- Thanks so much for joining this episode, guys.
We love making this stuff to bring all types
of people together.
- Yes, and we did do this topic
in a previous "Middle Ground" episode,
but due to your feedback, we chose to bring back
this topic with teens and parents
that do not know each other.
- Also, if you wanna be in a video
because I love reading your stories,
fill out the casting form below. Enjoy.
- One of the biggest things I believe in
is you don't need a mother,
you don't need a father, you need a parent.
(upbeat brooding instrumental music)
- My name is Anthony Cabassa.
I have three children, and I'm a veteran,
and I'm a parent, and I'm happy to be here.
- My name is Cassandra Roy.
I am a life coach and I have one son, David Alexander,
who is a full-time MFA student
at Yale University on a full scholarship.
- My name is Marissa Gold.
I have two children, they're 13 and 10,
and I also have a parenting company.
I run social and emotional empowerment groups
for tween and teen boys and girls.
- I'm Elizabeth, I'm 18.
Next year, I'll be going to school to study nursing,
and I have two dads and a brother.
- My name is Adam.
I'm 15 years old and currently I'm working
on starting my own clothing brand.
- I'm Noopur, I am a computer science
and engineering major at UC, Irvine.
- [Organizer] I feel too stressed.
(footsteps scuffing)
- The first source of stress
in your life is probably your parents,
something from your parents.
And it kind of, with your parents' expectations,
it kind of builds, at least for me, it did.
- My parents immigrated from India,
and so they went to college India,
and I'm a first generation Indian American.
I did robotics, I did music,
I did volunteering in high school,
and I got into college.
They were like,
"You should finish college in like three years.
Like yes, it's four years but finish it earlier.
Save money, do a master's program, finish master's early,
try and do a PhD, get a job while you're at it."
I don't even think I would be
in college if it wasn't for my parents,
but the fear of disappointing my parents is terrifying.
If I wanted to pursue something else,
I would do it after college.
I would do it after I got a job, I'm stable,
after I fulfilled what I needed
to fulfill for my parents.
- It pains me to hear how stressed you already are
because I think as adults, like, we know,
like, it doesn't end, you know?
Just like it gets harder and hard.
Like unfortunately, unfortunately,
like, life gets exciting,
and it goes in dips and waves and whatever, but-
- But there's no alternative.
You just keep going.
There's no option to quit.
- [Cassandra] I felt like the last kid being chosen
for the baseball team.
(team laughing)
Don't be too hard on your parents
because they're doing the best they can
with the information that they have.
And in terms of you, I would really strongly suggest
that you sit down and have a conversation with them,
because you may not understand this,
but they know something's not settling with you.
- My parents have tried talking to me.
The walls are already there,
and if you don't have the foundation
it's hard to start at a later age.
- [Organizer] I have struggled to be honest with my family.
- I mean, I was in the closet
for 13 years so that was one thing.
It's almost like as soon as I came out
of the closet, everything else did.
I started being more open.
I talked to more people.
I learned how to express myself
through art and through clothing which I'm now doing.
- For me personally, I have struggled
with an eating disorder from the time I was 11
until just recently.
I mean, you're always in recovery if you have
an eating disorder.
So much of that mental illness
is lying and going behind people's backs.
My parents had to sit outside of my shower
at night to make sure I wasn't throwing up.
They had to check in with my friends
to make sure I was eating all of these things.
There was an absolutely no trust,
and I still couldn't feel like I could tell them anything
because my mental illness wouldn't let me.
I have worked so hard to regain all of my trust,
and now my parents trust me to absolutely no end.
They know I will tell them the truth, in any circumstance.
- In my family, we don't talk
about mental illness or depression or anything like that.
We don't talk about sex in my family.
Saying the word "Sex" in my house is like taboo.
And slowly, my dad has tried reaching out
but it's very, like, saline.
Like he once told me in high school,
"Hey, you should go
into this body positivity workshop in school."
Like he could tell that I wasn't happy
with the way I looked.
I couldn't ever really come out
to them about the fact that, "Oh, I had depression."
"Oh, I'm going to see a therapist in college now."
- I think for me, my struggle
with being honest with my family is that,
growing up I was Christian and everything
will solve through prayer and reading the Bible.
If you were depressed, prayer and Bible.
If you wanted to have a girlfriend,
"Hey, that's not allowed."
Prayer and Bible.
My mom was a very fierce female individual in my life.
Her motto has always been,
"Your life is going to suck all the time,
and if you set that baseline
then you'll never be disappointed
because you always expect the worst."
By growing up that way,
I feel like maybe I'm a stronger individual,
but that communication was never there,
and the honesty was definitely not there
cuz there's things that I would do and I'm like,
"Well, that's definitely not Christian like,
so I'm not gonna tell her that."
What I hope to instill in my children.
It's like, "Hey, no matter who you are,
who you love, I'm not gonna be like my mom
where she's like,
"No, you have to be this perfect inside of a box person."
- Personally, I've gone through the same thing,
but now I know that I can tell them an absolutely anything.
When I first started telling my parents
that I was having sex, I was never met with,
"That's horrible. You need to stop."
You're not a good person."
None of that.
The first response was always,
"Thank you for telling us.
Let's, you know, provide protection."
Just in that scenario, I knew that I could be honest
with my parents and absolutely anything moving forward,
but it was hard to tell them that."
(footsteps scuffing)
- As an adult, as a wife and a parent,
the truth was always the best weapon,
for lack of a better word, to lead with
because it cut down on hurt,
it cut down on pain, it cut down on frustration.
Have I always been honest?
Of course not, I'm human.
I like to think I've been honest
about the stuff that was important,
but I've learned that honesty is in fact the best policy,
and it's just easier all around for me.
(screen whooshing)
- [Organizer] Social media can be very positive.
(footsteps scuffing)
- I honestly think that social media
and the internet, in general, has probably been one of,
if not, the best thing in my life.
Having no like queer role models,
seeing no artistic expression around me
in the real world where I am
but discovering all of that through the internet.
- [Noopur] I would not have found out I was asexual
without the internet.
I would not have known what asexuality was.
I would not have even known that was a word.
Because at least, in school and at home,
we never talked about this.
- I was like a little bit like,
"Okay, is it more positive than negative?"
But I think I'm gonna use like, to my own testimony,
how it's been for me.
I started a social media page
under the alias, "Conservative.Latino,"
and I get a lot of hate mail and I get a lot
of people calling me a race trader,
calling me, you know, a fake this, a fake that.
They call me names.
They wish death upon my family and my children.
And I see a lot of the profiles don't even have pictures,
and then I go to their profiles, zero followers,
zero posts, zero nothing.
And I'm just like, man, these people really-
- You're just on here to hate.
- [Anthony] Yeah, exactly.
- [Noopur] Some of them aren't even people, they're bots.
- [Anthony] Yeah, exactly.
- I used to play video games,
and at some point I actually decided to use my voice
in a video, and I am a female in the video game community,
and there's a lot of masculine toxicity.
Every single day, guys just hit on me.
I was 15 years old and these guys were like 20, 30s.
They would like gift me games, ask me out,
and usually it was fine.
I can be always be like, "No."
And most of them were respectful.
Sometimes, they would escalate.
They would threaten to find me out where I live,
they would threaten to rape me.
The point that I realized I had to like get away
from all this is when someone threaten to rape me,
and I actually got scared.
- Yeah, and this is ex, I mean, couldn't be
a better illustration of our parent's worst nightmare.
When it comes to social media, right?
And how quickly it can escalate,
and especially, like, you were 15 which is pretty young,
but there there are kids, boys and girls,
that this is happening to when they're 8, 9, 10.
They have no idea how to handle it,
and they don't know how to even talk
to their parents about it because they innately feel
that there's something off.
But they also feel like they could get
in trouble if they bring it to their parents.
- And I'll be honest, like my daughter has been asking me
since she was like six,
"Can I please start a YouTube channel?"
Like, that's been her dream.
But I go on these articles, and I'm hearing
about like all this online bullying
and especially with females,
I feel it's a larger thing because I was,
like, a youth pastor for my old church,
and a lot of them would tell me
that if they're on social media,
they would be receiving illicit pictures from grown adults.
So I'm like scared, I'm terrified,
but at the same time,
I feel like I'm almost punishing my daughter.
- When she does start to explore that,
I would say don't take it away
because that's gonna make her angry,
and she's gonna find a way to go on it anyways,
because there's so many access points for social media.
- Yeah, that's why I'm just like very concerned
because, as a social media influencer,
I see what I get in my Dms,
and I see that's the type of content that people leave
on my, and I would never want 'cause-
- [Marissa] It's probably part of why she wants to do it
cuz she sees her dad doing it.
- Right, Yeah. - So you're modeling it.
- Yeah, exactly. She's like-
- You know, I mean the kids
wanna do what they see their parents doing often-
- [Anthony] Exactly.
- [Organizer] Do any of the teens here feel
that sometimes your parents are hypocrites
for phone and social media usage?
- [Teens] Yes.
- I see more texting while driving
in the parents' generations.
They don't know about that technology.
They'll be like,
"Oh, I'm just gonna check this really quick."
And that's what causes a lot of accidents-
- My dad has a Velcro patch on his steering wheel,
and a Velcro- - On the steering wheel?
- Yeah, on the steering wheel,
I'm dead serious. It's really bad.
He doesn't understand that you can leave people on red.
Like, you don't have to respond to people in the moment.
If my parent texted-
- [Anthony] Still guilty of that.
I always just feel like I need to reply,
right then and there.
- [Elizabeth] Yeah.
- I'm just like, "No."
- [Elizabeth] The parent generation does-
- the OCD thing- - [Elizabeth] For sure,
more than, I see it all the time.
(screen whooshing)
- [Organizer] I wish my parents listened to me more.
(footsteps clacking)
- There definitely are times that I remember growing up,
and even now as an adult,
where I feel like when my mom and I talk about things
that she sometimes doesn't hear, really.
Like I have to say something over
and over and over and go back to it,
and it's really hard for her sometimes to hear something,
because it's not what she wants to hear.
- I'd have to say my father.
He's what we call it the weekend dad, right?
'Cause that's when we could go visit him
was every other weekend.
And growing up, he sat in front of the TV
the entire time, and he wasn't a good listener.
He wasn't someone that I ever felt
that I could come to for anything really.
And he just feels like the world owes him everything.
Sometimes, he would call me literally
as I'm in class, and I would text him and be like,
"Hey, I can't talk right now."
But he's like, "How come you're always so busy?
How come you never have time for me?"
It just got to the point where he was making me feel
like complete garbage, and he would say hateful things
to me, and I was like,
"You know what? Out of all your children,
I'm the only one that still talks to you,
and I am trying to do the best that I can."
And no matter what, it was just never good enough for him.
(footsteps scuffing)
- I feel so fortunate to have the parents that I do.
Anytime I approach them with a problem,
I am heard, I am supported and usually hugged.
So, growing up, I had so many people think
that I was missing out on something cuz I didn't have a mom,
and that I wouldn't be able to learn
about like what it is to be a woman
or what it is to, you know, have your period or whatnot.
I had so many people approach me and be like,
"Oh well, I know you're missing a mother,
but I'm always here if you wanna talk."
And I'm like, "No, I can talk to my parents about that."
One of the biggest things I believe in
is you don't need a mother,
you don't need a father, you need a parent.
- My mother was also a single parent.
She worked sometimes two jobs,
but she was never too busy to talk to me.
She was dead tired, sometimes.
So what we did was every Saturday we would hang out.
We would clean the house first, get dressed,
get lunch, and that was our time to talk.
Whatever was on my mind,
that was a good time to bring it up.
So it let me know that I could talk to her,
and that's what I've done with David.
Every Saturday, we had David's day when he was growing up.
So if he wanted to eat McDonald's, three times a day,
we tried to convince him for dinner to eat something else.
But you get my point that it allowed him to speak freely.
It's important that we continue to encourage one another,
because you will keep us young,
and we will be able to put some wisdom on you, you know?
And hopefully, we will listen to each other.
- I think that if everybody can just have moments
where they just tell their parents
that they love them, have an honest conversation,
a supportive conversation from both sides,
I think that we need more of that.
(gentle dreamy music)
(team chattering)
- It was nice to meet- - Nice to meet you too.
- [Anthony] So nice meeting you.
- [Adam] You take care.
- Thanks so much for joining, guys.
We really loved revisiting this topic.
- Yeah, it makes me just wonder how, you know,
we were like as teenagers and our parents, right?
- Don't remind me.
- We are trying to revamp "Middle Ground."
If you guys have ideas
of how to revamp "Middle Ground," let us know.
DM us, email us, comment below,
and we love to hear from you guys all the time.
As usual, thanks for watching and we'll see you guys around.
(gentle dreamy music)