A comical video of a millennial daughter teaching her baby boomer mother how to raise a child today has struck a chord with parents and grandparents. The ironic video has been viewed more than 21 million times since it was posted on Wednesday, and that number continues to grow.
Comedian and author Taylor Wolfe, whose Instagram account is @thedailytay, plays the role of a millennial mother in the video, while her mother Sandy plays the role of a baby boomer grandmother. In it, Wolfe described a mother who said seemingly innocuous words to her granddaughter, such as “be careful,” “stop hitting me,” “I’m so proud of you,” “hurry up,” and “be careful.” He’s been right many times. ”
But if you’re a millennial parent who spends time on social media, you’ll see Instagram posts and TikToks imploring people to avoid this word and use “kinder” language to avoid damaging their children. There must be a rush of people.
In one scene, a grandmother tells the children to be careful while they are playing outside. Wolf interjected, “I’m not going to say ‘be careful’ anymore.” Instead, say, “What’s the plan here? ”Please say. ”Then Grandma retorted indignantly: Do you know your plans?
Wolf said the idea for the video came to her when her grandmother was visiting for a week to help with her children, ages 1 and 3 1/2.
“What inspired me was knowing that she came here and there were going to be things that we obviously didn’t agree on. Parenting changed a little bit,” she said in the book Birdie & Harlow. Wolff, author of , told HuffPost.
“But of course, I don’t really say that to my mom. Sometimes I think that in my head because I watch too many of those (social media) videos.”
Today’s parents have access to far more information on how to raise children than previous generations. Much of the parenting advice floating around on the internet is well-intentioned, but it ends up making us afraid of saying the wrong thing or feeling guilty if we don’t follow the script. , Wolf said.
“Right now, we have too much information and we know too many different ways to mess with it,” Wolf said.
Wolf’s video humorously captures this pressure that many millennial parents feel.
“The millennials I see are laughing at themselves. They’re like, ‘Oh, I do this too, and I know it’s stupid.’ Or, “I know that would be too much,” Ms. Wolf said of the response to her video. “And I think baby boomers probably feel a little bit vindicated by that or are like, ‘Yeah, that’s too much.'”
“It’s funny because it’s true,” clinical psychologist Ashlina Ream reposted Wolf’s video to her Instagram account @psychedmommy, telling HuffPost.
“This just highlights the impossibility of parenting these days with unrealistic expectations and how we have access to so much information,” Ream said. spoke. “We are meant to be these ‘experts’ in using these scripts to communicate with children. It’s ridiculous to watch as a satirical clip, but it’s true. ”
“This just highlights the impossibility of parenting today due to unrealistic expectations and how we have access to so much information.”
– Ashlina Reem, Clinical Psychologist
The parenting scripts you see all over social media should be taken with a bit of a grain of salt, not as gospel. Think of it more as an idea or inspiration. Use what you want to use and ignore what doesn’t work for you.
“In an ideal world, you wouldn’t be saying, ‘Be early,’ all morning every morning, right? But we live outside of the vacuum of social media, where we have to go to work and… I have to get my kids dressed and out the door,” Ream said. “It’s impossible to gamify everything when resources are scarce, undervalued, and struggling.”
Based on his years of experience as a psychologist, Ream emphasized that telling a child to “be careful,” “good job,” and “I’m proud of you” doesn’t hurt the child. Nor has she come across any “significant research” that suggests that is a possibility, she said. In fact, she typically hears from her therapy clients that they wish their parents had said these things more when they were children.
“We can all say different things and still raise well-adjusted, healthy children.”
– Ashlina Reem
“I’ve never heard an adult come up to me and say, ‘My parents always told me they were proud of me or that I did a good job, so I’m essentially saying something. ‘I’m always looking for external validation.’Usually I hear the opposite,” she said.
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“I hear people talking about not listening enough, because their parents aren’t really verbalizing, not sharing their feelings, not explaining things to their parents. They didn’t understand. “
Perhaps this video will serve as a reminder that we all need to hear. It’s okay to parent in a way that feels right for you and your child, even if it doesn’t necessarily align perfectly with what parenting experts recommend.
“We can all say different things and still raise well-adjusted, healthy children,” Ream says.
