you know you as a parent, your grandmother or whatever, and you say you know, hurtful things, those things can be very traumatic and they and Cassie mentees never because so definitely, as parents, we gotta do better when it comes to the things that we say to our kids because you think that they do remember, they definitely do do Remember. Has there been anything that you've done so far when it comes to parenting that

you regret? Yeah, I think I've made compared Like I've made comparisons right, Like I'm always like if you like owning your can Like my daughter hangs out with her best friend as a boy, and he loves to eat and he like he you know, and so for a while I was like, look, I was like, look at him, right, like,

look at and look at what he's doing. And she was like, you're comparing me, like some you know, sometimes I wish she told me, like sometimes I think that you wish that he was me um and that he was your son, and that I wasn't your daughter, and I said something me and I was like, you're right, you know. I was like, but totally like in my survival brain thumb me in and I feel like, you

know something I do really want to emphasise someone. I was like, you, you can think about the way that you want a parent, but if you don't understand like what's normal for a child at the ages, then it's gonna be so much harder to know, like where you stand as a parent in that situation. Right, And so some of the things that have been normal for my children, I have expected more from them at those ages, you know. And it's like expecting them to walk, like right when

they come out of the womb. Like there are things that I'm still and at thirty five, right, like I'll be thirty five this year. There's things that I'm still learning that Like, I I'm so grateful nobody's punishing me for still learning some of these lessons, right. And something that somebody said, like to your point, where like the way that business is, it's like that depends, right, Like people are like is that okay to do? I'm just like, what what age? What do you you know? Like tell

me what age they are, age ages and just so important. Yes, And so I just want to tell parents, like any parents that are listening, like learn a little bit about like the brain, right, Like learn a little bit about like what happens when your children are in survival state, Like is it a good time to like talk to them and give them a lesson when they're like screaming right, Like, no,

the brain is not like calm enough. So there's things that I have done that like go against this right where I'm like trying to scream the lesson into my my older one, especially like she's the one that's really like starting especially now that she's going into like the tween years and eventually she's going to be a teenager. That's gonna be interesting because I remember myself as a teenager and and you know what, and you know what,

the pandemic, let's not forget this part. The pandemic definitely um to me and my eyes affected a lot of the development for a lot of these children, and affected the way that a lot of parents discipline their kids because they found themselves being stuck in the house all day, every day together for weeks, for months, for hours, um until this day there's a lot of parents that because of the pandemic and the things that are happening in

the world, they had tomato and now you're homeschooling now, you know, is not the same when you send your kids off to school for eight hours or whatever and then you have like that time away from them. Then now that that you're with them all the time, they get on your nerves and the smallest thing can make you, you know, flip the hell out as a parent. I think that we as parents we have to do better.

I want to thank you so much, Leslie, you know for coming in for you know, giving these these great tips and information that really do need to be heard, because I always say, there's truly no guide book into how to parents. We all figure it out as we go along. But there is a lot of good suggestions and there's a lot of great information that you can check out and see and become the best parent that you can be. Is there any social media platform or

anywhere we can check you out? Yes, I would love people to find us on Instagram at Latin ex parenting. I tweet sometimes also letin experience outlet ain experienting. Um. Yeah, I think that if people just start following that page. They can. Oh and also subscribe. If you got to let an experiening dot org, you can subscribe and see everything that we have coming up. And yeah, parents also, we need to find our own techniques. Let's meditate, let's

count a thousand if necessary. We need to find our own ways to become better people, become better parents for our kids. Um and it works for you and if not, then let's figure out other ways. I'm gonna let you know later on what was my favorite method. Once my girls grow up, I think I'm just gonna be a screamer. But that being said, thank you everyone for joining me, and remember to follow exactly a Mata and Michael podcast

on Instagram and also check us out on Twitter. Um and if you want to see the episode, you can check it out on exactly a Mata on YouTube. Exactly a Mata on YouTube, you can check out the episode and check out and see my my guests and all that good stuff. Remember that this has been a production of I Heart Radio's Michael podcast Network, and for more podcasts from my heart, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. This has

been such an amazing episode. I don't even know how to feel because I like all those good things, and in terms of the part of me that's like I know me, that's childhood us. You can't do they have to talk to them, you know, my God, put them on time. It's hard. I would definitely want to know what is your way of disciplining your kids. Go let me know at exactly amount on Instagram and on Twitter. Let me know what are the methods that you use to discipline and raise your kids. I am super curious.

With that being said, see you guys in the next episode of Exactly Am. I