How do we not f*ck up our children while giving ourselves grace at the same time? It is easier said than done, and there is no one size fits all solution. But we can always try our best. Join Bethany Mortellaro and Cher Vaden as they delve into the challenging journey of raising children, highlighting the difficulties and emphasizing that each parent is simply doing the best they can. With a focus on self-compassion, they encourage listeners to give themselves more grace and acknowledge that parenting is a constant learning process. From trusting mom intuition to teaching love and empathy, they discuss the fundamental aspects of nurturing a healthy relationship with our kids. Tune in for heartfelt insights and a reminder that, despite the challenges, we are all doing the best we can.
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We Try Our Best To Not F@Ck Up Our Kids: Navigating The Drama And Chaos Of Raising Children
We are doing this episode from my house, which is cozy. Cher came over as I was walking in the door from working at the salon all day. I had a long day. It is July 1st, 2023. Before you know it, kids are going to be going back to school.
Do your kids have summer schoolwork?
Yes, he has done quite a bit, but getting him to read the book that he has to read for third grade is like pulling teeth.
What book is it?
It is the Magic Tree House Heroes’ #30 Hurricane Heroes in Texas. Everybody has told me these Magic Tree House books are fantastic for kids because they go back in time, but reading them as an adult, I find them so boring.
I have all of them.
I have the whole damn collection except number 30. I was like, “I got to order this off at Amazon for $30.” It was expensive. My husband and kids are out of town. I’m flying solo.
They are going to text me and order pizza here soon.
We are going to Uber Eats it at some point anyway. We are going to change of scenery, Ms. Cher Vaden.
I like this scenery. Whether I look here or there, it is a great view.
You can look at the lake.
I’m looking at you. You look fab.
I was teasing my hair. Cher was like, “What the hell is going on?” I am channeling my inner Diana Ross. I love big hair.
She is a diva.
If I was stranded on a deserted island, I would have to have a pick. It is funny because many clients of mine are always like, “When I go to the beach, and I have saltwater in my hair, my hair looks fantastic. I don’t care what the product says. It is a saltwater beach. That shit is not the same.” I told clients, I’m like, “If you can get past the smell or put essential oils, which I feel when you add oil, it is going to change the composition of it. It is not going to be the same. If you can get a squirt bottle full of saltwater and spray it in your hair, you can have those beachy saltwater waves at any time.” That is for free.
I’m a sucker. I fell for that spray. It doesn’t. It is not the same.
Being in the industry for many years, I can’t even tell you the amount of products I have tried. I have my absolute favorites.
What is your favorite all-time hair product? It doesn’t necessarily have to be hair care. What is your all-time favorite, every girl must have, this is the best, and this is it?
There was a product and it was a Volume Blast by Living Proof.
You don’t like volume at all.
Is that Mary Katherine Gallagher?
No, it is Molly Shannon. I don’t think it was her.
That is when she was doing the Catholic girl. Cher is lifting her leg on my couch and shaking it in.
It was one of Molly Shannon’s characters, but I don’t think it was Mary Katherine Gallagher. It wasn’t that one. It will come to me.
Those were the best SNL days. It was when it was Cheri Oteri, Will Ferrell, and Molly Shannon. Who was the little guy that would play the monkey with Will Ferrell?
I don’t know.
I know you guys know who I’m talking about.
That is why my husband comes in handy because, for some reason, he knows all of this pop culture stuff, and you would never expect it from him. He would know. I have no idea.
I know his name and I can’t think of it. He spun off and started making his movies. He is hilarious.
Is it Corky Romano guy?
Yes. Cher and I are so in sync. It is not even funny when we think of the same things.
It goes to show you the level of insanity that we go at.
What is Corky Romano’s real name?
I don’t know. I have to think about it. It is Chris something.
Chris Farley was fabulous. He was good.
I went to John Candy after that. I was seriously thinking of The Great Outdoors. You and I are weird. What’s his name, Chris Kattan or something like that?
I think it is Chris Kattan.
If I did that, it would be the wine because I’m terrible with pop culture.
I apologize. Even Cher was like, “You don’t look like yourself.” I am mentally shocked. He is freaking hilarious. I love him.
You look like yourself. It has been a lot.
Having the salon, I was running ten minutes behind all day. I feel the stress of running ten minutes behind. I am always prompt on time. When I run, it gives me anxiety.
Go back to it. I asked you a question. I want to know the answer. I got to keep her on track, which never happens. It is usually the way around.
Here is the problem I have and I have talked to other hairstylists about this. They will produce a product that flies off the shelves. They stop producing it and try to create something new. Everybody is scouting on eBay, Mercari, and all these different sites.
Was this one of those?
They have Volume Texture Spray, which is not the same.
Is it by whom?
It is by Living Proof. It comes in a gray bottle. It is Volume Blast. That stuff is amazing. It smelled phenomenal.
I’m going to test your knowledge here.
I’m glad I’m not earning money on this.
When I lived in LA, after growing up in the Bay Area, the dry air there killed my hair. My hair was not happy. I bought this product to restore moisture and trap the moisture in my hair. It was called Crome.
Was that Redkin? Who was that by? I feel like that sounds familiar.
It was their own thing. It said, “Crome.” It almost looked like a Biolage bottle because it was a basic bottle with a shiny gray lid. It was like a liquid silicone to put on your hair. It smelled amazing. It made my hair feel amazing.
I remember when BioSilk first came out. Everybody was obsessed with BioSilk. They were not only using it on their hair, but they were using it on their body. It was the same time when Bath and Body Works had Sun-Ripened Raspberry. Sun-Ripened Raspberry and Country Apple were some of the best. I’m looking up Crome hair. What was it?
I don’t know what you call it, hair smoother or something like that. It was called Crome. It was amazing.
Is it Maxim Crome?
No.
I’m going to have to research that one.
You are going to have to.
Liquid Crome Polish. It is a hair polish.
It doesn’t come like that. It was a clear plastic.
Liquid Crome Hair Polish Shine Frizz Control. You can find it on eBay for $29 and $4 on shipping.
We are doing this in Bethany Mortellaro’s living room. There is a dog destroying a chew toy. He is snorting and having a field day. He looks cute doing it. It is funny because there are pictures around her house. In every single photo, she is in, her hair takes up a third of her body. That is not a joke. There is this one photo. It is her and her husband. They are holding one of their kids. It is in between the two of them. It is like a kid’s sandwich. The parents are looking at one another. All you see is hair, butt, and legs for Bethany. How are you doing over there?
I need a day.
Technical difficulties have been resolved via a library book.
What is this?
It is Chicken to the Rescue.
I’m going to give a shout-out to Luca here.
That is her middle child.
This is going to segue our topic, which is how to not fuck up your kids. Luca graduated from kindergarten. In his first six months of kindergarten, the kid had nothing but problems at school. He didn’t know how to express himself. He has a lot of big emotional outbursts. He is my middle child. I had a teacher at one point tell me, “You need to hold him back a year.” We are like, “No.” Academically, we will work with him at home. We are not seeing what the school is seeing. He is one kid at home and one kid at school.
This is the kid we talked about that we nicknamed Pesh.
The way he talks, he was like, “What are you talking about, mom?” He is skinny. I’m 5 foot. My husband is 5’7”. We are not tall people. We don’t have big kids. He is a feisty little Italian boy.
His personality makes up for what he lacks in height.
For the first six months, I kept saying to myself, and I even said this Thanksgiving break, I said to my husband and somebody who is working with us with the kids, “I need to homeschool him. I need to pull him out.” My mom’s intuition is telling me he needs to be homeschooled or not in the school atmosphere he was in because every single morning on the way to school, my kid is crying about how he doesn’t fit in. He doesn’t want to go. Here I am as a parent like, “Kindergarten is fun.” We are playing games together in the car. We are laughing. I’m trying to make light of now dropping off this anxious child to an eight-hour day at school. I’m trying to make the car ride fun for him.
I had a child who would get in the car and sit in the back of the seat with his head down. He would not talk to me or tell me how his day was. This is a great school. I am not putting the blame on anybody. I don’t want it to come across that way. There was something internally going on with Luca. I was tapping into it. I was telling my husband about the behavioral therapist that we have. Everybody was saying, “No, you should not homeschool him. He needs to be socialized.” The moment I pulled the trigger and said, “I have had enough. We are homeschooling him.” A dear friend of ours Robin, who helps us with the kids is a teacher.
She was my daughter’s first teacher. Kate and Luca are a lot alike.
Robin was my oldest son’s teacher. We met at Keystone Christian Preschool here in the Odessa community. We clicked. We hit it off. Her twin daughter’s baby Saffras. We grew this relationship outside of the school. I was working in the salon. I was pregnant with Gio. My husband is working. We needed help. She didn’t like the situation she was in. It was a win-win for everybody. She came to nanny for us. It was perfect. Honest to God, I trust her with my kids. She is a family member to us.
With that being said, Robin started homeschooling Luca. My shout-out goes to Luca because he got evaluated. I knew he was part of the situation at school was he was bored. He was so advanced that he was getting in trouble because he was bored. He got evaluated. He is going into first grade. He is at a second-grade level. I am freaking proud of him. Go with your gut, parents. The most depressing thing was picking up your kid, and he would sit in the back of the car like a frail little boy with his head down. I spent many nights crying.
You are trying to do your social thing. The active member of society is conforming to, “My kid needs to go to school. No, he needs to be around.” You are listening to what you are being told are professionals telling you what is best for your kid. You have mom’s intuition and it is real. It should not be ignored. Shout-out to you for the fact that you listened to that.
Mom intuition is very real and it's something that should not be ignored. Click To Tweet
Once I started diving into homeschooling, I didn’t realize Tampa was one of the largest homeschooling cities in the country. I am not concerned about finding a social outlet for my kid when there are co-ops.
I have a lot of friends who homeschool too.
I sat down with somebody here in town at The Homeschool Hive. When I walked out of that appointment, which was an hour long of getting educated on homeschooling, my head was spinning. I’m scratching the surface here. There are many outlets and groups. You can send your kid to school for one day. They can get their whole curriculum. You can put them in science class, art class, and music class. They can go for three days a week. It sounds like school to me if you are going three days a week, but it is in a homeschooling environment.
It is not structured like, “We are going to have snack time. We are going to learn science for this.” It is different. Go with your gut. Now I have a completely different kid who knows how to express his feelings. He is confident in himself now. I see a completely different Luca. I have a happy child again. It was nothing about the school he was going to, but it was not the right fit for my son.
You hit on a key point there. It is no different than anything else. You can’t fit everyone in the same box. Not everyone fits in the same box. I feel like often, these days, everyone is supposed to fit in the same box, but they were like, “I don’t fit in this box.” It is only for certain situations. It is either let it be everything or nothing at all. Schooling should not be standardized tests. If you look at my son’s grades on one of those standardized tests, you would think he had a mental disability. I don’t know how else you say it. How are you supposed to say that these days? He is slow. He would be like Forrest Gump. He got to go to a specialist.
Not everyone fits in the same box. Click To Tweet
What is the politically correct way so you don’t offend anybody?
They would say he is mentally challenged, which he is not. The minute you say the word test or put him in an environment, it is done. It is 100% a trigger like the word bitch to some women is a trigger. They went for their EEGs. Both of my kids have ADHD. We were trying to navigate ADHD without medicating. What is the best way? It turns out that while both of my children have the same diagnosis, they have a different form of it. Both of them are inattentive, but one of them tends to be more like I said, Katie and Luca are alike. They both went for that one-hour EEG. During that one hour, it is hooking them up to the machine, and they are lying there alone.
They didn’t let you go in there with them?
No, it was fine. I was right outside the door. He was lying in a little room.
When Enzo had that done, my oldest, they let me lay next to him in the bed to console him.
The first EEG he had, yes, they did, but not this one where they are trying to trigger activity in the brain as opposed to monitoring it by asking him questions. This one was more specific to epilepsy. Both my son and daughter had those tests done. When they called me about the results, they told me they needed to do a 24-hour because his EEG was abnormal. They could not comment on what that abnormality meant.
Katie’s was specific. She was triggered by the flashing light and the breathing thing. It would be typical for someone with epilepsy who had grand mal seizures. Katie has since been confirmed that she does have epilepsy. She has had one episode. She has yet to have another one. That was when she was about two and a half. They called it a febrile seizure. Now we know better than.
Henry’s 24-hour EEG was perfect. There was nothing because he was in a room watching the NBA finals. He was with his iPad. He was with me and playing Uno. The fact that you put him in a room and he knew that his brain was being tested was enough for him to be abnormal. His brain was having an anxiety attack and they have it recorded. That is sad. It goes with what you are saying, “What is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander.” People hate those old sayings. My husband hates that.
My oldest son goes to the same school, and he does phenomenally there. My oldest son has ADHD. His school is on top of his 504 plan. As a parent, in the second week of second grade, I was like, “I want to plan. I want it now. Let’s schedule a meeting. I’m not going to let this stuff fall through the cracks so that my son falls through the cracks.” You have to stay on top of them, but they have been wonderful in bringing in accommodations for dyslexia and an occupational therapist. We are working on his handwriting and reading.
Does he have dyslexia?
I do think he does. At eight years old, he gets his Ps and his Qs, and his Ds and his Bs. He gets those things backward.
Have you taken him to the eye doctor?
Yes, I have. I have an occupational therapist working with him to space out his words and letters. It is not like a run-on sentence. I can’t even space up. You are trying to read your son’s sentence about where the words stop and begin. He is learning those things. One of the tricks they are using is playing the game Hangman, which I thought was interesting. He has had two sessions at summer camp and it is going well.
With that being said, I don’t care. My husband agrees. If we have to drive to three separate schools because they will be successful for that child, then that is what we need to do as parents. It is hard especially when you work a corporate job or you have to be on the clock by a certain time. I completely sympathize, empathize, and understand that. Fortunately, in our case, my husband has his own business. I have my own business. Our clients are understanding of our situations so we can make it work. We have the help of my mom and Robin. I understand that there are a lot of people who don’t have help with that. I am grateful for that.
You hit on a key point. As a mom, you need to trust your intuition and go with your gut.
As a mom, you really need to trust your intuition and go with your gut. Click To Tweet
When everybody was telling me, “Don’t pull him,” I would cry because to see your six-year-old child, not even themselves, full of anger and anxiety and insecure. It was one of those small chapters in my life that was depressing being a parent because I couldn’t fix it when everybody was telling me, “Don’t do that. You need to get them socialized.” There are a lot of ways you can socialize your kids. They don’t have to go to school for eight hours to be socialized with other kids. That is not the only outlet of socialization.
A little update on Rocco here. Rocco is now being leash-trained. He is our Frenchie that we have had for several weeks because he has claimed my sofa as his little pee pad. I have a sofa where the outer layer of the cushion zips off. From the kids being little, being sick, and spilling liquids, I put waterproof crib liners in them, and nothing has seeped through to the feather padding underneath. We are now indoor leash training this little puppy, which is not fun.
You already have three little boys that take up.
I’m dragging him.
She posts a video on the website.
It is a body harness. I’m not pulling on his neck. I don’t need any dog haters out there because I love my animals.
It is funny. He was like, “I’m not going, Mom. You are going to have to drag me.” That is your fourth child.
This was funny when I pulled this up. When you read it first, you were like, “Is this serious?”
I realize what it is, but there is one of those that hits a sore spot with me. That is the part on it where it says, “For the love of God, whatever you do, don’t let your kids ever be barefoot.” It is satirical. It is poking fun. I am that mom. I used to run around barefoot all the time when I was a kid, but my daughter loves to be outside. She loves to have her shoes off. I hate it because I have big dogs with big poops.
Not only that, but you come in my house, and she comes in with these filthy feet. She is running in with filthy feet. My husband is coming. We walk with our shoes on because we have three big dogs. My floors are not as clean as they could be. She will get out of the bath with no house shoes on and gets in bed, and now she’s got dirt in her bed.
She had taken her bath. I was outside having a glass of wine on the pergola in the swing. Katie came outside after her bath in her house shoes to sit out there with me. She takes her shoes off and starts walking around the pergola in the grass. It was like a scene from a movie because she was looking at the skies. She says, “Do you know why I love to have my shoes off?” I said, “No, baby, I don’t.” She says, “When my feet touch the grass, it makes everything feel much better.”
How could that not make you melt?
I say that here, “For the love of God, whatever you do, don’t let them live with their shoes off.” I get it now. You should. It is grounding.
This is sarcastic.
There are some good ones on there.
This is 15 Surefire Ways to Fuck Up Your Kids by Tracy Busby. Number one is do not let them learn by doing. Be a hover.
Give me an example of a time that you let your kid and you finally throw in the towel and say, “Fuck it. I’m not going to tell them not to touch the scissors and knife again.” Go ahead. Learn by doing. That is how I read this because I have done it.
I feel like I am a tad bit of a helicopter mom. My husband and I were on our way to meet another couple for dinner. We had not had a date night in a long time. I’m all about my kids getting the Amazon boxes, cutting them up, and creating whatever craft they want to make or a spaceship. My husband ordered this plastic box cutter.
My whole point is we made one stop to have a drink. We were early. We were like, “Babysitter is here. We are getting the hell out of the house. We will stop and have a drink before actual dinnertime.” We never made it to dinner because I got a phone call from my mother. My eight-year-old son was cutting open the box with the plastic box cutter. He sliced his finger badly. It went through his fingernail. We came home. He went to the emergency room. He got stitches. It was a whole freaking parents’ nightmare. When it comes to scissors, sometimes I look at my children, and they are stabbing things and the way they are holding things.
I will never forget my cousin Elizabeth. We were 7 or 8 years old. She was in the back of the car. My father was driving. This was when my parents were married. My mother is in the passenger seat. It was my brother, myself, and my cousin Elizabeth at the time. She was taking scissors. She was cutting something. She cut the tip of her finger off. When it comes to scissors and knives, especially with my boys, who have no fear, they are like, “I’m going to take this screwdriver and stab holes in the box.” You are looking at what is underneath the box and you are like, “That is permanently damaged now.”
At least it was another kid in the box. That would have been bad. Henry is the rule follower. Katie’s inhibitions are turned off. She knows that something is not the best choice, but the angel and devil are on her shoulders. The devil always wins with her. She comes out of her room. She loves to cook. My husband got her a set of knives for Christmas several years ago. We tell her, “You don’t use these knives unless you are with Mommy and Daddy.”
One morning, she got Band-Aids on her fingers. I was like, “What happened, Katie?” She was like, “I was cutting myself some fruit.” I was like, “With your knives?” She was like, “Yes, I’m sorry.” That was several years ago. Not long ago, she came out of her room and got a Band-Aid in her hand. I was like, “What happened, Katie?” She was like, “Nothing. I’m okay.” I’m like, “What happened, Katie?” She was like, “I’m sorry.” She does it. I’m sorry.
She is already apologizing before she even gets to the point.
My best friend Jenny, when I was pregnant with Katherine, said, “Are you going to name her Jenny?” I said, “No, I’m naming her Katherine.” She goes, “Katherine Jenny.” My best friend’s motto is, “I rather ask for forgiveness than permission.”
I love her already because that is what I was thinking. I like to go through life screwing up and asking for forgiveness.
When you are a nine-year-old girl, that is a bit of a problem. That is what she does. It was always the same. The problem is I already knew what she did. She was cutting the fabric of some sort. She got a sewing kit from my mother. It has these fabric scissors. Fabric scissors are sharp. It is like hair-cutting scissors. She cut herself.
Here is what is best. She is nine. I’m that helicopter mom and an old-school mom. I was like, “You are a baby. You dress like a 9-year-old, not a 19-year-old.” I tried to get her to tell me what it was that she was cutting. She was like, “I don’t want to tell you.” I said, “You need to tell me. You know I already know.” I didn’t know.
She got this bathing suit. It is a bikini. It is modest but the bottoms have lattice on the hips. Behind the lattice is a piece of fabric. The home girl was cutting out the piece of fabric so that the bikini would have the lattice and let her skin show through on the sides. I said, “Do you know what that is, baby? That was God telling you you were doing something wrong. That is why you slipped with those scissors.”
You have to put the Jesus guilt on her.
I always use the Jesus guilt all the time.
Do you want to know how to fuck up your kids? Use the Jesus guilt, everybody. My mom put so much Jesus guilt on me. It took years of therapy to get through the Jesus guilt of both my parents. I’m not even joking. I thought I was going to hell for everything. That is a surefire way to fuck up your kids.
Here’s a surefire way to f*ck up your kids: use the Jesus guilt. Click To Tweet
I love my nana, but she did. We go on walks together and she would tell me, “A boy will always tell you, ‘Prove your love to me. Prove that you love me,’ to try and get you to have sex.” She used to always tell me that. They are going to tell you that you are the prettiest thing and they love you. They are going to say, “Prove you love me.” You will have sex with them. Don’t have sex.
My dad and I, when I was younger, would do daddy-daughter date nights.
You have a good relationship with your dad.
I do have a good relationship. It was not always that way. We have come a long way, but we have a nice relationship. He would tell me, “If you are in the movie theater and a boy puts his arm around your shoulders, and he starts creeping his hand a little bit more.” My dad was like, “I’m going to lay it out for you on what boys are like and what they want. I want you to be mindful of this.”
My dad wasn’t that nice about it. Were your parents young? My parents were young. They were 21 and 22 when I was born.
My mother was born in ‘69. What is the math?
My ex-husband was born in ‘66.
My mom is 70 or 71. She was in her early 30s.
Mine were young parents. I grew up with my parents.
I was having a conversation with a good girlfriend of mine. She and her husband got married. I was saying, “Are you guys going to hold off on having kids?
How old is she?
She is in her late twenties. I was in my mid-30s. We were having that conversation because I looked at people that I went to high school with who had children at such a young age, and now they are hanging out with their 20 and 25-year-old children. They are having so much fun. Here I am with a 4, 6, and 8-year-old. I’m pulling my hair out. These kids changed. I changed my underwear. I can’t keep up. When I think I have mastered it, they switch on me again. They are like ninjas. They keep switching on me. I’m like, “How cool I know that those younger years came with a lot of struggles because, in your twenties, you missed out on so much?” Look at it now.
Do you think that you would be better suited as that 27 mom?
No, I don’t. I don’t say this in a bad way. I say this in an honest way. I was selfish. I wanted to live for me. I wanted to go to school. I wanted to do my hair. I wanted to live for me. I wanted to experience my life. I did not want kids. I was not going to go get knocked up. I was not going to have any accidents. I was not going to have any of that. I was all about my friends, my relationships, and my career. If I wanted to go out and have fun, I went out and had fun.
I wanted to do me. When I met my husband and the time came, the clock is clicking here because now we do the math of like, “This is how they are going to be. How old I’m going to be when they are in high school and college? Look at the age we are going to be at.” I wouldn’t have done it any other way, age-wise. Would you?
No, because I lived my life. It gets me when I think of the fact that my grandmother is 90 and I’m 45. I think of the fact that 2023 is the year that I am double her age. She was 45 when I was born.
It is young because I’m 41. You are how old?
Forty-five.
Can you imagine having a grandchild now?
It was different back then. The only time it gets me like, “I wish I had my kids earlier,” is when I think of the future. If I’m living in the now, I’m good with the way things are because me at 45 is not what my grandmother was at 45. Back then, she had her first kid in her early twenties. I had such a great relationship with my great-grandmother and my kids. They are not going to have that down the road.
That is when I think back and think, “I wish I had my kids earlier.” If I had had my kids earlier, it wouldn’t be with the man I’m with. I wouldn’t have wanted to have kids with someone other than who I’m with. Hindsight is 20/20. If I’m looking at it from a realistic perspective, I had kids when I was meant to have kids. I had fun. I did my thing. I did the me.
Talking to this girlfriend of mine who is in her late twenties, there is no right time. At the end of the day, when you have that child, and we were talking about your husband, feel like they are second because you are giving so much energy and attention to this newborn baby who is relying on you. You don’t have a choice. I understand that the marriage goes the wayside. You are trying to find the balance as a new parent, especially for the first time.
There is so much amazingness to being a new parent. You are looking at this little life that you created inside of you, but there is that lonely side. You are not doing the things you used to do. You are not going out with your friends anymore. You lose you. There is no right time. Whatever the situation is, there is never a perfect time.
Don’t you love that when people say, “We are waiting until we do this?” Financially, you are never ready.
We were building my salon and our home when we got married. We said, “For our ten-year wedding anniversary, we are taking a honeymoon to Italy.” We are going to be celebrating eleven years in August 2023. Do you think the last time I went to Italy?
No.
I want to eat some mozzarella and drink some vino.
You are never ready. I wanted to touch on one thing you mentioned about having a newborn baby is that your husband feels second. We are in a stage, and you are transitioning into that stage. This will make me cry. I’m going to try not to cry. We are at the stage now where I was his and my son’s everything. You have three boys. I only have one. There is something about a mom and son. It is the most amazing thing. It’s like a mom and daughter. It’s a completely different relationship. I don’t know how to explain it other than that. If you are a mother of both a son and a daughter, you understand.
Even though Henry is not my firstborn, he is my first experience getting to be a mommy. We have now turned that corner to Nick is his best friend. His dad is the most amazing human on the planet. If he gets mad at somebody, he is mad at me because he can’t find his shirt. It is my fault because it’s not clean and not that he is one of those jerk kids.
He lets his raw self be shown to me. Every morning, he is sweet. He will tell me how much he loves me. Every night before bed, he tells me, “Mommy, I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t nice to you. I love you so much. You are my best.” My husband was second in my life when Henry was born. We have made that turn now that I’m second in Henry’s life and Nick is number one. It hurts.
I can appreciate that especially because of Enzo. We are going through a funk where I was always his cheerleader, safety net, and in his corner. If I felt like the situation was not handled in the correct way, my husband and I would talk about it. My husband would say like, “Can you help me how to deal with Enzo?” It is getting to the point where Enzo and I are now at odds, and they are buddies. I do not like this. I do not like not being that maternal mother of my son coming to me for things. There is a distance and I don’t like that feeling.
That happened with Henry at eight. You are at the right age. Dad becomes the man. He was like, “Dad is my guy. Dad is my person.” You are talking about the dog and you being the dog’s person. I feel like that is what is happening.
I have three boys. My boys are truly boys. I don’t have a problem doing this. I’m a girly girl, but I can always hang out. Even all my friends growing up were always boys. I always leaned more toward having guy friends.
You have a brother too.
He is my best friend. There is going to come a point in time when my husband and my boys are going to be getting into boy things. At that point in my life, I’m going to feel on the outs. If they are into golf, I will take golf lessons. I will learn how to golf to inject myself, be part of it, and have those memories and experiences with my family. I do believe that. I’m foreseeing it already. I’m seeing it a little bit with Enzo. They are taking these boys’ trip together. This is my plan. I’m going to schedule one-on-one mommy and me trips. Even if it is one day or overnight, I take one kid and get to know them. Not that I need to get to know them, but get that time together to connect. The topic is how not to fuck up our kid, Ms. Cher Vaden.
Go to the next one.
Number two is don’t ever let them help you around the house.
That is dumb. That shouldn’t even be on there.
On Sundays, I make my children do laundry with me. They empty the dishwashers. We now have this dog. I have Luca on training on the feeding schedule. I have Enzo on a taking-out schedule. If you are a member of this house, you have got to participate. These are in a jokey way. Don’t be like this is the fact of what they are saying you should do. Here is your one. Don’t let them get dirty.
No, I let them get dirty.
I’m talking about the feet.
I let them get dirty but wash your shit off.
Here is the deal with Enzo, my firstborn. If that kid dropped his pacifier, it was in the garbage. I will buy a new one. I’m 100% that person. If he got spit up, I always had a change of clothes with me. That kid was clean and pristine. Gio, my third child. We go out to the ball field. I’m like, “Please find a patch of dirt to roll your trains in so I can watch your brothers play.” It is different.
We were at the ball field, and we were meeting friends for dinner afterward. My husband was getting pre-clumped because Gio was playing in the sand pit, which is not clean sand. It was a dirty black sand. Their feet and toenails are all black. I was like, “Don’t worry about it.” I took them into the bathroom at the ball field. I washed him down in the sink. I wiped him down. They don’t have paper towels. I stuck him under the blower. We went out to dinner. I was happy. He was happy. Kids are healthy. They are building their immunities. They are good.
I agree they are building their immunity, but I don’t want the shit all over bed sheets. Get dirty. That is fine.
I do agree with you. I have a huge thing. I don’t like pets in bed. Sorry for all those pet lovers out there. I don’t want hair in my bed. I can completely understand if you love snuggling with your pet. I have no shame against you. I get it. I have to clean up after. I can’t clean up after one more. I don’t like hair on my bed. Whatever you do, do not spend one-on-one time with them.
We already know about that one.
I said, “I’m going to be taking my kids on one-on-one trips.”
I do things like this. One day, I asked, “I’m going to the grocery.” My husband tells me all the time, “Go by yourself.” I don’t want to go by myself. There are some things I want to do by myself, like going to the toilet. I want to go to the toilet by myself, and I can never go to the toilet by myself. Someone always needs me the minute I’m in the restroom, but going to the grocery. I’m going to the grocery, he was like, “Mom, can I come with you?” Whenever Henry says that my heart skips a beat. I was like, “Yes. Come on.” I know it is because he is going to try and be super sweet.
He gets all the snacks he wants.
No, he gets Pokemon cards.
They have those at the grocery store.
Katie wants snacks. Henry wants Pokemon. I don’t care. I take it. I’m not going to buy him many.
It is because you had that one-on-one time.
My point is I get one-on-one time with my kids often, even if it is something as simple as running to the market.
I remember having my daddy-daughter dates. I don’t even think they have them anymore, or maybe they do, but we would go to YaYa’s Chicken and go to a movie. Do you remember YaYa’s Chicken? It was like my favorite chicken.
Sidebar, my aunt, I love my aunt, who lives in South Tampa.
For readers who don’t know, South Tampa is Tampa Beverly Hills. Everything is beautiful. The antique homes are perfectly manicured. It is like Hallmark Channel neighborhoods.
People looked like they walked out of L.L.Bean or a Pottery Barn. Pottery Barn is what their house looks like. L.L.Bean has looked like their clothes.
They have fantastic restaurants and great areas where you can walk around with your dogs. I would die to move to South Tampa, but I want land. These are homes on top of homes. You don’t have many yards.
That is where I grew up. My little sidebar is my aunt, who lives in South Tampa. She and Nana were out running a couple of errands together. My grandmother was telling me this. She says, “Katie wanted to stop to get a sandwich at Popeye’s.” I’m dying. The idea of my grandmother driving through Popeye’s Chicken to get one of their chicken sandwiches because they are the best chicken sandwich killed me.
Your grandma is driving through Popeye’s.
My grandmother and my aunt are driving around running errands. My grandmother is telling me about their day. She said how she and Kate went driving around doing errands, and Kate wanted to drive through Popeye’s to get a chicken sandwich. I’m dying. I don’t expect Kate to go to Popeye’s to get a chicken sandwich. Kate would go to Chick-fil-A to get a chicken sandwich.
You were on the phone FaceTime with your grandmother, and I saw her once. I don’t remember what she looks like. This is my imagination of your grandmother driving through Popeye’s. I picture an old Mercury. Her shorts were behind a massive-sized Mercury steering wheel with thick glasses.
That would be her mother. You are describing her mother. She would never be seen outside of her home with rollers.
She does not have the rollers in her hair. She had it set. She could barely see over that steering wheel. Here she is asking for her chicken sandwich.
You have Sophia Petrillo. She is not Sophia at all. You wouldn’t even know she is 90. She is with it. She has an iPhone. She wears her Apple Watch.
Your grandmother looks much younger for her age.
That’s back to my point about having kids. The same. She doesn’t stop.
Never be silly with them.
We are always silly. You are a mom of boys. Farts are the funniest thing ever.
Everything in my house is poop, crap, farts, and vomit.
Do they talk about their penis and balls yet? Nick and Henry will start laughing because we also have two large German shepherds that have large cojones.
We have Rocco, the dog. They are like, “What are these?” I was like, “They are his balls. You have two balls too.” Luca goes, “Mine hang differently than his.” I was like, “Yes, as they would.” Everything is about shit, piss, and farts.
Bodily functions are hilarious.
Have many rules and make every little thing a sin. What did I say? I’m still 41 years old. I’m trying to get over the thought of going to hell for things.
I am defending myself here, but I have a husband with ADHD and two children with ADHD.
I’m convinced you have ADHD
I do not have ADHD.
I don’t mean that as an insult.
I don’t take it as an insult. I’m fucking crazy. I have a lot of shit.
You have two children and a husband with ADHD. Where were you going with that thought?
I have to have rules. If we don’t have rules, this goes here. A place for everything and everything in its place. If I don’t have that, it is chaos,
Nobody says you can’t have rules.
I’m clarifying my situation.
Your kids will always feel like sinners and give up on trying to be good. If they are always in trouble, they will start to lie to stay out of trouble. Having too many rules and rules that are unreasonable, which there are reasonable and unreasonable. It will teach your kids how to be sneaky and dishonest. It builds resentment like we want.
Here is the deal. I feel like my older child does not want to get in trouble. He is a liar. We have been catching him in many lies. That is the problem in our relationship. We have a behavioral therapist that comes to our house weekly. I grew up in a home where I was spanked. I was terrified of my parents. Have I spanked my son before? Yes, I have. He was hitting his brother. I said, “Why are you hitting him?” He said, “You spanked me. Why can’t I spank him?” He used it against me.
My sister did that to me.
I was like, “He got a point.”
I’m going to agree to disagree. He doesn’t have a point, in my opinion.
I think he is learning by example.
He is learning everything by example.
He is seeing two parents.
Who is lying, you or Michelangelo? I would say this. As much as I agree with you that I was scared to death, I was scared of my parents. I was scared to mess up.
I got the belt. I will never forget my father snapping the belt so I could hear the sound.
He thinks it was cool, but that is not because we were going to get it. I know what you are talking about. Were you a shit? Did you deserve it? Did you do something?
My fear, I would always start laughing instead of crying. My father would be spanking me. I would be hysterically laughing at him. I was pissing him off even more. I would make him chase me around the dining room table because I was terrified. I would run away from him.
What did you do that warranted that? That is what I’m curious about.
I remember one time I stuck post-it notes all over the neighbor’s side of the house, saying, “I’m in love with Michael. Michael, will you be my boyfriend? I’m in love with you so much.” I got in the biggest trouble for that. I don’t feel like that was warranted. I like, “Go clean up the mess, Bethany. Knock on the neighbor’s door and apologize.” I had a crush on him.
I don’t think you deserved a belt for that. I will tell you that I never got the belt. My sister is fourteen months younger than I am. She got the belt. She deserved it. My sister was bad. She was naughty. She is a lot like my daughter. I hate to say it. She jokes with me all the time. She was like, “I got your kids, and you got mine.” We joke about that, not for personality reasons, but for scholastic reasons. Scholastically, for her kids, school comes easy. The school was always easy for me. Whereas for my son, school is a struggle. Katie’s school was easy.
She got the belt because she was mean. There is no other way to put it. We are being honest, and Kelly, if you ever happen to be on this show, and I know you are reading, she was mean to me. She deserved the belt. I got in trouble for the same things that my son gets in trouble for. My son gets in trouble now with me for the same things I used to get in trouble for, which was he couldn’t shut up.
If my daughter does something to my son, she deserves to get in trouble because she is being a shit. She is trying to piss him off. She is trying to be a shitty little sister. She doesn’t get in trouble because she messes with Henry, and she goes off on her own. The reason why he gets in trouble is she was like, “Katie, stop it.” She pushes him to the point where he loses shit. You try and tell him, “Henry, stop it.” He wants to be hurt. I was like, “I know what she did. Henry, calm down.” He was like, “You don’t care.” He won’t shut up. As he won’t shut up, he gets in trouble for it. I used to get popped in the mouth because I was sassy. My mom would say something and be like, “Yes, but she can do it.”
I will never forget my mother picking me up from cheerleading practice at Tarpon Springs High School. She had a 1980s two-door Mustang. The windows were rolled down because the AC was broken. I had sunglasses on my face. I said something underneath my breath. She backhanded me fast. My sunglasses flew right out the window.
Henry has been popped in the mouth. I’m being honest. People joke, “Look at my lips. I got big lips.” The joke is that I got slapped in the mouth many times. I had surgery to reduce the size of my lips. That is a fact. We will talk about that in another episode. That was how I got in trouble, or I got spanked because Kelly was getting it, and I was getting it. As far as the belt, I never got the belt. Kelly got the belt. She got it from my dad.
My dad wasn’t the disciplinarian. You were scared shitless of my dad. My mom was the disciplinarian. She was the one to spank us, but Kelly got the belt from my dad. There were a couple of times, but one of them I remember is we had lollipops. We had taken these lollipops, put them in our mouths, and eaten them right before dinner. Mom says, “You get rid of those lollipops right now.” If you think for a second, I was throwing that lollipop away. You are mistaken because we didn’t have those treats all the time. I wrapped it up and put it in the freezer. Everything gets preserved in the freezer.
I stuck it in the door of the freezer. After dinner, we had to clean up. I put this lollipop in my mouth. My sister comes up to me, knowing damn good well it was not hers. It was a trauma that I remember like it was yesterday. I remember taking the damn thing out of the freezer and putting it in my mouth. I remember her walking up to me. She had this look in her eye. I don’t watch horror movies because it relates to my childhood like The Exorcist.
She walked up to me. She put both hands on that lollipop stick sticking out of my mouth and ripped it. I was biting down hard. I had a huge gap in between my teeth. The lollipop was coming through the gap in my teeth. She grabbed hold and ripped it out of my mouth so hard that my mouth started bleeding. The way my house was set up was that you would walk out the door to the garage. In the garage, you would make a hard, and there is an office there. My parents are both in the office, and I walk in. Blood is pouring from my mouth. Both my parents went after my sister. My dad grabbed the belt, picked her up, and whooped her. He was like, “I’m going to beat the mean out of you.” She was fucking mean to me.
My parents would pull my pants down. It was raw skin with a belt.
I spanked my children. Katie has gotten it.
The problem I have is I never know what the right answer is.
There isn’t.
My friend Ricky, his parents were our next-door neighbors in my teenage years. We were in a different house at that time. This is a Black family. We are close to them. My mom still talks to his mother. I was talking to Ricky about the challenges I was having with Enzo. He was like, “You need to talk to my mama because you need to whip some sense into that boy.”
I feel like there is a cultural difference. I’m not saying one way is right or another. I told Ricky, “What food does she like? I don’t want to come empty-handed. Tell your mom I am going to be stopping by her house.” She is home every day, Monday through Friday, at a certain time because she watches her grandchild. I’m going to be stopping by her house to get some one-on-one with Ricky’s mama.
I don’t want to put that fear in my kids. We talk about this. We listen to many murder podcasts. When you dive into these men who were murdered, they were physically abused. My kids are not sexually or physically abused but there is always that fear of their parents in the house. We were both spanked. We grew up fine. I have not murdered anybody, but I don’t want him to be scared to lie to me. I speak openly with my kids. I was like, “If you are the one who’s in trouble, and you come to me and tell me the truth, you won’t be in trouble. There will be a consequence, but it ain’t going to go down as if you lie to me.”
Where I was going before with the spanking, and the thing about the belt is that I don’t think there is a problem with it. You had expressed how Enzo said, “Mommy, you hit me.” It comes down to something as simple as us drinking wine. Some things are acceptable for a mom. I say this to my kids a lot, “God didn’t make children to have children. He made adults to have children because we have already been here.”
I feel like there needs to be a healthy fear of repercussions. I use those examples for my kids. It is not okay for you to drink wine. Why? It is because you are a child. It is not okay for my kids to say cuss words, but I say cuss words because I’m going to have to pay for that. What is good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, or do as I say, not as I do.
God didn't make children to have children. He made adults to have children because we've already been here and there needs to be a healthy fear of repercussion. Click To Tweet
I put it back in a way that my kids can understand it. I was like, “Do you pay for this house? No, but you live here. We both live here, but one of us has to pay for it.” I give them a correlation. It is my job to take care of you. It is no different than our dog. You have a dog. Maybe you can use the dog as an example. I’m not saying you use corporal punishment. People say that spanking your kid is corporal punishment.
According to behavioral therapy and the amount of studies that have been shown how adults grow up with this sense of insecurity and anxiety from being spanked as a child.
I get it from that perspective and I respect it, but turn on National Geographic. Look at a lion’s pride. Here is Mr. Lion man with his big old wiener and his balls and his big old mane, and he is running the roost. Bitch is lying there underneath the tree while the females of the pride are out dealing with the pups and catching the food. They hunt the food, bring the food back, and homeboy gets up from his lazy behind and comes and eats first. The pups eat and the females eat.
What happens when that mom lion is lying there, and the cubs are doing something? What does she do? She pushes them off. At one point, she gets pissed because they are not leaving her alone. She puts them in their fucking place. Do you think they do it again? I don’t see a problem with that. With the lying thing, Katie lies. I set her up. I told her and she was like, “How do you always know?” I made you. You grew inside of me. I know when she is lying and I set her up. She will feel guilty.
Do you do, “The cameras are watching you?”
No, they think I can see them through their pictures. Each of them has a picture of me in their bedroom. They think I can see them through that.
We still have the nest cams from when they were babies in all their bedrooms. They are still hooked up. They think that there are cameras throughout our house. Sometimes I sit back and think to myself, “Am I fucking them up?” I say, “Every single room of this house, I can see what you are doing.” If they did something in school that they got in trouble for, I’m like, “I’m going to have them pull up the cameras.” It is funny because I’m listening to other mothers around me, and they are doing the same thing with the cameras. I’m like, “Are they going to be so paranoid?”
Did you have privacy when you were a kid? I let my kids have privacy. They should. They need to have their alone time and their private time. They are never allowed to be in their room unattended with the door closed with an iPad. Not a chance because Katie makes her little videos on her own iPad. I’m not going to allow my kid to be introduced to that potential danger. I don’t believe that kids should be beaten. My husband, unfortunately, suffered abuse by his parents. I couldn’t tell you I was abused by my parents physically. For the most part, people do the best they can with what they have.
After talking to the behavioral therapist and reflecting on my childhood and the whippings we got as children for such stupid things, I sit there and say to myself, “They were doing what they knew.” They didn’t have a behavioral therapist in their era. Fortunately, I have the luxury of having a behavioral therapist come to my house weekly who is constantly teaching me about the changes in children. They are constantly evolving at this age. I still feel as confused as a parent with her in my home or without her in my home. At the end of the day, as a loving parent, you are like, “I want a healthy relationship with my kid.”
As a loving parent, you just want to have a healthy relationship with your kid. Click To Tweet
You are not going to have the same. I have my two and they are completely different. Their love language and communication styles are different. You have three. I would say this, do I think that everyone has trauma from childhood? Yes. There is a slim percentage of people who had Ozzie and Harriet as parents. Let’s be honest. Do I think my parents did the best they could? Yes.
My dad grew up in an abusive home. My mom did not, but she did get popped in the mouth because if she was mouthy. That was the way it was. My dad tried to ensure that he never whooped us like he got whooped. He didn’t. Kelly got it because Kelly deserved it. She is the only one of us who ever of four, the only one of us who ever got a belt.
My mom would grab the wooden spoon. I am like my mother. I grabbed the wooden spoon. I’m coming after you. I have told you three times. I’m fucking done. Go, and if you don’t do it, I’m going to pop you on the butt. It didn’t hurt. It’s fine. There has never been a time that it was ever in excess to me. Your story is completely different. Was I scared shitless to mess up? Absolutely.
I feared my parents. When my mother said, “Wait until your father comes home.” I was under my bed hiding. I will never forget my father peeked up the little slipcover, grabbed me by my feet, and dragged me out from underneath the bed.
If that says anything, it says that your parents were a cohesive unit. I would tell you that when my mom would threaten, “Wait your dad came home.” My dad never got on our case because of anything my mom said. If anything, he got on my mom. My parents had a terrible relationship. My mom was the one who got in trouble. I almost wish that my mom would have expressed to us, “Dad is going to be mad at me if you can’t get this together.” I wish that that would have been a communication because I would have had more respect for her.
Are your parents still married?
No, they got divorced after several years. We could talk about childhood trauma, but if my mom could have gotten on that page with us, instead, she would pit me and my sister against each other. I never felt sorry for my mom. I almost felt like she created her problems.
Did she create her problems because she was scared?
That is the thing. I’m telling you as a child how I felt. I still feel that way. It is because I’m the opposite of my mother in that regard. A man is never going to control or be superior to me. It affects my relationship now, but in the opposite way, “I am a woman. Hear me roar.” It is difficult for me to accept what the Bible teaches us. I struggled there. It can be extremely emasculating to my husband now because I have such a huge guard up that I will never be inferior to a man like my mom was. My mom is inferior to my dad.
I had to let that guard down.
She was made to feel that way. I won’t get into all those things. Did I suffer physical abuse at the hands of my parents? No. Did I suffer mental and emotional abuse? One hundred percent. Was a lot of it directed directly to me, first-person? One hundred percent. Was it also based on what I witnessed? One hundred percent. You didn’t dare not to wash the dishes before you put them in the dishwasher.
I will never forget when our dishwasher got delivered to our house. The first dishwasher we ever had in the ‘80s. We were excited. This huge box was coming. My dad told us that it was a present for us. We were 6 and 7. We are excited. My mom hadn’t even had my brother yet. My dad installed a dishwasher. He goes, “Now you can do the dishes.” We didn’t see it as, “What a shitty present.” No, we thought it was a present. We would fight over who had the dishes.
Your mom heard about it.
Every dish was coming out of the cabinet and getting thrown through the kitchen. I’m telling you right now, if my sister is reading this blog, she is doing this in her head. It was a creamy white stoneware. It was blue and brown. My dad went to Sears and bought at least two full sets after the first set. Three full sets of dishes were purchased in our home because he got pissed and threw them in the kitchen. My mom would be there crying and cleaning up the mess. Those are the memories I have.
Was your mom a stay-at-home mom?
She was. I feel like I’m responsible for that at all. She wasn’t always a stay-at-home mom. She had two little girls. To my recollection, since they have been divorced, I now know the real reason, which sucks. I don’t like growing up and being an adult.
I never lived in your shoes. I’m listening to the story. I’m sure your mother lived with a lot of fear. Her anger is directed toward the children because she can’t direct the anger toward her husband. She is scared of him.
There was also a level of pride. She was proud to admit defeat and go back home. Everything works out the way that it works out. I wouldn’t say that I have a great relationship with either one of my parents, but I accept them for who they are. I accept that I have one dad and I have one mom. My husband said that we were going on a trip. We are going to his hometown. He says, “We probably won’t see my mom.” I said, “Okay.” He is okay if he never sees his mother again. He would say, “I never got anything out of my mother. I take that back. I learned what not to do.”
That is sad. His father is deceased. I have a relationship with each of my parents. It is not what I ever want my kids to have with me and my husband. I love what my husband and I have with our children. My kids know they get one mom and one dad, and you can have a plethora of friends. I am not your friend. I will never be your friend. I’m your mom, which means I’m much more than a friend. You can have a million different friends. They come and go. You get one of me and your dad. I take a lot of pride in that. I give my parents the grace in that. They were young. I feel they did the best they could.
You made a comment about how my husband. We were out to dinner, the four of us. My husband had such a heartfelt, “I’m doing the best job I can do.”
He said, verbatim, “I’m doing the best that I can.”
Here is the problem I have with that. You and Nick, that touched your heart so much, but as a mother who is keeping the shit inside of the horse every single day doing the best job she can do every single day does not get the same level of sympathy as a man saying, “I’m doing the best I can do.”
Let me clarify that. It made an impact on Nick and me because it hit home for us. Michaelangelo when he said that, legitimately feels that he is doing the best that he can. When I take those words and put them into perspective in our relationship, you are doing the best you can, but are you? You are doing the best you can because I’m doing everything else.
That is the conversation I had with my husband because he brought that up. That was the line he used to me. I said, “That is great, but I’m doing everything else. You are doing the best you can. You don’t even have that much to do. You could do more.” I get what you are saying. It is not that it came with sympathy. It hit home for us. It did come with sympathy. It was profound. It was legit and heartfelt. It was 100% honest. As you are doing the best that you can, does that mean you are doing as much as you can?
Just because you're doing the best that you can doesn’t mean you're doing as much as you can. Click To Tweet
This is my perspective of all of this is you can hear a man in such a defeated way saying, “I’m doing the best job I can.” You can see a mother who is falling apart at the seams ripping apart. All of a sudden, it was like, “That girl ain’t got her shit together.” There is such a double standard.
They are going to go into a whole new episode with this one.
We need to segue into that one. We need to go into that one next.
We will keep this thing rolling. We will cut this and make a part 2 and 3 because you are not wrong. You talk about this whole list we have here. Never say I love you. That is on your list here. That is not only for kids. Tell your kids you love them. Henry cannot go to sleep if we don’t have the I love you.
Tell your kids you love them. Click To Tweet
I will never end a phone conversation with my brother without ending the phone, “I love you.” I never say that to my husband on the phone. He never says that to me on the phone.
Why is that?
We never did it. My grandmother was like, “Baby, I love you.” She keeps going with the kisses. I have recorded a phone conversation with her. I can hear it at the end of her giving me kisses. It melts my heart every single time I hear it.
You don’t do that with your husband. Why?
It is hard. With my brother, it comes naturally. There is such a place with my brother that is unconditional love. It is not a marriage. We are brother and sister. We have been through hell and back with my parents being divorced. We have been homeless. We have had such a bond together of having strange people knock on the door. My brother protects me. I protect him. There is a level of protectiveness with each other. Even when I got through my first divorce, my brother was like, “I’m flying you up here. You need a week away.” We sat in his apartment and watched ‘80s movies.
How far apart is your age?
We are two and a half years apart. He is older and I’m younger. You would think I was the older sister.
You are a girl and he is a boy.
If he was ever in trouble, I would always be the first one to show up. That’s how I am.
We are going back to this, never say I love you, which means say it often. I’m going to rock your roll with two things. Number one, have you ever lost someone unexpectedly? Has that ever happened to you?
No.
I’m going to tell you something, maybe because this is someone that you know that will impact you. I’m going to leave you with this little story here and I’m going to rock your world with the next thing. My husband lost his father when he was nineteen. He didn’t have a good relationship with his parents, and we are not going to dive into that. His parents enjoyed the drink more than anything.
At a young age, he knew what it meant to have drunk parents. He would go to school smelling like cigarettes. It was horrible for him. While he has a lot of happy memories, there is a plethora more of sad ones. Dad makes promises that he never kept. Let’s throw the ball. He makes it a point to go and throw the ball. While my husband might look like he is not doing anything around the home, when it comes to our kids, he steps up.
When he was nineteen, he and his dad got into an argument. He told his dad he hated him. He walked out the door and went out with his friends. He came home. His dad was drinking too much. He passed out in the chair. He helped his dad to his bed. He never said another word to his dad. He woke up the next morning to his mom and his sister screaming. His dad was dead.
My cousin went out for a ride the night before Henry turned two on his motorcycle with his friends. I was estranged from my cousin. That is a whole other conversation entirely. He came through a downtown interchange. He went to change gears on his bike. The engine exploded. It catapulted him over the edge. He splats on the ground and deceased. He had been estranged from his brother for several years. His brother works for the fire department. One of the other brothers and Red called my cousin and told him, “You need to come here. We found your brother. He is DOA.”
That is easy for you to say. I understand your stories.
I’m saying the difference between your husband. Where I’m going with this is about your kids because we are talking about the kids, but they never say I love you.
When it comes to my children, I don’t care how much they have infuriated me that morning by asking them 700 times to get ready for school. They are squirrels. I realize they have ADHD. I have to wait for those meds to kick in. When they leave out my car door when I’m dropping them and if I leave the house, I always give them a kiss and say, “I love you.” If they frustrate me because I have had to tell them 700 times to go to bed at night, I am livid when it’s now 10:00 at night, and it has been a 2-hour go back to bed, I will still say, “I love you. Go to bed”
Let me say this about the husband thing.
I love my husband. We just don’t say I love you on the phone.
Where I was going with this is we don’t say it either all the time because it becomes a hang-up. It is no different than me like, “Okay, bye. Talk to you later. Bye.”
When I hang up the phone with my brother, I genuinely mean, “I love you.”
That is where I was going with that. It is no different than the mother’s intuition and the Holy Spirit. If you feel compelled to say it at that moment, say it. Don’t hold back for any other reason. If you feel compelled to say I love you, you say I love you. Don’t say it for the sake. It is always in your heart. The thing with me and Nick is that I drive a lot for work. I’m on the interstates. It is dangerous. God forbid I didn’t come home that day and we had been into it. It is never a haphazard like, “I love you. Bye.” You do that with your friends. When you are saying it to your spouse, let it be meaningful.
There is a different relationship with my brother. My brother and I can gab on the phone like girlfriends because we are best friends. My husband works his career. I work my career. We co-parent together. We are getting through life together. It almost feels contractual because you don’t even think about it. You go through the motions of like, breakfast, dressing, kids’ school, and going to work. It is not like going 3, 4 to 5 days without talking to somebody and being like, “This happened. I love you. Bye. I will talk to you in a couple of days.” For us, it was the stress of the children, jobs, and everything. My husband and I have both said this, we love each other very much, but we bring out the worst in each other.
There are no boundaries. You are sharing the same space, bathroom, closet, and bed. That is the other half of you. You become one when you are married. There are parts of you. Some days you wake up, and you are like, “You look like shit.” That is the other half of you. Nick came out of the bathroom, whose face shaved.
I love your husband with facial hair.
We have that on video about him coming in. We had a tumultuous start to our week. When he shaves his face, it is when he already knows I’m pissed off at him. Now was not that day. We had a tumultuous start.
Is that a punishment?
It is not to punish me. It is more like, “I already know she is pissed off.” I feel like it was almost a test. We had to come to Jesus on Monday.
You don’t think it is just him wanting a clean face.
It was.
Give him the benefit of the doubt here.
I knew because I was sitting at the dining room table, doing something for work on a Saturday morning. He came walking out, but he got his back.
He purposely walked into the kitchen.
Had no choice. He had to get into the kitchen. There is only one way. He is coming out of our bedroom. He can’t pass unless he is to go out the back door. He walked past and turned his head when he walked by. We bought a vehicle. I was on the phone with the car dealership. They were calling to ask if we were satisfied with it. I was on the phone with this guy. He said to him, “Turn around and look at me.” He turns around. He goes, “Hey.” He was like, “Is everything okay?” I go, “Yes, my husband decreased his real estate value. He shaved his face.”
They want to know if you like your car. They got to listen to this whole other conversation. They are probably like, “This is a great phone call.”
In all fairness, he did it because his face was itching. He had that huge beard. What he does is shave his face. It is not my punishment. He was like, “She is already pissed off anyway. I’m going to shave my face.”
Even for our wedding, my husband, I wanted him to have that 5:00 shadow. I love facial hair on men. The things that were not attractive to me are attractive to me now. That little gray coming in the sideburns is sexy.
Can you remember being a ten-year-old girl and being like, “Oh, my god?” I remember Shawn Singleton in first grade.
I had a crush on Phillip Benjamin until fifth grade. From kindergarten to fifth grade, I was obsessed with this boy. I love him.
Let’s talk about a squirrel. Talk about people you knew in elementary school and you thought, “He is cute.”
They don’t grow up to be handsome.
They grow up and they are like, “You are as beautiful now as you were when you were ten.”
They were like the ugly duckling.
No, I’m saying the opposite. There is a guy and I’m going to mention his name, and I was friends with him on Facebook. Kindergarten through 5th grade to 6th and 7th grade before I moved and went to a different high school. This one particular boy was the nicest and cutest. He always got good grades. He was amazing. Still, to this day, he is as cute. All of us girls who are still friends from elementary school still acknowledge that.
Brian McBride, what a name. You are talking about names that flow. That one flows.
He was cute, nice, and smart. He got divorced. I’m like, “What an idiot woman?” Isn’t that terrible? That’s how we think. We don’t know what he was like.
It is always the woman who goes down for the pound.
Who was the ugly duckling that turned into like, “Oh, my God.” That was me. I didn’t turn into, oh, my God. I feel like I went from ugh to hey. I was that.
I went to the ten-year high school reunion, and I felt like everybody still looked the same. The thing with Facebook and Instagram is you are still looking at everybody even when you get out of high school. You are not seeing several years go by, and you are like, “I haven’t seen you in several years.”
I graduated in ‘96.
I don’t feel like anybody has changed. There is not one person I can think of that I’m like, “He got so gorgeous. He developed into this.” None of them.
I’m not going to mention his name because I would be horrified that I’m admitting this, but there was one guy in high school who was delicious. There are two. They were delicious. The funny thing is one of them is what my type would be. Everyone knows that my husband is my ideal. It is funny because I got their first and last name going through my head.
One of them was the super hot guy. Everyone knew he was whore, but it didn’t matter because he was hot, and he continued to grow up to be hot but a loser. He never got married. He never had kids. He was what he was in high school, a super hot playboy. I shouldn’t say not successful. He was successful in his way, but he was never going to get married and have kids.
If he ever got married and had kids, you would be like, “You are cheating, and you have left your sperm elsewhere.” There was the other guy that was super hot. He was mysterious but not my type. There was something about him. I kissed him once, nothing more, but he grew up to still be super hot but douchey. He did have a kid. I don’t know if he ever got married.
I did ask you about that word, mysterious. Does that mean you want to do him because he is mysterious?
No, it means he is hiding something. I wonder what he is hiding. It doesn’t mean I want to do him. Did I? Yes.
When you are done with your story, I have something to piggyback off that word, mysterious.
The story is that I ran into him randomly. My kids and I went to pick up dinner. We wanted sandwiches one day, and we had an early dinner. We grabbed sandwiches at the sandwich shop and he was there. It has been many years, and he is still as hot as he was in high school. That is saying something, but he is still a douche. I was like, “In my 40s, you are a bigger douche now because you are still what you were in 18.”
He never grew up. When you ask me to go through my brain encyclopedia of the boys that I went to high school with, when I think back, I still think of the kids who were the druggies or the parents who came from such privileged homes. They are still living these privileged lives. Nobody has accountability for themselves or their actions. They are cheating on their spouses. I feel that is a lot of the people I can remember. There is not anybody memorable that I can sit there and say, “That one guy.” There are great guys. They are not the ones that were the prom king handsome or the most handsome voted.
There was a couple. They were boyfriend and girlfriend when I was in high school. They were popular. They were popular not because they were popular dickheads. They were popular because they were nice people. They were cool. When I was in high school, the grunge thing was big, like Birkenstocks and baggy pants.
You would never have expected the two of them to be together, but they were together. They ended up pregnant. I grew up in South Tampa. They were sixteen and pregnant from predominant families in South Tampa. They ended up getting married. She carried the baby to school. She had the personality that she could carry the baby at school. She was cool. She still had straight As. She graduated high school. She went on to be a lawyer.
They have four kids together. They genuinely loved each other. It is weird looking at their kids because it is a clone of him and her. It is weird. Her one kid is in New York City, living it up. She went on to continue her career. She put her education on hold so that he could go to school. Once he was done, set and done with the kids, she went to school. It is a good story but it is a rare story.
I look back at some people and I’m like, “You continued to be a douche throughout the rest of your life.” There was the upset. There is the guy you have a crush on in high school and you are like, “There is no way.” High school goes on and you still like, “I wonder whatever happened to so-and-so.” You see him, and you are like, “You are bald. You got married. Your wife ended up with cancer. She couldn’t have babies because she had to have a hysterectomy. You divorced her. You are the worst human on the planet.” Even though my husband is bald, my husband is hot bald.
There is good bald and bad bald.
My husband is good bald. This guy turned out to be a bad bald. It is sad.
There are a lot of people who are good-looking. There are a lot of beautiful people outside your door. Whether they have personality or not, we are talking about looks here. I said to a friend, “This man was an attractive man, but there is something mysterious about him. I can’t even put my finger on it.” I don’t even know. There is something mysterious about this guy. It raises my curiosity. I’m like, “What is the deal with this guy?” Instantly, this turns into you wanting to screw him.
When you say he is mysterious, it makes me feel like you might get a little bajiggity.
No, there is no bajiggity. I want to know what is this guy’s deal.
You can’t say mysterious. He is suspicious.
I want to ask, “What is your bio so I can stop wondering what is suspicious about you?” My friend is like, “You want to fuck him.” I’m like, “What? Yes.”
Is this friend male or female?
He is a flamboyant male.
Flamboyant, meaning he is gay.
No, he is married. He could be closet.
He is bi, but regardless, when you say mysterious, I can see how that can go sexual.
That is complete and utter bullshit. I can think of a woman who is mysterious. It doesn’t mean I want to bang her bones. I don’t even go that way. I was annoyed by it because now it is turning into this whole sexual thing.
We are not talking about Tupac, are we?
No, we are not talking about Tupac. It is going down a completely different avenue. You are now tainting my whole thought of this person being mysterious and suspicious. You are tainting the whole fucking thing. Forget it. I can’t even look at this person anymore.
I’m curious. Who is the person?
This is a person I constantly see at the gym.
It is the gym guy. It is not the guy you tell often. It is not Tupac.
No.
It is not the dude that we mistook for someone else who now says hi to you every single chance.
No, it is not Rob. He does say hi all the time. Have you guys ever had those moments where you go up to somebody and you give them a big giant hug? He is looking at me sideways. I swear to God. This was our friend Rob. I am looking at his eyes and examining his face. I’m like, “Shit.”
The way you did it was good. He leaned back, and she went, “You are not Rob, are you?” He goes, “No.” She says, “I’m sorry. You looked familiar.” He goes, “Yes, but you looked familiar to me.” He was so cool about it.
Now we always wave hi.
Now you are friends.
I don’t feel that, as a woman, to say if somebody is mysterious or suspicious automatically puts you in the category that I want to fuck somebody because that is not the case at all.
That is a trigger one for you.
Mysterious can be a lot of different things.
I can see how it says sexual connotations.
I can see somebody calling my husband. Your wife has eyes for some other man, which has happened in the past. I was trying to set up a friend on a blind date. What was I doing? I was selling this friend on my Instagram with a girlfriend of mine who knew to be on the lookout because I was going to be showing him and talking about him. The next thing you know, bankers are calling my husband and starting shit. It is a true story. I have proof in my text messages that this entire freaking thing was staged. I look like an asshole.
I want to ask you a question. I want to know your opinion on something. This was a long time ago, but it is something that still pops up. Everyone goes through little tiffs in their marriages. Even though you say, “Let’s move on,” things from the past were going to pop up. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me. After I had Henry, I went postpartum. I didn’t have depression. It is the postpartum thing. You are sleep-deprived. Your body is not what it was. You never see unless you are taking it from behind. You are on top, bending over.
If I bend over, it is like a chicken gizzard hanging there.
I have another friend whose I will remain nameless and who has the same issue as you. My husband is working outside the home while I’m at home with this newborn baby. He and I are going through some issues. I see his phone, and curiosity gets the best of me. I look through his phone. I see these text messages between him and one of his golf students because he was teaching golf. I knew she was a young female. It was a text message initiated by him. He said, “How’s it going?” To which she responds, “Everything is great. How are you?” His response is, “Same old, same old, crazy home life.”
To this day, it still burns my biscuits because he tells me there was nothing wrong with that. That was completely innocent. What was the deal? I’m like, “You are texting a twenty-some-year-old single.” He was like, “She is not hot.” I was like, “Put a bag over her head. Her body is perfect. She is an athlete, which is what you love. You are asking her how she is doing. She asked how you are doing. You say, ‘Crazy home life.’ What the hell?” Would that piss you off?
I would be furious.
To this day, Nick says, “I don’t understand it. You make such a big deal out of that.”
Lie detector test time.
The lie detector states, “That was a lie.”
Where and when ten minutes before you are supposed to be there? You can’t pay the lie detector test person off.
Would that bother you?
Of course.
It has been several years. He says, “Why do you always bring that up? You are taking it so.” I was like, “Taking it so, what? How would you like it if I had texted some single hot dude?”
How would he feel if the role were reversed? Would he be okay with you talking to a guy that way? Do you think he would be okay? There is such a double standard in the stuff that my husband does.
They can pass it off as being stupid. They were like, “It is innocent. I’m being stupid.”
Maybe call me fricking crazy-ass street-smart. I know not to do certain things. There is a boundary that you do not cross as a married woman. I don’t think it is being prudish or a bitch. There are certain lines you don’t cross as a married person. What is okay for him is not okay for me.
There are certain lines you don't cross as a married person. Click To Tweet
I was talking to you when I first came here about another person who shares your name.
I didn’t know somebody shared my name when you told me.
Like you and your brother, my brother was the most special person to me ever. We are several years apart, but I have never loved another human as much as I loved my baby brother. He met someone. That someone is so not what we would ever have expected for him, she is a highly intelligent manipulative sociopath. I found out that he found out that she was texting another person.
She was having a texting relationship with somebody.
He doesn’t know the extent of it. He knows that she has been texting another person. When confronted, she acknowledged, “I’m not attracted to you anymore.” He goes, “What do you mean you are not attracted?” This person and I’m not fat or moles shaming, but have you seen the movie Trolls?
I don’t remember the movie Trolls.
Princess Poppy. I would typically call someone who is hideous a troll. I don’t do that anymore because Princess Poppy is cute, but there is such a thing as a Bergen in the movie Trolls. That is what my brother’s wife looks like. She is 5’10”. My brother is 6’4” or 6’5”.
I would say that there is no anger or hostility here.
I lied. There is not a single person on this planet I detest more than the person that my brother is married to there.
I’m trying not to burst at the seams, but my brother and my sister-in-law had their baby revealed. Aria is the only girl between the two of us. I have three boys. He has, and my brother has. My goddaughter, my niece Aria, will be 3 in September 2023. They are expecting a boy in December 2023. I’m so excited that my brother gets to experience both worlds. She’s a daddy’s little girl, but now he gets that boy stuff too. I love the relationship that my brother has with my boys. He will FaceTime them.
Make me cry now because I don’t have that with my brother anymore.
Enzo will be on FaceTime with my brother for twenty minutes because he is such a good uncle. He will let Enzo show him for twenty minutes on Zoom some transformer. He will take it apart and put it together the gazillion times. The whole entire time will be like, “That is amazing.” What people will sit there? There is no other aunt or uncle in our family, both my husband and I, that takes the time to invest in getting to know their nephews like my brother. I cherish that so much. I am excited he is going to have a little boy.
The next one in your list here says, “Their opinion doesn’t matter.” It says, “When you disagree on something, you are right. Learn to say because I said so a lot. Tell them what to think and what to believe. Anything to the contrary is nonsense and should not be listened to.” This is sarcasm, but I do say because I said so, but that is because I have explained the reason why my daughter can’t eat breakfast.
You said it fourteen times to your kid. They are still saying, “Why?” It gets to a point where you are like, “For the love of God, because I said so. Enough.”
I give them opinions. We ask them. If we don’t know what we want to have for dinner, we ask them what they want.
It could be Sunday, and we all wake up, and we are like, “What does everybody want to do today?”
Give your kids chores that you refuse to do. That is terrible. I think that is wrong. You lead by example. Give them chores you do.
Here is a story about that. I have a client who is now the lieutenant of the fire department, but he has been with the fire department for a long time. New recruits are coming in and they don’t even know how to do common household chores, they have to teach these men how to load the dishwasher, start the dishwasher, do laundry, clean the kitchen, and cook a meal.
I don’t want my three boys to leave my house and not know how to survive without me. I want them to be self-sufficient, which is why I have them do laundry with me. I have them put the laundry in the washing machine and measure out the detergent and fabric softener and which setting it should be on. I walk them through those things so that they can be self-sufficient on their own.
That is called being a good parent.
When it comes to the age of them being teenagers, I am not a fan of doing laundry, but it gets to a certain point where I am also not a servant to my children. They live in a home where they live a good life. You need to have your part in helping keep this house a running household. You are still a member.
Don’t you feel, as a parent, that you are not doing your job? That is your job. Your job is to teach them how to be adults.
Your job as a parent is to teach you kids how to be adults. Click To Tweet
It is but especially in Italian homes. The moms will do everything before their kids. By the time these kids walk out of their house, their mama has taken care of them so damn much. They are coming back to mama’s house to have the mom do the laundry.
They are finding the first woman who will do it for them and that is who they marry. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that. You have three times over. You are going to have to deal with that.
Every laundry day, I have one of my children who gives me the damnedest time every single time. I am sure you know which one that is. I have one who is like, “I will help you, mommy. Where are the hangers?” Gio is four years old. He is along with the ride. It is a constant redirection. This is not like, “We are doing laundry day. Look at my family on Instagram. My boys always do everything I ask them to do. We are the perfect happy little family.” No, it gets to the point where I’m screaming. I’m annoyed. I am threatening. You are going to sit in time out and take a breather for ten minutes. It is a job in itself as a parent but I have to do it because I want them to be self-sufficient.
You want them to grow up to be good humans.
I understand how it would be easier if I did it myself because it is.
That is not your job.
My job is to raise responsible kids. These kids I see in Target, Publix, or wherever I’m at run the parent. I want to start speaking in tongues because inside, I’m coming unglued. I will never forget one time my kid piped up loud in the toy aisle talking back to me in the middle of Target. I made him sit in timeout in the middle of the toy aisle at Target. They say, “Do it according to age.” I had parents walking past me and giving me the stink eye. Some parents were applauding me. You are not telling me what to do as a parent. My job is to protect you and instill in you kindness, empathy, and respect.
I find it funny that happened to you in Target because that was the one time Henry learned if you are going to pitch a fit over something you want, that is how you are going to act. He was young. He was little. He was only five. He was like, “I want this.” I said, “Henry, that is not how you act.” He was like, “Mom, I need this one.” I was like, “No, you don’t.” He was like, “Yes, I do.” He got stank. It is the best way I can describe it. I made him walk over to the shelf and put it back. He cried and Katie got to get what she wanted. As for the way he acted, he didn’t get anything.
It was a hard lesson for him. It hurt his feelings. It hurt me inside. I had to keep that on the outside. That’s fundamentally where people fail their kids. They don’t teach them responsibility and respect anymore. How are you going to grow up and know how to be a good human if your mom and dad didn’t teach you, or better yet, they did it all for you?
I have one child who is like, “How can I help you, mommy?” He is thoughtful and considerate. If it is the last cookie and his brother wants it, he will say, “It is okay. He can have it.” He is my giver and people pleaser.” I bought him a new game on his Nintendo Switch. My other child came up to me, who was incredibly disrespectful to me. When I asked him to help me with something, he was like, “Wait, no.”
When he came around to him asking me for a new game on his Switch, I said, “Enzo, do you remember what happened earlier? Do you remember when I asked you for your help? Do you think you earned that?” He looked at me and said, “I promise I will go next time.” I said, “Here is the lesson that you need to learn. You should do it always.” That is why we are having this friction.
That is when Henry took his turn. Henry flipped a switch. He was eight years old. I don’t know what it is. When he turned eight, he was different. The bottom line is parenting is not easy. While we don’t want to fuck up our kids, we also don’t want to fuck up our sanity level. It takes a lot.
The definition of insanity is my life every single day because it is doing the same shit. I feel like I live in an insane asylum. I love my children. I pray for all three of them. If you don’t think, there haven’t been many moments where I will lock myself in the bathroom and cry my eyes out. I was like, “This is hard.”
Let’s hit on something because you are saying that. That is why we started this show. It is because you and I had chatted, and we had talked about the fact that there are many women who feel like we do. There has to be.
I have had my salon for many years. If you don’t think I have many stories of women feeling defeated and having those great milestones where they are branching out of it or found something that worked. Every single topic you can hit on, I have discussed in the salon 100 times.
You are not alone. Sanity and chaos, locking yourself in a room and crying. It is not just you. It is me and how many of our friends. This is reality. We are trying not to fuck up our kids, but we are also not trying to lose our minds at the same time.
Give them diminishing nicknames like Drama Queen or Wimpy. That will make them feel self-conscious on a regular basis.
We have nicknames and we pick, but you have to also learn how to have a little bit of tough skin. I don’t think we picked the point of degrading our children.
There are moments when Enzo is acting out. There is this weird dynamic between Enzo and my husband. It is because they are two peas in a pod. My husband will make fun of him.
Nick gets on me about this. He says I do this to Henry.
He will make fun of what Enzo is doing at the moment. It ignites the kid even more. It is aggravating me even more because I’m like, “Am I sitting back and watching what I’m watching now?” I have two boys in my house crying like babies. This is when I say I feel at that level of insanity like, “Did I join the fucking circus?”
Give me your cup over there. Did you join the circus?
I had that cup made. I designed it. I had it especially made for me. It is a Yeti. It says, “Life is a circus.” On the back of it, it says, “Tickets to the greatest show.” I had fake popcorn stuck on the top of it. I love that cup. Don’t hug them.
Everyone gets into their moments. You are getting in your feelings. Everyone gets into their feelings once in a while. Henry and I are alike. Nick and Katie are alike. Henry gets into his feelings. He can be the one who wears his heart on his sleeves. He is a good read when I’m not well, sad, or low. This will make me cry. Ever since he was a baby, and I don’t know why he does this, but it is the cutest thing ever. He would put his hands completely outreached. It is stretched out to either side of him. He will go, “Hug?” As much as he avoids me when I drop him off at school, he won’t kiss me anymore. He will tell me goodbye, and he loves me as long as the doors are closed, the windows are down, and no one else can hear him.
If I’m sad, he knows I’m sad, and as long as I’m not sad with him. If he is the one who made me sad, this doesn’t work. If I’m sad, he will come up. I look at this tall ten-year-old boy. The minute he puts his arms up, he would go, “Hug?” It melts me and all of us. Nick and I will mimic it to each other to be cute. Giving your kid a seriously heartfelt embrace is one of the greatest things you can do for them.
We talked about our childhoods and the trauma we dealt with in our childhoods. That is one thing I didn’t get very often. My parents didn’t put me to bed at night and tell me they love me and have sweet dreams. I didn’t get a lot of hugs from them, but I would tell you that my kids know we love them because we hug them a lot. We snuggle. They are 9 and 10. Snuggle time is real. Everyone piles in bed. Let’s snuggle together.
Enzo, if he goes to sleep with me at night like if has a slumber party in the bed with me.
Does he snuggle?
No, he has done this ever since he was a baby. He was like, “Can we hold hands?” We hold hands and go to sleep. That is his thing. If he is having a little slumber party in mommy’s bed, he can not go to sleep unless we hold hands. When he was 2 and 3, and I had put him down for a nap, I would have to hold his hand until he fell asleep because he was a horrible napper. Once he was asleep, I would slide it out softly and tiptoe out of the room. That’s his thing is like, “Let’s hold hands.”
Henry is a spooner. Henry can sleep with us. Our first son passed away at birth. With Henry, we couldn’t let him out of our sight. He slept in a nap nanny, which is a whole other conversation, but the nap nanny was the best thing ever. We put it in a king-sized bed. He slept in between us even when he came out of the nap nanny. When he was bigger, he would sleep in between us in the bed. When he was six months old, we put him in his crib that was in our bedroom. Katie, we tried to do that with. No, the homegirl wanted her space.
Henry came into our bedroom because he didn’t feel well. I was tired. All I recall is telling him to go back to his bed. I don’t know what happened. I know he came into our room and I said, “Go back to bed.” I was that tired. It often happens that Henry will wake up in the middle of the night, come into our room and snuggle between us in our bed. It is the best sleep he gets. The problem is he got a lot bigger. Henry is almost as big as me. He is 5 feet tall and I’m 5’7”. With that comes big legs.
While he is slender, his butt is gigantic. It is this huge muscle, but he is a spooner. He will either lay butt to butt to me. He has to be touching me. There is Nick right there. As much as Nick is his best friend, he will snuggle up to me. It is either forehead to forehead. His forehead has to be touching my forehead like what you were saying with Enzo, and the hands or butt to butt. He pushes his butt right up against me, whereas Katie is like my husband.
She gets in bed and kicks off all the freaking covers because she is too hot. You are laying there freezing your tushy off because homegirl didn’t want the covers on her. For her and Nick, it is great. Henry and I can cohabitate, we can sleep together, and Nick and Katie can sleep together, kicking the covers off one another. I love that. The hugs are a big hug.
With Enzo, I will hold his hand, but I am not a spooner and cuddler. I need my space. I get hot. I’m freezing at first, and I’m dying of heat. I’m feeling your body heat on me.
You say many things that constantly remind me of how similar you and Nick are. He was like, “You are like a fucking heating pad. Get away from me.”
My feet are constantly freezing. My husband calls it a corpse. He is like, “Your corpse feet are touching me.”
Does it feel good to him when you put your corpse feet on him or it freaks him out?
No, he will usually take his feet and warm them up a little bit.
You don’t like somebody sleeping next to you because it is too hot for you.
Yes.
That is Nick.
I’m fine at first, but once I cross over and I’m having a hot sweat, I need to rip the covers off me. Don’t touch me.
I can’t sleep if I’m sweaty. That is me.
It is the whole fun part of womanhood.
We are successfully fucking up our kids if we are going according to this. I am with some of the things. As far as showing my kids affection and giving them an opinion, I will give them an opinion, but they don’t get the final word. Unless it is their day, they are allowed to have the final word. I let Katie run around outside without her shoes on, but there are stipulations. I do let her learn things the hard way. It was like the shoes off. We live on a lake. My husband and my son fish a lot. They don’t necessarily pick up after themselves. I told Katie, “Do not run around out by the lake without shoes on.”
The fishing hooks. Is that where you are going?
I was out of town for work. I got a phone call. She was like, “I didn’t listen. I do what you told me. I was running out by the lake.” It was a quick in and out. My husband described it as, do you remember when you used to take a pin and you stick it through your skin, and it didn’t bleed? He says it was the equivalent of that.
We are doing a good job. I’m doing a good job. I am a helicopter parent. I’m raising my kids right only based on what other people who interact with me and my children say. I take it as a huge compliment when my kids’ friends and their parents would come over to our house and say, “Can I leave so-and-so here with you for a while so you can teach them manners?” I take that as a compliment. I might be a hard mom, but my kids know I love them. They tell me and my husband everything. We are doing good. I don’t feel like I’m doing good a lot of the time.
I’m going to hope and pray for the best because there are a lot of times when kids come from great homes and, unfortunately, they get into bad situations and bad influences. That is where I want to keep the line of communication open with my kids. I want them to know that if they are ever in trouble like, “I got your back. I might not agree with it, but I got your back. I’m always here to save you.”
At the end of the day, we are all trying our best. The thing I can say I feel the strongest is that I don’t feel parents give enough grace because they are judgemental and critical. You are not living in those people’s shoes. You are not living their everyday life or knowing their work stresses, home stresses, or family stresses.
You don’t know everything.
This is not everybody, but there are a lot of parents that I have been in social circles with that I’m like, “I don’t like you because you are critical and judgmental. Why are you talking about that other mother when you don’t know what her life exists of? Who are you to be spreading such hate when you don’t know?”
You know what I’m talking about. There is that breed of women who can’t wait to tear another woman apart. You have great women who are supportive, understanding, and incredible. I’m not saying this is a blanket statement across the board. I’m saying the amount of women I have been around, even in my salon with clients, where I’m like, “Am I listening to this right now?” There is room for people to stop being judgemental and critical because you have not walked a day in that person’s shoes or know the challenges and the victories they have overcome with their challenging kids.
I have been both of those women you described because I can tell you that there are parents I know casually. I try not to judge them based on their children. When my kids are going to school with their kids and my kids are learning things from these particular children, I can’t help but be judgmental and think, “What the hell is going on in that house? This is the conversation that is being had, and this is the kid that is bringing it to school.”
I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about these particular moms whose kids do no wrong. I’m talking about that parent. My kid came home and asked me what the N-word meant. He learned that from a kid at the private school that he goes to. He named the little girl’s name. That little girl learned it from another little kid at school. I can’t go ahead and base that on the parents.
That is what I did. My kid came home talking about 69. I’m like, “Where did they hear that from?” I heard who they heard it from. I immediately judged the parents. There’s a track record there. This is not a one-and-done thing. This is something that has happened time and time again. To your point about what you are saying, I know the mom you are talking about, and I am not going to disclose the person I know that is that mom you are talking about.
I’m not even specifically thinking of a mom.
You don’t know this person. I do know this person. This particular person is what you said. Their kids do no wrong. The first one to criticize people that you thought, “I thought that was your best friend.” I know the type you are talking about.
Several years ago, I enjoyed doing my whole influencer Slime in my Stilettos on Instagram. I felt like I connected with many men and women because I kept it raw, real, and how crazy freaking life is as a circus. I can post a picture of my child smiling, but I’m going to go on my stories and tell you what a fucking nightmare it was.
I see these stories on Instagram like, “Look at little Johnny here. He is eight years old. He cooked an entire meal by himself. He went to the grocery stores and picked out the ingredients.” I’m like, “Gag me now.” That is not realistic. If your kid is maybe about 30 years, I will see him running to be the president if he is that smart at eight years old to go to the grocery store, pick out the ingredients, and cook the meal.
Perception is reality.
We can give each other a little bit more grace as parents and not judge and criticize because we see a child who is challenging or acting out. Luca, when he was three years old, kept biting other kids at Keystone Christian Preschool. I went up to the mother of the little girl, he bit, and I was pregnant with Gio at the time. I said, “I want to apologize. He is in this biting phase. He is biting my blinds.” This is legitimate. He was biting my blinds and couch. She looked at me and said, “Clearly, you have a lot going on.” I thought, “Wow.”
I took the time to pull you aside and apologize to get, “You have a lot going on. You can’t handle yourself.” My kid is biting at three years old. How many fucking kids bite at 3, 4, 5, and 6? This has been going on for centuries. My mother used to be a biter when she was a kid. As we were going through this, she would tell me all these stories of how she would get in trouble as a little kid because she was a biter. To go out of your way to be like, “I’m sorry. We are working on this biting thing.” I had rubbers around his neck. He would start biting the rubbers. I don’t mean a condom. It was something I found on Etsy.
A girlfriend of mine gave me one of those for Kate because Katie has this oral fixation. While she doesn’t bite her nails, she will chew on her fingers. I’m like, “You are going to get worms, herpes, and the weird thing you can touch.” That’s a thing. They sell those little rubbers.
I bought them off of Etsy. It was a necklace and robbery thing that if a child has anxiety or emotion, they have that inkling to go in and start chewing something. They can start gnawing on this rubber necklace. I did not feel like I had grace at that moment. I felt like I had a lot of judgment and criticism. When I saw that woman at a zoo several years later, and she was kind to me, I still wanted to knock her out.
I don’t blame you. It is almost like you know the difference between a kid who is being an asshole and the parent is not parenting versus the kid being a kid and the parent is trying to deal with it. I was in Target once, and there was a kid acting horribly. I felt bad for the mom. I stopped feeling bad for the mom when the kid kept it up, and she continued shopping and was going to ignore the behavior. I’m like, “Ma’am, there is a level to which you stop ignoring the behavior, and you address the behavior.” This kid kept on.
I was in that store for 30 minutes listening to this kid scream. I have a friend who has a child that would scream like that because the child was autistic. This was years ago. That is different from this kid who was spoiled and wanted their way. Mom wasn’t getting it, and the mom was ignoring it. “No, ma’am. You will walk out of the store. You go have a conversation. If a conversation is not able to happen in the store, take the kid outside.” That was absurd. Am I being judgy? One hundred percent.
My husband and I always had this understanding. We like to eat dinner at nice restaurants. As we have a child, it doesn’t mean we want to stop doing that.
You have to consider other people.
If one of our kids was acting up, one of us walked them outside, and we had a little coming to Jesus talk. I love you. We come back inside. Let’s continue with our nice dinner. We will move past this. I love you, and I get it. You are having a rough moment. You show some compassion, empathy, and some, “I’m not putting up with this shit, but I love you. Get back inside.”
There are many times people give that little, “Oh, God.” They do one of those versus having a little consideration because you were there too. The mom is struggling with a kid and a hard time, and she is trying, to give her that grace, even going so far as to say, “We have all been there, ma.” I had a woman start crying when I said that. She was like, “I’m trying.” You are good. Being a mom and a woman is hard.
I had a woman sitting next to me on a plane. I was flying up to New York. I was by myself. Her child kept acting up. She kept looking over at me and apologizing profusely. I don’t even remember. At that point, it was probably like 2, 4, and 6. I’m like, “I get it. I’m sorry you are going through this. Is there a way I can help you?” I’m not going to kick this woman off the plane because she is having a moment. People are assholes.
People don’t have any patience anymore.
They don’t have patience and they also lack empathy.
A good friend of mine said to me, “Empathy is a learned behavior for men.”
They are saying just men.
It was specified. Some women legitimately are not born empathetic. I know a few of those personally in my family. I have women who are born without empathy. They don’t know what it means to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Men inherently learn it or they do not. God did not create us equal. Men are not moms for a reason.
Empathy is a learned behavior for men. God did not create us equal. Men are not moms for a reason. Click To Tweet
On that note, I would love to have some advice from our readers. What are some challenges you have had? What are some techniques you have tried and failed? When you guys are writing your stories, the details are great. You don’t have to provide your name. We want to read these on air, but we want to protect your privacy and name.
We are in this together, which is why this whole show is here. We are not alone. It is fascinating to me how many of us have the same story. Some of the names and locations have been changed to protect innocence. Other than that, we experience the same things with our children, ourselves, spouses, and family members. I can’t wait until we get into one of those episodes.
Email us your stories at SlimeInMyStilettos@gmail.com, or you can send us a DM on Instagram.
Give us the correction corners. What did we fuck up this time? The F word has flown out of my mouth now. It has been relieving for me. We have those moments.
I’m not going to classify you according to this list as a sinner.
Thank you. I wouldn’t classify you, either. You are not a sinner in my book.