The Jeune Maman Podcast
The Jeune Maman Podcast is an audio-journey of the intricacies of Senegalese-American motherhood. Host Aissatou Guisse reflects on her own experiences and shares those of others around her, with the goal of sharing information, imparting wisdom with the help of guest speakers, dispelling myths, and much more!
The Jeune Maman Podcast
E17: Mama Doesn’t Always Know Best! | Senegalese Parenting x Therapy
In this episode, I talk about the importance of doing the hard work required to be a successful parent, including unlearning unhealthy behaviors and leveraging prayer, introspection, and therapy to become better versions of ourselves.
Steph Anya - Effective Communication reference: https://youtu.be/CaB30z_4z54?si=fUlQX4WoCNrHGo6i
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Hello everyone and welcome back to the Gemma Ma podcast, where we talk about all things pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, tips and tricks and more from a Senegalese, american perspective. It's been a while since I've been here, and that's because the last month or so has been so, so, so busy. I won't bore you guys with the details. If you've been following me on social media, you kind of have a little glimpse of what I've been up to, but that's why it's been a while since I've made a video. It's been a lot going on and I just haven't found the time to be quite honest. But I'm back. So today we're going to talk about a lot of different topics that are kind of mushed into the overall topic of like therapy and parenting. So bear with me as I develop my ideas. I'm going to be free flow talking. I have a high level script, but I really wanted to just come on here and talk to everybody about like parenting and the importance of working through your issues and kind of dissecting what baggage you bring into parenthood. The same way you bring baggage you bring baggage into a marriage or a relationship. That's the same way you bring baggage into parenthood, in my opinion, and so that's what we're going to be talking about today. I'll give anecdotes, I'll talk about my journey and then, yeah, we'll just. We'll just go from there. Hopefully it's a good discussion.
Speaker 1:I'm trying something new out here when it comes to the recording. As you know, if you have been keeping up. As you know, my daughter is over here trying to mess my setup. As you know, if you've been following my podcast thing journey, I started off with the audio podcast and now I'm doing audio and video. I'm trying StreamYard. When it comes to the solo episodes, I have tried them in the past for the guest episodes, but I'm going to try them for the solo episodes as well, because I think it'll just make life a lot easier when it comes to editing and post production, all of those things. So let's get into today's episode.
Speaker 1:I'm going to put up my notes here and the first thing that I'm going to talk about is the spirit of working progress, or, as I like to call it, that like not being so hell bent on perfection to the point where it hinders progress or it hinders just results. In general, I have recorded full episodes and then, in the post production part of it where I'm editing and piecing things together, something went wrong or you know, I didn't really like how it sounded, but the gist of it was there and I discarded the whole episode because it wasn't perfect or it didn't sound the way that I wanted it to sound. So I'm trying to break free from that. It also is hard to find time like perfect time to edit and to record when you have a whole distraction all the time, like I used to let that kind of hinder me and stop me full stop from being able to sit down and record an episode. I would actually get anxiety when I think about having to record an episode and be like well, you know who's going to watch Fatima while I do that? Who's going to do this? Is she going to behave? Is she going to do this, is she going to do that? I want to break free from all of that and just bring you guys like raw motherhood what you get is what you're going to get. What you hear is what you're going to hear, like.
Speaker 1:I don't want to limit myself to having the perfect studio environment, the perfect video quality, the perfect audio quality, when I can just work with what I have to get the content out there. So I hope you guys will bear with me through that journey and I'm going to bear with myself to the journey as well. It's always a learning curve, it's always a learning process for me. So I just wanted to get that out of the way. In case you hear Fatima, you know, participating in the episode or me making mistakes as I kind of go through the whole process. Like right now, she literally wants to be part of the episode and I wish I could let you guys see her, because it would make life a lot easier if I could just hold her and record, but for privacy reasons I won't do that. So let's get into the episode and I'm going to stop rambling about the logistics of it all.
Speaker 1:Okay, so today I want to talk about, you know, on social media I see a lot of videos, I see a lot of posts about breaking generational curses all the time, but we never really talk about how and, like I mentioned earlier, in the video, like or in the episode, excuse me, the trauma that we carry from our childhood. It shows up in our adult relationships, but it also shows up in our relationships with our kids as well. That's something that, as a mother, as a new mom, and something, and I don't know, has my new mom card expired? My daughter's about to be one, but either way, I still think I'm a new mom because I'm learning every day. I think you never stop learning as a parent, but especially that first year. To whatever like, there's just a lot to learn.
Speaker 1:That bag is a to bring with you. It will manifest itself in your relationship with your child. When they're quiet and they're not talking to you or they're not really interacting with you, that's a little bit different. But when they start talking, when they start moving, when they start doing things that will kind of grind your gears or will really make you have to interact with them on multiple levels and multiple dimensions, that's when you start to realize, oh wow, these things that I said I would never do are starting to show up, or these things that I, you know, experience growing up or starting to manifest itself in my relationship with my child now. So that's where we're going to be talking about it, and so, in order to fix something, we have to know what that thing is, as well as its root cause.
Speaker 1:And so getting into like, how do you break generational curses? How do you identify the toxicity or the dos and don'ts that you want to carry over into your relationship as an, as a parent and as an adult. And my answer to that always will be a combination of prayer, introspection. And what did I say? Prayer, introspection and therapy. Yes, obviously, you want to make sure that you have spiritual alignment. Whether you are a religious person or not, you have to have some moral compass that you're going to be holding yourself to when it comes to the standards that you want to use to raise your children. That's where some foremost introspection is important, because you always want to be asking yourself how am I doing? You want to check in with yourself, you want to check in with your partner, you want to check in with your kids when they get to that age that you can talk to them and say, hey, how do you think I'm doing? And that sounds weird to say like as a parent, especially in our Senegalese culture, to ask your kid like, how am I doing as a parent. But I think it's important, as your kids start to grow up, that you build that relationship of communication and having frequent conversations around how you're doing, how they're perceiving you as a parent, and then that you have a spirit of continuous improvement versus thinking that you know everything and that everything you're doing is perfect.
Speaker 1:And then the last bit is therapy. This piece is probably, for me, the most tangible that I can give a lot of tips and tricks on, because I've been through therapy many, many times before I had kids and now, you know, being a parent, it's something that I prioritize, not from like a western standpoint of like, oh, therapy is cool, but it is therapy is cool, but for me it's more so. I have to talk things out. I have to have a third person, a third party who maybe doesn't have skin in the game, give me feedback on certain things that I'm doing. And so, even if everything is going well, sometimes I do utilize therapy to just talk things out and make sure that I have my head on straight, that I'm not having blind spots, that I'm not keeping you know in mind when I'm interacting with other people. And as a parent, that's especially important, because you tend to have this mentality of everything I'm doing is for the benefit of my child and I know best.
Speaker 1:I know we always say that like mama knows best or your parents know what's best for you, but that's not always the case. We want what's best. We do our best, we try, but we don't know everything. And so I think, just having that humility and the wherewithal and the humbleness and the the maturity to recognize that you're doing the best, to recognize and acknowledge that we don't know everything, we're not perfect, and that parenthood is a journey as much for us as it is for our kids, then I think that you know you're on the right path, of acknowledging the importance of doing work continuously to be a better person, to be a better partner, to be a better parent. So that was a lot, and I'm going to dive into kind of the meat of the episode when it comes to parenting, having to unlearn some of the things that make us having to learn, and unlearn things that will make successful parents.
Speaker 1:And so, when it comes to Senegalese parenting, some things that I try to unlearn are the parents. Is the parents or parents are always right? I don't believe that kids don't know anything. I don't believe that parents don't apologize. It's not good for your kids. I don't believe that your parents must always have a say in the decisions you make as an adult. Moreover, they should sign off on them and give you their blessing. I don't particularly believe that in every single scenario, and so, of course, there's nuance. All of these things that we're talking about, we'll get into it, but these are just some things that I've had to write down and say, okay, these are some things that I want to challenge myself on as a parent and as my you know child and children are growing up, to make sure that I'm calling myself out on my own BS. That was a lot, right.
Speaker 1:I wanted to start off by saying like, when your children are young, you guide them, you educate them, you discipline them and you nurture them heavily, like their lives depend on you, right? You're feeding them, you're bathing them, you're clothing them, you're taking them to doctors appointments. When they're sick, you're taking care of them. So, of course, it's natural for you, as a parent, to feel like, oh my goodness, this is not only someone that I love, but I have a responsibility, a duty to take care of this person. Now, as they start to get older, that's what is imperative to learn to let go a little bit, and it's a process that you have to learn. It's not easy. I haven't gone through it yet, so I'm speaking from a point of privilege. I acknowledge that, but I imagine that as your kids start to get older. Actually, I'm gonna retract on that. I haven't been through it as a parent, but I've been through it as a child.
Speaker 1:I've been on the receiving end of being an adult and trying to forage your own path and make your own decisions, and sometimes feeling like you don't have the autonomy to do that because of a cultural standpoint. They're always you know what's the word that I'm looking for You're always. You always have to report back to someone, and that's usually your parents, right? So I haven't been on the perpetrator side of it, but I've been on the receiving side of it. I've been a victim of these things where you're an adult, you wanna make decisions, but you can't. You don't have the full autonomy to do so, and so I'll retract my statement on that.
Speaker 1:But really, what I wanna talk about is learning to let go a little bit is something that obviously cannot be easy for any parent to do. It's not easy for the person that you love and you cherish so much to let them out into the world and to trust that the education you've given them, the care that you've given them, is enough for them to sustain on their own. But it is, and it's something that you have to accept, acknowledge and embrace if you want to, as a parent, as your kids start to get older, live a more peaceful life, versus trying to control everything that they do because they're not gonna stay babies forever. I know they say your kids will always be your babies. I hope to experience that. I hope to be that loving mama bear forever and ever. But I also hope to have balance in my approach so that I can respect my kids as adults when they get to that stage and also it'll free up mental space for me to enjoy my life as an individual as well.
Speaker 1:I think we tend to think of the parent-child relationship as so symbiotic, so intertwined and so low-key, interdependent that we can't decouple it and we don't realize that. This is how I view it. You're stuck together when they're kids and you do everything together, so so, so much. And then, as you start to get older, there is that bit of a divide. There is that bit of like a fork in the road where they start to forge their own path and you have to get back to living your life as well, because you also are your own person. You have your own desires and wishes and goals and dreams, all of those things. So that's definitely something we have to understand and acknowledge and we have to check our own tendencies.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we do things without realizing that we're doing that. I was getting my hair done recently and the stylist was saying that she has a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old and she's like I am freaking out because they're talking about like starting to learn how to drive and she's like I can take you, I can take you, and she has to check herself and be like wow, they're growing up, like this is a normal phase of life that they're going through and I can't continue to be a mama bear and helicopter parent them all the time. It's just not gonna work. So prayer, introspection and therapy those three things will help you, I think. Start to at a minimum acknowledge the tendency that you may have as a parent and how you can start to break some of those cycles so that you can have a more peaceful and harmonious relationship with your kids as they grow into adulthood.
Speaker 1:Now I'm looking at my notes here and so I was kind of rambling a little bit, but I was like we owe it to our kids to dig deep and find out what's troubling us what our blind spots are that could be causing us to cause them pain and then address them. So we can't be good parents if we're not good to ourselves and to our kids, like that's just a thing, right. So there's a lot of things that we don't know are hurtful not only to others but to ourselves. We often have to dig deep and find out where that trauma is, find out where those disconnects are when it comes to our relationship with our parents, so that we don't repeat those same mistakes with our own children. So I'm kind of going on a soapbox here about just like thinking hard, digging deep and doing the work that's necessary to become a really good parent and to stay a good parent, because it's a continuous journey. It's not something that you do you reach a destination and that's the end of it. It's a continuous journey as your kids get older and older and older.
Speaker 1:So, like I mentioned, speaking from experience, I have been to therapy multiple times in the past. I kind of treat it like a medical check-in and I will say that I have the privilege of being able to do that through my employer. A lot of the times it's been through my medical plans at work that I have like a wellness aspect of it where I can get therapy sessions at a discounted rate. That is a luxury. Therapy is not cheap. Therapy is not cheap y'all, so I get it.
Speaker 1:It's not always possible to just go and get a therapist and work through these things, and that's why I wanted to bring in the aspect of prayer and introspection, because there are other ways to do the work. It's not just by going to a therapist's office, sitting down and talking about your issues. There are other ways to get it done as well, but it is a very, very effective way if you're honest with yourself, if you're willing to do the work and if you are open to that feedback that you're gonna be receiving, because you may hear some things that you don't like. Hey, hey, stop it. Yeah, okay, um, getting back into the house. So, like I mentioned, it's not what are you Cut, mama, come on, come on, okay, okay, good job. So getting back a little bit into the how of how you should do the work.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to talk about prevention, therapy, introspection and prayer, but a couple of more tangible things that I wanted to kind of deep dive into. The first one is going to therapy and being honest. So the therapist is not there to judge you and tell you that you're doing everything wrong. They're there to listen to you, connect a few dots for you as well, or help you connect the dots and really help you see things from a third party perspective to do on your own, especially when you're in the thick of it, like parenting, sometimes like you don't even realize you're doing certain things. So having that check in with someone where you can just talk about things, but also just recognizing that you have to be honest in that process If you're not honest in therapy, it doesn't work. It doesn't matter what you're going to therapy for. If you're not honest with yourself, it's not going to work. So there may be shameful times. There may be shameful moments, moments where you have to acknowledge like, wow, I really could have done things differently or I'm turning into what I never wanted to become. But it's good to recognize those things so you can take a step back and undo some of the damage before it's too late.
Speaker 1:The next thing is to hold yourself accountable. So if you're going to do the work, it ties into the being honest piece here. If you're going to go to therapy and do the work. If you're going to do introspection and think about the things that you're doing, if you're going to pray on things, you have to hold yourself accountable. So give yourself some measures. That's why I wrote down like the things that I'm like okay, these are things I want to dispel within my own home. These are things that I don't want to carry into the next generation in my own home. Find other ways. If that's not, you know a good method for you to use, but find a way to hold yourself accountable, document your journey and track progress so that way you can hold yourself accountable and say okay, I wanted to accomplish this by this age or by this time and I was able to make this amount of progress. It's really important to track the progress that you're making so that you can be proud of the success that you've achieved but also recognize the gaps that are still remaining and how you can address them. I think a key point here is, as your kids are getting older and you are able to have those conversations with them, they can also help hold you accountable.
Speaker 1:If you're a screamer, that's something, a moment of transparency. I am starting to realize like my lack of patience as an individual is starting to show up in how I'm parenting, where it's like those outbursts of like hey, like I think you probably might have heard it during the episode. It's like hey, and now sometimes it's less dramatic, it's like you just wanna get the child's attention. But if I don't check that, if I don't work on that patient's piece, if I don't continue to address that, it's gonna turn into me as a parent of a teenager and I won't have patience to have conversations, I won't have patience to understand when my child makes a mistake. I'm just gonna go from zero to 100, start yelling, start screaming, and that is not something that I wanna do. So I have recognized that, even though my baby's only 11 months, I have recognized that I have that tendency and I wanna completely get rid of it, and so I'm working on that. So, find those things that you do. It may be something small, it may be something big, but find it, address it, address it and work on it. Like oh, my goodness, I cannot say that enough I found myself being like hey, or like getting in those moments of frustration where you literally are like you have to take a breath. I gotta check myself on that and I'm continuing to check myself on that. So hold yourself accountable, document your journey and just keep working on it.
Speaker 1:And it ties into this next one that I'm gonna talk about, which is to implement practices in your home to make it easier. So have family meetings. They don't have to be formal, it can be over dinner, where you kind of just check in with one another, or like a game night where you kind of just decompress and kind of segue into some conversations around how things are going, how your kids are perceiving you as parents. A question let's see what I have here. Ask questions often and listen for understanding. Repeat back what you heard.
Speaker 1:This is that whole act of listening and trying to be more effective. There's a video that I watched from Steph Arne. I'll link it in the episode description or somewhere around here if you're watching the video, but it talks about effective communication and how active listening is a very imperative part of active listening. No, active listening is a very imperative part of effective communication. So when you're talking with your kids especially, it's important to make sure, especially because for some of us, we are a generation away from our kids, or maybe two generations away, depending on when you had your kids, or maybe for an older parent who had a surprise baby at 40, like I don't know. Like, just depending on the dynamic of your household, it may be that you have a child that is a completely different generation from you. They see things differently, they experience the world differently than you do. So active listening can be a very effective way to make sure that you're understanding what they're saying to you and what they're not saying as well by their body language, and that you are also communicating with them so they understand where you're coming from. So obviously we talk about communication being so important all the time. It's important in every relationship, especially a parent-child relationship.
Speaker 1:And the last point that I wanted to set on here was to forgive yourself, give yourself grace. It's not easy to do the work, to let go of the past. It's not easy to embrace the imperfections, but as a parent, you're gonna make a lot of mistakes. It's okay to make those mistakes as long as you're willing to focus on how to become a better person day by day. Like that's just the point that I wanted to end on there before I do the closing for the episode.
Speaker 1:In general, I talked a little bit about therapy not being free or cheap. I wanted to circle back on that a little bit, because it is a privilege, it is a luxury to be able to pay for therapy. But another thing that I do to supplement the therapy sessions that I have is YouTube. I watch a lot of therapists on YouTube. Steph Anya, steph Anya Steph Anya is one of them. She's a marriage and family therapist. I watch a lot of other videos around how to work through trauma, how to do reflection on your own, how to have hard conversations, how to check yourself when it comes to certain things that you may be engaging in in your parent-child relationship. That may not be helpful. So if you don't have the ability or the privilege to have a formal therapist, you can still do some of the work by taking the time on your own to watch YouTube videos, to read up on books, to just. There's many, many resources out there that you can leverage to do the work that you need to do. So therapy is not the only way, that's for sure. Journaling is a great way to do self-reflection. That way you can start to recognize patterns and tendencies. But you know, yeah, there's just a lot of ways to do the work that you need to do.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna stop rambling because I'm starting to lose my train of thought, but you guys get the point of it, like therapy is not the only way. But I'll close off the episode by saying that it's not easy. It's not a short putt, it's a long putt. You're gonna be in it for the long haul. As long as your child is depending on you, as long as your child has a relationship with you. You're going to have to do the work to make sure that you have a harmonious relationship with them.
Speaker 1:What does this say here? Oh, I was putting in my notes that I do not wanna become an African mom meme, like I want my kids to call me and you know I'm boot up in Bora Bora because I'm so busy and I live my best life but we have that kind of relationship where they are reaching out to me, they want to talk to me, even as adults. So that's my goal and I have to if I have to encapsulate everything that I'm working on as a parent. The ultimate goal would be to have such a positive relationship with my kids that they want to be, they want me to be a part of their lives and I want to be a part of theirs as well, but I also have my own life, so I think that's it. Yeah, in terms of notes, that's what I had for today's episode.
Speaker 1:I guess I'll just close it off by saying like motherhood, parenthood, fatherhood, none of it is easy. Like it's super hard Just me recording this episode. Like my daughter is all over the place. You're gonna hear some noises in the final edit, like that's just what it is. But I'm like I was saying in the very beginning, I'm embracing that, I'm trying to make that a part of the whole process and that's, in a way, very poetic.
Speaker 1:When it comes to, what are you putting in your mouth? What is that? It tastes good, right? Sorry for the interruption. I had to go and retrieve something from my daughter's mouth, because that's literally 50% of my day is having to go chase her down for something she put in her mouth again that she shouldn't have. But I was ending off the episode by saying that, in a way, the hecticness of motherhood, the hecticness of recording this episode, of doing this podcast and trying to manage everything, is very similar to motherhood in general. It's a learning process. It's a steep learning curve that seems to get steeper and steeper as they, you know, gain as they gain new abilities, like they're just are you done as they gain new abilities, like the predictableness of it just continues to go down. But that's what makes it so much fun, and I'm glad that I was able to sit down and record this episode, with all of its imperfections, with all of the mistakes.
Speaker 1:I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you take something away from it, but I would also like love to hear from any listener that has gone through therapy or is thinking about therapy, when it comes to Senegalese Parenthood or just parenthood in general, like what are some things that you're trying to work on? What are some things you want to unlearn and not take into the next generation? What other tips and tricks do you have for others out there who may be interested in doing some of the work but maybe don't have access to therapy or don't know how to get started? I think I'll end it there, because otherwise I'll start rambling, but I want to thank you all for listening, thank you all for tuning in and I will see you in the next video. Slash recording.
