The Whole Parent Podcast
The Whole Parent Podcast
When YOUR Parents Violate the Boundaries... #57
In this episode, Jon reflects on the ROUGH moments at family gatherings where love, history, and boundaries collide.... especially when you’re parenting in front of the people who raised you. Anchored in the reminder that “love does not require you to violate your boundaries,” he walks through real parent questions about food comments, gift overload, and forced affection. Parents will leave feeling less alone, more grounded in their authority, and clearer about how to protect their kids without carrying everyone else’s feelings.
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Welcome to the Whole Parent Podcast. This week it's Christmas. And every holiday gathering has its moment. You know? It's usually something small, something easy to miss if you're not paying attention. Someone says something at a table, someone shows up with too many gifts, someone leans in for a hug when your child's like, no. And suddenly the room shifts. In this episode, we're looking at those moments. The ones where love and good intentions collide with your boundaries. We're gonna hear from parents who left holiday gatherings wondering if they handled it right, if they overreacted, if they should have stayed silent, or maybe if they shouldn't have stayed silent. And we'll talk about what's actually being taught in those moments. Not through lectures and rules, but through who steps in, who absorbs the discomfort, and who's expected to carry whose feelings. This is an episode about family and about love and about holidays and the mess that it that is, and ultimately about the invisible lines that appear when everybody finally gets in the same room. Let's get into it. It's warming up right as Christmas is starting in Chicago. It's gonna be like 50 degrees on Christmas, which it's not uncommon that it's warm on Christmas. December is usually not the coldest month in Chicago, but this December has been really cold, a lot of snow, which has been so fun for my kids. And I thought for sure we were gonna have a white Christmas. And turns out looks like we're for sure not gonna have a white Christmas at this point. But you know, snow is not what Christmas is all about. Presents are not what Christmas is all about. Caroling is not what Christmas is all about. Food is not what Christmas is all about. If you are like most people, the holidays are about one thing, especially people with kids, I should say. I'm assuming that you have kids or you have kids in your life, or maybe you're a grandparent. The holidays are about one thing. The intersection of parenting in front of the people who raised you. And I want to tell, start with a story, and it's not a specific story, but just kind of a general feeling of how I feel around the holidays. Holidays are weird for me. Uh, they're weird for me for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because I love holidays. Uh, not everybody does, but I do. I am the type of person who really like shows up and tries to engage deeply. And uh I like seeing my family. I like being around people who I miss. I get to see some people around Christmas time who I don't often get to see. The best man at my wedding, my cousin, who lives on the uh other side of the country. Uh, he's around almost every Christmas and he's got little ones, and so it's fun to see them. And they're just growing up, and so it's it's really fun to see them because it's like I'm watching him become a dad too, and his wife become a mom. And uh I also get together with the family who I live closer by too. I see them several times a year, but we always see each other on the holidays. And I love holidays for that, and I love holidays for their traditions, and I love all of that, I love it for my kids, but it's weird because I I'll tell you, nobody thinks of me at whole parent at these gatherings, right? Nobody even thinks of me as Pastor John at these gatherings. Like I am still Jonathan, the youngest. I'm not one person I'm older than is my cousin. Maybe I'm giving it away that I'm I like seeing him, but uh, I'm like one of the youngest people in my generation. My brothers are eight and ten years older than me. Most of my of my other cousins on both sides of my family are much older than me. I'm the youngest on my mom's side, and I'm the second youngest, along with my cousin on my my dad's side. And so uh I'm I'm the baby still, and I see my aunts and uncles, and some of them will have a have an interesting thing to say about my life. Uh, they were excited last year when I was gonna be on a TV show, the one TV show that I've ever done. But most of them like kind of laugh at me and they they just kind of joke. And I remember one scenario, one specific uh situation, I think it was two years ago, wasn't last year, where my aunt was was over, and I kind of mentioned something about how whole parent was getting bigger and I had the membership or I was starting the I don't know if I had just started the membership or I was uh it was a year after I'd started the membership, but she came early. She arrived early, and and so it was just kind of me standing there with her, and I said, Well, yeah, there's you know, there's people out there that are looking to me for parenting advice and and parenting education, and I get to use my neuroscience stuff and my pastoral counseling stuff, and they know that I went to school for this stuff, they they understand that aspect of it, but they also know that I have young kids, and my kids were at that exact moment kind of like melting down, and one of them was like biting another one, and it was just not a good moment. Like my my at that time three-year-old was biting my at that time seven-year-old, and it was like, man, of course, of course, it's because things are out of routine and and everything's going bad. And so I don't look like a great parent in this moment. Um, I think I actually handled the situation well, but I didn't handle it probably how it was expected that I would handle it, which is, you know, hey, we don't do that around here. And if you do that again, I'm gonna give you X, Y, and Z punishment, you're gonna have a timeout, or you're gonna be sent to your room, and nobody's gonna want to see you around. I don't know. I don't know what I was ever what people were expecting me to do, but I probably didn't live up to that expectation. And the conversation continued on, and I kind of said, Yeah, you know that people are looking to me for this parenting advice and stuff, and she laughed. She laughed so hard. Like, I don't I've not heard her laugh that hard, maybe in like years. Um and she was like, Why would anybody want any advice from you? And I in that moment was just a little kid again, like desperately seeking the affirmation of the people in the room. And it was at that moment that I then had to go and process uh the situation had calmed down with my kids in front of these people, their sibling problem that they had just had. Somebody had taken something and I don't know who started it. I know who finished it. The three-year-old finished it by biting the seven-year-old hard. That's that's what I remember about the situation. But I remember walking over and being like parenting in front of these people is harder than parenting in front of like millions uh on the internet. Parenting in front of one person or one room full of people who watched you grow up is harder. It's harder for me to regulate myself, it's harder for me to do the things that I believe in, it's harder for me to follow the science, to follow the neuroscience in front of those people than it is for me to advocate for this stuff and get shredded in the comments by a hundred thousand people. Like, I don't care about that. But the judgment of a family member, boy, that can sting. And so that was a long, long intro, probably too long for this episode for everything we have to call it cover. But I just want you to hear first and foremost that it's hard for all of us because we go back to being that little kid in that relationship. And a lot of the questions that I'm answering today, I got I got these from Instagram, by the way. I put out a call, hey, I need you know, questions for my holiday episode. What do you guys want to hear about? And and the number one most asked for thing was like, we want to hear about how do we deal with relatives who like don't align around the holidays. We have to see these people, but we we don't necessarily align with them, they don't follow boundaries, they don't, they don't do gentle parenting, they don't do whole parenting, they don't, they haven't read your book, um, they don't seem to have any interest in that. How do we parent? And so I just wanted to start by saying, I I understand why that's so hard because it's so hard for me. And so if it's so hard for you, like welcome. Welcome to the safe space. Well, we're gonna talk about it tonight or today or whenever you listen to this. And there's no judgment for me. There's no judgment for me if you don't do everything perfectly, if you use way more screens when your family is around because you just don't know how to regulate. There's no judgment for me if you snap at your kids more than is typical because everything's out of routine and you're parenting in front of these people. There's no judgment for me because even though I think I, in retrospect, I probably handled the biting situation pretty well. I I remember then talking to them afterwards and feeling like I couldn't really have the heart-to-heart conversation that I needed to have, especially with the seven-year-old, about his brother who had just bit him and how he didn't really understand, but also he's still learning and all this stuff. I remember being really distracted and feeling like, yeah, I probably don't know what I'm doing here, which is not a good feeling to feel totally lacking in confidence in your own home with your own kids because it doesn't feel like your home when the people from your childhood are there. Um, and so without further ado, it's a long intro. I'm sorry. I want to get to my first question from Kelsey. Kelsey says, at family gatherings, my mom always comments about how much my kids are eating. Who's going back for seconds? Whether someone needs to slow down on the sweets. Sometimes it's phrased as praise, sometimes it's phrased as concern, but it's just unnecessary, in my opinion. I'm trying to raise kids who have healthy relationships with food and their bodies. I grew up with a lot of body shame and disoriented disordered eating, but I'm trying to be intentional about not praising, passing that on to my kids. I've tried to gently redirect her in the moment, but it keeps happening. When I've addressed it directly, she always says that I'm overreacting or projecting my own issues. How do I intervene in real time without escalating things? Kelsey, this is such a good question. And I think it gets to the heart of the boundaries that we're talking about. First, I just want to highlight for you and give you the, if you're looking for the ammunition for why most experts, both child dietitians or pediatric dietitians and nutritionists, also just like child psychologists and psychiatrists, say that this type of relationship with food, you know, hey, you need to slow down or you need to watch your weight or like just constantly hyperfixating about food, why that's a problem. Let me just lay out for you really quickly. Bang, bang, bang. Number one, your job as a parent, number one, is to help your child develop a healthy relationship with food, full stop. That is your primary job as far as nutrition is concerned. Unless your child is significantly underweight or they have some critical deficiency, that your pediatrician is saying they need to X, Y, and Z. And your pediatrician is putting that on you. Hey, look, in your specific case, your child needs to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. Trust your pediatrician. But beyond that, if your child is growing normally and they're within a reasonably healthy like weight and size and growth pattern, which probably does not look like what your mom maybe wants it to look like, but but for sure that that that it's your pediatrician does not have concerns. What you're saying, not hyper-fixating, hyper-focusing, constantly commenting on bodies and food, is the right way. Because your number one job is to create a positive relationship with food. Say it last time. Your number one job is to create a positive relationship with food. It's not for them to get all their veggies, it's not for them to clean their plate, it's not for them to, again, anything else. Positive relationship with food. When you constantly comment and you have this running commentary about food and bodies, it does three things. Number one, it teaches surveillance, which is that everyone is watching and everybody's judging me for how much I eat or how little I eat, but I'm just I'm under a constant threat of monitoring. Not a healthy relationship with food to feel constantly surveilled while you're eating, like everybody's watching you. Two, it assigns moral value, right, to something that is amoral. The act of eating is amoral. It is not moral, it is not immoral. Eating more or less does not say something about who a person is intrinsically. There is no moral value to consuming calories. It is sometimes an unhealthy, maladaptive coping mechanism when you have disordered eating, which you said was a struggle for you. A lot of that comes from moral value being assigned to body types, but especially to consumption of food. And number three, and I think this is probably the thing that's most overlooked, it just disconnects kids from their internal hunger and full cues. Like healthy relationship with food looks like I eat until I'm full and then I stop eating. That's that's a healthy relationship with food. Your hunger, you're full. You like this, you're experiencing pleasure through eating, satisfaction, right? Like all of these are what your goal is for eating. If you have constant commentary running, it just disrupts all of those things. And so if you're looking for the here is why, mom, number one, I don't want my kids to feel like they're being watched. Number two, there in my opinion, there is no moral value to food, eating or not eating. Like there, that is not a moral choice that our kids are making. And number three, I am trusting the science that when you constantly distract kids from their internal cues about when they're hungry, when they're full, by saying you should be more hungry or you should be more full, or you should stop eating, or you should keep eating, that that is not healthy for them and that it creates disordered eating. And I'm not projecting my own issues, I'm telling you exactly what I've been told by mental health experts, by pediatric dietitians, by mental health counselors, by uh child psychologists. And all of them seem to agree about this. I mean, there are in the world of wellness and nutrition, you're gonna get a lot of people who kind of come out of nowhere with their crazy schemes and thoughts and stuff. It's crazy how the consensus is really pretty solid on this, that the goal for childhood is not like getting enough cruciferous vegetables, which is by the way, like broccoli and leafy greens and stuff like that. We used to think that that was like, oh, you gotta do that. Like I remember sitting there, you gotta eat your vegetables to grow up big and strong, right? Um, and and we had multiple people, by the way, Kelsey, and if you're listening to this, ask about something related to my my parents make comments about food. And so it's and it's not unusual. My grandmother used to make comments about what everybody was eating and whether we were eating more, or here, take more, take more, or oh, you don't need that, you know. And and I hate to say it, but often there is gender play at play here where our little boys were telling them, Oh, you need to keep eating, you're a growing boy. And our little girls were saying, You need to start watching your weight. Seven-year-old, like, what are we doing, guys? And so the the old older generation just needs to shut up about it. And it's this is a place where you know you have to intervene, but your question is a is a valid one. How do you intervene without escalating things? I think number one, you just address it up front. I one of the things that I'm gonna like continually come back to here is that one of the struggles for us as grown children, everybody's a grown-up kid, right? When your parents or your in-laws or your grandparents are in the room, all of a sudden you don't feel like a grown-up kid anymore, you just feel like a kid again. And this is a common thing across most people, like like many people experience this. This is not just a me projecting my issues onto this. This is a common thing that I've worked with many parents who go through this phenomenon, feeling like I'm back in I'm back in trouble again. Because I, you know, my parents can still get me in trouble, even though I'm 30 years old or 35 years old, whatever. Um, on the contrary, on the contrary, oftentimes parents uh from that generation, boomers and you know, the greatest generation, whatever, they need to be told who's boss. And they're gonna respect you a lot more for that. So just come right out and say it up front. Hey, mom, we're not making comments about how she eats. And if we are, then we're gonna have a problem. And what I said in the intro, I think is really important here. A lot of times we don't want to get in trouble with our parents, and so essentially we hang our kids out to dry. We like let them receive those negative comments, and we're just like, oh, it's just a yeah, but I don't want to, you know, go in and you know, I don't want to get in trouble. Like, wait, it's like when your brother's getting in trouble and you're growing up, you don't want to like step in and be like defend him because then you're gonna be in trouble. Like, that's what it feels like. Your parents your parents are kind of coming down on your kids. It can feel like I don't want to get in in between this, especially when it's something where it's like, do I really need to make this a big deal right now? Do I have to make this a thing? I think, I think in this case, you know, let's cut this off before it becomes a bigger thing. You didn't say how old your kids are, but I'm just assuming by the wording of the question they're younger. Like, let's cut this off before this becomes a big thing. Here, here's exactly what you can say. Number one, you can say, we're helping our kids to listen to their bodies so we don't label food or portions. We don't have common, we don't have commentary about it. But that's what we're doing. Or you can say to your child, and this is almost riskier. I'm gonna be honest. For some parents, this will be this will be seen as disrespectful and defiant. They'll want you to address it with them. If you feel that they're just not taking the hint, you can literally look directly at your child and you can say, You're allowed to eat until your body feels full, and then you don't have to eat anymore, and no one can make you eat. And you can just name that and just call it what it is, and that can create some issues, but I'll be totally transparent. I had a a run in with my mom, not even over my kid, over another kid in our family, w in February of last year, or maybe March. And uh I kind of felt like backing down, and I was like, you know what, though, like it's either me or it's this kid. And I just stood my ground. And it was brutal. But even though it was brutal, like I can't think the kid, the kid wasn't in the crosshairs anymore. And my mom is like really good about this stuff. She's not usually this person. And it wasn't about like you're eating too much or it's body image thing. It was it was about like um manners. And I was like, do they really have to have manners? And she was like, Yeah. And I was like, Ah, do they though? And it was not a pretty sight. I mean, it was it's pretty brutal. Like everybody in the room was like, dude, cut the tension with a knife. But I think that that's it's worthy to do. So, how do you intervene without escalating things? You can address it up front so that it doesn't become a whole thing over the dinner table. And you can also just prepare your kid. Hey, you know what? Grandma says weird stuff sometimes about how much you eat. I can't have to listen to that. I don't listen to her about that either. In our family, we eat until we're full. And then we stop eating. If grandma doesn't like that, that's her family. That's not our problem. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Let me take a quick break before I get to question number two.
Jon @WholeParent:Question number two comes again from Instagram. These are all from Instagram, I think, because they are all a part of that uh back and forth that we did. I responded to people and they gave me these in the DMs. My in-laws comes from Patrick. My in-laws are very involved in our life. They, on the surface, they're loving and generous, but they don't always respect boundaries. Two things can be true. We can have parents who are. I'm sorry to interrupt the question, but one of the real challenges in dealing with family members is like we can love them and we can know that they're flawed, and we can know that like on the whole, it's a good thing that they're around. We are presented often with this, these, this binary of like either your parents are perfect and you like let them watch your kids and like you just trust them intrinsically, and they they're the greatest parents that you've ever had and they're the greatest grandparents, or like you go no contact and you never see these people. I don't think that those are the only options. If if you have to make it an option to cut ties based on what I say in this episode, um that is your call. It's not my call. I I doubt that that that uh you're gonna make that choice based on what I say, but but that's a call that you make, it's not a call that I'm helping you make. That said, I think most often we're in the messy middle. And the messy middle is on the surface, our parents are loving and generous, and they don't always respect boundaries. Okay, back to the question. My wife and I have been clear and consistent about certain parenting boundaries, things like screen time, discipline, sugar, routines. In the moment, they seem to agree. They nod, they say they understand, and then as soon as we're not around, they do exactly what we asked them not to do. This time of year, it shows up most around gifts. We've asked them to keep things simple, not overwhelm the kids. Specifically, we asked them to only get one gift for each kid. But I already know that this request will be annoying, ignored. We try and hold the line, but it often turns into this is just the type of grandparent that I want to be, or you're taking away my way of showing love. I'm exhausted from feeling like I constantly have to choose between protecting our parenting choices and keeping the peace. How do you hold boundaries with in-laws who don't see boundaries as valid without blowing up the entire relationship? Great question, Patrick. I want to begin by understanding what boundaries are. Boundaries are, in the words of Brene Brown, what is okay and what is not okay. If you say something is not okay for your child, that is a boundary. Parents in-laws who choose to violate those boundaries need to be held accountable for their violation of those boundaries. Parents and in-laws who violate our boundaries need to be held accountable for those violations. And I don't know how what that accountability looks like in your house, but true just saying we're going to keep the peace by ignoring the boundary overstep only permits further boundary incursions. I think I cut this entirely out of the book. I might have had it still in the book. I don't remember. But one of the stories that I had in the book initially, in the initial drafts, if it's not still in there, was about boundaries. And it was about my friend from uh my first job out of college, and she had these this shared backyard. There was no fence in the backyard. And there was this property line boundary that they had and with their neighbor. And they noticed that their neighbor had like built a vegetable patch that kind of crossed the boundary a little bit. And they had just moved in and they were like, We're not gonna, we're not gonna make a big deal about this. This is like an old guy. He's like, he's likes us tomatoes. We don't, we're not putting up a fence. Like, who cares if like one row of tomatoes is technically on our side of the boundary? And over time, that boundary incursion turned into more boundary incursions. Specifically, the culmination of this is that he built a full shed like a foot and a half over the boundary line. And so he built a shed next to his garden. And, you know, his garden like expanded into their yard more, and then he built a shed next to the garden. Meanwhile, her kids are getting older, and her kids want to start playing like backyard baseball, and they get a dog and they go, We got to put up a fence. So they call the fencing company, and the fencing company runs a survey and they go, Yeah, you know, this guy is over the property line. And they're like, Yeah, we know, but like, can we just like put it in a little bit? And they're like, Yeah, no, that's not how this works. I mean, we could put the fence in further, but but then you're gonna, it's gonna look weird. You're gonna have to like build it around this stuff, and and really he has no right to be on this property right here. And they're like, Yeah, but we didn't tell him, you know, about his tomatoes, and then he built this shed and he didn't ask. And he's like, It's not your fault. He built an unpermitted shed without asking, like, getting a plot of survey, that's not your fault. And they're going back and forth. So finally they tell him, they're like, hey, we we're gonna have to, you know, we gotta ask you, like, move the shed or figure out how to move it because like they can't build the fence here, they need to build it right here. And by the way, your tomatoes are over the line, so like we're gonna lose road tomatoes. And the guy's like, I'm not moving anything. They have to go to get a court order and then tear down this guy's shed, ruins the relationship forever. Like, cannot have a relationship with his neighbor ever again. If you live next to somebody who just absolutely hates your guts, it's not a pleasant thing. And I'm not gonna say that it was their fault entirely, but there is some blame to be passed on the fact that they did nothing about the early boundary incursions that were not a big deal. Like, they did nothing about the tomatoes and they did nothing about the guarding going in. And that failing to hold that boundary when they knew that it had been crossed and not coming forward. I mean, when they bought the house, they said this guy's encroaching on your property line. You have to get a survey when you buy a house. They said, this guy's over the line. You should tell him that he's over the line. And they're like, ah, we don't want to bother him. We don't want to make him mad. We want to be good neighbors. Turns out you ruined the relationship. You blew it up. And the reason that you blew it up is because you failed to hold boundaries effectively when the boundaries were still small. So here's what I'll say. As I said before, I think this generation, this older generation, they understand the you're the parent, take some charge. They they want to, they're all up in my comments frequently, telling me how I'm too soft on kids or I'm giving parents permission to be too permissive. And um, you know, parents need to be their kids' parents, not their friends, and they need to take charge, and they need to kids need to learn more discipline, and kids need to learn more respect, and kids need to, you know, have be obedient to their parents, and that's in the Bible, or whatever, right? Whatever they want to say. Um, you can turn that back around and go, hey, I know that you know that I'm their parent. I know that you know that I'm their dad. I know that you know that she's their mom. As their mom, as their dad, we are making the call, and it's not your call. This isn't the type of grandparent you want to be. I'm sorry. It's not your call. It's our call. So you can get them one gift or you can get them no gifts. You can do no gifts. That's cool. We can do no gifts this year. If you feel like one gift shows like too little of your love, you can get them a big experience. You can get them an expensive gift to keep you. You can get the offer them alternatives, but you can't get them more than one gift. And if you do, we're gonna have a problem. We're gonna have an issue. We're gonna have to address this boundary violation. Because here's the thing that small boundary violation does become a bigger boundary violation. When they turn it back and use it, well, you're not letting me show my love to these kids. I have not no problem with you showing love. You just can't show love in this way. I'm not going to ask my kid to, we're not gonna uproot everything and upend everything so that you can show love in this way. Like, this is not what we look, we don't view uh consumerism as a as a as a thing of uh uh indication of your love. And we don't want to start giving our kids the idea that they that that it is a measure of love. I understand why you're exhausting for constantly having to choose protecting your parenting choices versus keeping your peace, Patrick. What I'm saying is you will be more exhausted if you don't protect your parenting choices. And this is, I usually do not give such harsh advice on the podcast, but we are dealing with grown-ups here. And just because your your in-laws' emotional dysregulation is not your concern. Your children's development and emotional dysregulation is your concern. Now, within reason, right? Like you can't control how your kid feels. Sometimes you have to let the emotions just you have to learn to surf their emotional waves. But when your in-laws or your parents show up and they're trying to guilt you or trying to sh, you know, do this narcissistic, like emotional manipulation tactics, I'm sorry, I'm not here for it. And if they cannot hold respect in this relationship, because what they're saying to you right now is that they don't respect you. What they're saying to you right now is, yeah, you are the parent, and we don't actually respect that. And I think they need to learn how to respect that. And I think if that takes a conversation, hopefully not in front of the kids. I mean, sometimes it has to be, but but hopefully, this is a conversation that you can have. You pull them aside and you go, hey, we need to have a chat over here. Kids go play in the basement. We need to go have a chat right now. Hey, that was inappropriate. We're not doing that anymore. You need to respect our parenting choices, or we're gonna make different choices. And you're not gonna like those choices. It's not a threat, it's a promise. Like, name it and hold the boundary. Not because your parents aren't or your in-laws are not loving and generous, but because that is not the whole story here, and we need to hold the boundary. If it is not okay that they are violating these routines, then they have become untrustworthy caregivers for you. And untrustworthy caregivers are not people who you want with your kids. I want you to bring them back into trust. And I don't think that this has to be a punitive thing. I think that oftentimes the older generation who only knows punishment will try and make it punitive. Well, you're punishing me. I'm not punishing you. I'm anti-punishment. I'm telling you what the boundary is and I'm asking you to respect it. And if you can't respect it, then I have to make different choices. That's not a threat, that is just the facts of the matter. If you have to write it out beforehand, do it. Instead of saying something like, please stop buying so many gifts, start saying things like, We're gonna be keeping the extra gifts at your house. We're gonna donate them, we're gonna space them out after the holidays, but they're not open in all of them today. Instead of saying, you know, we need to when they say something like, We're you know, you're taking away our our way of showing love, you just say, We know that you're trying to show them love. We're just being intentional that love is not expressed this way with our kids. Just very clearly. And like I said, you can offer them alternatives, experience gate-based gifts, whatever. But I think, and and I this I spent the longest time on this answer in this podcast episode, because I think this encapsulates so many different pieces. Because it's not a a like a specific thing that we really can't like handle, it's not it's not a toxic um like body image related thing or personal autonomy thing, which we're gonna talk about now. It's it's just like people not respecting your boundaries, and I think that you have to I think you have to make people respect your boundaries. Because the other thing here is that your kids see this and they learn that some people are not don't have to respect your boundaries, and that's not a lesson that you want them to learn. You don't want you don't want your parent you don't want your kids to learn that just because they're somebody who's family, they're allowed to do whatever they want to you. It's a hard lesson to unlearn.
SPEAKER_01:I'm still learning unlearning that one. Okay. Little break. 10 out of three.
Jon @WholeParent:Question three. Uh, I did not ask you if I was allowed to share your name, and so I'm not gonna share your name. This parent said, my daughter didn't want to give my mom a hug goodbye. But instead of respecting that, my mom got visibly upset and really pushy about it until my daughter was literally burying her face into my leg. Later, when I brought it up to my mom, she doubled down and said that my daughter hurt her feelings and that I'm teaching her to be rude, and that why don't I care about her feelings too? What am I supposed to say to that? I think the personal autonomy piece for kids is a good place for us to wrap up this episode because I think this is one of those we we we had a first question about values, we had a second question about boundaries, and now we have a third question about respecting kids and treating kids with dignity and as full humans who are allowed to make their own choices. And I think it's a good place to end because this is the third place that people struggle. I had a very similar comment that was almost identical to this, where the mom said that uh the the parent who didn't get hugs said that she was being a meanie. Like this was like she said she called my daughter a meanie. You're being a meanie to like this whatever, four-year-old, five-year-old kid. The thing that we have to remind ourselves is that just because our parents say something does not make it true, your daughter was not being rude. She was communicating her boundaries and her desires. Not your boundaries, but her boundaries. Burying her face in your leg is her way of saying, I need to get back to my safe home base because this does not feel safe to me. I made a statement, I don't want to give a hug right now. And now, in the moment, when an adult who has power over that child because they are bigger and stronger, and they can leverage manipulation, pushes past that, the issue stops becoming about manners. It becomes whose feelings matter. Does the adult's feelings matter more than a child's bodily autonomy? And I think the answer to that is resoundingly no. Unfortunately, this has not always been true in our society or in the way in which we parent kids, like like very frequently, abuse, outright abuse has been justified by saying, well, like kid doesn't really understand it. Like we're not gonna work, but we're not gonna go and get uncle so-and-so thrown in jail over this. We just need to keep a better closer eye on him. And it goes unreported. And that person continues to abuse, and that child goes without counseling and therapy that they need. And and all of this comes from this idea that children should not be able to or should not be permitted to say no. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I am a strong advocate for this is how we groom children for not only abuse now, but abuse later. It is how we you know, you know, like, why don't you give me a hug? Don't you love me? Becomes abusive partners later, saying, Why don't you do this with me right now, even though you're not in the mood, even though you don't feel like it, even though you don't want to? Don't you love me? These types of emotional manipulations take root. And I know it's not that I I'm I'm making a mountain out of what many people feel as a moleho. It's just a hug. Come on, why are you being such a whatever about it? I'm being that way because the child very clearly made it that. I I don't think that we need to like if you offer a kid a hug and they're kind of like ambivalent about it and they're kind of like, ah, whatever, fine. And then they kind of like don't really hug you back, but they're like, whatever, I don't really care. That's how my kids are sometimes. Um, I think that that's one thing. I don't think you need to make that like the world and anything, but why do people need to hug kids? This is a strange thing to me. I don't feel like the need to hug every kid that I know um in order to show them that I am affectionate about them, even kids who are related to me. I don't, you know, I don't make my kids hug me when you know when I feel close to them and I might ask for a hug and if they say no, that's that's it, right? I might turn it into a game sometimes. Be like, oh, you can't hug me. Such a just just a little, I just want a little hug. I don't want a big hug. My kids come over, give me a big hug. Again, that's a that's a game. But we I don't I'm not trying to make this into like something that it's not, but the second that the child turns away and goes, like, mom, get me out of here. Okay, that that's when we know that it's it's drawn past this point. I got in big trouble. My most viral video early on TikTok was this girl smashing her phone with a hammer and she's like melting down while she's doing it. She's a teenager, maybe 13, and she's uh she's like crying, weeping, like hyperventilating as she's being forced by her mother's boyfriend, I think, was the End of the video, mother's boyfriend making her smash her own cell phone with a hammer. And I said, This is abuse. And many people said, How could this possibly be abuse? John, what do you know? You don't know what you're talking about. I said, It's abuse because look at their face. It's abuse because look at how she's responding. I don't care what you do to a person. I mean, I do. Obviously, there's many things that are abuse. I shouldn't have said that that was a dumb thing to say. It's not always what you do to a person that's obviously abuse. It's how they respond. If a person feels deeply unsafe and and emotionally distraught by you demanding a hug as they leave, they're not being a meanie, they're not being rude. You at that point have put them in a position where they are distressed. And so I want you to remember that no child is ever responsible for managing an adult's emotions. And you are not responsible as your mother's child for managing her emotions either. There's gonna be a whole nother episode someday all about parents who try and do role reversal later in life, where they kind of do this, like, well, now that I'm 60 and you're 30, why don't you take care of me a little bit? Parents aren't allowed to do that. That's not healthy, ever. If you find yourself in that relationship, something has gone very wrong. That's not how parent-child relationships are supposed to function. I understand when your parent is dying of cancer. I've been there. I cared for my dad when he was dying of cancer. At no point did he ask me to be his dad. That would have been inappropriate. And so the problem is many of us grew up managing our parents' emotions because we controlled our behavior and we controlled our emotional reactions to things in order to not set them off. So all of this to say, you are not responsible for her emotions. Your daughter is certainly not responsible for her emotions. And I would intervene immediately, if that ever happens again, and make it awkward if it has to be. You take the awkward hit. This is exactly what I did. It was again, it was not something that was this bad. It was like a manners-related thing. But I saw an adult relative getting into it with a kid and going, like, you need to stop doing this thing. It's gross and I don't like it. And the kid was like two. And I was like, Hey, how about you pick on somebody your own size? And it was bad and awkward and terrible. But at least it was awkward and terrible for me, and not for the two-year-old. I think you intervene and you put yourself in harm's way if necessary. Put yourself, your body between your daughter and your mom. I think that's the right thing to do. You correct the message with your child afterwards. Hey, you did not do anything wrong. You are allowed to choose who you hug and who touches you, and who touches your body. And if you don't want to touch somebody, or you don't want somebody to touch you, you can tell them. And that is not that is not bad. That is good. And if anybody ever touches you and they're not supposed to, when you say no, you tell me right away, and we I will make sure it never happens again with that person. And then clearly address it with your mom after the fact outside the moment. Because I promise you, in that moment, when you step in between, when you do all the she is dysregulated, she is not ready, and she is not in a learning receptive state, she's gone. And so you have to address it with her, but it's not gonna happen in that moment, not well. So come back later and say, hey, look, I'm not gonna allow you to guilt my kids about physical affection, I'm not gonna allow you to demean them about physical not wanting to hug you, I'm not gonna allow you to call them names like meanie. If that choice is not going to be respected, then we are going to limit our contact with you. And she's not gonna hug you ever. Even if it hurts your feelings. Make it real clear. We're not doing this. We're not playing those games. Don't do it in the moment. Do it after the fact. It's just way better. But there is no justification for making a child feel bad for not wanting to hug a relative. Ever. You can have that conversation later. Yeah, you know, grandma came from a different time, and she probably had to hug people she didn't want to hug, and now she feels like she should be able to make people hug her who don't want to hug her, but we're not doing that anymore. We live in a better time now, and we're not gonna do that. A little adult discomfort in that moment is teaching your child a valuable lesson. Your body is yours, nobody is allowed to touch it, touch you. Mom will always come and protect you when you need me. And love does not require you to violate your own boundaries. And that should be the title of this whole holiday episode. It has not been a cheery one. We have not talked about beautiful, warm, and fuzzy things, but it's because that's not what you asked me to talk about on this episode. You all came forward and you said, This is what we want to hear about, John. And so that's the episode that I made. And it really should be Love Does Not Require You to Violate Your Boundaries. That should be the title. It's not going to be, but you know that that's what it is. Okay, I've already gone too long. I'm over time. Anyway, hope you have a good holiday week. See you on the next one. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings, and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. 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