Abundance vs Fear-Based Parenting

In this enlightening episode of The Pulling Curls Podcast, join Hilary as she delves into the intricate world of fear-based parenting. We’ll explore the transition from parenting out of fear to practicing a more positive, reality-based approach, touching on sensitive topics like children’s use of cell phones, social media interactions, and personal attire. Hilary shares her personal journey and insights, offering valuable tips for fellow parents navigating these challenging waters. Tune in to untangle the complex knots of fear-based parenting with us on episode 232.

Find it here on Apple or Spotify Podcasts

Big thanks to our sponsor Family Routines — the best option to help your family get involved more!

Links for you:

My episode with my son: https://www.pullingcurls.com/podcast-073-teen-tips/

Timestamps:

00:00 Marketing creates fear around cell phones, lacking perspective.
04:34 Monitoring phone use, creating responsible habits.
07:53 Parenting marathon, growing and learning, improving.

Keypoints:

Pulling Curls podcast, fear-based parenting, positive parenting, parenting advice, Hilary Erickson, simplifying parenting, Family Routines, parenting mistakes, church influence on parenting, cell phone safety for kids, social media for children, setting phone restrictions, BeReal app, YouTube Shorts, consequences for children, teenage phone habits, college preparation, managing screen time, understanding technology, clothing choices for children, church dress codes, opposite gender interactions, teen dating rules, co-ed social events, communication with children, parenting challenges, raising teenagers, late-in-life parenting, postpartum preeclampsia, weekly to-do list organization.

Producer: Drew Erickson

Transcript

[00:00:00.770] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls podcast. Today on episode 232, we are talking about fear-based parenting, so let’s untangle it.

[00:00:10.690] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary, a serial overcomplicator. I’m also a nurse, mom to three, and the curly head behind Pulling Curls and the pregnancy nurse. This podcast aims to help us stop overcomplicating things and remember how much easier it is to keep things simple. Let’s smooth out those snarls with Pregnancy and Parenting Untangled, The Pulling Pulling Curls Podcast.

[00:00:39.100] – Hilary Erickson

This episode of the Pulling Curls podcast is sponsored by Family Routines. If you are looking to get into a routine with your kids so that you can have these kinds of conversations, be sure and join it. It really helps when your kids are helping out more so that you can do the tough stuff of parenting behind the scenes.

[00:00:55.010] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, so I had my oldest come on and tell me all the things that I had done wrong on episode 70 three of the podcast. And after he came on, I really started to think about all the ways that I have fear-based parenting rather than abundance parenting or positive parenting, those type of things. I was parenting, especially with him, in a lot of fear-based areas.

[00:01:18.920] – Hilary Erickson

And honestly, I think that’s very normal for your oldest. Maybe it was just for me. Also, the church that I attend is very fear-based with our kids a lot of the times, especially when I growing up, it was very fear-based. They were afraid of all these different things, including listening to songs backwards, which I don’t even understand as an adult. But that’s where I was coming from, and it wasn’t a great place to parent him from.

[00:01:44.610] – Hilary Erickson

And I just wanted to share with you guys a few of the things that I learned as a mom. And I also wanted to say that I see the marketing, especially around cell phones, and maybe this is the group that I’m in, as extremely fear-based. It is like we are giving our child a gun, literally, and that is what a cell phone is, and that we have to have all these restrictions. It needs to be in a safe, things like that. Whereas our kids are going to have this gun the rest of their lives, and we need to be there to support them, to show them how to use it. It is our job to give them gun safety classes, right?

[00:02:18.790] – Hilary Erickson

By the way, we don’t have any guns at our house. I don’t know why I came on this metaphor, but yes, it’s our job to show them how to use it and not to be afraid of it, because I think we can all agree that our phones are a very valuable tool for us. So I’m really working on being more positive-based or reality-based, like what they’re going to confront with these specific things.

[00:02:40.210] – Hilary Erickson

So let’s head back to phones. I’ve actually had a few episodes on cell phones, and my thoughts on it have evolved with time. And with my daughter, we are a lot less restrictive than we were with my sons, and this in some ways. So I will say that one of our main rules right now is that starting at 14, because that’s the rule on the Internet, is that you have to be 14 in order to be able to put pictures of yourselves and put yourself out on the Internet, at least for, I believe, Facebook and Instagram, you had to be 14.

[00:03:12.850] – Hilary Erickson

So I said, We are not going to lie and tell them that’s not your age. You have to wait until you’re 14. But at 14, you get to pick one thing to be on. And at 14, I said, That is BeReal, which is the app that she’s allowed to use right now. They’re only allowed to take pictures at certain times of day. They can comment. It’s a nice starter version into social media because I will say with her, I am more concerned about all the effects that social media can have on a girl.

[00:03:41.450] – Hilary Erickson

And so starting in this thing where she’s only seeing friends, things like that has really helped me feel a little bit more comfortable in giving her a little bit more leeway with her phone. The other thing that I do is I share what is annoying about whatever she’s doing on her phone. So she could sit on her phone and watch YouTube Shorts for hours, or forever. So she does have YouTube on her phone. It is restricted. I don’t know how they restrict it. We still use the circle in our home, so it’s restricted, like their safe search type thing.

[00:04:11.020] – Hilary Erickson

But when she sits there and waste so much time, I say, You’re not a very fun person when that’s all you’re doing. And she realizes that. And sometimes we just need somebody to point that out. Honestly, Hilary probably needs somebody to point that out some of the time because you start to scroll TikTok or Instagram, you get sucked in. And it’s not usually in a very positive The other thing is having really serious consequences if she doesn’t get her stuff done. So I’m usually like, okay, hang out with your phone for half an hour.

[00:04:38.250] – Hilary Erickson

They’re not allowed to be on phones at school. So I know that she wants some time to just catch up with friends or whatever she’s doing on that phone for a little bit. And then I’m like, At the half an hour mark, then you need to start getting your jobs around the house and your homework done. I don’t want you just sitting at that table continually texting friends or whatever after that point in time.

[00:04:56.660] – Hilary Erickson

And I think, I mean, what a great thing if she does that in college. She gets home from a stressful day. She gets on her phone, decompresses for a little bit, just like we used to watch TV back in the day. And then she gets on with her work. And if we can start those habits now where it’s not forced due to either some filter or how I have her phone set up, if she’s doing that on her own, that’s going to set her up for a huge benefit when she goes to college. And then also pointing out that I have an issue with it, too. So when I find myself that I’m just scrolling, do scrolling on TikTok or Instagram or looking at other people and wishing I more like them, I mention that to her and say, Gosh, I wish I could be different.

[00:05:33.660] – Hilary Erickson

I wish this was different. I wish I made different choices. And we have that conversation together rather than her thinking, You have this scary, horrible gun, and it could hurt you. I’m realizing that both of us are carrying the gun, and she needs to learn how to carry that gun through the rest of her life. Once again, we don’t have a gun. But I’m saying we look at a lot of times these things as they’re so scary when in reality, I love my phone, I love how much I can get done on it. I just need to use it right, and I got to show my kids how to use it right, too.

[00:06:00.680] – Hilary Erickson

A couple other areas where I had fear-based parenting, especially with a daughter, is what she wears. I don’t want her to portray the wrong thing to people. Growing up in the church that I grew up in, that was a big thing. You don’t show your shoulders, your stuff goes to your knee. And I’m letting my daughter pretty much make her own choices as to what she wears. Now, the one thing that I do have on my side is if I’m going to buy something, I need it to reach certain standards.

[00:06:26.930] – Hilary Erickson

I don’t allow specific sayings on the T-shirts. It’s not just covering certain areas. But if I’m going to buy it, I’ll say, I’m not going to buy that, but if you want to buy it, that’s fine. And then we have those conversations about, were you cold? Did you feel like you had to cover up, stuff like that. She’s experimenting with different things, and it’s just been nice to see her make her own choices and realize what she likes and what she doesn’t like, and me not having to step in and be like, Oh, what are you portraying by wearing that outfit? Or whatever I was going to say. I love that she’s making her own choices in this positive parenting, reality-based parenting way.

[00:07:06.200] – Hilary Erickson

Another thing is interactions with the opposite gender. When is she going to date? Who is she dating? Stuff like that. And letting her make her own choices. In regards to that, we do have some basic rules. Usually at our house, we don’t allow people to date until they’re 16, but she goes to co-ed parties. She goes to plays with people of the opposite gender. We’ve talked about it, and I’m just trying to help her see it in a positive way and make good choices early on instead of just being at 16.

[00:07:32.530] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, you can date. You can do whatever you want, apparently, which has happened in a lot of households. So again, we’re just easing her in, trying to show her the good and the bad, but hoping that she’s going to make good choices because we’ve worked really hard on her.

[00:07:44.640] – Hilary Erickson

And I will say the key to all of this is communication. And I just didn’t have the time as much when my oldest was the oldest because I had little kids beyond him. So I just didn’t have the time to talk to him as much as I do this last one. And I will also say that I knew all along it took us a while to get pregnant with our last child and trying to… I knew I was going to have to gear myself up that this was going to be a marathon because our next child is already a sophomore in college, and she’s a freshman in high school. So I’ve got these four years that I’ve got to keep going. I know I’ve seen a lot of parents who just petered out at the end. They were just too tired to really parent that last kid.

[00:08:24.900] – Hilary Erickson

So trying to keep it positive maybe helps me not feel so worn down by parenting and also helps her that she’ll be able to take these things and use them as she grows up and grows older. And I will say that I’m a much better parent by child number three than I was at number one. And I tell number one that frequently. I’m sorry, I was practicing. I wasn’t any good at it. And hopefully he understands that. So how are you fear-based parenting versus positive or reality-based parenting? Come over, tell us on Instagram. We’d love to have a chat about it. Thanks, you guys, for listening.

[00:08:58.430] – Hilary Erickson

Next week, we’re going to talk about postpartum preeclampsia. And then the week after that, we are going to talk about making a weekly to-do list with organizations so you’re not overwhelmed. So stay tuned.

[00:09:09.330] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks for joining us on the Pulling Curls podcast today. If you like today’s episode, please consider reviewing, sharing, subscribing. It really helps our podcast grow. Thank you!

Keywords:

providers, pregnancy and delivery, Julie Kyle, certified nurse midwife, Pennsylvania, hospital bag checklist, nurse with 20 years of experience, four main providers, free birth, risks and unknowns, knowledgeable provider, training and experience, healthcare providers, qualifications, absence of midwives, spectrum of lending, formal education, certification, regulations, lay midwives, fees, value of knowledge, Ma on a little house on the prairie, historical role of midwives, birth centers, home births, Arizona, board centers, certified professional midwives (CPMs), licensing process, number of babies delivered, certified nurse midwives (CNMs), stereotypes about midwives, hospital setting, collaborative practice, integrated approach, terminology, full title, background in nursing, master’s degree, misconceptions about midwives, certified professional midwives (CPMs), licensing and state laws, administering drugs, tasks performed by midwives, obstetricians, education and training for doctors, residency, specialization