Welcome to Round four of the Parenting Roundabout podcasts for the week of June twenty
sixth I'm Terry Morrow, and I'm here with Nicole Ritics, Hello, and
Katherine Heleco Hello. As moms of teens and young adults, we've survived those
little kid days, yet we're still rethinking the decisions we've made all through our
kids' lives and worrying about what's going on right now. Today's Thursday, which
means it's time to give into our obsessing, and today we're obsessing about whether
to let kids skip a family obligation or event. Now, yesterday we were
talking about getting gifts from people, and this is the kind of thing that
makes people not want to send you to the guilt send you a gift.
You graduated, but I haven't seen you at any of the family gatherings.
I don't know. I thought maybe you moved to Mars, so I gathern
you read this article, What does it say? I mean? Basically,
this mom of teens is arguing that, first of all, she doesn't want
She's saying that an obligation is a form of people pleasing, like she doesn't
want to teach her kids that you have to do things because you have to
please other people, and she doesn't want the fight, you know, with
the kid over like I don't want to go to Grandma's or whatever. But
then in the end she's like, in anyway, they I want them to
go because they want to go, and they usually want to go, right,
Okay, then we're done here, Like well, I don't know why
we're okay. Yeah, I mean I just think this is definitely one of
those things that is you can't just make a blanket statement like you know,
oh, I never make my kids go. Well, okay, what if
their other parent died, You're not going to make them go to the funeral,
or like what if you know their sister got married or I don't know.
It's just like, yeah, they're sometimes you might actually just have an
expectation of your child, Like it's it was just definitely one of those like
sure, go ahead and say that, but we all live in in a
real world where that may or may not actually be the case. I mean,
it depends on what we're talking about. Yeah, there's an if there's
a frequent gathering at which children are bored, I can see them wanting to
opt out. If you don't see your family that often. I mean,
there's okay, you don't want your kid to do things to negate their desires
to please other people. But at the same time, there's a certain level
of these are you know, these are people who should mean something to you.
Don't have to do what they say all the time, but you can
honor them with your presence, with your board surly presence from time to time,
and it's not going to kill you. It means a lot to Grandma
to see you exactly, and who knows how long Grandma is going to be
here. It's just I mean, there's like there's people pleasing on the one
side, I guess, and manners on the other. It's not bad to
go from time to time, even if it's boring. I say this because
we have no more family near us, so we hardly ever see our family,
so it's really easy. But when they were around, we got together
quite a lot, and my kids, actually my daughter especially loves being with
family extended family, way more than I do, so she's really sad when
we can't see them a lot. We used to like drive halfway between our
where they live now and where we live and have holiday meals together, and
we just don't do that anymore because the people who have been driving there just
like, can we just stay home? We stay home. So it's the
adults really, Yeah, and she's really upset about it, So maybe she
needs an episode on should you force your parents, you see family members or
do you not want them to learn to please you? That would be bad.
But I you know, I never had that much family stuff when I
was growing up, and we did here for a little while, and now
we really don't. My husband had a lot of it, but he was
a dutiful guy, so it seems like it could theoretically be kind of nice.
Yeah, I mean when I was growing up, we had a you
know, a fair number of family that lived right in town. So you
know, basically once a month there would be something. It was somebody's birthday
or it was a holiday, or you know, it was summer, whatever
it was, and we would get together. So it was and I don't
remember, certainly as a kid not wanting to do it, you know,
I mean because at some point it was my birthday, so that's right.
There was always cake, you know, so yeah, it just was kind
of what you did. And yeah, and I guess to somebody said,
yeah, it was an expectation and nobody was, but nobody was ever trying
to get out of it as far as yeah, maybe the adults were and
I just didn't pick up on that as a kid. Yeah, So I
think that you kind of have to honor your kids um boundaries too. I
mean there's manners and then there's being polite. But I think sometimes it's okay
to not you know, they don't need to be at everything if that's not
what they're comfort is. I am speaking from the point of view where I
had to go to everything until I was, you know, of an age
where I shouldn't have had to or I could have had the choice, right,
right, And those were some very made for some very uncomfortable moments in
terms of just yeah, socializing. I'm more of an introvert, so right,
Yeah, I would have really liked and a lot of them I didn't
need to be there for, Like if if there was a conversation about okay,
really, how important is this? Is it absolutely crucial or not?
Right? Yeah, I don't know. Well, frequency is certainly a thing.
And also is there somebody there who picks on your kid either a cousin
or an adult in that case, forget it. But I ain't going either,
Right, I've had those I've had those feelings from time to time.
But and sometimes my kid didn't notice it and I did, so I was
feeling angry for myself and for my kid who was just having a good time.
Right. Um, But those are the kind of things that make you
say, you know what, this isn't that important, right, at least
on a frequent basis. Yeah, I mean, just because their family doesn't
make them good people. Well, we're hoping nobody from Nicole's family, and
listening to this episode, we're not talking about you. She means somebody else,
you know. She means, you know, let's just not wear the
rose colored glasses here. It's great that you know, that's that's the case
that I think we also need to be aware that there's also other, you
know, experiences, right. Yeah, we have extended family who we see
seldom enough that it's fun when we see them. But a lot of the
times it's for like weddings and and showers and stuff like that that my kids
aren't invited to, and I wish they were because they would have a better
time than me. And I would like them to get to know these,
you know, extended family members. But there's not really um a venue for
that really anymore. Weddings, weddings, showers, and funerals is pretty much
it. So I don't know. Well, funerals, everyone's allowed to go.
Guessen is very good at funerals. He's he's got his he's he's a
good Italian boy, he's got the manners down. People are impressed by him.
Nice. Yeah, but I don't know family ladies and gentlemen. Yes,
it's complicated. It's complicated. Go to the gatherings right before the graduation
in the first communion so you can drop and then just just have a oh,
you know, he's so involved in sports. We just really can't and
oh did I imagine that she's in the marching band? And darn they have
a play that weekend, right, so you know there's ways yep. Yeah,
well we hope you feel obligated to listen to us every day. That's
right. Don't think you can get out of that. That's very important.
Bring it with you to the game, right, It'll give you something to
do rather than talk to your family. There you go. Perfect. I'm
sorry, but I have five thousand episodes I downloaded, and I gotta I
gotta free up some space on my phone. Well, on that note,
tune in tomorrow and we'll share our roundabout roundup of things that we've been using
or enjoying lately that we think deserve a shadout. Find all our episodes at
parenting roundabout dot com and talk back in the comments there, on our Facebook
page or on Twitter, where you will find this a roundabout chat the