Legit Parenting
Legit Parenting
A Guide to Crucial Conversations
We share heartfelt stories and practical advice for those tricky family discussions, grounding our guidance in real-life experiences.
Welcome to Legit Parenting, where imperfect parents build resume kids and families. A place to learn real solutions based in brain science to fit your unique parenting style. We show you how to tackle today's challenges for children and teens. Remember, when it comes to raising kids, you just have to be this side of good enough. Join us and we will show you how. I'm your host, craig Nipenberg. I've been a child and family therapist for nearly 40 years. I'm the business owner of one of Colorado's largest private practices, best-selling author and father of four. In my fathering world, I've been a birth death, a single parent, a step parent, an adoptive parent, a parent of exceptional students and a grandparent of two. By my side is Sydney Moreau, our production manager and mother of three ages, preschool through 18. Together, we bring you a guilt-free parenting perspective with solutions that actually fit into your real life. Welcome to Legit Parenting. I'm your host, craig Nipenberg, along with my producer, sydney Moreau. I wish we had just taped the last five minutes of our Sydney and I were chitchatting before we started the show.
Speaker 1:Now, many of you listeners have younger children. Some of you might have teens, and we were just discussing this point of it at being an age where you have the teenagers still trying to get them to launch as adults and at the same time, while taking care of your aging parents. And it's a pretty difficult phase. It's not for the faint of heart, that is for sure. That's things to all of you who are in that phase and to Sydney. She's got a couple more years left of the teen than I do. Mine's almost done.
Speaker 2:But and I have another one behind it.
Speaker 1:That's right, you've got another little one. Oh my gosh. This is why you have kids when you're younger.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is. I would recommend that.
Speaker 1:Too much and after a lot of consecration with my daughter at seven o'clock this morning, it didn't really start my day off to a good point. But I do want to thank Jake at Stretch Lab who stretched me out. I just came from there and it is so relaxing. If you ever get a chance, if you have a Stretch Lab by your house, somewhere in your neighborhood, it really is quite amazing. Thanks, jake, for keeping me sound and after this I'm going to go hit the bike and just decompress.
Speaker 1:But today's topic is those difficult family conversations. We've all had them. I've got some tips based on one we had on Thanksgiving. That was absolutely delightful, but man, they can go south pretty fast. Also, I want to give a big thank you to Colorado Public Radio. I did a book interview with them last week that will air in December They'll put it on Colorado Public Radio or National Public Radio and really enjoyed it and it was so fun. On Thanksgiving morning I was reading my papers, listening to Colorado Public Radio, like I do every morning, and I heard my voice on the radio. I'm like what they were doing some promo teasers for the when it airs. So that was fun. That was a surprising little start to my Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1:Do you want to cover a couple of things in the news before we get to our topic today? They've just been out a couple of different things. First one's a rather negative, of course, and this first one is about sex distortion. I've talked about that before and I remember the first teen who was a victim that I was seeing of sex distortion, where he was thought he had a girlfriend online that he had met and they converse for months and then eventually she sent him some pictures of herself naked and wanted to have a picture of him naked and being a foolish young male. And if you have boys, you this was on Orly Sexes but boys, when they're testosterone, shoot level, shoot up. They are just gullible for anything related to romance and they are suckers. It's no different than the guy that goes into a strip club and comes out and says oh I give, spends all his money and says I know that dancer, she's into me, she gave me her phone number. I'm like, yeah, call that one, see if it's actually a phone number. But we are tremendously gullible and this young man sent his naked picture, also known as a dick pic, and guess what? He gets back An email saying this is not her name. We have your picture. We're going to put it on social media unless you get your parents' credit card to send us money. Fortunately, his parents did the right thing. They contacted the police and indeed it turned out to be part of a Russian mafia scheme, but the guys are still falling for it.
Speaker 1:So you have to and this article talks about it you have to talk to your team males about never, ever, sending pictures of themselves over the internet or on social media that there's such a high probability of that being a scam and they're trying to extort money out of you. That's what it's called sex distortion. So the tips on this was. The first one was talk to your team boys about it. They're gullible. Let them know that's out there. I'm doing a lecture on this topic in January coming up. Make sure also they never share their passwords on their social media account. That's a must If, in addition to preventing it, obviously, some of those parental controls on social media accounts, which I don't even know how to do my teenager does it for me, but that's a good starting point. Also, couple points they gave keep an eye on their online friends. So check out who they're communicating with Provise their payment apps. Cindy, I don't even know what a payment app is.
Speaker 2:Can you explain?
Speaker 1:that to me.
Speaker 2:It's like Venmo or PayPal, or Cash App is another one I think they use. I'm sure there's other ones. You can Apple cash people money directly through texts and your Apple phone. There's all kinds of things, but some of them are used as social so you can if you don't set it to private, you can see who your kid or who your kid's friends are sending money to, and or they can see where you're sending money to as well. I don't know how it would be a scam, but certainly you would be able to see if there's some illegal behavior or like doing something with your parents credit card or something like that. In addition to that, I will add not only cash apps, but if you've ever given your kid your credit card for DoorDash, you will.
Speaker 1:I mean I. It's on her ATM card, which we now possess. We took it away from her.
Speaker 2:And it's crazy, DoorDash the money.
Speaker 1:Donald's Burger, and it's $16. $30.
Speaker 2:Right, I know it.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I would add to that this article says, if you use Apple cash, set up Apple cash family for money limits and transaction notifications. So there you go. I guess that's one solutions. If photos are shared, recommend the stay calm, don't pay it and report them. The incident to the police. And the story on this one is young one man who they did report to the police, like my client did, and they took care of it. Then they there's also the cyber bullying tip line. Call it. I'll just the numbers 800-843-5678. 843-5678. If that happens to you and then you work on getting the photos taken down. You don't want them hanging out forever. Now, on the same thing, they do. The female side of the equation, although it does involve males at the heart of it all. Very upsetting story and because one of my friends at Orange Theory she's a wonderful mom. I see her all the time. Her daughter's a division one gymnast at the Florida. They usually rank in the top three gymnastics teams in the country every year. Her daughter's going to be a senior and this one was about.
Speaker 1:The Wall Street Journal set up, use bots or whatever to follow things on Instagram and all they put in that they were interested in was female women's gymnastics. Now think about that. So there are several gymnastics influencers out there, but your daughter's in the gymnastics, You're in the gymnastics, you want to follow the trendy people and the influencers in the gymnastics world and watch the reels and all that stuff. They did that with some of their bots. Now, given that this is usually teen girls, young adult women, maybe even younger gymnast, you might think or draw the correlation. Well, that could be attractive to men to watch that. And sure enough, when their bots started doing streaming videos, they had all sorts of things to pop up, Like Bumble, which is a dating app, showed up a video of someone stroking the face of a life-size latex doll and a video of a young girl with digitally obscured face lifting up her shirt to expose her midriff. And another, a Pizza Hut commercial, followed a video of a man lying on a bed with his arm around the caption. What the caption said was a 10 year old girl. Metta says they're working on it, but apparently this is a place where pedophiles go and they get served up all this different content just because they're following female gymnastics.
Speaker 1:And I will read you the clip of some of the things they on these bots that showed up. One was a six second video, a delt content creator uncrosses her legs to reveal her underwear. Then a sprinter at a track meet runs over a small boy who steps onto the track. Okay, I guess gymnastics and track and field are close, but I don't know why you'd want to see it get run over. Next is a Disney ad promoting Coco theme Plaza doll of Familia I'm assuming is a show. And then young woman wearing lingerie and a furry tail poses with fake blood dripping from her mouth. That was a second, a seven second video. Next, a five second video child in a bathing suit records herself posing in a mirror. Followed by a four second adult content creator gives a cum hither motion. In an eight second girl tweaking in a car while song with sexual lyrics plays.
Speaker 1:So the advertisers are not happy, and that's cool about this article. It looks at the advertisers are looking for wholesome content. I mean your pizza hut. Did your thinking your ads are gonna be watched by? In this case, moms, girls or gymnasts or the daughters themselves are watching this. Let's send them wholesome content. And it's filled with child pornography content. What a nightmare On this one. The hope is that the companies will start fighting this more themselves and actually withholding dollars to companies that put their videos out and potentially attract sexual predators. That's just, isn't that disgusting Sydney.
Speaker 2:It's so gross. It's just absolutely disgusting. Yeah, it really is nuts.
Speaker 1:This next one I thought was cool. Again, I don't totally understand it. We just got the Roku thing for our TV in our bedroom because we want to watch. Paramount Plus has the original Yellowstone I think it's 1883 and 1922. We're big fans of Yellowstone and we're streaming these things. I guess that's streaming. Is that through Roku? Is that streaming? Yeah, this one mom talked about how the streaming's been great for her kids because they never see commercials for toys or McDonald's. So her kids the only shows they watch are streamed with no commercials. So it's online.
Speaker 1:Kids. If you're just watching children's TV, there's all these ads for everything and of course, any kid that's watching Doc McStuffins what's the other one? If it's so cute? My grandson loves it. They're like dogs or builders and stuff. Paw Patrol yeah, he loves Paw Patrol. So when you're watching that on a regular TV, you get all these ads and then of course, every child's like oh, I want that, I want to go eat the year, let's go to McDonald's, on and on. And this mother was saying it's great when you're streaming, you don't have to work on that.
Speaker 1:Another one related to Thanksgiving that I really enjoyed. The article was gratitude has helped humans evolve and survive and then goes on and talks about the mental health benefits of being generous to others and expressing gratitude for everything in your life. It's interesting because, in terms of the evolution of our social brains, people have always looked at I do something nice for you, people do something nice for me. So it was this reciprocal agreement that will be nice to each other. And they thought that was the only time that humans do that. And what they've realized now is that humans will do random acts of generosity to others without caring if someone gives back to them. So we've evolved past tit for tat to let's just be kind to others and be generous to others and see and live that way and not expecting a necessarily one to one correlation, which is really a fascinating thing to look at the evolution of that. It's the kind of behavior this is a quote from the article it's the kind of behavior that shows gratitude is more than simple exchange. It can make us more generous with other people in general, even if they didn't help us first. So always encouraging your children to be generous to others and kind to others. And then the important part, as you're thinking about gratitude, as you're going over gratitude list with your children is to talk about how the people were grateful for it, not necessarily our possessions, but focusing on relationships, and that's one of the things I talked about. My color of public interview is really focusing on relationships, not so much all the gifts and all that kind of stuff, so I thought that one was quite compelling in itself.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's get to our topic, those difficult family conversations. Now, families have always had these right. I can't even fathom what it was like to be growing up having a family Thanksgiving dinner in 1860 when one half was against slavery, other family members were for slavery, or for states' rights, as they like to paint it, and how, as we know, many times families broke apart and brother fought brother on the battlefield. I can't imagine what those dinners were like. I know for myself. In the 60s, during the Vietnam War, my grandfather, who was a state senator in Missouri, very conservative, started going off on the hippies, those hippies in their long hair. Well, sitting directly across the table from him was my older brother, who was a hippie with his long hair, and my dad took great offense to grandpa's comments and they were face to face and I'm like, whoa, this is a trip. So much for Thanksgiving dinner. I just wanted to have more roles at Grandbury's house and my mom's stuffing, which is the best in the world, and we added it Thanksgiving at our house. So those can be very difficult times and especially around topics of politics, religion, those are all tricky. Now we had and I'll tell you about the boundaries in my own family of origin that we have but Thanksgiving dinner it was my side of the family here in Denver my brothers, we had my wife's sister or her parents, the grandkids we had 35 people for dinner and it was incredible. It was just a lovely experience.
Speaker 1:Now afterwards, after everything was cleaned up, it was down to the 10 originals. So it was my in-laws, my wife, myself, her son and daughter-in-law. Her sister was there, so it's just the small group of adults and it was the most diverse group you could ever have Among the 10 of us. We have Roman Catholics, we've got evangelicals, we've got mainline Protestants, we have atheists, we've got them all covered For parties. We had a libertarian, we got the Democrats, we got the Republicans, we got pro-choice people, pro-life people. It couldn't have been more diverse and typically we avoid those discussions, but it just started happening and it really was this back and forth, exploring our different views on things, and that's one of the keys that I'll get to, if you're gonna allow those at your house, and it was just a lovely experience and my daughter was the hit of the whole thing. And, of course, when you get old people get together, they talk about how the younger generations, millennials Sidney, are you a millennial?
Speaker 2:No, I'm just Gen X. Okay, yeah, I'm just a millennial.
Speaker 1:The millennials take a lot of heat on social media too. I very blame the millennials for just being sloppers, right. But my daughter came out and she said a couple things. The first thing she said is you have to understand that TikTok is where we get our news. And I'm like, oh my God, really. And she said I fact checked everything and it dawned on me because I just ran an article the other day about how, for younger generations, about 30% get their news on TikTok. That's where they get their newsfeeds and so maybe that's a good thing that they're getting news and trying to follow things. And then we talked about her generation and she said you don't understand all that we are inundated with on the news feeds. We've got climate change, we have social media and we have guns. And she said you just, my friends and I, we just feel hopeless. And the quote that we're being ruled by a bunch of old white men. And it was just incredibly compelling. It was like a political speech. And the grandpoules very conservative said to her you should be the voice of your generation. You have to have a voice and do something with it. I don't think Lily's going to jump on that, but hopefully she can at least influence others online about what's going on for their generation and what they can do and some things they can't. But certainly some things need to change. So I was really impressed with it. That was just a shining moment for me Now in thinking about your family.
Speaker 1:We just had Thanksgiving. We got the holiday celebrations coming up. Those can be landmines, lots of landmines for someone taking a conversation too far. Now in a couple of weeks we're going to have a guest on Steve Carlton, who's a professor at the University of Denver Social Work Graduate School of Social Work and an addiction specialist, and he's going to be talking about parental use of substances. So instead of talking about the teens' use of substances, he's going to help us look at parental use of substances and how that impacts your parenting. So stay tuned for that. But I do think when you're thinking about your holiday festivities, alcohol and tough conversations do not go well together. It's the reason years ago my wife said anytime we're having a function, it's beer and wine only. No more hard alcohol, no more vodka, screwdrivers, whatever. It's beer and wine only. And that does help dampen anybody getting too inebriated. So if you want to verge into a discussion or it's heading that way. If one of your guests or family members is obviously inebriated, you shouldn't have it, or that person should be in the room, because it will go south pretty fast. Now there's other times you don't want to have those at all.
Speaker 1:We had a family trip with my in-laws and there were about 10 of us at an Airbnb in the mountains a couple of summers ago. Labor Day weekend, lovely time. And the first thing when we picked up my in-laws, grandpa started it on politics and started bringing up some story and he's very subtle, he just asks these questions and my wife was like dad, we're not talking about politics, that's all we get. And he stopped. And about 30 miles later, well, there's all these homeless people. Why don't we have them live out here in this big valley and build like a camp farm or whatever? My wife's dead, no politics. So she shut it down. It was a great weekend. We didn't have it at all.
Speaker 1:Now, in terms of myself and my brothers, we are very strong headed people and the three of us all have different perspectives and we just don't do it anymore. It was a nightmare in the past and so we just don't have those discussions anymore. Period, that's our rule, so set your boundaries. Number two is again, this might be related to the inebriated uncle or whatever but pick the people who can handle it. If you think people are capable of having a discussion that's informative and enlightening and helps people understand each other, great. But if you think it's going to go south, then you really got to think who are the people we want to have this with. So my brothers and I we're not going to do that. It's not going to work.
Speaker 1:In this case, my father-in-law his biggest desire he loves to debate politics and he told me afterwards he said my best friend, who was my attorney, passed away and all we used to do is debate politics and I miss that. And he's very open to debating. He's not just one side of my way or the highway, he's very open to others' opinions or thoughts and just loves to debate. So for him it was just a glorious time to be able to do that. Number three everybody at the table has to acknowledge that we all have different experiences, life and different views, that you have to acknowledge that with each other. They were all coming from different perspectives, different generations, different life stories and that shapes how we think and you really have to validate that before you start Now.
Speaker 1:Interestingly enough, our conversation this is tip four was my mother-in-law who cut the tone for the whole thing, and they're older, and in fact my wife and her father. They went over to the VA cemetery here in Denver for Logan to plan out his burial and his where his ashes are going to go. It's that time he's 90 years old now and they were doing that and he wants to have a very Roman Catholic service at the parish and then go over to Ford Logan. But my grandmother set the whole tone by just mentioning why she doesn't feel as religious as her husband or her kids, that she's really never had that feeling. So she didn't start out by making a line in the sand saying this is the way you have to believe or this is the right way. She was just wondering about why is it? She's never been able to figure that out.
Speaker 1:And in that process, when someone starts with questioning, then you can say each other's opinion and that's a crucial one. So when you're having those discussions, focus on validating the other person's perspective first. So when they share something about this or that, you just want to simply validate. That's where they're coming from and you can understand why that makes sense to them. And number six hopefully this makes sense and, sidney, you can certainly jump in, but if you need to apologize if you've said something that you thought went a little too far, I called my father-in-law the next day and I said hey, I hope you weren't offended by my comments about former President Reagan, because I that's a zero. When you look at this disparity in wealth in this country, it really took a big hit then and he was like, oh no, I'm fine with that. That was great. I'm looking for opinions. I want different ideas so that I can be more informed as well. Sidney, any thoughts on that? I don't know how your family does it.
Speaker 2:I've had a highly polarized family, from religions to politics, to generations, and I think that what I've curved over my time with my family is and it's not a new point is that you really can't change other people's minds.
Speaker 2:But I think, at the heart of it, when you're having that conversation with your family, I think what I've learned is that when somebody is sharing their opinion or expressing their political viewpoints or making some kind of narrative about what they believe, really at the heart of it, they're wanting validation that their understanding is enough, that their place, that they're coming at it is a perspective that is worth listening to.
Speaker 2:And so when you realize you really can't change other people's minds, but a family is all about connection and feeling like that connecting. So if I can't change your mind about what I'm going to believe, but you want to share your opinion with me, then for me to be curious and me to ask you questions about it and listen to it with an understanding but not with debate, makes that other person feel so validated and connected within the family. And not that we find that piece all the time, but I find when somebody engages with me. In my opinion, that's just the position that I take and I almost never share my own opinion unless I'm coming to the table to be vulnerable in my own thoughts, but I try to keep it out of off the kitchen table just because it doesn't go well, but if you can just listen, and you just summarized it perfectly.
Speaker 1:It's about questioning, listening, validating the other person and you're not going to change somebody's mind at a holiday dinner party. That is not ever going to happen and we all get our fixed mindset and it's based on where we've been. But if you can understand your relatives and their family and what they've gone through or what they've been and validate that, that leads to a good family discussion without it becoming hostile.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think recognizing half of my family is Jewish. I was talking to my daughter, who is Gen Z, who gets her news from Tintock, and I grew up at various family functions with Holocaust survivors where they would share their tattoos and they would talk about the stories and they would do that and as a kid growing up you're very removed from that and I was saying to my she's seeing what she's being influenced by through Tintock and a lot of the problem with that is it lacks a lot of context. It's snippets, it's bits and pieces, there's no history in it, there's not whatever, wherever you fall on a side politically.
Speaker 1:It's two seconds, yeah, and it's not a deep dive.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And history is essential for having any discourse and understanding history. How did we get here?
Speaker 2:And so there's a part during Passover where you read about the Holocaust in every Seder book and I told is my daughter. I said I guarantee you that this moment in time will be added to those prayer services where we talk about it. And I said it's just such an important time in history. But it's not challenging her on what she sees, but just the magnitude of what she's experiencing, because she's going to be influenced the way that she's influenced, but just being able to come to her place as a Gen Z-er and understand the magnitude, like Lily was saying, you know, we're subjected to guns, we're subjected to, like she said, we're ruled by white guys, we're ruled by old ideas and policies that don't necessarily apply to Gen Z, but when you think about it, like I think about my grandmother, I would never I'm sure she never thought that history would repeat itself. But here it's.
Speaker 2:We're having this thing, and it's just the magnitude of it and I was like it's just wherever you go, like just understanding the and the understanding and just being compassionate to it, I think is the only place you can connect with and being really aware of what other generations have experienced.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine sitting around the table hearing from Holocaust survivors. That's incredible to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're a kid right, yeah. You're just like oh, that could never happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's no. But whatever it is, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1:But it's just that I think all sides there are some things that you really can't understand at younger ages, until you're older. And I was just talking about this with my stretch lab guy, jake today, who's young, he's probably 24, 25, about Blink 182, which I love the band. And they have a new song out one more time. It's called and they're older, they've been around for a long time and the song is basically listen to the lyrics. One of the first verses is we were strangers and then brothers and then strangers again.
Speaker 1:And it's about this phase in your life. You think about that show Friends. So you're young, you're living in a new city, you're meeting all these new people, your family's living in another state, somewhere, and so you have this deep bonding with that group of friends in your 20s where you're bonding with these other people your age and you're falling in love and getting married and you're in each other's weddings and all of that. And then life goes on and you start your own family and your family's going to this school or they're going to that school. Your kids are in different things than their kids are and you just become strangers again. You just depart, until this has happened to me on a couple occasions One of those old brothers, one of those old, close friends is sick with cancer, passes away and my dear friend John Pedigar died several years ago from pancreatic cancer and I. Fortunately we reconnected about nine months before he passed and he reached out to me and we had talked in years and I still have some of the greatest memories of my early adulthood with John. And it's a shame you spread out, you lose touch and then the life issues bring you back together again and the song is Do we have To Weep that Long For that To Happen Again? So those are things that you really can't fully understand until you're older or go through that. It's the process of life. But being able to validate each other's experiences, limit the alcohol content in your family gatherings and set your boundaries. So if you just want to not have a discussion in the kitchen about those things, don't do it, because you don't want your kids witnessing negative side effects from that. Well, I want to thank you for tuning in. I want to end with Things of Beauty. Make Me Cry.
Speaker 1:This one first for my daughter. I had that feeling of knock-us pride in my offspring as I listened to her talk. It was just a glorious moment and fortified me from our discussion this morning about the missing homework. So you have to fall back on those things as a parent. The other one, and it's just so devastating.
Speaker 1:We're talking about Israel and Hamas and the release of hostages, and I was so thankful that little girl, abigail, who just turned four, was released and this Sunday I had a little prayer about that and then I just broke down into tears because that little girl's going to find out that her mom and dad are dead, that her family she had in Israel are dead and she survived, that she survived being kidnapped in horrible conditions and now she has to know her parents don't live anymore. That one is so difficult. I just pray for her family, the remaining family members, extended families, that they can help that little girl and help her lead a life of dignity and respect and purpose. Having been with her, she's been through that one is just too much. And children should be part of war. Okay, oh man, sorry, sydney.
Speaker 2:I share your sentiments. It's just.
Speaker 1:the footage is so hard to watch all around Just the devastation and the pain of these children, the suffering there is on both sides of suffering people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend and we'll be back. We have some guests coming up this next month and I'll let you know about when my interview with Colorado Public Radio comes out. And I'm looking forward to the Sadians Book Fair tomorrow night Well, I have a table with both my books out and get to see the kids at the school I worked at for so many years. It will be a delightful experience. Thank you very much and remember you just have to be this side of good enough. Thank you.