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- [00:02]
A
As dad. Some days we feel like we have all the answers, and some days we feel like we don't have a clue. If that describes you, you're at the right place. This is the All Pro Dad Podcast. Hey, welcome to All Pro Dad Podcast. My name is Ted Lowe and I'm father of four. And I'm joined today by my buddy, B.J. foster, father of just two.
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B
Father just two.
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A
As if that's not enough.
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B
That's plenty. That's plenty, right? Yeah.
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A
Well, today it's, you know, I'm kind of excited about this episode. I don't know if excited is the word or a little, a little heavy about this episode, if I'm being honest, but also hopeful. You know, a few. What is it? A month ago, we started talking about this series, very popular series on Netflix called Adolescence. And you guys brought it to my attention and we looked at it as a team, went, wow, this is so powerful. I can see why it's so, so popular. And I just need to say, before we dive into this episode, we are not saying endorsing this series language and there will be spoiler alerts. But. But it did speak so much to what kids are going through.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And to be honest, when I first started, I didn't.
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B
You were happy? No, I was like, I don't know if.
- [01:18]
A
I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through this because it was about an extreme story. But it felt like it was hitting every insecure and protective bone in my dad body, you know, would. Coming up. And it was unsettling, to be honest. And could you give, you know, our listeners, viewers a brief synopsis of adolescence?
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B
Sure. So adolescence is a story of, gosh, I think the kid is 12, maybe 13. He's in middle school, and he's arrested for murder. And you find out pretty quickly that he did it. And it's not so much who did it, because we find out pretty early that he did it. It's why did he do it? And it's uncovering that. And it's uncovering a lot of different dynamics, a lot of different social media kinds of things, outside influences. There's the parental aspect of it. They're kind of thinking, what did I do wrong? There are other parents in the whole thing. And you get to see the dynamic between other parents and their children, and maybe they're missing the mark or stressed out or not really connecting with one another. There's social pressures, there's cyberbullying. There's all these things that in the digital age, in the digital world that we're in now that we have to kind of consider. And so, and it, it's really well done. It's a lot of times it's done in just a single. It's. The whole thing is done in single shot. So they, they never cut away. It's a constant hour long single shot, which definitely builds drama, builds the tension. And I was in a good mood when I started it. And you haven't been in a good mood since, right? Yeah, it's, it's, it's very heavy. It's, I think a lot of things that we really need to take a look at. There's some cult, you know, teen culture underworld kind of stuff that, that, that is out there. And it's, I, it's very real. Like, it's, it's, it's very real and, and, and, and pertains completely 100% to what middle schoolers, teenagers are going through these days.
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A
Yeah. And the example is very extreme, but it could not be more relevant to all of us. That was what surprised me the most. Right. You know, when you see something extreme, you're like, well, that's bad for them. Yeah, yeah. Right. But this happened, it was like, whoa, I can relate. I had so much connected so much with the parents, what they were going through, and again with the kids.
- [03:53]
B
Well, and sometimes it doesn't, you know, like the, the, the things that we go through and the things that kids go through, it doesn't necessarily end in a murder. Okay. But there's so many wounds that come out of this period of life that, I mean, there could be internal deaths that are kind of happening every single day that our kids are dealing with. And so to uncover that a little bit and understand that, look, this is the reality that kids are in it, you know, might, you know, one girl who was murdered and one boy who was involved in that murder, but you get to see the culture of what they're living in and the meanness that they're living in and is unsettling to say the least. Like, I mean, just the way that they treat one another and, and just the, the destruction that's going on.
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A
Right.
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B
And we have to be aware of it as parents.
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A
Right. There were two scenes that I think popped out that spoke, you know, one of them speaking to empathy with the kids and the other one was like empathy for the parents. So the scene that really pops out to me was when the counselor who had been meeting with Jamie, the main character who had been detained, she's trying to talk through some of this with him and he's getting very agitated and he even tries to scare her at one point and she starts talking about some sexuality things and some girls attracted to you. Different things. And it was above his 13 year old maturity obviously because he would even stop and he would say, are we allowed to talk about this? You could tell he had obviously talked about with his friends but he said, are we allowed to talk about this? And I thought, wow, how many conversations he had with kids about this because that's the culture they live in. But being an adult, this is not okay. There was something that was heartbreaking for me that he thought I couldn't reach out to adult who could have really helped him.
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B
It's a total disconnect. I mean, that's the thing. It's an absolute disconnect that you can see the wall between the adolescent world and the adult world.
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A
Yeah. Like you don't understand this land. I'm not going to talk to you about this land because you don't understand it. And it turns out kids aren't wrong in so many ways. Even when we think we do, we usually don't. The other scene that I think any parent hears this, they're going to be, oh, that I can relate to that is at the end when his parents are wrestling with their part of is just so profound and you know, it's easy to point the finger at them. But you're going, oh, I related to this. I'll read you guys a couple of lines from, from the film that I think will speak to this. The mom said this is after it's happened and he's been convicted. Mom says he never left his room. He would come home, slam the door straight up to his computer. Dad, we couldn't do nothing about it. All kids are like it these days. He was in his room. Didn't we think he was safe? You know, what harm could be going on in there? I thought we were doing the right thing. The mom says, you were a great dad and I was a great mom, but we made him. That one hit me. Dad said, so if my dad made me, how did I make that? And then he says, should we have done more? The mom says, I think it would be good if we accepted that we could have done more. And the dad stops, dropped his head and said, I should have done better.
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B
Yeah. And that is the big question of the week is how do we help our kids navigate the digital world.
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A
Yeah. Because I think this series just really exposed the vulnerability of kids in the digital world.
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B
And parents are caught in the middle. They don't really know what to do here. And the digital world. The problem with the digital world is it's constantly changing, constantly updating. So trying to help navigate it is. Can be a real challenge.
- [07:51]
A
Yep. And I think whether you watch the series or not, and again, we're not endorsing the series just as a way of teeing up. The important conversation is, how can we as dads support our kids growing up in the digital world? Here's a little bit of perspective that I want us to walk through and unpack. A little bit is number one. We have to understand things from a teenager's perspective. You could just see this divide between parents and kids. Right. Another thing was the online validation and self worth. The kids get so much of their validation and self worth from things they see online. When the counselor asks Jamie again, who's the lead character, says, do girls like you? He goes, no, I'm ugly. Because what he had seen online had told him, you're ugly.
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B
Right. I mean, I think that's a. That's the challenge. That's the really hard thing with, like, it's hard. And it was hard enough for us when you. You would either get validation or not. We all have an inner critic. That inner critic is looking for validation in a really loud way. And what social media does is they put their pictures, they put their content online, and they're getting real time likes or no likes, and everything is being communicated to the kids. Basically have two voices. You have one voice that says, I'm good, I'm attractive, or there's self confidence. And then you have this other inner critic voice that is just trying to rip the kid apart. And this one is super loud and this one is very quiet. And so when they're not getting likes or whatever, it's just giving a bullhorn to their inner critic. And so immediately, yeah, the kid comes in, he's like, no, I'm ugly. And he's looking for her to say, no, you're not. You're not ugly. And she doesn't say it. And he even tells her, you're supposed to say that that's not true.
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A
I'm not gonna believe you. But you're supposed to, as the adult, tell me a lie.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Right. But. But I would know you're lying.
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B
Right. Or I would think you're. I would think you're lying, like, because this voice is telling me that I'm not. And it's being validated by my Peers, because they're not liking my stuff as much as they're liking Jimmy's stuff or Tommy's stuff or whatever so much. Yeah, it's just a constant comparison and constant voices kind of coming at them. Then next, you have kind of this cyberbullying and online harassment component to this whole story, that the fact that this kid had put something online and this girl made a comment, a negative comment, using emojis that adults couldn't really understand, but the kids knew it. And it got a bunch. Again, it got a bunch of likes. She comes online in front of everybody and in a digital way, smacks him in the face, and a bunch of people kind of pile onto him. And again, it's this. In middle school in particular, there is this culture of just meanness. Like, they have no idea the impact that they're having on each other. Or they do, and they don't really. I mean, they don't get it. They don't understand how much they're hurting one another. All they're looking for is their own validation. If I smack this kid, I get attention like that girl, like adults do. Oh, completely. Right, Completely. Except we understand a little bit more. We're a little bit more. We understand the hurt it's causing.
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A
Right.
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B
We just might decide to do it anyway.
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A
Right.
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B
They. From a. They don't really understand it as much, the impact that they're having. All their thinking is, if I say a smart al. A comment or if I smack this person in the face, I get a ton of likes. I get validation. I feel better. I make everybody laugh. They're not thinking of the casualty that's taking place, that it's coming at somebody else's expense. And that's all what happened to this kid is he got hit, he got smacked, and everybody kind of piled on. And in our day, it would happen at school. It might happen afterwards. We go home, we get a break until tomorrow at school. They go home, they go into their home, into their room, they get on their phone, and it continues. And it continues, and it never stops.
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A
Never, never. 24 hours a day.
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B
24 hours a day. So then you have this pressure to conform to online norms or what people would think is attractive, that girls have to rise to this standard of models and whatever else would get the attention of someone. And then you've got boys who have to figure out what it means to be masculine and strong and tough. And this is where in the. In the story, you know, this. This boy, Jamie, had these things happen where he was. He had initiated with a girl. He had asked her out, she had rejected him. That hurt. And all of a sudden, he's trying to figure out what to do with that hurt. And he's trying to figure out, okay, what do I need to do to be attractive? And he finds Andrew Tate, who's telling him that 80% of the women in the world are attracted to 20% of the guys. So if you want affection from women, you got to trick them. So he's hurt by. He's hurt by a girl, he's angry about it. And he has that anger and that bitterness nurtured by this guy he's finding online who tells him this is what it means to be a guy. Women, they create a ton of problems. You just got to take them and trick them, and that's. And you need to get yourself attractive so they can't resist. Resist you. And then you can kind of be the one in control, right into a
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A
kid's, you know, credit. They're, they're digging for, what do I do? What do. How do I handle something this hurtful, right? And they're going online instead of their parents because you don't get it. So basically, what we're saying, you know, from a kid's perspective, you know, we've got to realize as dads that there's online validation and self worth. There's cyberbullying and online harassment, which breaks our heart, and then there's the pressure to conform to online norms. Right? And from a dad's perspective, I think we have to consider, how do we navigate this cultural divide, digital divide, between us and our kids? Because if we're being honest to one degree or the other, there's a lack of understanding on our part of what they're living in online.
- [14:29]
B
Right? Well, I think even bigger than online, there is a subculture that kids live in. And the reality is, the tough reality is we are not invited to it. They don't want us there. They don't want us to know it. So even in this show, the girl went after the boy with two emojis. That was it. And adults thought he was. They were. She was complimenting him, right? But really, she was digging. She was going after him with two emojis. And the minute we, the minute we learn them, okay, so you might go out and, and, and find an article that's like, what do these emojis mean? The second you read that article, the language is changing. You're behind. You're behind a couple months at least, right? You're just Learning it now. And so that we can ask our kids, hey, what does this mean? What does this mean? And they'll tell us, right? And the second they know that we know what the language is, that's when it changes. And we need to figure out how to deal with that. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later.
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A
Right? And I think another thing that dads, we got to think about is just the difficulty in setting boundaries. What does that look like? How, you know, how long are they on their phones? Are they on their phones? At what age do they get phones? All those things. There's just a difficulty for dads. There's no set right or wrong way. There's no rulebook for anything as being a dad.
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B
But especially.
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A
Especially with this.
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B
I think another thing dads are dealing with is the fear and anxiety about online dangers and how to handle it and then these communication breakdowns. How do I talk to my kids about this? Where do I start? What do I say?
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A
All right, so now that everyone's listening and watching, wants to cry and is totally overwhelmed like we were watching this series, let's talk about some hope, right? And that was the thing we want to do with this episode the most, is give you hope. So let's. Let's talk about what are some practical steps that we, as Dax, can do.
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B
Okay, well, number one, I think it's important to watch for the signs. Okay, so is your kid isolating away? Has their behavior changed lately, even just in the way that are they. Have their clothes changed? Has their group of friends changed in the way that they talk to you? Like, is there an edge to how they speak? Like all these very subtle signs, these subtle tics. Those are the things we need to very much pay attention to. How are they interacting with people around the house? Do they seem more agitated? And some of these things are going to be okay. They're just teenagers. Like, we've gotten plenty of. We've written articles like this, and there are people that comment, well, that's just teenagers. Great. Yeah, you're right. However, that's an evaluation you need to make. You need to be looking for these signs because they could point to deeper things going on.
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A
Yeah, listen. Listen to your. Listen to your gut. And I would say listen to your. Your wife's gut as well. You know, if you're married, if you're married, you know, lean into that. If the two of you are going, hey, what do you think about this? Talk about that a lot. What's going on with them? We See that? But you're just saying, hey, don't. La la la la la. No, right?
- [17:48]
B
Or, or assume that they're fine. I think that was a part of this, Part of the heartbreaking part at the end when the parents are doing evaluation of what could I have done better is they assumed because their son was in his room, he was safe. And that's the problem. It's like if we're sending our kid to 7 11, when they're 11 years old, we're gonna prepare him, right? We're gonna be like, okay, watch out for this person. If this type of person happens, I'll never forget I was leaving a concert time with, with four teenagers that I had taken and they were younger, they were like maybe 13 or whatever. And we were, we were in a city and I said, okay fellas, gather in. There's a lot of weird people outside. Okay, I want you to just walk like you have purpose. Talk to each other, be like having a fun time. If they try to talk to you, just act like you didn't hear them, like you're in the midst of a conversation. I'm preparing them to walk to the car. Right, but are we preparing our kids for what they're going to encounter online? Are we having these conversations? Are we asking them, you know, like, hey, have you ever experienced this? Have your friends experienced this? You know, we need to be asking those questions so, so that they're ready for what they encounter. So watch for signs, watch for signs.
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A
Educate yourself and set boundaries.
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B
Yeah, set boundaries. I mean, I think that's, that's one of the biggest things is you can't just let your kid disappear up, up into their room and devices and think they're fine because they are being influenced by something. A friend of mine used to say, consistency over time equals impact. Well, if they're consistently up in their room and they're consistently hearing from who knows who upstairs in their room, that's going to have an impact over time that's going to be impacting their heart. And what is ever going into their heart is eventually going to come out in their behavior.
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A
That's good.
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B
So we, we have to prepare them for this, but we have to, so we have to have boundaries around these things. Like, you know, I wouldn't, personally, I don't let my kids going into their rooms alone with their devices. I don't let them stay overnight with their devices. They have to plug them in at 10 o' clock downstairs. And so we gotta have some type of boundaries so that they're not lost in this stuff all day, and we need to be. And part of the thing that that does is if they can't be on their device for four hours, what are they going to do with those other two hours? It's more opportunity to spend time with you.
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A
That's good. That's good. What else?
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B
Well, we kind of talked about it a little bit, but listen and talk to your kids, and I think one of the best questions you can ask them is, hey, what are your friends talking about these days? Who are your friends listening to? Like what. Who are your friends talking about that has influence? Do you? Like, these folks start out with their PE peers first because they're much more willing to throw their peers under the bus and say, well, they're into this kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And it gets them talking.
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A
You get, I've got a friend.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, what. What are your classmates?
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A
That's good.
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B
You know, what are they doing? You know, and so it's a little bit. Instead of going, hey, who you. Who are you following these days? You know, that's a little bit more, okay, I'm being interrogated now. But if you, you come in through the side door when you're just like, hey, what are your classmates? You can start to get, hey, do you follow this person? What do you think about them? Or what do you think about what they're saying? You know, what's. What's happening? You know, how's. How are things? You know, have you ever seen any kind of cyberbullying? Have your friends ever dealt with that before? That's probably. And you, you, you could probably pick up some of the signs, you know, if they are like, you know, if they're a little bit dismissive or you start to see them get a little bit agitated or angry, that's probably a good sign that they've dealt with it themselves. Like, have you dealt with this? And be empathetic, show it in your eyes? I think we're very quick to react to the things that they tell us, and it is extremely important not to react with any kind of judgment and to react with empathy and to listen, to validate how they feel and make sure to share your own experiences, share your own struggles. Those are the types of things that I think are able to connect you with the things that they're going through and helps them realize that you understand a little bit about what the things that they're experiencing.
- [22:30]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. Dads, we hope, despite the heaviness of this, you find some hope. And one of the things that I feel like gives us hope every week is to really make what we're talking about a practical thing. So our pro move of the week this week based on this is to set a weekly digital reminder to have an online check in with your kid. Because I don't know about you, but my life starts getting going really, really fast and I forget. So it's just, hey, let me just talk about it with them. And to reiterate what you're saying, it is, you can say whatever, you can be clumsy with this thing, you can struggle with this thing, but you can talk to me because I'm safe. Because they need us to be. They need us to be safe. Bj thanks for talking about this with me and thank you guys for listening. If you want to hear more about the digital divide, you can go to operodad.com you're going to find a lot of resources there. But the main thing I want to say as you're leaving is thank you for listening. We know that you and your kids will be glad that you did. Thanks for listening to the All Pro Dad Podcast.
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B
All probably.
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A
Allprodad is the fatherhood program of the nonprofit Family first, along with our motherhood program imom. We exist to help you love your family. Well, subscribe to our daily email the AllProdad Play of the Day by going to AllProdad.com subscribe and get daily powerful and practical fatherhood tips in your inbox. The AllProdad podcast is hosted by me, Ted Lowe, produced by Bobby Lewis.