Can Teens & Parents Understand Each Other? | Middle Ground

thanks so much for joining this episode guys we love making this stuff to bring all types of people together we do this topic in a previous middle-ground episode but due to your feedback we chose to bring back this topic with teens and parents I do not know each other also if you want to be in a video because I love reading your stories still at the casting horn below enjoy one of the biggest things I believe in is you don't need a mother you don't need a father you need a parent my name is Anthony Cabasa I have three children and I'm a veteran and I'm a parent and I'm happy to be here my name is Cassandra Roy I am a life coach and I have one son David Alexander who was a full time MFA student at Yale University on a full scholarship my name is Marissa gold I have two children they're 13 and 10 and I also have a parenting company I run social and emotional empowerment groups for tween and teen boys and girls I'm Elizabeth I'm 18 next year I'll be going to school to study nursing and I have two dads and a brother my name is Adam I'm 15 years old and currently I'm working on starting my own clothing brand I'm Noopur I am a computer science and engineering major at UC Irvine I feel too stressed the first source of stress in your life is probably your parents something from your parents and it kind of with your parents expectations it kind of builds at least for me it did my parents immigrated from India and so they went to college India and I'm a first generation Indian American I did robotics like the music I did volunteering in high school and I got into college they were like you should finish college in like three years like yes it's four years but finish it earlier save money do a master's program finish master's early try and do a PhD get a job while you're at it I don't even think I would be in college if it wasn't for my parents but the fear of disappointing my parents is terrifying if I wanted to pursue something else I would do it after college I would do it after I got a job stable after I've fulfilled what I needed to fulfill for my parents it pains me to hear how stressed you already are because I think as adults like we know like it doesn't ends you know it's like it just like it gets harder and hard like unfortunately unfortunately like life gets exciting and it goes in dips and waves and whatever but like there's no alternative you just keep going there's no option to quit I felt like the last kid being chosen for the baseball team don't be too hard on your parents because they're doing the best they can with the information that they have and in terms of you I would really strongly suggest that you sit down and have a conversation with them because you may not understand this but they know something's not settling with you my parents have tried talking to me the walls are already there and if you don't have the foundation it's hard to start at a later age I have struggled to be honest with my family I mean I was in the closet for 13 years so that was one thing it's almost like as soon as I came out of the closet everything else did I started being more open I talked to more people I learned how to express myself to art and through clothing which I'm now doing for me personally I have struggled with an eating disorder from the time I was 11 until just recently I mean you're always in recovery if you have an eating disorder so much of that mental illness is lying and going behind people's backs my parents had to sit outside of my shower at night to make sure I wasn't throwing up they had to check in with my friends to make sure I was eating all of these things there was an absolutely no trust and I still couldn't feel like I could tell them anything because my mental illness wouldn't let me I have worked so hard to regain all of my trust and now my parents trust me to absolutely no end they know I will tell them the truth in any circumstance in my family we don't talk about mental illness or depression or anything like that we don't talk about sex and my family saying the word sex in my house is like taboo and slowly my dad has tried reaching out but it's various like sivan like he once told me in high school hey you should go into this body positivity workshop in school like he could tell that I wasn't happy but the way I looked I couldn't ever really come out to them about the fact that oh I had depression oh I'm going to see a therapist in college now I think for me my struggle with being honest with my family is that growing up I was Christian and everything was solved through prayer and reading the Bible if you were depressed prayer and Bible if you wanted to have a girlfriend hey that's not allowed prayer and Bible my mom was a very fierce female individual in my life her motto has always been your life is going to suck all the time and if you set that baseline then you'll never be disappointed because you always expect the worst by growing up that way I feel like maybe I'm a stronger individual but that communication was never there and the honesty was definitely not there because there's things that I would do and I'm like well that's definitely not Christian like so I'm not gonna that what I hope to instill in my children it's like hey no matter who you are who you love I'm not gonna be like my mom where she's like no you have to be this perfect inside of a box person personally I've gone through the same thing but now I know that I can tell them and absolutely anything when I first started telling my parents that I was having sex I was never met with that's horrible you need to stop you're not a good person none of that the first response was always thank you for telling us let's you know provide protection just in that scenario I knew that I could be honest with my parents and absolutely anything moving forward but it was hard to tell them that as an adult as a wife and a parent the truth was always the best weapon for lack of a better word to lead with because it cut down on her to cut down on pain I cut down on frustration have I always been honest of course not I'm human I like to think I've been honest about the stuff that was important but I've learned that honesty is in fact the best policy it's just easier all around for me social media can be very positive I honestly think that social media and the Internet in general has probably been one of if not the best thing in my life having no like queer role models and seeing no it's just the expression around me in the real world where I am but discovering all that through the internet I would not I found out I was asexual without the internet I would not have known what asexuality was I would not have even known that was a word because at least in school and at home we never talked about this I was like a little bit like okay is it more positive than negative but I think I'm gonna use like butt to my own testimony like how it's been for me I started a social media page under the alias conservative dot Latino and I get a lot of hate mail and I get a lot of people calling me a race traitor calling me you know a fake this I fake that they call me names they wish death upon my family and my children and I see a lot of the profiles didn't even have pictures and then I go to their profiles zero followers zero pose zero nothing and I'm just like man these people yeah exactly somewhere they're mourning and people they bought yeah exactly I used to play video games and at some point I actually decided to use my voice in a video and I am a female in a within the video game community and there's a lot of masculine toxicity every single day guys just hit on me I was 15 years old and these guys were like 20 30s they would like gift me games asked to let me out and usually it was fine I can be always be like no and most of them are respectful sometimes they would escalate they were done and to find out where I lived they would threaten to rape me the point that I realized I had to like get away from all this is when someone threatened to rape me and I actually got scared yeah and this is exam eeen couldn't be a better illustration of a parent's worst nightmare when it comes to social media right and how quickly it can escalate and especially like you are 15 which is pretty young but they're they're kids boys and girls that this is happening to when they're 8 9 10 they have no idea how to handle it and they don't know how to even talk to their parents about it because they innately feel that there's something off but they also feel like they could get in trouble if they bring it to their parent and I'll be honest like my daughter has been asking me since she was like six can I please start a YouTube channel can I be like that's been her dream but I go on these articles and I'm hearing about like all this online bullying and especially with females I feel it's a larger thing because I was like a youth pastor for my old church and a lot of them would tell me that day if they're on social media they would be receiving elicit pictures from grown adults so I'm like scared I'm terrified by at the same time I feel like I feel like I'm almost punishing my daughter when she does start to explore that I would say don't take it away because that's gonna make her angry and she's gonna find a way to go on it anyways cuz there's so many access points for social media yeah that's why I like I'm just like very concerned because as a social-media influencer I see what I get in my DMS and I see that's type of content that people leave on my and I would never want cuz it's probably part of why she wants to do it cuz she sees her dad doing yeah you know I mean the kids want to do what they see their parents doing your job to do any of the teens here feel that sometimes your parents are hypocrites for phone and social media usage I see more texting while driving in the parents generations they don't know about that technology that I call I'm just gonna check this really quick and that's what causes a lot of access oh yeah on the steering go I'm dead serious it's real it's really bad he doesn't understand that you can leave people on read like you don't have to respond to people in the moment if my parent texts I always just feel like I need to reply write that in there I'm just like no parent OCD for sure more than I'd all the time I wish my parents listened to me more [Music] there are definitely are times that I remember growing up and even now as an adult where I feel like when my mom and I talk about things that she sometimes doesn't hear really like I have to say something over and over and over and go back to it and it's really hard for her sometimes to hear something because it's not what she wants to hear I have to see my father he's what we call it a weekend dead right cuz that's when we could go visit him was every other weekend and growing up he sat in front of the TV the entire time and he wasn't a good listener he wasn't someone that I ever felt that I could come to for anything really and he just feels that the world owes him everything sometimes he would call me literally as I'm in class and I'm and I would text him and be like hey I can't talk right now but this today how come you're always so busy how come you never have time for me it just got to the point where he was making me feel like complete garbage and he would say hateful things to me and I was like you know what out of all your children I'm the only one that still talks to you and I am trying to do the best that I can and no matter what it was just never good enough for him I feel so fortunate to have the parents that I do anytime I approach them with a problem I am hurt I am supported and usually hugged so I growing up I had so many people think that I was missing out on something because I didn't have a mom and that I wouldn't be able to learn about like what it is to be a woman or what it is to you know have your period or whatnot I had so many people approach me be like oh I know you're missing a mother but I'm always here if you want to talk and I'm like no I can't talk about my parents about that one of the biggest things I believe in is you don't need a mother you don't need a father you need a parent my mother was also a single parent she worked sometimes two jobs but she was never too busy to talk to me she was dead tired sometimes so what we did was every Saturday we would hang out we would clean the house first get dressed get lunch and that was our time to talk whatever was on my mind that was a good time to bring it up so it let me know that I could talk to her and that's what I've done with David every Saturday we David today when he was growing up so if he wanted to eat McDonald's three times a day we try to convince him for dinner to eat something else but you get my point that it allowed him to speak freely it's important that we continue to encourage one another because you will keep us young and we will be able to put some wisdom on you you know and hopefully we will listen to each other I think that if everybody can just have moments where they just tell their parents that they love them have an honest conversation a supportive conversation from both sides I think that we need more of that thanks so much for joining guys we really loved revisiting this topic yeah it makes me just wonder how you know we were like as teenagers and our parents right don't worry we are trying to revamp middle ground if you guys have ideas of how to revamp middle ground let us know DM us email us comment below and we love to hear from you guys all the time as usual thanks for watching and we'll see you guys around

Channel: Jubilee

Views: 2,961,721

Rating: 4.9447923 out of 5

Keywords: jubilee, jubilee media, jubilee project, live deeper, blind devotion, love language, middle ground, spectrum, jubilee middle ground, teens, parents, teens and parents, can teens and parents understand each other?, can teens and parents agree?, teens and parents discuss, kids and parents, parent teen issues, family discussions, parents discuss with kids, teens and adults, teens and adults argue, jubilee teens and parents, talking to your parents, healthy teen parent relationships

Id: GcmgZPR6zCw

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Gaudian_]

i’m ugly, but i promise i’m usually not THIS ugly lmao. lighting got me looking like the kid from horton hears a who

edit: this is what i look like in normal lighting lmao

[u/sagey1]

I hope that your clothing line is successful and your parents help you along the way. Good luck!