Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Modern parenting has its challenges, lunches to prep laundry, to
Speaker 2: do homework, to help with soccer drop offs, to shuttle
Speaker 2: There's just a baseline level of stress and busyness that
Speaker 2: comes with being a mom or dad today. But life
Speaker 2: sometimes turns in ways that sends these usual parental burdens
Speaker 2: into stress overdrive, like when there's a scary health diagnosis,
Speaker 2: or a death in the family, or a job loss.
Speaker 2: What wisdom can moms and dads turn to during these
Speaker 2: extra difficult parenting moments? What can you do to find
Speaker 2: solace as a caregiver when it feels like you're the
Speaker 2: one that needs care Well, today's two guests have some answers.
Speaker 2: As the power couple hosts of the hit podcast We
Speaker 2: Can Do Hard Things, best selling author Glennon Doyle and
Speaker 2: soccer legend Abby Wambach are used to handling tough family situations.
Speaker 2: Since getting married years ago, the pair have navigated the
Speaker 2: typical challenges of raising three teenagers, but recently, as Glennon explains,
Speaker 2: life decided to hurl a series of nasty plot twists
Speaker 2: their way.
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago, all within like a six
Speaker 3: month period. I was diagnosed with anorexia. Abby lost her
Speaker 3: beloved brother Peter, and our sister Amanda was diagnosed with
Speaker 3: breast cancer. And this weird thing happened was you know
Speaker 3: how in your friend groups or in your family, there's
Speaker 3: usually like one person who is okay, And so when
Speaker 3: you lose your shit, you like you can go to
Speaker 3: somebody to remind you of who you are or of
Speaker 3: what it's true. And so I think for the first time,
Speaker 3: everybody was unmoored.
Speaker 2: How do you cope when your entire family support system
Speaker 2: is falling apart, when everybody is unmoored? Well, Glennon and
Speaker 2: Abby decided to turn to what they do best on
Speaker 2: their show, sharing short bursts of wisdom with one another.
Speaker 3: Like for Abby, I was writing things down for her
Speaker 3: about grief. A lot of the things that we had
Speaker 3: talked about on the pod, like moment that were anchoring
Speaker 3: and grounding to remember Abby was doing for my sister
Speaker 3: in terms of like health and recovery and resilience. And
Speaker 3: I and Abby were collecting moments of wisdom about body
Speaker 3: peace and all of this stuff I was going through.
Speaker 3: I think, when I think about it now, I think
Speaker 3: we couldn't find the hope and wisdom inside of ourselves,
Speaker 3: so we were externalizing it and they became these like
Speaker 3: little treasure chests that we just kept returning to over
Speaker 3: and over again. I ended up sending it to a
Speaker 3: friend who said, well, this is the most helpful thing
Speaker 3: that anyone's ever sent me. And she was joking, but
Speaker 3: she said, can you make something like this for every
Speaker 3: category of life? And so we laughed, and then I said, wait,
Speaker 3: we should do that because I've always wondered why in
Speaker 3: moments of like challenging moments in life, the times when
Speaker 3: you most need to access what you know and your wisdom,
Speaker 3: you lose it. So we just thought, why not have
Speaker 3: an answer to that where you can go to this
Speaker 3: one place and remember everything that you have learned and
Speaker 3: what other people have learned by walking these paths will
Speaker 3: light your way.
Speaker 2: That one place where Glennon and Abbie can remember everything
Speaker 2: they've learned, They've decided to share it with their fans
Speaker 2: in the form of a new book, co authored with
Speaker 2: Glennon's sister Amanda Doyle. Like their podcast, it's called We
Speaker 2: Can Do Hard Things. And this little treasure chest of
Speaker 2: advice in book form wind up becoming much larger than
Speaker 2: at least Abbey expected.
Speaker 3: Actually, le let me tell you what she said when
Speaker 3: she opened the package with the book in it. Yesterday
Speaker 3: we got the book. She opens it up, she holds
Speaker 3: it up, and she goes, I cannot believe that I
Speaker 3: wrote a book that's four hundred and ninety six pages
Speaker 3: ninety seven, And I was like, why is that the
Speaker 3: thing you're It's so weird.
Speaker 4: It's just so uncommon for a former athlete to produce
Speaker 4: and publish a lot Like my books are shortish.
Speaker 2: The new book is a very long book, and it's
Speaker 2: incredible for so many topics, especially the one that we're
Speaker 2: talking about here today, which is parenting. Is an apt
Speaker 2: way to put it, because Glennon and Abbey's book tackles
Speaker 2: at least two hard topics that I wanted to dive
Speaker 2: into during this special series on Happier Parenting. First, how
Speaker 2: can we parent our own kids in ways that don't
Speaker 2: repeat the mistakes our parents made? And second, how can
Speaker 2: we reparent ourselves in order to fix what our.
Speaker 1: Own caregivers got wrong?
Speaker 2: Take, for example, the challenge of understanding what we really
Speaker 2: want out of life.
Speaker 1: Even as adults, many.
Speaker 2: Of us are walking around with a set of outdated
Speaker 2: scripts about the way we should be living, scripts that
Speaker 2: our parents wrote for us many years ago, and that
Speaker 2: simply may not fit with our current goals or identities.
Speaker 2: If we're not careful, these outdated narratives can keep us
Speaker 2: from becoming the people we want to be. And this
Speaker 2: is one reparenting challenge that Glennon and Abbey talk about
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: We are a lesbian couple. We talk about this all day,
Speaker 3: every night. We don't we don't need to just understand
Speaker 3: each other. We need to overstand each other sory. This
Speaker 3: is something that we spin around constantly because I think
Speaker 3: we do have a moment where we kind of wake
Speaker 3: up and we go, wait, is this who I really am?
Speaker 3: I've developed a certain facade personality. I mean, in my
Speaker 3: childhood home, what was important was that I was like
Speaker 3: sweet and polite and small and controlled and disciplined, that
Speaker 3: I was always achieving. My dad used to say, you
Speaker 3: can rest when you're dead. He's a football coach.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I think all of us, everyone listening, can probably
Speaker 3: relate to the moment where you look at yourself in
Speaker 3: the mirror and you're like, have I met you yet?
Speaker 3: And besides that, there's a family role that we all
Speaker 3: get put into. I have a sister who was the
Speaker 3: hero of the family. I was an addict and had
Speaker 3: a lot of mental health challenges. I was kind of
Speaker 3: like the designated patient, and she had to be perfect.
Speaker 3: And now she's still trying to have a life where
Speaker 3: she doesn't have to be perfect. I mean, you Abby,
Speaker 3: you talk about the facade that you had to create.
Speaker 4: I'm the youngest of seven, so the particular family system
Speaker 4: that I came from was of fend for yourself. You
Speaker 4: got to get what you get, whether it was a
Speaker 4: second helping of food at dinner or the true, unbridled
Speaker 4: attention that I was longing for from my parents. It's
Speaker 4: virtually impossible with that many human beings in one space,
Speaker 4: and that projected onto me in a way that made
Speaker 4: me make decisions as a person, as a kid, as
Speaker 4: a young adult, that got me pretty far down the
Speaker 4: sports route.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I played for the United States and I won gold medals. Literally,
Speaker 4: they handed me a trophy that said I was the
Speaker 4: best player in the world, which is insanity when you
Speaker 4: think about it, like that's impossible. And then when I
Speaker 4: look at myself in the mirror, the night after I
Speaker 4: get that award, I'm assuming, I'm thinking that this is
Speaker 4: going to finally make me feel the thing that I
Speaker 4: have been in search of, right, the worthiness, the love, roughness.
Speaker 1: Right, you will be enough finally with this trophy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And so I looked in the mirror and I thought,
Speaker 4: you are the same. You still have that same weird acne.
Speaker 4: You just look the same, you feel the same. And
Speaker 4: so I mean, the way that we both were brought
Speaker 4: up has shaped so much of the people we now
Speaker 4: know ourselves to be. But when have we ever given
Speaker 4: ourselves a space to really analyze, like why, actually am
Speaker 4: I like this? How did I become the person that
Speaker 4: thinks the way that this person thinks, so the person
Speaker 4: that reacts in the way that this person reacts.
Speaker 2: And this is the problem, right, is these incredibly loving,
Speaker 2: well intentioned parents who are trying to protect you, who
Speaker 2: are trying to do right by you, wind up pushing
Speaker 2: this kind of thing that's not you, it's not your
Speaker 2: real self, and it becomes this facade. But the sad
Speaker 2: thing is that I feel like often parents do this
Speaker 2: out of care and love. There's something that they're scared about.
Speaker 2: They're worried that you're going to be rejected for some
Speaker 2: aspect of your identity, and they're like, don't be like that,
Speaker 2: Like it's just this misguided attempt to protect and Abby.
Speaker 2: I know you've talked about how that played out out
Speaker 2: in the context of your queer identity, especially too, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think our parents really were trying.
Speaker 4: The best that they could and doing the best that
Speaker 4: they knew how and making decisions in the way that
Speaker 4: was best for them at the time. I want to
Speaker 4: give them the most compassion and put them in the
Speaker 4: light most favorable and also say that it wasn't what I,
Speaker 4: in my particular personhood needed, and I was able to
Speaker 4: do some really awesome stuff with it. So the paradox
Speaker 4: of it all blows my mind on a consistent basis,
Speaker 4: the paradox of wondering what if things were different, how
Speaker 4: would I have turned out? And I wouldn't change a thing.
Speaker 4: Some of the stuff that I experienced fortified me. And
Speaker 4: I was explaining this to Glennon there's a part of
Speaker 4: me that feels so grateful to my parents for in
Speaker 4: some ways not really accepting my sexuality at a young age.
Speaker 1: Wow, that for.
Speaker 4: Putting me in a position to like, really be striving
Speaker 4: towards this love and worthiness and acceptance because I created
Speaker 4: my life in a lot of ways off of the
Speaker 4: foundation of that. And she just said, yeah, honey, I
Speaker 4: get that. And also I wonder what could have happened
Speaker 4: if love took that place, if acceptance took that place.
Speaker 4: I wonder how much more you might have been able
Speaker 4: to grow and to become. And that was tough to
Speaker 4: hear because there's so much truth in that. And I've
Speaker 4: got what I've got. I had what I had, and
Speaker 4: so I feel like I made the best of it.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, if this is what like terrible trauma
Speaker 2: and your parent's not accepting you, looks like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not so bad in your case, Abby.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the best in the world.
Speaker 2: This gets to another blueprint that parents inadvertently give kids.
Speaker 2: It's this idea of like what love looks like. It's
Speaker 2: not always the healthiest version.
Speaker 5: Abby.
Speaker 2: You had a story from the book about learning that
Speaker 2: love was transaction that I think point out with your.
Speaker 1: Kids if you wouldn't mind sharing it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: When I was younger, my dad paid me for scoring goals.
Speaker 4: The better I did on the field, the more quote
Speaker 4: unquote pride they would have for me. And then the
Speaker 4: story in the book I think that we talked about
Speaker 4: was at the cake pop story.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, yes, she tried to buy their love for life.
Speaker 5: So I'm very new to the family.
Speaker 4: I'm still like getting to know the kids, and I
Speaker 4: just thought, okay, I'm going to really try to court them.
Speaker 4: So we were in line to get a coffee and
Speaker 4: I see that they have got cake pops in the
Speaker 4: menu in it, and I turned back and I was.
Speaker 5: Like, hey, girls, you guys want a cake pop?
Speaker 4: And they said yes, and so I ordered the cake
Speaker 4: pop At the drive through. They said, yeah, how many
Speaker 4: do you like? And I said, I'll take all of them.
Speaker 4: And Glennen was like, wait, no, no, no, that's not parenting.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, oh really, Now it's like a family
Speaker 4: joke because I'm like, what do you guys want and
Speaker 4: they're like, oh, like all of them, all the everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But it's so easy to fall into, right, because
Speaker 2: you want to kind of get your kids to think
Speaker 2: that something's rewarding.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Your dad maybe not the best strategy, but he wanted
Speaker 2: you to think that, like scoring goals was rewarding. So
Speaker 2: it's like, I'll slap this other external thing on you.
Speaker 2: I'll pay you to do it. And what we forget
Speaker 2: is that our psychology is set up that when you
Speaker 2: add an extrinsic reward to something, you pay somebody, or
Speaker 2: you give love and cake pops, then that makes you
Speaker 2: kind of feel completely empty when it comes to the
Speaker 2: intrinsic rewards, Like that's the quickest way to make your
Speaker 2: kid hate soccer or feel like the only goal of
Speaker 2: soccer is just so you can get the money afterwards
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 3: Even the pride I do try to think about the
Speaker 3: thing that I'm saying feels like a gift. I'm proud
Speaker 3: of you feels like a gift. But what is the
Speaker 3: shadow side of saying that? Like I'm proud of you
Speaker 3: because you did well in a game. Implicit in that
Speaker 3: is I am less proud of you when you do
Speaker 3: not do well anything.
Speaker 2: There's a because in there. I'm proud of you because
Speaker 2: dot dot dot right.
Speaker 4: One of the things I'm very con of now we
Speaker 4: have a young daughter, our youngest She plays soccer. One
Speaker 4: of the things that's the most important to me is
Speaker 4: to not get too high or low about any kind
Speaker 4: of performance that she has because I want her to
Speaker 4: know that, whether she does well or doesn't do well,
Speaker 4: that I just love her period.
Speaker 3: Right, So that's just another form of what we were
Speaker 3: talking about in the beginning, Like you learn what makes
Speaker 3: people happy, and then you amplify those parts of your personality,
Speaker 3: and you find out what makes your parents are family uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: and you knew those parts of your personality and then
Speaker 3: you turn forwarding and you want to while you're half
Speaker 3: a person, right, So asking these questions, like even saying
Speaker 3: why am I like this is the beginning because inherent
Speaker 3: in the question is the moment where you start to
Speaker 3: notice the water you're swimming in, which is being conscious.
Speaker 3: Like if you don't notice the water you're swimming in,
Speaker 3: you just think that's the way it is. But if
Speaker 3: you can figure out what parts of your personality you
Speaker 3: amplified and muted, then there's a bit of a hero's journey.
Speaker 3: You can go on to like explore the parts you
Speaker 3: muted and start to amplify those so that you can
Speaker 3: become more fully human and you're not just like playing
Speaker 3: a role your whole life.
Speaker 4: I just want to say one thing really quick about
Speaker 4: the pride thing, because I just had this like aha
Speaker 4: moment in my body. I think parenting what it comes
Speaker 4: down to is if we can control the centering of ourselves,
Speaker 4: then I think that a lot of parenting issues would
Speaker 4: get solved because when I say that I'm proud of you,
Speaker 4: I am now centering my opinion of you more than
Speaker 4: you your life and your experience.
Speaker 5: So what we say is I'm.
Speaker 4: So happy for you because that is how I feel.
Speaker 4: I feel so happy for you, and it gives them
Speaker 4: the autonomy of the experience, and it also takes my
Speaker 4: experience and what matters to me out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love that because there's so much science that backs
Speaker 2: up that. If you're allowing it to be their intrinsic
Speaker 2: reward that's about them, that's not about the idea that
Speaker 2: you want for them as a parent, then that's going
Speaker 2: to be the thing that drives them into the future. Right,
Speaker 2: You're helping them develop their real self as opposed to
Speaker 2: whatever facade you want for them. That's good, but it's
Speaker 2: very hard.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, when I get back from the break, we're going
Speaker 2: to hear what you learned about how to do this
Speaker 2: better for your own kids, and also what the science
Speaker 2: shows about healthier strategies we can do to kind of
Speaker 2: reparent ourselves if we didn't get that from our own parents.
Speaker 1: So the Happiness Lab We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: In their new book, We Can Do Hard Things, podcasters
Speaker 2: Glennon Doyle and Abby Wombach explore the complex experience of
Speaker 2: raising three children while trying to come to terms with
Speaker 2: their own complicated childhoods. For Glennan, the process of truly
Speaker 2: confronting the past began at the start of her parenting journey,
Speaker 2: when she was forced to really start thinking about her future.
Speaker 3: When I found out I was pregnant with Chase and
Speaker 3: I was twenty five, I had been lost to addiction
Speaker 3: from the time I was ten, like, believing in alcoholism, drugs,
Speaker 3: the whole thing. So when I found out I was pregnant,
Speaker 3: I think I just really had a moment of Oh,
Speaker 3: this is it. I felt very close to debt, Like
Speaker 3: I felt like either I clean it up now or
Speaker 3: I don't ever clean it up. And I largely became sober,
Speaker 3: became a human being by figuring out what would this
Speaker 3: kid's mom do? Like I formed a personality completely based
Speaker 3: on mom because I didn't have a developmental track like
Speaker 3: most people. Because I was last to addiction for so long,
Speaker 3: so I really didn't go through all the things that
Speaker 3: one is supposed to go through, which has made the
Speaker 3: kids growing up, I think harder for me than the
Speaker 3: average bear. I've really been struggling a lot with them
Speaker 3: growing up and growing away because my only identity, not
Speaker 3: only my only identity, but my only feeling of belonging.
Speaker 3: And I think that's what I've really noticed about this time,
Speaker 3: which is that I am a person who struggle mightily
Speaker 3: to feel like she belongs anywhere, and the little microcosm
Speaker 3: in this family has been the only environment I've ever
Speaker 3: felt belonging. So to lose that now sending all my
Speaker 3: love to all the people who are losing their belonging
Speaker 3: in identity.
Speaker 4: Because we're coming up we and a year and a
Speaker 4: little bit, we are going to be empty nesters. We
Speaker 4: also have artists, so likely they will be back in
Speaker 4: living in our house.
Speaker 2: But I think this is something that so many parents
Speaker 2: go through. You know, the parents that I work with
Speaker 2: most closely, our parents whose kids are going off to college,
Speaker 2: and you have parents who set up their whole identity
Speaker 2: like I am a mom or I am a dad,
Speaker 2: and then a lot of kids are needing you less
Speaker 2: or less in the ways that you got used to.
Speaker 2: And I think this can be incredibly hard as an
Speaker 2: identity change for parents, And so how do you navigate
Speaker 2: that while doing what we suggested before the break of
Speaker 2: not centering yourself.
Speaker 3: I've found that every phase of parenting just requires a
Speaker 3: completely different self because it feels like what they need
Speaker 3: from me is so different. I think if I could
Speaker 3: go back and do anything different, I think that I
Speaker 3: a little bit too much created in every scenario this
Speaker 3: feeling in them of Mom's got me. And I thought
Speaker 3: that that was good parenting. What I'm trying to do
Speaker 3: now is more of like responses that say, oh, you've
Speaker 3: got you, You've got you. That is a big frickin difference.
Speaker 3: Like I had this weird moment recently where I was
Speaker 3: thinking about okay, me on my deathbed, the kids all
Speaker 3: around me, and I've always thought that what I wanted
Speaker 3: in that moment was for them to think she was
Speaker 3: the best mom that ever lived. And then I thought,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that's not what I want them thinking.
Speaker 3: What I want them thinking is I've got this, I'm okay,
Speaker 3: not I'm not okay now because my guide my life
Speaker 3: my everything is leaving, But I want to have parented
Speaker 3: them in a way where in that moment they think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm good, which is two different things, right.
Speaker 2: And I think parents can again, loving parents who have
Speaker 2: incredibly good intentions can like mess this up. You made
Speaker 2: this claim that it's worth pushing back on this idea
Speaker 2: that we need to mold our children like that. That's
Speaker 2: not the right metaphor. What's a better metaphor for parents
Speaker 2: to think about.
Speaker 3: I think that there is this idea that goes back
Speaker 3: to what we were talking about in the beginning, that
Speaker 3: there's a world out there and that we have to
Speaker 3: prepare our kids for that world, which really means that
Speaker 3: whatever your world view is based on your childhood trauma,
Speaker 3: your own your kid's this poor Bonzie tree, and you're
Speaker 3: just like cutting parts off and you're doing it out
Speaker 3: of love because you think, well, like in an Abbey's situation,
Speaker 3: bless her mom's heart, she's Catholic, she thought the world
Speaker 3: was going to crush Abby yeah, with her queerness, so
Speaker 3: she crushed it first. Yeah, But what we forget is
Speaker 3: like we are the world for our kids, so we
Speaker 3: bring them the rejection that we're afraid they're going going
Speaker 3: to experience outside because we think we have to prune
Speaker 3: them to make them able to grow out there. But
Speaker 3: that doesn't work. I guess the metaphor because I'm obsessed
Speaker 3: with metaphors and can't do anything literally would be. It
Speaker 3: feels more to me like they're not lumps of clay
Speaker 3: to mold, because the last thing I want to do
Speaker 3: is mold anybody in my own image. Like, good God,
Speaker 3: I'm working hard enough to change my own situation, right,
Speaker 3: and they know more than we do, Like that is
Speaker 3: almost like moving backwards. I always think about that line
Speaker 3: from the Khalil Lebron poem about like they are life's
Speaker 3: longing for itself, like they belong to the future where
Speaker 3: we can't even go in our dreams. I think they're
Speaker 3: more like seeds. They have everything in them when they're
Speaker 3: born that they need to become, and so our job
Speaker 3: is not to touch it. Actually, our job is just
Speaker 3: to create a fertile soil that allows them to grow
Speaker 3: into whatever they were meant to be without pruning too much.
Speaker 5: That's really good.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a faulty system too, because it's like
Speaker 4: this thing that we do by creating this big identity
Speaker 4: around parent mother, rather than creating the mindset that I
Speaker 4: am raising this child, I'm guiding this child through all
Speaker 4: the different phases of their life so that I can
Speaker 4: leave them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the point. That's the goal eventually, is
Speaker 2: they can do it on their own, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, And bless our hearts.
Speaker 3: It's a heartbreaking, terrible sirstem. No, I'm not giving five
Speaker 3: stars to the system. I think it's awful, but it
Speaker 3: is in fact the situation, that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And it winds up helping you because if your child
Speaker 2: wasn't a seed, if it was really up to you
Speaker 2: to mold them, then you'd have to do that perfectly, right,
Speaker 2: Your every mistake as a parent would be deeply messing
Speaker 2: them up. And this is something I know you've both
Speaker 2: talked about a lot in the book, right, is that
Speaker 2: striving to be the perfect parent is actually incredibly dangerous
Speaker 2: and probably really harmful for your child. Part of what
Speaker 2: you need to do as a parent is that you
Speaker 2: have to show your humanness, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, what I've been playing with lately is becoming aware
Speaker 3: of your repetitive behaviors and how those affect your children
Speaker 3: and I'll give you an example, because this was like
Speaker 3: a breakthrough for me that just happened. I am doing
Speaker 3: a lot of work on myself with eating disorder stuff
Speaker 3: and yadiyada. I have like one song. I've learned that
Speaker 3: huntback whales have like one song. They sing their whole lives.
Speaker 3: I just have one song, and it's this eating shit,
Speaker 3: and I just will keep spinning around it forever. Anyway,
Speaker 3: in therapy, I have learned that I am very judgmental. Okay,
Speaker 3: I use judgment as a way of keeping people away.
Speaker 3: I'm scared of people. I use judgment to keep myself
Speaker 3: safe and my family safe. So my family has experienced
Speaker 3: that for me many hundreds of times. Meaning they will
Speaker 3: bring someone up or something up, and they will hear
Speaker 3: Mom go into a list of the reasons why this
Speaker 3: person is bad, why they should stay away from this person,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. Recently, I was doing that at
Speaker 3: the dinner table. I saw my little one kind of
Speaker 3: dim I saw it in real time, A mean I
Speaker 3: talked about it. We took her to dinner and I
Speaker 3: said to her, here's the thing. I learned some strategies
Speaker 3: when I was young because I am scared of people.
Speaker 3: One of the strategies I've learned is judgment. So when
Speaker 3: you hear me going through a list of reasons why
Speaker 3: someone is bad and you should stay away from them,
Speaker 3: that is my very unhelpful attempt to keep you safe,
Speaker 3: and it has nothing to do with the person I'm
Speaker 3: talking about. So when you see your mom doing that,
Speaker 3: I want you to not look at the person I'm
Speaker 3: talking about. I want you to only look at your
Speaker 3: mom and think, oh, she's doing that thing again. Because Laurie, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do with the gap, Like,
Speaker 3: I know this isn't what I want to teach my kids.
Speaker 3: I know I don't want to be doing this, but
Speaker 3: I have this gap where my body keeps doing the thing.
Speaker 3: So how we deal with the gap is we just
Speaker 3: point out the gap, because what we do to our
Speaker 3: kids is we put our dirty lens over their eyes
Speaker 3: and they don't know that that's the water they're swimming in.
Speaker 3: They just think that's the way it is. But I
Speaker 3: want her to not put my dirty lens on. I
Speaker 3: want her to see the world with her lens, which
Speaker 3: is better than mine. It's more open, it's more trusting,
Speaker 3: So that is I think a way that's like the
Speaker 3: next step. It's identifying the patterns that we don't want
Speaker 3: to pass on completely, and even when we can't stop them,
Speaker 3: at least pointing them out to our kids so that
Speaker 3: they see it as our worldview.
Speaker 2: You also on the book talk about these cases where
Speaker 2: you really encourage kids to push back against adults, whether
Speaker 2: those adults are you know, their parents, or other authority
Speaker 2: figures of their life, so that they can develop their
Speaker 2: own views and their own story. Glenn, I think you
Speaker 2: had a version of this with your daughter and her
Speaker 2: high school guidance counselor recently.
Speaker 1: Could you share that one.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, everybody out there trying to teach their
Speaker 3: kids to be brave and stand up to authority figures
Speaker 3: like just look out, because we did that and now
Speaker 3: our kids are just really.
Speaker 1: Buyer beware I guess on this one, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, I mean we're so proud but also constantly terrified.
Speaker 3: So I think the moment you're talking about is when
Speaker 3: our middle child came home and she said, look, my
Speaker 3: counselor wants me to join all these clubs, and I
Speaker 3: don't want to join the clubs. I'm not like a
Speaker 3: club person and I said, okay, well, what's the big deal,
Speaker 3: just don't join the clubs and she said, I don't
Speaker 3: want to disappoint him. And that was a big moment
Speaker 3: for me because I really think that our job, and
Speaker 3: what I told her is like we need to just
Speaker 3: walk around every day with the express goal of disappointing everyone.
Speaker 3: That should be not something we avoid, something we strive
Speaker 3: for because even that word disappoint think about it, it's
Speaker 3: like disappointing someone else as the decision maker of your
Speaker 3: life and reappointing yourself. So I said, oh, honey, you
Speaker 3: got to disappoint your counselor you got to disappoint everybody,
Speaker 3: so you don't have to disappoint yourself. And she said, oh,
Speaker 3: even you, And I said, oh, especially me. Like I
Speaker 3: know people who are doing like the biggest, huge lives
Speaker 3: and they're all still just living, not to disappoint their parents.
Speaker 3: Their parents aren't even alive anymore. It's the most important
Speaker 3: thing we can do in our entire lives is to
Speaker 3: stop recreating what we think our parents would have wanted
Speaker 3: us to and create what we want to.
Speaker 2: Create, creating the life we want to create. It's such
Speaker 2: an important goal, but it can be surprisingly hard to
Speaker 2: actually do.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: When we get back from the break, we'll look at
Speaker 2: strategies we can use to become the people that we
Speaker 2: really want to be in spite of what our parents
Speaker 2: may have wanted.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: Here Glennon and Abbey's tips on successfully reparenting ourselves and
Speaker 2: not making the same mistakes with the next generation when
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. It's no secret
Speaker 2: that parenting can bring up lots of unresolved experiences from
Speaker 2: your own childhood. Watching your child mess up might trigger
Speaker 2: your own memories of feeling criticized. A big move or
Speaker 2: divorce may lead you to reflect on how your parents
Speaker 2: navigated big life transitions. In their new book We Can
Speaker 2: Do Hard Things, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wombach explain that
Speaker 2: we can embrace these moments as opportunities not just to
Speaker 2: do better for our own kids, but also to reparent ourselves.
Speaker 4: I had this experience with my kid early on when
Speaker 4: I got into the family. We do kind of nightly
Speaker 4: ritual where we lay in bed and we'll take a
Speaker 4: moral inventory of the day and things that didn't sit
Speaker 4: right with us. And one of the things that wasn't
Speaker 4: sitting right. Was the way that I responded to our
Speaker 4: youngest who came to me and said, my knee hurts,
Speaker 4: and I just went into the way I was parented.
Speaker 4: I basically said, you know, you'll be fine in not
Speaker 4: so many.
Speaker 3: Words, deffin up buttercup.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it felt very like I was pushing her away,
Speaker 4: And that was kind of the way that I was raised.
Speaker 4: And I think in this moment when I was telling
Speaker 4: Glennon just said, well, you can apologize to her. And
Speaker 4: I was like, I'm sorry, excuse me, and yes, I'm like,
Speaker 4: but parents don't do that. Parents don't apologize. That had
Speaker 4: never happened in my whole life. So the next morning,
Speaker 4: I wake up and Amma's eating her cereal and I
Speaker 4: kind of explained the story, like, this thing happened last
Speaker 4: night and you came to me with your injury and
Speaker 4: I didn't handle it right, and I'm so sorry, and
Speaker 4: I want you to always feel confident and comfortable coming
Speaker 4: to me with anything, even if it's a toenail that
Speaker 4: you're feeling uncomfortable about.
Speaker 5: And she just was like eating her cereal and she.
Speaker 4: Was like, okay, great, moving on, And it was this
Speaker 4: really important moment for me that not only did it
Speaker 4: feel unnatural to apologize to a child, my own child,
Speaker 4: but it also felt very healing. Like I think that
Speaker 4: what we get wrong is that we think that we
Speaker 4: are just the way that we are and this is
Speaker 4: the way that it will be. But parenting is this beautiful,
Speaker 4: unique opportunity to reparent ourselves. And so in this apology
Speaker 4: with my child, I was having this experience. I felt uncomfortable,
Speaker 4: I felt scared, and then it happened, and she was
Speaker 4: so great about it and loving that I just thought, Oh,
Speaker 4: I bet you there were probably a lot of things
Speaker 4: my mom wanted to apologize for and maybe she can't
Speaker 4: find the words for it.
Speaker 2: Abby, you brought up the idea specifically of parenting ourselves,
Speaker 2: like reparenting ourselves, why is it so important?
Speaker 4: Being the youngest of seven, I was always watching my
Speaker 4: parents and my brothers and sisters and trying to like
Speaker 4: figure out what what worked for me, what I would
Speaker 4: do different, And then you get to do that with
Speaker 4: your kids. You get to then express your own idea
Speaker 4: of parenting on your children. But I didn't know that
Speaker 4: there was so much possible healing in it for me.
Speaker 4: In the ways that I wasn't parented that I might
Speaker 4: have needed. And we do have to analyze and think
Speaker 4: about really from the beginning, like why am I so
Speaker 4: anxiously attached? Oh, probably because my mom didn't hold me
Speaker 4: as much as I needed to be held, because there
Speaker 4: were six other people that she was having to fend
Speaker 4: off of her body. Probably because every single one of
Speaker 4: my brothers and sisters left to go to college. In fact,
Speaker 4: when my sister, when the oldest, went to college, she
Speaker 4: was kind of my second mom. She was the one
Speaker 4: that was holding me and changing my diapers. And when
Speaker 4: she went to college, I was starting to act out.
Speaker 4: Said they brought me to a therapist like a school counselor,
Speaker 4: and I said, like, I think that my sister Beth
Speaker 4: died and nobody is telling me about it. And so
Speaker 4: parenting and reparenting has to begin with actually really doing
Speaker 4: a deep dive on the environment that you grew up with.
Speaker 5: And if we're.
Speaker 4: Really present and really awake with this idea of what
Speaker 4: parenting can be, what it was for us as children,
Speaker 4: what it might currently be for you as a person
Speaker 4: right now in your parenting life, Like there are ways
Speaker 4: for healing Honestly, I've never felt more happy in my
Speaker 4: life in just watching these children experience the lives that
Speaker 4: they're creating for themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this idea of kind of mindfully noticing what
Speaker 2: you missed, mindfully noticing what you need, it kind of
Speaker 2: fits with something that we talk about a lot on
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab, this idea of giving yourself self compassion,
Speaker 2: which I think is one of the fastest ways to
Speaker 2: kind of parent yourself, like mindfully noticing I'm struggling right now,
Speaker 2: this is not feeling good, I'm sucking. But then it
Speaker 2: comes also with this idea of like, this makes sense.
Speaker 2: No parent is perfect, no childhood is perfect. I'm just dealing.
Speaker 2: But then also treating yourself with kindness, and I know
Speaker 2: that this is something that both of you have struggled
Speaker 2: with at various points. Any strategies for parents or anybody
Speaker 2: who's struggling with this and trying to reparent themselves of
Speaker 2: giving themselves some kindness.
Speaker 3: I feel unable sometimes to figure out what I want
Speaker 3: for myself without seeing it through the lens of what
Speaker 3: I want for my kids first, And I wish I
Speaker 3: could do that, but I'm not yet able to do that.
Speaker 3: So what I would say is I think that when
Speaker 3: we talk to parents about just be kind to yourself,
Speaker 3: we're so obsessed with doing things right or well that
Speaker 3: that feels a little bit like BS until you start
Speaker 3: to think, Okay, then forget about yourself for a minute.
Speaker 3: You think about your kid, and when your kid makes
Speaker 3: a big mistake at school, or your kid feels left out,
Speaker 3: or your kid says something awkward, or your kid loses
Speaker 3: a job, what do you want them to do after that?
Speaker 3: You probably don't want them to feel like I'm such
Speaker 3: an idiot. Guys suck. I just am like, Okay, So
Speaker 3: if that's not what you want for them, because the
Speaker 3: only thing we know about human beings really is that
Speaker 3: they're just going to keep screwing up constantly, like that's
Speaker 3: just what we do. So that's the model we have
Speaker 3: to work with. We know that's going to happen to them.
Speaker 3: The only way that they're going to have a self
Speaker 3: compassionate inner voice is if they've seen that. That's what
Speaker 3: got me. I wish what got me is just like,
Speaker 3: obviously you should be kinder to yourself, but thinking what
Speaker 3: I want my kids to have as their inner voice
Speaker 3: when they screw up is what I have to become
Speaker 3: and model. That's what reparenting is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's such great advice because there's
Speaker 2: evidence from Kristin neflab Butt U T.
Speaker 1: Austin.
Speaker 2: If you want your kid to develop a self compassionate voice,
Speaker 2: you have to model that self compassionate voice and ideally
Speaker 2: model it out loud, like Abby your story about apologizing
Speaker 2: of like mom messed up. I probably should have been
Speaker 2: nicer to you about not feeling well. I'm going to
Speaker 2: try to do differently in the future when it takes
Speaker 2: some time to think about this. That's so much nicer
Speaker 2: than secretly beating yourself up insideer than watching the consequences
Speaker 2: of you secretly beating yourself up inside. Allowing yourself to
Speaker 2: be vulnerable actually helps your kids because then they get
Speaker 2: to sort of see how you do it, which is
Speaker 2: so important for their own development. Yea.
Speaker 3: Even naming the patterns like I could have gone to
Speaker 3: Amma and said, I suck. I'm just so judgmental, that's
Speaker 3: not the whole story. Like I learned that as a
Speaker 3: coping mechanism, and I said, Amma, like, I'm doing my
Speaker 3: best with this. This is something that I learned to
Speaker 3: keep myself safe. It's not my favorite part of myself,
Speaker 3: but this is how human beings work. So when she's
Speaker 3: forty and she's okay, when she's forty nine and she's
Speaker 3: talking to her kid, I don't want her beating herself
Speaker 3: up about her coping mechanisms. But I do want her
Speaker 3: telling my granddaughter what hers are because I feel like
Speaker 3: all we're trying to do each generation is like you
Speaker 3: get a certain hue of paint from your parents and
Speaker 3: you just add more white to it or whatever. You
Speaker 3: just try to like clear it a little bit each generation.
Speaker 3: So all we're doing is trying to get each other
Speaker 3: to look at our stuff and say, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to take that with me.
Speaker 4: And compassion has been really difficult for me personally. It's
Speaker 4: been my life's journey self love right worthiness, And so
Speaker 4: for the listener who also struggles with this, like I
Speaker 4: totally get it, and it is extraordinarily hard, Like I'm
Speaker 4: my biggest critic, right if I didn't get it perfect,
Speaker 4: if I didn't get it exactly right. There are therapists
Speaker 4: that are really helpful around cultivating a practice of this,
Speaker 4: because it has to be a practice. I mean I'm
Speaker 4: a very optimistic person, and I see the very best
Speaker 4: in so many people around me, and yet when it
Speaker 4: comes to myself, I can be so critical and so unloving.
Speaker 1: You're so not alone.
Speaker 2: I often joke that if people could hear what we
Speaker 2: say to ourselves, and we'd all get fired because hr
Speaker 2: would be like, you know, would put us all up
Speaker 2: for harassment, unless we're so mean to ourselves.
Speaker 3: Harassment. Oh that's crazy, and.
Speaker 4: So it is difficult. But I think when Glennon told
Speaker 4: me that too, this is early days. She said, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the most important things around parenting that we
Speaker 4: can offer our children is just the modeling of the
Speaker 4: way we live. That really got me thinking, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: my dad drank every day and that was something I
Speaker 4: aspired to do. Oh yeah, then I became an alcoholic.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Like I
Speaker 4: put my dad and his drinking ability on a pedestal.
Speaker 4: That's something that I wanted to become, and the same
Speaker 4: thing happens.
Speaker 5: And it might not be.
Speaker 4: As obvious and as detrimental as alcoholism. It might be snark,
Speaker 4: it might be judgment, judgment. It might be what kind
Speaker 4: of food you choose to eat, like modeling therapy, Like
Speaker 4: if I'm not getting this compassion for myself thing right,
Speaker 4: I'm modeling to my kids. I go to therapy every
Speaker 4: single week and they know it.
Speaker 2: And the modeling is so useful because one of the
Speaker 2: things we know from the research is that a very
Speaker 2: quick emotion that parents go to is guilt. And when
Speaker 2: you start to realize that treating yourself nice, working on yourself,
Speaker 2: putting in that work, that's actually parenting for the future.
Speaker 2: That's so like when your kid's forty nine, they'll talk
Speaker 2: to you know, your grips and daughter in a really
Speaker 2: nice way. I think that can just give parents permission
Speaker 2: to take the time and put in the work to
Speaker 2: take care of themselves, which they wouldn't normally do, but
Speaker 2: when it's for their kids, they do it. There's so
Speaker 2: much good wisdom in this book. I hope all the
Speaker 2: parents listening and all the non parents listening go out
Speaker 2: and check out your book so that they can get
Speaker 2: as many gloomorerous from you as I have. Glenn and Abby,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 3: You're the best. You make us happier. Laurie. We just
Speaker 3: love hanging out with you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: Parenting young children while simultaneously reparenting yourself is tough, but
Speaker 2: as the title of Glennon and Abbey's book suggests, we
Speaker 2: can do hard things, and while reflecting on the past
Speaker 2: may be hard, it often comes with the opportunity to
Speaker 2: shape a more intentional future, both for ourselves and for
Speaker 2: our kids. And showing that you're willing to take care
Speaker 2: of yourself is pretty much the best way to teach
Speaker 2: your kids that they can also navigate life's challenges with
Speaker 2: self compassion. In next week's special episode on Happier Parenting,
Speaker 2: we'll dive into what we can learn from parents who
Speaker 2: live in the happiest countries on the planet. We'll meet
Speaker 2: a mom from Denmark who's found that adopting a Scandinavian
Speaker 2: approach to parenting can lead to way less stress and
Speaker 2: surprising increases in family resilience.
Speaker 6: For a Danish parent, it would be no good if
Speaker 6: your child was top of the class but miserable and
Speaker 6: actually aspect to some parents in Finland, he said, they
Speaker 6: sort of told their children to study a bit less.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter about being top of the class, it
Speaker 6: matters about being happy.
Speaker 2: Until then, don't forget to check out my new free
Speaker 2: online course, The Science of Well Being for Parents. You
Speaker 2: can learn more by heading to doctor Lauri Santo's dot
Speaker 2: com slash parents. That's dr Lauri Santos dot com slash parents.
Speaker 2: We'll see you back soon for the next installment on
Speaker 2: happier parenting here on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor
Speaker 2: Lauriy Santos,