150: A Convo with Cory, my 9th grade son

0 (1s):
My name’s Randi Rubenstein, and welcome to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast at Mastermind Parenting, we’re on a mission to support strong-willed kids and the families that love them. You’re listening to the, the Mastermind Parenting Podcast with Randi Rubenstein and Corey Rubinstein today, episode one 50, I’m here with Corey Rubenstein. Hello, 15 year old son, baby, as a family. And I asked him if he’d record a podcast with me because he actually had an a, I don’t know, because you said you were going to start a podcast, but that never happened.

0 (41s):
Yeah. Why?

1 (44s):
I didn’t have the right people working with me on it.

0 (47s):
Anyway, I’ve been driving Corey the school, his sister went off to college. So for the first time, in several years, I’ve been driving him to, and from school, we have a lot of conversations, some of which you get a little heated. In fact, you got annoyed with me the other day, which we’re going to talk about, but not quite yet. Before we talk about that this month, we have a theme every month. And our theme this month is balance, which is really about doing the things that make you feel good on the inside and having a balance around the things that don’t make you feel good.

0 (1m 29s):
And one of the things I focused on in the first episode was how COVID for a lot of us has been, has been sort of like for a lot of moms has been sort of a nice built-in excuse. Like, oh, we have to say no to that invitation because we can’t go because you know, our health. And so it was interesting because last night tell you don’t don’t name names, but like,

1 (2m 0s):
Okay. I had a friend who was like, I dunno wanted, I didn’t not want to come over because I dunno, I just wanted to be a while myself and a half. And she was like a sort of trying to invite herself over and I just blamed it on COVID and it’s just an easy excuse. And it’s just, it’s convenient. It’s convenient.

0 (2m 24s):
But what happens when, when everyone’s vaccinated because the kids aren’t vaccinated yet, most adults I know were vaccinated. What you were like, well, I haven’t been around her

1 (2m 38s):
Would probably go back to the old excuse and just say, my mom says you can’t come or just blame it on you somehow. I did. You used to

0 (2m 45s):
Tell me, I tell my kids to blame it on me. That it’s easy to blame it on me. It’s fine. And

2 (2m 56s):
What’s like,

0 (2m 57s):
Why wouldn’t you say, Hmm, I think I’m just going to lay low tonight and hang in. Why would you not say that? Okay.

1 (3m 5s):
Actually I did say that. And then she was like a Jewish kept trying to invite herself over. It was a little interesting.

0 (3m 14s):
So if you, so if you, if it starts, so you do say, Hmm, I, you know, basically this is about me. I just want to be home. I just want to be home for the night. You feel like you can advocate for yourself.

1 (3m 27s):
Yeah. But like, she, I guess didn’t understand that where she was, maybe she had no boundaries. Okay.

2 (3m 38s):
So apparently

0 (3m 40s):
This is going on for our kids too. And as we work on boundaries, as we start to model how we can say no and make it about us, like, no, I don’t want to go out and have plans during the week because I like to be in my bed to do. I like to be in my dad. And I, is there anyone LaMer than me and dad? Now

1 (4m 1s):
You guys do the bed, chilling. A Reed seems really boring. Or we watch shows.

2 (4m 9s):
We’ve got shows. Yeah. I know

0 (4m 13s):
We play with dogs. It’s it’s exciting over here. So, yeah. And you know what I would say to you guys to teach your kids that they’re allowed to, they’re not responsible for other people’s feelings. So as long as they’re respectful, I just want to be home. Or I’m just going to hang with my family tonight. Or I have family dinner or I I’m kinda tired. I just want to be at home. And if they have some, if it’s as if it’s an awkward situation, because peer pressure is a thing. Give your kids the excuse of throwing you under the bus. Only every time. Like, what do you see?

0 (4m 53s):
Like, I, that’s what I said, like, what am I trying to when cool mama, the ear with the freaking teenagers? No, just blame it on me. If you’re, if somebody wants to put you in a risky situation or something’s, you know, not making you comfy, then you just blame it on me. Or we have a code word. Do we have a code word? Every, and I used to have like a code text where she would text me a word and then I would call her and be an act mean like, you need to get home right now. You know, maybe we need to do that again. Here’s another little tidbit. Corey is our youngest and we forgot to be parents when he started to become a teenager.

0 (5m 34s):
Do you remember when we were fighting constantly about like every weekend? Like, what time are you going to stay out what time? And it was like this negotiation every freaking weekend. And then we had dinner and then we were like, oh my gosh, we forgot to like, go over having a curfew. And how many nights in a row, you can have a sleepover and we forgot to do all that. And that rule, we didn’t the, I remember where you were, you were on the stairs. We were arguing about it. It was Friday. And then I realized like every single weekend, we’re arguing about this. And it’s because we hadn’t had a productive conversation. So we made it a time to sit down. You were the scribe you had, you wrote down in the rules.

0 (6m 17s):
Oh yeah. The rules

2 (6m 18s):
Member. Yeah. And you don’t

1 (6m 20s):
Remember a signed it? G O R Y. So I wasn’t liable. Yeah.

0 (6m 24s):
But I, you, you cop to it right away. That’s a tricky I had to admit to it. Okay. So another story I wanted to tell, and this may not be one episode. I may chop this up into different episodes, just so you know, I’m not sure. We’ll see. I got to go get something for my, from my room for one second. So I want you to talk to the camera and tell the story about the little girl that came in to the doctor’s office the other day. Okay. We’re waiting. And I’ll just set it up for a sec. We’re waiting in the waiting room and a little girl, little tiny wirey, hyper girl about the age of probably six or seven comes in with her mom.

0 (7m 12s):
Now you go.

1 (7m 16s):
So we’re sitting there and there’s this little girl and she’s like acting all crazy. And she runs, she walks in, she’s doing this. And the mom is just immediately like, just yelling at her all the time. Just like, you need to stop. You need to like, act normal, be normal, all this stuff. And then a little, girl’s just like, that’s not helping. And so she starts like looking chairs and stuff and acting all crazy. And then the mom’s just yelling at her and there’s like, me and my mom, this other guy in there, it says completely out of hand and Randi, Rubenstein.

3 (7m 53s):
What do you get that before you got there?

0 (7m 56s):
What did you say? How is the little girl’s like spitting Loogi is on the ground and you’re looking for the chair. Yeah. She was a little lacking. Everything. She was spending the mom, I think put antibacterial stuff on her hands. And it’s a little girl was licking everything. She was obviously very kinesthetic, wanted to touch and lick and do all of the things. And, and so she had the antibacterial on her hands and then she looks her hands and then she, it tastes disgusting. It’s like alcohol. So then she started spitting everywhere. The mom doesn’t have a Kleenex or anything. She literally spitting giant league is on the floor. Oh. And Elsa was she, she was coughing.

1 (8m 35s):
She, she was coughing and she didn’t have a mask on. And the other guy in there was so clearly uncomfortable and he was just like, shrugging away,

3 (8m 44s):
Goes to the corner.

0 (8m 47s):
And so she, yeah. So the, you know, the, mom’s not making eye contact with anyone cause she’s completely mortified and said a little girls coughing. And you know, nowadays, if you’re coughing in public without a mask, especially if you’re a little kid, you’re like a little COVID carrier. So everybody it’s like, she, you know, she had the

2 (9m 11s):
What’s it called, like she like, like

0 (9m 15s):
Cooties, you know? Like everyone’s like, oh, so did you say, how are you? Like, show me your phone, where you texted me.

1 (9m 22s):
Oh yeah. I forgot about that. What did that text

0 (9m 24s):
You? I don’t know. But talk close into the Microsoft. People can hear you.

1 (9m 28s):
I think I texted like a, I don’t remember like, like this mom, this mom needs like Randi, Rubenstein parenting or something like that. I think that’s what I said.

0 (9m 41s):
Yeah. Yeah. So he’s like this mom needs Randi Rubenstein parenting, which look, when we see a kid acting out of control, it’s very normal for all of us to go to a place of judgment, you know? And, and this mom was clean. The little girl was clearly pretty out of control and the mom was clearly doing it wrong. Did you say anything about what the mom was doing?

1 (10m 3s):
Yeah. Yeah. I just said she was like yelling her and saying like, act normal wars or like be normal or something like that. I don’t know the normal what’s wrong with you. She was like, she was

0 (10m 12s):
Like, what is wrong with you? Stop it. Stop. What’s wrong with you? And the little girl is obviously very used to being yelled at because she’s completely ignoring the mom and blowing her off and giggling and spitting more and acting more crazy. Sorry, am I keeping you up?

2 (10m 32s):
You know what? You’re

0 (10m 33s):
Yawning. So, right. So like it’s super easy place to judge this mom and judge the kids. So some people would go to a place of, you know, what a shitty little kid and some people will go to the place of what’s wrong with that. Mom and Corey shows me that and it’s clear. And so I just, so now you can go into the next part of the story where you expecting me to do what I did. What did you, I don’t know what happened next.

1 (11m 5s):
You said you like interacted with the daughter and said like, I dunno, like, is that fun or something like that? I don’t know. You like interacted with her. So then she was like distracted and she stopped like licking and like doing all these gross things. And the mom was just kind of sitting there accepting it. And then, oh, you talked about how she’d like dresses and stuff. The mom was like talking and then she was, I don’t know she was being good for like when you were talking to her and that’s all I recall.

0 (11m 43s):
So the little girl, so I’m noticing all of this and, and my heart’s actually kind of breaking for the little girl because I know exactly how this story turns out. However many years later, you know, like this little girl, well, I’ll share that because we talked about that in the parking lot. I looked at the little girl and she’s got an adorable sense of style. She’s got like this Bob tear, she’s got like this, this kind of funky bow headband on these little leggings, this layer, this shirt with this little layered shirt underneath and these cute little leopardy shoes. And, and so all of a sudden I’m like this little girl has a really cute sense of style.

0 (12m 27s):
And I could tell the mom and her were not super connected. So it didn’t seem like the situation where the mom’s like picking out cute outfits for the daughter. I could tell the little girl probably had dressed herself. And so I was like, what is this whole, all luck? I was like, I am loving it now what I said. And so I just started talking to her, like she was a, full-fledged a little person. And I was like, how did you put all that together? So that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. And she was, and she kind of starts getting kind of like, like looking away and kind of smiling and looking kind of coy. And so then the mom starts saying, oh, it was an accident. It normally doesn’t look this cute.

0 (13m 7s):
She just accidentally, she didn’t mean to make it look cute. Yeah. The mom was like, what really weird? The mom was like, our, you could not accept this compliment coming towards her daughter. And the little daughter was just like, looking like this. And then, you know, I start, I keep kind of talking about this whole sense of style, loving this look, whatever. And, and it was honest because it really was cute because I was just looking for anything I could possibly connect with the little girl on and make the little girl may be, feel a little bit better about herself. And, and then the moms looks a little girl and she does what so many of us are guilty of. She just said something nice to you say, thank you.

0 (13m 49s):
You remember that? Say, thank you. And I just interrupted. And I was like, oh, she already said, thank you. She said, thank you with her eyes. And then a little girl kinda when, you know, look like this. And then the next thing you know, the mom gave you her her phone and why she gave her her phone. We didn’t hear much else from her. That was it. So what I would say is, is that it’s easy. You know, especially with our most challenging kids who are acting like this little girl was acting spitting, coughing, you know? So you feel the other adults looking at you judging you and the mom, you know, the mom’s not coming in prepared.

0 (14m 36s):
I’m sure the mom lives her life. This is their interaction probably outside of the office. So the other, the mom’s not coming in with her waiting room bag, with little activities in it. And remember the restaurant. Yeah. Like little kids hate going to restaurants. Like we always had a restaurant bag. You have a little things that live in the restaurant bag. You go, kids are not used to waiting. And so you come with stuff and you’re prepared and they have, they’re a little activities and they’re things. And, and now you’re setting them up for success. So the mom didn’t come in with anything like this. And lo and behold, she gives her the screen and the screen at least keeps the child quiet and keeps her from behaving in this way.

0 (15m 24s):
And so I think it’s easy to get into that habit of doing the screen. But what I was going to say also is, and I think that’s where, how it starts, you know, the screen addiction at such a young age, this is how it starts. It’s the easiest go-to method. And, you know, I’m sure the mom was stressed out, but when we left and we were, you know, after our appointment and we were talking about them, we were going to the, to the car. I said, you know, the sad thing is, is that I know how a little girl, like this turns out because in the first seven years of life, all of the messages, the child hears that becomes the things they say to themselves.

0 (16m 4s):
So all that, what’s wrong with you stop. And that just, you’re so annoying. There’s something the matter with you, you’re disgusting. That’s basically, even in the mom, never said, you’re disgusting. She was acting like you’re disgusting. So now this is going to be a little girl at 14 years old, 15 years old and onward, who’s saying to herself, well, I’m disgusting. What’s wrong with me? This is how low self-worth is created. And this is, you know, that’s why I think so many women and men, this is why so many people struggle with self worth. But what I said was the sad thing is, is that the mom’s not thinking that she’s doing that.

0 (16m 48s):
In fact, the mom’s probably sharing the same messages with her that she was raised with. And so this is how, this is how the cycle repeats low self-worth begets low self-worth. We get a low self-worth and its just, you know, it’s just sad. It’s just really sad. So we were talking about that and I’m going to cop to a mom mistake that I made. I’ve made some major mom mistakes around technology myself while I may have had the restaurant bag and not have plugged you in, you know like that mom did.

0 (17m 35s):
When you were a little, once you got old enough to get a cell phone, we were so hesitant. We give our kids cell phones in sixth grade when they go to the middle school. And we were so hesitant with Corey because know once they get the cell phone they’re gone. And

1 (17m 54s):
I don’t like that. She says, because I feel like I’m not done, but we will keep going.

0 (17m 58s):
We will keep going. So I constantly am noticing when he’s what we call nationalizing. Define a socializing.

2 (18m 9s):
Okay. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Just

1 (18m 11s):
Staring at your phone instead of socializing. No socializing, no face and a phone in your face knows. Yeah.

0 (18m 20s):
So like you’re with other humans, but your S your attention is on a screen. And so it makes me crazy when I see this, however, the apple never falls far. There’s many times. In fact, you called me out. I remember when you were in fourth grade and I was P I had a call. I was like, I’m the mom who can work and pick my kid up from school. And I was picking you up from Trafton. You don’t like killing your phone when you pick you up. Yeah, because I had this call that was like a meeting that happened at, from three to four o’clock every single Tuesday. So every Tuesday I would pick them up and I would have my, my air pod in and he’d get in the car and I’d be like, you know, because in my mind, I’m like, we have a rule of no phones.

0 (19m 13s):
Like if the driver can’t be on their phone, can’t be texting. Nobody else can be on their phone. So that’s our rule. But on Tuesday afternoons, I would break that rule. And I justified it because I was like, I’m picking them up all these other days. It’s fine. But just that one day would send Cory the message that he was important. And he is a little kid and he’s, you know, just had a full day of school. He gets in the car. He wants to know that the other person in the car is ready to maybe have a conversation with him, or at least in the car with him and present. And, and so you said, Hey, can you have somebody else pick me up on, on, on the days that you have calls?

0 (20m 0s):
Cause I really don’t like, it basically asks for our babysitter. Cause he knew that if our babysitter picked him up, she wouldn’t be on her phone. And so, so ha you know, so now when I’m like stop <inaudible> hello, pot, meet kettle. Like I, have you ever heard that term? The pot calling the kettle black. So when I see my kids on their screens, it reminds me of my own, all of the moments that I haven’t been present. And so it’s almost like it’s a mirror making me face my own hypocrisy, my own struggle with being present my own choosing screen’s you choosing to nationalize over the people that I’m with.

0 (20m 51s):
You know, it’s been a form of distraction for me as well as overworking has as well as different things over the years. So when I see my kids doing something that I know I’m guilty of doing, it’s almost like I want to tell them how to do it differently because I want to, I don’t want to believe that I’ve passed that down and it makes me feel guilty. It makes me feel ashamed. It makes me feel like I haven’t been as present as engaged as I want to be. So this is the definition of insanity because I keep do I know I’m doing this. I know I’m doing this and yet I keep doing it.

0 (21m 33s):
So I put rules on him. And then I still am guilty. Many times of choosing technology over. Do you feel like I do not, not really.

2 (21m 48s):
You don’t know really?

1 (21m 53s):
Do you still know? Not anymore.

0 (21m 56s):
No. At the L so look, I used to a little, so what was modeled for him before he had a phone was many times of me choosing technology over being with him. Now he has technology and he’s doing what was modeled for him when his brain was being shaped. But now all of a sudden, because I’m faced with it because he’s holding up a mirror saying here we’re many years, mom, where you weren’t quite as present as you thought you were, and now I’m doing it. And now I’m trying to correct him, even though it took me many years to correct my own behavior.

2 (22m 32s):
When you say that’s true. Yes.

0 (22m 35s):
And so the other morning we were in the car. And so a lot of times I think about this stuff at night, or I’ll write about it in the morning and like things that I feel guilty about. Like, I want to have more balance around choosing people over a technology and I’ve worked really hard on that. And so I’ll think about all these things. And then in the car, on the ride to school, I want to tell them all the things, or I’ll have an agenda of something that I want to teach him. And what did you say to me the other morning?

1 (23m 9s):
So you are late for this. I said, I just woke up and I got really mad. I got really mad. Yeah. He got mad. He was mad.

0 (23m 23s):
I mean, so you were, I mean, you got mad and you were like, can we please just not have a serious conversation? Like, can we just, like, he was basically saying, can we just be, and he was a, you know, we have a rule of, no, you can’t be on your phone in the car. So it’s not like he was saying, I’m going to be on my screen. Instead it, she just was basically like, we can

1 (23m 49s):
Have normal conversations. We don’t have to talk about things that make me uninterested and unhappy.

0 (23m 55s):
Right. Like he was basically saying like, stop the mom agenda and all the shit you want to teach me. Like, I just want to ride to school and have a minute to wake up. And can we just like B and I sometimes have a hard time just being, which is super hypocritical, that I’m always on him going get off your screen and get off your screen, you know, people before technology. But yet he’s over here saying, can we just be, does it always have to be a serious talk? So, yeah. So I think that that is definitely something needs to shift and change. I think I’m gonna stop doing that.

0 (24m 35s):
And then what we do, I listened to you and we turned on some talk radio.

1 (24m 40s):
Yeah. And then we had a good, funny talk or we listened to that. A

2 (24m 44s):
Sandra Bernhardt. Yeah. She was fun.

0 (24m 46s):
Yeah. And a, and that was me also sitting there going, okay, we can’t talk about anything serious. And I don’t feel like just listening to music. So I put it on radio, Andy and listen to something that I wanted to listen to

1 (24m 58s):
Radio. Andy is great. I would suggest it.

0 (25m 2s):
Radio and TV is awesome. And so we were listening to the Sandra Bernhardt. Okay. So all that being said, I thought of that topic of, I think this is on a lot of moms radars have the balance around technology is especially with summer coming up. The last thing we want to see is our kids sitting on the couch, rotting in front of screens all summer long. And so I think it’s easy.

1 (25m 31s):
You want to hear that a plan? I just made what I it’s in my head since this morning. Okay. I’m not saying no to any plans this summer. You’re coming from a place of yes. Like if I get invited to somewhere, like, like if I, if I’m too lazy to go somewhere, I’m just going to go and not be lazy. Hmm. It’s a good plan. She’s in people before technology.

2 (26m 2s):
Yeah. I like it.

0 (26m 4s):
Yeah. And you know what I’m, I think I need to make a commitment that we’re going to come up with our plan together in terms of the screens and such at together. And I’m not going to know a gin nag about it. I’m not going to know a generic about it. If I have to follow through on something I’ll follow through on something. Like if we have a deal where we have some screen-free hours, can we have some screen-free hours just like to keep us on track?

2 (26m 37s):
Yeah.

0 (26m 38s):
Okay. So it made me, so of course when after it was after that morning, I, after, after, when I get home from driving you to school, I’ll read a little chapter in one of my favorite books, untamed. And it just so happened to be the exact topic I needed. Magical. The universe is magical. Okay. Hold on. I would like Corey to read this chapter. The whole chapter. Wait, look how short the chapter is. One.

1 (27m 17s):
No, I can’t read all this look.

0 (27m 20s):
It’s like, it’s like three and a half pages. Four pages. Okay. Read what you want. And then all read the rest.

1 (27m 28s):
When chase was a little, we’d find a matter a kitchen table, a drawing maps with the world and making lists of every country on earth and its Capitol. He’d pass the entire afternoons, writing his own song lyrics. And we’d collect a little poems. He left all over the house. Okay.

0 (27m 42s):
Just real a little bit. Okay. I’ll read a check. When you turn for a team, we bought ’em a cell phone ’cause he does a really want a blend. And we wanted to make him happy slowly. We watched him fade away. He stopped drawing maps and reading and writing. And we stopped finding poems around the house. When he was with us. I could sense his need to be there instead. So even when he wasn’t on his phone, he was gone. He was just hovering among us. His eyes changed, sorry. His eyes change. They became a little duller and heavier. They’d been in the brightest size I’d ever seen. And then one day they just weren’t in his phone. Chase had found a place easier to exist in easier to exist in than inside his own skin. That was tragic because inside the itchiness of our own skin is where we discover who we are.

0 (28m 27s):
When we’re bored. We ask ourselves, what do I want to do with myself? We’re guided towards certain things, a pen and paper, a guitar, the forest in the backyard, a soccer ball, a spatula at the moment after we don’t know what to do with ourselves is the moment we find ourselves right after itchy, boredom is self discovery, but we have to hang in there long enough without baling. There’s so much about phones and children that parents worry about. We worry that we’re raising children with commodified views of sex, lack of real connection, filtered concepts of what it means to be human. But I find myself worrying most that when we hand our children phones, we still their boredom from them. That’s exactly. Isn’t that a true? I know it’s so it’s so I love her.

0 (29m 11s):
As a result, we’re raising a generation of writers who will never start writing artists who will never start doodling chefs, who will never make a mess of the kitchen athletes who will never kick a ball against a wall and musicians. Who’ll never pick up their aunt’s guitar and start strumming. When you read a little more. Hmm.

1 (29m 32s):
I was once talking on a Silicon to a Silicon valley executive who had played an integral integral role in the creation and proliferation of cell phones. I asked how old her kids had been. When she’d bought them phones, she laughed and said, oh, my kids don’t have phones. Ah, I said, don’t get your kids high on your own supply. Those who had those who made the phones are creative people. They want their children to be become people who create, not just consume. They don’t want their children searching for themselves out there. They want them discovering themselves in here. They know that phones were designed to keep us addicted to exterior life. And then if we ever dive inward, we’d never become who we were meant to be.

0 (30m 18s):
Abby and Craig and I talked about Chase’s slow fade incessantly, but we didn’t do anything about it. I knew in my gut that chase was becoming addicted to his phone and that this was interrupting his growth in peace. But I was afraid that if I took the phone, he’d be left behind and left out. He’d be so different from the others. It, right? Yes. It took me two more years to remember that fear of being different is a terrible reason for a parent to avoid doing what a child needs her to do. When chase was a freshman in high school, I asked him to take a walk with me. I know, same age as you. I turned to my bright, beautiful boy and said, I make a lot. I make a lot of mistakes parenting you, but I only know their mistakes. In retrospect, I’ve never made a decision for you that I know in real time is wrong for you until now.

0 (31m 4s):
I sort of feel that way about the phone too. I know I’m not doing right by you letting you keep that phone in your life. I know that if I took it away, you’d be more content. You’d be more content. Again. You’d be present. You might have less contact with all your peers, but you’d have more real connection with your friends. You’d probably start reading again and you’d live inside that beautiful brain and heart of yours instead of the cyber world, we’d waste less of our precious time together. I know this, I know what I need to do for you. And I’m not doing it. I think it’s because all of your friends have phones and I don’t want you to have to be different, but everybody’s doing it reason. But then I think about how it’s not all that unusual for everybody to be doing something that we later find out is addictive and deadly like smoking.

0 (31m 45s):
Everybody was doing that a couple of decades ago. Chase was quiet for a while. We kept walking. Then he said, I read this thing that said that kids are getting more depressed and stressed than ever before, ever before, because the phones, it also said we can’t talk to each other as well. I noticed those things about myself sometimes, lately. I also read the ed. Sheeran gave up his phone. What

2 (32m 6s):
A guy did he give a fish? I dunno, but he is scary looking. Have you seen them? Yeah.

0 (32m 14s):
He’s talented. Yeah. He’s good. Why don’t you imagine he did that. He said he wants to create things inside instead of looking at things other people create and he wants to see the world through his own eyes instead of through a screen. I think I’d probably be happier without my phone. Sometimes I feel like I have to check it like a controls. Me. It’s like a job I don’t want, I don’t want or get paid for or anything. It feels stressful sometimes. Okay. I said chase and Tish both decided to quit social media and use their phones. Only for texting. We’re going to wait until high school to get AMA a phone. We didn’t, we do not want to give her a job while she’s so young. We want to give her the gift of boredom so she can discover who she is before she learns what the world wants her to be.

0 (32m 56s):
We’ve decided that our job as her parents is not to keep her happy. Our job is to keep her human. Hmm. Is that a good line? Probably. This is why don’t you see a need?

1 (33m 7s):
This is not a story about phones. This is a story

2 (33m 12s):
Knowing,

1 (33m 14s):
Okay. Brave parenting is listening to the knowing ours and our children’s. It’s doing what’s true and beautiful for our child. No matter how counter-cultural it seems it’s about how, when we know what our children need, we don’t pretend

2 (33m 28s):
Not. No, I love the dramatic.

0 (33m 34s):
That was deep. That was deep Glennon. She’s a GE

2 (33m 42s):
Yeah. Chippewa.

0 (33m 44s):
Isn’t it? What does a GE a God

2 (33m 46s):
Know Dubois? Oh, she’s a doer. She’s a jewel bow. No, just a wild.

0 (33m 51s):
But when you are you, what does that mean? When you say she is a G?

1 (33m 56s):
Well, I mean, it means God, like she’s a God, but like I said, it more like, like legends and why don’t you say she’s an L a, because that’s just not right. She’s an OJI and that’s original gangster. Say a letters. She’s

0 (34m 15s):
A G NGL. She’s a G NGL not going to lie. That’s my favorite TB Hage. TB Hage. Okay. I think that wraps it up. Tech balance. Yeah. Being human people before technology

1 (34m 36s):
Being a human is our greatest gift in this world. And you need to embrace not being a hypocrite.

2 (34m 45s):
Learning how to be, right? Yes. It’s just like the

1 (34m 50s):
Great religion Taoism. You must know how to be, to be able to be. Mm.

0 (34m 56s):
I don’t know

1 (34m 57s):
What that means, but it sounds great. It does

0 (35m 2s):
Sound great. Okay. So for those of you, we call them the core

2 (35m 9s):
With the following the core look. Did you see the pictures we put up behind?

0 (35m 15s):
Here’s a look at this. Look at this with the core.

2 (35m 17s):
Hold on. Let me look. Not one, you know? Yeah. The little one he used to a blow through. I’m in the middle of the Avery one.

0 (35m 30s):
Where’s your, oh, oh my gosh. I think we just,

2 (35m 33s):
The glass broke. Dammit. Gosh. Darn it. Dammit.

0 (35m 39s):
Whoa. It’s okay. Geez. It’s all right. Okay. Thanks for listening. And that’s what we got for you.

1 (35m 49s):
That is it. Stoker’s of stoke nation.

0 (35m 51s):
He loves he’ll. Tell him about your favorite podcast.

1 (35m 55s):
Mmm. It’s a good one. It’s called going deep with Chad and JT by a John Tomas and Chad and yeah, it’s, it’s a very intellectual,

0 (36m 5s):
The Primo. They are, what are the human rights? Activists.

1 (36m 10s):
They’re actually stoke activists. So they like to raise stoke in the niche.

0 (36m 16s):
That’s literally what they say. They’re like, and how long are their episodes?

1 (36m 22s):
An hour and 30 minutes. Yeah.

0 (36m 25s):
And his older brother turned him onto it. I’ve watched

1 (36m 27s):
About like 30 episodes. Yeah. Or listened. Do you watch or listen, listen. Yeah. Yeah.

0 (36m 34s):
They’re obsessed with it. They said they, they don’t like short podcasts because they liked the long format because it’s just like a window into what? Into the real conversations. Wow.

1 (36m 46s):
Yeah. They talk about some very deep things, but also they keep it funny. They keep it real.

0 (36m 53s):
It’s fun. It’s fun. It’s, it’s fun to learn when

2 (36m 58s):
You’re laughing too. That’s the trick. That’s the trick.

0 (37m 3s):
I’m still learning. Still learning how to do that in our morning car rides. Yeah. We’re going to bring it down and that’s what I’m committed to. We’re going to bring it down a notch on the morning car rides. Okay. Bye guys. Have a great week. Thanks for listening today, guys. I hope you picked up some tips tools, maybe some baby steps for creating more balance and boundaries in your life. And I just wanted to let you know, if you want to continue moving the needle forward in creating this for yourself, having a happier household. I want you to go to my website and check out Mastermind, Parenting dot com. We have three beginning programs and you need some accountability and more support.

0 (37m 48s):
Then please look for the one that would be a good fit for you. And as always, we’re on all the social channels under Mastermind Parenting on Instagram, it’s Mastermind, underscore parenting, uhm, and you know, periodically I do pop up on different Instagram lives, Facebook lives, where I give you a teaching and coaching. And I love engaging with you live to help you help your strong-willed kids so that they can feel better because when they feel better, they do better. And I love, love, love getting to know you guys. So thanks for listening. If you liked this podcast, please don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review super, super appreciative.