Justin Worship, as host of The Dad Podcast, joins us on Wednesdays to talk parenting. We love it when Justin is here. It is a fastest half hour and radio nothing but a good time. No, you're what they called me in high school. Nothing but that's not true. That's going to start lying to people now.
Justin, that's a good point, Shannon, I'm sorry dumped that.
Jacob to your credit. Never mind, I'm.
Just gonna say it like it's new Shannon that doesn't say things on the air for some reason.
Weird.
It's really it's like.
A fun like you know, you've been with your partner for a while and you learn something new about them, kind of a thing that to me feels like this, you're left handed. Yeah, I didn't know that, Like, I didn't know this was the skills that she had. And it's fun, as much as it might be annoying to be.
Like, well, what was she gonna say? Like, I don't know why, but I find it compelling and interesting.
We're looking through this article about signs that you're too hard on your kid. Before we get into the signs, Shannon actually brought something up earlier in the show, and I thought Okay, so you would agree with me that if you're thinking, if you're even entertaining the thought, am I being too hard or too lenient on the kids?
Fine, you're probably okay. And this is I'm saying this seriously. Every expert that I ever talked to on the Dad podcast said those words almost verbatim that whether you're a child development specialist, psychologists, a doctor, or like social worker, like anything that would be like worried or focused on the development of a child and parenting, they all said
the exact same thing. If you're worried about whether or not you are being a good parent, you're not the people that we need to worry about or should be talking about.
I mean the old trope of.
Beaver's mom, June Cleaver saying something to Ward like don't you think you're being a little hard on the Beaver and Death.
Was like, what are you talking about? Ward?
Cleaver could give two rips about whether he was too hard on Wally and Beaver.
This has always been my thing in parenting is that I know lots of people who are very, very sweet to their kids, and it makes zero sense to me.
But in my experience, anecdotally, I'm saying those.
Kids, for whatever reason, have so much animosity for their parents and struggle like I wish because it seems wildly counterintuitive.
But I also know people who were severely.
Abused, like emotionally and physically, and yet they somehow grow up to have an easier time in adulthood than those people who had been coddled and loved and been gentlely treated or handled their entire life. I don't understand. It doesn't make sense, but that's what I've seen across the board. I haven't seen a contradiction in my own personal experience to that.
I have a hypothetical to ask you guys.
A story, and I think that this happens pretty I don't want to say regularly, but it happens where let's just say, a teenage boy is involved with his first girlfriend or whatever in school and she's wildly possessive. She doesn't want him to have female friendships, she doesn't want him to have interaction with his sister's friends, nothing like that kind of cuts him off from his friends. Not the extracurriculars, because they're both in the same kind of extracurriculars,
but to the point where this person is changing. You know, this kid, this young boys, you know, obviously affected, is being manipulated, and it's a highly toxic relationship, and she's highly territorial and abusive, some would argue, and the parents have done everything. They've cut the kid off, they've taken the kid's car away, they've they have access to the text messages all the things she says vile things about the parents as well via text.
It's a very specific hypothetical. Are you picking up on the story that I heard?
And I was completely and I was listening to the story, and.
I'm thinking, what a nightmare?
Yeah, but I mean, not being a parent, What do you do in that situation?
What I would tell you is that I would do is when they get to that age, because we're talking teenage years, I've already kind of hit that point where I was just thinking about this last week where I'm not really doing a lot of parenting anymore to my sixteen and thirteen year old. Like there's guidance that is suggested, but it's hardly heard. It's pretty much dismissed on a regular basis now. So it's really just about keeping the
bumpers up, is kind of my approach. Now because you have to let them and I remind them of that. I go, you're at an agent, you're going to decide to not listen to me. So it's hard because I think that they've done everything they could do to keep the kids safe, because they're at least by monitoring text messages and that kind of stuff.
In my opinion, I know there's lots of parents.
Who believe that bs of like privacy and all that stuff, and I'm not a fan.
I just don't.
I didn't think I would be this guy when my kids were younger. But I'm like, if you don't get privacy until you pay for stuff on your own and move out, like, that's when I will respect your privacy. But when you need me to provide everything to you, that also can become a tool that I feel like I need to use to make sure you're being safe, and I decide to what extent I allow you to
have privacy in that regard, that's my opinion. But so you're aware so that nobody's getting hurt, that's all you can do, and you have to let it run its course because when they're teenagers, they don't want.
To listen to you, and the more you push, the harder they push back, and you're fighting yourself in a.
Quick s the mistakes and figure it out. Yeah, tough, it is.
I Like, I'll be honest, just sitting here listening to that circumstance, I'm imagining each of my sons being like trying to figure out what I would do, and I don't even like my answer, but I do feel confident that that's what I would do it.
I'd just be like, we're just gonna have to wait this out and see how it goes.
Yeah, because you can't necessarily drive an intentional wedge between your kid and whoever they're in the relationship with, because depending on your kid's personality, that draws them to that person even more, no matter how abusive or manipulative that
other person is. That there's an ingrained pushback to whatever your parents do, period, and when your parents tell you it's wrong or illegal or you can't do it in this house, then you turn around and you're drawn to that thing that is now off limits.
Yeah.
I would almost argue that much like we talk a lot about being overprotective, right, that that somehow that delays, that stunts the development by slowing down the connection in this relationship. You might be prolonging it unintentionally, right, the more you just let them confront the crazy Because my parents I had a girlfriend in high school that my parents didn't like at all, and thankfully they just kind of let it go.
They would drop.
Hints of like, no, that seems a little nutty, man, like are you sure like that kind of stuff, and then after a while I came out of the fog of sex.
It was just like, oh, yeah, she is a little kooky. This is not right.
A right.
Parents dot Com had this article about signs that you're being too hard on your kid, according to psychologists, and there's a.
Couple of them already putting to psychologists like what do they know?
I mean, the first one here is your tone is consistently harsh. We are all awful. We're awful judges of how our tone is.
Of course it is.
In the middle of the moment. You're never going to be able to temper your tone. I am in a moment right now, and stop telling me I'm not.
You know. The only part that bums me out about this is that your fantastic producer Keiana found the articles for this week normally I find them, but whenever I come across something like this that I read it and I felt this way when I read it. When she said to Tommy, like, what do you think of this? I was like, I like it when it pokes gary and I just see something. It always tickles my soul when I know that I'm gonna come in and you go like, what the hell is it there?
That's why I brought the Westminster Dog.
As person listening to it, pure joy, pure joy the whole time.
I agree, I thank you very much.
So having said all of this, is I am guilty of a lot of these. I'm way too harsh on my kids, arguably, Like the one that I think is garbage is if you only give love when they're exhibiting good behavior.
What the that's awful? Withholding love? I think is a gross.
But here's the thing. But hold on because I'm its favor of this.
That's what I'm saying. I'm saying I don't withhold love. But when my kids being.
A colossal ahil ahle, how.
Does it make holding love though?
Like being a punishing I would say, and and withholding love for two different things? N that.
But see, this is what I'm saying the way these articles get written, as a guy who's read them for the entire time my kids has been around, is that it messes with your head when I think you're a parent who has good intentions.
Like they don't they don't express until the very end. They have this buried thing and.
Like the emotional like we talked, there's another segment, but talking about emotional parentification right where a kid is now, you give kids responsibilities and that's that's not Maybe that's not a good thing, and I think that's garbage.
If you're emotionally codependent on your kid, yes, that's garbage.
But to say things like if you find yourself criticizing them more than anything.
But sure that.
But if I my kid's just having a bad couple months, it's not helping him for me to blow sunshine up his ass.
Like what does that do any good for? Well?
And I think that is the balance That is not necessarily the root of parenting, but it is is a challenging part of parenting is figuring out, Okay, I have to be able to when they exhibit bad behavior, I have to be able to punish them, Yes, but they also have to know at the end of that that I still love them.
I'm doing it because I love them, right, And.
That I think is one of the struggles that people have is like, well, if I come down, if I ground my kid for doing something stupid, or if I punish them for this, They're going to think I don't love them, and.
I don't They couldn't be further from the truth.
Well, yeah, yes, but you're also trying to put it.
I mean, you as an adult know that, but then you're trying to put it through the math of what a nine year old thinks or a fourteen year old things, and it doesn't work that way. Like you have to sit comfortably in the fact that if you constantly show them that you love them in other ways, then the punishment might actually mean more and the punishment might actually take hold.
How often do kids act out to get love in the form of punishment, right, Yeah, Like I need attention. I'm going to lash out because I'm not feeling the love or whatever. I'm not feeling neglected or what have you, And so you lash out to get that kind of punishment, because that's a way. I mean, I think that that's kids don't know their brains are working that way, but I think it's death.
We've seen that countless times.
I guess maybe what I should be saying is that if whatever it is that you're doing right doesn't seem to be having any kind of a result, then maybe take a moment to go is there maybe a better way, but not to immediately also bail on it. Like there's so much to be said about just maintaining consistency.
When do you hit the kids.
Honestly, when I think it's a last resort to be If I'm being honest, I know you're maybe probably kind of joking, But like I, I don't know. I've only hit each of my kids once and it genuinely didn't work. Like it just it more upset them than it did got their attention. But when my dad told me the story, I was like two, and I guess I or one and have two. I bit a kid on the cheek. My dad, without thinking about it, just reached out and thumped me in the head.
And he told me the story. He goes because he used to thump me on the head, knuckle me on the head. That was my entire life.
And everybody told us, she's like, geez, your dad really was abusive to you, But he told me.
I thought it was sweet abuse.
He told me the story, and he goes, I thumped you in the head. You immediately let.
Go of the kid, freaking Hannibal. What was he supposed to do?
I said, you let go of the kid, You turn around and you made direct eye contact.
And my dad said and goes, That's when I knew that was your thing.
It's like, you gotta figure out what it is that works on your kid, correct.
And this I just my thing is I just don't want people beating themselves up because they're hard on their kids, because I don't think that's the problem that parents have right now.
That's not the focus. Is being too hard on your kids probably shouldn't be your worry.
Yeah, well, and there will be people who say, I mean, there are abusive parents out there, and that yes, that there always have been and unfortunately there always will be. Correct, it's just a matter of what you do with it when you when you're when you're raised in that and then are around other people for a lot of I mean, like I talk about this many times. My eye opening days were the first few months that I was in college because I was around people who weren't like me.
They didn't grow up like me. They didn't grow up in the same house like I did. They didn't grow up in the same part of the state that I did. That was eye opening for me that there were other people in this world. And there's a point where and if you grow up in an abusive house, you may not know that it's an abusive house until you're around enough other people who can confirm for you your suspicions. That's not the way it's supposed to be. It's then
that you have to make the decision. Okay, which path am I going to choose? I know what didn't work for me, I know what was wrong with my upbringing. How do I change it and make sure it doesn't
happen to my kids? If you're even conscious of it, if you're able to make such a mature decision like that at some point in your life, and if you're sitting at home and you're that stressed or worried about it, maybe get some therapy and go see a couple therapists to get at least a second opinion, like to see what their thought is. Because I venture a guest that probably eighty to ninety percent of the people who are
out there, like we talked about to start. The other segment that are worried about this probably don't need to be worried about it, but you can get somebody else who's an expert and can weigh in and tell you, no, that's emotionally abusive. Like what I learned from my therapist was my family did not have boundaries. We talked about something nobody should ever talk about.
I know, right, it's weird and so, but it's I'm totally emotionally like grounded.
I don't overshare myself at all. I find that that.
May be why you're so easy to talk to.
It be around it is because yes, you know, you didn't have boundaries.
There's a reason for everything.
Personally I've chosen. I genuinely I like it.
I like it that people laugh at me about I know so much about my parents sex life that people should not know. And I gotta go.
We'll talk more about it when we come back. Is that swamp watches my parents?
How granular are we talking about?
Oh?
Very? Oh yeah, I'll tell you one thing off the air, all right?
Is it something you've told your therapist already.
Uh not, Yes, this is the thing I'm going to tell you is the thing?
Yeah, all right, we'll see you next week. Maybe Gary and Shannon will continue right after this