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Thanks so much for joining this episode, guys
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We love making this stuff
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to bring all types of people together.
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Yes, and we did do this topic
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in a previuos Middle Ground episode,
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but due to your feedback
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we chose to bring back this topic
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with teens and parents
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that do not know each other.
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Also, if you wanna be in a video,
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because I love reading your stories,
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fill up the casting forum below
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Enjoy!
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One of the biggest things I believe in
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is: you don't need a mother,
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you don't need a father,
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you need a parent.
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[Cool suspense music]
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My name is Anthony Cabassa,
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I have three children,
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and I'm a veteran, and I'm a parent,
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and I'm happy to be here.
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My name is Cassandra Roy,
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I am a life coach,
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and I have one son, David Alexander,
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who's a full time MFA student at Yale University
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on a full scholarship.
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My name is Marissa Gold,
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I have two children,
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they're 14 and 10,
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and I also have a parenting company.
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I run social and emotional empowerment groups
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for tween and teen boys and girls.
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I'm Elizabeth, I'm 18,
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next year I'll be going to school
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to study nursing, and I have
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two dads and a brother.
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My name is Adam, I'm 15 years old
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and currently I'm working on starting
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my own clothing brand :)
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I'm Noopur, I'm a Computer Science
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and Engineering major at UC Irvine.
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"I feel too stressed"
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The first source of stress in your life
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is probably your parents.
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Something from your parents.
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In a kind of... with your parents expectations
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it kind of builts. At least for me it did.
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My parents immigrated from India,
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and so they went to college in India
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and I'm a first generation Indian-American.
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I did robotics, I did music,
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I did volunteering in highschool...
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and I got into college.
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They were like "you should finish college
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in like three years", like "yes, is four years,
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but finish earlier, save money,
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do a Master's program."
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"Finish Master's early,
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try and do a PhD;
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get a job while you're at it."
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I don't even think I would be in college
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if it wasn't for my parents, but...
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the fear of disappointing my parents is terrifying.
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If I wanted to pursue something else
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I would do it after college, I would do it
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after I got a job, I'm stable, after
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I've fulfilled what I needed to fulfill
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for my parents.
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It pains me to hear how stressed you already are,
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because I think, as adults like, we know, like, it doesn't end.
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You know? It's like, it's just like it gets harder
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and harder. Like, unfortunately unfortunately,
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like, life gets exciting and it goes in
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dips and waves and whatever but..
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But there's no alternative
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You just keep going, there's no option
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to quit.
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I feel like the last kid being chosen
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for the baseball team [laughs].
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Don't be too hard on your parents,
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because they're doing the best they can
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with the information that they have.
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And, in terms of you (Noopur),
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I would really strongly suggest that you
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sit down and have a conversation with them.
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Because you may not understand this,
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but they know something's
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not settling with you.
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My parents have tried talking to me.
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The walls are already there
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and if you don't have the fundation
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it's hard to start at a later age.
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"I have struggled to be honest with my family"
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I mean, I was in the closet for 13 years,
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so... that was one thing.
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It's almost like as soon as I came out
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of the closet, everything else did.
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I started being more open,
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I talked to more people,
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I learnt how to express myself through art
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and through clothing, which I'm now doing.
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For me, personally,
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I have struggled with an eating disorder
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from the time I was 11 until just recently.
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I mean, you're always in recover
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if you have an eating disorder.
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So much of that mental illness is lying,
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and going behind people's backs.
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My parents had to sit outside of
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my shower at night to make sure
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I wasn't throwing up.
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They had to check in with my friends
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to make sure I was eating.
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All of these things,
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there's absolutely no trust,
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and I still couldn't feel
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like I could tell them anything because
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my mental illness wouldn't let me.
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I have worked SO hard
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to regain all of my trust
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and now my parents trust me to
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absolutely no end.
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They now I would tell me the truth in any circumstance.
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In my family we don't talk about mental illness,
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or depression, or anything like that.
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We don't talk abut sex in my family.
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Saying the word sex in my house is like taboo.
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And slowly my dad has tried reaching out
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but is very (?), like he once told me in highschool
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"Hey, you should go into this Body Positivity
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workshop in school" Like, he could tell
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that I wasn't happy with the way I looked.
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I couldn't ever, really, come out to them
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about the fact that "Oh, I have depression"
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"Oh, I'm going to see a therapist in college now"
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I think, for me,
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my struggle with being honest with my family
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is that growing up I was Christian,
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and everything we solved through prayer and reading the Bible.
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If you were depressed, prayer and Bible.
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If you wanted to have a girlfriend,
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"hey that's not allowed"= prayer and Bible
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My mom was a very fierce
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female individual in my life.
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Her motto has always been:
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"Your life is going to suck all the time,
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and if you set to that baseline,
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then you'll never be disappointed
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because you always expect the worst."
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By growing up that way
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I feel like maybe I'm a stronger individual
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but that communication was never there,
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and that honesty was definitely not there,
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'cause there's things that I would do
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and I'm like "Wop, that's definetly not Christian-like
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so I'm not gonna tell about that."
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What I hope to instill in my children is like
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"hey, no matter who you are, who you love,
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I'm not gonna be like my mom" where she's like
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"no, you have to be this perfect inside-of-a-box person."
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Personally, I've gone through the same thing,
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but now, I know that
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I can
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tell them absolutely anything.
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When I first started telling my parents
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that I was having sex
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I was never met with
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"That's horrible, you need to stop,
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you're not a good person", none of that.
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The first response was always:
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"Thank you for telling us, let's (you know)
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provide protection."
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Just in that scenario,
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I knew that I could be honest with my parents
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in abolutely anything moving forward,
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but it was hard to tell them that.
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As and adult, as a wife and a parent,
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the truth was always the best 'weapon'
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for lack of a better word,
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to lead with.
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Because it cut down on hurt, it cut down on pain,
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it cut down on frustration...
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And have I always been honest?
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'Course not, I'm human.
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I like to think I've been honest about
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the stuff that was important.
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But I've learnt that honesty is in fact,
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the best policy, is just easier all around for me.
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"Social media can be very positive."
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I honestly think that social media
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and the Internet in general
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has probably been one of,
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if not the best thing in my life.
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Having known like, queer role models,
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seeing known artistic expression around me
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in the real world where I am,
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but discovering all that through the Internet.
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I would not have found out I was asexual
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without the Internet.
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I would not have known what asexuality was,
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I would not have even known that was a word.
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Because, at least in school, and at home,
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we never talked about this.
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I was like a little bit like, okay, is it
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more positive than negative,
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but I think I'm gonna use like, to my own testimony,
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like, how's been for me.
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I started a social media page
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under the alias Conservative.Latino.
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I get a lot of hate mail,
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and I get a lot of people call me a race treator.
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Calling me, you know, a fake this, a fake that,
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they call me names, they wish death upon my family and my children.
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And I see a lot of the profiles don't even have pictures,
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and then I go to their profiles: 0 followers, 0 posts,
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0 nothing and I'm just like, man, these people rea(..)
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You just signed here to hate!
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Yeah! Exactly.
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Some of them aren't even people, they're bots.
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Um, I used to play video games and,
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at some point, I actually decided to use my voice
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in a videogame. And I am a female,
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in a, in the video game comunity,
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and there's a lot of masculine toxicity.
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Every single day guys would hit on me.
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I was 15 years old and these guys were like 20, 30s
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They would like, gift me games as to let me out,
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And usually it was fine, I can be always be like "No"
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And most of them were respectful,
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Sometimes they would escalate,
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they would threaten to find out where I lived,
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they would threaten to rape me.
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The point that I realized I had to, like,
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get away from all this is when someone threatened
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to rape me and I actually got scared.
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Yeah, and this is ex.. I mean...
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Couldn't be a better illustration of
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a parents worst nightmare
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when it comes to social media. Right?
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And how quickly it can escalate
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and especially like you were 15,
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which is pretty young,
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but there are kids, boys and girls,
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this is happening to, when they're...
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8, 9, 10 they have no idea how to handle it,
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they don't know how to even talk to their parents about it.
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Because they innately feel that there's something off,
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but they also feel like they could get in trouble
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if they bring it to their parents.
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And I'll be honest, like, my daughter
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has been asking me since she was like 6
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"Can I please start a YouTube Channel"
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Can I, like that's been her dream,
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but I go on these articles,
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and I'm hearing about like, all these online bullying,
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and especially with females, I feel it's
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a larger thing because.. I was like a youth pastor
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for my old church, and a lot of them would tell me
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that if they're on social media they would be receiving
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elicit pictures from grown adults! So,
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I'm like scared, I'm terrified but at the same time
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I feel like I'm almost punishing my daughter.
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When she does start to explore that,
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I would say don't take it away,
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because that's gonna make her angry,
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and she's gonna find a way to go on it anyways.
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'Cause there's so many access points for social media.
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Yeah, that's why I like, I'm just very like, concerned
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as a social media influencer I see what I get in my DMs,
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and I see the type of content that people leave on mine,
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and I would never want..cuz..
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It's probably part of why she wants to do it,
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'cause she sees her dad doing it, so you're modeling it.
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You know, I mean the kids wanna do
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what they see their parents doing often.
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[Asking the real questions here]
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YYyYeEeEesSSS!!¡¡
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I see more texting while driving in the parents generations.
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They don't know about that technology they're like
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"Oh, I'm just gonna check this really quick"
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And that's what causes a lot of accidents.
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My dad has a velcro patch on his steering wheel
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In his steering wheel?
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Yeah, on the steering wheel I'm DEAD serious
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it's reallyl.. it's really bad.
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He doesn't understand that you can leave people
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on read. Like you don't have to respond
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to people in the moment. If my parents text...
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I just feel like I need to reply right then and there (yeah)
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Just like "No!" Maybe is like and OCD thing.
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The parent generation does, for sure.
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More than, i, I see it all the time.
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"I wish my parents listened to me more"
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There definitely are times that I remember growing up
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and even now as an adult where I felt like
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when my mom and I talk about things
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that she sometimes doesn't hear really.
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Like I have to say something like
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over and over and over and go back to it
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and it's really hard for her sometimes to hear
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something because is not what she wants to hear.
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I have to say my father. He's... what we called "the weekend dad"
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'cause that's when we can go and visit him,
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t'was every other weekend.
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And growing up he sat infront of the TV the entire time.
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And, he wasn't a good listener,
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he wasn't someone that I ever felt that I could come to
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for anything, really.
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And he just feels that the world owes him everything.
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Sometimes he would call me, literally as I'm in class
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and I would text him and be like
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"Hey I can't talk right now" but he'd say
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"How come you so busy, how come you never have time for me!"
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It just got to the point where
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he was making me feel like complete garbage,
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and he would say hateful things to me.
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And I was like "You know what?
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Out of all your children,
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I'm the only one that still talks to you
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and I am trying to do the best that I can."
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And no matter what, it was just never good enough for him.
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I feel so fortunate to have the parents that I do.
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And any time I approach them with a problem,
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I am heard, I am supported, and..
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usually hugged. [THAT'S SO CUTE] So,
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I.. growing up, I had so many people think that
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I was missing out on something 'cause I didn't have a mom,
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and that I wouldn't be able to learn about, like
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what it is to be a woman,
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or what it is to, y'know, have your period or whatnot.
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I had so many people approaching and be like
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"Oh, I know you're missing a mother but
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I'm always here if you wanna talk!"
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And I'm like "No! I can talk to my parents about that"
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One of the biggest things I believe in is:
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you don't need a mother, you don't need a father,
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you need a parent.
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My mother, um
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was also a single parent.
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She worked sometimes two jobs,
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but she was never too busy to talk to me.
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She was dead tyred sometimes!
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So what we did was, every Saturday
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we would hang out.
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We would, um, clean the house first,
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get dressed, get lunch, and that was our time to talk.
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Whatever was on my mind, that was a good time to bring it up.
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So, it let me know that I could talk to her.
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And that's what I've done with David,
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every Saturday we had David's day,
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when he was growing up.
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So, if he wanted to eat McDonald's three times a day
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um, we tried to convince him for dinner to something else
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but you get my point,
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that it allowed him to speak freely.
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It's important that we continue to encourage one another.
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Because you will keep us young,
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and we will be able to put some wisdom on you.
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You know, and hopefully we will listen to each other.
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I think if everybody can just have moments
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where they just tell their parents that they love them,
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in an honest conversation, a supportive conversation from both sides.
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I think that we need more of that.
365
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Thanks so much for joining, guys
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we really loved revisiting this, uh, topic.
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Yeah, it makes you just wonder like
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how, you know, we were like as teenagers,
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and our parents, right? (Don't remind me)
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We are trying to revamp? Middle Ground.
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If you guys have ideas of how to revamp? let us know,
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DM us, email us, comment below,
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and we love to hear from you guys all the time.
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As usual, thanks for watching, and we'll see you guys around.