An epidemic is defined as a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time. Chris believes that parent guilty is at epidemic proportions and sees it a lot in his practice.
In this episode he talks about what parent guilty is, why he believes it’s at epidemic proportions, and how we can overcome it.
Tune in to see Parent Guilt Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
Listen to Episode #71 – Parent Guilt: An Epidemic
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Episode #71 Transcription
Craig Graves: [00:00:00] Hey, Chris, how are you doing today, man?
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:04] Hey man. I’m doing okay. How are you?
Craig Graves: [00:00:06] Things are going really well.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:08] I gotta say a before . The Mics got live. I’ve been whining and complaining and I got to keep on doing it a little bit. We’re recording on a Saturday afternoon and it is my fault. So you don’t have to hold me accountable.
I hold myself accountable to tell him what happened.
Craig Graves: [00:00:24] I’m glad we got that on the recording there. You just, you just missed a day, man. We were supposed to record on a Thursday night and, and I don’t know what happened, you blew it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:34] And now my weekend of rest and stuff is a disrupted because I’m looking for the Mountaineer basketball game in an hour and a half.
And I got a new account with ESPN plus that I’m going to have to watch this thing on there. And, and, so my, my brain is kind of, I’ll dial in here in a little bit and, and, but, I gotta be honest. My brain is kind of on. A foot bat basketball right now we’re playing Kansas. So bear with me on a Saturday afternoon, with another edition of, throughatherapistseyes the podcast, we invite you to see the world through the lens of a real mental health and substance abuse therapist to create emotional growth.
Being aware that this is not a delivery of therapy services in any way, shape or form, Looking for feedback and discussion, go see our website throughatherapistseyes.com. Craig, we’re going to talk about the human emotional experience. What shall we do?
Craig Graves: [00:01:26] Figure it out together. Yeah. You know, the cool thing about ESPN plus is you can go back and stream that game.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:35] I’m wondering.
Craig Graves: [00:01:37] Yeah. Sounded fine. At least that’s how the fights are. I can go back and. And rewatch the fight.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:42] Right. Right. So, because I, I figured I’d do that as my, you know, my fun fact about myself. Yeah. I got, I got ticked off cause I had to go get an account with ESPN plus this afternoon, just so I could watch my Degen basketball game.
That’s one thing I’ve always done for myself is I get the NFL package and I do like the Fox sports. So I can really watch my sports at home too, all the time of managing kids and, and, you know, and you don’t get to go out as much and whatnot. I always kind of, for myself, wanted to make sure I had that.
And so. It bounced me in luckily a week ago I found a bundle on espn.com backslash bundle. Check this out, man, 1395. I don’t know why they can’t just say 14 bucks, but it’s 14 bucks a month. I get ESPN. Plus I get Disney. Plus the Mandalorian for star Wars is on there by the way. And supposedly Hulu, although they’re screwing with me, they can’t get me activated.
That’s a pretty good deal.
Craig Graves: [00:02:33] That is a pretty good deal, right? Yeah. And is that like a, is that the cost or is that a limited time or what? It
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:41] looked like the cost man.
Craig Graves: [00:02:42] Interesting.
Chris Gazdik: [00:02:43] There was no limitation on it.
Craig Graves: [00:02:45] Yeah. We had Hulu. I had Hulu, right. I don’t have any cable I just stream. So I’ve got a YouTube subscriptions that I have to watch ads.
I’ve got an ESPN plus that I pay 4,99 a month for just so we can watch UFC fights. Basically
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:00] we can come to my house
Craig Graves: [00:03:01] and, yeah, we can. And then my, my ex wife got Disney plus, and of course my kids just spend a week here and a week there, so they they’ve logged on to Disney here. And so we watched that when they’re here.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:15] yeah, I’m looking forward to checking out the Mandalorian. Yeah,
Craig Graves: [00:03:19] I’ve heard that’s good. I’ve heard the star Wars movies are terrible.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:22] Oh
Craig Graves: [00:03:22] no, they read, they brought the emperor back. I just heard it was, I heard it sucked everybody. I listened to says it’s not good. Really? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:31] my buddy, he turned me on to some YouTube or out there and he was raving on it,
Craig Graves: [00:03:35] talking about it.
Yeah. Most people, Ben Shapiro was ripping it and I listened to him the other day and he’s a big star Wars geek, and I like star Wars too. That Han solo movie on Netflix is great. Oh yeah. Yeah. Me and my son. And I’ll watch that over the Christmas holidays
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:51] explains a lot of the, how the resistance got started.
Craig Graves: [00:03:53] Yeah. It took me about a quarter of the way through to get into it. But once I got into it, it was good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:59] So you saw how I did that, right. That was one of the things, the sports and ESPN plus that I did for myself through all these years of raising these kids and whatever. I think that that’s a nice spill into what we’re going to talk about today of parent guilt.
You know, you know, we, haven’t talked a lot about parenting in a little while, dealing with family and all of that. So, do things for yourself, guilt free. Let’s talk about parent guilt, Craig, your a parent you ever feel guilty.
Craig Graves: [00:04:27] Yeah. All the time. All the time, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:32] Yeah. You know, it’s an epidemic. You hear people throw that word around, but, When you, when you think of an epidemic, I mean, what does that do in your mind when something is an epidemic?
Cause to me, you know, you look here, I mean, definition, I think Google definition or whatever, widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time, right? Widespread occurrence. Why does it have to be an infectious disease? And even if you look at infection, emotions, Just like yawning, right?
Is it is yawning. Is infectious. You ever hear that
Craig Graves: [00:05:11] it’s contagious. It’s contagious. Yep.
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:15] Well, you know, if we really start to needle in, on mental health and incorporating that into our society, we need to understand the infectious nature of that. So that when I say something and I express my guilt for doing something that infects you in a way for feeling guilty about something that you did or that same thing, and we can feed each other into feeling horrible, you ever think of it that way.
Craig Graves: [00:05:44] I don’t think I have, but that kind of makes sense. If you don’t catch yourself,
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:48] I started thinking that with this, because I haven’t really thought of that way. Epidemic. I mean, people throw that word around, you know, when you get a pandemic or an epidemic of the flu, that’s supposed to be really bad this year.
People get really concerned about that. It’s newsworthy. You’ll see it on the news, right? Yeah. Well, emotional matters really are. As we incorporate into the health field, the same thing I would maintain the parents have always felt a sense of this. The social media is accentuated it and experience it exponentially as a result of what we see on, you know, Facebook and they’re just all over the place, right.
That creates a full blown. Why? Golly epidemic with parents guilt. I really feel like we are so as a society critical of parents, And man part of my agenda, I guess I’ll be honest. This time is to, is to help that get stopped. I think that’s possible, mr. Graves,
Craig Graves: [00:06:55] got to start somewhere.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:57] We just did hope, right?
Yeah. Come on, man. Give me a hopeful response.
Craig Graves: [00:07:03] Well, I see you got to start somewhere. Can you, can you change the world? Do you know, you change, change yourself and then those around you begin to change and it spreads out. So. Maybe. So
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:14] it sounds like a certain yes.
Craig Graves: [00:07:16] Yeah, I think so.
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:19] Well, let’s try it. Let’s do it.
Craig Graves: [00:07:20] Alright, let’s do
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:22] it today. I really, I challenge all of you out there that are parents that are part of this epidemic. We need to make a CNN news flash society’s crisis. New found identified epidemic, parent guilt. We get on the news. How about that?
Craig Graves: [00:07:44] Well, if you’re looking, if you can spin it that way, I’m sure you’ll be on the news.
You can create fear in the hearts of Americans, then you’ll be on the national news anytime soon.
Listen,
and then we can create a pill to fix it and get
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:58] rich. Hey now we’re I sense the sarcasm, I sense the sarcasm. I really loved the tacit knowledge, episode that we did. No with dr. Ted Spickler because it really has played on into my mind with a lot of what I do, man.
And, and that’s, that’s where we get on to talking about here, though. What of this matter is what is this that people really do experience? Because he talked about tacitly, understanding the experience of what it is that we’re doing. In our day to day life. And if you think about really be needling in and going deep on how do we really experience this?
Th this is, this is profound in my mind with, you know, how we understand ourselves and you can say, yeah, I tend to be a guilty parent, but let me put you on the spot. Do you really know what that means and how you experience guilt as a parent? Because that’s what this list I think you’ll be like. Oh, yep.
Yup. Yup. Felt that too. Yep. That, yeah, but. As I asked you, do you, do you know how you feel guilty?
Craig Graves: [00:09:08] You know, how do I feel guilty? That’s probably a pretty good question. I think something I’ve never really analyzed, but,
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:14] or tacitly understood.
Craig Graves: [00:09:16] I think the thing is, is you just wonder if you’re doing right things, you know, you, you know, I think our job as parents is to set our kids up for success when we’re no longer with them.
And. You think, you know, the way I handle that situation, is that going to help or hinder them down the road? You know, you know, if I let my emotions get to me and I become angry over something, I think I shouldn’t have, then there’s always that thing of golly, I shouldn’t have acted that way, or I shouldn’t have done that, or I should’ve done that differently or.
Or whatever that, whatever that is, or whatever, whatever that, whatever comes up that way, I think is kind of how I feel. I feel guilt. No, I think my kids probably have it pretty, pretty good overall, you know, but I mean, there’s little things nag at you, you know, there’s little things, those little things nag at you.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:09] I really feel like. You have a pretty universal experience in parenting where you feel very, very isolated and you have all constant level of second guessing. And, and, and, and, and I can just tell you my experience of, of that, that that has been so rewarding is, and I’m sure that you’re going to nod and agree with this, that, that breaks that down a little bit.
You know, all those conversations you have with parents on the side of baseball fields, or, you know, in the basketball stands or the dance recitals, when you’re waiting for your kid at the car and you hang around in the car line and you start finding out other parents have kids that won’t brush their teeth also.
Craig Graves: [00:10:51] Oh yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:53] Other parents, his kids won’t pick the rappers up off of the couches.
Craig Graves: [00:10:58] Yeah. I’m sure we’re all sharing, sharing the same experiences as parents with our children. I mean,
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:03] but it’s honestly almost surprising to me even knowing that when I have those conversations, I probably had one with you years ago,
Craig Graves: [00:11:11] maybe.
So, you know, maybe so. And I look back on the things I did as a kid. And I think, man, I, my kids are really good compared to what I was doing at that time, you know?
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:22] I tend to be the opposite at times more recently with mine as we’re struggling a little bit right now with some things, but that’s probably why.
yeah, I just, I just feel like, you know, the, the biggest thing I really would like to accomplish really from this conversation is helping parents to truly understand you’re not alone and, and to, to secondarily blow a hole in society’s tendency to really judge parents, parents get judged. And we need to be super careful about that.
So that tacit learning thing, man, understanding yourself and how you really experience it, I think is, is, is what I was after there. And you had a good answer, but maybe I’ll ask you at the end of our list here, see how you feel about how many of them don’t apply. Because I think they almost all applied to all of us at some point.
Which by the way I got to this is, this is another one of those cool ones where it’s, this is just kind of a brainstorm one again, I’m starting to enjoy these, these shows a little bit, even more and more as we go, because you know, less and less do I do I do. I have like, you know, Dry or clinical stuff.
Like last time we did Asperger’s and we had to kind of do diagnostic stuff a little bit, man. This is, this is just, just getting down to me, thinking about it and talking about what I was thinking about and what I see from my clients in the office stuff from, from time to time. And yeah. And I can tell you that the, that this list of things that, that we have in so far as, how do you really experience this?
I work with parents all the time in my office. Yeah, part, part of is trying to, to, to validate their experience of themselves being a good parent, because they do not feel that way.
Craig Graves: [00:12:56] This is an issue you talk about with clients in your sessions constantly.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:00] Really? When I get a kid in my office and I’m pulling parents in to kind of get collateral information and we’re having conversations, I mean, they are just parents out there are feeling.
Well hopeless.
Craig Graves: [00:13:13] Do, do people come to you for that reason? Or do you find these things out and have these discussions as a result of some other thing they’re working on
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:20] both. Really? Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:13:22] So people come in and say, Hey Chris, I’m a terrible parent, man. I need some
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:24] help. Well, they don’t say I’m a terrible parent, but they say, I don’t know what I’m doing.
I need some ideas. Like, I feel like I have no options. I’ve tried everything with this kid.
Craig Graves: [00:13:36] Yeah. You didn’t give him the book.
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:39] Actually I do.
Craig Graves: [00:13:40] You got a book I’d like to say that
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:43] anytime we’re talking about parenting it’s love and logic, you remember that material? Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s actually as closest thing that we could have
to the handbook.
Craig Graves: [00:13:52] Yeah. I should have thought about that. There’s books on parenting. I mean, I think some of them I’ve actually read a couple of books on parenting. Some of them are good. Some of them are bad. Some of them are mixed. I mean,
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:04] yeah. It’s. It’s actually not even a book. It’s, it’s a mentality. It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a whole way of doing things that I’m highly praising of because they, they,
Craig Graves: [00:14:17] with that love and logic mentality, we did a show on that.
If you haven’t heard it, go back and find the love and logic parenting show,
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:23] they’ll change your mentality all 180 degrees.
Craig Graves: [00:14:26] It’s pretty interesting. Some of that, I don’t agree with it, I think, but it was a pretty interesting show. An interesting, interesting concept. Some people take that too. What others would consider to be extremes?
But it changes the way you think. I think it’s an interesting way looking at it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:41] I’m curious what you don’t agree with. one of the big things, I think you were like, you let the kid do anything they want to do. Then you heard a podcast
from Weldon.
Craig Graves: [00:14:50] Well, I’m not so sure. I want to give my kids the options that, that, that the guy gave
him.
Ben Greenfield.
Yeah. Yeah. He’s got nine year old twins and he said that he’s explained to them the consequences of their actions. And if they want to. You know, snip a little whiskey or do whatever they, you know, I don’t know whatever they want. I’m not sure if he draws any boundaries, but I did say I did hear him say that his kids could do things like that, but they know the consequences of their actions.
So at what point do you step in and say, no, you’re not going to do that. You know, and that’s where I kind of have some, maybe disagreements with that strategy.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:31] Or additions. I mean, you know, as, as with anything, a major experience of doing something or a, or a mentality or a whole understanding as we’ve talk about that tacit knowledge, you know, it’s, it’s a way of thinking and there’s many applications and you can add your own things in that concept of a way of thinking with those yeah.
Concepts.
Craig Graves: [00:15:52] So kind of to reiterate. I think the strategy is you let your kid whatever they want to, as long as there’s no contact consequences, ramifications to hurt anybody else or to harm anybody else or, you know, so if I tell my kid the dangers of drinking whiskey, for example, and, he just said that’s to bring a bottle of whiskey home.
He says that I’m going to drink this whiskey and sit in my room and I’m not going to hurt anybody or whatever. I’ll just sit in my room by myself, drink. I’m going to say, no, I don’t think you are, bud yeah, but I think that love and logic parenting model, you talked about might say, let them do that. If they want to just understand the consequences of it.
And I’m like, yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna let you do that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:34] Yeah. Which is of course against the law.
Craig Graves: [00:16:37] It is against the law.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:38] I mean, and the law of the land and the home, it was the
Craig Graves: [00:16:41] 11 logic. Go based on laws. We didn’t talk about that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:46] Oh yeah, absolutely. Because that’s causing a problem for me as a liable parent.
You know, I’m, I’m liable for your behavior and that’s not gonna fly, so there’s not going to be, that’s going to cause a problem for me. And so you need to fix that problem and put the alcohol down for sure. And if you don’t, then you might not have hands in order to hold that bottle. I’ll take care of the problems.
That’s a joke sort of, but you’re right. You remembered it exactly correctly. I want to get off of that though and get to where we’re at here, but because, but that’s awesome. you picked that up and learned it kid. You could do anything that you want as long as you don’t cause any problems, for anyone else.
I saw that he caused a problem there. So you need to fix your problem, up. I see that you haven’t fixed the problem, so don’t worry about that. No problem. I’ll fix the problem. And then you come around and you create high structure for it. That’s the, that’s the. Stream of consciousness that they offer.
And there’s many applications and concepts that that’s a part of it like protect your energy, let your kids work out their own problems. Get out of the way so that they learn lessons. They have to fail and get hurt and let them do that. There’s a lot of things that go into
Craig Graves: [00:17:56] it. Yeah. I’m all about, I’m all about those things.
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:00] well, let’s go back to how we experienced parent guilt. So. Feeling of people typically going after or having done something wrong or unintentionally or accidentally. So I thought that was an interesting thing. When you look at what it is, guilt, how many times do we take on unintentional actions? And intentional actions and reassess, like I didn’t even intend to do that.
You know, it, there’s so many things that go on in the course of a relationship with a, with a parent child, a lot of unintended actions that you were assessing. I didn’t even do that sort of, but then I screwed up, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot going on from day to day to day and the way that we really experienced this, I already said they get thrown under the bus, but is it possible to say that parents are the most criticized group of people ever
Craig Graves: [00:18:51] parents are the most criticized group of people ever.
There’s probably some truth to that. Yeah. I think there’s probably some truth to that,
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:00] yeah. I don’t know who else could be criticized more politicians.
Craig Graves: [00:19:04] Yes. First off the cannon line.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:06] Right. But how many people are politicians?
Craig Graves: [00:19:09] Very few. Thank God.
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:11] How many people are non critical of their talk about how parenting goes on.
Let’s think about that for a second. Have you heard conversations? I might even say ever where people are like, wow, the way we’re doing parenting now generally is so much better than it used to be.
Craig Graves: [00:19:34] I don’t know. Is it, is it better
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:38] in some ways it’s gotta be.
Craig Graves: [00:19:40] Yeah. I mean, how so? I mean, what are you,
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:41] why is it always bad?
Craig Graves: [00:19:43] Well, I think this, everybody gets a trophy
Chris Gazdik: [00:19:47] of course
Craig Graves: [00:19:48] kind of mentality that we’ve been using now for however long has created some people who aren’t as motivated and. Productive. And as resilient as generations in the past have been,
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:03] you know, parents were criticized in exactly the same way and I’m not old enough to know, but I think our parent’s parents criticized in the same way by their parents and on and on and on it goes, I feel like we are so judgmental of the way we’re dealing with family life.
That it’s a no win. It feels like a no win situation. And I agree. I have a lot of views about how crazy thoughts that we have and the rapid nature of the world today and in, you know, keeping up with the Joneses and all that kind of stuff, which, you know, actually that was number four, right. Keeping up with the Joneses.
That’s the way we experienced this. I don’t know that that’s so different from generation to generation. I really don’t.
Craig Graves: [00:20:49] You don’t think what’s different
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:51] that. Cohorts of parents have been criticized less over eons.
Craig Graves: [00:20:59] So you think that the level of criticism has been the same throughout? Yes. I don’t know, man.
Maybe so, but maybe for different reasons. It seems to me that as parents now versus when I was a kid, parents are much more engaged,
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:17] which is
Craig Graves: [00:21:17] good. They’re they’re much more engaged. Is it though? I mean, I think it can be.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:22] Can be bad too,
Craig Graves: [00:21:23] but we don’t want our children to experience any pain or any failure or any hardship.
And I think that’s probably been a constant theme. Somebody that has a research study on the greatest generation. And they asked them why they were so great. And they said, because we had it so hard, that’s why we were so great. You know, world war II, their parents were, their fathers were all off at war, all this stuff, you know, and they said, well, what’s the one thing that you would change for your children.
And they said, we wouldn’t make it as hard for them. So the thing that made them great. Was the thing that we’re going to take away to make them make their lives easier.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:59] Right.
Craig Graves: [00:21:59] You know, and I think that we do that today. We make things so easy for our kids That were taken away. Some of the things that could potentially make them great.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:09] I totally agree with that. You know, I mean, I think there’s, I think my point right here though, is with, with getting out of a guilty perspective, To point out the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of what we’re doing. I mean, I could go toe to toe with anybody, you and five other people all at the same time included with concerns that I have about things that we are doing and how we want to change that.
Cause love and logic. That stuff would say, yeah, let your kids screw up. Let them screw up a lot. Let them have a super hard time crying themselves to bed, trying to figure out the solution to their dating problem or whatever it is. Like I agree, you know, but at the same time, I think if we’re going to be enabled to get out of this and we’ll talk about that, you know, the second part, the second half of how do we turn this around to compassion for parents?
I think to get out of that, we need to feel, you know, empowered and. Uplifted to get out of a guilt perspective. So that think about it. If I’m not feeling a guilt experience constantly with my kid, I’m going to be more able to sit back and let them screw up.
Craig Graves: [00:23:23] Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Right. So you don’t want to feel guilty.
So you’re going to bail them out of whatever situation I’ll get past. Right. You have to, if you’re going to take that stance and you’re gonna let the chips fall, so they have some hardship, then maybe you have to. But if you really feel confident that that’s the right thing to do, then, then maybe you’re not going to feel guilty about letting them go through that experience either.
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:44] Exactly.
Exactly. Let me go down through my list of, of brainstorming thoughts on how do parents really explain experience this and then we’ll pick it up. Cause we’re only about halfway through guilt. yeah, typically. Specifically doing something wrong intentionally or unintentionally a society throws them under the bus and they experienced that all over the place.
Three did something wrong in their own view like that. I really do that to my kid for keeping up with the Joneses and shouldn’t in middle school and shoes. See how I bolded shoes.
Craig Graves: [00:24:16] Yeah, shoes. I don’t get the shoes thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:18] You go through that too.
Craig Graves: [00:24:20] With my kid. I did not. When I was a kid, no man,
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:24] I didn’t either. There was something about like, if I don’t have the right shoes, dad, I’m just, it’s going to be the worst thing ever.
And you go, God, bless it. My kids actually ponied up some money to get their shoes. I think more than once.
Craig Graves: [00:24:36] Well, that’s good. Yeah. That’s a good thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:38] Yeah. Cause I’m like, I’m going to pay you $130 for shoes. I’ll give you 50. I’ll give you $70.
Craig Graves: [00:24:44] Yeah. I’ve told my kid that too, you know? Hey, how much are those new shoes? You want?
250. Yeah. You better pick a different pair.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:52] All right. The rest will, I’ll just blow through and then we’ll go back. And once one sound interesting, intentionally did harm by one’s own opinion or doubts about themselves in their parenting. again, this is all, how do parents really experience. The hopelessness and guilt epidemic, complete confusion.
Number seven here. Right? What the heck am I to do with this one? I don’t know what to do, and I should know what to do. Screen time. Number eight, balancing that, you know, the fight is on. I said, diet and nutrition, confusion, even with science, right? Parents are feeling all of that. I want McDonald’s. And.
Other convenient foods and we’re told, give him broccoli and eat right. And vitamins and Oh, you just get bombarded with what’s the right thing to do. lack of information on the complexities of life and child development. You know, we, we don’t, parents don’t know sometimes very basic child development, realities, and the complexities of life that we have nowadays.
we experienced it with home work, life balance, dual learner families. How many people are single earner families out there, they exist. Matter in fact, almost kinda experienced that kind of coming back around you, have you heard that at all or felt that
Craig Graves: [00:26:09] no, I don’t. I haven’t heard that. I don’t know. I think used
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:12] to be the norm single earner families.
Now nobody is, you know, I
Craig Graves: [00:26:16] think most parents I know are divorced and the ones that aren’t are dual income families.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:21] Actually, I didn’t have that on my list. Where am I at number nine or 10? We should have number 13 here, a divorce, or you’re a horrible parent. If you get divorced, you know, the people could feel that way in that situation.
12 parent’s criticism of the child who is a parent, right.
Craig Graves: [00:26:42] You weren’t raised like that. That’s funny.
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:45] Yeah. I, you know, one of the biggest criticizers that really bites into you, I believe are the parents of the parents. Right? You might get some validating parents out there that are helping their kids, parent the grandkids.
And, and, and I think that’s the case, but I tell you a lot of times, I think, you know, I don’t know what percentage it would be. Validating grandparents or critical grandparents, I feel like much more typical. Is it for grandparents to get frustrated with the grandkids? Because they’re like, I don’t know why that kid is acting like that.
I didn’t teach you to act like that and we need to do better. Like, this is my grandkid.
Craig Graves: [00:27:29] You haven’t heard about a whole lot of grandparents who were critical of at least in my experience. Maybe you are in your therapy sessions, but I’m not hearing a lot of that in my circles.
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:40] Yeah, I’ll tell you one of the things I often tell my clients and, and, and talk about, you know, is my own experience going from kid one to kid two.
It’s funny because I’ve told this story a thousand times now I can put it on a podcast and hopefully just stays out there. when I had my first kid, of course, I didn’t know anything about what we were doing and I figured out the diapers and you know how to hold the baby and you know what the.
Schedules and the balancing was going to be, and you can’t go hang out with buddies as much. I gotta stay here and do this. And you know, and I enjoy it all the family life. I was ready to throw myself into it and I figured it all out, figured out how to actually make a bottle right at the time a year or two or three rolled around.
So because my second kid’s three and a half years younger. I got my new baby here, baby. Number two, Adam, I’m sorry, buddy. Thrust a bottle and do his face all cold nasty. And he was like, ticked off. I’m like, what’s wrong? What did I forget?
Craig Graves: [00:28:36] Well, that’s like a running joke, right? It gets. Is as you go, as you have more kids, it’s like, you know, I’ll be all right, bro.
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:43] Well, that’s true. That’s true. But you still ought to be able to borrow it.
Craig Graves: [00:28:47] Good. Something happens to the first kid. You run to the hospital real quick. You know, I don’t look God, you know, if something happens to the second kid and you’re like, Oh my God, I’ll bandage you up, you know, you do what you do.
The business at home. The third kid gets hurt. It’s like, ah, that’ll be all right. The
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:00] fourth kid doesn’t even get noticed
Craig Graves: [00:29:01] rub some dirt on it. Yeah, that’d be fine.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:04] Well, my thing is there is I forgot. I literally just forgot what was kind of a basic part of getting a bottle, just pop it into MiC for, you know, for, for 10 seconds and whatever, before you, before you go out with it.
And it just dawned on me as I did that. How much you forget what it’s really like day in and day out. Even if you are a parent, I submit, that, you probably forgot what it’s like to really experience it. I right now mine are. You know what 19, and you’re 15, 18 and 15 in a minute years old. Right. So it’s like, that’s been much more than 10 years since I’ve had a baby.
I don’t know how to handle a baby right now. I mean, I know, and I remember, and you know, I can get it back pretty quickly if I had another baby, but I don’t really know what it’s like, because it’s been 15 years since that’s happened.
Craig Graves: [00:30:03] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:04] So grandparents really 40 years sometimes. Can you remember 40 years ago?
What? It was really like, no, if I had trouble three years later, remembering something simple like that, then I’m going to be pretty judgmental about something that I’m really not experiencing. And that’s dangerous. Let me say that again. I’m going to be pretty judgmental about something that I really don’t know what the experience is actively like, and that’s dangerous.
Cause you don’t know, you’re not in it. People that don’t have kids just don’t fully get the drain and the challenge and the guilt and the feelings and the emotions and the pride and the pure joy and the elation and the up and down.
Craig Graves: [00:30:49] Yeah. People who don’t have kids have nothing to say to somebody who does.
Yup. Yup.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:56] I actually think I would maintain that. Yeah. How’s that for terrible therapy judgemental statement, but I agree
Craig Graves: [00:31:03] it is what it is
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:04] true. Right? So let’s, let’s wrap that up. You can spend a lot more time, a little bit on, turning parent guilt to compassion. How can we really become compassionate towards parents and stuff?
Let’s, let’s spend some good time on that. how do we really get out of this? You know, we got the, who is everybody? The what, how, how do we really get, how do we really get out of this? let’s take a break for our sponsor, Craig
Craig, who is our sponsor
Craig Graves: [00:31:37] not really a sponsor, but we’ve got an affiliate ship with a company that produces health supplements called whole family products. And if you click, if you click on our site, if you go to our site throughatherapistseyes.com and you click on the whole family products graphic on there.
Then it takes you to their site while you’ll find 126 different natural type health supplements. They’ve got hormone creams, CBD oils, nutritional supplements, anti-aging products, I’ll say 126 different things out there. Sleep AIDS. We did a show on sleep.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:14] Let me, let me jump in Craig. I don’t usually do, but I want to challenge the audience.
Hit the reef, hit the reverse button. Guys hit the reverse button for just a second on the podcast show. And let’s play this over again. Here’s why, because we really want to arm you in helping you as part of our community. Take ownership of the throughstherapistseyes community and, and help us grow the show.
Send the links to people. Have conversations with at least one person this week. And thirdly, get to the website throughatherapisteyes.com. Craig. I have a little bit of an agenda this year to kind of get people hipped up to helping us out with that. There’s really a lot of amazing stuff that’s on there.
Craig, I’ve kind of dug into it. I’ve always let you do that, but I’m kinda more aware of it now in, in, in what’s out there very affordable products, 20 bucks is a lot of the. The, the mid price point for these products that people are probably buying anyway, and they could be doing it here and help us out hemp seed oil.
I mean, that’s, you know, people are all about, that’s like 1495 to 2250 Keto, 3000. We had a, we had a show on the keto diet, right? We did, right. This is, this looks like an amazing product. I’ve let you talk about it, but I’ve kind of looked at it and talked about it with people specifically do this is good stuff.
Craig Graves: [00:33:30] It really is good stuff. I used to sell these products or some of these products on Amazon, and there’s a product called minnow balance that helps ladies with menopause. And there’s one, there’s a PMs cream, that helps ladies with that issue. And those used to sell like hotcakes for me and always got rave reviews.
So I know we have a lot of lady listeners, so those may be things that you might be interested in checking out there too. And, I know Brenda albino, who is the, owner of the company, and she’s a great person, has a heart for helping people with their health and, and issues like that. And that’s a great company, man,
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:08] Craig, sleep, weight loss product, right.
Sleep weight loss is made up of proprietary blend of natural ingredients that have been proven to support the body’s natural processes for sleep restful sleep, including, we talked about hormones and neurotransmitters and stuff. I don’t know what these chemicals are, but check out this chemical list.
Cause this product for 1495 sleep, weight loss includes arginine glutamine or Nithin KOL. Ostrom. And lysine lose weight and sleep great is what it says. I mean, if you’re trying these types of products there, this is amazing.
Craig Graves: [00:34:47] They’re natural products help the body do its natural thing. So those creams that I just talked about are made with a pro a thing called the wild yam.
And what it does is it stimulates the body to increase its natural production of hormones. So everything on the sites, natural and, Quality stuff.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:09] Get back to the show, man. I listen to the playback of our little mid thing. There. I’d be honest with you. I might, I might turn into a bit of a health nut.
Craig, if I keep on hanging out with you, man,
Craig Graves: [00:35:20] you need to dude,
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:21] I don’t know, man, herbs and vitamins and you know, weird foods, but I will, I’ll tell you one thing I will never do. I’m gonna make a pledge to you. If you get into my head and work me over and get me like this health nut kind of thing. I never eaten a raw egg dude.
Craig Graves: [00:35:38] Never say never can’t do
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:39] it. Texture’s just not right for me. All right. Let’s let’s needle in here. Let’s go deep dive on my brainstorm with turning parent’s guilt into compassion. Because compassion given to parents and more importantly, compassion given to yourself as a parent is huge in order to try to be a good parent.
Let me say that again. Right? Compassion given to parents and or more importantly, compassion that you give yourself as a parent is crucial in order to be a good parent. You cannot parent out of guilt. Can’t do it effectively. If you’re feeling guilty, you’re screwed. I might even make that statement as broad underlying that’s it sort of reality statement.
Sometimes I refer to him as an emotional fact. If you’re parenting out of guilt, your going to be ineffective. How’s that for a statement?
Craig Graves: [00:36:48] Yeah, I agree. No, Nope, no disagreements here.
Chris Gazdik: [00:36:52] So let’s get that turned into compassion and we’ll be more effective immediately. So, first of all, you’ve had kids, Craig, how many times have you been worried what my kid is doing?
I don’t. I know lots of kids do lots of things. Nah, but listen, man, really what my kid is doing this ain’t normal. This is a problem. This isn’t right. Have you ever thought that. I have,
Craig Graves: [00:37:23] I don’t think I’ve thought that to be completely honest.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:26] Really. I’ve been, I’ve worried, like, you know, it’s, I mean, even with stupid things before I knew it’s like, you know what kid wouldn’t brush their teeth.
But what, why would kids not brush their teeth? I mean, that’s
Craig Graves: [00:37:35] yeah. What kid would brush their teeth?
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:37] Well, I know that now, but when I was a parent that, you know, only three and a half, four years in I’m thinking, do you not understand there’s cavities, man? I mean,
Craig Graves: [00:37:46] no, they don’t understand. They don’t care.
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:48] So, but, but a new parent is really not going to understand, you know, Oh, they really don’t pick up their shoes.
Like. Generally speaking, if you have a quandary and a wonder at any point, have other kids acted like this? Other kids don’t act like this. I don’t see anybody saying the F word that the kids don’t do that. I’m going to tell you an overwhelming majority of the time that you ask that question, do other kids do this?
The answer is going to be
Craig Graves: [00:38:21] yes. It’s going to be a resounding. Yes.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:23] Resounding. Yes. And I think. Parents ask that question all the time.
Craig Graves: [00:38:30] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:30] All the time.
Craig Graves: [00:38:31] Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:33] So you still think, you never thought they,
Craig Graves: [00:38:35] I don’t think I’ve ever. I, again, I even when they’re screwing up, I mean, I can walk into my son’s room.
He’s 16 and it looks like a bomb went off in there. Right. And I’m like, dude, if you would just put your dirty clothes in the hamper. And take your dirty dishes downstairs. It wouldn’t look like this. Yup. But I can remember back when I was his age and I did exact same thing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:59] Well, see, you know, there, there probably are.
I’m glad to hear that because there probably are gradients of this. you know, some parents are eat up with this stuff tremendously, so, and maybe some parents are pretty grounded with it. And here, here, I’m, I’m super glad to hear that if that’s the case, because that’s, that’s super parenting too, to be able to have a confidence and a groundedness about that.
I mean, Craig, that’s what we’re after. So, that’s I’m glad to hear that. There’s maybe a lot of parents out there. That need to know though, you can get into this kind of framework where yeah, they’re doing they’re, they’re acting the way I did. It’s okay.
It’s normal. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:39:32] It’s funny. Cause I, you know, I use myself as a frame of reference quite a bit.
And if my son goes to somebody’s house to spend the night, especially if it’s somebody, I don’t know. I always call, I always call the parent to make sure that that’s the plan.
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:47] Oh really?
Craig Graves: [00:39:48] Yeah. And my, my kids like dad, you know, why do you always call. And I say, because when I was 16, I would tell my mother, I was going over to Ricky’s house.
He would tell his parents who he was coming to my house. I mean, we’d stay out all night. I mean, seriously, when I was 16 years old, I was doing that. We were getting into all kinds of mischief. So I’m like, I know how the game’s played pal, you know, I’m checking up on you, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:13] Poor kid. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:40:15] Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:15] Poor kid
Craig Graves: [00:40:16] To his credit. Every time I’ve called, that’s been the deal. He’s you know, he hasn’t tried to pull a fast one yet. That’s probably cause he knows better.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:23] Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:40:25] You know, I’ve got a frame of reference and it’s me. In a lot of cases,
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:30] so realize it’s normal more than likely you did it. They are doing it. It’s normal, stop worrying, and you’ll be more compassionate.
You don’t have to worry about something is totally abnormally wrong here. Now it probably really isn’t number two, mistakes will be made if you can accept that fact and then actually learn from them as you make mistakes as a parent. You will be much better off Craig. You ever make any mistakes?
Craig Graves: [00:41:02] Oh yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:02] And your view.
Craig Graves: [00:41:03] Yeah, absolutely. Man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:05] Well, why feel guilty about that.
Craig Graves: [00:41:07] Absolutely.
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:08] Look, my overriding believe with parents as they are doing the best, almost a hundred percent of the time they’re doing the best they can do with what they have to offer and what they know. Two for their kids. I believe that right down the line, almost, even in the extreme and rare cases where you’ve got, you know, parents that are bonafide DSS needs to get their butt in there and get this kid neglectful that that parent is still operating with.
It’s the best capacity that they have and what they, what they know and what they can.
Craig Graves: [00:41:41] Yeah, I think that, you know, when you, when I read compassion on here, given compassion, that’s what I thought. Most parents that I know now, I do know some who were just like, you’re saying, wack jobs that, you know, but in most cases, parents are doing the best they can and making decisions based on their conscience or research.
They’ve done. Or whatever they they’ve got the kid and their own best intentions at heart. I mean, I think that they’re trying, right, right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:14] Absolutely. Trying with everything they got.
Craig Graves: [00:42:16] Yes. It’s easy. It’s easy for me to judge. Like I could judge Greenfield, you know, and say, well, wait, what are you doing? You know, but that’s what he thinks is the best for his kids.
You know, these people who don’t vaccinate that they’re doing what they think is best for their kid. I mean, they are whether whether we like it or not, or whether we agree with it or not, they think they’re doing the best thing for their kids.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:34] Right. And we have to have compassion about that. You know, I would submit to you even like an alcoholic, who’s ravaged by the issues of addiction or any other, you know, troubles that might be if afflicting somebody.
they’re definitely not being very effective parents, but they’re trying, and they care, but I still want to take their kids because they’re not getting three square meals or even a meal for the day. And that’s a problem, but that parent needs needs to be supported.
Craig Graves: [00:43:03] Yeah. One of the things I’ll say about making mistakes, at least, at least from me.
And maybe you can give me your, outlook as a, as a, as a therapist. But if I mess up and I know I’ve messed up, then I’ll admit that to my kid. And if apology is owed, then I’ll say, Hey, look, I’m sorry. I screwed that up. Shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have said that should have done this differently.
I think that also shows them that it’s okay to admit you’re wrong and messed up. It’s genuine. But I think it also helps to deal with the guilt too, because if I’m, if I do something wrong, I feel like crap about it. And then I tell my kid, Hey, I did this. I’m sorry. And I say, you know what? Dad is. Okay.
Which they always do.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:46] Couldn’t agree more than that.
Craig Graves: [00:43:47] Then I don’t carry any, you know, I don’t carry that guilt with me.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:50] I couldn’t agree more It’s a perfect way to deal with guilt. Let a kid know. I mean, what better way to teach them than to show them I screwed up, you know, I mean to, to, to, to appear infallible is unrealistic and I would submit that’s the quickest way to get a kid to blow you off, you know?
so you’re trying to teach life lessons, right? And I had a teacher in college. man, love him, Joe. he was, he was my favorite teacher, I think, Jerome Kolbol. And he, I remember man, he’s up in the cold state of Minnesota now I think, Hey Jerome, if you’re listening or hear this, I want you to one of my, one of the best, this, this stuck with me.
He, he gave us a sheet about teaching. If you, if you show the long math and he had a problem where it was a long math that this teacher was showing on the board, It was much more effective than the teacher who just showed the long math equation and did just show the answer. None of the work the students were like, Oh my God, I can’t do that.
But he sat up here for a half an hour doing the long math and working hard, stopping and thinking. I think even like had a consultation with, and the story that he told, you know, it wasn’t a real story, but it was a made up thing. But wait was show your struggle. You decrease your guilt. And you actually teach even better.
Excellent point. Yeah. rely on others. Number three, I guess it’s number four, because you got one that I tend to think I had that on my list, by the way, Craig, don’t try to do all this stuff and think about all this stuff alone. That’s not wise, you know, you cannot know what to do all the time. And even if you’re a super smart parent and incredibly experienced with five kids, if you, if you, if you tap into the resources that are all around you and talk to other parents, then you’re going to be much better off.
Don’t think you got to do this alone.
Craig Graves: [00:45:44] Yeah. yeah, I think that’s a great advice too. And I mean, I liked from my. Kids to have other people that are respect and trust and they’re in their lives because it’s good for them. Hear things from other people. You know, my 25 year old son and my 16 year old son is kind of getting there now.
But at one time, man, he wouldn’t listen to anything. I said, his grandfather could say the exact same thing that I was saying to him. And he would act like it was a revelation. And I’m like, dude, I’ve been saying that for the past six months, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:15] you’ve told me that before and I’m right now, you know, with my kid being 18 and he’s right in the middle of it, man.
I can’t tell him anything. It’s like,
Craig Graves: [00:46:23] yeah. So, I mean, I think it’s good to have other, other people
and
men and women who can say stuff to your son or daughter and they’ll get it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:32] Yeah. I mean, you’ve told me that I talked about that just in our life and, and it’s when you, when you told that story, To me for the first time we were talking about that, that was incredibly validating in my own brain.
You know, I’m like, Oh man, really? Like, you know, and I will, I look at, I look at Alston will sit down and be like, Oh man, he’s really going to come back around.
Yeah, it’s
true. Because I’m not experiencing that right now. Like seriously, I’m not experiencing that. I almost can’t even see it. Yeah. I know it’ll happen.
Craig Graves: [00:47:01] Yeah. I’ll come back around eventually.
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:03] I can’t see it.
Craig Graves: [00:47:04] Yeah. I think Austin was about 20 years old. When that happened. God,
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:08] I’ll give it four more years. Was it get some extra time positive self talk? I need to practice what I preach right now. Number five, avoid the negative brain and all the potential negative outcomes that you can imagine for yourself, man seeking encouragement from other people.
Also, I skipped one particularly of the same developmental state. And I put that out there. Just brainstorming this, Craig, if you can be mindful about talking to people, like we just demonstrated, you’re almost in the same developmental state as I am, because I’m just after that, you know, he’s would you say he’s 20?
Craig Graves: [00:47:49] Yeah, he was 25 now. Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:53] little bit further out, but still, if you could get somebody that’s in the same developmental boat, they’re dealing with the same issues. That’s just an incredibly smart thing to do baseball field talk, if you will.
Craig Graves: [00:48:03] Yeah. That positive self-talk thing. If I could interject there, I think that a lot of that comes from working on yourself as a parent, because if you’re negative Nelly to everybody else, you’re not going to be.
Positive in front of your kid.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:18] Look at number seven.
Craig Graves: [00:48:20] Yeah. There you go. Take care of self. Yep.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:22] Yeah, it does. Positive self talk is work on taking care of yourself and being negative neely is just going to make you mean.
Craig Graves: [00:48:31] Yeah. I go back and listen to the episode on mindfulness and also the unbeatable mind, a book review we did for some tips on how to be more.
Internally aware and positive
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:43] yeah, I kind of dropped the ball on that a little bit. I like to have with the show notes, the ideas of the shows that play off each other, you know, I I’ve, I apologize for our community, man. I’ve kind of let that out, but you’re right. I mean, we have, we have now shows that you can go pop back onto and we have like four or five of them with this one.
Craig Graves: [00:48:59] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:00] They’re all good conversations and we can go deeper on different things now. Yep. So then mindfulness, which ones did you just point out? I don’t know.
Craig Graves: [00:49:08] Unbeatable mind book review the mindfulness episode. I published a short on the, on trans trans taking negative thoughts and turning them into positive.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:22] Gotcha. Realizing that there are many ways to accomplish the same goal. What is it all roads lead to Rome? Is that the right way to make it that
expression?
Craig Graves: [00:49:31] I’ve heard that one, but that’s probably good.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:33] All roads. Most roads. Yeah. Well, I think it’s a separate way of saying all roads lead to Rome. It’s the idea that man, you, you, you’re going to get to the center golden city by multiple routes.
You don’t need to go the right way though. Wrong way, avoid go the only one, right way going to work. Realize, give yourself a break, cut yourself some Slack. You’re going to do it your way in a way that you feel is the best way. And there’s multiple ways that are the best ways. I mean, you know, there’s a, I’d rather you think about like the love and logic stuff with what’s the mentality that you’re coming out with this get out of the specifics in the rat race of, you know, what’s what’s right.
And what’s wrong right now. Well, you know, you’re still going to teach a life lesson multiple ways. So, so that’ll help you to relax. Yeah. Never said take care of self can’t. Count on others when you’re not taking care of yourself. I mean, we are not going to spend too long time on this. Cause we talked about it on this show a lot in different ways, you know, the airplane reality or metaphor, right.
Put oxygen mask on you, you don’t, you die. And they die too. Is so true. You true? That rhymes, doesn’t it?
Craig Graves: [00:50:44] Yeah. Kind of.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:47] Realize you’re not alone. Other parents struggle with teeth, brushing routines as well. And yes, their kids have clothes on the floor. And I tell you only my kids only my kids, not, not, no, that’s not true reviewing right.
Realize a lot of behaviors, normal mistakes will be made, rely on other people, seek encouragement from other parents that are particularly currently in the same developmental boat. Hit positive self talk. Make sure you’re not being negative. Nelly realize there are many, many, many ways to accomplish the same life lesson you’re trying to teach.
Take care of yourself. Don’t be guilty about that. Realize you’re not alone. Other parents are struggling as well. Here’s another one I already talked about it. Number nine, check it out.
Craig Graves: [00:51:33] Love and logic.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:34] Yeah. I don’t know why I’ve listed on here.
Craig Graves: [00:51:37] is that on loveandlogic.com. Is that the, I think so.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:40] I think so. I don’t know why I listed out on here where we’re trying to turn compassion.
Well, you know, I actually, I do now, now I do. I remember one of the things I really like about their strategies Craig, is that they’re really protective of the parents’ energy and they’re very validating of like parents need to. Need to take care of themselves in the ways that we’re kind of talking about here today and, and, and, and have compassion towards your kids.
So it was like, you know, it’s, it’s really tough to be a parent and you got to give yourself praise for that and compassion for that. At the same time, it’s really tough to be a kid. Just let them, Hey, I know we’re both, we’re struggling with this. This is a tough problem. It’s a tough one. And then back out, take care of yourself and let them take care of it.
And then you both feel better when you watch the kid have successes. So that’s, that’s what I think I was looking at and being compassionate. they talk a lot about that. Winding down three or four more to go on my brainstorm on how to turn parents guilt into compassion, realize it’s okay to protect your own energy.
The kid can do it themselves. They can get it done. You don’t have to do it for them. If they don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. And it’s okay. Right. Yep. If the kid doesn’t do it and they need to do it, they don’t do it and it doesn’t get done. It’s okay. Well that might mean they don’t pass the test. Well, that might mean they, you know, don’t get the Eagle scout or the college scholarship or their shoes tied today, going to school.
Pray.
Craig Graves: [00:53:27] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:28] Tough one to really believe. Oh, it’s okay. Let them know.
Craig Graves: [00:53:32] I want to go back to your love and logic strategies, not getting the scholarship affects you as a parent. So get on. I’ll make them study
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:41] not if I am not paying.
Craig Graves: [00:53:43] Well, that’s what I’m saying. If you are paying, then that’s going to help you out.
I think that’s a different thing.
We all talk about college anxiety.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:50] Oh wow.
Craig Graves: [00:53:51] At some point, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:53] Yeah, we’ll write that down when we’re done with the show. If you’ve got a pen, jump up and get a pen, really
Craig Graves: [00:53:57] I will remember that,
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:59] because that is totally true. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:54:01] That’s a, I love to do a show on college debt.
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:04] Oh, college debt and going into college and UVA and into the world and graduated high school.
I mean, it’s a, there’s a lot there. Yeah. There’s a lot there. All right. Number 11. Perfection is not the goal, man. I can’t tell you how many parents think they’re trying to be the perfect parent and they have to be the perfect parent, like perfect. I gotta be the perfect mom. I got to cook. Right. I got to have the right nutrition or the right strategy for, I gotta get the right dentist.
I had to get the right doctor. I gotta have the right public school. I have the right shoes, the right nutrition that I say nutrition. Oh my God.
And you do it too. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta have enough hours in the, in the, in the baseball cage. With my kid, I gotta be the coach. I gotta be the right cook. I got it. I gotta keep the house fixed and right. And warm. I gotta, I gotta make sure the humidifier’s at the right digit of humidifying temperature for the house.
It’s crazy. The things that we try to do to be perfect moms and dads, here’s a tip. Stop it. That’s just not the goal.
Craig Graves: [00:55:12] Stop it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:13] Stop it.
Craig Graves: [00:55:15] Go look up that newheart. Video loves Saturday night live. That’s great. Love it. And is a good one.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:22] I’ve actually played that more than once. And
Craig Graves: [00:55:24] I’m going to post that on the Facebook page guys, to check that out,
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:27] that’ll be a good post.
Yeah, that’s an awesome post. You can’t stop. The child from hurting in this world. Realize this number 12 instead realized they can be learning moments. I don’t like the phrase. Tough love to be honest with you. But I like it in the sense that it’s a generally understood concept. That is a good reminder for parents.
Craig Graves: [00:55:49] Why don’t you like the word? Tough love.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:51] I can’t really totally put my finger on it because I feel like there’s a better words or better words that can encapsulate what it is that we’re trying to do, you know, in relationship to, to let in the kid experience this and to figure out the problem. Rather than, than, than stepping in to take care of it.
Tough, tough love. This feels like to me a weird way of saying that, and I haven’t ever figured it out yet. it’ll it’ll pop on me at some point,
Craig Graves: [00:56:20] but you’re not against the concept.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:21] No, not against concept at all.
Craig Graves: [00:56:23] Okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:24] No, the concept’s great. And like I said, I liked the phrase because people generally know what that means and that’s what I’m talking to here.
Tough love, you know? Can’t stop the kid from hurting in this world, let them realize that they can actually learn from it. You know, let those things happen, man. You, you want to let them be and let them hurt. And I know that sucks moms and dads out there. I know it sucks to watch your kid hurt, but you’re going to, it’d be much more effective if you’re there to support them and encourage them in a compassionate and loving way without taking care of the dag-gone problem.
Don’t fix it. And that’s the concept of tough love. Lastly, in my little brainstorm here, take the pressure off, realize this kid is going to figure it out. What’s important to them. They will figure it out. They have a brain, their brain will help them figure this stuff out and they will, they will actually survive.
Believe it or not an incredibly vast majority of the time. Not only are they just fine, but they thrive. And I think, I think that if you can carry that visualization and carry that, that insight into your mind throughout, you know, the experience of being with these kids through their growing up years, you’re going to be calmer.
You’re going to be okay. You are going to be effective. You’re going to be compassionate. You’re not going to feel guilty and you’ll confidently enjoy their successes as they go along to take the pressure off, realize this kid really is going to figure it out. They’re going to be okay. They’re going to have a brain and work it and survive, and actually even more so visualize that.
Imagine that, see that experience, that your kid’s going to thrive. Isn’t that a nice way to think.
Craig Graves: [00:58:24] That’s a great way to think.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:26] And that’s usually true. You’re not lying. You’re not being naive. You’re, you’re probably being pretty accurate when you start thinking in that way.
Craig Graves: [00:58:38] That’s a great way to think.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:41] So let’s, let’s stay with that for a second.
Let that marinate as you take us out of here, Craig, and unless you have thoughts, questions, or other things that we did an okay job in trying to blow up some of the. Guilt. We feel as a society of parents.
Craig Graves: [00:58:57] I hope it helps some folks, man. I think it will.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:01] So take us out of here and I’ll tell you where we’re going Next
Craig Graves: [00:59:04] throughatherapisteyes.com folks.
That’s where you can find information about our show. You can find a blog entry for each individual show you can stream from right there off of the website, or you can find us on just about any popular podcast platform. You’ll also find links to our Facebook and Instagram on the site. And we have an email list.
You can sign up for, to love, to be able to communicate with you that way. And, where are we going next, man?
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:31] We’re going to talk about fear. Fear is a powerful,
Craig Graves: [00:59:35] the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:38] I love it. We’ll see you next week, guys.