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Chronicles Of A Therapist
Chronicles Of A Therapist
Tell Your Kids It Was All A Lie
This episode tackles the essential but often romanticized concept of adulthood. Through personal anecdotes and reflections, we explore the critical responsibilities of adulting, the need for open conversations with teens, and the importance of fostering emotional resilience.
• Confronting the myth of adulting as freedom
• The significant role of parents in shaping maturity
• Importance of realistic expectations for teenagers
• Emotional regulation and resilience challenges in modern youth
• Necessity of completing high school education for future opportunities
• Encouraging open discussions to prepare teens for adulthood
• Advocating tough love as a key to responsible upbringing
Hi guys, welcome to Chronicles of a Therapist. I am your host, cassandra Shepherd, and welcome to my space. Therapist. I am the host, cassandra Shepherd, and welcome to my space. So I talked about TikTok and stuff last episode, but the segue of my concern of young people, I posted something I believe it was on Facebook and I went on a very dramatic tangent and only and I'll tell y'all this the reason why what prompted it is, y'all know, I work in a school.
Speaker 1:I work primarily with middle school and teenagers, high schoolers and I have met so many teenagers throughout my career who really have this thought process of and we had it too I can't wait to be an adult because when I'm an adult, nobody is going to tell me to do anything. And after this conversation with this teenager, I said that is false, that is a lie, that is not and and nobody nobody, when I was a teenager and thought that way, said this to me. So in my brain, I feel like we should tell young people this. It's a lie because it gets worse when you become an adult. The level of responsibility and have to's are diabolical. Like as a teenager, you're upset, or as a kid that your mom asked you to like clean your room because it's your space and you destroyed it and that makes you upset now. Now, granted, because of child development. I understand why, developmentally, children, teenagers, struggle with being told what to do, especially those children who did not have parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties, grandmamas, who was on their neck, like when you parallel, parallel, having a certain type of parent who just was on your case about stuff, about, and not even like naggy. I'm not talking about naggy parents, because that's a whole, nother subject. I'm not talking about like nag, oh, my god, your shoes are dirty, take your shoe off. You stepped in mud. Well, duh, I stepped in mud, why? Why would you think that I wouldn't take my shoe off? You stepped in mud? Well, duh, I stepped in mud. Why would you think that I wouldn't take my shoe off at the door? We're not talking about them, parents, but the parents. Like I've talked about my dad, I've talked about my mom. They and I didn't realize this until like this level of adulthood they were on my neck. So much the reason why I'm successful. I can work multiple jobs, I have multiple degrees. It's literally because of how they was on my neck, like my dad conditioned us so bad.
Speaker 1:I remember, being four or five, crying about oh my God, my toe hurt. You know what Frank would say Is it bleeding? No, okay, go give me a knife so I can make it bleed. No, I'm fine, like.
Speaker 1:So I say that like, when you have a certain level of parents who shape you, who shape you for responsibility, who shape you to problem solve, who shape you. I remember at five we were ordering McDonald's. You know why my dad would say I'm not eating it, you want as you order it. I have met teenagers who cannot go to McDonald's indoors and ask for whatever they want. You're not even paying for it. Like, huh, you can't tell the people what you want. Why are you so I say that to say these are the same children who I don't want to be told what to do. So the reason I'm having this episode as adults, please, if you have children in your life, teenagers, you work with kids. You got kids. You got nieces and nephews, cousins. Please tell them, and not in a way like you know you had people.
Speaker 1:I remember when I had to walk to school and it was oh, that's not what I'm talking about. Don't lie, don't, don't lie, don't lie, don't say that type of stuff. Tell them when you have to decide if I want to pay my car note or book this flight, that's adulting Because I want to book the flight, because I want to leave, and being an adult is getting on my damn nerves and I don't care and I just need a reset. Or I want to really buy these new shoes really bad because they're nice and I like them and they make me happy, but I kind of need to drive to work. I kind of should pay my mortgage on my rent because I kind of need a dwelling, because I got a family, and if I don't pay it, then who the hell gonna pay it? Like what? So we need to tell our teenagers this, because they are growing up and, granted, these are the same who don't know how to emotionally regulate themselves because they crash out on social media all the time, and that's okay, because their society says that's okay. If they are the generation who, like I'm, I would never say that mental health was never a thing.
Speaker 1:We were raised different. You might have been anxious and depressed, but guess what? You still going to school. You still going to school. I know you don't want to go to school. You have social anxiety. I don't care you are you throwing up? You got a fever, you're going to school and some people's parents didn't even have that. You, I don't want to hear that and you better not call me. You better not call me and tell me nothing. I gotta go to work, you're going to school.
Speaker 1:So we were raised with that line of thinking, where we persevere, whereas these generations, they, don't know how to do that. So we need to tell these children that being an adult is not the end. All be all like. Being an adult is not like oh, I'm gonna be an adult. Well, here's the thing when you're an adult, when you are grown, you can provide for yourself, you can work and provide. Just because you turn 18 don't mean nothing because you're still living in your mama's house or your daddy's house or whoever's house. It ain't yours. You're not paying no bills at all, you're not buying no food. Who bought your clothes? Now?
Speaker 1:Now, granted, there are teenagers who, unfortunately, are adults. All of us know, have have grown up with them. They are cousins. They was working four or five jobs. Either they had a kid at 16 and they had forced, were forced, to provide for themselves and their children, or they looked at their life and said well, my mama got health issues and I'm the oldest, so I guess I'm getting two jobs I'm gonna go to school or I'm going to drop out of school because I got to work to provide. Yes, there are people like that, absolutely, but we ain't talking about them because these kids are not doing that. I don't know. None of the kids that I work with have that story.
Speaker 1:Granted, I work at a charter school. It's very small and when I listen to my teenagers I'm like, yes, you guys. Yeah, it's not a behavior school, but y'all have mental health and stuff. I can tell. But like, are you telling me that you're upset that all the adults want you've already flunked and you're supposed to graduate, but you're still a junior? Want, you've already flunked and you're supposed to graduate, but you're still a junior, you're not doing any classes and you just want to like kick it and play with fidgets all day and like not do no work, and we are spazzing out all the teachers in the building because we want you to graduate. You know why we want you to graduate? Not just so we can get you out our hair. We want you to have because you need at least a high school diploma, like our kids don't even realize, like when we were teenagers, you could be 14, drop out and get your GED. You can't do that. Guess how old. You got to be 16. You got to be at least 16. So, like we, we OK, yeah, I need to go to work, I'm a dropout, I'm just go ahead and get my GED. They can't even do that. So that says you got to at least have a high school diploma. The job market for people with high school diplomas and no skills is difficult. So why would we not want our kids to at least at least at least get a high school diploma?
Speaker 1:So I say that because I'm surrounded by teenagers who think that way oh, I'm so anxious, you are anxious. You do struggle with depression, you have had traumatic situations, but and I said this and I and that probably sounded harsh but I don't care. Nobody really cares. I'm a therapist, I care society doesn't care. As a therapist, if I'm having a shit day, it don't matter if I got six clients I gotta talk to, and I know at least three of them are suicidal and I know they on suicide watch. More often than not I'm going to work, I might be struggling, it don't nobody care, nobody cares, nobody cares.
Speaker 1:So we need to, literally sometimes our kids need tough love, and not in the space of I'm making like brown beading you, but like we have to set up our teenagers, our middle schoolers, because they, oh my god, y'all are going to be the ones taking care of us and y'all don't have no stress tolerance, no distress tolerance at all. None, zero, zip. Y'all are crashing out because somebody cut you off while you're driving. That happens every day there. All of us have had experiences where you want to literally ram somebody. I see myself doing that often. But here's the thing insurance I, if I, if I take this jeep and ram it into this car, that would be so gratifying, until I can't drive my car and I go to jail for vehicular homicide or assault, and this is a cascading failure like.
Speaker 1:So our teenagers, our young people, don't think oh my god, because y'all play GTA and you can literally do that in the world of GTA. Sure, you can. You can blow somebody up, you can be so mad. I'm gonna lay, give me the laser gun, I'm gonna. You can blow somebody up, you can be so mad, I'm going to lay, give me the laser gun. I'm going. You can't do that in real life. You will go to jail. You can't do that. Would it be fun? Possibly, maybe, but then you're going to go to jail for homicide because you killed somebody, because you just wanted to shoot them, like the same people with the mental health struggles who are shooting up churches and and malls and clubs. They are going to jail, do they have mental health? And I promise every one of them, people, people knew they were struggling. Every they were connected to somebody. It was a family member, they had it there, somebody knew, nobody cared enough to say, hey, uh, johnny was talking.
Speaker 1:Real weird case in point, jeffrey dahmer, you cannot tell me, as creepy as that guy was, there was nobody. There was nobody in that boy's life who said something's wrong with him. You know why? Because, unfortunately, as a society, we don't care, people don't care. This is the same reason why you ever, you ever, people scream help. Nobody responds. You know why. Somebody else going to do it. I don't want to do nothing with that, right? That's why they tell you if you're in an issue, if something's going on, you scream fire. You don't scream help because nobody's coming. Somebody else come for a fire help. Nope, nope, somebody else. If I heard it, somebody else had to hear it. I might be the only person on the street, but somebody heard it.
Speaker 1:No, so I say that to say we have to teach our children are, and even not even not even our middle school teenagers. If you're not teaching your toddler structure, this is why they are how they are now, because there was no structure at all. And I'm not saying just your parents. Some people got amazing grandparents, sometimes the grandparents' structures or the aunts or the uncles or the coaches or the pastors or the. When you can't teach your children structure, they don't believe that authority is a thing and they grow up thinking I can't wait to be an adult to do what I want because I can go rob a bank, because I can go to the liquor store and rob the liquor store. No, you shouldn't go to the liquor store without any money, because the rest of us who like to drink I just got paid, let me go get my fifth, let me go get this bourbon right quick, you don't just walk into a store and steal it.
Speaker 1:No, but if we don't teach our children problem solving, if we don't have these conversations to let them know, because I say this all the time to young people. I wish somebody would have told me, because they really was letting us believe that being an adult was the easy. Maybe it was just my parents, but I'm sure y'all parents made that stuff look like cake, like man. Look, even if you were struggling, you didn't realize how much y'all was struggling because our parents shielded us from so many things that when you got an adult you was like oh, I had a great conversation with my mom a couple months ago about whoopings and my mom I think I might have got three whoopings from her and my mom was, I told y'all she was dramatic.
Speaker 1:She would make me go in my room strip down and I would wait for hours. I would just be waiting like it's nine. Why, why? Why are we doing this? Like what kind of torture? Why? I didn't realize this until a couple months ago. My mom said you know why I did that. I really did that to calm down. Yep, I was calming down because you had pissed me off and I didn't want to hurt you. So I would go do, I would go wash dishes, I would go do other stuff to have myself calm down, so that when I was giving you a whooping. It was an actual discipline. It wasn't me beating the hell out of you. What? Oh, I never knew that, and I'm almost 40. And I just found that out.
Speaker 1:Like I said, our parents made things very easy. And then when you become an adult, when you want to take your kid's head off and you think about what my mom was never or maybe she was, but it wasn't to the level of anger that you have because that kid did something stupid Our parents shielded us from stuff. So to prevent these unhinged young people, you got to have those conversations, you got to give them spaces to talk about reality. Like the best thing I would tell adults. Take a kid through a script, all right. So you're going to graduate from high school. Do what you want to do. I don't know, I'm just going to like not work, okay, okay. So if you don't work, you don't know, I'm just, I'm just gonna like not work, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:So if you don't work, you don't have a house, because where you gonna stay, you can't stay here, because we had the conversation that when you turn 18 you're gonna get a job, gonna go to the military, gonna get out or something. So you don't have a job, so you don't have a house. So now, what? Well, I'm just gonna well, but you don't have a house. So now what? Well, I'm just going to, but you don't have a car, so you don't have a dwelling. I'm just going to have fun, I'm going to play video games. You have no home, though, so I know you just want to play video games and eat Takis all day, but you have to have a home, electricity and Wi-Fi and a TV, because all that stuff I provide. So help me understand. Oh yeah, so let's, let's try to start working on budgeting. Let's try to start.
Speaker 1:So we got to start teaching, because they are very this generation is very much um, they don't have to be told what to do, and we weren't either. Let's be real. A lot of us, we had trial and error, trial and error. So be creative. Talk to your young people in a way where it can reach them. Maybe they are a gamer, maybe they love gaming. Okay, I notice that you game often. You get home from school and you game. You're now a junior, you are not working, so what's the plan? What's the plan because you graduate the plan Because you graduate next year. Like are you going to school for IT? So you can like make games, because that's cool, we can support that. That's two in one, we can do that.
Speaker 1:So, like, I think it's important as adults to give them the space to explore. Oh, I want to. I laugh and I shouldn't laugh. I have met so many young people who want to be rappers and then I listen to their material and I'm like do y'all hear yourself? Like, do you? I know that mumble rap is a thing, I understand that, but do you hear what you just said? Okay, do you realize how much work it is to be an artist, how much money it takes? No, let's do some research. Let's research some artists who actually are making money long term, not one here to quitters. Let's research some artists who've been doing this for a minute, who got some real money. So, encourage your youth that way. Like I don't think that some of the Facebook wouldn't be around if somebody told Mark not to do it. So I don't think that you have to turn down great grand ideas, but you have to help them play it out.
Speaker 1:You have to ask those questions because otherwise they will continue to live in their delusions and their friends will encourage them and they're all going to be content creators and make a lot of money, but none of them know how to edit or have equipment or even have a computer. All they have is their phone. And if you know anything about content, you can record it on the phone. But where are you going to house it at? And once you house it and edit it, it gets bigger. These are the conversations have with your young people. If that's what you want to do, you know what? Make me a video. Okay, after a while your phone's going to crash out. Then what? Hey, you might need an actual computer. So these are things that you should. I encourage you to have those conversations, because the reality of being an adult people still going to tell you what to do because we still got to pay taxes, we still can go to jail, you know, like let's be real Like even people who are homeless on some levels are choosing to be homeless.
Speaker 1:Even if they're homeless and hopping from shelter to shelter, there is a level of choice, because every shelter that I know of there's a program where you can get a house. So they are also choosing to be homeless because they want to. It's 20 degrees right now they are choosing to be cold. There is choices, and just because you're an adult doesn't mean that there's a golden ticket and you can just I can just do it's not. So please, ma'am, please, sir, help your kids. Thanks for listening, guys. You can find me on Instagram at CNChef, underscore Chronicles, and I will catch you on the next one. And don't forget to allow your passion to prepare your purpose. I'll catch you next time. Thanks for watching.