S5E44 Why Our Parenting Style is Unique

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Transcript

Speaker 1 (0s): Hi bows and bow ties. It's me As black opinionated woman, also known as a bow. I know I do not come on video as often because I'm under siege. I am under siege. So if you hear a lot of noise in the next like 20 or 30 minutes is because my life is psycho. I got laundry going, which I'll throw those in the dryer on the way out the door.

My kids will be coming downstairs and they're probably about 20 minutes or so and you're wondering, why are you telling me all this? Well, if you look around, it's still dark. It's 6 0 5, okay? And I changed two of my kids' schools. Hopefully one of my other children will be doing them at the school next year as well. So we, I dropped them off at a new school. So the title was Why Our Parenting Style Is Unique.

I wanted to talk about black parenting for a second. You know, I did put a couple of notes on here, but I'm probably gonna go off cuff, you know, off the rip here. All right, so this is the thing. I have been leaning in on my kids lately, guys, by the way, if you're wondering why I look different with the hair and everything like that, you know, I'm going through it. I'm always going through it. I had dyed my hair over the summer.

It was cute until it wasn't. It started breaking off. The color was like, no ma'am. So then I decided to get some extensions for a while to match the hair color. And I'm thinking maybe this weekend I might have a 24 inch bus down. I don't know. I might have some, like a quick weave and some lashes I'm going through it. But anyway, let me get back to it. So I have been leaning in on my kids a lot and well, I always lean in on my kids, but even more so with one in high school, one in college, and two in eighth grade.

You know, as you can tell, I'm getting older and my job is to prepare them. My job is to prepare them. And when I talk about preparation, I'm talking about the realities of the real world, but also just emotionally just trying to make sure, make sure they have a strong constitution about themselves. Just making sure that when they have a certain level of repetition about certain things, then what happens is that breeds confidence, right?

Typically you're confident when you've done things over and over and over again. And then you, you approach things confidently. So let me just, you know, I wrote a couple points. One of the conversations I had with my high school son is I told him, you can't just do what everyone else can do. Now if you're a black parent, you know exactly what I mean. If you are a non-black person watching this, just understand that many of us tell our kids that our kids cannot do what other kids could do.

You can't get away with certain things, whether it's silly behaviors, whether it's being average in school, anything. So one of the things I teach my kid is, and I shouldn't have to, is I'm always making him take that hoodie off your head. I don't want him getting used to walking around, even though he should be able to, but I'm like, take that off your head. I teach him things like how to represent himself, you know, and everyone's gonna say, oh, it's politics, blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, I don't care. I'm like, I live in reality. The fact of the matter is you don't have to walk around wearing a hoodie. I wanna make sure that your clothes fit you just all the things, behaviors. I say you can't get away with what other kids can get away with. At the end of the day, you are always going to be seen as a black kid. It just is what it is. And so I'm constantly teaching my kids that like you don't have the luxury of being average.

You don't have the luxury of getting away with certain things, right? And I don't wanna go too deep into this. I think those of you, you could get my point, you get my gist. Like there's certain behaviors you cannot engage in. And if you're horsing around playing with friends, you'll be the one that's always gonna be blamed. We ran into this over silly, nothing crazy. So I parent the way I parent because I want them to understand like, you need to be aware of how you show up in this world.

I say it again, you need to be aware of how you show up in this world. Oftentimes I run into parents who live in environments or communities where there may be representation of everybody across the board. And they think that the rest of the United States is like that. So they think that the isms don't really exist. They don't run into that. They're like, oh, we think things are changing. I'm like, you have the fortunate luxury of living in the bubble that you live in.

And also, especially if you're a non-black parent, a lot of times oftentimes those other parents will say those things because they live in those bubbles. And then what happens is they can leave that bubble And they still look the way they look. So no, I'm not teaching fear or racism or anything like that because I love that my kids are able to be who they are around all kinds of people. But I also wanna make sure I raise my kids to be aware of who they are, because you will get reminded.

So I'm gonna move on. Earlier I talked about preparation. And let me just say this, the greats preparation for, I'm like preparation. No, there's preparation for life outside of the home, right? Because this is a safe place. But I'm also strict. So I try to, I try to be relatively consistent about how I go about life.

I teach my kids things like how you show up in, in, in your life. It, it's gonna go across everything, right? The way you are is gonna show up in your schoolwork, in your sports, in your relationships with your parents and your siblings, with your relationships, with friends, how you're going to work. You wanna be the kind of person you are across the board. So that requires for you to have a level of discipline about yourself.

You wanna be disciplined in your approach to many things. That's not to say that you can, you can't ever go off script, but you wanna be disciplined about yourself. You wanna also, not only that, when you're disciplined and you practice doing certain things, what happens is eventually you become confident in so many things because you've been there before. You are disciplined. So now, like it's not new. You want things that are ingrained in you so that you know exactly who you are, whatever, however you choose to show up.

But like I said, how you show up will show up in everything across the board. Again, who you are, you train yourself to be, it's going to show up in your relationships with your family, with your friends, your schoolwork, your sports, anything. And I, and I explained to them even down to schoolwork, and this is gonna sound controversial, but this is the thing I said, you know, you still need to, to get educated.

Now there are gonna be people who are going to disagree with me on this. And no, I don't think education is just a formal college education, but that's the one I'm pushing for. I say, number one, look at who's going to college. The wealthy people send their kids to college. They're not sending their kids to the trades. And I tell them, I said, there's nothing wrong with the trades, but oftentimes the trades will represent a ceiling.

And then people will try to fight me and say things like, oh, well you could start your business. I'm like, but the average person isn't starting their own business in the trades. And the trades, they're, it's great work. You know, these are very knowledgeable skillset, but I'm also concerned because of where we're going with automation and ai, right? So I tell my kids, you need to become college educated and you can, if you wanna get a trade, still get a trade, but you need to get college education.

And there's benefits to that. When you, when you attend college, like you're learning about life, you're just, there's a period of discovery and transformation. You're learning how to network, you're learning about different opportunities, you're meeting different people, you're learning about different career fields. When you're studying for a trade, you're just very myopically focused when you're studying in college. Now, I mean, I'm sure somebody is, someone is gonna challenge me on that and that's okay. But when you go to college and even though you're studying in your field of study, there's a lot of cross pollination that's happening.

So I am constantly pushing for my kids to go maintain education. 'cause this is the other thing, you really can't take away someone's education, right? I mean, there's all kinds of ways you can find some extreme example, but you can't take away education, but you can take away a trade, so to speak, right? The trade could go away based off of automation or ai, whatever. Even though you're still always gonna need humans that'll look for a lot of these things. But you can't take away this.

You can't take away the education. So I'm constantly pushing for my kids, like, you don't get to be average. Now, this is gonna sound crazy. I said, the fact of the matter is many other kids are going to be able to thrive in ultimate o other environments. I'm like, right now there is a war. Like there's just, there's a war on class, there's a war on different groups of people. You wanna make sure that you can educate yourself, educate yourself.

I tell them that sometimes like the kids where we live, like they have the fortunate luxury of knowing that like they can take their time with how they want to choose their post high school career. Or maybe some of these kids at my, where some of my other kids go to this, this private school, they don't have to consume themselves about getting great grades because when they're done, they'll just go work for mommy and daddy. You know, you got moms and dads who are partners in, in law firms and I don't know, doctors and all whatever business owners, like you've got wealthy kids.

Like I'm like, you're not them. You are not them. So I'm constantly trying to teach to my kids that I need you to be disciplined about how we are gonna move in these next few years. We are gonna have purpose. I find that a lot of black parents are teaching their kids like, you cannot do what other kids get to do.

It's just the reality here in the us At the end of the day, you need to be able to be fully self-supporting. I will not always be here. Your father will not always be here. You need to be fully self-supporting. You need to have a purpose. We don't go to school, we don't go to college just to say we got an education. We go to ensure that we can take care of ourselves. Although my oldest seems to be on the struggle bus these days, but hopefully he's pulling it together.

I'm gonna move forward. I'm gonna talk about identity for a second. I don't wanna say too much without divulging too much information, but I definitely am constantly reminding my kids who they are. It is really important to understand that although you can have all kinds of friends, who you are is good too. And for the most part, I think I've done a pretty decent job of teaching my kids like who you are is you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

God made you the way you are. And it's more than enough. It is so awesome. I want my kids to understand that they are enough. I used to constantly tell my daughter, you don't have to be seen. You already are seen. So you don't have to be extra for anything. But I want my kids to know that like, like I, I, I, I'm over here stuttering, but it is so important to me that they know that like you are seen and who you are is already good enough.

You don't have to be anything other than who you are. And it is not this, this transcends race. This is just who you are as a person. But because we live in America, race has to be brought into it. I'm like, your blackness is beautiful. Your blackness is enough. Like, not to say that your blackness is currency, but in some circles it is. But what I want them to understand is you are black and you are enough.

You don't have to be anything other than who you are, except for me, because you know, I have extensions. I needed it. My hair was falling. Now I don't know what was going on. And I may have a bust down by the end of the week. I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. But I want them to understand that they need to be resilient in who they are. They need to have a strong constitution about who they are. They need to know that they can represent themselves as they should just themselves.

They don't have to try to be anything else. I'm like, you don't have to try to be anybody else. And I don't want them to try to be anybody else. I want them to look in the mirror and like what they see. So it's an, it is especially important when you are in an environment where there are not a lot of people who look like you, right? Because these, if you're, if you don't have a good foundation about who you are, I can see how that can be difficult, in my opinion.

I would say more so with girls and with boys. But I could be wrong. My boys seem to be like, I'm good. My one boy I've had to work with a little bit. I'm like, Hey, I don't know if you know this, but you are black. I say that tongue in cheek, but I definitely made sure I leaned in on my daughter. My daughter needed to know that. And I think she's got it pretty good. Like, you know, just understanding who you are and representing yourself. I wanted her to know that, that this is plenty, we talk about values, the things that, you know, we value as a community.

Like we do value family. Let me just say this. And it's not that other communities don't, but I'm just talking about mine. It's, it's like, why one of my daughter's teammates, it's funny because like, her mom is quite similar to me in terms of like, we just look at them as kids. Like that's like my play niece. You know, we, we look at certain things like how we teach our daughters, like little things, like hygiene is taught differently, I think.

Like we don't stay in nasty clothes when we're done with our sports. We get out of these clothes, we don't get into our beds wearing out outside, like outside clothes. Like just the little things like when you come home from practices, come outta these clothes. I too, I do that with my boys too, but they, 'cause they stink really bad. But I'm like, we don't lie in those things. We don't lay around in that. Like, we want to make sure that our bodies are clean. And I'm not saying other cultures don't, but we were talking about how we're constantly preaching certain things.

And I'm trying to keep this PC right? I think just understanding the things that we value, like in terms of like extended family, how we go about hygiene, how we go about our beauty routines, right? You know, it's just those little things, like just teaching them certain things. Like, and, and the way you do things may not be the same as other cultures. How we manage our hair, how do we take care of our hair?

So like when you're not with me, when you have to go away for camps and stuff like that, you don't need me now. Like, you know how to do it because you've been trained, you are disciplined, right? There's, we, we have to parent our kids differently. Like I said, I'm trying to keep this very high level without deep diving too much. 'cause then it makes everything heavy. But I think people can pick up what, what, what I'm putting down. I, let me see anything else. I took notes on, I think I made the comment, this is the next day I made the comment to, oh, that's my laundry.

I made the comment to several people over the last few years. I said that I believe that black kids need to be spoiled too. And, and, and the reason why I say that is like, there's discipline and everything, but I do believe in spoiling. Not having, not having bratty kids, but like, I want my kids, boys and girls to understand they probably don't know how to need it, but like, having a soft life, meaning I don't want my kids to think everything about life has to be a struggle.

That's not what I'm teaching my kids. I want my kids to understand you have to work and you get to rest too. Boys and girls. I said what I said. So I'm teaching my kids things like rest. Now let me tell you something. I am in a position of privilege when I'm not wealthy. But when I say a position of privilege where I can say these things where I'm like, you need to work hard, but you need to know how to rest.

You know what, when you come home, of course you have chores, but you have different privileges too. You know, I want my kids, what did I say about soft life? Because I was trying to, but I was going with a point on that. I think the main thing I wanted to, to get out of that was, 'cause I had a conversation a couple times with people And they said that I believe that we need to be spoiling our kids.

And when I say spoiling, not creating brats, but like, not everything has to be like, you gotta just get this back. Well, that's important too. But I want them to enjoy life. I want them to take their 3.50 cents and invest in themselves. You save for the future. You take time and explore something. You do something different. You try something you've never tried before. I do believe in that. I believe that our kids should have the opportunities to be, you know, taken care of.

And, and when I say spoiled, spoiled a little bit within reason, you wanna set boundaries. But I feel like oftentimes people feel like, you can't do this, you can't do that. I'm like, that's not true. When I say our kids, I'm talking about from a community standpoint. I want our kids to be able to be spoiled and loved. And when I say pampered, I, I mean that loosely. 'cause of course I'm not walking around every walking moment putting pillows under butts or anything. But I think that our kids need to understand within reason the soft life too.

Not just other groups of people. I definitely teach my kids, but I I, I mean my daughter, but I want my sons to know that. Now, I haven't named it the soft life, but I want them to understand that you don't want to have to toil day and night. You want to be able to rest. You wanna be able to enjoy yourself. You wanna be able to invest in things that bring you pleasure. You want, you want that. And I'm trying to show my kids that type of thing.

Let me see. I am teaching my kids that it is okay to express themselves without being disrespectful. I grew up during a time when it was difficult sometimes to express myself. But I want my kids to have opinions. I want them to be thinkers. I want, I want them to feel empowered as long as they are respectful.

And that's within reason. 'cause I don't give 'em a whole lot of leeway, but they get some. I think the biggest thing is just making sure that my kids know that they are protected and loved. I want them to be in an environment where they feel loved, where they feel protected, where they can have some of a soft life, but they are prepared for when they leave outside of my home. The fact of the matter is that not everybody's gonna be on their side, whether you're black, white, or indifferent. But not only that, they can't cover for the fact that they are black.

Like, like that's the fact of the matter. People are gonna have biases against them. Every once in a while when I find out some things I have to do a verbal chin check. I've already had to have one a couple weeks ago I was trying to get an IEP for my son and someone said something that was crazy. It was out of pocket. And you know, me, I had to go ahead and politely and professionally handle that. But I made sure it was very, I, I wanted it to be uncomfortable enough that they got the message, but enough that there was no major performance.

But I would've been in my right if I had to perform and you know what I mean? Anyway, look, I think that being a black parent requires for us to not just raise our kids, but we have to prepare them for the world differently than other groups. We have to let our kids know that you are valued, you are loved, you are enough, you are worthy, you are capable.

We have to give them all those things. And it's tough at times. We have to give them the talk about the, the police. We have to give 'em the talk about all kinds of things. But then when they're home, they need to feel that love too, right? It's gotta be a safe place. It's gotta be a place where they can enjoy a little bit of soft life, right? Hopefully this made sense. I, I probably should have gone in a little deeper, but I try to keep these videos relatively, I something that you consume, you can consume.

It is not that I don't want to be inflammatory, but, well, sometimes you have to be inflammatory, but I, I like for these to be videos that multiple people can consume, right? Like, not necessarily other groups. That's great. But I'm thinking in terms of levels. Like kids, if they're watching this, like it's kid appropriate and, and adults, this is a good time to subscribe to my channel. If you liked what you heard.

That's pretty much it. I gotta go yell at my kids. It's six 30, we need to be in the car and nobody is down here. Nobody's down here. And then, then they wonder, look, and then they wonder why. I'm like, didn't I say see, see, this is the kind of video that I, I don't want you guys to hear was getting ready to happen right now. They know they need to be down here And they need, they need to be in the car because I need to stop and get my coffee on the road. You know, we got priorities.

But look, this is a, a good time for you to subscribe, share with your friends, leave a comment, let me know if you would like for me to talk about other topics. And that's pretty much it. All right. Until next time.

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