Go Your Own Way: Finding Your Parenting Style and Being Real with Gwenna Laithland Transcript

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Gwenna Laithland: when we talk about breaking generational trauma, yeah, I’ve got some generational trauma that I had to unpack and unload and be okay with daddy issues.

Cause I think that’s the difference is I’m not expecting my daddy issues to go away. I’m expecting to be able to identify. Oh, no, I am feeling this way because of abandonment issues. Oh, no, I am feeling this way because I have trust issues. if I can identify, Oh, here is where I’m getting triggered.

And it’s not because my children are screaming in my face. This is something deeper. This is something inside me as a person.

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host, JoAnn Crohn, joined here by the lovely Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: why hello, hello, everybody. How are you?

JoAnn Crohn: We are starting the month of February off with laughter and fun because I think we need a little more more funny. More funny,

Brie Tucker: We do need, well, actually, if you ask me, we are quite hilarious behind closed doors.

JoAnn Crohn: we were laughing with Gwenna when she came on our guest today, who you’re going to enjoy so, so much. just a heads up this podcast, please put those headphones in your ears for it because it is for adults only. this episode, it’s. It’s true to the title of her amazing book, Mama Cusses, so let’s put us out there right now.

but we were laughing so hard before we even started the interview, we’re like, we’re just going to hit record. Let’s just hit record. And you can hear this banter back and forth.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, well, I mean, we were really relating on the whole having teens, man. It’s, teens are a, I mean, every stage of parenting has got its struggles and its challenges. And I’ve said this a million times before, but teens are just like preschoolers, but with better vocabulary and our particular point of bonding here was how the teens like to use their vocabulary against us.

JoAnn Crohn: And you’re, going to hear it at the beginning of this episode. so Gwenna Laithland, she is the creator of Mama Cusses, CEO of Pleasant Peasant Media,

of the Childproof Podcast from Betches Media and author of Mama Cusses, a field guide to responsive parenting and trying not to be the reason your kids need therapy, which drops on March 3rd, 2024. We have a link in the show notes to pre order. You can find her on TikTok and Instagram, on her popular channel at Mama Cusses, and we hope you enjoy our interview with Gwenna. 

 Yeah. the pre show, we were talking about how much we loved your, best of 2023 TikTok and the, the use of teenage slang and like her pulling out the Oreo, the double stuff Oreo. She’s like, Oreo dupe. You’re like, that’s a

Gwenna Laithland: That’s a real oreo. What the, what’s a dupe then? I thought a dupe was a fake. We have real oreo money in this house now, kid. I

Brie Tucker: My

JoAnn Crohn: There’s no Hydrox! No, okay.

Brie Tucker: My opinion is that they just make it up on the fly. my husband and I don’t even try anymore. we will intentionally use all the slang we possibly can wrong. Just to

Gwenna Laithland: Yeah.

Brie Tucker: off. Just to make, and it’s only my daughter that cares. My son doesn’t even answer ever. He just stares. You just get the stare, and he’s hmm. Judging

JoAnn Crohn: you get all 

Gwenna Laithland: is the master of these little passive aggressive head shakes.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, really?

Gwenna Laithland: mom.

Brie Tucker: just the tiniest little wiggle of the head is just the utmost disappointment in everything I am as a person and a parent.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s the side eye. It’s

Gwenna Laithland: Thanks, kid.

JoAnn Crohn: And

Brie Tucker: you’re like, God, I don’t even, were we like that to our parents when we were teens?

JoAnn Crohn: Probably, yeah. Yeah,

Brie Tucker: are a real bitch.

JoAnn Crohn: I get called I’m cringey all the time. Mom, don’t say that. That’s cringe. That’s cringe. I was just at a race this weekend, actually. And like, you know, they say it so much that you get like this pleasure out of making them cringy. you want to like push it to the farthest. And so, 

Gwenna Laithland: gee too. Do you get choo

Brie Tucker: No!

JoAnn Crohn: no, I’ve never heard choo gee.

Brie Tucker: Holderness family they did something about that, but I haven’t heard that word yet out of my

Gwenna Laithland: Yeah, so so choo gee is like when we say we’re adulting it is the most millennial Millennialisms, it’s choo

JoAnn Crohn: gee.

Gwenna Laithland: So there’s cringe and anybody can be cringe But Chugi is acting like one of those 2007 BuzzFeed Millennials, that’s Chugi, and every millennial went, Oh, I know that one. No, I was, I was taught that one. Um, 

JoAnn Crohn: that and see if my kids even know that one. Maybe I’ll get one up on

Gwenna Laithland: maybe it’s regional, I, there are a bunch of, I learned from a. Keith Lee Tik Tok, a new slang that I’m not even going to use because I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it. I’m scared to say the word. Like maybe that’s not one of the words I’m allowed to say because I am mayonnaise colored. I don’t know.

JoAnn Crohn: don’t know.

Gwenna Laithland: I want to be respectful, but I don’t understand. No.

Brie Tucker: of it makes any sense. Nope. But the worst thing is that we’re cooler than our parents

JoAnn Crohn: for probably say the exact same things they did about our slang 

Gwenna Laithland: going to say, eyebrow of skepticism, I don’t know if I’m cooler than my mom was when my mom was 40. I don’t, I have not figured out the, the, the cool ranking scale of 40.

Brie Tucker: of are you, but are you the same age as your parents were like, I feel like I am still not as much of an adult as my parents were at my age. I am failing at this

JoAnn Crohn: always feel that way about myself. Yeah. I always feel that way about

Brie Tucker: you said that this morning. You’re like, I’m still 17.

Gwenna Laithland: No, it’s, it’s weird because I’m entering the part where my body definitely reminds me how old I am, but my brain is like, nah, you’re 18, fuck it.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah.

Gwenna Laithland: Try it anyway. 

JoAnn Crohn: talking about that this morning. I’m like, I am perpetually 17 in my head and I will go and I will do anything, that my 17 year old self will do even more so now because I feel like being older has its benefits because you have this perception of the world now where it’s like, I really don’t care what people think about me. So

Brie Tucker: Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: when it’s 17, you’re so worried about everything. it,

Gwenna Laithland: I, I tried to do a thing that should have been simple. So we have a breakfast bar in my kitchen and I tried to hop up and sit on it, except it’s breakfast bar height and 17, 18 year old me definitely would have had the core and arm strength to pop up and sit on it instead. I bruised the lower part of my bag, just sort of like throwing it into the countertop

JoAnn Crohn: that hurts.

Gwenna Laithland: my 40 year old body was like, bitch, no, my brain was like, you can do this. My body was like, are you sure?

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, no. See, I love this conversation because these are things that like we as moms are people. foremost instead of parents, and I feel like so many parenting books like yours coming out soon, Mama Cusses, in particular like don’t regard the mom as a person first. It’s all about the parenting instead of the person, and yours really digs in to the person, and I feel like I got to know you so much just through your introduction and how much you hate Brown.

Gwenna Laithland: hate Brown.

JoAnn Crohn: And as soon as you started talking about your dad too, I’m like, Ooh, something happened there because there are a lot of adjectives describing that. Like the first way you introduce him, you’re like, he had the minds of a toddler. Explain some more about that. Yes. Yes. was very funny and he was very dense. Yeah.

Gwenna Laithland: point at which things could have gone very different for him, but they didn’t. And he made some choices that are questionable at best. And he was really funny. That’s where I got my humor. So for as much as I will trash talk my dad, because he, he dipped when I was 11 and then he came back when I was 17 and it was weird. but. I will say that my trauma didn’t make me funny. My genetics did because my dad was hilarious. and he knew it, but he also knew that that’s all he had because, uh, someone could out talk him the minute he couldn’t make a joke of it anymore. now he was an absolute shoebox. just.

Brie Tucker: I haven’t heard that description before. A shoebox. So, small and empty?

Gwenna Laithland: yeah, thin and easily discardable. 

Brie Tucker: Oookay. 

Gwenna Laithland: for, for growing up, essentially, I had to describe that part is because a lot of my parenting decisions, came from daddy issues. I said, when we talk about breaking generational trauma, yeah, I’ve got some generational trauma that I, I had to unpack and unload and be okay with daddy issues.

Cause I think that’s the difference is I’m not expecting my daddy issues to go away. I’m expecting to be able to identify. Oh, no, I am feeling this way because of abandonment issues. Oh, no, I am feeling this way because I have trust issues. Oh, no, I am feeling this way. if I can identify, Oh, here is where I’m getting triggered.

And it’s not because my children are screaming in my face. This is something deeper. This is something inside me as a person. I say in my book, a ton of times, gentle parenting or responsive parenting starts with you, the parent. You have to get good at your own emotions. You have to get good at your own problems.

And if you are coming into parenthood with generational trauma on board, you have to be able to look at that and go, Nope, Nope. That’s my fucked up brain being fucked up.

Brie Tucker: No, that’s 100%! we have a whole podcast episode, JoAnn, right? Like, where we talk about, so many times we are parenting through fear. But if we don’t realize we’re parenting through fear, we’re just making it 20 times worse. 

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. And it’s, it’s so interesting too, because once you realize your own traumas, if you think about it in a way where a lot of people get triggered by their kids and like, you know, my kids aren’t respecting me or my kids are saying these things to me. and then they feel bad themselves in that moment. We are trying to gain our self respect from a four or five year old. And if you think about it like that, you’re like, this is kind of ridiculous! Like, what does this four or five year old know about it? What does our

Gwenna Laithland: even good at being a person yet, but let them, let them define 

JoAnn Crohn: Yes! That’s a defined meaning! 

Brie Tucker: Their acceptance! I still need their acceptance like I did! Of the other teens when I was a teen. What is going on here?

Gwenna Laithland: I was a people pleaser and my daddy left me. Please stop acting like this.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s so funny though, when we think about it that way, we’re like, whoa, we want them to define us. And then you realize that, okay, I need to teach this little person how to people. And something I really enjoyed, in your book is all of the little nicknames that you give to your kids and what you call them.

And we’re going to get into it right after this break. I have one of, uh, like my first introduction is going on to your, the nicknames and everything that you give people is what you call babies, your pet names, womb fruit, chaos goblin. my sex trophy.

Brie Tucker: That one was very funny.

Gwenna Laithland: I get that. That is the one that the minute I call a child a sex trophy. I get two things that happen. First of all, most people are like, Oh my god, they are sex tr I had sex, I got a trophy. And then I get the other part that’s like, That’s disrespectful to your children. Sharon, I am not looking at my child and calling it a sex trophy to its face!

JoAnn Crohn: No, my other favorite was evicted parasite. I

Brie Tucker: Oh. would be good.

JoAnn Crohn: mean, so, my sister and I were just talking about this this weekend. She is six months pregnant, and she absolutely hates being pregnant. And I Yeah, I hated being pregnant as well. And people like see like, Oh, it’s this beautiful, wonderful thing. Well, yeah, after they’re out of your stomach and not invading your body anymore, I’ll look at them and be like, this is amazing, but get them out. 

Gwenna Laithland: these kids cost me yogurt, any hope I have of making my own iron. Um, like they’re parasites. All right. They permanently rearranged my innards. My entire abdomen just splits in the center and there’s nothing I can do about it. Yes, they’re parasites, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not lovable parasites.

JoAnn Crohn: they’re love them. They’re the cutest parasites ever.

Gwenna Laithland: Ever. 

Brie Tucker: My kids were just harsh. They were harsh little parasites. My son used my placenta as his personal punching bag, so I was hospitalized for almost that whole pregnancy. And then my daughter, I swear to God, she had fingernails and she was scratching her way out.

Gwenna Laithland: so I’ve got a teenager and then I’ve also got five year old twins and my twins. first of all, I carry real low. We’re into pregnancy talk now. I carry real low. So they are like in my pelvis the whole time. And then something I didn’t have with the first one was something called round ligament pain. So those ligaments that that keep all of those muscles still, yeah, mine were real stretched out because they were two human beings tap dancing on them.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Mm hmm.

Gwenna Laithland: I was 

JoAnn Crohn: like. No, when I read you had twins, I’m like, one baby exhausted me at a time. did twins sleep at the same time? Like how do you even function? Yeah, I know. What did you do? So. I

Gwenna Laithland: you know, honestly, I can’t tell you how I did it because, I have a theory about the newborn fog and the newborn fog, lasts anywhere. It starts from about two weeks. If your baby was born at term, because the first two weeks it’s, it’s the honeymoon period. It’s a sentient meatloaf. that while it does need like a lot of attention, it’s not so bad. But then after that two week ish part and, and like some babies don’t get the honeymoon period, they go like 100 miles an hour into needy But I don’t remember the first year. It’s just in the fog.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s in the file. I don’t remember the first three years of my son, really. I have to go back and pictures because like he didn’t let me sleep for three years. Yeah.

Gwenna Laithland: deprivation as torture, but yeah, let’s have kids.

Brie Tucker: And let’s, and let’s leave it to mom to be the one who takes care of them 90 percent of the time.

Gwenna Laithland: Right.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh my gosh. So I was, okay, I was listening to another podcast about this and it’s really interesting because she was talking about mom guilt. And first of all, her. Her obstetrician was like, Hey, are you going to hire maybe a night nurse for your baby? And she’s like, that is such a privileged thing to do, like hire a night nurse. And then her OB stopped her. She’s like, wait a minute. What we’re asked to do right now in society as women is just not what we’re designed for. We were designed to have babies in villages with many generations above us who could give the moms a break. so that moms could sleep, so that moms could rest, so that moms can take care of themselves. And this whole expectation nowadays that we should be able to do everything is just not what we as humans are designed for. And I found that so impactful and so well said.

Gwenna Laithland: I read, my clean to clefts hunt, gather, parent a book. I highly recommend. And in it, she describes several various cultures that parent very differently than Western cultures. And one of them, the kids are raised entirely by the grandparents. The parents are there, but they’re the ones who are still young.

Healthy, agile. Their joints aren’t gone. They don’t have arthritis. Cognitively, they’re as healthy as they’re ever going to be. And so they are out plowing fields and repairing roofs and standing up walls and doing all of the work that maintains the village that meets the physical, the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs there.

And the grandparents are raising the kids they’re the ones maintaining their behavior. They’re the ones training them up in the way of how we contribute and how we help and That that mom who just had a baby and handed it off to her own mom. She will have a chance to raise her grandchildren. So there is an expectation of parenting of community raising of the Children.

and there’s no guilt. There’s no shame in a mom having a baby going. Oh, I love you. It’s adorable here, Mom. And then off she goes to do the work that she needs to do without the sleep deprivation. While she’s not, I don’t want to say it’s a waste of the prime of our lives, but like for those of us who have kids in our twenties and thirties, we have a lot of capacity to do a lot more, but we spend two to three years in absolute fog from being sleep deprived because an adult’s sleep needs are not the same as a baby’s sleep needs.

JoAnn Crohn: No, they’re not. They’re not at all. Yeah, there is a lot of mom guilt that goes on with it. And in your book, you call your mom guilt Alice, which I love. I love giving the other name for it. Why did you settle on Alice?

Gwenna Laithland: I have no idea. That 

is just, I have, I have never once put serious thought into anything I have ever named, including my children, um, it was the vibe at the time as the kids say 

JoAnn Crohn: LAUGHING

Gwenna Laithland: I did try to put thought into my oldest name. she was going to be Haley and then she was born and I went, not that. and then when they asked me, they’re like, okay, so what’s her name? I was like, I don’t know. They’re like, okay, we’re just going to leave you with this large stack of paperwork for the birth certificate and the social security cards. I was like, Abigail.

Brie Tucker: Wait! Wait! Don’t leave me! This’ll work! Bring me that, bring me that naming book! First name! There we

JoAnn Crohn: They even See, there we go! LAUGHING

Gwenna Laithland: make me fill out the paperwork by myself. I don’t

JoAnn Crohn: That’d be pretty daunting. It’d be pretty daunting. we at Nol Gilt Mom, we like to call our mom gilts Bob. Bob is just the patriarchal male, basically. LAUGHING Telling you all the stuff you’re doin wrong! LAUGHING

Gwenna Laithland: I want you to consider something because I have Alice and Alice gets a name, but Alice is my friend. 

My mom guilt is my friend. Now. She’s not my favorite person. she’s kind of, she’s like a bitchy librarian. She remembers everything, everything. She catalogs every mistake I’ve ever made.

Every negative feeling I’ve had about an interaction with my children, with my children’s teachers. and anything that possibly could have gone wrong. Alice remembers. And Alice likes to drop that out whenever she feels like it. But I appreciate Alice because while Alice is sometimes a little overexcited about reminding me of all the times that I nearly effed up my own kids.

What that does is it gives me an opportunity to go, wait, I’ve been here before. Cause here comes Alice going, Hey, do you remember the last time we had a fight about the red cup versus the blue cup? How did you handle that? How did that go? It didn’t go well, did it? You’re going to do it again that way? Oh, okay, no, Alice, I will not handle it that way because it didn’t go well last time.

And so Alice is this constant reminder of this is the mistake you made. Do you want to try it again or do you want to try it a different way? That said, there is a whole other entity that lives in my head, doesn’t even get a name, and it’s Mom Shame. Mom Shame is that feeling of worthlessness, or like we don’t deserve to do the things we need to take care of ourselves. So Mom Shame is what makes us feel like shit for wanting a shower that lasted longer than five minutes. But oh, well, now I’m asking my partner to watch the kids. They’re his kids. I’m here gendering them according to my relationship arrangement.

JoAnn Crohn: he spends 40 minutes in the bathroom. So like why?

Gwenna Laithland: Right? Why am I feeling bad when I have, I have the resources, I have the support, I have the network to just go take an everything all in one shower. If it can be scrubbed, sanded, gridded, or graded, I have the time to do that because I have that level of support and not all parents do, but I do. So Mom’s Shame wants me to feel bad about that.

Mom’s Shame is what remembers that time that you had to poop, and that’s when your baby decided it was dying of hunger. And so you’re mid poop, and it’s losing its mind right there in front of you, but you can’t do anything, because again, mid poop.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah So like distinguishing yeah this mom guilt and this mom shame I look at it a little different way the Bob Isn’t really berating us as much the Bob is like this overactive being that’s trying to keep us safe is trying to tell us all these things that, okay, if you don’t do this, you’re going to lose your social connection basically.

but Bob is like totally wrong and going about it the entirely different way. And so when Bob starts overreacting, like our job is to comfort Bob and be like, okay, this is, this is really what’s going on. We can calm down. We could take a seat and it’s going to be okay. But distinguishing between mom guilt and mom shame, I think is so good because mom guilt is the thing that tells you, Hey, I could do this a different way. I could do this better. And mom shame is you are a horrible, awful, no good person and you don’t deserve to be here, which is totally unproductive.

Gwenna Laithland: and the way I recommend being able to, if you’re going to go with a system of parsing out Alice, who is my mom, guilt versus my mom, shame, who’s just a contrasaurus rex. If we’re going to parse those things out. the way that Alice doesn’t get to get as antsy about it is apologies the minute you realize, Oh, I handled that not in a way that was conducive or helpful or useful in any way, shape or form.

I’m mad. They’re mad. The toy is still broken. nothing in that interaction went well. I’m going to apologize for it. And that is the thing that cools Alice’s jets. Because then when she trots that back out, Hey, remember the time they knocked over the piggy bank and shattered it two days after getting it, you flipped your lid on that.

And then you said, sorry. So now that you have discovered yet another broken piggy bank, how are you going to handle it? Because last time you had to apologize, which is good. You did good. How do we avoid getting to the point that you need to apologize again? That’s what Alice does, and Alice is very much soothed by apologizing to your kids when you make the mistake. by helping them learn how to apologize, by showing them how to do it. That keeps Alice, okay, I’m gonna be nice, because when you don’t have that sort of closure, that’s when Alice gets to team up with mom’s shame and just make you feel like a trash human being every time you look at a piggy bank, because you never resolved 

Brie Tucker: Yeah, 

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, do you feel like Alice ever gets a little hyperactive with the apologizing and apologizing for stuff that Alice doesn’t need to apologize for. You know,

Gwenna Laithland: yeah, yeah, she does. Um, 

JoAnn Crohn: with that?

Gwenna Laithland: mostly I self bully myself, but I am a millennial. So I

Brie Tucker: Yeah.

Gwenna Laithland: don’t, I don’t, I don’t recommend that.

JoAnn Crohn: The 

Gwenna Laithland: Um, no, for, Alice getting a little over egregious with the want to apologize, So true story. The other day, I. said something. And in the moment before it left my mouth, I was like, this is going to piss the girl child off.

Brie Tucker: She is going to hate this information. So I said it anyway, because the information that was going to make her cry, that was going to infuriate her to the point of real grief and emotion was go put on your pajamas. It’s bedtime. You’re

JoAnn Crohn: As always, that’s the most horrible thing in the world.

Gwenna Laithland: She just didn’t want to do that. And and so there was a part of me that Alice was like, apologize to her. No, this is a valid boundary that I have set my child needs to go to bed. They have to get up at 630 in the morning to go to school like they need sleep. I haven’t done anything wrong. I have simply given them boundary that that very five year old brain was like, I don’t like it. Okay, cool. You don’t have to like it.

Put PJs on or sleep naked. I don’t care, but go to bed. That’s it. I don’t have to apologize for that. And Alice very much wanted me to like, you pissed her off. She’s going to remember that. She’s going to talk about this in therapy when she’s an 

Brie Tucker: You’re going to give her mommy issues now. You got a daddy, now you’ve given mommy issues. How’s about that?

Gwenna Laithland: and, and in that case, I, I had to like, just back it up and be like, no, I am the adult here. Cause Alice, by the way, is like a 14 year old girl in my head.

JoAnn Crohn: Those 14 year old 

Brie Tucker: They are quite

Gwenna Laithland: Right. 

Brie Tucker: and they know everything and they do know everything

JoAnn Crohn: and illogical. Yeah.

Gwenna Laithland: in no way to trash teenagers. But I have been a 14 year old girl. So that’s that’s Alice is 14 year old me deep into my emo phase deep into my angst phase poetry written in red pen because it looked like blood. That’s what Alice is in my head. It’s just 14 year old me being hypercritical of everything.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Oh, that’s good. And then it’s like the, the, when you picture it as yourself, I feel like you’re able to be a lot more loving and compassionate to that person and, talk them through, talk them through their issues. Exactly. what is coming up for you now that you’re really excited about, Gwena?

Gwenna Laithland: so my book, mama cusses, uh, field guide to responsive parenting and trying not to be the reason your kids need therapy from St. Martin’s press is out March 5th. it is available for pre order now as we record, I’m not sure when this episode is coming out, but right now it is available for pre order. I’m sure the, the lovely humans at No Guilt Mom podcast will, uh, give you a 

Brie Tucker: Yes, there will be There is a link below to pre order. 

Gwenna Laithland: So yeah, that’s available. And, right now, if you pre order the book, you can provide your proof of receipt, your proof of purchase, to a different link and we’ll send you a free sheet of Mama Cuss’s stickers.

JoAnn Crohn: You know, we love a good sticker over here at No Guilt Mom. we have all the stickers here. And yes, go get a pre order of the book and so you can get the stickers as well. 

Gwenna Laithland: Well, and these, these are the good kind. I made them give me the, I would have had more stickers, but I made them give me the good kind that you can put on your water bottle and they will stay through the dishwasher

Brie Tucker: Oh! Those are special.

Gwenna Laithland: those are those plasticky vinyl ones that’ll stay.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. you gotta have them, else they’ll just go away and it’s no good. Well, I highly recommend getting Gwena’s book. It is so funny, Gwena, I was laughing reading it and just like your sense of humor just tickles me. And where you say like your mom has a slow burn sense of humor, I feel like you have that too because like you’ll just say something and So it’s just completely enjoyable to read while putting that parenting information out there in a really doable way. So go get the book, pre order it right now. And Gwenna, thank you so much for being here. It was a great time. 

Gwenna Laithland: much.

JoAnn Crohn: Okay, so much I have to tell you, Brie, for this interview, because it brought up so many stories that I wanted to tell during it and I couldn’t because I’m like, that would get us off track. No, that would get us off track. No, that would get us off track. It’s like constantly raining in my ADHD

Brie Tucker: Oh, yeah, 

JoAnn Crohn: no, JoAnn, No.

Brie Tucker: I had plenty of things that I was all like, Oh, and you said this in your book and I had that same thing happen to me. 

JoAnn Crohn: we’re like, focus! Focus on

Brie Tucker: it was definitely, it was definitely a, a practice and self control and quieting that ADHD voice of like, no, no, no, no, no, you only have so long. Talk about what you have.

JoAnn Crohn: know, it’s funny because, when we were recording the intro, we mentioned about the struggles of having teenagers, and how they’re different than having toddlers and preschoolers. Well, I just spent some time with my preschool nephew over the weekend, and Oh my gosh, I do not miss that age at all.

Brie Tucker: What happened? 

JoAnn Crohn: There’s like some things, like you get really great stories. And this is what I miss about it. You do get really great stories, but it is just exhausting. Like when we got to, my parents house, my nephew was there and he was spending the night. And he was like, Bouncing off the walls kind of energy, like showing off for his cousins, just doing all these things. and his favorite word right now is murder.

Brie Tucker: Oh my God. 

JoAnn Crohn: Cause we were on the couch and he’s like, okay, I murdered you. I murdered you. I murdered you. And we’re like, where are you getting this? And then the other day he heard a sound and my daughter’s like, yeah, there was a bump. And he said, Oh, I think someone just got murdered.

Brie Tucker: Oh my God.

JoAnn Crohn: Talking to my sister about this, and she’s like, oh, oh my gosh, like I tell the dog, like she has a puppy right now that drives her insane, like

Brie Tucker: I will murder you. 

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, she tells the dog, I’ll murder you. But then also she’s like, wait a minute. And she thinks about, her partner, and she’s like, He watches Dateline

Brie Tucker: Oh my God. What can I say? Is he watching like the, the Why women kill, shows or whatever. 

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. No more Dateline. Dateline is not a safe show for the toddler anymore.

Brie Tucker: Oh my god! Because I can’t you imagine? The because the toddlers say preschoolers say stuff at the most inopportune time. You’ll be like enclosed on like a, I don’t know, like a, elevator and like suddenly it stops and can’t you just see him slowly turning to his mom and being like, are you going to murder dem mom? Or something

JoAnn Crohn: you get a

Brie Tucker: Are you

JoAnn Crohn: little student in the party lot. He didn’t want to go home. And so he screamed. And he’s like, the murder scream. He’s like, Ah!

Brie Tucker: serious? 

JoAnn Crohn: daughter’s running away. Because another thing he did at the table, we were all at Zinberger. Okay? They have a location in Tucson, which is the most awesome place. and he’s sitting across from me. He’s like, Okay, Auntie Jo, oh, he holds his, hand up in front of me. And he’s like, open the lid.

And I’m like, okay. And I pull open his thumb. And he’s okay, put your finger inside. I put my finger inside. turn it around. I’m like, okay, I turn it around. I took my finger out from his hand, and then he looks at me. He’s like, thanks for cleaning my toilet.

Brie Tucker: My god.

JoAnn Crohn: And we’re like, where did you get this? Like you don’t go to preschool. 

Brie Tucker: where does he get that? 

JoAnn Crohn: All of us adults are like, Googling on our phone, Thanks for cleaning my toilet! And we’re like, Bluey! The Bluey thing? Okay, I’ve never seen Bluey. I know what Bluey is. I’ve seen clips of it. I’ve never actually watched it. Clearly, I need to. And my sister’s like, Well, there goes Bluey as a safe show! I mean, it was pretty tame, but it was hilarious. It’s just, I don’t miss that 24 7 all the time anymore. But I have to say, in little increments, it is so funny. So, so it’s fun. That’s my, my jam is that age. But I’m starting to come around to teens a little bit more. Mine are becoming a little bit more, interactive. 

Yeah, there’s a lot of benefits in teens. Like this, this weekend I was away from the house all day and, it was up north from my parents, like a 20 minute drive from my parents house. And my sister’s like, well, why don’t you just have mom and dad bring the kids up here and then you can leave from here up, back up to Phoenix. I’m like, yeah, that’s a great idea. I had nothing packed at home. And so I’m like, Hey, can I talk to my daughter? And she’s, first of all, she’s like, I’m on the phone already, mom, you’re on speaker. okay. But then I’m like, hey, can you just, can you pack up all of my stuff for me? Can you just put it in and make sure I’m all good? And she’s like, yeah, I could do that. And that’s something that teenagers are great for because they have now those skills that they can really help out with and make your life so much easier.

Brie Tucker: It’s fantastic. 

JoAnn Crohn: And they’re cool little people too. They have these little thoughts and stuff that are really interesting from, from like human behavior. That’s what I always look, their little science projects every time I’m looking at them as my little psychology projects. And so that’s how I keep myself entertained when I’m bored to death.

Brie Tucker: okay. I don’t, I’m trying to think like, I don’t know. I guess maybe science projects. There’s a lot of this didn’t go great last time. We’re going to try this differently, but it’s just, it’s constantly full of things these days. I, that it’s funny at the beginning of the episode, we talk about the whole trying to keep up with their, terms, their language. I don’t even try. I do not even try. I just intentionally take all the slang I possibly can. How many can I use in one sentence the wrong way? And then 

JoAnn Crohn: What’s been your latest sentence? 

Brie Tucker: Oh, Jesus. I don’t know. It’s been a while. Cause I, I, cause they’ve learned. They don’t say any slang around me anymore. At all. Cause I, I will just, I will kill

JoAnn Crohn: We could try. There’s a Stanley, very popular with kids. This Stanley is bussin no cap. I’m sure I definitely said stuff wrong there.

Brie Tucker: And probably it’s cringy. Or crogey. oh no, what was the other one that she had? 

JoAnn Crohn: I can’t remember it.

Brie Tucker: Dang it. No, it was,

JoAnn Crohn: Crugey? Crugey?

Brie Tucker: it, it, it, oh, I know that word. I just hadn’t heard it in a while. okay, I don’t want to keep everybody on trying to, like, get through my memory. I’d have to look it up to find it. But, yeah, the whole, like, millennial term of us trying to use their slang, like, I don’t know.

I just feel like we had way cooler slang, but that’s just me. we had cooler slang, and we weren’t such pains in the butts to our parents sometimes. But then again, on the flip side, I do recall quite a bit as I’m going through things, because I have decided that somehow my youngest, my daughter is my sister’s child.

I, I somehow I’m raising my sister’s child. and I’m like, that’s not fair. That’s not how this was supposed to work. I was the good rule follower. How do I have this kid that’s like, okay, we’re going to try this. Well, you didn’t say that. You didn’t specify. You said that I had to be home at 10, but you did not specify AM or PM. So, you know, like, that’s what, that’s what my youngest would say.

JoAnn Crohn: That must be fun. That

Brie Tucker: it keeps, keeps you on your toes, we’ll say that.

JoAnn Crohn: Well, go get Gwenna’s book, Mama Cusses, a field guide to responsive parenting and trying not to be the reason your kids need therapy. Pre order it. When you pre order an author’s book, you’re giving them a whole bunch more love than if you actually waited to buy it, because that is how All the best sellers lists come up. They look at pre orders. So go pre order Gwenna’s book

Brie Tucker: Well, plus, if you’re, if you’re part of our No Guilt Mom community, you probably love stickers, and you get those stickers too. you can’t miss out on stickers.

JoAnn Crohn: And until next time, remember the best mom’s a happy mom. Take care of you. I’ll talk to you later.Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.