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Welcome to Round four of the Parenting
Roundabout podcasts for the week of June twenty

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sixth I'm Terry Morrow, and I'm
here with Nicole Ritics, Hello, and

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Katherine Heleco Hello. As moms of
teens and young adults, we've survived those

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little kid days, yet we're still
rethinking the decisions we've made all through our

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kids' lives and worrying about what's going
on right now. Today's Thursday, which

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means it's time to give into our
obsessing, and today we're obsessing about whether

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to let kids skip a family obligation
or event. Now, yesterday we were

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talking about getting gifts from people,
and this is the kind of thing that

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makes people not want to send you
to the guilt send you a gift.

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You graduated, but I haven't seen
you at any of the family gatherings.

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I don't know. I thought maybe
you moved to Mars, so I gathern

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you read this article, What does
it say? I mean? Basically,

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this mom of teens is arguing that, first of all, she doesn't want

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She's saying that an obligation is a
form of people pleasing, like she doesn't

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want to teach her kids that you
have to do things because you have to

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please other people, and she doesn't
want the fight, you know, with

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the kid over like I don't want
to go to Grandma's or whatever. But

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then in the end she's like,
in anyway, they I want them to

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go because they want to go,
and they usually want to go, right,

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Okay, then we're done here,
Like well, I don't know why

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we're okay. Yeah, I mean
I just think this is definitely one of

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those things that is you can't just
make a blanket statement like you know,

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oh, I never make my kids
go. Well, okay, what if

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their other parent died, You're not
going to make them go to the funeral,

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or like what if you know their
sister got married or I don't know.

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It's just like, yeah, they're
sometimes you might actually just have an

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expectation of your child, Like it's
it was just definitely one of those like

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sure, go ahead and say that, but we all live in in a

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real world where that may or may
not actually be the case. I mean,

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it depends on what we're talking about. Yeah, there's an if there's

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a frequent gathering at which children are
bored, I can see them wanting to

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opt out. If you don't see
your family that often. I mean,

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there's okay, you don't want your
kid to do things to negate their desires

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to please other people. But at
the same time, there's a certain level

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of these are you know, these
are people who should mean something to you.

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Don't have to do what they say
all the time, but you can

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honor them with your presence, with
your board surly presence from time to time,

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and it's not going to kill you. It means a lot to Grandma

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to see you exactly, and who
knows how long Grandma is going to be

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here. It's just I mean,
there's like there's people pleasing on the one

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side, I guess, and manners
on the other. It's not bad to

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go from time to time, even
if it's boring. I say this because

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we have no more family near us, so we hardly ever see our family,

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so it's really easy. But when
they were around, we got together

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quite a lot, and my kids, actually my daughter especially loves being with

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family extended family, way more than
I do, so she's really sad when

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we can't see them a lot.
We used to like drive halfway between our

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where they live now and where we
live and have holiday meals together, and

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we just don't do that anymore because
the people who have been driving there just

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like, can we just stay home? We stay home. So it's the

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adults really, Yeah, and she's
really upset about it, So maybe she

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needs an episode on should you force
your parents, you see family members or

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do you not want them to learn
to please you? That would be bad.

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But I you know, I never
had that much family stuff when I

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was growing up, and we did
here for a little while, and now

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we really don't. My husband had
a lot of it, but he was

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a dutiful guy, so it seems
like it could theoretically be kind of nice.

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Yeah, I mean when I was
growing up, we had a you

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know, a fair number of family
that lived right in town. So you

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know, basically once a month there
would be something. It was somebody's birthday

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or it was a holiday, or
you know, it was summer, whatever

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it was, and we would get
together. So it was and I don't

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remember, certainly as a kid not
wanting to do it, you know,

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I mean because at some point it
was my birthday, so that's right.

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There was always cake, you know, so yeah, it just was kind

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of what you did. And yeah, and I guess to somebody said,

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yeah, it was an expectation and
nobody was, but nobody was ever trying

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to get out of it as far
as yeah, maybe the adults were and

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I just didn't pick up on that
as a kid. Yeah, So I

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think that you kind of have to
honor your kids um boundaries too. I

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mean there's manners and then there's being
polite. But I think sometimes it's okay

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to not you know, they don't
need to be at everything if that's not

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what they're comfort is. I am
speaking from the point of view where I

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had to go to everything until I
was, you know, of an age

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where I shouldn't have had to or
I could have had the choice, right,

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right, And those were some very
made for some very uncomfortable moments in

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terms of just yeah, socializing.
I'm more of an introvert, so right,

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Yeah, I would have really liked
and a lot of them I didn't

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need to be there for, Like
if if there was a conversation about okay,

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really, how important is this?
Is it absolutely crucial or not?

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Right? Yeah, I don't know. Well, frequency is certainly a thing.

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And also is there somebody there who
picks on your kid either a cousin

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or an adult in that case,
forget it. But I ain't going either,

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Right, I've had those I've had
those feelings from time to time.

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But and sometimes my kid didn't notice
it and I did, so I was

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feeling angry for myself and for my
kid who was just having a good time.

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Right. Um, But those are
the kind of things that make you

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say, you know what, this
isn't that important, right, at least

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on a frequent basis. Yeah,
I mean, just because their family doesn't

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make them good people. Well,
we're hoping nobody from Nicole's family, and

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listening to this episode, we're not
talking about you. She means somebody else,

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you know. She means, you
know, let's just not wear the

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rose colored glasses here. It's great
that you know, that's that's the case

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that I think we also need to
be aware that there's also other, you

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know, experiences, right. Yeah, we have extended family who we see

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seldom enough that it's fun when we
see them. But a lot of the

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times it's for like weddings and and
showers and stuff like that that my kids

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aren't invited to, and I wish
they were because they would have a better

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time than me. And I would
like them to get to know these,

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you know, extended family members.
But there's not really um a venue for

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that really anymore. Weddings, weddings, showers, and funerals is pretty much

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it. So I don't know.
Well, funerals, everyone's allowed to go.

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Guessen is very good at funerals.
He's he's got his he's he's a

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good Italian boy, he's got the
manners down. People are impressed by him.

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Nice. Yeah, but I don't
know family ladies and gentlemen. Yes,

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it's complicated. It's complicated. Go
to the gatherings right before the graduation

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in the first communion so you can
drop and then just just have a oh,

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you know, he's so involved in
sports. We just really can't and

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oh did I imagine that she's in
the marching band? And darn they have

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a play that weekend, right,
so you know there's ways yep. Yeah,

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well we hope you feel obligated to
listen to us every day. That's

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right. Don't think you can get
out of that. That's very important.

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Bring it with you to the game, right, It'll give you something to

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do rather than talk to your family. There you go. Perfect. I'm

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sorry, but I have five thousand
episodes I downloaded, and I gotta I

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gotta free up some space on my
phone. Well, on that note,

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tune in tomorrow and we'll share our
roundabout roundup of things that we've been using

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or enjoying lately that we think deserve
a shadout. Find all our episodes at

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parenting roundabout dot com and talk back
in the comments there, on our Facebook

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page or on Twitter, where you
will find this a roundabout chat the