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Today, I'm super chill. I've been working so hard so much.
I am exhausted, but I am never never never, never tired, never exhausted to talk to y'all today.
I want to talk about something that's really important.
It's about positive disciplining when it comes to parenting, you know, without punishment and things like that. But today I want to bring in someone who also had become part of my family, which is Alex, my producer, my friend.
Alex. Are you in here today?
I'm always in here with you. We're going to be talking on parenting because now that we're parents, we got to learn how to change the narrative. Right.
That's why I love Mike will do that because kids, we get to talk about the Latino experience right way that we were raised culturally. You know, every country is different, even though we're all the same, one big family, but we all have different methods of discipline when it comes to parenting your children. I know that growing up, my mom did it was the way of you know, I guess, discipline,
punishment control. It was just, you know, it was a copy paste of what she had learned, right and patron of like go to is a threat, and you know, it's like a regular Latino. You don't even see now that as an adult, it's like, oh yeah, that was regular in the moment, I used to hate it in my mind. I would think of ways to, like run away from the house, you know, as soon as she leaves, I'm gonna do my love my book bag, and I'm just gonna run away.
And I feel like that was everyone in the nineties, right, everyone was everyone had to get away back.
Yes, like we all had ways of doing things.
However, supposedly now this generation knows best, knows better right from wrong, knows what we shouldn't do when it comes to disciplining our kids.
Alex do have more experience than I do.
So how do you feel about the discipline and punishments and and all the timeouts of you know, this generation of twenty twenty three, do you like it better?
Do you miss the way things used to be? Do you think it worked best?
Or do you think that now that we know better and how psychologically it can affect our children, how do you feel about it?
Yeah? I think that's a that's a big thing, is the psychological thing of it, right, because I don't think there was no consequences back then for getting your booty beat by your parents, right. I guess that's because they thought it was just the right way of disciplining, right, and that was just something that they did, and that's
something that was done to them. I do believe that even even timeouts have their place in time now A man like if it wasn't leta or the belt, you know, like when my grandfather used to take a little stick off the freaking bean tree strip it and I would just run, especially when I did bad things. I just I know, And you know what's crazy is that people still treat their kids that way till this day. Yeah, you know, it's something that hasn't gone away culturally. That's
just what they think is right. And you can't tell them right from wrong.
I know the fear it must have put into you, but but you knew what to do. You know, you knew to get it together right. And there's ways, like for example, I now as a mother and working on my parentsing skills, and I know it sounds crazy, but I am, you know, in the process of training my daughters at such an early age, and my training starts off with and I hope it never passes beyond the
stair the laser. Oh yeah, guys, you know the laser when your parents just gives you that mean mug, just that deep, they open their eyes real big, give you the laser, and you know that means get it together. That's what I'm working on now. And to be honest, even though they're super young, they're getting it. Mommy is really fun and I'm very nurturing and I'm very loving. But whenever they start to wilad and cry, and you know, because they have that, you know, they have the mommy thing.
And right now they know that every go, I'm gonna come and hold them.
But sometimes of the line, right, and you don't want little Brad stamp fogo.
I mean, they're babies, but you want to raise them properly, so I just do the laser eye and they know to get it together. There's many methods. I do believe and don't judge be for it, right, Oh god.
I believe that.
A little spanking, spanking is a is a more americanized you know, terminology, a little spanking.
It's not a terrible thing.
I do not go with child abuse, and that's another topic of conversation. There's a very thin line between discipline and abuse, and that's something that we have to learn and figure out, because if you're making your kid bleed, I think you've already passed that line of abuse, right, And my mom did it to be a couple of times.
I'm not gonna lie.
I'm grown now, right, but my mom would pop me in my mouth sometimes and that pop, that back, that that back of the hand, that right in the mouth.
Sometimes she would bust my lip. She would act like she didn't care.
Later on as an adult she like miss Lisi and like I would feel terrible, but all got you wouldn't like I wouldn't know what else to do, Alice. As a parent, do you ever get desperate and just like, don't know what to do and feel like, oh, like that anger part of you is about to come.
I'm like I'm about to huh.
Yeah. So that was one of the one of the things that you know, growing up, if you got out of hand and you know what I'm saying right in the mouth, and I think, here's here's the problem with it, right, I felt like what was going to keep me from
now doing that to someone else? Because it was being done to me, right, Because as a kid, you don't you don't know well, you know, you're just like, Okay, cool, I just got spank for being bad, right, But you don't know what being bad is because it wasn't there wasn't any communication with you. You know. Yes, parents tend to like tell you something, but I think back in the day parents just kind of were like they went to the tenth degree immediately. But today's age, parents give you.
You know, there's communication, there's active listening. There's a relationship there where they're like, Okay, I know you're freaking out, you're crying. I don't understand it. Talk to me what's going on, you know, and the frustration leads to you, you know, what is it that our parents used to say, I'm going to give you someone to cry about it.
Yeah, I do believe. I believe.
I don't know if in the belts. I don't see myself doing the belts. I don't see myself doing the hangars or the but la Chankleta at this point is a tradition.
It's like, listen, if we're.
Talking about Michael Tura, I must pass down my gultuda from one generation to the other. And if I can't give you anything else, let me at least give you la chankleta, the flying chunklaatea from one room to the other.
It is classic. I do believe that.
Obviously, communication is key talking to your children, you know, understanding why they're behaving a certain type of way. In many occasions, we do have to be realistic and understand that as much as we may think that children don't have any pressure, don't have you know, any other things that they're going through. We don't know how they're handling things. You have to also understand that the way that we were raised a few years ago or many years ago,
it's not the same generation. It's not the same lifestyle that the kids are living today. Between social media, the Internet and everything else. They are going through a lot of social pressure, and let's even talk about bullying. You know, you never know what your child is going through, right
when you're not around. That's causing them to behave a certain type of way, that's causing them to be disrespectful, that's causing them to be angry, that's causing them so whatever the case, may be the friends that they socialize with, right, because my mom would always be like, do you.
Know I didn't raise you to be this way?
You may not, but guess what, I spend more time in school and aftercare and tutoring and other the things because unfortunately, in my case, as a single mother, she had to work super hard. She had to get several jobs, which I understood, you know as an adult, and I respect and understand, But that meant that I spend less time with you, and I spend more time in school with my friends.
So all those behaviors.
Don't necessarily mean that you're doing a bad job as a parent.
Right.
You may be the best parent, had the best intentions. Sometimes you go out of your way to give your children all the things that you didn't have.
All those things. It may not just be you.
It's also the circumstances of the things that surrounded the things that they watch, things that they hear, and so on. But communication is key when it comes to parenting. I will say that to it's important. So I also set clear expectations, rules and boundaries when it comes to raising your child. I know that in many occasions, like in my case, I can only speak from experience, my own personal experience. My mom has always been my best friend.
But as my best friend, she always made it very clear that I am your mother.
You know what I mean.
I love you, But if I have to write you know, but I do want you to feel comfortable enough to trust me to talk to me. Tell me what's going on. How do you feel good or bad? I still got your back. Right expectations as a parent, I expect you to do good in school down, Both of your expectations should be that your kids should.
Be like all straight a student. That's a lot of pressure.
Yeah, not everyone's is school smartest, right, you know, some people need a little bit more extra help exactly.
So That's what I'm saying, Like, don't make ridiculous expectation that your kid is over here stressed out right trying to commit suicide because you're trying to be this this perfect child for their parent and they can't accomplish that mission. Beato, do set rules where your kid feels the need to put in that effort that work. Right, to go to school, get good grades, be athletic or you know, talented or.
Whatever it is.
Be the best that you can be at whatever it is that you're going to be. But it'll be the best at that right.
And when you and when you help them along the way, it sets good good Like you just said, you said good rules, good expectations, that you're not pressuring them. I mean you hit it right on the dog. Yeah.
And also rule rules and regulations. I mean, guys, you wake up early in the morning, you clean your room, you do your bed, and da da dah and boom. Then you know a whole schedule. There's a schedule for things. Right, if you do this A, Y and Z, you will get rewarded with Sunday we can go to the park, we can go here, we can go there, we can
do whatever. Because also I think it's important that we do know that kids have responsibilities, but kids also want to be rewarded, right, I think It's also a balance. Never make it feel like, oh, you have to do that. Yes, you do have to do that, but you also want to reward them with things because at the end of the day, well you teach them at home, it's the same lesson that they're going to use in life. So if I do X, Y and Z and do it properly, I will get rewarded with something.
In life, our reward is money.
You work extra hours, you do what you have to do, you get rewarded with financial stability. Financial stability brings your nice cars, nice dinners, houses, all these x you know, all these other things.
So I think that that's also.
In Yeah, and you teach them like we have always said, you teach them. On top of doing that, you teach them financial responsibility. Like that's perfect parenting. You're not You're not being mean to them. You're setting good expectation, breaking breaking down good rules, and giving them a reward for, you know, for doing these things, setting a positive mindset for everything that they do.
I agree on thousand percent.
Do you have a scheduling system with your kids or rewards.
Or yeah, we used to, you know, it was it was important to make sure, you know, you brush your teeth, you do your your hair. You know, you you make your bed, and you know, if it was a school a school day, you know got to be out by a certain time. You come back, do your homework if
you have any you know, there's always outside time. I think that's important, you know, and you know there's there's certain things you gotta do on a school night to get you know, to bed early and blah blah blah, which is you know, but I never wanted to think like I gotta put my finger down, even though I wanted to. I want to be like, yo, you got to be met by seven. I know that that doesn't happen,
you know what I'm saying. So, yeah, there was always there was always good consequences for everything that that you did positively. Obviously, if you do something bad, there's also those like okay, you're gonna go to time out whatever. But like you just mentioned, instead of of imposing punishments, you know, you allow natural consequences to occur when a child has good actions, you know, does the right thing.
I also think it's important for us to learn from other parents.
Right. Oh, I know that there's no guidebook on how to raise a child. I know that every every child comes with a different manual.
A different experience.
I get those things, but I think it's important to also ask amongst each other as friends, if you have really close friends, if you want to keep it in the family. Oh yeah, Meana, I'm going through this situation where my kid. You know, how did you deal with it? What should I do? What do it think works best? Because experience is key, you.
Know right now?
You know I'm a new mom, right, first time mom and a first and mom of two. I have a lot of pressure to complete different personalities all at the same time.
Coming from also being a single child. I never knew what it was to have brothers and sisters. I don't know how to deal with eventually when they argue and fight and do all these things. Am I supposed to be like, Oh, they're just sisters, that's what they do. Or no, no, no, wait, this is a moment, a moment to teach a lesson. You're not supposed to do this.
Yes, so ask questions, right, it's okay to add.
It doesn't mean that you're a bad parent because you can't get it right.
It doesn't mean that you're just ask It's okay to ask questions because sometimes that one that one conversation can change your perspective on how you should handle that situation, right, Alex.
I agree one hundred percent plus you get you know, if you surround yourself with good you know, good parents that know you know how to work a good relationship balance with their kids. That helps you create your own methods and your own ways of being with your child.
You learn positive reinforcements, You know how to encourage your children problem solving discussions, because that's huge, you know what I'm saying, Like, you want to be able to take everything that you're learning and adapted to your kids because guess what, at the end of the day, those kids are going to be great to you. Yeah, yeah, you know, and they're gonna they're going to treat you and others
around them so well. Yes, right when you present your kids to a stranger or other family members, you want them to be kids but also have respect and you want other people to admire that.
Of course, your kids are a representation of your parenting, So the way that you are around them, the words that you use around them, the love and nurturing that you do once they stand beside you publicly. The way that they behave and act represents how you how good of a job you're doing.
I'm not even gonna lie. The smallest thing as thank you, You're welcome.
Please.
Those are the smallest little thing that showcases your child is being taught properly at home.
And I think all those things are important.
I'm going to talk about also, back in the days, I know, at least in the Dominican Republic, it was a community effort to raise a child.
It didn't matter if it was Lacina.
They would be like, oh, he Jose, I'm telling your mother you're out here acting crazy. And they would go and tell your mother mena food and it's out here playing outside with no shows and messing up his uniform whatever. But it was a community effort to raise the children properly.
Now, if your neighbor were.
To come to you and be like, oh, your kid's out here in this bike going crazy, be careful because they can crash.
People now are super oversensitive to me.
Correct to me, because if you're doing it in a positive way, I'm not saying it for anything. I'm trying to help you, right, I don't know, I kind of missed a community effort to raise the children, to the community effort to help the single mothers, or that all that part I kind of do miss it. Did you ever have any raise up in a neighborhood like that?
Yeah, yeah, that's that's crazy. Because I grew up in Puerto Rico. I was you know, at the age of eight, was when I first came here to the United States. But everyone a little Bessino. Everything that you did was known. Everyone made sure you were okay. Everyone. When when even my parents were like if you misbehave and they you know, they tell you and scold you for doing something bad, you know, I'm not going to jump on them, but obviously if they're abusing that problem, but there was never
anything bad. One thing that I have for you is, you know, as the kids are getting older, you know you find different ways of being being open to them and discipline and you know, if they get out of hand, there's a lot of redirection and distractions that we can
do for them. Right you are you gonna be the type them that you go that way the traditional way, like here's some crayons, here's some plate, ohisthing, or would you go directly into the electronic use, because I feel like that's an abuse that parents are are are using. You know what, He's jumping and giving them an iPad. And I'll be honest. Yeah, my younger one, Oh tell me no, I said, no, how did you do it?
Every time they want something or if they're freaking out or whatever, you then go leave or they've coloring books.
Miah, let me tell you something. I am slightly going through it right now. And people keep telling me that it's normal not to panic, But I'm going through right now because my babies are so stoked with coconomelaan and and all these other things. When they can't watch TV, they will cry and scream for us as long as possible so they get that and oh no, because I'm busy working and this and that early in the morning, that TV is on late at night till one two
o'clock in the morning, that TV is on. And yeah, I'm trying to figure out what else can I do. I have them a cripple the toys. Out of all the toys, they only care for the remote control, my cell phone, anything digital. There's a part of me that feels like they're pandemic babies. Right they were born in this era of technology, and their natural instinct is I want to press buttons, I want.
To see a screen.
Before it wasn't that, it was I want to Barbie, I want a doll, I want to baby, I want They are technology babies.
I think you can. You know, there's so many different things out there that they can use, so many different toys that have noises, bangs, whatever, you know what I'm saying. And I feel like that's hard because we use TV as for me as a oh you did something good. You you know, you you did everything you had to do. Here's this reward, you know, you get thirty minutes of your favorite show.
Right right.
Yeah, My kids are going through right now, and it makes me wonder by being a bad parent, by not, you know, by giving them what they want, knowing deep down inside that that's probably not going to be good for them. Because I've seen kids we saw recently on social media where this mother was on a flight and her daughter started spazzing out and going crazy and started hitting everybody on the plane because her mother took away the phone since there it had to be on airplane mode.
We've seen kids that will go crazy, sat in the middle at the supermarket anywhere because they can't have their iPad. I do not want to be that parent, and I will get that tankleta and just throw it from one room to the other and snap you right out of it. But you know, it's such a terrible thing. Something else that I want to talk about is you mentioned it before, problems solving.
I think that there's a lot of kids these days that.
Don't know how to, you know, solve their own problems because they have become so codependent of the parents, of the Internet, of this, of that, of that instant gratification. I think it's important to give your child or give your children instruments like you said to you know, just rearrange the energy. Right, If you're upset, how about we go ahead and do sports. How about we go ahead
and play the violin the piano. We do something else instead of just being stuck, especially for the boys too, stuck in the room playing Nintendo PlayStation.
I don't know, okay, and okay, wait on, yeah, these days exactly whatever it is.
Y'all is doing in these rooms, y'all need to figure out other ways. We're even looking at young teenage kids dying in a playroom, just stuck in that stuff, like they've become zombies as parents. Like we said before, communication is key, but we need to figure out other ways that we can encourage and help our kids.
We become so stuck ourselves between work a lot of time.
You even see the parents stuck on Instagram doing TikTok while you are completely ignoring your kid. What has happened to our society? What is happening to us as parents?
I saw a parent who was at an event taking video of you know, like they were doing some type of thing here, and she's just like taking video that she has like a maybe three or four year old, and she just keeps on yelling at her like hey be quiet, or hey be quiet, like you know, she's four years old, she's bored. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like she's just you have her attached to this, like you know, a little monkey thing, yeah, attached to the wrist or whatever.
O my god.
And at one point, at one point she's like I need to go poopy. Uh huh, And she's like, not right now, go sit down. And I'm standing right next to this kid, and you know, my fatherly and stick kicked and I'm like, I'm going to say something. I have to say something. Finally, the little girl turns around and she's like, can you take me poopy? I want? Where's the do you know where the bathroom is? I was a second away from snapping at this, I hear you.
And finally she looked at me and she saw my face and she was like, Okay, come on, let's go. Let's go to the bathroom. But like super annoyed at the fact that your baby's asking you to go, Like, dude, come on, man, they're four years old. I felt so bad. Man, I was ready to just jump on them and all because they were either too busy watching a video, you know, in front of them, trying to take a video of something, or on their own phone. You know.
Well, that's the era that we live in. Where are you know?
And to all the feminists out there, please do not keep me for what I'm about to say. Okay, everybody has the rights to their own opinion, their lifestyle and aimen to that personally. The older I get, the more mature, the more I realize the world that we live in and the lifestyle that I've had. Right at a very
early age, I started doing taxes at four. I started working at a very early age my mom, because a lot of times when I talk about it, people like, what you're saying doesn't match My mom and I did struggle a lot in this country, but I was American because I was born here. So my mom would have her friends take me to auditions, take me to castings while she was cooking right, working very hard. She was the one who didn't have any documents. I did right.
So my mom would.
Always make sure that I was in dance classes or whatever she could afford her, anything that was free or anything like that, right.
My mom puts so much.
Work into me being so great, and I worked at such an early young age that I had at a very early age, the hustle was in me. I knew to work. I knew that I need to somewhat not provide because I didn't understand what it meant to provide. But the work ethic. You can teach your children how to have good work ethic. You could teach them what financial responsibility is. You can teach them independency. Right if mommy is not there, if daddy's not there, I want
to know that I raised you right enough. Then you're going to know what's right from wrong, that you're going to know how to handle certain things or to say no, I don't want to go there.
No, I can't do this. My mother and my father would not approve of this. Just over all, times.
Have changed so much that I feel like if you you're being a bad parent, you're now affecting with their emotional state.
You can't do this.
No, well no, no, Alga, you can't spank them because now it's abuse.
You can't do this. It's like, if this.
Is us now, fifteen years from now, I don't know what type of world we're.
Gonna live in.
Like I don't know anymore what it is to be a good parent. There are so many rules and regulations these days on how to raise your children. I feel it also makes it a little bit more difficult on the parent. And parents also feel just you know, they feel unencouraged, they feel like they're being bad parents, and I don't know, I just I just want to not lose my Latino traditions. I still want to go old school with many things. You know, I believe in the
stand in the corner, I believe in the spanking. I believe in the taking away things. I believe in many things. I believe in. Guando is not a terrible thing. I believe in all those things. I don't want to lose because whatever my mom did for me, it worked for me. I think that these days, we have technology, we have social media, we have access to a lot of other things, psychologists, many other methods that we can use to raise our kids.
In a better way. Have you ever seen have you ever spent your kid.
Alex No, no, never. It's better to find, like I said before, that different way of how do I diffuse this situation, especially if they're like being really mean, Because if they're being bad and mean, that means there's something
going on and find out what it is. And even though the easy way out is to be like no, I got hear, so the little work that I'll put in to realize, Okay, this is what's going on and it finally got to it, you know, and let them calm their way down, you know, would go a long way for them and for me, because then I'll feel bad.
Now here's something that I at this moment in my life I won't get to experience, but I want to know as a as a married man or as a person who's in a relationship or has a child, and you guys live all in the same household.
As a father, how do you handle that when mommy.
Gives a certain she has a certain type of way of disciplining, and then the father has another one. Or if mommy says no, but then you know she'll go to daddy any means then you know, how.
Do you how do you work that out?
Yo? That's that's difficult because if they're playing their card like we all did when we were younger, you fall,
you fall into it. You're just like cool. But if you hear the other parent, you know, whether it was my ex wife or whatever, say something like, hey, she would call me and she'd let me know they misbehaved, they did this, you know the bad things obviously, right, Yeah, And I would have to I would have to abide by that, you know, Like they would come over and I'd be like, listen, mommy told me x Y and Z. But your kids they can try to take advantage of it.
They they'll think that that's an okay thing to do, and as they grow older, they'll use that to their advantage with their partners or their friends or people of authority around them.
And you know what, you just hit such an amazing point because my mom was really big into that. Making sure that's part of good parenting, making sure even after before you punish your kids, explaining the reasons why you're punishing them so they understand, and making sure that they themselves understand Mommy or Daddy is punishing because they told me don't do x y's, but I still did it. So now I know that if mommy or daddy tells me not to doing and I do it, here comes
a punishment. So that is very important. A lot of parents just go you know, giving timeouts and taking away things because I said so, I understand that I said so. But also making sure that your child understands why they're being punished.
It's also extremely important, you know what.
I can talk about this for hours and hours because there's so many levels and layers to what it is to good parenting, how to become a better parent, rather better because it doesn't mean that you're doing a bad job, but there's always ways of you improving your parenting skills. And you know what, if you guys can take anything away today from this episode, I would say, look positive disciplining techniques promote a nurturing and supportive environment, fostering healthy
child development and building strong parent child relationships. Okay, that's so important. And by focusing on effective communication, respect and teaching problem solving skills.
There's ways of being a good parent. Don't feel that you're doing a bad job. You're not. There's things that you can do to become a better parent.
Communication is key, just being supportive, understanding them, get to their level, understanding their children. I know that you're stressed out with the responsibilities and bills of life and everything else, but remember that they're kids, and they're also living in a new generation in a different world, and things are also hard for them. I thank you so much for joining me today that Kido de Alto. This was such a great conversation. I really loved being able to talk about.
This since you have more experience than I do. Thank you, Thank you so much.
Thank you for being part of Exactly Amada. Make sure to find me on YouTube. Catch my show by searching for micro through that podcast on YouTube and clicking on exactly a Mata. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Amala Lagra a L and Amada, ra A L and I Remember Guys. This is a production of Iheart's microda podcast network. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is exactly Amada