Please Stop Shrieking!
Zak Rosen: Welcome to mom and Dad, our Fighting Slate’s parenting podcast for Thursday, December 1st, The Stop the Shrieking Edition. I’m Zak Rosen. I make a different show called The Best Advice Show, and I live in Detroit with my family. My daughter Noah is five and my son Army is two.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: I’m Elizabeth Newcamp. I write the homeschool and family travel blog. Dutch Dutch Goose. I’m the mom of three Littles Henry Who’s ten, Oliver who’s eight and Teddy who’s six. We live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I’m Jamilah Lemieux. I’m a writer contributor to Slate’s Care and Feeding Parenting column and mom to Naima, who’s nine and a half. And we live in Los Angeles.
Zak Rosen: Today on the show, we have a question about a five year old who constantly throws tantrums, screaming, No, don’t stop. It’s a relatively minor requests. Her parents are concerned someone will call child services due to all the yelling. Is there a way to stop the shrieking? Then on Slate Plus, we’re going to talk about how to set healthy boundaries with grandparents. Here’s what you’ll hear if you have Slate. Plus.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: You know you want to give your kids that experience of being around them, but perhaps it’s toxic to you, right? And you don’t want that toxicity passed on. And the problem with being empathetic is that sometimes you feel so beat down that it feels like you’re giving up a piece of yourself to be empathetic.
Zak Rosen: Okay. We’re going to catch up on our weekend parenting. But not before a quick break. See you back here in a second.
Zak Rosen: All right, Jamilah, Do you have a triumph or fail for us this week?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I have a fail. I actually it’s a confession, if you will, and a resolutions and.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: A new segment, Confessions.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: And New Right Parenting confessions. That is still often what our fails are like. Here’s this awful thing I’ve done. Let me confess. So I and by practicing Naima have become an inconsistent masker for folks who’ve been listening to this show since the beginning of the pandemic.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: You may remember that I was once like. The captain of the Anti-covid caravan, you know, is very diligent about washing groceries and wearing masks and gloves and just all of the things and socially distancing. And I stayed in the house for a year and, you know, I didn’t do anything socially until I got vaccinated, basically. And even though masking has been passé for quite some time, you know, in our corner of the world here in L.A., I and Naima, you know, and her father’s household, who had like still, for the most part, been pretty consistent.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Now, that doesn’t account for going to brunch or to a movie or to a bar. And I still do those things, you know? But when I’m not doing those things, I masks, I wear masks in the grocery store and mask to pick up Naima from school. And, you know, I don’t really go anywhere else. Like, I usually wear masks at the gym and like, I just kind of fell off. I didn’t realize, like, how much I fallen off until we got to New York, where we spent Thanksgiving week. And we were there a couple of days before my mom got there. And she’s an excellent maskers So we pulled it together once mom came. And so that kind of helped us get back on track. But, you know, even though we both had our flu shots, there’s this crazy flu going around and, you know, it’s supposed to be worse this year than last year because last year people were masking by the droves, you know, And so we’re masked back up, we’re back on track.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: And, you know, I’ve just got to do better. I mean, it’s not that I wasn’t doing it at all. It’s just that like, I gotten really comfortable with being like, oh, left in the car. I’m not going back to the car. I’m just going to go in the store. I’ll, you know, I’m going to, you know, like the last time I went to the gym, I think I came in with ADD on and then it was just like, you know what? And it’s just so easy when you look around and no one else is wearing them. You know, I think part of what shook me up in New York is that I was seeing them. And like when you see them and you don’t have one, like, I don’t know about you all, but I feel like an asshole. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t feel weird wearing one. I feel weird not wearing one. Other people have them on. I feel very conspicuous and irresponsible and like, I’m making some sort of political statement that I didn’t intend to make.
Zak Rosen: Yeah. I mean, we have dropped off tremendously. The numbers have been going down a lot. And so, yeah, I mean, that’s true. I feel the same way as you do when when I do enter a space and everyone’s wearing them and I’m not. But I mean, we’re surrounded by people who are pretty conscious about about other people, and like most of us have stopped wearing them. And I mean, we were boosted. We’re Vaxxed. I’m not defending not wearing it, but we’re in a different place than we were last year and two years ago.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Do you feel like, though, there there are different kind of rules and standards now? Because I definitely feel like our mask usage has become like if anyone in the house is sick, coughing, anything we’re all masking when we’re out. Because I do feel like I don’t want to give something to someone else, right? So we’re limiting where we’re going out, and when we are out, we’re going to mask. But I mean, to me, I really resonate with the like, if we are somewhere and everyone else has a mask on or even see one or two other people with a mask on, I’m likely to pull it out of my purse, put it off, because I just feel it. You know, I if I go to a medical office that isn’t requiring them, I’m going to wear it because everybody else is wearing one. So the question is like, are we there or are we on the should we all be masked all the time? You know, should we be masked more around children because of the RSV and because of the flu and COVID? I don’t I don’t know. And I feel like we have not been given great guidance because the masking has become so political. It’s like no one wants to tell us what to do. We have.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: It. You know, I just think of people that have certain disabilities and elements that make them, you know, much more susceptible to serious malady if they get COVID. I think that’s really my only basis at this point for continuing to mask.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: A lot of those same people are susceptible to flu. So is it just now that we’re like more aware?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I think it’s more than just COVID. I think for sure, like the flu is definitely a part of my like, thought process behind masking this winter. You know, like, even though I’ve had a flu shot, I just.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Will there are people who can’t get them, right. I mean, we and people that even when they get them, get sick.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah.
Zak Rosen: Yeah. Like I was at an event for my synagogue last week and they requested that anyone coming because it was close quarters wear a mask and we all wore masks. But that was more the exception now than the norm, whereas last year, kind of any indoor space we were in, wear a mask.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Now I like rules. I like when the place says, wear your mask. I’m like, Great, thank you for telling me what to do.
Zak Rosen: I know if someone tells me to do it, Great. Thank you for telling me what to do. Yep, totally.
Zak Rosen: How about you, Elizabeth? What have you got this week?
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: I have, you know, I’m calling it a triumph. But really, it was forced family fun, which maybe my kids don’t think it was a triumph. So we every year that we’re able cut our own Christmas tree from the national forest and you pay it’s like $12 for a permit. Actually, if you have a fourth grader, it’s free with the every kid outdoors path. But you get this permit and they tell you which areas of the forest you can go to. And essentially you’re cutting down your Christmas tree for $12, but you’re also helping with fire mitigation and forest thinning. And there’s all these rules about what kind of tree you can cut down.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: We went last year and had to search for like 2 hours for the perfect tree. This year, Jeff got like a hot tip on an area we could go to. That involved, like, driving through these gates that look like maybe you shouldn’t go through. I mean, you definitely could go through them, but you have to get out and open them. And there were a couple of places that maybe the minivan, you know, like Jeff got out and looked at where we were going and was like, oh, like, maybe we won’t make it. Maybe we might have to fill this with sticks, but we made it to this area.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: And the issue with cutting your tree is that most of the wild trees grow up with another little tree next to it, so they only grow on one side. Their trunks are all bendy, so finding a tree is like difficult. So we get out of the car and instantly the kids find this tree that they’re like, This is the perfect tree. You know, We walked maybe 8 minutes from the car. The problem is it’s like a 15 foot tree. We don’t have 15 foot ceilings. So we’re like, no, no, let’s walk around. So we find this other little tree and I’m like, Oh, this is it. But Jeff is like, This has been too easy. So he now leads us over the next couple ridge lines. Anyway, after walking around for 35 minutes or so, we come back to this tree that I found and we get down next to it to like, think about cutting it down and there are dead mice in it. I think they froze. So I instantly took that as a no thank you. No trees with dead meat, right. Like that’s the universe saying this is not your tree.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: So we go back to this 15 foot tree and we decide this is the one we’re going to take. You have to cut them right at the base. And they don’t want you leaving any of the stuff you cut in the forest. So we cut down the 15 foot tree, we carry it back to the car and of course, it doesn’t fit on the minivan. So we start trying to, like, slice it down and then throw out Area 15.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Just you and Jeff were here.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Just me and Jeff. Yeah. The kids are carrying like all the the branches because we did slice off some of the bottom thinking that would take some of the weight. And honestly, I think Jeff did most of the lifting as my end was not very heavy and he gave me the gloves because I was dumb and I didn’t bring work gloves. And the trees are like spiky. This is every year, by the way, like we do this. I never bring the stuff. The kids are like, We found the tree. Let’s be done. You know, We’re like, We have to look for the perfect one. So we carry the tree back to the car. We try to, like, sit the kids down to have like a snack and some weed brought hot cocoa. How about cocoa? But it’s not really that cold. So they’re not thrilled with the hot cocoa we like, slice out of onto the tree. We get it on top of the car.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Now we have to drive home, which is like over all these highways. Last year, our cute little tree wrapped up perfectly in this blanket. We brought the same blanket. 15 foot tree does not wrap up into this blanket. Get it home. We cut off what we think we need. We bring it into the house. You guys, it is so tall we can’t take off any more the bottom, because the tree also is like, Hey, I like a really fat tree, right? So it’s really fat at the bottom. And then the top is kind of all the same until the very top. So we’re like, well, we can’t take off any more. The bottom will have like this very narrow tree. So we just start hacking off the top. And now no joke, the tree just looks like it goes through the ceiling of my house like it. If we just cut it right at this, like I should go put the other half in my bedroom, which is under where we have the tree. And it would just look like the tree went right through the top. But we had so much extra leaves that I was able to make four or five wreaths with the extra stuff. So that’s kind of fun.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Zach How about you trying for fail this week?
Zak Rosen: I’m not ready to call it a triumph yet because it’s only been one night. But I told you maybe a month or two ago that we were having some big time sleep regression issues with Army. Ever since he’s he started climbing out of the crib. He’s in a big kid bed, is in a twin bed, and since then it’s been many, many months. He has not slept through the night more than like ten times. I would say He wakes up usually at around two in the morning and comes into our room. And either we’ve been just pulling him into bed with us, which is cozy or sheer, or I will go and sleep with him in his bed.
Zak Rosen: And then last night, after just months and months of this, we were just like, you know what? We can’t we can’t let this continue. We have to stand up to this little kid. And so we sleep trained last night, which just essentially meant, you know, I mean, he’s he’s two and two months. So he can easily, like I said, leave his room. He can open his door and come into our room. So. He came into our room a couple of times and then we just went and put him right back and he cried and he got out of bed a couple times. We put him back and he cried. And then we held him for a couple of minutes and we put him back. But he did not sleep with one of us in either his bed or or our bed. He slept by himself. After much back and forth. But he did sleep by himself.
Zak Rosen: Once we did that, I’m hoping that this is the beginning of the end of hopefully the last sleep regression will have. Because this kid’s too old to be regressing. He needs. He needs to sleep, and so does his dad and his mom. So I’ve got my fingers crossed. I’ll let you know how it goes next week. But we are going to continue holding the line and making sure that he sleeps in his own bed.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: I mean, I think any sleeping family is a good family. So whatever you have to do to get those Z’s. But I don’t think you should set yourself up for these too old to having regressions, because I. I doubt this is your last with any of them.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I can tell you that it’s not.
Zak Rosen: No. What do I have to look forward to?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Measures of, you know.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Years of regression. Yeah. Agreed. Whenever they go through something. Yep. Like I think as they get older, it becomes more emotional.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Yeah.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: And maybe they’re not, like, crawling in, but maybe it’s just like night waking or wandering or other things.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Or they need to lay down with them before they go to sleep. As opposed to you saying goodnight and walking away. You might have to, like, stay in the bed with them.
Zak Rosen: I appreciate you tempering my expectations, honestly. So this isn’t the last sleep regression. It’s just the last one for a month or two, right?
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Yeah. And it does get easier, right? Because they can tell you more.
Zak Rosen: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And he’s starting to communicate so much. It’s been very, very sweet. He learned the word weight. So like when I leave the room now he says weight and it’s heartbreaking and cute. Okay. Well, on that note, we’re going to take another quick break and we’ll see you back here for a listener question.
Zak Rosen: It’s time for our question, which is being read as always, by the wonderful Sasha Leonardo.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Dear Mom and Dad. Our five year old has always had big emotions. But somewhere in the last year and a half, she started shrieking and screaming bloody murder during her tantrums. Or basically any time she doesn’t want the thing we want. Slash does want the thing we don’t want. This is blood over into school too, though thankfully, not a ton. We have responded in a variety of ways. Time in loving on her hugs, snuggles, etc. talking calmly to her, sitting with her, but not responding until she stops screaming, breathing techniques, time out, reprimanding her, leaving her to tantrum on her own until she screams herself out. Consequences for the behavior screaming back.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I know, I know. This last one doesn’t help. Tonight was another in a series of battles way after bedtime, after a big fight to get her there in the first place. She came tearing downstairs and was actively peeing her pants. She refused to sit on the toilet, so we put her in the tub. She screamed bloody murder and then continued to scream even louder and more adamantly and robustly. When we said we needed to take her underwear off because they were wet, like she wouldn’t let us do it at all. She got out of the tub screaming like a fire alarm. If fire alarms shrieked, No, don’t stop repeatedly for 10 minutes without end, and proceeded to curl herself practically under the toilet. We could not get her to stop. I had to leave the room. I’ve got some auditory sensitivity and I have a hard time with loud, repeated noises. Thankfully, my partner worked magic.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Eventually, 30 minutes later, as a child, I also screamed a lot, just not all the time. But one time our neighbors called child Services on my parents because my screaming. It was really terrible for all of us. I’m truly worried that the same thing will happen to us. How do we get her to stop constantly losing her shit or at least stop constantly screaming? I know kids push back, but I’m at my wit’s end with the noise and intensity. I’m worried about the neighbors and I’m really concerned for her with this level of amped up emotion. It feels way out of the norm. Thanks. Screamed out.
Zak Rosen: What do you think, Elizabeth?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Oh.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Well, I feel so bad for our parents here because unfortunately, tantrums are like a very normal part of development. Right. This is your child telling you that they can feel and that they have thoughts and opinions on the things going on around them and they don’t have the language or capacity to deal with them. I think that’s really hard. I also think the hard thing is that this stuff does not resolve by you doing the right thing for one week or for two days or one episode, right? Like they are going to have to grow out of this. But there are things you can do, I think, to minimize the impact to your family. What you can control in this situation is not your child, but how you are reacting to them. And it sounds like you’ve tried a bunch of different things and a lot of times they just don’t work immediately.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: What we found, which I think is kind of what is practiced in a lot of that, the gentle kind of parenting area is this like name it to tame it. So anger is a secondary emotion. It’s what you feel when you feel overwhelmed by something else. The reason kids choose anger and tantrums is because it’s something you can control, right? Like you can’t control frustration or jealousy or sadness, but you can control anger when you feel angry.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: There are things you do and that feels very satisfying, like even as adults. Think about when you as an adult get angry. It feels really good to, in the moment, scream back or be, you know, like, Oh, I’m aggressive and I’m big. That feels good. And so you have to understand that that is what your child’s doing it doing. So I think if you you continue to say, like you seem really frustrated or I think you’re frustrated. I think you are sad. I hear you that you wanted to play more, right? Like so you’re saying I understand why you’re feeling this, or at least like I’m taking my best guess. But with kids, it’s usually pretty easy. You’ve asked them to do something that they don’t want to do. I think then saying it’s okay to feel that way is important. Like it’s okay that you don’t want to stop playing. That is really frustrating. So now you’ve said like the way you feel is totally okay, and now as a parent, you set the boundary and then you’re going to enforce that boundary.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: So I think with the playing stuff, I try to tell the kids a lot of times when we are going to do the thing next. So like if they can’t play the switch anymore, I say, like, I understand that you’re really upset that I’ve asked you to turn off the switch. I know you’re in the middle of a game and that’s really frustrating. We will get to play more, you know, whenever that is. When we get back from this errand or tomorrow at the same time.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Right. So this is going to happen again. And it’s not at all tied to your behavior. This is something that we are going to do. Again, whatever it is that you’re fighting over in that moment, this is when you’re going to get that back. And then just holding to that boundary, which can be hard. But I think it is a very kind way to say like, gosh, I know you really enjoy doing that, or I know, you know, changing from this behavior to getting into the car or to cleaning up from dinner. All these simple requests like that is really frustrating because we feel that as adults too, we want to do the thing that we want to do.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: I have a couple resources that I just want to recommend really quick, which is getting like a wheel of emotions feelings chart because it a lot of them have like faces and I think kids do really well with like pointing at the face and then you helping them. We’ve always used this How big is my problem chart, which has like different faces. I know I’ve mentioned this before and Etsy has a few of them. If you look up, how big is my problem? It has different faces and it has like a crazy face and it says like emergency and then it has another face. It’s like less of emergency all the way down to like slight inconvenience and happy. And I like to take the kids like in a once we have sort of calm down and say, when you are throwing this tantrum or when you look like this, you looks like there was an emergency. What kind of things are emergencies?
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Right. So like the behavior you’re giving me looks like this, but what you should actually be telling me is something more up here, like the annoyed face. And these are behaviors of annoyance versus behaviors of an emergency. And this is important so we can keep each other safe. And I just think having those charts somewhere to refer to can be really helpful and concrete. But I also know that, like the reason these charts exist is because a lot of kids struggle with this. I don’t know. What do you guys think?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Well, I just want to add that, like you, we have to put a COVID asterisk next to the behavior of like all children basically over the age of four right now. You know that like the last few years have been really challenging for them and even more so for their parents. You know, So a five year old would not remember the pre-COVID world per say, but still certainly had their life impacted in certain ways, you know, at the very least via the changes that their parents went through personally, professionally or otherwise during these last three years. So I think there’s that to take into account.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I’m curious to know what, if anything, the letter writer remembers about their own screaming. You know, like they mentioned very briefly, that they once, you know, shriek so loudly that child services were called and the loudness was something that, you know, a lot just not all the time. But that’s a lot, you know what I mean? Like the Latin all the time or kind of the same thing though a lot means pretty regularly.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: So what were you going through? What were you feeling? What were you experiencing that caused you to scream? Can use happen to any of those memories and you may not have them. It’s possible that you just remember that. Hey, as the kid, when I got upset, I got loud. But if you can, you know, recover any memory from that time period, try and think about like what made you react in such a way? What were the things you were experiencing? Was this related to your auditory sensitivity in some way? Like what was going on with you that brought you there, and how might that apply to your child?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: You know, for folks who listen to this show and especially anyone who reads Karen feeding notes that I like every week advised therapy and I’m going to advise therapy again today, I think considering all this happened in the last couple of years and that your child is experiencing these big emotions, that you’re struggling, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of things. You know, like you’ve tried a lot of stuff.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: I think it is possible that your child may need to talk to somebody that is trained to identify what’s going on with them, you know, so that they can provide you with the sort of tools and coping mechanisms and, you know, strategies for when these things happen or, you know, strategies to help her express herself without having to scream. But I would say, I think, considering all that you’ve done, that it is time to, you know, outsource this while continuing to, you know, try new things and be as patient as you possibly can with her all along. But I think you deserve some support here.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: Jamila, can I add to that that in addition to therapists, an occupational therapist is is someone that works with a lot of this, including like the sensory stuff. So I think that’s a. Great suggestion. And there are also therapists that work with, like you mentioned, family. So they’re they’re advising you on what to do. But if the therapy route, traditional therapy doesn’t seem to be working or you feel like it’s something else, there are occupational therapists that work with children to deal with kind of this overstimulation.
Zak Rosen: Yeah, yeah, I cosign all that and I was digging into this a little bit. And there’s a difference between tantrums and meltdowns. These sound to me perhaps more like meltdowns than tantrums. The difference being meltdowns are usually a result of sensory overload, though I could be wrong. And so once you get into this meltdown territory, if you if you just Google tantrums first meltdown, you might start to be able to identify some of the patterns and notice when your kid is having a tough time. I would totally co-sign, going to talk to a therapist. But like when they are not melting down or tantrums, we work with them to build their own calm sanctuary in the house, something somewhere that they love, something that’s theirs, whether it’s like a fort or a corner or under their bed or on their bed, or just somewhere where they can like feel like, okay, this is like my space where I can go.
Zak Rosen: And who knows? You’ve probably already tried this. You might be you might be past that, but just to like, build with them space to go when they’re feeling these big feelings that that might help. But again, it seems like you’re doing really great and you’ve tried a lot of this, so go talk to a professional. Please keep in touch. We’d love to know how everything goes and if any of our advice helped and what you decide to do next.
Zak Rosen: Everyone else. If you have some advice to offer, send us a voice memo or email us at Mom and Dad at Slate.com. I really love the voice memos because I know Get to hear your voice and then we get to perhaps put that into the show. That’s also where you can send us any questions of your own mom and dad at Slate.com. That’s it for our show. Don’t forget to join us on Monday. And while you’re at it, please subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode.
Zak Rosen: This episode of Mom and Dad or Fighting, is produced by Rosemary Belson and Christy Taiwo. Back in July for Jamilah Lemieux and Elizabeth Newcamp. I’m Zak Rosen. Thank you for listening. All right, Slate Plus, let’s keep rolling. We’re in a time of gathering, which can be a really lovely chance for families to reconnect. But it’s also a time when we’re renegotiating how we interact with our family. Which got us to thinking about this piece we read from the skim about boundary setting, specifically with grandparents. Can one of you give us a little synopsis, a skim of the skim?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: The article touches on the challenge that many of us have with the fact that our parents want to give us advice and, you know, way in our parenting. They talk about some of the specific things that parents, you know, often have things that they want to say about like sleeping and dining habits and physical touch, you know, just some of those really hot button issues that we find our parents overstepping their boundaries at times. And so they give some pretty specific suggestions on how to address these topics.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: This also includes like conversation of gender and race and screen time. And it has some languaging for folks that are trying to navigate these things with their parents. But the headline is asserting what your values are for your household, standing on them and, you know, politely but firmly defending them to your parents, you know, letting them know this is how we are choosing to raise our child. This is important to us. And, you know, this is what we’re going to do.
Zak Rosen: One tiny takeaway that I found very helpful that I’m going to try to apply myself is switching out your butts for. And so instead of being like I know that when my kids are at your house, you give them whatever you want, but we want to feed them healthy foods to switch that out with. I know in your house you can feed them whatever you want and we’re looking to feed them healthier foods. So just like that tiny, subtle shift can make them feel less defensive and make just your language kind of more empathic and, you know, open to to conversation rather than like authoritarianism.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: I thought it was interesting to come from a place of empathy because I think sometimes with our parents or with in-laws, it’s like we’ve geared up for battle already knowing that we’re going into these. And so when they say something, we’re like ready to jump on them about it. So this idea that like kind of taking a minute to set yourself in the mindset of like this is kind of about them, or they’re trying to recreate a holiday memory, they’re not necessarily doing this to counter how I parent or to make a statement about how I parent, right?
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: They’re coming from a different place.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: And so when I respond, if there’s a way for me to hinge that on, I want us all to be able to enjoy the holidays, or I really want the kids to feel comfortable so that you have this time and this is the way you know that we can do that without commenting on what they’re doing, I think is a really good thing, but very hard to keep in mind.
Zak Rosen: Yeah.
Zak Rosen: Have you two dealt with any any specific kind of foundational or philosophical differences with your parents and your kids? Grandparents?
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: Oh, yeah. I can’t think of any off the top of my head. I tried to think of some earlier. I think I have, like, probably finally browbeaten my poor mother into not trying to advise me like, it’s fine, you know, like we I’m finally adult that she’s given up. But I will say it took a lot of lifting on my part in terms of how I received the things that I didn’t appreciate, like how I responded to them. Like to get us to a place where there’s one less unsolicited advice, but two, that like this doesn’t have to become a fight or a thing.
Jamilah, Jamilah Lemieux: You know, I just receive it, you know? And I do think that I’ve gotten into a maybe without having read this article, but like less of a butt but in hand moment, like, okay, mom, I recognize this and I’ve decided that we’re going to do this anyway. We’re going to do the complete opposite of what you said. But I think that my mother has respected the fact that I’m. You know, it’s not that she’s criticizing things that I’m not doing, you know what I mean? It’s not like a lack of activity. It’s just like a different take. You know what I mean? Like a difference of opinion and how you should correct this behavior or what you should, you know, do in this regard. And that I we’ve gotten to a place of, I think, healthy respect for my parenting, which I appreciate.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: The thing that comes to mind for me is the homeschooling, right? It is something that I think maybe none of our our parents understand and Jamilah much like you, I’ve just come to a place to try to understand. Um, I don’t have to take their advice right there. My children, Jeff and I make those decisions. We have a very different life and set up than what I grew up in. And that. In general. I’m being offered this advice from them because they care about my kids and because they don’t necessarily understand and that it’s not a battle I need to win. Right.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: So me winning anybody over on this, what does that change at this point? I have dealt with it, though, through texting a friend also. Schools just like, oh, guess what was said today. One of the things that we did have a conversation with and I actually think the more we’ve like traveled with my parents, the more they’re able to see the stuff that is working and the support that I can give the kids. But there’s a lot of we run into when we’re around family. They want all this like demonstration of knowledge. It’s like we need to demonstrate that the homeschooling is working. And that’s something that I could just tell bothers the kids. And so being able to just say, like either redirect the children or redirect, you know, my parents into saying like, I understand what they want us to see this, but maybe they could do some work together, right? Or work on this project together.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: You know, my mom is great at helping the kids with math. And I think it also satisfies kind of her need to know that the kids are like getting an education and they’re not just like floating around here all day. And and so things like that work really well. But I think it did come from that place of empathy, just trying to reframe it and say, my parents, Jeff’s parents are not trying to say that we are doing something wrong. They deeply care about our children and they’re trying to express what they know to have worked.
Zak Rosen: So we have six grandparents, as you know. They’re all very involved too, to varying degrees, like we just spent the last week over at Shira, his parents house, and she grew up in an environment where everyone has an opinion about everyone else, and it’s made them so incredibly close and intertwined and everyone just knows what’s going on. And because of all the time they spend together, they feel that each of them has kind of earned a right to at least offer a comment whether or not it’s welcome or not. It’s just like it’s all it’s all fair to say because they’re so close.
Zak Rosen: And so it’s something that I’m having to adjust to. Like my in-laws watch our kids for, you know, sometimes days on end and they are so dedicated to them and so in love with my kids. And I’m so grateful to them. And I feel like the the shadow side of that or just like the part of what comes with that territory is them having opinions. And so. And that’s fine. I’m happy to hear their opinions. I don’t think that they think that they’re getting an equal vote. But, you know, I feel like the more time the grandparents spend with the kids, the more invested they are in having opinions. Right now, we’re talking about where we’re going to send Noah to kindergarten next year. And it’s been it’s been interesting, just kind of holding, holding the line of like, I know Cher and I know what we want. But, you know, her mom might make some some suggestions anyways.
Elizabeth Newcamp, Elizabeth: I mean, I think the good thing is all of us are lucky in the sense that we have healthy relationships. And I am sure that this is much harder if you have a very toxic or unhealthy relationship. And the holidays are the time in which, you know, you want to give your kids that experience of being around them. But perhaps it’s toxic to you, right? And you don’t want that toxicity passed on. And the problem with being empathetic is that sometimes you feel so beat down that that it feels like you’re giving up a piece of yourself to be empathetic. Right. Like to to walk into something and decide, like, I’m just going to be the better person here. Can be really hard.
Zak Rosen: Totally. Well, Slate Plus, thank you so much for joining us. We’ll see you back here on Monday. And be sure to join us on Thursday for another bonus segment. Talk soon.
