Episode 6 – Parental Ponderings

Welcome to Marriage Mixed with Spencer and Shirley.

Marriage Mixed is a resource that opens the door on interracial marriage.

We share real experiences from our interracial marriage, and let me tell you, it has not been easy, but it is rewarding.

We talk about our differences, what has worked for us, and what is still difficult.

We also share our views on important topics like food, from a white guy's perspective, and from a Haitian girl's perspective.

What is our goal?

Our goal is to reach people, like you, who may be struggling in an interracial marriage, and, through the sharing of our own story, prove to you that you are not alone.

The battle for your marriage is real, and thankfully, you have reinforcements.

Our hope is that by using this resource, you will grow in love and grace for your spouse, and ultimately find hope, help, and healing for your marriage.

Sometimes it will be tense, and other times you will be laughing with us as we discover new things about each other.

Thank you for joining us and enjoy this episode of Marriage Mixed.

Welcome to Marriage Mixed with Spencer and Shirley.

Hi Shirley.

Hi Spencer.

Today we'll be talking about parenting.

We've been doing a lot of thinking.

So this is kind of a one-off episode before we launch into something new.

But we wanted to talk about what we're dealing with, which is parenting lately.

Before we get into parenting, we're gonna start with a question that you can ask your spouse.

So the question is, what do you want your kids to remember you by?

Like what do you want to say?

Like my dad did this.

I feel terrible instantly.

I feel like...

Just what do you want your kids to remember you by?

Like I can start if you want.

Go ahead.

Like I told you before, I want my kids to be like, oh, my mom, every time she cut a rotisserie chicken, she let us have some of the meat while she was cutting it.

Or my mom was strong.

Like my oldest child called me strong like last week, and I was like, thank you.

Because I work out, so it's nice to feel strong.

Or like my mom let me help in the kitchen or be in the kitchen with her when she was cooking or whatever.

My mom made cookies, good cookies or whatever, stuff like that.

My mom loved God.

That's always the goal.

Those are sweet things that you want to be remembered by.

For myself, I want to be remembered as having integrity, being brave, loving them and genuinely taking time to be with them in whatever they're doing.

That's hard.

I feel like I'm not doing that very well, but that's definitely what I want.

When you said the question, it just hit me like, I don't know, that I'm probably not doing a great job.

I feel like my kids will remember me being angry or impatient or just not having time for them.

So that's hard.

What are some things that you are doing a good job with?

Like, I don't know.

We can't, like, this is real life, so we can't have 100% of our attention on them all the time.

What are some things that they...

Like, tonight, you noticed that our older child was trying to get attention negatively, and you, like, addressed her, and you asked, you said, like, oh, like, you can, if you want attention or something, you can just ask, or you can ask for something or whatever, and she wanted to read a book, and you read a book to her.

And the second book you read to them, you were being very animated and funny.

Yeah, improvising in the book and stuff.

I honestly don't think that was from me, though.

I mean, it was, but I think that came out of prayer, just praying at dinner, praying that God would help us, help me address our kids' needs better and give them what they really need.

I feel like that prayer helped me hear the Holy Spirit more, because I was pretty upset when our daughter was, our oldest daughter was not obeying, or actually just doing things she knows are wrong to get attention.

But then I thought, like, something quite quiet in my heart thought, well, she wants attention, so how can I give her that attention and teach her how to get attention in the right way, instead of purposely breaking rules to try and get me to look at her?

So I was happy that that worked out, and she seemed pretty happy.

Yeah.

In her defense, though, maybe like 20 minutes before that or something, she asked me to read a book, she asked me to do stickers, and she asked me to read a book, and I told her no for both of those things, because I was trying to clean up.

Yeah.

I did do both of those things with her this morning, but, you know, dealing with a throw up tonight, trying to start laundry, Spencer being at his group tonight, so it was just me and the kids, having our younger child be clingy since dinner until she threw up.

It was just a very uncommon night and an uncoming day for me.

I guess we kind of already transitioned into talking about parenting.

Yeah.

So yesterday I read an article about parenting from, that's on desiringgod.org, and it was talking about how, just talking about that verse, train up a child in a way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

And the author of the article was just saying how, it says, like, train up, not tell up.

Like, not telling them, like, do this, do that, the other thing.

Like, training them, like, being the lead trainees in their life.

And I think that's partly, like, modeling behavior too.

It says, train up a child in a way he should go, so not like what they shouldn't do all the time, not like, no, no, no, but, like, this is what you should do.

And I've heard of that before, like, not saying no so much, but, like, focusing on what you can do, like, you can do this.

And then, and when he is old, so, like, I guess a long-term view, like, winning the bigger war or battle instead of just, like, the smaller war or whatever, however it goes, like, having a long, longer-term view, like, and when he is old, he won't depart from it.

And I thought, I thought it was a good article, good pointers.

How have you seen that, that play out with our children?

Um, I think, like, trying not to say no all the time is a big thing, because I think we say no a lot, um, maybe it has to do with our families of origin and how we are as people, um.

What are some things that we're saying no about?

A lot of things.

I know, like, I looked into our eldest daughter's crib, and I saw her braced in midair over the crib with her feet on the back and her arms on the front, and she had somehow wedged herself up, so she was suspended above the crib.

And it's actually pretty impressive for a three-year-old to get into that position and be able to hold it, kind of wedged up there like a ninja.

But my initial response was telling her to stop, and then I followed up and said, it's really impressive that you can do that, but don't do that.

Then I thought about it, and the worst that could happen is she could fall, and she'd just fall straight into the crib onto the mattress.

Probably could have just let her do it, and it wasn't like she was supposed to be sleeping at that time or anything.

So that's an example, at least for me, where I probably just say no before I even really think or observe what my kid is doing and celebrate what they're doing.

There's this story that I really like.

It's really convicting, so it makes me sad, but it's really, really good about a famous artist who, and I think I read this before in one of Zig Ziglar's books, so hopefully I'm quoting it correctly.

But anyways, there's this famous artist, and when he was a kid, he was old enough that he could babysit his little sister while his mom was away.

And while his mom was away, he was teaching his little sister how to paint with, you know, actual paint and made like an absolute disaster in the house, just painted everything.

And when the mom came home, there's paint everywhere, and he was like, I taught, you know, my little sister how to paint.

And she looked around at the complete disaster of paint everywhere, and I would have been livid, like so upset, pouting and fuming and angry and probably punished our kid if they did that.

But her response was, oh, like, I love it so much.

You're an excellent painter.

Like she wasn't even, like she acknowledged, like, how well he did in his painting.

Like she wanted him to paint more, something for her or something like that.

I can't remember the story that well, but her immediate response was not, you made a huge mess, you have to clean it up.

I think they ultimately cleaned it up, but she saw that he loved, that she just appreciated what he did.

And he's like, that's the day that I became a painter.

Like she could have come in and shut that down so fast, and maybe he never would have ever thought that he could paint.

But because of that one experience for this encouraging mom.

So it makes me sad just because I know, I really struggle with supporting my own kids.

And it's so much easier to focus on what they're doing wrong, and be really irritated by it, and try and stop the bad behaviors instead of looking for the things that are really good that are happening, that might be happening sideways.

Because they literally don't know their foot from their head.

Like they're, they don't know a dang thing, so they don't know what's good or bad.

They're just trying stuff.

They're choking their sister like, look, I'm giving her a hug.

But here I am, you know, like, just raining on everything, and it really, it's hard.

So that's where my mind is going.

Not in this, not in the house.

You shut that off, you take that spell away.

When mother does not like a thing, it's O-U-T, it's out.

For those of you who are thinking, we're extremely strange.

What is it called?

I wish I had duck feet.

When mother does not like a thing, it's O-U-T, it's out.

It's a cute book.

It's a good book.

But it's good.

Or, yeah, it's good to have perspective and encourage the good and not just shut down the bad.

And that book's actually a great example because it's a sweet book, but the kid has stereotypical parents where the dad is only interested in work and the mom is obsessed with everything being clean.

And the kid is just left out on his own.

He's in the street most of the time getting bullied, and he wants to be...

Trying to figure out.

He wants attention.

He's imagining himself having all these animal characteristics so that he gets...

No, he's trying to figure out, like, who to be.

But it gets him attention, each thing that he has.

He talks about the girls looking at him and being the best boy in town, and, you know, he just wants to be celebrated for who he is.

Yeah, and then he finds out that it's best to be himself.

By the way, the author of that article I was just talking about is Matt Bradner, and it's How to Train a Child, Three Sub-Subtle Parenting Shifts.

Yeah, I think it's good to, I think something I can do more is just positive reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement goes a really long way.

It's like really easy to like say, when someone, when a kid does something bad, but it's like harder to like encourage the good.

It's almost like tricky to even encourage the good, because sometimes if you encourage the good, you're going to be like, oh, you're doing well.

They kind of snap out of it, and like they're not in their quiet moment on their own anymore, and they're like trying to come back to you, or you know, whatever.

But yeah, it's really good to like, you probably go farther positively saying like, wow, you did that so well, or you're doing so good.

Then you do reprimanding, like, for example, if you're trying to get your kid to stop sucking their fingers, like, you'll probably do way better, like telling them like, oh, wow, you're doing such a great job not sucking your fingers, like, and like giving them positive, like, stickers or whatever, then you would scolding them or whatever.

The, like, it will just kind of make them do it in private, or hide it from you, or feel bad about themselves or whatever, then like positive reinforcement will bolstered our confidence, I guess, and be like, oh, I can do this.

I guess it would work the same way for adults, like saying something positive probably goes farther than saying something negative.

Negative causes you to be defensive.

Yeah, I mean, most of us who are listening to this are probably married and have been married for a minute or two, meaning like a year or more.

And how well would it work if we try to approach each other with everything negative?

Why did you do this?

Why did you do that?

I really don't like when you do like, how much could we put up with?

I could put up with like one thing a day probably.

We probably do approach each other or our spouses, at least from our experience in marriage.

We probably don't approach in like a, I don't know.

I don't know.

You're good at saying, like thanking me for a lot of things, like a lot of regular smuggler things.

I guess it goes back to how I'm designed, though.

Words mean a lot to me.

Encouraging words.

And it's not that hard for me to think of encouraging words.

Not its head.

Whereas you are less likely to use words, even in that example.

Not in your head.

What does come easy for you is doing kind things.

Like, you do so much for us.

Thanks.

Cooking, creating meals, and shopping for those meals, and cleaning my clothes every day, and steaming them so that they're ready, and cleaning the kids, and, I mean, you can just go on and on and on.

Thanks.

I'm grateful for your provision for our family, and how you protect us, because apparently men have this protection gene within them.

Yeah, and Spencer sees danger, and wants to protect his own, like a lion in one of those videos.

What are you thinking about?

You just want to protect us.

I don't know.

Like, I don't know.

You probably try to find a nice, good place for us to live.

I don't know, you just want to protect us.

We read a book.

Well, actually, I read the book.

Spencer never finished it.

By Cynthia Tobias called You Can't Make Me, but I Can Be Persuaded.

And it's a book for, like, parents of strong-willed children.

And I think it had good insights for if you have a strong-willed child.

Because it's not easy.

If you have a strong-willed child, if you never even thought you had a strong-willed child, but me saying strong-willed child makes you be like, we might have a strong-willed child.

Like, oh, yes.

It's not easy having a kid with a strong-willed.

And their strong-willed can develop, seem like, like, come to the surface, like, when they're so young, like, under two or something.

Was it under one?

Like, before she turned one or before she turned two?

Also, our first child is very smart.

Maybe that goes with the strong-willed, I don't know.

So she was kind of advanced with a lot of things.

But yeah, had good insights.

We should probably reread it.

There's a lot of stuff that I don't think we do that is good.

Like, it talked about how you should have a relationship with your kids that they want to, like, keep.

Like, they're not going to obey you if, like, when they're obeying you.

It's not like the relationship is that great anyway.

Like, have a relationship that's worth it, basically.

So don't just try to, like, ask for opinions, but you're not even, like, involved or doing things they like or whatever.

It also, I think it also talks about positive reinforcement.

Like, that's kind of, that's where I got it from.

Like, don't just talk about what they said did wrong, but tell them what they do.

That's right.

I think for our child, something that would, and every kid will be different, but this is probably, probably applies to a lot of strong-willed child, strong-willed children would be giving choices as much as possible.

That's something that's really sticking out to me for our eldest little girl.

Giving her choices, and like real choices, so that'll be hard for me because I still want to control a lot of stuff, but like giving her a genuine choice that gives her dignity will go pretty far.

I think that's really what she wants, is she's very intelligent, and you honor someone's intelligence when you give them choices.

And I'm even thinking about this now, like in sales, if I don't give someone a choice, they're probably not going to buy.

But if I give them a genuine choice between this and this, and then inform them on their options, and say, based on what you've heard, what do you think is the best option for you, that honors them and gives them dignity.

Yeah, I definitely don't want to feel like I must make a sale, because it's like, oh, no, buddy, I cannot buy this product.

I was thinking maybe we can rewind and talk about parenting when you have like a newborn or like under one or something, because we're talking a lot right now about like where we're at.

But parenting in the beginning is hard too.

Parenting in the beginning.

I don't want to remember it.

I'm still scarred.

So parenting in the beginning equals sleep deprivation, equals like when you have your first child, it's like recovering from giving birth and depending on like your birth situation, it might have been very hard and a lot to recover from.

Depending on your paternity leave situation or maternity leave situation, that might be hard like taking care of your kid and the help that you get depending on your in-law situation.

What about our situation?

Can you share?

I'm just saying in general because not everything applies.

But I mean, I could still share, but I'll finish my list.

Depending on your in-law situation, you might have different opinions on stuff.

So our situation was, my birth wasn't, my first labor wasn't like, was good, but it was still, it was hard.

It was definitely hard.

It was hard on my body.

Recovering postpartum was very hard for me.

We were also in the middle of COVID 2020 when I gave birth, and it was kind of like a weird time in the world.

Yeah, very weird time in the world.

Spencer's job only gave him like one week of vacation for the whole year, so he was with me for a week and then left.

It was hard to figure out sleep.

We weren't prepared for that.

Yeah, and then I would say like, like you might have differing opinions on stuff, so you guys might have done stuff differently, like you came from families where they done stuff differently.

So you're coming with like two different ways of doing things.

You might have two different opinions on things, and you have to like figure that out together, and that's hard to do.

And I think for me, sometimes it was like, this is not like necessarily about me, this is about our child, and I want the best for our child.

And we fought hard for like certain different things.

And let's not forget that we were sleep deprived for like five months, and that is difficult.

Yes.

I think that probably the interracial piece played into how we want to raise a kid, and have very strong opinions, how to do that, like just throwing it out there in white culture, at least in the culture that I grew up in, the crying out method was what people do.

And that's a very controversial thing.

There's different ways to sleep train a baby.

I know that that created a lot of tension about opinions on that, opinions on what to purchase, what not to purchase, from a very conservative background, where everything we bought was used.

And you wanted some new items, which is okay, but it's like very hard for me to swallow with my background.

Like, how am I going to spend so much money on this one?

I can get one for literally a tenth of the cost, and it's just hard.

Yeah.

And I would say, I don't know if you want to include this, but you wanted to do the crying out method, but it was too early to do it anyway.

But you were fighting for us to do it.

Well, I was dying.

In my defense, I was literally dying.

And our kid would have died if we let them cry it out that early.

So, if you do want to do the crying out method, you can't take care of the child.

There's two parents though, but you can't do the crying out method too early.

They have to be old enough.

At a certain point, they need to keep eating throughout the night, keep responding to their needs.

And at a certain point, I think maybe after 3 months or something, 3 to 5 months or reach a certain way or whatever it is, then you can consider different sleep training methods.

But in the beginning, suffer.

But I wasn't thinking about the money thing, but yeah.

Yeah, I think different backgrounds definitely plays into it, for sure.

Because we bring like a whole family and pieces of our culture with us and then try and combine them.

They're so different, they don't fit.

And it's really hard when you're trying to do that with the worst possible platform of sleep deprivation.

Yes.

It's literally, oh my gosh.

Yeah, being sleep deprived is not fun.

It makes you argue way more easily, you have less patience, like you probably forget stuff, you're probably falling asleep while you're driving.

It's a whole lot of stuff.

It's not fun.

Performance at work, I remember getting called into a meeting and just like not even knowing what's going on.

I was like half asleep saying inflammatory things about people.

They're like, why don't you want to work with that person?

They're lazy.

They're looking at me like, what?

No filter.

Your filter is asleep too.

Or your sports is asleep.

Also, you might have like opinions from different people coming in.

Like you might have opinions from...

Oh, like in-laws?

Yeah, like this in-law is telling you to do this, this in-law is telling you to do that.

And, you know, it's hard.

It's like your turn to raise a child.

You might not have...

Even though they're well-intentioned and want the best for you, you might not have asked them what their opinion is.

And you might not want to do what they want you to do.

Or, I don't know, you just want to figure out yourself.

You want to figure out with your spouse.

And that's hard to navigate too, like in-laws.

Like, yeah, things that come in from other people's opinions.

And also as a new mom, getting like judgment from like people in the store, for example, like I went to the store and like this lady was like, I was had our older child, she was just her at the time in the baby carrier.

And this lady stopped me in the aisle and she was like, why doesn't the baby have socks on?

Should have been like, well, it's not your baby.

That's why.

Yeah, she was like reprimanding me or scolding me for looking down on me, whatever, for not having socks on the baby.

You know, it's just like, what?

Like I probably was like thinking you're going to say, oh, your baby is so cute or whatever.

But instead she's like, why doesn't your baby have socks on?

And then in the same grocery shop when I was checking out, there was this other lady who was like very sweet, and she helped me pack my groceries because it was self-checkout, and she'll talk about her, that she doesn't have any grandkids yet.

She probably longed for grandkids.

Yeah, and she was like just sweet.

So it was like cool to see like the two, like just that happened to me where there was like this lady who's like, why doesn't your child have socks on?

And then there's this other lady who's like, oh, I see this mom holding her baby, trying to get some groceries, let me help her out.

And like just like having a friendly conversation with me.

So if you're going to be any of those people, be the second person.

Did my baby need socks?

Maybe, but she was like against my body.

She probably was warm enough.

Did I learn more about warmth of a baby as I grew in my motherhood?

Yes, I did.

Did I need a woman in the store to stop me and ask me why my baby doesn't have socks on?

Was I going to listen to someone who was stopping me and talking to me like that?

No.

Because you're an SWP.

Like, who was going to listen to someone who comes up to you and tell you why?

If I see someone not handling their kid well in the store, like me scolding them, is that going to help them in the moment?

No.

You know?

Guys, so, something that I noticed after having a kid is how intimately related women are to their maternal instinct.

Basically, maybe Shirley can share from a woman's perspective, but from a guy's perspective, you and I know what it's like to have machismo or be competitive with another guy, whether it's working out or just anything.

It's like you want to one up the other person.

I've never seen that in women until it comes to mothering, where they all have an opinion, and it's the best opinion there is, and they will fight each other to prove that point.

It's really interesting.

And I think it comes from a caring place of, this is how I cared for my children.

This was a meaningful, huge part of my life, and I want you to do it too.

But it's really incredible to watch from the outside, to see mother-in-laws come in, attack tigers, and they're like, oh, you need to do this, or you need to do that.

And it's like, oh, wow.

It just gave me insight into how meaningful, what a meaningful part of a woman's life having children is, and how strong the opinions are around it.

It's mind-boggling.

I've never seen women behave that way.

Yeah, I think, I don't know if women are necessarily, or not all of them anyway, trying to one-up each other, but there are really strong opinions about different stuff when it comes to motherhood.

The thing is like, people are different, like mothers are different, and kids are different, situations are different.

So even though it's the best thing, well, it's the best thing for you, or it might have been like a good thing that worked for you, doesn't mean it's the best, or gonna work for someone else.

Like, there could be something else that's also good, that works well for another family, even if it's not the same thing that you did.

Because I probably think a lot of times like, oh, this is, like, this thing is great, like, this tool is awesome, but doesn't mean there's not other tools out there that are also, that would also work well.

But my experience with certain things would be like, yeah, that works really well.

I didn't have anything else to share, do you?

Nope.

May God give you guys...

Wait, wait, wait.

One more thing.

What's a surely fun fact for the day?

Um, I don't have one.

You must have something.

Oh, if you're going to make a dessert with coconut in it, coconut, shredded coconut, roast the coconut first.

Like, yeah, roast the coconut first because it adds to the flavor of it.

So the one way you can roast coconut is by like putting it in the oven in a thin like even layer at like 325 degrees and just like put it in, but set a timer for two minutes and keep tossing it over and over like set a reoccurring timer for two or three minutes until it gets to the color that you want it to be.

Maybe two minutes to be safe.

Yeah, and it makes the flavor be much better.

Just like if you roast nuts or something, roast, basically roasting stuff brings out the flavor is what I've discovered in baking.

Except oatmeal.

I mean, you liked it, didn't you?

Oh, well, like roasting nuts, roasting coconuts, roasting probably like macadamia nuts or something.

Not that I've roasted that many stuff, but in videos I watched.

But I was going to say, may the Lord give you guys understanding for each other's stories, understanding for where each other are coming from.

May God give you guys wisdom.

May He help you guys do this together.

May He help you all navigate the hard things together, even if y'all come from two different sides.

God gave you guys, God gave me, Spencer, and all of y'all, hopefully, well, not hopefully, if you don't have it, and that's how God wanted to be.

Two ears and one mouth.

So listen, listen twice as much as you speak.

This is what I heard on the podcast this week.

Amen.

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