12: When Parenting is Hard with MommaCusses
Parenting has its moments. Some are good, some are bad, some fill you with heart-melting fuzziness, and some make you ask, “What in the world was I thinking?” We all have visions of our parenting ideal, but real life gives us way too many opportunities to turn into the kind of mom we don’t even recognize. To sum it up, parenting is hard! If you are that parent who needs encouragement today, join us for today’s episode–and I welcome you to join us even if you are not a parent. You might learn something valuable, too!
I’m joined by Momma Cusses, aka Gwenna Laithland. She got her start as a writer at the age of 18 and soon branched out into content marketing and has worked with museums, professional sports teams, accounting firms, and universities to help refine their content. She started Momma Cusses in 2020 in hopes of normalizing modern motherhood and giving moms a place to connect and feel less alone.
Show Highlights:
Gwenna’s story: her history of parenting in reactive mode as a young mom who came out of an abusive relationship–and the realization that hit her about what she was doing to her daughter
Why there is not a magic answer or therapy tool for those reactive parenting moments when you lose your mind
The difference in responsive vs. reactive parenting
Gwenna’s advice about handling endless questions from your kids
How our past personal issues determine the behaviors that send us into “Reactive Parent Mode”
Why gentle parenting is NOT about how you parent but about how you regulate yourself
Why “gentle childing” should NOT be what you want for your child
How to do “offline work” with your child when emotions are not elevated
How to gain a new perspective on parenting under stress
Why there is immense value in a parent who can say, “I’m sorry”
Why we should stop demonizing screen time and teach our 21st-century kids to use devices responsibly
Why it’s healthy to realize that you do not have to accept every “invitation” from your child
How to find the “middle ground” when you are reparenting yourself while parenting your child
Resources:
Connect with Momma Cusses: Website, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook (Look for Gwenna’s book coming in Fall, 2023!)
Connect with KC: TikTok and Instagram
Get KC's Book, How to Keep House While Drowning
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KC Davis 0:05
Hello, you sentient balls of stardust, welcome to the Struggle Care Podcast, the podcast about self care by a host that hates the term self care. I have with me today, Momma Cusses. That's how you know her. I also know where it's gonna to Hello, hello, we're going to talk today about parenting under stress. And I know not all of my listeners are parents. So feel free to skip or you know what, feel free to hang in. Because I find that even if you're not a parent, so many of us are re parenting ourselves that it can actually be kind of cool to listen to people talk about parenting. So anyways, glad you're here, when I'm so glad that you're here. I am excited to be here. You emailed me and they're like, Hey, you want to be on my podcast? I was like, yes.
Momma Cusses 0:54
Yes, I do. Well, I just want to jump right in. Because you and I did an event recently, where you told a story that really resonated with me. I mean, I don't know how many of our listeners know my story. But I gave birth to my second baby, right as the pandemic shutdown happened. And I as a therapist, and a mom that really believes in kind of respectful parenting, I had all of these parenting ideals. And as I became more and more isolated, more and more depressed, more and more angry, I found myself turning into the kind of mom that I didn't recognize. And there was so much failure that I felt about that as I was like raging, right, like hulking out at my kids. And it made me sort of recognize that I had all of these amazing ideals about how to parent that I had picked up from books and podcasts and blogs. But none of those resources actually addressed how you are supposed to pull off any of this respectful, gentle parenting stuff when you yourself are compromised, burnt out stressed. So will you just start by telling us that story that you told? Yep. So I have not always been a gentle or responsive or intentional parent, I had my child when I was 23. And I was in a not good place, mentally, or emotionally. My ex was abusive, and I was coping with that. And then I kind of had to go on the journey of leaving an abusive ex. And to any listeners who have ever done that, that is more complicated than just getting in the car and driving away. And I was kind of parenting in permanent reactive mode, like my daughter would present a parenting challenge or a parenting quandary. And I would look at exactly what was in front of me and just move forward. And sometimes I make good reactions, and sometimes I made crap reactions. But there was one day, my daughter was probably six or seven. We'll let listeners know that this will be a cussing podcast in case they're listening to it in the garbage. And so you know, if you've got littles maybe pause for a sec. So I had had a shit tastic day, everything that could go it was a Murphy's Law Day, my PT Cruiser had broken, I'd had a terrible day at work. I'd had people call in, I had a child that was not mine puke on me, because I was working in a museum at the time. And then I get home, and I get the chicken out of the refrigerator that I was going to cook for dinner. And it had spoiled at some point. And so no, I didn't have dinner, and my daughter walks in at what was technically the worst possible moment for her to have walked in. She couldn't have known that. I don't even remember what she said. But I lost my mind every bit of negativity and pent up rage that I had gathered throughout the day just came pouring out on this six, seven year old child. It was unfair, it was inappropriate. And I didn't have any control over it. It was just my reaction at the time. And in that moment, as I am screaming at volumes that the neighbors two doors down could hear me at conversational tones.
KC Davis 4:17
In that moment, I regained consciousness. And I opened my eyes for the first time in years and I watched my daughter flinch. She shrunk away from me and tried to make herself small. She was handling my shit better than I was. She was six or seven.
And that was the moment where I was like nope, not this. I never want to be the reason my daughter makes herself small. The reason my daughter tries to disappear The reason my daughter is having an emotional breakdown because her mother can't handle her own emotions. And so I went to the internet, as one does, I connected with two groups, neither of which exist anymore. One was a Facebook group called parenting with intent. And one was a Reddit group that was just about, it didn't really have a name. Because this was in the days before gentle parenting kind of caught fire as a term, the style of parenting has been around since the dawn of parenting, we just didn't really have a name for it. And it's not been a very popular parenting choice up until, you know, really the 21st century. And that's where I learned the difference between responsive and reactive parenting.
I resonate with parts of that story is so much because I feel like I spent the first 18 months of my second daughter's life it just in reactive parenting. And I remember getting with a therapist and asking, like, I don't know what to do when I get so angry. And I know, they're just being kids. I know, they're not doing anything wrong, and I got so rageful. And I said, What do I do when I get to that point where I'm like, almost seeing, right, and I'm like, trying to get her to tell me these tips, because I would fly off the handle and then feel so guilty. And she said something to me that ultimately was so validating, like, it's gonna sound odd. But she said, can I just be honest with you? And this is what happens to me, by the way, because I'm a therapist. And so when a therapist sees a therapist, occasionally the therapist will just be like, I mean, can I just shoot you straight on this? And I go, Yeah, and she goes, there aren't really tools that pull you back from that moment. Like once that moment has commenced, there aren't like magical, mindful tools that, like make you regain yourself. You really, I mean, there are some things we can do to like mitigate harm in that moment, if we want to talk about like, walk to the bathroom, scream in the bathroom, or you know, those sorts of things so that you're mitigating the harm that's happening to your kid. But if you're looking for some sort of magical therapy tool that is supposed to make you just like cool your head off and regain consciousness and come back to calm, it doesn't exist.
Momma Cusses 7:04
It doesn't. It's the same thing as what our kids throw temper tantrums. If you've been practicing gentle, responsive parenting, you know, once you hit the crying, screaming, throwing themselves on the fit, there's riding that wave, there's attempting to find points at which, okay, yep, the feel is a feel we're going to do it but we can't stay up here we have to deescalate. So we're no longer trying to communicate, don't hit your sister, don't throw the ball the TV don't eat dirt. We're purely trying to get them out of that peak tantrum. So we can resume the conversation of don't hit your sister don't throw the ball the TV don't eat dirt. We have this expectation that because we have fully developed prefrontal cortexes and some level of emotional awareness that our kids yet lack, that we are immune to this No, once your cortisol levels in your brain get too damn high, you just kind of have to ride that wave and find ways to de escalate, but you're still going to be fucking pissed.
KC Davis 8:01
Yeah. And she was like, the only thing that we can do is walk it back and figure out like what in your life is missing by way of support and skill, but those support and skills are going to be implemented in other times and areas like and then those will sort of decrease the amount of these like rage filled moments. And it really was comforting to me, because here I was thinking that there's something I could or should be doing in these moments to stop this. And I'm just not good enough to figure it out. It's like, no, it's way before that. And like I said, she had some ideas about how to mitigate harm. In that moment, we talked about just walking away, we talked about, you know, putting them in a safe place and going outside. I'll never forget my kids have this, Melissa and Doug, like cleaning set. And I don't know what I was doing. But it was one of those similar days that you described, and I was frustrated. And I was trying to maybe put on a diaper or something where they're like, wriggling around like alligators, and laughing That's always kind of what I really struggle with is like you can be the biggest shithead in the world. But if you're laughing at me while you do it, I have a very hard time regaining my composure. And so I'm like holding on for dear life. And my daughter picks up the broom, the wood solid wooden toy broom, and whacks me in the head with it. Now, I can't remember if it was purposeful or not, because I want to say it maybe wasn't. And I snatched that broom out of her hands. And it was all I could do to make myself get to the bathroom, shut the door. And before I began, like wailing on the sink with this broom, and I mean I slammed it over and over and over until it broke in half. And then I sat there and this just wave of regret and guilt and self loathing came over me that I had destroyed one of their toys, because they were kids with it. And I thought to myself, Okay, I like waited till they were preoccupied and I snuck it out to the trash can, because I didn't want them to see that it happened, I immediately ordered them a little replacement broom. But that was kind of the moment that I remember going, something's wrong, something is wrong, this isn't me.
Momma Cusses 10:26
There are points in parenting that you will always be reactive, there is no choice for it. Hopefully, you get to the point emotionally where in your own mind and body, those reactive moments are only happening in emergency situations a kid running toward traffic, something very unexpected happening. Yes, you're going to be reactive. If you come home and you find that fluffy, the puppy has expired. While you all were away from the house, that's going to be a reactive moment, right? Like, you're gonna have to react there. But the difference between responsive and reactive parenting is I can't plan for every goddamn thing my child is going to throw at me figuratively and literally, but I can prepare a series of responses. So my eldest one time had a breakdown. Because I did not know how many of her fingers it would take to measure the Empire State Building. That was wildly specific kid, I'm not even sure off the top of my head, I know how many it is, and a normal amount of measurement, much less your fingers specifically. And at that point, I was not practicing responsive parenting. So I had no choice but to react. And what I just did, there was pretty much what I gave my kid. No, why is that important? It's not important, why she thinks that's important. But having a response to kids asking stupid questions is important. But it takes practice. And you kind of have to accept that. Sometimes reactive is your only option. That doesn't mean you're failing. It means that you didn't know how to plan for this particular set of stimuli. You can't build a response yet.
KC Davis 12:09
So what is give me one of your responses to when questions are about to send you over the edge.
Momma Cusses 12:16
So I actually do not struggle with questions except the why I will answer questions all day long, as long as they are structured. But if we get into a while loop, what are you doing? I'm making lunch? Why? Because we need to eat? Why? Because our bodies need food. Why? Okay, we have now entered a wide loop, you are probably not hearing the answers that I'm giving, you are probably not paying attention. And you probably don't actually care about the why you just want to continue the conversation and attention. So my response when we get into a while loop is asked me a better question. If you really have a question here and you're struggling to figure out how to communicate it. I want you to know you have my attention. I might be making a PBJ. But I am focused on you as well. Ask me a better question. And if they were like, I don't have one, okay, then you didn't care about the information. And that's okay. You just wanted the attention. I'll give you attention as soon as I make this peanut butter and jelly. But if you really were seeking information and weren't sure how to communicate, ask me a better question is a pause point of why does our body need food? Okay, this is a good specific question that we can discuss. But it's not a while loop.
KC Davis 13:26
I love that. That's so much more thoughtful than mine. Because mine is I think I've answered enough questions. And I just cut it there. Or I say, what's the other one that I use? I have like two or three little ones that I wanted. Like, I think I've answered enough questions, babe. Sometimes I'll say, I feel like I've answered that. I feel like I've answered that.
Momma Cusses 13:44
Now we do do that one as well. You already know that information. Can you remember it? Yes. I already answered that question six times, buddy. So here's something else that I recognized in my parenting journey.
KC Davis 13:57
And I'm curious if you relate, in my experience, and especially just talking to lots and lots of people, parents, I think that sometimes when you have gone through a situation where someone has been abusive to you, you find yourself in these spots as a parent where you worry, you start to do behavior that doesn't look like you and you have this fear of am I turning into this person? Am i Repeating this behavior and it turns you into this shame spiral. And I had a realization that was sort of groundbreaking in my parenting journey, which was and that happens a lot to me when my kids hit me when my kids hit when they push me when they like laugh at me and won't stop like grabbing at my clothes. Like there's a certain specific sort of intersection of variables that puts me into a place where I'm about to snap. And what I realized was in those moments, I was not reacting likeLike the person who used to hit me, I was not reacting like the person that used to taught me I was not reacting like the person that used to do those things. What I was reacting like, was the child who went through that, that now realizes we're an adult. And we will be damned if we let it happen again. And then those moments, I'm almost forgetting that it's my children in front of me. And I turn into that little girl. And I'm thinking it won't stop, stop, stop. And it's like it boils over. And it's like, I have big girl strength. Now, I will put you down. I will not allow this to happen to me. I will not write in the strength that you didn't have at one point. And so the recognition that I wasn't turning into a person that treat someone that way, I was just reverting back to a person that had been treated that way was huge.
Momma Cusses 15:59
Yeah. So I am very lucky in that physical violence was not trauma that I experienced. I got spankings and that is a whole different conversation. So I mean, yes, in that, but it wasn't presented the same way as domestic abuse, right, the conversation for another time, but I got spankings. I was not abused outside the guise of spankings. What I got was abandonment issues, which made me very sensitive to dismissive actions. So shrug at me and watch me lose my mind. roll your eyes at me, or one of my least favorite things that my son has been doing. Is it tip toes, the line of weaponized incompetence, it is not weaponized incompetence, because four year olds are just incompetent. They can't weaponize that yet. But when I give a specific instruction, I have done all the steps. I've done all the proper responses. And I know I have my son's attention. I know his listening ears are on I know that we are communicating in a way that an adult and a four year old communicate. And I give him a specific instruction, buddy, go put your socks in the hamper right there. Like I've done all the things and it goes what love there. You earn me you SOP.
KC Davis 17:17
I think that's why the laughing gets me like I really struggle at bedtime. Because putting on PJs going upstairs like I can handle I don't want to I can handle I'm not gonna I can handle all of that. What I can't handle is you going limp over and over falling onto me. While I have kind of a hurt back, and then laughing at me when I say Please stop, please stop and you're laughing. And I just Oh god, it's so hard to cope with. But it was once I sort of could step away from like, the shame aspect of why I was responding that way. I didn't realize that that was so big of a burden. And recognizing like, yeah, man, like in this moment, my inner child needs something. And it's overwhelming to have to parent the child in front of you and the child inside of you at the same time when they both need your attention. And so there's no blog written about how to do that.
Momma Cusses 18:19
And I appreciate the gentle parenting like experts that basically say like you cannot gentle parent when you are dysregulated. Like let's just get real i for a long time spent a good part of my day. dysregulated. So like, what are we supposed to do then? So the internet has a running joke that amuses me every time for different reasons. But I'm out here gentle parenting, when is my child going to start gentle child. And the honest, ugly truth of that is when they stopped gentle child and it means you fucking did your job. They're not a child anymore. You raise them to functional emotionally mature adulthood. And while your child will always need you in some fashion, the relationship between a toddler and its parent and an adult and its parent should and intrinsically has to be different. Right? So when your child starts dental child thing, it's because you don't have a child anymore. So gentle parenting is not about how you communicate with your child. It's how you regulate yourself. And once you regulate yourself, now you're able to approach this tiny human being who is learning to person from scratch from a more stable platform. So gentle parenting, it's that's why it's called gentle parenting. It's about the parent. And that whole explanation doesn't make it any fucking easier.
KC Davis 19:54
Well and I would also say like if your child is gentle child being all the time that also might be a child that is too afraid. It's premature maturity, right? Like a child that is, quote unquote well behaved all the time. Like, that's not normal. And you can produce that kind of child through fear and intimidation and domination. But that's not what I'm going for. And I think that's really hard for me sometimes is that, especially on the internet, right, like, I feel like the group that says, you know, let's be gentle parents and let parents be parents. It's like, there's some odd overlap with the group that will see a child, quote, unquote, misbehave, and just say, Well, you shouldn't tolerate that. You shouldn't like parents shouldn't tolerate that. And it's like, what, like, I sometimes see parenting experts on Tik Tok, where they'll like, do it a child like falling out in the grocery store? And they'll say, like, See, the problem here? Is that like, we allow this, like, we tolerate this, like this behavior shouldn't be acceptable. But they never say like, what are you supposed to do to stop a child from doing that? Because I know how to stop a child from doing that. It's going to screw them up and traumatize them.
Momma Cusses 21:09
But like, I can intimidate them into quitting. Yeah, I'm twice their size, right?
KC Davis 21:14
And so this pressure, we sometimes feel as parents to modify our child's behavior immediately. Or we're a bad parent like is not consistent with actually teaching them social emotional skills.
Momma Cusses 21:28
Yeah. Well, and it's one of those, the English language is stupid, and is wildly imprecise for having so many friggin words in it. So the idea that, Oh, you shouldn't tolerate this behavior? No, that's exactly what I should do. I don't have to accept or encourage the behavior. But we're all going to have to tolerate it. Or I'm really just passing the buck to their future partners, or their teachers or their managers, because they don't know how to deal with this shit. So no, I do have to tolerate it. That doesn't mean that I'm not working on it with them. Because when you get to the fifth stage, we have to cool down right, is what I call offline work. So we work on emotional regulation, when they are not elevated, because it's stupid to do it while they are elevated. So we have offline conversations. Everything's fine. Everyone's in a good mood. Hey, buddy. If you ever feel frustrated, what should you do? Should say I'm frustrated. I need a minute. Right? Excellent, buddy. So the next time I see that frustration level climbing in the freezer section of Walmart, Hey, buddy, are you frustrated? Hey, what do we do when you're frustrated? I'm frustrated. I need a minute. Okay, let's go do that. But I am not going to hit that. But one of 10 Fucking breakdowns?
KC Davis 22:41
Well, and the irony is, is that if my kid falls out in the grocery store, it's likely because I have held a boundary with them. Like, if my kids saying I want to open these gummies right now, and I'm saying no, we're not going to open them till we get there. And they start to I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm gonna be like, Oh, are they gonna take the gummies? I don't want you to, you know, fall out in the grocery store. I want to which listen, I'm truly I'm not saying that's right, wrong, good or bad. I do it nine times out of 10. But I think the irony is like the day that I decide, like, No, we're actually going to use this as an opportunity to learn how to hear no, that's a day where she is going to fall out in the grocery store, she is going to scream, she is going to cry, she is going to do those things. And it's just so ironic to me that like that's the moment when parents are like, that parent needs to have some boundaries with that kid. And it's like, don't that's literally what I just did. I was willing to let her have this big embarrassing moment. Because that's how moving through that is how she's going to learn how to hear no, she has to go through that whole, you know, storm of feelings before she comes out the other side and goes okay, I'm still alive. And you know, next time I'll know a little bit more how to ride those feelings out.
Momma Cusses 23:54
Yeah, well, and here's the thing is as adults with emotional issues all our own with feelings, that crest hormone waves and good days, bad days and mental health issues. We don't always get to pick where we have the emotional energy to hold that boundary. If it is in the Walmart section, or the freezer section of Walmart, we're gonna have to incur that break down because I can't promise that when we get home and I decide to hold the line on the goldfish, I'm still going to have the same emotional energy to coax you down off that ledge you climbed up on, I get why you got there, I would be there to in a similar position. But I have the emotional wherewithal to walk you down from here to let you experience this level of negativity. And if the other patrons of Walmart have an issue with it, I know lots of big words for them, too.
KC Davis 24:47
I think that's almost like the first and most important point and parenting under stress, which is that this idea that you are supposed to handle every single interaction with grace and long term goals in mind and holding the line and like that's not realistic. What is better? Like, I know my kids need to learn how to say no, when I'm under stress, when I'm in a really hard time in life, what I have to do is pick where the times and place it like pick a point once a day, once every three days, maybe just once a week, if I'm in a really, really hard spot, where I'm looking at, okay, the environment, the choice, what kind of time do I have? What kind of emotional capacity and occasionally those variables will intersect in a point, right? Okay. Deep breath, do it. I'm gonna make my kid mad, big boy pants, today's the day we're gonna sit, hold that line, and you're not failing, you're not failing, all of those times that you do, just give them the gummies in the middle of the grocery store, so they don't fall out, right? Like, if you're pushing your grocery cart, and you just got off of a 12 hour work, and something's happening with your kid and your foot hurts, and you're worried if you're gonna be able to afford the groceries like you are not obligated to use that moment to hold the line and teach them something. Just give them the gummies.
Momma Cusses 26:14
Yeah, just just make sure you save the barcode. That's good. No, right.
KC Davis 26:17
And I think that's just like a huge point of like, what none of us are like doing these things all the time. We're just like picking moments to do them.
Momma Cusses 26:25
Now, here's the thing that I want to be really clear. If you end up having to make a call, or you fall into a reactive moment. And you start acting like that inner child who is now realized she holds the club, or you start channeling the only method of parenting you have which you swore you were never going to do. But it was your only example. So in that moment of crisis, you're like, What do I do? Well, this is what my mom did. And then you kind of have to have that argument. I want you to know, when you're parenting under stress, and you make a choice that ultimately you didn't want to have made that you may be regret. You were still parenting really well, as long as you come to the realization Oh, I fucked up. Because it gives you an opportunity to apologize. And most importantly, it shows your kids how to person successfully, because they will encounter stressful moments that break down moments of indecision and bad decision. And if they have a really solid base of Yeah, I remember that time mom lost her shit in Walmart. But then she apologized, and we cleaned up the thing that happened. And that's how adults handle emotional breakdowns.
KC Davis 27:40
The amount of times I have said, I'm sorry, to my children. I mean, so many times, I will say, Hey, I should have treated you with kindness. In that moment, I have said, Hey, I should have been more gentle with your body in that moment. I mean, I've never, like, hurt my children or anything. But I mean, you know, I've grabbed their arm as they're refusing to get into the car and going, we're sitting in the car seat, right? You push that a little bottoms down on the car seat. I have said, Hey, I got really upset. And that wasn't your fault. And I'm sorry that I said that. And the other thing that I love to do now, especially before we go to the airport, is I will look at my kids. And I'll say, and maybe it's because I remember as a child thinking, Why am I always under obligation to act correctly? When the adults around me get to fly off the handle whenever they can't take it? Like why am I held it bigger standards? So what I always say to my kids, when we're going to airport or something and say alright, huddle up, Davis family meeting, we're gonna make a deal. You ready? They're like, okay, and I said, the grown ups are going to work on being patient. And the kids are going to focus on being cooperative. And we go back and forth patient and cooperative patient cooperative. And so as we go through the airport, I will remind them, hey, remember our deal. I'm going to try and be patient, you're going to try and cooperate. And my kids will say it to me. Mom, you're not being patient. You said you'd be patient, I say okay, well, you should just click the red light. But this mutual like, I'm still the adult, I'm still holding boundaries, I'm still responsible for them. I'm still the one in charge. But I'm also admitting like I'm a person. I'm also working on trying to do what's best for our whole family to move through this day. And you are also expected to do what's best for our family to move through this day. So that's always a good one. Like I'm gonna work on being patient. You work on being cooperative.
Momma Cusses 29:37
I would say anytime I make a video or a piece of content involving apologies like apologizing to your children, I universally get at least a percentage of comments that went man if my mom had said sorry, just once, which it's upsetting, but it's also okay, but you did the work there. You recognize the important of apologizing and humanizing our own behavior, we are people, we are flawed people who are raising flawed people. And it's a punch in the stomach to recognize we're raising flawed people, our children will have flaws when they are out of our house. And that is okay. Because hopefully, we can give them the basis to be able to go, I am flawed, I will eff up from time to time, and I know how to recover, recuperate and rearrange to adjust for that.
KC Davis 30:33
And I think about like, what is the resistance against saying, like, I'm sorry to kids or admitting that we messed up. And I think that it comes from this place where we're afraid that if we demonstrate to our kids that we don't always know what we're doing. They don't have any reason to obey us the next time we ask them to do something, right. Well, I don't listen to this woman. You don't know what she's doing. But that's not actually the effect it has on kids. The effect it has is I mean, and here's the thing, it's not rocket science, it's the same effect. When my husband apologizes to me. When my husband apologizes to me, I don't think to myself, see, he was wrong. And next time this comes up, I'm, you know, I don't need to try to see his side because he's wrong all the time. That's not what I think what I think is, wow, it feels really good that he cares about my pain. And that's what it communicates to our kids is, mom cares, when I've been hurt. And that creates such a solid base of attachment like that is more powerful for attachment, and self esteem and self compassion than really anything else we're doing.
Momma Cusses 31:43
Yeah, essentially, a person's greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. And I as a mom, I feel like I've got a pretty strong presence as a mom, I identify Well, as a mom, doesn't mean I'm like a perfect mom. Nope. But in that, I also have to acknowledge that as a mom, that's part of a weakness, I can show them how to be weak, I can show them how to be vulnerable, because that's important as they develop to kids learn more through demonstration and observation than they do listening and being told.
KC Davis 32:21
100% My kids say I'm sorry, not because I've ever made them say I'm sorry, but because I have said sorry to them. Like, that's what they've learned. And there's also this aspect of going back to when we were talking about like, I have limited capacity as a person. But then when I come under stress, I have even less capacity. So I have to sort of pick and choose and gentle parenting takes so much mental and emotional energy, that I what I had to do was look at sort of this landscape of parenting ideals and choices and like kind of lower the bar a little bit like be okay with not being some perfect mom. And I was on a parenting podcast, like last year, when we were talking about like parenting in the pandemic, and did it on, and because of my therapist, and he asked me like, so like, what tools did you use to like, get through those periods of time, like continuing to be respectful to your kids. And I know, he was looking for something really profound. And I literally was like, Oh, the television. I used the television, the television was on all the time. That's it,
Momma Cusses 33:31
I use cereal, and sorry, that's when I am at my breakpoint when I'm at the end, I don't have we're having cereal for dinner. And mom's gonna say sorry, as soon as she calls herself that she can mean it cereal, and sorry, that's how we cope with this shit.
KC Davis 33:46
Mine's TV and ice cream. So it'll be like, I'll just turn the TV on, like I've hit my limit. I can't be kind today, I'm gonna turn the TV on. And I'm not doing it from this perspective of like, this is going to be the rest of our life. I just know this is a hard period of time. I know that I'm reaching out to people I know that I'm trying to to build more skills, more resiliency, more ability to regulate in those moments. But those aren't overnight growth things. So in the meantime, if I have to choose between losing my patience and turning on the television, I have to take every blog that ever told me that I was going to you know, scramble my kids brains with too much TV, and just like punted out the window because the reality is nobody prepared me for how much parenting would just be harm reduction. Like I get it, like yelling at my kids isn't good for them. Sitting from the TV all day is probably not the greatest thing but like in this moment, I have to do just like pure harm reduction like better to turn on DuckTales than for me to break more brooms.
Momma Cusses 34:47
Yeah, absolutely. We made a very unpopular decision. You can't see it from where I'm but I'm sitting in my children's room. And right above my head right here is a TV that we put in our four year olds bedroom. Now to be clear, this is not used often it is used for Okay, we have all hit our breaking point we are all overtired, we are all overstimulated, you are gonna go watch My Little Pony in your room, because if mom has to watch My Little Pony with you, it will push her past to the edge. She's already dangerously close to tipping over.
KC Davis 35:21
Yeah, listen, the TV. And just in case anyone doesn't know, that's listening, all of the research around television, it does not show that television does something harmful to your children. What it shows is that there are other activities that are necessary for their brain development, it is necessary that they socialize it is necessary, they go outside, it's necessary that they do things with their hands, that they work out problems that they move their body around, you need that kind of thing in order to sort of optimally grow and mature. And if you're watching television, you're not doing those things, right. And so if a kid is watching TV all day long, sort of glued to the couch, like they're not necessarily getting those other things. And so we TV is not bad, but non TV time is good, right? It's good. It's really beneficial to have non TV time. Right. So that being said, it's also beneficial to have non mom screaming in your FaceTime.
Momma Cusses 36:23
Yeah, yeah. And I have the privilege to be able to just own a TV that I can put in the children's room, they're old enough to safely have the TV, we've got it mounted up high, because they're so for, but that we're old enough to handle this shit, I am privileged enough to provide this shit. And if I don't have to watch any more friggin monster trucks or My Little Pony, we're better. This is better for everybody, for you, for me, for everybody. And that being said, when you walk out into my living room, I bought letter magnets for my kids, because they need letter exposure, not just rote memorization, I have writing boards for them, I have sensory tubs for them. I've got all the Pinterest shit, it's just that we can't do the Pinterest shit on a percent of the time. Sometimes it's My Little Pony in the bedroom.
KC Davis 37:08
Well, not to mention, like, not everybody has a partner to hand kids off to not everybody has, like, there have been times where I've had to do work from home. And you physically cannot work from home, unless you are sometimes using the television. You physically can't cook a meal with your children clinging to your body, and almost putting their hands on the stove and almost like, you just have to do it sometimes. And I had to sort of get real about the fact that, yeah, man, I understand the benefit of non electronic toys, I get it, and my kids have lots of them. But that doesn't mean that I am somehow failing. When I need to finish an email and my kid wants to look at the electronic piano.
Momma Cusses 37:55
Yeah, it's not going to be the end all be all. The other thing that we've got going for us is a lot of us come from childhoods of the 80s and 90s, where there was a lot of demonizing of TV. And that has kind of stuck with us like our parents, we're gonna rot your brain out, your face is gonna get stuck that way, kind of those over the top parenting moments, just the catchphrases that sort of embedded themselves into our consciousness. We're raising 21st century kids. So in one fell swoop, the same groups that demonize screentime Oh screentime is gonna ruin your kid. Not only are we finding out not just that there are better options that we should probably make available as often as possible. But we're also then turning around and publishing this on our blog from our phone and then getting on our Yeah, like, we have an insane amount of screen time. accountants don't look at ledger books anymore. They look at computer screens. So we're raising 21st century kids. And so if we could stop demonizing the TV, we're really just acknowledging, yeah, we spend a lot of time interacting with screens. So let's teach how to use those responsibly instead of reactively.
KC Davis 39:10
And I think giving myself the permission to not be on. Like, I really spent the first few years of my kid's life thinking like, I need to be playing with them all day. I need to be engaging them all day. I need to be doing these things all day. I hate Candyland. What what happened right was I got really burnt out and I found myself like stealing glances of my phone all day long. And when I sort of stopped, and it was just out of desperation, like I checked out completely for a short period of time. And my therapist, God bless or, like, kind of gave me permission. She was like this week, I just want you to do the bare minimum. Like we just need to get to a point like and then sort of worked up to, okay, it's better for me to sit down on the couch and say to my kids, Mommy's gonna look at our phone for the next 15 Min. Let's y'all go play, and then transition to 30 minutes or 20 minutes of uninterrupted time with my kids, where I'm paying attention to them, and then transition to now I'm going to do the laundry or, and I would choose, like, I'm going to do the laundry and they go, can we help? And I'd say, yes, yes, you can. And then I'm gonna transition to cooking dinner and you're to go, can I help? I'm gonna go, no, no, you cannot. And you know what, maybe we'll flip those tomorrow. But like, I don't have to accept every invitation from my children, whether it's to play to participate. And that's hard for people, especially if they experienced a childhood where they felt like they were never involved, never connected, that we become afraid that we're going to do that to our kids. And I think it's hard to remember that our children don't have the same emotional context that we did. If we experienced something in that way, like, my kids, you know, they are actually learning good things about how to entertain themselves, how to play independently how to understand that mom is a real person that he has needs also, like, those are good things. I'm teaching my kids. And because I'm a connected mom, and a caring mom and a mom that says I'm sorry, and all these other things, my kids don't hear no, and then go, I'm so lonely. Whereas like, there are kids that hear no and say I'm so lonely, but it's because they're not getting that connection somewhere else. Like the most life changing parenting thing that I ever was told was that it's my job to be the parent that my children need. It's not my job to be the parent that I needed as a child.
Momma Cusses 41:30
Yeah, that's fantastic,
KC Davis 41:32
right? Because it and that's what happens. Like, if you had a really, really like, cold parent, we often become the parent that is so warm and involved that we're afraid to back off, we're afraid to give them any space. If you had a parent that was suffocating. Sometimes we are too afraid to be involved, because we don't want to do that. And if you're a parent that was like, we just tend to do that. And it's hard to remember like my kids need to hear yes, they need to hear no. So I try. I try to give them enthusiastic yeses and confident nose.
Momma Cusses 42:03
I think when you're re parenting yourself, while also parenting, it presents really unique challenges because our instinct is to go, this is how my dad handled this. So what is the opposite of that? And that might not be better than what your dad shows like, yeah, there's a middle ground somewhere in between, it's not. And you have to find that middle. My hand was a terrible object lesson. But you have to find that middle ground of okay, if the opposite of hyper controlling is free ranging it, there is middle ground, that is in fact the better option. But when you're re parenting yourself, while also parenting, it is really difficult to just go well I know not what my dad was. So what is not that and it's easiest just to switch to the opposite, which is maybe not the best. And that's where we get all of this parenting under stress. Because we're very aware of that. Well, it's not my dad, but it also can't be the opposite of mine.
KC Davis 43:05
Totally true. Well, I really appreciate you coming on. I love talking to you about parenting, probably more than I like talking to anybody else. Because I feel like we need more representations of what parenting in real life looks like.
Momma Cusses 43:20
That is the point of mama cusses is to normalize modern parenting. I
KC Davis 43:24
love it. Well, thank you. Can you tell everybody where they can find you? Yeah, you can find me on YouTube but pleasant peasant media. I'm on Tiktok and Instagram as mama CASAS and I'm on Facebook as this mama cusses or you can just shortcut all that shouldn't go to mama cusses.com. And you have a book that's going to come out. I do. I have a book currently titled mama curses, but we're very early in the publishing process. So it is expected to debut fall of 2023. And you've worked with publishing companies before the book currently titled mama cusses could not be that by the time it comes out. Okay, well, I still want people to know about it because they will so they can keep an eye out for it. Thank you so much going on. Thank you for having me.