Episode 80
This episode is the 3rd in the KNOW, LOVE, GROW series and is all about getting to know your children better, specifically your young adult.
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Episode 19: Parents’ Hardest Questions Answered with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife
A special thank you to Clarice Paulson and Caleb Price for being open and honest in the questions I asked them.
I have coached many parents, and also coached many young adults. I have seen how often both groups are misunderstanding each other and working against each other instead of together.
The two main ways Clarice and Caleb said parents are making their lives harder are:
#1 – Parents are trying to limit their YA choices and take away their agency because they are afraid of the choices their YA will make. They don’t want to allow their YA to experience failure and the consequences of their actions, so they are trying to control what their YA’s life looks like.
#2 – When young adults are making choices and they are not the ones the parents want them to make, the parents are labeling themselves as a failure as a parent. Parents are putting their own value and success on the line depending on what choices their YA makes, and that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on their YA.
Tune in after the interview for my insights into how you can start to combat these issues in your parenting and in your family.
Want to contact Clarice?
https://www.balancedrecovery.coach/
https://www.instagram.com/coachingbyclarice/
Want to contact Caleb?
http://www.calebpricecoaching.com/
https://www.instagram.com/calebthecollegecoach/
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Full Transcript
Tina Gosney
I hope you’ve been following along this month on the no part of the no love grow series. So January is all about knowing knowing yourself, knowing your family members, and how does that help us to have better family relationships. When I decided to do this series on know love grow, I knew that I needed to include this particular episode.
I’ve coached parents, many parents and I’ve also coached some of those same parents children, I know that we are not understanding each other. And sometimes that’s on a small scale. Sometimes on it’s, it’s on a very large scale. And that’s a problem.
Parents, I know that you are creating problems for young adults. Young adults, I know there are ways that you are scaring your parents to death in so many ways.
This episode is all about giving the young adults a microphone and letting them share their experiences. You are not going to hear me trying to explain the parents position or contradict these young adults, I would ask you to do the same. Let them talk really listen to what they are saying really take it in.
Last fall, my stake held an emotional resilience conference for the youth. And the next day they held a fireside for parents and leaders of youth. Some of those same presenters that have participated in the conference, we’re there to talk to the adults at the fireside. One of the presenters who was a counselor who works directly with youth said, “Parents, you are trying to clear the road for your child. And there’s absolutely no way for you to do that. You need to prepare your child for the road. And you know, above that you’re not even really ready to do that either. You need to do your own work before you can help them.”
Talk about a powerful statement. But what this counselor said rang true for me for several reasons. And one of those reasons is that I’ve worked with enough parents, and I’ve worked with enough young adults that I’ve seen both sides of this equation. I know so many youth are not prepared to face the things that they are facing. And I know parents are still working out so many things within themselves, that they’re not really able to help their children from an emotionally clean place.
Parents, the more we understand ourselves, and why we are doing what we are doing, the more we can address those things that are ours to deal with. And we don’t put those burdens on our children. For this episode, I sought out a couple of young adults who I knew would very be very open and forthcoming in the questions I wanted to ask. And I really wanted young adults who were aware of themself, which is not super common at this age to be very self aware. But for that reason, I chose young adults who are coaches, because coaches have done a lot of internal work no matter what age they are.
I think by the time you get done listening to this episode, you will have so much love and appreciation for these two young adults. They are honest, they’re open, and they talk about some pretty vulnerable things. I have some things I’ll share with you on the other side of this discussion. If the things that Caleb and Clarice talk about, sound familiar to you, make sure you are tuning in after the interview for some ideas on what you can do to begin working in these areas. Enjoy this interview that I had with Clarice and Caleb. So I want to introduce Clarice Paulson and Caleb Price.
Tina Gosney
Clarice, would you just introduce yourself to the listeners really quick?
Clarice Paulson
Yeah, my name is Clarice. I’m a certified life coach through the Life Coach School much like Caleb and Tina and I coached specifically with young adults who are primarily female and we coach on disordered eating and eating disorders, and kind of anything in that realm. Regarding body image and self esteem,
Tina Gosney
Hey, do you have like a certain age group that you like to focus on?
Clarice Paulson
No, I focus a lot on college students, because that’s kind of my, that’s where I’m at right now. And so I can really relate to them on the journey of recovery. But I do have a lot of high school clients who are struggling right now with the beginning waves of diet culture.
Tina Gosney
Good. Oh, that’s such a needed niche. I’m so glad that you’re doing that. Thank you so much. Caleb, what about you? Would you give us an introduction?
Caleb Price
Hi, yeah, I’m Caleb price, also known as the college coach. That’s what I call myself. I got introduced to the world of coaching about two years ago, thanks to my mom, and thanks to my own crisis. And now I help people through that same one college when it comes to breaking up with anxiety and establishing basically a character of confidence of coming into college, being successful in it, knowing how to navigate studying, dating, the whole landscape of it, it’s changed my life. It’s helped me so much. And so right now I work as a software developer, just graduated, will be getting a master’s, but I love coaching. College students are basically young adults, during this time when it comes to their anxiety, and feeling like they need purpose and aren’t good enough, because that was me. I want to help people through it.
Tina Gosney
I’m sure that there are plenty of people that can relate to what you just said about being in college building and that like you’re not good enough, and just having anxiety. That’s such a huge narrative these days for college kids. Well and beyond to it’s not just college. Right?
Caleb Price
That’s what I just think. You can start now.
Tina Gosney
Yeah, let’s get them, you know, having a better mindset about themselves and about the world around them when they’re young before they hit the real world.
So we’re going to be talking today about a couple of things. In fact, when I reached out to Clarice and Caleb, I said, Hey, if you were going to say, these are the things that I think parents need to know. And what would you say? And immediately, they both knew the same thing. Both said pretty much the same thing. So we’re going to focus on those few things that came up when I asked you guys that question, which I thought, if I was going to answer that question myself, I would have given the same answer. So I think all three of us are on the same page about what we’re going to talk about today. And the first one was, parents really are wanting to exert a lot of control in the life of their young adults. They’re not wanting to allow them to make their own decisions, and experience failure. So Caleb, why do you think that that is happening today with parents? What do you see happening? And what insights do you have into that?
Caleb Price
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s just natural to not want our children to fail. I mean, speaking from the mind as if I was a parent, because it’s basically like, it steals like our product, like we have created this human being we’ve raised them up, therefore they are a part of us. And they’re gonna go out there in the world, and we care about them. on a deep level, I think almost every emotion or everything that we do that honestly might feel a little bit negative, or come with the not the intended result is always usually coming from a good place. And so when it comes to the parents, it’s always coming from a place of love, but unintentionally holding us back from experiencing the real world.
So taking the example of like going to college and dating and whatnot. Like, we might be so concerned about how they’re doing that we might want to, like, always be checking up on them. Always be figuring out where they are in their life reassuring, or we might be concerned about like, what kind of degree that they’re getting, where are they like, what are they studying? What is their career path, we want to know their plan. That’s why it’s just like from high school onward, we’re like, what is your plan? Like, what are you doing? Meanwhile, the kid is just like, I don’t know. They’re figuring it out along the way. And so then all that pressures put upon them. Of course, this has been created in their mind. But it doesn’t help that the parents are kind of reinforcing this narrative that like, hey, all the chips are on you, you need to perform in order for me to be considered successful because we love you. And from that place of love, unfortunately, there’s this disconnect. I feel like when it comes to then, like not wanting them to fail because we think failure is bad.
We think that if they fail or if they mess up, that let’s say they need to switch their major, let’s say they get into a career that they don’t like Let’s say that relationship goes bad. Maybe they even get divorced. I don’t know all these things that parents worry about, especially when children come to figuring out their identity. In this world, we attach so much pressure on that they need to turn out a certain way, because we have a way that in our mind that this is the way that it works. This is the way that successful, this is the way that is not considered a failure. And even when we deviate a little bit from it, as children, it can feel like, well, then I messed up. And if I messed up, then like, you know, I’m not good enough. And clearly, like, what’s the point of this, like, my whole life has led up to this point. And I feel like I, you know, let this person down.
Tina Gosney
So when you have that kind of pressure put on you, does that feel you’ve mentioned a couple of times like it’s coming from love, right? But does it feel like it’s coming from love? Where does it feel like that’s coming from?
Caleb Price
Yeah, no, it feels honestly, like, I’m, I mean, I just want to go to shame, or something like that, or just like that the parents are either like, frustrated, concerned, and it’s just like this idea that we’re a problem. That’s what I get from it. It’s this concern that like, we need fixing to be like, better to change that our feelings about ourselves, or our feelings about our career, the choices that we’re making, that they’re all wrong. And therefore we want to distance ourselves from our parents, often, we want to distance ourselves one because we need to become our own person. But to I think we put extra between us. And we or we struggle connecting with our parents, we resist, we like fight, and all these things, because we feel like we just feel bad about ourselves in that moment. Because we then have created in our own heads this habit, this narrative that, oh, whenever I’m you know, make a choice. Like, I can’t bring that up with my parents, because they might think I’m a failure, if I messed up in some way. Or if I want to change the narrative, I remember the first time that I brought up the idea of not going to BYU to my dad, he was kind of devastated. Because he’s this big, you know, BYU grad, all my kids are gonna go there, that sort of thing. And I was like, um, I don’t want to do that. I wanted to do something different. And it was hard for me to bring that up. Even though that’s just like a choice. Even though there’s nothing wrong with, you know, the school that you’re going to sometimes parents like to put this idea that my kid must perform in this certain way. outs. I’ve messed up.
Tina Gosney
Okay. So, as you see the narrative of your parents, they have this story. This is how our family is, and this is what all my kids will do. And you not fitting into that narrative. And then did you feel pressure from them as you decided not to go to BYU?
Caleb Price
Yeah, so I mean, I did feel pressure. But the nice part is, is this my parents, I think, obvious or understanding, it’s just that my dad will, still brings it up, sometimes. He just likes to bring up like, you could have gotten here, you could have got this scholarship. Yeah. And I’m like, Okay, it’s the same. When I decided to be a life coach, like my parents, it’s different, because I know what other people’s parents are like, like, I know that, like, for me, I feel very blessed and fortunate. And it was still hard to like, go through this kind of acceptance. And I know, there are parents out there who are very strict with this idea of like, you got to do this thing. Or, like, if you turn out this certain way, so like, I don’t know, like, when a person decides maybe that they identify certain what different way either you know, like sexually, or just like to identify a part of a different religion, or just to identify a different political party, or just how they want to live their life in the future. Like, all those decisions, when they become their own kind of person, it’s really hard to then believe that you can, like be accepted by your family, or at least from their own perspective for them to accept you.
Tina Gosney
Okay, so that’s, yeah, that’s really interesting. In fact, it’s probably parents trying to, to keep their kids where they know that they’re safe, and feel like they show it showing them that they loved, they loved them, but they’re actually creating the opposite for their child in that they’re pushing them away. However, their child is then feeling like they don’t love and accept me. I don’t fit in here is there’s those kinds of thoughts maybe?
Caleb Price
Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s just I think that’s that’s the funny thing is that you the parents think that they’re doing a wonderful thing, right? But they’re not getting the result that they want and that’s how you know that there’s something wrong there. When you when you notice that like, you’re feel like you’re doing everything out of love. Like I’m accepting them. I’m opening up. But when you see that they’re kind of pushing themselves away, you know, and sometimes that just might be the outcome. The choice, unfortunately. But I feel like more often than not, we, as you know, young adults want to connect with our parents want to be approved want to get reassurance from them? Yeah, we don’t feel able to do it because of this dynamic that’s being created.
Tina Gosney
Okay, awesome. Clarice, what do you think about that?
Clarice Paulson
Yeah, I kind of just was jotting down a couple of notes. Because I think what Caleb was saying, where it stems from a place of very real love and concern, I definitely think it comes from parents just wanting it to work out for their kids. And that’s, that’s love. That’s your concern. You know, that’s the parents saying, I really want it to work out for you. But what parents kind of fail to see is that it is working out for us. It just might look differently. And I think that is where the disconnect comes from comes from, especially if I I feel like it’s a lot of the times if I’m pushing away from my parent. And it’s because of the really hard reality of feeling like I’m never good enough, not even for my parents. I see Caleb nodding his head, because that’s a really hard truth, to have some times of presenting an issue to your parents and saying, and feeling that disappointment, feeling that shame feeling that those really hard emotions were all of a sudden the people that are supposed to love me the most are kind of bringing up these hard feelings that are really difficult to kind of confront head on, especially when it’s so intimate with family members.
Tina Gosney
I and you guys both it sounds like you both coach people who have those thoughts, young people that have those same thoughts, right, like, I’m not good enough. I’m not measuring up. I’m not enough. And it sounds like I’m I know I heard cabling. I’ve heard Caleb say that before, and what he was talking about how he helps people. But Clarice, I’m sure that that feeds into the people that you coach as well.
Clarice Paulson
Oh, 100%, I think that’s the biggest thing that I think that’s one of the biggest fears we have in this mortal life is to never be good enough, or to be enough for the people around us or for our major for our dating, relationships, whatever it may be. And we have this weird construct in our head that we have to measure up to something as humans, and especially within a church, I think that sometimes can get skewed even more so because we have more to compare it to. And yet, again, I think we talked about this in the very beginning of just coming from a place of love. And that can be construed in a way where we want it to work out, we’re making pressures happen, but really love as Christ would or as we as accepting as we can to be as authentic and Christ like as we can in each situation. That’s the love that we’re trying to get to. It’s not the love that is the helicopter parent, or is the parent that’s very discouraged on themselves for being imperfect. I mean, young adults know better than anyone, everyone’s imperfect. And I think that’s part of it, too, is adults are growing, young adults are growing, we’re all still growing. And there needs to be that kind of mercy for each other saying, like, Hey, I see where you’re at in the face of life that you are. But I’m not going to hold you to that. Because I think that love allows us to grow and really blossom and bloom. And we can do that together instead of having it be where we feel like the parent is stagnant because they’re already grown up, or we feel like our child’s stagnant because they’re not moving forward in the way that we want them to. Neither one of us are stagnant. If we really think about it in this process, that’s life, we’re always continually in progress and practice.
Tina Gosney
I love that because that’s one of the things that I just think of so off even though I’m a few decades older than you guys, I still feel like I have so much growth that I’ve done. Since I was a grown up, you know, since I did graduate from college and get married and started having kids play, it’s just been so much growth. And it would be really sad if we didn’t have that growth if we just stopped growing. We you know, when we got married and became parents, but there’s it’s supposed to be like that. So I love the way that you put that Clarice something that I was just thinking about as you were talking is that that we do all have this feeling of like, I’m not enough parents have that feeling too. Like I’m not doing enough for my kid. I just I want to save them from the heartaches or the mistakes and then they get really scared and they act from fear. Right? Right. And the world that we live in right now. There’s a lot of things that we see other kids going to or other people going to the seem really scary. And so they’re trying to control trying to manage the people you know that they love most in their lives to keep I’m from going into those things that seem so scary. But by trying to control and manage that, and putting the pressure on you guys, do you feel like that almost is creating the very thing that they’re afraid of? That they’re so afraid of? Is there any of that?
Caleb Price
I mean, I’ll interject here and say for sure. Just say 100%. Because, like, Guess what, pressure is something that builds up. And we want to relieve that. And most of the things that we go to, to relieve are the things that our parents don’t want us to do. Like, I can just speak from experience. And unfortunately, just from a very real standpoint, like I mean, I had a habit of pornography in the past. And I think that came a lot of the times from this expectation of, I gotta be perfect, or I gotta be really good at school, I gotta be doing this. And then at the same time, with this kind of expectation, we can’t go to someone to talk about it, let alone our parents, we can’t go to talk about it.
Because that standard is there, that pressure is there. And that would just break everything, even though vulnerability, openness, talking about it, that is the solution to it all. That’s what heals relationships, that’s what heals this part of ourselves. And so we’re young, like, we are supposed to experience life and go through these failures, or go through these moments, setbacks, whatever we want to call it, with, out like, kind of being held back from it without kind of like, like, of course, as a parent, like, when you’re raising your kids, you’re gonna have rules, you’re gonna have boundaries, that’s totally normal that’s in your household.
But once you know, they leave, like, without an understanding of why we’re doing these things. Or just with this idea that like, like, we did it only because our parents told us not to. And now we can, like, do whatever we want. Without that understanding of, there’s a reason for this, or maybe we had an experience, and we’re able to talk about what their parents beforehand, but in this scenario, we don’t. And so then we’re kind of just left on our own, and that we can’t talk about it with anybody. Like, this is just, it’s just fascinating to see how, like, parents don’t want their children to go through the things that they did. And so they create situations that ultimately make that happen. They create these situations them that ultimately will allow it to happen. That’s not to say that my parents wanted that to happen. isn’t a bad thing that it did.
Tina Gosney
Right? They’re not purposely creating that for sure. But by not knowing and being really educated on how they’re creating that they’re actually creating the very thing that they’re very afraid of.
Caleb Price
Yeah, 100%
Tina Gosney
Clarice, what were you gonna say?
Clarice Paulson
Yeah, I just had the thought. Because just as Caleb was talking, I think it does come from that place of like, oh, I don’t want them to have to experience this. And I think the parents are trying to come from that place, again, of saying, I want the best for my, for my children, I don’t want them to have to go through it. So then, but they already need to learn the lesson. But we can’t be selective in life by saying I don’t want them to experience, whatever it may be. You can’t just pick and choose the best parts of life. Like that’s just a given, you have to experience the lows to experience the highest. And that’s the human experience is in order to get the final result, you have to undergo the journey. And so that was just something that I thought about, as Kyla was talking because we try to I think that parents are even trying just to be selective and saying, No, I want my children to get the experience without actually experiencing it. It isn’t possible, right? It’s just not possible.
Tina Gosney
Before we hit record, where I was telling you guys that I had taught a lesson a couple of weeks ago in my ward, about the new for Strength of Youth pamphlet, and we had the young woman and the Relief Society combined. Because we wanted them to hear we wanted the moms to hear what the girls were going to be hearing in lessons and the new guidelines for making decisions. And there was so much fear in the parents so much fear that was expressed about like now you’re not telling my kid exactly what to do, and I don’t know how to guide them. And there just was a lot of fear for the future.
Mostly on the parents side, not on the daughters side. I got to say, I brought this scripture in and this is a scripture that has been really pivotal in my understanding of why we’re here on this earth. And it’s Abraham 3:25 And it says, “And we will prove them here with to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.”
We need to look at words in scriptures and make sure that we’re interpreting them in the way that it was written at the time. And this one was translated in the early 1800s. And so if we go back to that Merriam Webster’s dictionary from 1820, something, the word proved does not mean test, like we’re not being tested, and there’s like a pass and a fail. The word proof means we’re going to let them learn by their own experience. So we’re here on this earth having this educative experience. And Clarice what you just said is like, I want my kid to have this experience. But only this, this much of it so that they can get this great blessing. But they’re not I don’t want to have, I don’t want to allow them to have the fullness of that experience. Because that’s too painful. And that’s too scary. And that’s too dangerous. But I think if we are trying to control our kids, if we’re trying to eliminate the failures, eliminate choices in their life, we’re actually taking, we’re taking control and not allowing you guys to have as much education as you might have. If we were able to release the control.
Clarice Paulson
And really experienced life. I mean, I think everyone can go through the same experience and get something different from it. And I think that’s what makes us so unique as individuals. That’s what you know, us as coaches sitting here talking about it. We’ve all had different backgrounds. And I think that’s the beautiful part of life is just being able to present and say this is a trial, this is an experience I had that was Yeah, wasn’t great. But these are my results from it. And usually the parents are ecstatic when you talk to them about, Hey, Mom, this is what I got from the divorce that you and dad had, you know, instead of saying, we don’t blame our parents for those mistakes, we don’t blame our parents. And we don’t say Why does life have to happen to me like this, but if we can turn around from it and say, This is the experience I got and that I’m so happy I did. And I think just like offering up our souls fully into that it’s almost like Joseph Smith in the jail, you know, saying, and honestly Christ on the crossing, not die well, but my like yours. That’s, that’s what we’re here to do is really tried to fully experience and feel and become as much as we can. With the help of obviously, the parents around us the parents in heaven, just being able to turn to them is the bigger task at hand.
Tina Gosney
Yeah, what great insight that is Clarice Caleb, were you look like you wanted to say something?
Caleb Price
I actually did. Yeah. So I mean, I think you nailed it on the head, Clarice. And this understanding that God works this way. Like, that’s how he works as a parent is letting us experience everything he doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t say, Oh, I’m not gonna, like, I don’t know, make the air fill up in this tire that’s gonna blow you’re gonna have a flat tire, you’re gonna have to learn how to change that, like that is a normal, natural part of life. And we learn from it, we get to grow in it. And it’s our opportunity, honestly, to experience it. And so I think a lot of the time, you know, from this genuine place of love, parents like to take away heart experiences from their children, to heart experiences of choosing anything. And this like, what we call decade of decision, okay, one, what a pressure phrase, I guess, like, let’s put all your life on these decisions.
Because decisions apparently make you happy. None of that is true. But really just like emphasizing how like, parents like to take away choice and like to take away, like, the hardship that people are going to feel like, this is the way of how you’re supposed to do your life. And when, you know, we grow up as young adults, and we go out into the real world, we realize, oh, life doesn’t work that way. And so then it’s so easy for your brain to like, look at you and say, Well, you must be the problem. Because clearly you’re doing things wrong. Because clearly if you’re experiencing hardship, especially in kind of a culture of religion, where we’re taught, you know, like, you know, righteousness is happiness, and all these sorts of things, and we one day wake up, and we’re just depressed, because we just don’t know how to manage our emotions. Or it’s just, that’s how the day feels. And like, that’s just how it’s gonna go. And we have to ride through it. We it’s so easy to think that something can be wrong with us because of that.
And so I think, again, you know, it’s coming from a great place, but unintentionally, when parents edit the experience of their children, trying to take away hard things rather than honestly even putting hard things into their life, having them grow, having them make choices, having them become their own person. Like then, if that’s done earlier than, you know, we might not be so lost, or we might have at least the resources to work through the experiences that do come up. We’re ready for the challenge. We understand it’s a part of life and we don’t go To the place of something’s wrong with us.
Tina Gosney
Clarice, you were talking about looking back at experiences and saying, Hey, this is what I learned from it. And this is how I grew. And this is like, it wasn’t terrible, because you got divorced, I learned so much through it. Do you think and this kind of feeds into what you were also saying, Caleb, like, do you guys think that that’s pretty common for kids your age, to be able to look at your life experience in a way that, that takes a step back, and is reflective, and says, Oh, I learned from that this is what I learned from it and be able to communicate that to anyone, even a parent or anyone else. Do you think that’s I think that’s a really high level skill?
Clarice Paulson
But I honestly think, kind of flipping it back on the parents here, it might be part of the parent’s job to let the child have child, young adult have that experience is saying, like, what did you learn, you know, giving them the space and almost like holding space, you know, we say that a lot in the coaching world of just having that kind of spiritual picture where they can lay it out, and they can draw their own picture and fill it in with whatever colors they want. And as a parent, we can just sit back and I say we like I’m a parent, letting them draw that picture, however, it may look, because it’s gonna look different to them than the idea in our minds as parents that we think their experience is going to be. But again, we just have to be able to communicate that space of love saying, Hey, I know this was really difficult for you to go through. Here’s the microphone I want, I want to hear your perspective on it.
And I think, yeah, 17 year olds, there’s some ages where maybe they’re a little too young to kind of have that higher level of thinking of like, wow, what did I learn from my parents divorce? What did I learn from my pornography addiction? What did I learn, but at the same point, that is what we’re doing as humans continually. And I think communicating that and holding that space, that’s how we are able to pay our own lives, as well as just be able to vocally talk about our experiences. I mean, that’s what we’re doing on this podcast. That’s what 100 other podcasts are doing. That’s our entire way of feeling connection with one another is really allowing ourselves to share these experiences and to touch our souls with one another.
Tina Gosney
And I don’t think that that type of like sharing, and reflection happens just when you become a young adult. Parents could start that at a very young age, or when you’re teaching their kids, too, okay, there was this experience, maybe this is like something you didn’t want to have happen. This was kind of disappointing. Let’s just take a step back and look and see maybe what we could learn from it. I think that parents themselves, though, are often having trouble doing that in their own lives, let alone allowing their kids to do that, and teaching their kids to do that. But imagine if we were all able to do that have that skill of like, yeah, I didn’t really love this experience. But I learned so much from it, here are the things that I learned. This is how I’ve grown. Imagine if we could do that, as parents and then teach that to our kids at a young age, and we just grew up with that kind of reflection in our lives, like things would be totally different.
Clarice Paulson
I feel like we’d have a lot more love on this earth, honestly, because we tell each other so much more clearly. And be able to give give away to each other to say, oh, I want to hear your experience, and then have the time when it’s our time to share our experience as well. Neither detracting from either experience or saying one is right or one is wrong, or, but just being able to more fully understand one another. I love that thought that’s beautiful.
Tina Gosney
Yeah. Caleb, what were you gonna say?
Caleb Price
I think I would just add that. I mean, I wish this was really something that I you know, had when I was growing up, I think it is, honestly, um, you know, my parents were a lot more open, I think, than most but I still think like we could have had these kinds of conversations, because it would have encouraged me to be open with them of what I was going through instead of just dealing with everything in my own head. Because you know, me dealing with my own stuff in my own head, it never usually goes very well tends to always go on the train of oh, I’m not good enough, or clearly, something’s wrong. And so I love this idea of just like, being open in a conversation and not expecting unnecessarily anything to come from it. But other than just like, hey, I’m going to hear this person. Because I think a lot of times like when we have conversations now with our parents, as young adults, like it can be so easy to like for the parent, I think to expect like, oh, they need to be ready with advice. They need to be ready to have all the answers. They need to be able to To fix and, and help their child like, be at a normal happy level, because if they’re not happy, we can’t be happy, instead of just allowing the child to just show up and be like, yep. Like, yeah, you’re crying because you failed your final. Okay? Like this isn’t this okay space, you can cry with me I want to hear about it, I want to hear about how the teacher is like totally against you, I want to hear about how you don’t have any friends or like, I just want to hear your experience. Because more often than not, we just need to be heard. Rather than given a solution. We need to be validated in our experience, and then we can get the gears turning. And we can to say, no, actually, things are better than I think they are. Or no, actually, I know what to do. Because now I’ve learned something from this experience, just like we’re talking about.
Clarice Paulson
Validation can come from just listening. I love that. Because I don’t think a lot of parents understand that because they do jump the jump the gun to try to offer advice or to try to fix it. It’s like no, just listen to me. And that is that is more than enough usually to kind of settle a lot of what’s going on in my inner turmoil that now is bigger turmoil because I have this conflicting advice, or I’ve got this pressure that’s added.
Tina Gosney
Right. And I don’t think that that is a thought that most parents have, I think that they think it’s their job to fix it. Or their job to like, get you out of the out of the like feeling like you’re a failure, or getting out of the sadness over filling a file. Or maybe to give you advice like, well, if you had studied more than you wouldn’t have failed your final, you know, those kinds of things. I think that they think, Oh, it’s my job to fix it in some way. And to make this not happen again. And if I listened and like validate you in your experience, that’s going to drive you further into whatever you’re feeling right now. But it’s actually the opposite happens, in that if someone feels including our own children, they feel heard and understood and just validated like this experience is true for you right now. It actually allows you to move through it instead of getting stuck there.
Clarice Paulson
And you feel closer to the parent because you feel less like they are pulling you forward or pushing you back. But more like they’re just walking with you holding your hand. Because even if as a parent, you feel like you’re not doing enough, because that might be the case, if you just sit there and try to think in your head, I need to know I’m not I’m going to suppress my advice, I’m going to suppress my judgment. I think parents a lot of the times feel like they’re not doing enough, like they’re not being active in that relationship. But many of the times we don’t need overactivity, we just need someone there. And we just, you know, parents to be that sounding board so that we can put everything out on the board and be able to look at it ourselves without anyone trying to move the pieces already.
Tina Gosney
Right, that would be such a gift to your child to be able to do that.
Clarice Paulson
That would be really nice.
Tina Gosney
There’s also the second thing that you guys said, when I asked you like, Okay, what do parents need to know, we brought up this feeling of parents think that when their child makes a decision that is contrary to what they want, or what they have expected, or the story that they’ve been telling themselves. They see their child go a different way that they have all this feeling of failure on themselves, like I have failed as a parent, which is huge in the parenting world, I have to tell you, feeling like you have failed. But also and I tell parents this quite often it’s not like to put your worth there. They’re measuring their own worth, as a person on what their child is doing. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the parent either. So tell me what your experiences are. What do you have? What are your thoughts about that idea?
Clarice Paulson
I have a mom who she always whenever I present something and I’ve told her I was going to be on this podcast. She knows I’m not throwing her under the bus. I think she’s incredible. But she does have that kind of blatant response response of saying it’s because I’m a terrible mom, or it’s because I failed you. Which is really hard because as a young adult, I feel like I am coming to her and asking for reassurance and instead of getting reassurance from her that I am doing enough, or that something that I’m struggling with can be resolved. I’m asking for reassurance but having her flip it back on her and say I take this personally. Instead of asking for reassurance and getting it I’m asking for reassurance, reassurance and then having to give it it puts me in a very difficult position because there’s in no way shape or form that was anything and what I was implying is It doesn’t have to do with my mom in any way, because it’s my own personal life. But all of a sudden, I’m having to act like I’m more put together than I am on a subject that I was feeling weakened, and coming to her to strengthen. And then I’m having to be strong for both of us now. And so that’s my relationship with that understanding of I understand where she’s coming from a feeling sort of like what I do is dependent on her parenting. But we take things very personally nowadays, I feel like we take a lot of things as if it’s something against us when we fail to notice the people that are around us living and experiencing their own lives.
Tina Gosney
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, Caleb? Here? Are there nodding your head?
Caleb Price
Oh, yeah. Well, because I mean, I really relate to that. Because my mom used to be like that, like immensely. I remember growing up in high school before she found coaching, just so enthralled with this idea that she wasn’t good enough that if you know, we messed up, or things didn’t go the way that she’d intended. She’s like, Well, I’m a failure clearly failed as a mom, and you can’t talk to someone about that like about what you want, you just feel like you’re a burden. And with this idea of being a burden, you’re like, Well, clearly, I’m causing my mom this amount of pain one, it teaches us a falsehood about how emotions work. And two, I think primarily is we just don’t want to experience that feeling.
We don’t want to experience and think that were a burden. And so we clean things up. We don’t talk about how we’re really feeling. We aren’t authentic, and we become people pleasers like that, like, that’s just the truth of it. Yeah, like it’s just, or we, we rebel completely. And we don’t want to be in that kind of situation. And so then no wonder when, like, you know, later down the road, our parents might wonder, like, why doesn’t this person talk to us? Or why do they feel like, Why do like, all of a sudden, they seem entirely different than who they were, it’s probably because they are, like, the this is their first time they get to experience who they want to be as a person.
Like, I mean, I got really lucky to experience like, this is silly example about like, music. Like, I got to practice the violin, and I even have this dream of being a musician and composing music. And my dad, like, let me have that dream. But like, I can imagine a lot of parents being like, strict about what a person is, you know, when it comes to the like, small things like career and music and but like big things, like choosing a partner in the future, who you date, where you’re going into your life, like religion, and all these major beliefs, how you just choose to live your philosophy, like, if that is under control or under attack, because every time you try to bring it up, or have an honest conversation about it, you basically are have this concept presented before you that, oh, my parents a failure, like I don’t want them to feel that way. Or I’m a failure, I’m a burden and I don’t want to feel that way, then we can’t open up. We can’t be authentic. We can’t be ourselves until we exit that situation. And then that might be the first time that we’re actually like, either coming to ourselves, or we might be even motivated to just like, go as far left as possible. Whatever the direction is, like, my parents said this so I’m going this because I just don’t want to turn out that way.
Tina Gosney
Right? Right. Hey, Caleb, would you there’s some people who won’t understand what a people pleaser is. Oh, yes. How would you describe a people pleaser?
Caleb Price
Oh, yes. Okay, so a people pleaser, I can say this, because I’ve been this and I continue to be this in or choose to, at least is that is someone who puts on a front of like, in terms of their actions, saying one thing, but feeling something different on the inside. So for example, like if my sister asked, like, Hey, can you take me to the airport? Like, I can say, like, Sure, I’d love to do that. Even though deep down, I don’t really, like I and I’m kind of hiding that. And you know, that’s like a small thing when it comes to favours and whatnot. But deep down, it might build resentment. It builds passive aggressiveness. It just builds this idea that like, we’re not being true to ourselves and how we feel. And so when it comes to young adults, it’s so easy, because they might really want to do something. Yet they’re afraid to tell their parents about it, because they’re afraid of how they’ll react, potentially, because they might think they’re a failure, or potentially, they might get really angry or just say, How could you do that? Just in shock. And so then we choose to hide that. And when we choose to hide that and present a different person, that’s a people pleaser.
Tina Gosney
Yeah. And in essence, it’s an attempt to control the way that person is thinking about you. Right? So you’re saying, Yes, I’ll take you to the airport. Because secretly I want you to think that I’m a good person, but I’m really resentful that I don’t want to do it. And so I’m going to be mad about it the whole time. Whereas if, yeah, I’ll take you to the airport, not really what I want to do, but it’s okay. I’ll do it, and just letting it go. But it’s an attempt to, to control how someone is thinking about you. Clarice, what were you going to say?
Clarice Paulson
Oh, I just was going to add that it’s kind of trying to live up to the expectations that you believe other people have about you, you know, or the expectations that you have set on a certain thing. Just because I’m a people pleaser, as well. So I understand what you see, like feel like expectations that in order to meet, then you have to, not stuck up. But almost, again, put up that front that you may not be truthful to the feelings that you’re having. In relation to the position that’s being asked of you. Yeah.
Tina Gosney
So when parents are just living into, like, I’m such a failure, you’ve turned out this way you made this choice, that means I have failed. How is that I mean, we’ve, we kind of got into it already. But tell me like, an overall feeling of that makes me feel fill in the blank there.
Clarice Paulson
I like the kid have brought up resentment, because I think that’s the biggest feeling that comes up is almost a resentment. It’s a hard kind of disappointment that you have with your parents. Because again, you, you begin to start to hold back a little bit, because again, if I’m asking for reassurance and having to give it, I’m gonna have to give it every time that I show up. And so I’m going to be starting to hold myself back. But I think some thought that just came to me was just how relational beings we are like, that’s just in our nature. And so it kind of makes sense that a lot of us are people pleasers, because, and yet at the same time, we need to understand that we can get validation from other people. And it’s okay. Molly, Claire, just in her last email that she sent out on her email thread, talked about outside validation and external validation. And I think a lot of the times that’s where we search for it and is in our parents are the people that around us that we feel like we should be getting respect from. And being relational beings, like we search for validation then in other people, and we get it from other people and for them then to feel like we can’t find that validation or that we have to give it to someone else. We have to be able to balance when to give validation and when to kind of keep our mouth shut or hold back from giving advice or when is it someone else’s turn to get that reassurance or that so that there isn’t resentment being held, or disappointment being held? Because we are giving each other the validation that we need in the right timing of, okay, I need to validate my mom right now or my mom needs to validate my experience. Sorry, I know that was off topic with what comes up. But I think that disappointment and resentment are the are the two main things I think Caleb mentioned shame before.
Tina Gosney
Yeah. Is that how you would feel Caleb?
Caleb Price
Yeah, I mean, I was just gonna say you just feel ashamed, you feel like, like something? Yeah, it’s either wrong with you, or you just like feel this, you feel hurt. Because like, your parent basically said, like, I’m a failure, because of how you turned out and you’re like, that is you’re talking about me, talking about a human being, right, you’re talking about the choice that I made, you know, maybe the choice to be a lawyer or the choice to vote a certain way. And I wanted to be vocal about it. Maybe, you know, I just started to, you know, be an activist and certain things or maybe I wanted to experience, you know, different religions or like, just deep down or Yeah, like, especially even like, just like, who you choose to marry. Like, when you present that person and your parents like, well, like, clearly I failed. You’re just like, out, because you’re saying that I am the failure, you’re saying that I am the reason for that. Like, I’m the reason for the heart. And so, of course, you’re not going to want to show up or be around or be open about these things. And then in turn, there’s a dialogue that’s going on inside your head, questioning everything, starting to doubt things and ultimately, just not building a trust with yourself. Because that’s one of the biggest things that you learn when you’re growing up when you’re leaving the house for the first time is that it’s all on you. Like, you know what’s best for you, you know what the decisions are? And if you don’t, you’re gonna figure it out. And so when we come to our parents for advice and reassurance and all these things, it’s so easy for I think that, um, to not trust us and not trust that we do know what’s best for us or that they do. And that’s where the, you know, that’s where the heart comes in. That’s where from that idea of failure.
Tina Gosney
This kind of relates back to what we were saying on the last topic in the like the very thing that parents are afraid of. They’re creating, because they’re feeling like they’re a failure, expressing or in, in some way, maybe they don’t say those words. But you always know, even if they’re not, the words are not being said, you always get the idea like, right, because the most of our communication is nonverbal. So it comes out in one way or another. But then they’re creating that sense of failure in your you as well. So they’re just kind of transferring that same type of beating myself up, not trusting myself, questioning all my decisions, and my and the things that I’ve done. And just transferring that over to you as well. Yeah, as we look at wrapping this up, I want to, I want you to kind of describe, like, because you guys live in a very different world than we did when we were growing up and your same age in your young adult years. And I think parents often will think that, Oh, isn’t the world just similar? As when I was that age, people just dated and they got married in their early 20s. And then they had kids and things are different now. And I don’t think parents really realize how different they are. Because they think that you should be doing the same things that they did when they were your age. So can you just kind of describe, okay, this is kind of like how my world is a little bit different than you might think that it is. Who wants to go first?
Clarice Paulson
That’s hard, because I feel like we kind of were joking about this, because we were talking about dating. And I kind of mentioned that I don’t even feel like I can talk about it. Because even though I’m living in it, it’s constantly moving. And it feels very hard to describe. And yet there’s just a different culture, there’s a different, the, what’s normal is completely different. And I think sometimes our parents forget the struggle that they went through in that time, because they’re able to look back on it. And kind of our brain will kind of blot out the parts that maybe we’re a little bit difficult, but we’re in our difficult parts right now. And it just looks a little bit different. Because things are not the same. You know, dating is a little bit different with cell phones and texting, and there’s tick tock and I don’t even know like, it’s just a whole nebulous of things that feel like they’re constantly changing. Caleb, I don’t know, if you want to add anything, I think yeah,
Caleb Price
No, I mean, I think you’re exactly right, you’re hitting the nail on the head, and that the landscape of just living your life is entirely different. Because one, you are now projecting yourself on a stage in front of 1000s of people. And as well as you have access to 1000s of people, versus even extended even farther 10s of 1000s if we need to, because like before, you just went about and lived your life and you had your friends and your community, you knew some people had family. And that’s all you knew that was your world. Like that was your bubble. Even if you felt like you were going out there and you were outgoing, you’re in a bubble. Now we don’t live in a bubble anymore. We live in a world where we’re exposed to everything, like everything you can ever want or imagine is on the internet. Humor has taken an entirely crazy weird scale is wild and bewildering, as well as just like how, you know, just like society colliding, especially with religion. I think that is a big thing. Where there’s a lot of conflict over can these things reside? Or can I exist in both of these things? One where I think this is right, and I also think this is right. And so there’s a lot of conflict there. And I think the easiest thing to go to is dating, like, instead of going around and talking to people, like it is a different landscape. Yes, I do think we should go out and talk to people. But I also have to put out there that you can also just open up your phone and access any person that you want. That is deciding to put yourself out there in a different way.
Communication is now through words written versus speaking most of the time, and so it’s just like, there’s so many different facets. But at the end of the day, I love what Clarice said is that like it is different but at the same time, it’s probably not that different because we just aren’t recognizing what we went through in the past. As parents I imagine we look at the past with some rose tinted glasses, or at least we present that to our children. Like for me my pair Aren’t they met up you IU. And like she was at a party that he was at, and his roommate was my mom’s cousin. And it just worked out. They didn’t talk about how, you know, my dad got the impression to marry her and was freaked out about it, and doubted that impression and almost broke up with her several times to the point that my mom, my grandma said, You can’t marry this person basically, like that discussion didn’t come up until I went to them. And I told them, I was talking about like, my second breakup or something like that thinking I was a failure, thinking I didn’t know what I was doing. And my mom just tells the story casually. And I’m just like, well, where have you been hiding this?
Like, I just thought you guys knew what you were doing, I thought I was a problem vs understanding that, yes, we live in a different world. That means we are the ones that are going to have to learn how to navigate it. And parents just get to be along for the ride. Parents get to point out things if they want to, they get to offer advice. But at the end of the day, I think what we’ve talked about is listening, listening to what we’re going through, and just being there. That is what’s gonna matter without kind of stressing this expectation that like, you have to do a certain thing, you have to be married before you’re 23, you have to, you know, be graduated and be making six figures at this age. Like you have to you should be in this religion. And you should have this many kids like those things. I’ll put it bluntly, don’t matter. Because it’s not your life.
Clarice Paulson
I like that. It just worked out because it kind of goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning of how parents want it to be worked out. And they know everything’s going to work out in one way or another. But they don’t want their kids to be working, working it out through it, almost. And we want it to work out without working out our way through it. But there’s just different aspects at play. It kind of takes out the whole struggle that we have the experience that our parents probably had to, you know, your experience with your parents and knowing the actual stories like, Oh, those are those rose colored glasses taken off. Right now we’re living that we don’t we don’t have the privilege of looking through it with what rose colored glasses, seeing, Oh, it’s gonna work out. We can say that a million times as students as you know, parents who can say it’s going to work out but it doesn’t really seem like it until we actually work it out.
Tina Gosney
Such good insight, you guys, if you had one last thing to tell parents, like I want them to know this. Is there something that comes up for you?
Clarice Paulson
My go to is probably love will always work. And I love that because love, love works. It really does work. And at the end of the day, it’s the reason that we’re here. It’s how we can always come out of a situation feeling good about ourselves good about the people that we’re surrounding ourselves with is if we’re able to love them. And if we’re able to receive love.
Tina Gosney
I’m not surprised that you said that Clarice because the the lot of the discussion today that we’ve had together has been you talking about love. So I’m not surprised at all. That’s the last thing that you said. So thank you so much. Caleb, what do you think? Is there one thing that like, I want parents to know this that maybe that we haven’t covered yet.
Caleb Price
I would say just quit worrying. We’re gonna turn out just fine. I mean, of course, you’re allowed to worry. But recognizing that what you’re doing might be having an adverse effect that you’re not aware of on your children, when you choose to worry when you choose to try and be controlled to fix things to think you’re a failure, and you want things to work out perfectly, like, just let it happen. Like your kids are gonna mess up, they’re gonna go through this journey. But when we expand the perspective of life, and understanding that they have yours, on this side of the veil, and on the next, like they have yours, to be themselves to figure out their life, like, let it happen, just as you went through it. And just as your parents let it happen to you, they’re going to be able to find exactly the job, they’re gonna be able to find exactly the person they need to be with. They’re going to find their path when it comes to either the gospel, even if they very, even if things don’t work out well, even if they truly do fail. So in the end, let’s like go a little bit and do a Clarice Senate. Just love them and enjoy the experience with them. Like have some fun, want to be with your kids and not worry about what you know, there’s no need to have any of this pressure because they’re going to figure it out. And it’s gonna be better this way.
Tina Gosney
That’s awesome. Thank you guys so much for being here today. I really appreciate you letting me pick your brain, giving some advice to parents just letting us inside like To get an inside view of the life of a young adult. So, if they want to find you later, hey Libby, how would someone go about finding you if they maybe someone has a college student, they’re like, Caleb is the perfect coach for camp for my child. So how would they go about finding you?
Caleb Price
Yeah, so I mean, I have a website, it’s calebpricecoaching.com. Just go to that, and it’ll detail all that I offer. I do like to do one on one coaching, with college students to help them break up with anxiety. And of course, you can also follow me on Instagram @Calebthecollegecoach, you’ll have everything there. And you know, if you’re confused, or you have questions, just message me.
Tina Gosney
Well, Clarice, what about you?
Clarice Paulson
Yeah, my website is balancedrecovery.coach. And I’m on Instagram as well as @coachingbyclarice. And yeah, I offer one on one coaching as well. And I do recommend it if I know a lot of moms who have some daughters in high school that are struggling with disordered thinking patterns, and based on diet culture, or even as a mom the influence that you have with your daughters on their eating habits, and just how they view their body. And so I just say get ahead of it. Now, if you think that there’s a little discombobulation in your child’s life, I’d love to sit down and talk with them. The first visit with me is always free, and you’re more than welcome to sit in, to kind of get a feel for how I would coach again, trying to coach from a place of love with your daughter or with whoever you might have in your life that needs a little bit of guidance in a spiritual space to work things out.
Tina Gosney
Awesome, and I know there’s gonna be plenty of parents also who are like Clarice is my daughter just needs to get on a call with Clarice right now. So I’m gonna put links to this in the show notes to both of your guys’s contact information, and parents can just find them there if they want to want to get in contact with you. So thank you so much appreciate you guys being here.
Clarice Paulson
Thank you for having me. I know.
Tina Gosney
After listening to that, how are you doing? Are you feeling all the love for Clarice and Caleb yet, because I know I am. After I listened to that, I have some things that stood out to me, as I talked to them, as I listened back to it just recently, we recorded this back at the end of last year, just wanted to share some of my thoughts that really stood out to me as I listened back to this just this past week.
And the first one was that parents think they need to fix their young adults, their choices, their mindset, the way they see the world, because they’re young adults are wrong. And they’re wrong. If that young adult doesn’t see things the way the parent sees them, it’s just not okay. And when the young adults see that their parents think that they’re wrong, it leads them to not want to open up to them. And so they start hiding things. But when parents are looking at their young adults and saying to themselves, or sometimes they’re saying this to their child that I have failed as a parent, because what I see you doing, and we say that in many different words, but that’s really what we mean, right.
And it’s so easy for the young adult to think I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough for my parents, my parents are looking at me and saying, I’m a failure, I failed you as a parent. And then they’re thinking these people who are supposed to love me, the most in this world, are bringing up some really hard emotions in myself. I don’t know how to deal with those. You know, one of our greatest fears in this mortal life, is that this thought that we’re not good enough.
And we talked about this in the podcast, you know, especially in the church, we get this view of being good enough is very skewed. Because we compare ourselves with others, and we compare ourselves to an ideal, that doesn’t really exist. And then when we parents are comparing our children to other people’s children, or to the ideal that we had inside our heads, or the way that we had told ourselves, things were supposed to go, we are telling them one way or another that they aren’t good enough, and that is not loving.
Now, this next one, I’ve talked with several young adults about this. I know this is true. And they mentioned this in the podcast, when a young adult feels pressured by their parents to live up to this ideal. They don’t really know how to deal with that pressure. So they’re turning to something to relieve that pressure. And it’s often the very thing that we are afraid that they’re going to turn to, that’s what they’re turning to. And then the young adults don’t even feel like they can come to their parents and talk about it. Because it was the parent that put the pressure on them in the first wave plays and that’s what they’re trying to get away from.
So instead of seeking out help, they withdraw and they often hide. This is not what we want our kids to do. But doesn’t it make sense that that’s what’s happening. So often, we think back to, you know, some of the mistakes that we made when we were younger. And then we’re thinking things like, I don’t want my kid to go through the same things that I did. And we think that if we try that we control them enough, then we can stop those things from happening.
But by trying to exert that control that pressure, we’re creating those very things that we’re so afraid of. I love when Clarice said, we can’t pick and choose to experience only the good parts of life. We need to experience the highs and the lows, and we need to go through the whole journey. But so many parents are saying, I don’t want my child to get that experience, I don’t want them to go through the lows, I only want them to experience the highs, but I want them to have the strength on the other side of it. That’s just not how it works. And when we are afraid of allowing our children to experience the lows, this is just our fear talking, this is coming directly from that fear, emotion.
And reacting from fear in your parenting will drive you to do some really crazy things. Fear can take over easily, and it usually shows up as anger or trying to control. And when you’re reacting from fear. It’s very hard to give up control to allow them full use of their agency, especially when it feels like you’re watching a slow train wreck happened before your eyes. We want to spare them those consequences of those actions. And so often we want to stop the action before it even gets to the consequence. Because we know what’s coming.
This is so hard, right? But so often, that’s not the only thing that is at play. It’s also that we know that we will go through some hard, difficult emotions, because of their choices and the consequences that we see them going through. We don’t feel strong enough to handle it. So we try to control them. I don’t think we often even realize that this is what we’re doing. But these young adults, they want to become who they came to the earth to become. And when we limit their agency, we aren’t allowing them to become and learn from their own experiences. You heard them say this over and over in this podcast in many different ways. They said that same thing.
So when your young adult is struggling, what do you do?
You hear them you listen, and you let them talk about hard how hard things are. And you validate their experience with sentences. Like, that sounds so hard. Or Wow, that is big. What are you doing about that? Or maybe something like are you okay? Is there anything I can help you with? Tell me how you’re feeling. So often we think if they come to us, and they talk and they open up, we need to fix things. But we think also if I validate their experience, and I say yeah, I agree with you, then it’s going to add fuel to their emotions and those emotions will get bigger and bigger and takeover.
Really interesting, though, that the opposite is true. Once we allow them to have their own experience, to express their sadness, their frustrations, their anger, their disappointment, or whatever else it is that they’re feeling if we allow them to express that and tell us all about it, that allows them the freedom to let those emotions go. It allows them to be to feel like they’ve been heard and understood. In fact, it’s been said that being heard, is so close to being loved, that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.
I did a podcast with Jennifer Finlayson Fife last year, it’s Episode 19, called Parents Hardest Questions Answered. There’s a link in the show notes.
I really advise you to go listen to it if you want to know more about the things that were talked about here. But in that podcast, she said, “We are trying to get our children to be the evidence of our goodness. And that’s not love that’s using your child to reinforce you. And it’s a very easy thing to do. It’s easy to use your child to reinforce your view of yourself. The faster you can disentangle that the more you can know them and stop distancing yourself from them because it’s too hard to know who they really are.”
This just shows when we are leaving it up to our child to validate us to validate the evidence of our own goodness that we want to see in ourselves that view that we have of ourselves. We are putting our own work our own success on this earth. In general, parenting included on our child wants you to think about that. You’re looking at a person who is much younger than you, who is separate from you, who has thoughts and feelings that are different than yours, and who makes choices that are different than you would make and you are letting them dictate how you feel about yourself.
No wonder we have such a huge need for them to do things our way. Because we can’t be okay if they don’t. This is not fair to you. And it’s not fair to your child. And it is not modeling an emotionally healthy and differentiated adult for your child. This is not loving on many different levels, even though it seems like it is at the time. We get this confused all the time. So what do you do? Now that you’ve been able to hear the experience of two young adults, you might have a better idea of what your young adult is experiencing? How do you stop making their life harder, and start giving them a soft place to fall with you start by really trying to get to know them.
Really listen, without judgment without contradicting them. Just listen, they are telling you who they are. They’re showing you who they are all the time. Put your own thoughts of yourself. And what this means about you. Put it aside. When you get really get to know another person you are leaving who you think they are supposed to be. You’re leaving that out and you’re putting it aside. You’re actively listening in order to understand. And you’re asking questions, you’re being very curious about things that will be hard to hear the answers to ask them the very same question. I asked Caleb and Clarice.
How am I making your life harder? And then just listen.
But before you spring, that question on him, you might just want to give him a heads up. That sounds something like, Hey, there’s something I really want to know. I’m really wondering if I’m doing something that makes your life harder. I want to give you some time to think about it. Because I think that might be something that you really need to do some digging to get the answers to. So I thought I’d give you that question you had a time. And when you’re ready, discuss it. I really want to sit down and have this talk with you. I am really interested in what you think. And then just give them time. check back in with them every once in a while. Hey, are you ready? You want to have that talk yet? But leave that door open? Let them decide when they want to talk about that with you.
If you have any questions about what you’ve heard today, I want you to get into contact with me or with Clarice or with Caleb. You can find all of us online through our websites or on social media. You will find the links in the show notes and any one of us can answer your questions.
If you’re ready to start doing this work of knowing yourself the things that you’re learning this month in the podcast, I have a free pdf training for you. There are 30 journaling questions for you to start discovering more about yourself what you want out of your own life. This PDF is a great place to start. When you’re creating your own personal strong sense of knowing who you are in this world and why you matter. Regardless of your life circumstances. Go to the show notes there’s a link to download that PDF.
I will see you next week. Another really great, strong episode you will not want to miss so I’ll see you next week in the last in the no part of the KNOW, LOVE, GROW series.
