Would You Want Your Child to Become Exactly Like You?

How would you feel if your child suddenly embodied everything about you - your self-talk, how you treat others, your entire essence? Would you be proud? This question serves as a powerful mirror for every parent's journey, forcing us to examine not just how we parent, but how we exist in the world.

The podcast explores several thought-provoking parenting paradoxes we rarely question. Why do we find it perfectly normal for adults to need sleep aids like weighted blankets or the comfort of a partner, yet label infants as "needy" when they require physical closeness to sleep? After spending nine months inside their mothers, we somehow expect these tiny humans to adapt immediately to sleeping alone in dark rooms. This cultural expectation stands in stark contrast to their biological needs for security and connection.

Finding the delicate balance between supporting our children and allowing them to develop problem-solving skills presents another parenting challenge. When should we step in during sibling conflicts, and when should we let them work things out? Personal experiences often color these decisions - my own childhood experiences with a sibling who damaged my self-esteem makes me particularly vigilant about certain dynamics between my children. Yet I recognize the importance of letting them develop their own conflict resolution skills.

The most meaningful indicator that we're doing something right comes when others comment on our children's behavior outside our presence. Those moments of positive feedback suggest that despite the daily struggles and second-guessing, something good is getting through. I'd love to hear how other parents navigate these challenges - how do you decide when to intervene versus when to step back? Share your thoughts and experiences through the link in the description.

Chapters

• 0:00 Summer Update and Reflections
• 1:53 Would You Want Your Child Like You?
• 4:45 Controversy: Infant Sleep Independence
• 9:29 Raising Kids to Solve Problems
• 13:38 Call for Listener Feedback

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is Steel Versus Podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. Hope everyone is having a great summer thus far. Finally, in New Jersey we have some decent weather, although the pockets of rain are super annoying. I'm going to sound like a brat for a second, but I wanted to go to the beach and it looked like every two hours it was going to downpour and it did actually, and it was just kind of a pain in the ass, but nevertheless it was going to downpour and it did actually, and it was just kind of a pain in the ass, but nevertheless grateful for the somewhat sunny weather that we have at this point in time. So I hope everyone's been getting out and enjoying it.

Speaker 1: 0:31

I said to one of my mom friends the other day I feel like I'm blinking and the summer is coming to a close, like, yes, things are better this summer Cause I already told all of you that kids are in camp and it is a little bit more pricey, but at least you know I have my sanity and it's really making a world of difference. And it also makes me continue to reflect back on when I was trying to carry everything on my shoulders all the time and refused help and always felt like I had to do everything and that everything was a priority and everything was always on my shoulders. And now that I've let go some of that control that I desperately needed before, and now that I've put some things to the side and said, like you know what, I do deserve to have a break, or I do deserve to do things by myself, um, yeah, my sanity is a is a lot better. I'm also, um, in like the good phase of the month for me. Um, I'm going to do a whole episode on the various phases throughout the month for the menstrual cycle, because it makes such a big difference to how you feel in the moment, especially for us ladies getting in our 40s. This is like prime time for us for like lots of things. We finally know who we are. We're operating on a whole other you know, functional level, cognitively, but there's also a lot of physical things that we're going through too too. So there's there's a bit of a balance there imbalance, rather, in some days, but um, so I'm gonna do a whole episode on that. Today's focus.

Speaker 1: 1:53

I wanted to talk about being a parent, and I'm still kind of in honor of all my cousins that have kids or just recently had babies. They're just starting out, starting the new phases of infant toddler, little kid, big kid. You know, they're really at the beginning stages and I'm at the stage where I'm starting to just second guess, like, have I done this correctly? And I'm not even. I'm not done, you're never done being a parent. But now I'm in the mindset of, like, I'm seeing some behaviors, you know, that I don't love in my kid kids and you know, I wonder to myself, like, was it me? Did I do something here to trigger this? Was there too much yelling when they were little? Or did I, you know, did I not acknowledge their feelings on something? So in my head, I'm consistently not criticizing, but constructive, constructively reviewing things in my head, because we can always do better right now.

Speaker 1: 2:39

One of the reasons why this thought stream had started was because I saw this, um, this little snippet on Pinterest and I actually flagged it because I wanted to share with all of you. And there's this keynote speaker and he's a room full of people and he's talking to all the parents and he says, you know, for the parents in the room, if your child today, um, you know, grew up right now and was you in this moment and talked to themselves, how you talk to yourself and treated people how you treat people, and just showed up? How you showed up and really embodied everything about you and that's who they become, exactly how you are today? Would you be proud of that? Would you even want that? And I said this to my husband and we were kind of just both reflecting on it a little bit and I'm happy to say that, with that self-reflection, I feel pretty good about that. I would feel good about it. I would feel great about it.

Speaker 1: 3:27

Actually, if they could advance that quickly right now and have my brain in their head and how I talk to myself and how I treat people and the very essence of me in them, right in this moment, I would be very proud and I've been working very hard on this on me as a human and especially after having kids my children along with my husband. But my kids mostly pushed me to be a better person, because I kept reflecting to myself over the years if you want your kids to, you know, break generational trauma, or if you want them to, you know, do better than you like, then you actually have to do better and show them that in the moment, because you can lecture your child over and over and over again, you know, for example, you can tell your kid over and over and over again cigarettes, kill, don't, don't smoke cigarettes. It's a terrible habit, it's awful for you, it's horrible, it's horrible, it's horrible. But if then you are yourself a smoker, your words are not going to mean anything. They're just going to see your actions. And your actions do truly speak volumes louder in words. So just future thought. If your child turned into you right in this moment and embodied everything about you, would this be a proud moment for you. So just a little thought starter there.

Speaker 1: 4:42

Now there's another one that I saw that's a little bit controversial. So it's one of those like hot take kind of situations. I'm going to read it direct and then we can talk about it. So the quote here on Pinterest says it's crazy to me that it's socially acceptable for adults to cuddle their spouses to sleep and use other sleep aids such as eye masks, weighted blankets or essential oils. Yet tiny humans, who need the biologically normal physical closeness of a parent to be able to fall asleep, are called needy, spoiled or too dependent.

Speaker 1: 5:09

I've given this a great deal of thought, because I was quite often judged at the amount that I had my kids on top of me, that I was carrying my kids, and in my mind I always rationalize it as at some point they're not going to need mommy right. At some point I can't pick them up, it's physically going to be impossible, and I'm not picking them up because I'm swooned. I'm picking them up because I'm their mother and if my child comes to me and is crying, if I can pick them up and it's safe and it's, you know, even're one of the very few countries that doesn't, you know, doesn't really promote like co-sleep, you know, co-sleeping with your kids. Now, I never actually did that on a regular, but if my kid was scared or had nightmares or something, I pulled them into bed with me. Not a big deal. I didn't do it consistently because I just don't have I didn't have that in me. I just I didn't want that, want that.

Speaker 1: 6:06

But I will say this the first four years of my kids' lives I actually was either sleeping in the same room with them or very close by, because they would get up so often that I found it pointless to just go back to my room, so I would literally sleep in the room with them. They slept great Every time I had to do that. Now, did I like that? No, not so much. I wanted to be next to my husband but at the same time time you know that was more of a logistical issue with me, but really, really think about this. Like this tiny, tiny little bundle has been inside of us. It grew inside of me for nine months and as soon as it comes out, I'm supposed to start sleep training and leaving it by itself. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that now.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Granted, I used to get so frustrated because I just wanted them to go to sleep, and I used to get so angry because I had other things I needed to do, but that's really the key thing there, right, I had other things I was trying to get to instead of just focusing on my kid. You know, there's so many things that you can think back on and think to yourself oh, I could have done this differently, or I wish I had gone a different way with this. One thing that we can't ever take back is every single moment with our kid. You can't. I mean, it applies across the board, to older people and everything. But for the time, there's a very brief moment where you're the focal point of your child, you're their whole world, you're everything. And it starts to slowly go away as they get older. And I say this now because my kids are getting older and I do start to see it slowly going away.

Speaker 1: 7:23

I'm glad that I babied them. I'm glad that they knew that mommy was there and mommy was always going to be there when they needed them. Now, when they need me today, it shows up differently. It's not the same as when they were little and they would cry at night and I'd have to get frustrated and go in there and give them a bottle, whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Now it shows up as mommy. I have to talk to you. Something happened, or mommy, or mommy I heard this phrase. Can you tell me what it is? I'm the person that they come to now when they have a question or if they need to be reassured or if they want to talk something out. That's me. So I think that there is a connection there between me being there and making sure that they always knew I was their safe space, and now I am their safe space. I hope it continues that way. So it's kind of just like a food for thought.

Speaker 1: 8:03

I would be interested in hearing other people's opinions about, you know, how we treat infants and how we immediately think they're, or act as if they should be, on their own once, once they're born. I still think it's. It's kind of nuts, um, to expect, you know, a little little tiny baby who has no idea what's going on around it or really can't articulate anything, to be totally fine with being in a completely dark room by itself, probably cold. You know, like it just doesn't. It just doesn't make sense. Like literally, logically, it doesn't make sense. But I'd be interested in hearing everyone's opinions on it, because I know this is kind of a hot take. People go back and forth again, like I mentioned, like the co-sleeping thing, because I do have some relatives that did that and I don't know that I'm totally on board with that either because then at what age do you cut the co-sleeping off? And then wouldn't it be much more harder for them to get into their beds and be comfortable in there? Yeah, see I. I mean, I go back and forth on this, because now my kids are big, there's no way I'd be able to co-sleep with them. I can't imagine that, like you know. So I don't know. I'd be very interested in hearing other people's opinions about this because I do very much feel like we in the United States basically kind of are told like, oh, just abandon your young, and some of it is, like you know, we don't have a choice because of work and whatever, and the finances now, the economies, and, my God, in such bad position for us middle class folks and the lower income people that it just it's getting really difficult. So I just just I'm curious to see what everyone's opinions are there now.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Third and final topic and then I'll let everybody go is another quote that I saw on here and I can't read it because it was a video, so it goes a little like punchy, but essentially the takeaway from the video is that we're raising mentally weak children when we don't let them troubleshoot on their own and we don't allow them to think through and problem solve on their own. If we're consistently there for them in terms of, you know, stepping in and making everything okay, then we're not allowing them to gain the confidence and to gain the really brain power I don't know how else to say that to figure out their own problems brain power I don't know how else to say that to figure out their own problems. I will say this the way that my husband and I approach problem solving with our kids is we will listen. So our kids fight all the time, just like everyone else's kids that have siblings. I mean it's like a free for all right, and so we'll listen. And if we happen to hear like the tone of voices starting to change, we can tell when things are escalating, before they get like to a fever pitch, and then we'll we'll wait a beat, literally just a beat. I mean you can tell when they're going to fix it and when they're not. Now, a lot of times when I do interject, or when my husband interjects, I mean it's because we're seeing something we really don't want to say or we don't like and we have to course correct. Right, like I'm not against course correcting, but I am pro letting them figure some things out on their own.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Now I'll give an example, a personal example here. My oldest and one of the twins are consistently butting heads Like a lot, so much so that I'm like hyper vigilant, and I'm not sure if the reason why it triggers me so badly is because when I was growing up, my older brother was the same way with me and nobody stepped in and I think my parents did what they could. But you know, I just distinctly remember my older brother terrorizing me and me hating him and I would be crying and my self-esteem was horrible. And you know, because he was just consistently making fun of me and just consistently making me feel bad and I really internalized a lot of that. And so I I suppose that I'm triggered because of that, because when I see my son doing it to one of my, my daughters, I don't, I won't have that, I just won't have it. I will not stand for it. And I bring it very vocally to his attention and to the twins attention that if this continues on, you're gonna hate each other for a while. It's gonna happen.

Speaker 1: 11:44

And to my son, I consistently am letting him know if you continue with this behavior, you're not. You know, people are not going to be want to hang out with you. You cannot control everything, so it's something that's like an ongoing process of communication. Now there's instances where I don't interject. There's times where I will just pull one of them aside and say listen, hey, like you didn't handle this quite right, you might want to think about this. There's a constant stream and flow of communication from myself and my husband, constantly trying to make sure they hear something, that something gets through.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Now we know that some level, some, some knowledge is getting to them, because we we've been told from other people when our children are out of the house that like, oh, we love your kids, we love your kids, your kids are awesome, you're, you know your kids really. Oh, we love talking with them. They're, they're a riot and I'm like all right, like so I know that there's something getting in there. I just don't know how much of it. I'll take a 25 at this point. I just want to make sure they're okay and that they're being respectful people when they leave this house. But I am curious again what are your thoughts? You know, what do you think about this?

Speaker 1: 12:49

If you're any kind of single parent, two parent household, whatever, I am very curious to understand how other parents are handling this. Are you stepping in consistently when there's a problem? You know when, if your child has a problem with somebody else at school, how are you handling that? You know, I'm curious about that because we haven't had too much of that just yet, but I do actually make it a point also to make sure that if my child is talking about somebody that they're friends with in school, that I get that parent's phone number, because I find it much easier to be able to just reach out to the parent directly to say, hey, like I heard this, this and this happened at school. Do you happen to know anything about it? And if you keep it casual and you keep it, you know more. On a hey, we're we're parents in this together, like we're both trying to figure stuff out. Did you hear anything? If you heard something, can you let me know? It takes a village, you know.

Speaker 1: 13:36

I just want to put that out there too, and I am curious about how other parents are handling letting their kids troubleshoot. Are you letting them deal with stuff? Are you stepping in all the time? I'd really be interested in hearing from you. You can, in the description, message me directly and I'll get it, which is pretty cool. Somebody did it recently and I was very excited about it. So please feel free to leverage that to get to me and I'd be happy to give you a shout out on the next week and I can talk about what you message about. I hope you all enjoyed this episode. I wanted to give you a couple of thoughts that are there about parenting. See what everyone's thinking, what the vibe is. I hope that you all are having a wonderful summer, as I said, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.