How to Connect with Your Son: Small Changes to Make with Tosha Schore Transcript

Please note: Transcripts were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

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

Every time we first record here on the podcast, Brie starts us with intro music when we see the countdown on the timer. And then every time it stops, she does the outro 

[00:00:19] Brie Tucker: music. I don’t even know why. It was funny because, yeah, when we were recording this episode with our guests, At the end, I think she made a face and JoAnn’s like, Yeah, that’s what Brie does.

That’s just her music. 

[00:00:29] JoAnn Crohn: Oh, no, she didn’t make a face. I was just commenting on your outro music. Oh, okay. But still, I think it’s cute. I comment on the cute stuff I see. It’s what makes you genuinely you. Oh, there are 

[00:00:41] Brie Tucker: so many things that make me genuinely me, I think. One of them is also the whole, like, how I refuse to refer to going to the bathroom as anything other than, I gotta go potty.

I gotta go tinkle. I gotta go tinkle. Yeah, that’s the thing. 

[00:00:53] JoAnn Crohn: That’s early childhood for you. I 

[00:00:56] Brie Tucker: still, like, it would crack me up. I was working at this Uber corporate job before here and we’d be in a boardroom and I would, in front of everybody, I’d be like, excuse me, I’m going to go tinkle. I’ll be right back.

[00:01:09] JoAnn Crohn: We have a great guest today, Tasha Shore, talking about boys. And how we can raise our boys to be more emotionally resilient and have better communication skills. And we dig in a lot, Brie. I feel like you got some good Tasha coaching in 

[00:01:24] Brie Tucker: this episode. I needed it. So it was very, I feel very empowered now.

So I hope everybody walks away feeling as 

[00:01:30] JoAnn Crohn: empowered as I do. Yes. If you feel like you’re having a hard time talking with your son or with another boy in your life, oh my gosh, this episode. Stick around for it. But Tasha sure she is a parent coach and founder of parenting voice peacefully where she’s on a mission to create a more peaceful world.

One sweet boy at a time. She’s also the co author of listen five simple tools to meet your everyday parenting challenges, which has been translated into five languages. She’s resided in both California and Israel and is the proud mom to three kids ages 16, 18, and 20. And we hope you enjoy our interview with Tasha.

You want mom life to be easier. That’s our goal too. Our mission is to raise more self sufficient and independent kids and we’re going to have fun doing it. We’re going to help you delegate and step back. Each episode we’ll tackle strategies for positive discipline, making our kids more responsible and making our lives better in the process.

Welcome to the no guilt mom podcast.

[00:02:44] Brie Tucker: Welcome 

[00:02:44] JoAnn Crohn: Tasha to the podcast. We are so excited to get into this topic of boys and aggression. And the biggest question like I have for you to start this out is why the focus on boys in particular? 

[00:02:59] Tosha Schore: Great question. And while I get asked. All the time focus on boys for a lot of different reasons, but really because my heart goes out to them, I feel like they have been left behind.

I grew up with my mom, feminist, fighting for women’s rights. I can be whatever I wanted to be. I feel like we’ve made huge strides for women. We still. We still have a long way to go for girls and women. I’m not saying that we don’t. But I think what happened is that in a lot of ways, we’ve turned the boys into the bad guys and just cuckooed them on the side.

Oh, they’re bad or they’re causing trouble or they can’t deal. And that’s not serving them well. It’s also not serving our families well. And if you read the newspaper, you’ll notice that it’s not serving the world well. 

[00:03:48] JoAnn Crohn: Well, there’s a loneliness epidemic right now among men in particular, because boys aren’t being raised with the socialization or the friendship skills.

And they’re also not feeling comfortable talking to their friends about emotional issues and all of these things that provide great mental health boys aren’t taught how 

[00:04:09] Tosha Schore: to do. It’s true. They’re not. And I think there’s an expectation also that Especially on the part of moms, I, I encounter this a lot as I coach moms, where there’s this expectation that the boy’s going to talk about it, right?

So, Hey, sweet boy, let’s sit down and talk about what happened at school today. Why did you throw your paper at your teacher, or why did you throw the pencil at your friend, or whatever? 99. 9 percent of the time, that is not how this young boy is going to process what happened. And so, we’re trying to force a way of processing that might feel natural for us, but isn’t for him.

And so, part of… Focusing on boys is figuring out how can we support them maybe in, in ways that are different than we were supported or that we would want to be. Okay. I have to 100 

[00:04:56] Brie Tucker: percent agree with this because I struggle so much and I always have to connect with my oldest, my son, because he, when he was really little, yeah, he would talk about his feelings more, but as he hit elementary school and up, we just hit this thing where I have a really hard time getting him to discuss feelings and how to like, and I know he’s not processing things great.

But I’m at a loss as to, I feel like I’m constantly trying to climb up a slippery slope and I just keep sliding back down. 

[00:05:25] JoAnn Crohn: Well, it’s hard. It’s hard with boys too, especially asking the question. I think that question is hard for both girls and boys. The, why did you do a particular behavior? Because most people have no idea why they did a particular behavior.

And you have something, you say that aggression is almost always fear and disguise. Can you tell us a little bit more about 

[00:05:45] Tosha Schore: that? Yeah, I think it’s really important to realize that one of the reasons the main reason to me that is really important to understand is because it allows us to access empathy in a way that’s really hard to access when we don’t see things that way.

So if we have a boy who Is perpetually taunting his younger brother, let’s just say, and we’re in the mindset of he’s a bad kid. What’s wrong with him or blaming ourselves? What did I do wrong to raise such a monster? It’s really hard to access empathy. It’s really hard to feel warmth or compassion towards that child, which is a prerequisite of being able to help him.

Nobody’s gonna let us help them if they feel like we’re not on their team, right? But if we can realize There’s fear in there, and we might not know what that fear is of or what that fear is about. And in fact, there might not be a real danger, but it might just be that his system is sensing danger. And so he’s reacting to something that to us just seems dangerous.

No big deal. But if we can get ourselves in that mindset, then like I said, we can feel love towards him. We can feel compassion and we can turn to ourselves and say, okay, this kid is struggling. What might I be able to do to turn things around? How might I be able to connect with this boy? 

[00:07:04] JoAnn Crohn: I do see a lot of explosions from my son and we’ve been working on this a while and I’m a big proponent of therapy like he’s in therapy right now to talk about emotions and just very emotional centered household.

But it’s true when you dig behind the reasons for the outburst. It’s usually a fear based response. Typically what sets my son off is his older sister, no surprise. He thinks that she thinks that he doesn’t know anything. And when his intelligence is ever questioned, that is when he just goes off on her.

And it’s so interesting seeing the reasons behind behavior and behind aggression when we look at it from that fear based perspective. 

[00:07:52] Tosha Schore: JoAnn, that’s super interesting, the story that you just told about your boy. It’s very common. And I think what’s important is to realize that I’m not saying therapy is bad or it’s not worth it.

And if it’s helping, that’s wonderful. And I always say to parents and my boys too, I want you to know, and I want your kids to know that there are lots of people in the world who can support them. And it’s really. a skill to be able to ask for help. This is one of the things that I want our boys to learn how to do is to ask for help when they need it.

But again, if it’s not working, right, if the talking about the why isn’t working, then we need to look deeper. And many times I find that We’re wanting to figure out why for ourselves because if we could just figure out like why is he Exploding like this then I can make it stop. But just take this example, right?

You’re saying if his intelligence is brought into a question into question or if his sister says or does something in particular He’s set off. We can’t control his sister, right? Those things aren’t necessarily gonna stop happening So even if we have the Y and the Y is because sister does X If we can’t make Sister not do X, then how is the Y really helping?

And so that’s where I come in terms of looking for a more somatic based healing experience that’s less dependent on the Y and more about trusting the body to heal. by releasing feelings. 

[00:09:17] JoAnn Crohn: Well, you make an interesting point when you say, talking about the why. Because my whole approach is that I don’t so much want to fix it, but I do want to make him more comfortable in his own skin and his own emotions.

So that he knows that the feelings that he’s feeling, where they might be generating, what thought processes might be generating them, and how to attack those thought processes, or question actually is a better word, question those thought processes, so that he doesn’t escalate to that. Or 

[00:09:50] Brie Tucker: get to the point where he just tries to just numb it all and stuff it all down.

Right? The other toxic part of society that’s, you know what, I don’t understand these feelings and I’m, and let’s just be honest, and I’m a guy, so I shouldn’t be having them, so we’re just going to pretend like they just don’t even exist. I’m going to stuff them down until they eventually 

[00:10:10] JoAnn Crohn: explode. No, that’s not 

[00:10:11] Tosha Schore: helpful.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of the things with aggression is so often we’re afraid of the behaviors and then they’re stuck with them because it’s like, Oh, God, the adults around, they can’t deal with this either. And so they try to tap them down. And again, yeah, just like you said, we look at addiction, we look at all the ways that we not look at how we numb, we numb adults numb with sex and That porn and drugs and alcohol and our glass of wine at the end of the day.

Like we all have our ways to numb. I was going to say, 

[00:10:41] Brie Tucker: can we throw in social media there? It feels like a little bit more gentle, but it is still numbing. 

[00:10:46] Tosha Schore: We’ll be honest. I’m like the lamest person on social media. I’m like, so not into social media. So I’m just like, Oh, it makes me crazy. But yes, that’s absolutely right.

And we don’t want our boys to tamp down those feelings. We want them to be able to feel, so we have to get comfortable with them feeling. Yes, 

[00:11:03] JoAnn Crohn: that is a big thing. It is, does really start with us and our behavior. Because we cannot change our kids behavior, we only have influence over our behavior. And becoming comfortable with that is 

[00:11:14] Brie Tucker: so 

[00:11:15] JoAnn Crohn: hard.

It is, it is. You feel like you’re being torn apart 

[00:11:18] Tosha Schore: inside. It is, but I do want to say that their behavior will change as a result of our behavior changing. We can’t come in with our agenda. Hey, let’s sit down and talk about your feelings because they’re just gonna zip their mouth right closed and not say a word.

The quieter I am, the 

[00:11:35] Brie Tucker: quicker this will be over. I can weep mom out. I know I can. 

[00:11:38] Tosha Schore: Exactly. But if we listen intently, I think parents will be surprised at what comes out. Like, just for example, like I, I have one child who is more reserved than the other. I have one that’s TMI all over I gotta be like, I’m your mother, right?

I don’t want to know all these things. But then I’ve got one who… tends to keep his feelings close to his, his body and his heart pretty close. And it’s interesting because the other members of the family will say, you know, Oh, he doesn’t talk about anything. He never tells us what’s going on, or we can’t get to know him.

And I look at them and I go, that’s absolutely not true. If y’all are willing to stop talking for a few minutes,

you’d be surprised at what you’ll find out about your brother. It’s quite interesting. And so that’s the child who comes in the door and I say, welcome home. And then I’m just quiet. 

[00:12:32] JoAnn Crohn: Oh, yeah. That is a good tactic too. I have to use that. My husband is that way. And so I feel like he trained me for having kids that way because I cannot ask any sort of question because questions are tied to expectations.

That’s right. When you ask someone how their day is going, they feel like they need to tell you something positive else you’ll let them down. And people don’t want to share. And I took my husband. talking to me about that to really understand what’s behind it. But staying quiet saying, it’s good to see you.

And then bam, about five minutes later, everything will start coming out. And I’ll be like, I need a Brieak. 

[00:13:13] Brie Tucker: I need a Brieak. 

[00:13:14] Tosha Schore: Totally. I find a lot of parenting voices about offering myself. Rather than asking for something. Yeah. If, if I notice it’s me, who’s wanting something, I’m wanting information. I’m wanting closeness.

I’m wanting connection. I’m much more successful at getting those things when I offer myself rather than start sort of poking. How do you 

[00:13:35] Brie Tucker: offer yourself? Because I’m going to say that again, I have. And JoAnn knows my two kids very well. My oldest is my son and my daughter is only like 15 months behind him.

They’re very different. My son’s very reserved. Doesn’t want to talk about his feelings. So it’s hard for Briee to let go of the walks in the door. How was your day? Because again, he hates that. So to me, offering myself as coming in his room because he never wants to leave his room, come in his room. He’s playing video games.

I plop on his bed. He’ll slowly turn and be like. Can I help you? Oh my god! I just wanted to be here. I love that. It doesn’t seem to 

[00:14:09] JoAnn Crohn: work. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. I 

[00:14:13] Tosha Schore: love that. It doesn’t seem to work. No, no. No, no. Okay. I’m gonna stop you. I’m gonna stop you. What does that mean, it doesn’t seem to work?

I don’t get anything 

[00:14:23] Brie Tucker: out of him. That’s just goes back to playing his video game and I sit there fucking hours. But then, wait, wait, wait! 

[00:14:29] Tosha Schore: But that means that you’re coming in with an agenda. Okay. If it’s not working, you’re not getting something out of it. So you’re leaving frustrated, but what if you just went without that expectation, without trying to get something out of him, and just because you want to offer your presence and your love, right?

Hey, I’d just like to hang out with you. If you want to talk to me, great. If you don’t, totally fine. And then you just leave when you’re done. 

[00:14:54] Brie Tucker: Expert 

[00:14:54] JoAnn Crohn: move, Brie. Bring headphones. And just have headphones on your bed. And if you have headphones on, they will turn to you and be like, Hey mom, guess what? And you’ll have to take out your headphones.

And then you’ll put them back in. They’ll be like, Hey mom, guess what? You have to take out, because you’re not, because they know you’re not trying to get anything. 

[00:15:09] Brie Tucker: Okay. All right. I will try that. I am down to try that. And then you won’t talk. 

[00:15:15] Tosha Schore: I’ll tell you a quick story. I got a parent who started doing the type of work that I do when her boy was about 13 and really struggling and really reserved and starting to get into trouble.

For 

[00:15:25] Brie Tucker: everybody listening, that 11, 12, 13 is a hard age for boys. We give a lot of slack to girls because we know they’re going through puberty, but I think boys get the shorter 

[00:15:33] Tosha Schore: than the stick. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. And so she was feeling distance from him and he was disappearing in ways that she didn’t want him to be disappearing.

And she did exactly what we were just talking about. She started just committing to going into his room where she didn’t come out of. He was just like on his computer doing whatever. And she would knock and say, Hey, can I come hang out for a little bit? Sometimes he wouldn’t even answer, but he wouldn’t say no.

And so she just come and hang out on the Yeah. And then just watch him play and not really say much of anything at all. And then she’d leave and she did this like day after day, after day, after day. And she would let him know when she was coming and let him know when she was leaving. And it seemed like she would say to me, like, I think he doesn’t care.

I feel like I’m just like, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Like. I am inconsequential. It makes no difference that I’m here. I could be a blob of salt and that would be I feel her, sister. I feel her. But let me tell you something. One day, she got up to walk out, and he said, Mom, wait, I want to show you something.

That’s like the Holy Grail! It is! It is! And, you know, he wanted to show her some book about, he was into building model planes or boats or something, I can’t remember what. And he wanted to show her, and that then was the beginning of a conversation. But When we’ve been poking at our kids, it takes time for them to trust that we Really are going to meet them where they are that we’re really just love them 100 percent unconditionally how they are where they are right now.

And if you think about it, that’s what we all need to be able to open up. So sometimes it takes weeks of going into the room and sitting there without expectation and leaving with the cheery. Thanks for letting me hang out with you for a few minutes. See you. See you later on and leaving not another day of no interaction, grump, grump, grump, right?

We are helping their system build trust that we really are ready. To not plea with them to be different, to be at a different developmental state, to be in a different emotional state, but that we really love them and are ready to meet them exactly where they are. That has to be the starting point. All right.

I will 

[00:17:36] Brie Tucker: do it. I love that. to this more and I will bring my AirPods. Yay. 

[00:17:40] Tosha Schore: And you’re going to email me and you’re going to tell me how I go. I will. 

[00:17:42] Brie Tucker: Yeah. 

[00:17:43] JoAnn Crohn: Okay. Tasha, what else do you recommend that we do to help our boys with emotional regulation communication skills? 

[00:17:51] Tosha Schore: I’d say like the number one thing is to work on our own emotional regulation skills.

We always have to start with ourselves. So if you’re a yeller or a shamer, which might sound like, Oh, better than that. Or just even though that sort of annoyed outBrieath, the thing, all those things that can be interpreted as shaming, then we need to step back and think about, okay, what are our own boundaries as parents?

Why do I feel resentful, right? How am I not being true to myself such that I’m feeling resentful towards my child? Because to me, that’s a sign that I’m not holding my own boundaries. So, looking at our own boundaries, looking at our own wounds. So, uh, one prompt that I’ll often give parents is to think about what was going on in their life when they were the age that their child is now.

The child that they’re really struggling with. What was going on in your own life? There are often really amazing parallels. Maybe, Briee, we were talking about the college experience early on. I don’t know what your experience was with applying to college, or if you applied, or if you went, or what the pressure was, or what it wasn’t.

But I’m pretty positive that if you took the time To think back to what that was like for you, you would realize how that experience is influencing the way that you’re sort of walking this with your children. And then we can separate. It’s, Oh, well, what does that do I want to take with me? And what does that do?

I want to leave behind. I 

[00:19:16] Brie Tucker: think that is a good point right there, because I think I’m pretty good at reflecting back on and what I experienced, honestly, working with no guilt mom has really helped me open up my introspective skills. But that piece right there of what do I want to leave behind? I don’t always think about that part of it.

[00:19:35] JoAnn Crohn: Well, it’s hard when you’re in the moment and you’re dealing solely on your reactions because you aren’t quite aware of how those wounds have impacted you. That I think is where we make those snap actions of the shame that you mentioned, or even the anger or the resentment. It’s where that comes from.

And so if you don’t go back and you examine it, you’re constantly doomed to relive the loop. 

[00:19:58] Tosha Schore: Absolutely. I teach a practice called listening partnerships. If you’ve read our book, listen, there’s a chapter on listening partnerships and we do this in my community and in my courses I teach. And I have a personal practice of listening partnerships that I have with other parents around the world that I meet with regularly.

To just offload the pressures of life and parenting so that they don’t spill out all over my children. We have to take responsibility for our emotional well being, and that is one way. And that, again, that’s, we haven’t really talked about the release of the feelings, but what I’m doing in that listening partnership is, I might be sharing something verbally, I might be talking about an experience, but oftentimes, like recently, I was sharing about, I have a child going off to college and there are lots of feelings coming up for me about that.

I’m sad and I’m crying and like, to have a place where I can cry about that and mourn his departure and all of those things really helps me think more clearly about how I want to show up for him. And so one of the things that I figured out, like this light bulb went off after I had this big cry the other day.

And that was that I actually don’t need to share. as much information with him as I’ve been sharing about how I’m feeling about his departure. Some of it’s okay, but like, Actually, a lot of this is just my stuff to work on, and he doesn’t need to be a part of this. And that was intelligence that I gained by releasing the stress and the fears and the sadness through tears with my listening partner.

Not by anybody telling me I should do this or should do that. Back to your question, JoAnn. It’s like, we have to take responsibility for our own emotional healing so that we can model emotional regulation. 

[00:21:40] JoAnn Crohn: Completely. As the daughter of parents who, let’s just say me going off to college, it was calling home and my mom being like, why did you leave me for about two months?

Two months into my college experience. It was awful. It was so awful from a child’s standpoint. And I knew I never wanted to give that ever to my kids. 

[00:21:59] Tosha Schore: An example of what you don’t want to bring forward. Perfect. 

[00:22:03] JoAnn Crohn: You don’t want to bring forward. And you mentioned something earlier about. release of emotions.

[00:22:08] Tosha Schore: What is that? So that’s, for example, the crying, the tears that I shed. And so we go back to your question about what can we do for our boys. One of the things is to really listen to their feelings. So at the beginning, we talked about talking about their feelings and the why behind it. But what I find is that when we have scenarios with our kids, where they’re really struggling, if we can Be present so that we feel like with aggression, we have to set it up so that we don’t feel in danger.

So maybe we’re on the other side of a wall or maybe if we got a biter, we’re wearing a few layers. So we’re not going to get teeth in our arm. Because once we get hurt, we, it’s really hard to keep our cool. But if we can keep ourselves safe and focused on the goodness of the child, that sweet boy, I like to talk about the sweet boy underneath those not so sweet behaviors, then.

He can have that big tantrum. We’re not trying to quiet it. He can have the big tantrum. He can yell and scream and tell us about how life’s not fair and how we’re the worst mom ever and all of the things. And we can know that actually what we’re doing in that moment is something called stay listening.

Also something that we write about in listen where we’re staying and we’re creating safe space for him to feel because when those feelings come out, what happens is it’s like the clouds part and at the end his thinking is much more clear and so what you often find in a scenario where let’s say children are fighting and you’ve gotten between them and separated them so no one gets hurt and you’re listening to them and they’re screaming and saying all the things is that if we don’t get in there and try to be like the police officer and Figure out like who did what and who done it and who went first and how many minutes for each.

And we just allow them to feel their feelings. 99% of the time when they’re done, they are going to come up with a brilliant solution about how to share or a brilliant solution about how to move forward. So I really wanna parents to understand that our children’s intelligence builds, they get smarter when we create safe spaces for them to feel and for our boys.

We need to get comfortable with them feeling all kinds of things, not just anger, like the ones we label feminine and girly, they got left out, they felt disappointed, they were teased, they felt embarrassed, they’re shy, like all these feelings, they need a place to take them. They need a place to take them, and for us to not say, Oh, it’s okay, someone else will invite you to their birthday party.

No! Maybe they will, maybe they will, or maybe they won’t. That’s not the point. The point is right now, I’m feeling super disappointed, angry, left out, whatever, sad, because I didn’t get invited. And that’s real. And he gets to feel those feelings, those normal feelings. We don’t have to 

[00:24:57] Brie Tucker: fix it. 

[00:24:58] JoAnn Crohn: Stay with us.

We’ll be right back. And he gets 

[00:25:02] Tosha Schore: to feel those feelings, those normal feelings. We don’t have to fix it. 

[00:25:07] JoAnn Crohn: I get so wild up about this because this is where all the research is. And when you’re around people that then treat your child a certain way that you would not, say they’re crying and you usually let them have their outbursts.

It’s in front of you. And this other person comes in and it’s like, it’s okay. Here, here, here’s this, And like tries to stop the emotion. It drives me completely bonkers because that is just pushing things down and minimizing them and boys and everybody should be allowed to have their feelings.

[00:25:38] Brie Tucker: Absolutely. People pleasers out there. I’m going to say, we know that it’s hard for you because I’m a people pleaser. That’s my role in my family. Growing up was, it was my job to try to. Neutralize the feelings in our family. So I have a really hard time being, and JoAnn knows this all the time. I’m like, so I started crying, man.

I didn’t, I can’t handle crying, stop crying. And I’m like, Ooh, crying. We’re getting somewhere. That’s a good point, Tasha. Like really, again, about the whole, like, it’s not always your job to fix it. To just be there. You’re the support, but sometimes that support is strong and silent, man. 

[00:26:17] JoAnn Crohn: Well, a story example of that is my son and I went to Starbucks this morning to hang out before he goes to school And we were sitting outside.

It’s a little warm outside and near the end of it. He just starts complaining. He has bug bites on his ankles He’s like, I just don’t want to be out here anymore and I’m worried about being late to school and being at the car lot and I just And I’m just like, I pick things up and I’m like, okay, let’s go.

And we get in the car and about two minutes into the car, he’s calm. He’s cool again in the air conditioning because the heat. And he says to me, I’m sorry. It didn’t look like you were ready to leave yet. And I’m like, I get that. I’m a free person though. I like, I do what I need to do. I saw you needed to leave and that’s okay.

And he’s like, yeah, but I saw that you didn’t want to yet. I’m sorry for that. I love 

[00:27:04] Brie Tucker: what that relationship you guys have built so that he’s comfortable saying all of that. But what I really love is by that, at least from my perspective, from that interaction, he learned that he can say what his wants and needs are and that they 

[00:27:17] JoAnn Crohn: will be valued.

But I also get a lot of emotional storms and I feel the frequent need for wine. I don’t do it. I don’t do it. But I’m just saying 

[00:27:28] Brie Tucker: there is creamy coffee sounds delicious right now, bringing 

[00:27:32] JoAnn Crohn: it back to the whole, like wanting to numb feelings and needing to let them out somewhere. It is totally necessary because usually those mornings I’m right on the phone with Brie and I’m like, Oh, I’m ready to scream at everyone this morning.

[00:27:46] Tosha Schore: I’m with you and I’m glad you’re saying this because I want parents to know that there is no perfect parent and we’re actually not striving for perfection. And one of the biggest gifts I think we can give our kids is the gift of apology because we are going to mess up. We are going to lose it. We are going to act in ways that we wish we could take back.

But what an opportunity to be able to come back and say, Hey, I’m sorry. That wasn’t about you. That was about me. Like, I have to do that a lot, 

[00:28:13] Brie Tucker: but also especially for our boys, because again, I think they’re taught this as society has this toxic masculinity of that. You’re strong. You’re a leader. You don’t show emotion.

You don’t cry and you don’t apologize because apologies are a signs of weakness and it’s a sign of being a human. It’s a human characteristic. It’s a lot of pressure to think you’re supposed to be perfect. Both for our kids to think they’re supposed to be perfect, and for us to think we’re supposed to be perfect.

[00:28:38] JoAnn Crohn: Totally. It 

is 

[00:28:38] Tosha Schore: a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of pressure. And we can let it go. Yeah, 

[00:28:43] JoAnn Crohn: we could totally let it go. These are such good tips, Tasha, for raising our boys. I want to know though, right now, what are you excited about that’s coming up in your life? 

[00:28:52] Tosha Schore: Well, I think the thing I’m most excited about right now is that I’m working on a children’s book.

Ooh! Let’s do more! So I’m not sure like what to tell you exactly except that I’ve got a first draft written and I’m about to do some edits and resubmit it to an editor and I’m hoping that the Publishing House will take it on. So maybe by the time this airs, It will be further along in the process. That would be my wish.

If not, and there’s somebody out here who’s publishes children’s books and would like to hear my story. 

[00:29:26] Brie Tucker: We might have 

[00:29:27] JoAnn Crohn: somebody. 

[00:29:29] Brie Tucker: Yep. Go to 

[00:29:30] Tosha Schore: Tasha. Exactly. The book is actually a little bit about something that we didn’t get to, which is play and the strategic use of play. In the face of challenging behaviors.

I smell a 

[00:29:42] Brie Tucker: follow up episode coming, Tasha. I, that’s what I smell here. We’re gonna have a follow up. 

[00:29:46] JoAnn Crohn: Yes. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this great info with us, Tasha, and we will talk to you later. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Boys have so many emotions and I love that Tasha focuses on them because oh my gosh I get hit with more emotions for my son I feel than my daughter.

Although my daughter is, she’s coming, she’s pretty close to it. 

[00:30:08] Brie Tucker: You have the joy, from my perspective, someone looking outside. The first born is like a little more quiet, a little bit more reserved, and then the younger is kind of like, I’m here! I’m loud and I’m proud! But now you have the joys of teenage ism with a girl, and I just feel like those emotions are big and loud and 

[00:30:28] JoAnn Crohn: proud.

It goes up and down. Yeah, that’s I think the problem because sometimes it could be absolutely fine. Sometimes it could be like no emotion whatsoever and it’s frozen and sometimes they’re very explosive and there’s tons of tears and crying and what Tasha was saying about you have to work on your own emotional resilience is 100 percent true because So many times I want to run screaming out of my house because of all the emotions going on in there.

There’s so many emotions. 

[00:30:54] Brie Tucker: And they’re so uncomfortable. There’s so many emotions. There’s not much, it doesn’t feel like there’s much room left for your own 

[00:31:00] JoAnn Crohn: emotions. Yeah, exactly. Which makes it hard. It’s when I go and Close my door. Sit in my room. Read my book. But that’s good. And try to calm down. 

[00:31:08] Brie Tucker: Right.

And that’s good. And we need those breaks. Because. You cannot possibly take on the emotional load of everybody in the household, have space for everybody’s emotions and yours all simultaneously. A cup only has so much room before things 

[00:31:23] JoAnn Crohn: start to overflow. Now that there’s so much of this emphasis on parents controlling their own emotions, I feel like we’re getting both ends of the bad stick here.

Because as kids, we were told to control our emotions and now as parents, we’re told to control our emotions. Meanwhile, the generations on both sides of us get to go willy nilly with all their emotions and just let 

[00:31:45] Brie Tucker: them out and we’re the ones dealing with them. Well, that’s because, you know, we raised ourselves.

Kids of the 80s and 90s, the latchkey stuff, honestly, I love watching the TikToks and in reels these days of the parenting influencers and they’re like back in the 80s or 90s, what it was like. And yeah, the notes on the kitchen table that were like, I’ll be home around five or six. There’s a snack in the fridge or you can get stuff out of the freezer.

And we’re all like, all right. And we did that all ourselves. Now, even my teenagers come home and I’m like, how was your day? Would you like a snack? All of this stuff that, 

[00:32:20] JoAnn Crohn: oh my gosh, I don’t do that 

[00:32:23] Brie Tucker: for me. I do it. Cause I’m thirsty. I’m a thirst. I think I’m pretty open that I am a thirsty mom. That is what would, that sounds really bad.

That’s not what I meant by it. I just, I want to connect with my teens and like the fact that they’re teens and I’m divorced and they’re only here every other week, I’m like. Constantly seeing time tick by and I’m like Hang out with me, please. I’ll bribe you with food with drink. Yeah, 

[00:32:48] JoAnn Crohn: but anyway, the best way I have found is to ignore like not ignore, but just get Kind of play hard to get be there, but not say anything So there’s a tons of times where my daughter will get in the car and I’ll be like hi.

You should be like hi And then I won’t say anything to her and I’m waiting for her to talk and I’m waiting for her to bring it up or bring anything up and many times she has to go on her phone and she’s just like on her phone and this inner voice in my head is oh my gosh she is ignoring me and going on her phone she does not have any social skills I am raising her completely wrong we should be engaging in conversation right now and I should have my question cards out and no Oh, That’s not it.

That’s everything that we have been told to do that doesn’t actually work. I’ve talked with my daughter about this phone. I’m like, Hey, I feel a little ignored when you’re in, when I’m in the car with you. Cause she saw I was upset one time we got out of the car. I was visibly upset. And she’s like, what?

And I told her, I feel ignored when you get on your phone. And she told me, sometimes like I just need to process things and I need to sit there and quiet. And I look at my phone because that’s how I’m processing. And I’m like, well, I get that. Okay. Yeah. And so I’ve let it happen for now. And usually when she gets to process her emotions and deal with them, then later on when she’s ready to talk, she’ll come out and just talk to me.

Right. 

[00:34:15] Brie Tucker: It’s so hard, there’s so much, but again, it’s like Tasha said, reflecting back on what it was like when we were that age for our kids, be it really little, elementary, middle, high, whatever it is. And then taking the pieces that we wanted to carry forward and then leaving those pieces that we didn’t want behind.

That’s the part that I struggle with, but I’m going to try really hard and I’m excited. I’m going to be going in my son’s room a little bit more often and I just lay in there with my AirPods on. I do get so excited when he just randomly starts talking to me. I’m 

[00:34:50] JoAnn Crohn: like, Oh my God. Let’s calm that down.

Let’s calm that down. That’s the inside. I 

[00:34:56] Brie Tucker: don’t always show it. I know that I show a lot of emotion, but yeah, my husband, you’re a terrible poker player. Just, you always, your emotions are so easy to see. 

[00:35:06] JoAnn Crohn: That’s mine as well. We work well together. We always know when something’s wrong. I know, right? 

[00:35:10] Brie Tucker: Be like, what’s wrong?

Right. Just tell me. It’s all good. I’m going to, I’m just going to keep asking. It’s 

[00:35:15] JoAnn Crohn: interesting because something Natasha said in there was about, we shouldn’t put our own feelings on our kids. And that’s true to some extent, but I think there’s really a balance to be had there because your kids need to know what happens when they behave a certain way to people.

So if they’re constantly on their phones and they’re like ignoring you. I think it’s okay to make kids aware that, hey, I was feeling ignored. As long as you’re willing to listen to their reason as well and not just put it as a shameful thing on them. Because we have to be open to what they bring back.

Yeah. What gets into trouble is if you’re bringing up the same emotion over and over again when they’ve already told you what they’re doing, then that’s not helpful and that’s when you really need to release them. Yeah, for sure. But remember, the best mom is a happy mom. So take care of you and we’ll talk to you later.[00:36:05] Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.