Firehose

Eden Hyder: I've I've never really been one that's that leans toward prescription, right? Like, um, Do this and that should fix it. Right? It's it's more about building up someone's own intuition and instinct and nurturing that inner, that inner voice that can say yes or no, or I'll try this and, um, building up that self trust.

But it is, again, it's hard to do that on platforms that. Really are so short, um, short term, um, or, you know, two-dimensional

Denaye Barahona: Hi, this is Denaye. I'm the founder of Simple Families. Simple Families is an online community for parents who are seeking a simpler, more intentional life. In this show, we focus on minimalism with kids, positive parenting, family wellness, and decreasing the mental load. My perspectives are based in my firsthand experience, raising kids, but also rooted in my PhD in child development.

So you're going to hear conversations that are based in research, but more importantly, real. Thanks for joining us

happy. New year 2022 marks the fifth anniversary of the simple families podcast. I started this podcast back in February of 2017, sitting on the floor of my master bedroom. With a cheap microphone and a laptop, because I had read that the best place to record a podcast is in your closet because all of the clothes, damping, the sound a lot has changed since then.

The show has seen more than 4.5 million downloads it's in the top 1% of podcasts throughout the world, which is a huge accomplishment that I'm very proud of. The show was growing rapidly in the first three years. And then the pandemic hit and things got pretty stagnant. Downloads just kind of stayed stable in the past two years, the reach of the podcast, hasn't really grown.

And of course, you know, I thought it must be something that I'm doing wrong. Maybe I'm repeating myself all the time. I don't know. But I started asking around to other podcasters and found that many other people who podcast on similar topics to mine have experienced the same thing. Now one explanation could be that podcasting has grown immensely and there's a lot of competition out there.

But what I suspect is that a lot of people have moved from podcasts to short form content. As our lives have become more overwhelmed, wanting, want to get more bang for our buck. We're leaning on 30 seconds of parenting content onto. Or reading over one square of five quick tips on Instagram. If you're listening to this podcast, you might not be one of those people who has made the shift over to short form content, but you might be impacted by it more than you think.

That's what I want to talk about today. This shift towards shorter and shorter form content for really big topics like parenting and self-help today I'm joined by my good friend, Eden Heider. If you've read my book, I talk about Eden on page one, because she really was part of my page one. She was probably my very first mom friend.

We both became mothers right around the same time. We bonded quickly over our messy houses and the fact that we were both mental health professional. I am happy to have eaten here today to listen and be my sounding board. As I'm talking through this topic, that's been on my mind for quite a while. I see a crazy number of one minute reels on Instagram that do have valuable content, but it's like a fire hose coming at you faster than you can handle.

And I'm worried it might be hurting more than it's helping. There are so many well-intentioned professionals, speech pathologists, OTs therapists, teachers, psychologists, nurses, financial experts, teaching budgeting, so many amazing professionals, sharing their best tips and tools and strategies in just one minute, you can learn how to be all the things.

And I don't know about you, but that feels heavy and unhealthy. I hope you find this episode useful and I'd love to hear from you. What are your thoughts? Send me a message without further ado. Here's my chat with. Hi, Eden, how are

Eden Hyder: you? Hi, Denaye. Good to see you. I'm excited to be here.

Denaye Barahona: It's good to have you here.

So I have been thinking for the past few months, actually, maybe much of 2021 about how overwhelmed I've been feeling with the parenting and self-care self-help content on social media, especially Instagram. Tech-Talk one minute review. That sort of thing. So I just, I want to talk to you about it and hear how it makes you feel.

Um, and talk about like this pressure. I feel like there's a lot of pressure on parents to be therapists to their kids. Do you feel that? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. What is that about? Like where did that come from? Yeah, I

Eden Hyder: think there's a lot of right. As parents. We have a lot of fear about how our kids are going to do, and we have kind of this illusion of control to thought, like we can control the destiny of our children.

Um, and yes, we, we influence on me impact, but. I think we want to be good parents. And out of that, out of that desire, it just, it gets distorted and, and we try to be too much for our kids therapist among other things. Right?

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. A lot of hats that we try to. Yeah. Too many, too many. And I feel like there are a lot of well-intentioned educators and mental health professionals like you and I who are online and sharing content.

And yeah, sometimes I just feel like it's, it's, we're, we're giving more than people can really digest. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I th and I

Eden Hyder: think you, and I probably both contemplate that as well as we think about and consider it the content that we put out, not wanting to overload, um, but also really, I think wanting to trust our followers and people that are interested by what we post trust them and encourage them to.

Disconnect when they feel they need to, or when they're being negatively impacted by maybe a post that's really positive or really helpful, but it becomes too much.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. And I think that happens all the time. Like a lot of the things that I read online, especially on Instagram, I see a lot of these like images with lots of, um, things you should say to your kids, things you shouldn't say to your kids, like four steps, four pieces of advice.

And when I read those things, I feel like. Those are things I should be able to easily implement just through reading a few brief statements. And often it's much more complicated than that. So I see all these things I should be doing, but actually implementing them. That's a whole nother story.

Eden Hyder: Yeah.

That's something that I've, I've found when people message me with very specific anecdotes they want help with, I tend to really shy away from giving or prescribing, right? Like do this, this and this because I don't know. Right. Like the, the depth and the breadth of their situation and really what my hope is.

In my messages back, or really just to validate their own sense of self knowledge, right. That like they experienced this situation in a certain way and they can discern, they have the capacity within them to discern what to do or how to respond and what's best for their family, their kiddo, their situation.

Um, but it can, it can be completely overwhelming, um, constantly seeing and having your, um, You're a social media flooded with posts about do this, do that. Um, and I think depending on our kiddos, depending on us, we have different trigger buttons, right. So I might be totally fine seeing a post about. Kiddos that struggle with, um, with anxiety.

But when I see a post about a kiddo that's, um, struggles with depression, or it could, or that struggles with food, that might be something that hits a more personal button and where it might not overwhelm you. It might add to my.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. And I think that some of this content makes parents feel like they should be able to fix all these things themselves.

You know, I've recently read two books that were intended for parents. One was one was for parents who were meant to be social, emotional, social skills coaches for their kids. And the other one meant to be parents as anxiety coaches for their kids. And I. Had to listen to several parts of these books more than once, because it was heavy.

A lot of content for me to digest, even though I'm very well familiar with these areas. And all I could think about during these books was like, what would a lay parent who doesn't have a psychology background or doesn't have an education background? How would they experience. This sort of material. I mean, are they going to feel like failures when they say, oh, this is, I should be able to teach my kids social skills and I should be able to coach them through their anxiety.

And then they are faced with this material that is so complex. And so multi-faceted that it's more than they can handle it's above their pay grade. Yeah, I think we all were taught

Eden Hyder: to ignore our limitations. Right. And, and we each have so many of those. And so wearing all these hats that

Denaye Barahona: it becomes

Eden Hyder: kind of stepping into roles, all these roles that we can't do any of them.

Well. Yes. Um, yeah, and, and it also, I think, disrupts something that can be. Of huge value to our kiddos, which is, is building as a support system, right? There are multiple people that are feeding into their lives and offering value and resource to them. And I think when we try and take all of those roles on ourselves as, as maybe part of control or part of fear, it can really, um, hinder our kiddos

Denaye Barahona: growth.

Yeah, because we're trying to be everything and do everything. And we're eliminating the role that other adults might be really playing in their lives. That is, is valuable to them.

Eden Hyder: And he's, even as I'm saying this, I'm aware that we're telling people who put on a bunch of hats to stop putting on the hats and then there's going to be that right.

That sense of, well, I shouldn't have, or I should have, and it, and it it's, it's just this dilemma as a parent to do or not to do, to be, you're not. Yeah. And I

Denaye Barahona: do think that we are faced with so much information, whether it's books or social media or whatever it is that I feel like, I mean, I feel the same way about cooking and recipes, right?

Like there are millions of recipes at my fingertips. Like why is my cooking still sub par? Like, why am I saying, why is my food not like I have all this information at my fingertips? Why is it not amazing? And I mean, the truth is. Like I get overwhelmed by it. And I choosing recipes from like choosing five recipes for one week out of a million overwhelms me and I don't put the effort into it as a result.

And I kind of wonder if there are a lot of people out there feeling like that about parenting content and self-care, and self-help. Yeah,

Eden Hyder: I think there's, I, I feel like I've come across a lot of people

Denaye Barahona: who have read

Eden Hyder: all the books, I've done all the things. They've scanned, all the social media accounts. Um, but they're still stuck.

And just as much as we don't want to be our kiddos therapists, we, it might actually help our kiddo more. If we ourselves. Find a therapist, right. Or get, or get that therapeutic help for ourselves or cooking help for ourselves. Right. We, we, we take classes ourselves to help ourselves do better, be better.

Um, and that, and that flows down into our family system.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. It feels, I just recently thought of this. Analogy that makes a lot of sense to me is that I feel a certain way. When I walk into libraries, I feel like there's so much, I don't know. And I get really overwhelmed, just looking at all the books, thinking there is so much out there that I don't know.

And I don't, I don't know if anyone else feels like that, but, um, I think that's when we're digesting little bits of short form content on social media or otherwise that. It almost is like reading the book jackets of a thousand books and you leave, you leave feeling inspired, but not sure what your next step is.

You don't know how to act, how to make change and all that inspiration. I don't know about you, but I feel like if I can't implement it, then I start feeling like a failure.

Eden Hyder: Yeah, I think, I think I've noticed myself. I, I really narrow the accounts that I follow or that I spend time on. Right. Um, and tend to really invest on invest in, in those accounts.

And that that's probably a way. You can say, okay, I really align with how this person talks, how they, um, post and I, I want, I want to really focus in this area that feels more, um, applicable than, than scanning all these different people who probably are opposing each other in various ways. Right, right.

Getting all this conflicting information and, and there is, there's kind of this paralysis that happens.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. And then you feel like you're doing everything wrong. I remember, um, a year or two ago I was working with this family who had a special needs child who had a child. It was an adopted child. So they had, um, some mental health therapy, that speech therapy, they had physical therapy, lots of different professionals working together with them.

And. The mom was just like, you know, I'm never doing anything, right. Everyone tells me, I'm just doing everything wrong all the time. Like, we'll go by that. And she's like, yeah, well, the speech service therapist said to do this and the behavior therapist had to do this and there are different things. So I must be doing them wrong.

And it's true that different professionals with different trainings and different from different disciplines. Have differing viewpoints. And I think, and even within the fields of mental health, different therapists have different viewpoints and different strategies and models that they work from. And it does feel like you can't be doing your you're going to find ways where you're quote unquote, messing up the more, the deeper you dig, right?

Yeah. I've, you know,

Eden Hyder: early on, in. And my getting my masters, I honed in, um, in, on this phrase of good enough. Um, you, you can only be, and you really only need to be the good enough mother. And that is so freeing as a reminder, right. That we can only. Be good and be good enough for our kiddos. We can't be perfect.

We can't do all the things right. We're going to mess up and that's a given. And, um, and, and embracing that as a way to really demonstrate to our kiddos that like, we, we are human too. We have limitations and we mess up and learning how to integrate those mess ups into the family conversation that feels valuable and beneficial.

To our children and their, their emotional intelligence.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. Well, and I think so often we think when we mess up that, or when we yell or when we lose it and that we're traumatizing our kids, and that's a big fear that I've been hearing from parents online is am I going to traumatize my child when that, that, that I hear that all to that question all the time.

Is that something that you, something that you worry about, do you worry about traumatizing? Oh, totally. Yes.

Eden Hyder: Absolutely. Especially, especially because as a therapist, right. I sit here and I hear about all the things that parents have done from these adult children. Right. So they're sitting in my office and they're saying, yeah, when I was five, when I was six, when I was 13, all these things that they remember that their parents have probably no recollection of.

And I, and those, those moments. Can haunt me if I let them, um, because I do it, you know, in an interaction might happen with my kiddos and I think, oh my goodness, is that going to be it right? Like, is that what they're going to hold onto? Is that the word? Is that the tone of voice? Um, and it is. It, it can be completely terrifying.

Um, if I let it, but I think, again, it it's, it's about leaning, leaning back into that. Good enough. Um, and really trusting in the repair of the relationship that, that actually teaching teaching repair also helps teach resilience and, um, helps them. Understand how to resolve their own conflict. Ultimately.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. You know, so I don't worry about traumatizing. My kids, I'm the total opposite experience. And I think that comes from the fact that I have worked with some quite traumatized children as a social worker, you know, kids who have been through severe neglect and sexual abuse and physical abuse and emotional abuse.

And I've seen how resilient kids are and how resilient those parent child relationships are more. So that's something, I think that in my early days, As a parent child therapist, working with that population, especially that really sticks with me is that especially working in foster care, you know, working to reunify families, to get kids back into their biological families, is that.

The C those kids love their parents. That that bond is so strong, even in the face of trauma. And I see that, that, that good enough work that I'm doing with my kids and how I have largely been able to protect them from. A lot of the big stuff, like, you know, neglect and sexual abuse and physical abuse and emotional abuse.

And not that I'm emotionally the most perfect present, like articulate therapeutic mother ever by any means. But I, I feel like I'm doing pretty good with where I'm at and I'm like I said far from perfect, but, and that helps me to, to know like, The little stuff, the little arguments, the, the hard times are going to be come part of their life experience for sure.

But are they going to him become this traumatic experience that impairs them for the rest of their life? Probably not, but I mean, like you said, I think that all parents are going to do things that upset and harm in some way their kids, without them even knowing it.

Eden Hyder: And I think there's, again, there's freedom.

There's been freedom for me. Just embracing that, Hey, my kids are going to go to therapy one day. They just are right. If they're not already in therapy, right. They're there, they're going to need to hash and work these things out. Right. Their sense of self, what they like, what they don't like what's processing what's happened to them over the years.

Right. Um, processing the complicated relationship. They have with me and their father. Right. Um, but I do think that

Denaye Barahona: fear of,

Eden Hyder: of doing something wrong and of traumatizing our kiddos can prevent us from doing what we may actually feel in our gut is, is actually beneficial and helpful what our kid is.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah.

And part of that for me, is showing up authentically who I am, you know, I'm being me, which is not, I'm not being like therapist in a, I'm being like real DNA, which is different. You know, when you're in an office working with a coaching or therapy client, like that's going to look very different than when you're at home with your family.

And, and that I think is an important thing for, for parents to note, is that. Therapy and parenting are very different. And when you're showing up at home, that looks different. I mean, do you feel the pressure to be therapeutic to your kids all the time at home? I think I

Eden Hyder: it's almost like a Seesaw that I'm on, right?

Like, uh, B being authentically me versus being authentically me as therapist. Right. And. Oh, on the days when I'm maybe more in my head versus kind of present in the moment with my kiddos, I will go more therapist. Um, I'll I'll think about, well, you know, what's therapeutic to say in this moment, what does my kiddo need to say in this moment versus what am I feeling?

I am not feeling happy right now. And I, and I need some space. I need some boundaries. But it is, it's a, it's kind of a Seesaw that I teeter-totter back and forth on. Um, depending on probably how I'm, how grounded I'm feeling in the moment. Um, and, and also maybe how strong that fear is when it kicks in of, or how big the kiddo's emotion is in the moment to, um, that can, but when I will say, when I go into.

Oh, I need to be therapist as parent mode. I do hit the space of paralysis where it's like, what do I do? Right. Versus I'm just in myself being myself as Eden mom,

Denaye Barahona: you know? Yeah. You get stuck in that. Did I say the right thing? What is the right? Totally. What's going to be the result if I say it this way or that way, or what's the right script.

Um, yeah, and I, I think part of the benefit of having some education and training is that. You've internalized. A lot of the principles that underlie being more intentional in parenting and in your relationships. And I think that's the part that we're all missing when we're consuming short-form content on the internet.

Like when I was in grad school, I S we spent like years just like hashing out. Psychological theory, like the underpinnings, how to understand the framework for our thoughts and our feelings and our emotions. And then through that, we've developed some tools and tricks and that kind of thing. But the reason that we're able to really be intentional and in the moment with a lot of this stuff with our kids even is because we have that foundation that has been built throughout years of education and years of training.

I don't think that's something you can learn on the internet. And I also don't think it's something that parents need to learn in order to be effective and loving and warm and kind and present. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed entirely. I think that, you

Eden Hyder: know, what I would add to that list of education and training is self.

Um, you know, I would have been a very different parent at 23, um, than I was at 31 32 and, you know, neither good nor bad, just different. Right. I, I had lived more life experienced, more, more things and, and been able to process more of. You know who I was and how I grew up and you know, what I want to take from that childhood and what I want to leave behind.

And, um, and just an increased self-awareness that helped, um, going into life. Yeah.

Denaye Barahona: And that is as much about life experience as it is age. Right? Like, I feel like that can, at any age, that might come totally 22

Eden Hyder: at 23.

Denaye Barahona: And that's, that's the, that's the real work, right. It's not getting everything. Seeing all the right things. It's really just understanding who you are, what you're bringing to the table. Like maybe a little bits and pieces where you can learn and, and feel good about the way that you're showing up. But I don't know.

I feel like a lot of the messages I'm seeing that are meant to be well-intentioned feel like a lot of pressure. Yeah.

Eden Hyder: And I think even, even when, you know, sometimes I might go to try some of those things that I see in that content or that I come up with in my therapist find, um, Ooh, my kiddos will shoot them down.

You know, I remember, I remember one day, um, my oldest daughter had gotten. Really upset about something. I don't even remember it, but, um, and I went to go talk to her and she, she did not want to talk to me. And she said, because I don't want a therapist. I just want someone to listen. And, and then she said, I want poppy, our dog.

Um, because poppy will listen and not tell anybody and not say anything. Exactly and not say anything back. And that was a good lesson for me. I think, you know, she really just wants a presence there. She doesn't want, she wants, she wants a dog who can be a dog, right. Like a mom who can just be a mom and, um,

Denaye Barahona: and not a therapist.

Right. Not, yeah. Not,

Eden Hyder: not someone

Denaye Barahona: who's who feels like they're working.

Eden Hyder: Right to,

Denaye Barahona: to be with their kid. I feel like I'm most effective at really nurturing my kids and their mental health when I'm just giving them a. Hm like that is, I feel like that's most of the time, the best possible thing that I can do.

Like last night, my daughter at dinner, I could see she gets this expression on her face when she's holding back tears. And I know it so well and we're sitting at the table and. I see that like the tears are just like right about right. About to pour out. And I, I was frustrated with her at the time because she wasn't eating.

She was like trying to craft and eat at the same time. And like, it was a long day and we were tired and I just wanted to get the bedtime routine underway. And so I was frustrated and I just wanted her to eat and get the meal done and she wanted to simultaneously craft and eat. And I got short with her.

And then that's, that's where we were at with like the tears, like on the verge. And I saw that and that helped me to center myself in that. Okay. Like right now, like you just need to show up with a hug and warmth and nurturing because she's feeling emotionally hurt by the way that you were interacting with her DNA.

And like what, how do I repair? And for me, a lot of times that repair looks like just giving a hug and being there and being present. Yeah, I have.

Eden Hyder: I love that. And I think that is, it's a good pause. If we, if we can let ourselves. Absorbed that, that moment in the emotion in the moment, I think oftentimes with my youngest, she will jump to anger first,

Denaye Barahona: really quickly

Eden Hyder: after experiencing maybe hurt or sadness or feeling misunderstood.

And it, it has taken a lot of intentionality over over the years to, to catch those little glimpses of, of hurt and sadness. And sometimes

Denaye Barahona: it's.

Eden Hyder: Yeah. I like what you said. It's, it's like a hug. Sometimes it's passing just silently going and getting a bandaid and passing a bandaid over to her without making too much eye contact either.

And, and kind of expressing this moment of, I see you I'm here and we can just stop for a second.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. Right. You don't have to have any perfect words at those moments. Yup. Right. Alright eating. We're gonna pause right here for a quick 62nd break from today's sponsor. The sponsor for today is by Jews.

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That's a $99 value for just 9 99. You get four classes for just 9 99 at B Y J U s.com/podcast. All right, back to my chat with Eden. I was just, I just saw this book recently and now I'm going to misquote the name of it, but I don't know anything about the book, but I think the book is all the right words you need as a parent or say the right words as a parent.

I'm not, I have to, I'm going to have to go look at it. I don't know anything about the book, but when I saw that, I'm just like, Wow. Like that's a lot, like now I cannot memorize parenting scripts, you know, and I, so I am guilty, but there is one script that I talk about a lot on the podcast that is really powerful for me, which is sometimes we get frustrated with each other, but we still love each.

Yeah. And the reason that, that, and that's when I tell people that script, it's not like I want them to just memorize that script and repeat it. That script is really rooted in some of that underlying psychological theory, but shows that integral at mental theory, which shows that our kids are black and white thinkers.

And they actually think when we're mad at them, that we don't love them anymore. So how do we start to bridge that gap and help them understand that the, those feelings can co-occur right. We can be frustrated and we can still love someone at the same time because they're young developing brains. Don't understand that.

So what I'm doing is I am at those moments where I see that they may be feeling unloved and they may be asking for love and the most unloving of ways that I need to give them. Affirmation over and over again. That's sometimes we get frustrated with each other, but we still love each other. And it's not the script.

I want you to remember. It's the principle, right? That your kids need to hear it. They need to know that you can love them and you can be mad at them at the same time. And they need to hear it over and over again, maybe their whole life. And that that's the hard part, right? When we give someone a short script like that is like they're.

Well, first of all, they're probably going to forget the script, cause they don't know the meaning of the script, but if you can really understand that meeting and what underlies it and what you're doing with it, you're going to remember it and you're going to make it your own. You're going to take the words.

They're going to transform them into something that's more natural.

Eden Hyder: Yes. So my version of that script, I didn't even know you had that script, but my version of that script has been, um, I love you even when I'm mad, right? And, and it's a phrase. Um, I would start the first half and just kind of organically, my kiddos would say the second half.

Right. Um, and I, and it is just like you said, our kiddos are black and white thinkers and, and even as adults, I think we, we also have not fully absorbed. That it's okay to feel both that I can be. I can be frustrated and angry with my partner and at the same time, hold onto faith. Trust love for this person that I know is relatively constant in my life.

Right. Um, and that, that anger doesn't threaten that. It, it can just co-exist with it sometimes.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. I think we can know that on an intellectual level, but having that security is, I think it is a lifelong process, especially it depends, I think a lot also on the way that you were parented and how your parents handled those interactions, you know, did they withhold love when they were upset with you?

And I think if you did have a family like that, where, you know, The cold shoulder was a punishment frequently, then you're probably going to feel that separation of love and anger more distinctly. Um, but I don't know. I think we all probably experienced that on some level.

Eden Hyder: Well, and I think as a parent, too, like when we hear kiddos complain about us or our partners, right.

Or whatever, the teacher or something, right. I think it's. That can be hard to it. We can, we, we can tend to be, get defensive or be like, well, you did this, or, well, I did this because blah, blah, blah. Versus, you know, what I've, what I've found with with my oldest is she really just needs to feel like she can voice her frustrations and voice her hurt feelings.

And again, you know, I can be the dog. I can, I can, I can just sit there and like stroke her back or, um, sit next to her and nod, you know, and, and that's, and that's enough. It doesn't her frustration with me does not threaten my love for her and for her to know that and feel that is really

Denaye Barahona: powerful. Yeah.

Um, it's funny that you say that about at school and like the way that your kids talk about you. So do you know the zones of regulation? I have no idea. Okay. So we practice that in our family. So it's, you know, you're either in the red zone, which is like, you're out of control, like losing it. And that could also be like you're overexcited out of control body.

The yellow zone means you're a little bit escalated, a little bit out of control the green zone, you're calm and focused. And then the blue zone, which is you're feeling sad or lonely. Um, and my daughter's school practices, it's pretty widely practiced in schools. Do they practice it at my daughter's school?

And, um, I had reached out to the teacher to saying that we do it at home and asking like, if she was using it at school and the teacher wrote me back and said, said yes, actually yesterday she told me that she's always in the blue zone at home. And she's usually in the green zone at school. I like to use a lot of profanity.

Cause I'm just like, you know, like you're not really, you're actually generally pretty happy at home, but like those haven't not taking that personal was hard. Right? Like this idea that she told the teacher that like, she's really excited at home because I guess. Observations are that she's not actually very blue at home.

Um, and actually when she told me, I asked her, I had asked her a similar question the previous week and she told me the office opposite. She said, sometimes I'm green and blue at home and I've usually blue at school. So this, um, kind of just like taking that with a grain of salt, you know, those feelings come and go, those zones come and go.

And it's her being at home. It's not, it's not about me. It's. You know, just you're experiencing the whole range of emotions. So I think it can be hard to hard to hear that too. Especially when our kids are, are talking with teachers and that kind of thing and talk, you know, like, especially doing the kind of work that we do.

I think that we often set the bar pretty high for ourselves. Do you find that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Eden Hyder: That even, even. As a therapist and as someone who has like a social media presence. Right. And, um, is pretty active and,

Denaye Barahona: um, an out there in the world, it,

Eden Hyder: you know, the expectation that I have on myself is that we would, we would have our stuff together.

Right. Like, yeah. Um, even the messy moments would go perfectly, you know, there's that pressure and that voice to, um,

Denaye Barahona: To be doing

Eden Hyder: it right, right. To be doing it well. And, um, and for that to be witnessed or communicated to the communities that we're a part of. So school, um, sports teams, things like that. Um, yeah.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. So one of the things message I've been reading, I follow a handful of different influencers in the parenting and self care space. And one of the messages that I've been seeing coming up frequently lately is how worried we need to be about. And about kids who seemed calm and happy as I feel it was not so great.

I feel super triggered by this. Um, I was a good kid. I definitely had not had didn't have good emotions and good emotional experience of my, my whole life as an normal human. Um, but I just, when I read that, I think to myself, Okay. Like, I have plenty to worry about, but now I need to worry about not just the kid who's having like meltdowns and acting out, but it also needs to worry about the kid who seems to be perfectly content and happy.

And I, I get that, like, I understand the B the theory behind it, you know, some kids are internalizers and some kids are externalizers. Some kids like push, push down their emotions and they hold it all in and some kids act out on it. I get it. But as a parent, like reading that messaging that. Hey worry about your good kids.

Worry about your calm kids. Worry about your happy kids. That just the experience of that as a parent feels heavy. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, uh,

Eden Hyder: my son, my oldest is an internalizer and my youngest is an externalizer. And my first thought kind of, as you, as you shared, that was that th their growth looks different.

Right? Um, it's going to be growth for my externalizer. Um, to start processing their emotions and be able to hold onto those emotions a little bit and tolerate them. And it's going to be growth for my internalizer to be expressing those emotions and, um, and it's growth for her to rebel a little bit and it's growth for her to.

Be angry and SWAT at SWAT at the younger sister. Right. Because that's just not something that she does. Um, so, so I think that post

Denaye Barahona: is, is probably at its core about not missing. The, the people who are quiet,

Eden Hyder: right? The people who have this calm exterior on the outside, but it is, it creates an anxiety around that it where it can right.

Create an anxiety around it. Even the good kids aren't safe, which my goodness, you know, you don't need to walk around with that

Denaye Barahona: either. Right? And maybe I, maybe the triggering part of that messaging is not the core messaging, but it's this idea that, Hey, you should be worried about dot, dot, dot, like add one more thing to your list because you aren't worried about enough.

So here's something else that you need to be worried about. And I think that's why that content is so shareable because it is something that's usually not on our radar radar. So when you see something like that, you're more likely to be like, oh, Yeah, what that resonates. I should share that with other people because it's new, it feels new, it feels innovative.

And I think that's just at the moment, I'm sure a year from now, there'll be something else that we need to worry about that is becoming more shareable. Um, well, and I think, yeah,

Eden Hyder: and it feeds on that fear, right? Of like, oh, that shock of, oh, I hadn't. Worrying about my good kid. Like how do I need to be worrying about my good

Denaye Barahona: kid, right?

Yeah. And it, and we're using that word, good kid, like just in quotation marks because they're artists, kids, but that's just kind of like asterisks. Um, but I mean, I do think in many ways that that's, this idea is not that different from like the story. I don't know when we had new babies, when there was a lot of stories about dry drowning going around, you know, about how your kid could swallow like a tablespoon of water and they could die in the night.

And it was very clickable. It was very shareable because it was scary and it was new information. Do you remember. Going

Eden Hyder: around. Oh yes.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. Internal decapitation. That's another one. get rear-ended and they could look fine, but actually dying the night from it's horrifying and I don't want to laugh, but I just feel like these things are so rare and that is why they are news.

You know, something I just recently read was that you can die playing the underwater game where like who can hold their breathless. Hmm. Like kids can like, just be like cooking, like doing a competition of who could have shot longer and that kids could die and they shouldn't be allowed to play that. And I think this was last summer that I read this and I'm just kind of waiting for that to like pop up at the public pool, kind of like they're forbidden from holding their breath anymore and like, sure.

Yes. Maybe there have been accidents related to this. I'm definitely going to get. A few dozen people emailing me after this episode being like my cousins aunt's son passed away doing this, and I feel for that. But I think when we are inundated with this fear-mongering that it really can negatively impact our wellbeing because fear is around.

Eden Hyder: Well, and it can, it can negatively impact our kiddos too. Right. We, we already probably are more, more controlling as parents than maybe past generations. Um, and. When that fear intensifies that that desire to control, um, also intensifies and that can, that can impact our kiddos mental health, right? It can impact, um, their own ability to trust themselves in discerning like, Hey, this is a safe risk to take.

This is not a safe risk to take or, wow. I really feel like I need some breaths. Now I'm going to go up above the water and take a breath. Um, but I, I. I think there's benefit to increasing awareness.

Denaye Barahona: I think you

Eden Hyder: have to be careful how you do that and how much you absorb of that as a parent.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. And it's hard, it's hard to know, like when to turn it off and what to turn off and it can feel like a rabbit hole going down the fear rabbit hole of information.

Yeah. That, so that was, that was one thing.

Eden Hyder: Um, came up a lot as the COVID pandemic started to really, um, take off, uh, a lot of the parents that I see as clients and they might be all across the board as far as like spectrum of COVID Israel COVID is not real, you know, all across, all across that spectrum, but, but the conversation was, you know,

Denaye Barahona: How, how

Eden Hyder: much exposure to what's happening or what could happen? Um, Is healthy for me given this current situation. Right. And how much is, how much is too much, how much is too anxiety provoking? When do I need to slow down, turn off social media? Um, how do I make these decisions? Right. There's so much anxiety that I think was peaked during, um, and is peaked maybe right now, even during the pandemic as parents.

Um, that it felt like there was such a high cost to making the wrong

Denaye Barahona: choice. Yeah. And I think that the, we feel this huge need for prevention in all aspects. How do we prevent illness? How do we prevent our kids from being sad? How do we prevent them from getting their feelings hurt? How do we prevent them from getting bullied?

How do we prevent, you know? And that is also a lot of the pressure that I feel as a parent is feeling like I need to prevent all possible negative. Incidents that my kids might come across and I don't think that's healthy

Eden Hyder: well, and it's not it's, it's not realistic. Right? It's not a realistic capacity that we have.

We just, we can't, um, But, but some way we get the messaging that that's something we should strive for. It is out of well intentions again, right out of, out of our love for our kiddos and our desire to protect them and keep them safe. Yeah.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. And I think maybe that's the difference between our generation and our parents' generation is that our parents' generation didn't know how to identify a lot of this stuff and they didn't have the resources to prevent and to therapize their children.

And they, as a result, didn't feel the pressure to be all the things and do all the things. And now we are faced with so much information that a lot of that information feels like.

Eden Hyder: Yeah, completely. I think social

Denaye Barahona: media has obviously like expedited

Eden Hyder: the distribution of all the information and access to the resources.

Um, but again, we have to really discern when, when the access is too much. Yeah. And, and not healthy for us. And when it's, when it's still really valuable and helpful and informing.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. Yeah. And I think also understanding the different venues for information, you know, like before the pandemic, I think podcasts were a great source of information.

You could listen to like a 45 minute to an hour discussion on a topic. You could think about your own position, what you might do, how you relate to it. And now, you know, I've seen hugely in my work that people have shifted from longer form content, like podcasts to. One minute Instagram reels, and that's where they're going to get their information.

And it cheapens it. I mean, for lack of better words, like you're, you know, it's, you're, you're reading the book jacket instead of the book and you're missing a lot in that you feel like you're doing something maybe, but I do think you're missing a huge, huge piece of the puzzle and, um, just kind of sampling and tasting and not really knowing what suits you or what fits.

And that may be a good

Eden Hyder: takeaway, Denae like this kind of discipline of choosing to read the book and not just the book jacket. Right. Um, out of a desire to really understand something. More comprehensively. Um, and to be able to take away the kind of core message versus the, like the quick to dues don't dues, things like that.

Yeah.

Denaye Barahona: Yeah. But it's hard sometimes. Cause that makes us face our own stuff. Right. If we're really, if we're going to start doing our own work. Yeah.

Eden Hyder: And some days we don't want to do

Denaye Barahona: that. So, no, I don't think you always have to, like, I think that often, like you can avoid as a coping mechanism, but. I think when we're ready to take action and start making change that we need something a little bit more than short form social media content.

Yeah, for sure. So, well, thank you so much for chatting with me about this Eden, as you can tell, I'm like kind of verbally processing all of this. I'm trying to figure out what my role is. You know, like I think I have contributed to this pressure in ways and I don't want to anymore, you know, like I want to be showing up with meaningful content.

That's going to make people think and make people reflect and make people figure out what. There what's best for them. And it's hard to do that in a world where everyone wants like a tweet, you know, rather than a book. So I don't know. It's a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. What about you? Yeah,

Eden Hyder: I th I think, again, my, my

Denaye Barahona: hope is that.

Eden Hyder: I've I've never really been one that's that leans toward prescription, right? Like, um, do this and that should fix it. Right. It's it's more about building up someone's own intuition and instinct and nurturing that. That inner voice that can say yes or no, or I'll try this and I'm building up that self trust, but it is again, it's hard to do that on platforms

Denaye Barahona: that

Eden Hyder: really are so short, um, short term, um, Or, you know, two dimensional.

Yeah,

Denaye Barahona: absolutely. Well, thank you. And where can we find you online on Instagram even after all or your website

Eden Hyder: contact with you? Yeah, so my Instagram is at Eden Heider and. Uh, and then my podcast, I have a podcast, uh, season one is available. It's inside out podcast. And my website either Eden hyder.com or inside out collaborative, which is my therapy practice that I share with my therapist, husband.

Denaye Barahona: Great. And that's Hyder H Y D E R. You got it. Good job. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks again for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed my chat with Eden. If you want the links to get in touch with her, go to simple families.com forward slash episode 2 91 as always. Thanks for tuning in and have a good one.