Mike
Generational dynamics have long been a topic of fascination and debate, with each cohort bearing its unique set of values, experiences, and parenting styles. Among the generations, Baby Boomers have often faced their fair share of criticism for the way they raised their children.
However, as time marches on, a new generation, the Millennials, has taken the helm in the realm of parenting, bringing with them a fresh set of challenges and approaches to child-rearing.
Recently, one therapist, Stephanie Lindeman, shared her thoughts on the subject.
“Here’s how millennials are gonna [mess] up their kids. As an attachment therapist, the consensus in our community is that it’s gonna be through phones, and I’m gonna show you how phones are gonna [mess] things up.”
“I’ll just show you what is called the “still-face” experiment. And, full disclosure, it pulls on your heartstrings to watch it. Okay, so what you’re gonna see here is a mom engaging with her baby who’s a little under one year old. Because the baby is nonverbal, it’s critical that mom is paying attention and using attunement to sync up and communicate and signal with her baby.”
“You’re gonna see the baby point and mom follows. And by mom following, she’s signaling to the baby, “I am with you.” You can see mom and daughter are really connected and in sync here, which is so important because remember, babies can’t self-regulate until around age two. They are completely dependent on mom’s nervous system.”
“So now what’s happening is the experimenters have asked the mother to keep her face still so that mom is not actively attuning to the baby and not empathically responding to her baby. Get this, what this is to the baby is signals of rejection. The baby is making bids to get mom’s attention, mom’s affection, mom’s engagement, and she’s getting rejected. Everything she is trying to do to get mom’s attention – she’s trying to point, she’s making squeals, and everything she’s doing is getting rejected by her mom. And that rejection is distressing. You see, she starts to dysregulate, and she physically loses control of her body. And she tries to squirm her way out of that chair, because the pain of disconnecting from mom and not being able to co-regulate with her is so intense.”
“And that was what, like a two-minute clip in the experiment? Now imagine that mom is… her face is still and yet she’s holding a phone. Baby is right there, trying to get bids for mom’s connection and attunement and co-regulation, and mom is not giving it. If you are not giving your children that attunement, that empathic connection, then they’re gonna go get it from someone else. You have control over this. Who do you want them to get their attunement and connection from – you or someone else?”
@stephanne221 Parenting psychology 101: what signals are you sending your children? Signals of attunement, or rejection? It’s natural to accidentally send signals of rejection, what’s critical is the ability to attune, validate, and repair. Also, this experiment was btwn a mom and a daughter so i focus on the mom-daughter caregiving bond, but this dynamic can be present for any caregiver-carereciever relationship. #mom #parentingtips #parenting #relationships #relationship #family #millennial #millennialmom #childhood #childhoodtrauma #generationaltrauma #psychology #attachment #attachmentstyle #therapy #therapytiktok #therapytok #mentalhealth #fyp #foryou #foryoupage
Now, the Boomers…
“Here is the most important thing I’ve learned from boomer parents, as a family therapist. The price of not taking accountability is isolation. You have a choice when someone comes to you and says, “Hey, I need to give you some feedback because you hurt me.” You can choose to be open to their feedback and figure out how their emotions make sense and how your behavior may have impacted them. Or you can choose to be closed to their feedback, and get defensive, try to defend yourself and dissuade them to feel a different kind of way – or to just stop telling you about it.”
“The cost of that first choice of being open to receiving feedback and being accountable, it’s very difficult. You have to tolerate your own distress and regulate your own emotions to make it through. And that choice is relationship-enhancing. Choosing to be closed to feedback, and to not take accountability for your actions will spare you of that pain, and it’s a relationship-destroying behavior.”
“One more thing. They’re also confused, because as I’ve seen, when you remove yourself from the equation, and you remove your behaviors from the equation, all you’re left with is the other person. So if I made a negative comment about someone else’s body, and they began to cry, but I am unwilling to see myself and unwilling to evaluate my own comment, all I see is this person crying, and I don’t understand why because I’ve removed the trigger. And then I just get confused. Why are they crying? It must be something wrong with them.”
“That lack of accountability allows me to blame it on them, and to spare my own pain. It’s a great strategy to protect myself against feeling uncomfortable emotions. And if I choose that, I will also be choosing isolation and no contact. If there are any boomer parents who are watching this and who don’t want to be in a no-contact status with their child, I just so strongly encourage you to begin going on a journey of learning how to tolerate your own emotions so that you can emotionally show up for your child.”
@stephanne221 Accountability matters and can heal relationships. If youre a parent who is serious about improving your relationship with your children, this is for you! #parentingtips #parenting #relationships #relationship #family #boomer #childhood #childhoodtrauma #psychology #therapy #attachmentstyle #millennial #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #conflict #communication #healing #kids #okboomer #mentalhealth #therapy #therapytok
“I didn’t intend to do this. I accidentally conducted a social experiment in my comment sections. And the results are hilarious and also tragic. For context, my most recent TikTok is a message to boomers about how if your child approaches you with feedback about how your behavior impacts them and you don’t take accountability, you can lose the relationship.”
“I gave millennial parents some really unnecessarily harsh feedback. I literally said, “This is how you’re going to [mess] up your child.” And look how they responded to this feedback. Like, so open, literally changing their behaviors in real time, showing gratitude. For the few who didn’t like the format of my post and my message, they literally said that, without attacking me, and then gave me suggestions for how to be more effective”
Millennials seemed to take the feedback well.
While Boomers got defensive.
“Lots of defensiveness, some attacking, some name-calling, some changing the topic. Both generations of parents were given feedback by me around how their behaviors are hurting their children, and this is how each generation chose to respond. Here’s the sad part though. The way that these boomer parents responded to me and other adult children in the comment section is a window into how they responded to their own adult children when their children came to them with feedback and pain. Did you also use the strategy of dismissing them, name-calling them, making these passive-aggressive threats and changing the topic with your own child?”
“I don’t want you to have lost your child. I don’t want you to be in a no-contact place. That is incredibly painful. The greatest pain a human being can go through is losing their child, whether that be the death of the bond, or the death of the actual child. And it’s devastating to sit with the pain of a child, whether it be a minor or adult who feels emotionally abandoned and unknown to their parents.”
“And let’s talk about the elephant in the room when we bring up accountability as a parent, because to take accountability as a parent means facing the question, “Am I a bad parent?” If my child comes to me and tells me that I hurt them, then am I a bad parent? Am I a bad mom? And that is a horrifying question to have to face. And especially if you don’t feel like you have someone who can co-regulate you. Like, if you’re not close with your spouse, and you’re kind of alone out here emotionally in the world, that question will swallow you alive. Because it is lined, it is venomous with shame, with parental shame, right? And it’s just gonna eat you alive if you don’t know how to handle it. Or if you can’t be co-regulated by someone that you trust. And so if we look at this cycle of what’s happening – a child approaches their parent and says, “Hey, I have all this pain that your behavior caused me.” That parent then has that shame, internal shame spiral, can’t go there, and rather than go there, shuts that child down through that same stuff you were throwing in our comment section of dismissing, of changing the topic, of whataboutism, right? And now you two are even more disconnected. And you are both in pain.”
“This is why in family therapy, and in the model that I practice, I work with my parents individually first, because I realize the caregiving that I’m asking you to do, this emotional maneuvering, is a lot and you have to go past that elephant, right? It’s more like a frickin’ dragon. Right? This shame dragon. Parents are supposed to be the stronger, wiser other. And so – because we’re not looking to children to co-regulate us, right? – we need our spouse, or another party like a therapist, to help us navigate around that dragon so that you can show up emotionally for your child. If you’re a boomer and you’re watching this saying like, you know, can this work? Can I do this? The answer is, if you want to, then yes. If you do the work of going through the scary process of navigating your feelings so that you can show up emotionally for your child. I’m not saying it’s a guarantee. This is not a promise, and it’s the only option you have”
@stephanne221 So believe it or not, i accidentally gave both millennial parents and boomer parents feedback on how they injure their children, and wowow the results say a lot 🤯😳😳 #millennial #millennialsoftiktok #millennialmom #mom #parenting #parentingtips #kids #parenting101 #psychology #socialexperiment #boomer #boomerparents #socialexperiment #therapy #therapytiktok #mentalhealth #family #communication #healing #relationships #relationship #fyp #foryou #foryourpagе
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