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Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream. Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025, Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin. All rights reserved. So I'm a bad mom. I guess I'm a really bad mom because it turns out I have done the cardinal sin of new age parenting and I have never asked my daughter for her consent to change her diaper at six and a half months old. This is real Parenting experts are now telling parents that they need to get consent from their infant children to take their pee and poop filled diapers off of their bodies. And while we're at it, they probably shouldn't even do it right away way anyway because we need to teach consent to our infants. It's gotten me thinking about the last several decades of horrible expert parenting advice and I think we should probably ask ourselves, are the experts really worth listening to at this point? A few days ago I was sitting on an airplane coming home from a very quick day trip to Nashville and I start scrolling through social media to see that the New York Post had shared perhaps the most insane parenting advice, if you could even begin to call it that, that I've ever seen in my entire life. Here's the headline for you from the New York Post. Parents Should Ask for Baby's Consent. Our Baby's Consent before changing their diapers According to the parenting experts out there in the world now, instantly I just was taken aback. I was aghast to be honest with you. You guys know I have an almost seven month old right now. I change a lot of diapers every single day. And if I've learned anything about the changing of diapers, usually it's just about last thing that your baby actually wants to do in their day in, day out schedule of the entire experience. Literally like babies immediately when you bring them home and they have no idea what's going on and they're out of the womb for the first time. Freak out when you are taking clothes on and off of them, you're trying to wipe things, you're trying to throw things away. Like it's just too much going on. And now that my daughter has mastered the rolling process and we are very rapidly approaching the crawling era, which I'M totally not prepared for when it comes to baby proofing my house. For the record, I cannot imagine a more stressful experience than changing my baby's diaper. Like, truly, it is the craziest thing that we do every day. Legs are everywhere, kicking, just hands everywhere. It's insane. It is true chaos at any given time of the day. She needs it though, right? Because I, as a good mom, I'm not going to let my baby sit there in her own filth for hours and hours and hours and hours and get a rash and skin irritation and and UTIs and God knows what else because she just didn't want her diaper changed at that particular moment in time. So I start reading through this article, trying to give the benefit of the doubt to whatever these experts might have ended up saying about why we need to ask for our babies consent in changing their diapers. And it turns out this is from a larger study that was conducted by childhood development researchers in Australia. Here's what this article starts with with It's a move that might stink to some parents, no pun intended, but there is a new age way to change newborns. Undies. Yeah, when I see new age parenting, immediately alarm bells start going off in my head. But they say drenched diapers, wet, dirty diapers are no longer messes that need to be ripped off of your baby's bottom post haste, according to new advice by these parenting experts, these researchers in Australia. Instead, instead of immediately changing your baby's dirty diaper because you don't want them to, I don't know, get a urinary tract infection that can turn into a blood infection that could kill them. These experts I'm going to keep doing the gigantic quotes around that are encouraging moms and dads to request their infants consent. You read that correctly before changing their diaper. This study literally has this quote in it at the start of a nappy change, ensure your child knows what is happening. Get down to their level and say you need a nappy change. And then pause so they can take it all in. But their offbeat directives for cleaning a cutie's patootie, a task that parents often rush to just get done, the researchers said. Don't end there. Then you are supposed to ask your child, once they've given you permission to take the pee and poop off of their body, do you want to walk or crawl with me to the changing table or would you like me to carry you? Is what you're supposed to ask your baby how you possibly know what your kid wants in that exact moment in time. Good luck with that. But they say that you should observe their facial expressions and body language to check if they understand what is happening. Look, I'm a first time mom if I've learned anything as a parent and I'm sure I'm gonna say this six or seven times in this episode to really hammer it home and make this loud and clear. The only thing I've learned about parenting expert advice is that there really is no such thing as a parenting exper at all. You feel like you're on the job every single day of your life. I feel like I'm still trying to learn new things about how to help be there for my child and nurture her and help her develop appropriately every single day. Long story short, I have no idea what I'm doing. I am learning every day and parents of kids much older than mine are saying that that is basically how it feels for your child's entire life, including when they are adults. You are always learning on the job. So I am never going to self proclaim myself or this show the expert parenting show or myself as a parenting expert, but are we seriously comfortable listening to the actual self proclaimed parenting experts to say that our children's body language and facial expressions as a newborn or infant should be able to tell us if they're okay, if they're consenting, if they're happy with the idea of changing their diaper? Not right away. God forbid you change it right away, but when you know they're like emotionally ready for it. Really honestly, like what? What are we even doing? So this article obviously took me back. I was aghast, truly off my rocker. I recorded like a six second video of myself reacting to it while I'm sitting on this airplane and using crappy weight plain wi fi. I ended up posting this on Instagram, which has now racked up a whole bunch of views and a lot of input. Input from people, especially current parents, who had the funniest things to say about all of this. Amy Maine said my kid would have a constant rash if I was asking to change her diaper all the time. She turns into Nacho Libre every single time I try to change her life with Laura says let me go ask my 6 month old, I'll be right back. And so many people in the comments are saying yeah, experts my ass. You clearly are not parents or you're like literally delusional if this is the type of stuff that you are genuinely suggesting to actual parents doing this in the three dimensional world not the abstract inner workings of our minds, the inner machinations of our minds. So this got me thinking about some other expert parenting advice I've come across over the years that at the time before I had kids, seemed totally wild and out of the blue to me. But now as a mom, I'm rereading these stories and I consider all of them to be certifiably insane. Key takeaway, I guess, is that there is no such thing as a true parenting expert. And if someone is self proclaiming themselves to you as such, you should probably sprint in the other direction. Back to the insane parenting advice of the experts in a moment. But first, a message from our friends at Instagram. One of the most common questions that I am getting from parents of kids of all ages right now is what we are going to do to keep teenagers safe on social media as they navigate all of the important content that is out there. The truth is, protection of teenagers online as they navigate social media is something that we all as parents can stay ahead of together. And and as a new mom myself, I feel that responsibility so much more deeply now. As my daughter Isla grows up, I want to feel empowered to make sure that she is being safe and responsible when she is online. Last year, Instagram became one of the first platforms ever to truly take this very seriously by launching what they call teen accounts. These accounts automatically limit who can contact our kids and what type of content they are ever exposed to in the first place. They designed this reimagined experience with parents hearts in mind to support you and to bring more peace of mind. Nearly 95% of parents say that these new default protections have helped keep their teens so much safer online. And that means everything. Setting thoughtful digital boundaries is not about fear or fear mongering. It's about showing your teens that their safety and their innocence matter so deeply to you. When parents like you and I safeguard the spaces that they explore, we are building a foundation of trust and that they deserve to know that they're growing up feeling secure, loved and protected. That's why I am so grateful that Instagram is taking these important, proactive steps in online safety. You can learn more about this incredibly important work ahead@instagram.com teen accounts. So let's read through some of this other advice because it's genuinely some of the most insane garbage I've ever seen. There is, of course, the classic rule of so called gentle parenting. I consider gentle parenting to be a scam in and of itself and maybe we'll do a whole extra episode of that, but here's one for you from the National Association. I want to make sure I'm reading this correctly. The national association for Child Development, literally, the self proclaimed so called experts, Bob Dohmen says this. You should never say no to your child, ever. One of the most common words he says that children hear is the word no. I have heard parents spew it out like bullets being fired from machine guns. What an odd thing to say at the same frequency and with what often sounds like similar intent. So the national association for Child Development is telling you every time you say no to your child, as a parent, you are basically using a machine gun to shoot bullets at your children. That's how severe the word no has become. How do you think that most children by the time they be 6 months or 16 years old define no as spoken by a parent? It could mean mom or dad saying, stop it for now, I don't like it. Or perhaps later. Or is that just the noise that they make when they're in a bad mood? The word no is defined for a child by the consequences that follow its use. They say never say no, never as a parent, unless you are going to physically stop the offending behavior or deliver a consequence. So I'm a new parent. My baby literally only says one word and that's mama. Sorry dad, but like I am really proud of that, that that happened this week. Pat on the back to myself, mama is the first word. Thank you, Lord. Have we been singing Mamma Mia. For months to get us ready for that? Of course we have. There's nothing wrong with a little parent indoctrination. Okay, I'm putting that out there. Uh, but if my daughter were to open her mouth and ask me tomorrow, hey mom, can I go sleep over at my boyfriend's house? I'm not supposed to say no. She's not doing an offending behavior. I'm not necessarily going to ground her for something like that. But I, I'm never supposed to say no if I don't know. My 14 year old daughter is asking, should I go spend the night at my boyfriend's house? What if my daughter asks, hey, Jack in my class has decided to become a drug dealer. Is it okay if I buy drugs from him? She's not actively engaging in offending behavior. It's a question. It's an interesting question, one I'm sure many parents have gotten in the past. And just to be clear, national association for Child Development. I'm never supposed to say no. What if your son, teenage boy, is like, hey, mom, can I log on to OnlyFans today and use your credit card to pay $50 a month subscriptions to watch legitimate pornography? I'm never supposed to say no unless I'm physically stopping my child's offending behavior or delivering a consequence. Interesting. Other therapists are taking this forward several steps. There's a therapist on TikTok who actually says you should never say no. Never, never, never, never say no, actually. Instead, the way to tell your child not to do something ironically is to tell them to do it more. Listen to this. And Doug. Here we have the limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds of with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. People always say, don't say no to kids because that triggers them. So instead of saying no or stop, I'm gonna say, hey, do that four more times. Okay, now do it two more times. Do it three more times. One, two, three. Okay, now turn them off and leave them off. Okay. When I need it back on, I'll tell you. Okay. High five. So you're never supposed to say no. You're supposed to, like, wean them off of it. This is literally like the nicotine pat concept for your kids. Instead of just quitting cold turkey your bad behavior that you shouldn't be doing, don't ever say no. Say, okay, do it four more times. So do it more. Do it four more times. Do it two more times. Do it one more time, and then we can probably stop again. I return to my examples. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you no for wanting to spend the night at your boyfriend's house as a teenager. Just do it like four more times and then two more times and then maybe we can stop after that. Yeah, I don't love that you want to use my credit card to pay for an only fan subscription as my teenage son. But it's okay. We can do it for like four more months and then two more months and then maybe we'll, like, wean ourselves off of it. I really don't want you buying drugs from your classmate Jack, even though you asked so politely. But maybe you can just buy four more joints and then two more joints and then maybe you'll just, like, get it out of your system and you'll decide not to want to be a drug addict anymore. I mean, these people are certifiably insane and probably bad parents. Not that I'm a parent Shamer. Please don't hear me say that or not raising kids. I don't know who this Bob guy is who wrote this from the national association for Child Development, but the headline never say no to your child screams, I spend no time with children. And I have such an unhealthy relationship with children that I have no idea how to help them set appropriate boundaries to live a healthy, regulated, normal life. People are actually even taking this steps further. Not just that no is the worst word in human history and that we should never say no to our children, but there are other words and phrases we should never say no say to our kids beyond just the word no. 1 parenting coach, self described parenting coach on TikTok, says we shouldn't say good job to our toddlers when they do a good job. That's demeaning, apparently. Listen to this.
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I don't say good job. Here's why, and here's what I say. Instead. We don't say good job or good girl or good boy. To be honest, that kind of reminds me of talking to a dog, so I just can't get my brain around it. But here's the biggest reason when we are trying to help our toddlers learn appropriate behavior. For example, if my toddler, who's two and a half, is super frustrated because the baby took his toy and instead of shoving the baby away, he gently asks, baby, can I have that? Or he gives him another toy and says, baby, can we trade? I don't want to just come in and say a blanket get like, good job or that was such a good boy. You were being so nice. Because that shifts it to an extrinsic motivator. When we say that sort of positive affirmation for our toddlers, we're shifting their focus to keeping us happy, right? This is an external motivator. This is how children grow up and become people pleasers. Because the only thing they learn to look out for is, how do I make my mom happy? How do I make my teachers happy? How do I make the adults happy? How do I make my boss happy?
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Right?
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They're always looking for that validation externally. Instead, we want to help them feel that motivation and that positive affirmation intrinsically, internally. So this is where we shift our language a tiny bit. And instead of saying like, good job, you were nice to the baby, I would say like, wow, you really figured out how to solve that problem. Wow, that was a tricky situation. And you work together with brother to figure that out. We're putting the focus back on them. Wow, I saw you pause for a minute when brother took that toy and.
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It was really hard because you were.
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Frustrated, but you didn't push him. We put the focus back on them, on what they did, on how they reacted, on what we saw, almost in this neutral storytelling sort of way. Because then they learned to be proud of that behavior, that action, whatever they did intrinsically right instead of extrinsically simply pleasing us as their parents. And research has shown us that intrinsic motivation, internal motivation that comes from within yourself is so much more powerful for us when we're children and as adults, kind, caring, compassionate, contributing members of society. I do give my character, kids praise and affirmation and positive words, but I do it in this way very specifically to build up that intrinsic value within themselves.
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This is fascinating. This is genuinely a fascinating way to look at the world. I appreciate actually that she continues to praise her children. I think that's something we should be doing as parents, although CBS News would beg to differ. We'll get to that in just a second. But it is fascinating to be consciously raising an entire generation with no extrinsic motivation. Everything is supposed to be intrinsic motivation. I don't know about you, but when I hear that type of worldview, I'm thinking we're raising an entire generation of legitimate narcissists. Like people whose literal, only motivation is what's going to happen. Bring them internal satisfaction, raise their personal ego, make their priorities the number one most important thing in the world, rather than reading the cues of important authority figures in their life, like a parent or a boss or someone that they're accountable to, a coach. They're not considering what is a good job to society and to serving other people. But the only thing that they should be considering is what is serving them. I'm sure the next viral insane parenting expert hack is that your kids should never even eat real food. It should all be ultra processed crap. But I'm not falling for that and neither should you if you are a mom who wants the best possible food for your kid. But you still wonder, is this actually safe or healthy for them to eat? You need this amazing tool that has transformed my life. Food labels can be so misleading. With seed oils, additives that are banned in Europe or around the world, endocrine disruptors, microplastics, heavy metals. The whole thing is so overwhelming. And that is exactly why I use Olive. Olive is like having a clean living expert right in your pocket. It is 100% independent. No brands paying for better ratings. Just credible, transparent information that you can actually trust. One quick scan and Olive looks past all of the marketing and big dollars in big food to flag ultra processing sketchy additives, seed oils and hidden contaminants in our food. If you scan in the grocery store and a food scores very poorly, Olive will even recommend a safer, cleaner, non toxic alternative for you. And they are building the most comprehensive independent database of lab tested products out there ever. This is not just talk. Olive recently completed one of the largest independent baby food studies ever done in history. They tested over 300 products for lead and arsenic for actual ISO accredited labs. Real testing, real results. If you want to know if your baby's food has been contaminated with lead, you can just ask Olive. Truly, this thing has become my go to sidekick As a mom. Anytime I'm confused about what is going to be safe and healthy for my daughter, what's considered an ultra processed food or what I can reliably trust. And I use it for my husband and I as well. I whip out Olive at the store or even just type in something that I'm hoping to buy online. And they have given me so many incredible swap options that I feel way better about the food that I'm buying and stocking in our house, in our fridge and pantry. If RFK Make America healthy again. Message. Maha resonates with you too. But you are so tired of decoding confusing labels and ingredients that you just can't even begin to pronounce. Olive is about to become your best friend. It is the app for the Maha movement. My listeners here on the Isabel Brown show get an exclusive, exclusive seven day free trial. You guys can try Olive scan your pantry. Make sure that you are feeding your family only the very best. Download Olive right now in the App Store. This is a parenting coach coaching other parents on how to behave this way. And this type of content, shockingly is really, really working. I'm seeing this literally all the time on social media. This is on my for you page almost every single day of my life. These parenting coaches giving tons and tons of advice. This woman that we just reacted to has almost 300,000 followers on TikTok, bringing the incaps joy into toddler parenting. And I'm sure she's a wonderful parent. I don't want to give her any sort of mom shaming here. I'm not interested in doing that. Mom shaming sucks. Everybody's just trying to figure it out as we go. None of us are experts, but that mentality seems to me to be a symptom of a much larger social disease where we have let ourselves be convinced that the only important motivators that we should be teaching our kids are self serving. If this is what all the parenting books are saying, no wonder we've gotten here as a society, frankly. And while we're at it, while we're raising an entire generation of narcissists, maybe we should just let our kids decide their entire schedule. If you need everything to be self motivated, if you want all of your motivations to be what serves you and your interests in that exact moment, rather than putting healthy boundaries or reading cues from the adults in your life, kids should just pick their whole schedule at this point, even as babies or toddlers mom.com mom.com ran this headline recently I let my kids pick their own bedtimes. Oh, this wasn't that recent. This was nine years ago. So this has been going on for a very, very, very long time. July of 2016 this woman says I let my kids pick their own bedtimes. She says my kids tend to go to bed when they're tired, not when they're told. I don't believe that it's natural or healthy to expect a baby or toddler to sleep through the night uninterrupted by themselves. And I'd even go so far as to suggest that sleep training is nothing more. Nothing short of rather emotional neglect, which ignore the natural development of a baby through to a young child parenting is exhausting. Da da da da. For me, putting a child to bed before they're tired, sometimes in the daylight, and making them stare at the ceiling to fall asleep eventually through boredom is not compassionate, gentle parenting. Interesting. There's that buzzword again. Maybe we really should do a full episode breaking down gentle parenting at some point in time. Children, she says, are young only for such a short window, and I feel it's not unrealistic to allow our own needs for rest to take a back seat to the children's higher energy levels while they learn to adjust their circadian rhythms. As many mature adults, we learn to adapt our old lifestyle pre children from an egocentric perspective to a more collective perspective. We need to be letting our 5 year olds make their own bedtimes, she says. We always have let our 5 year old stop when he drops, usually around 10pm in the summer and 9pm in the winter, and as a consequence he compensates by waking up later on in the morning around 9:30am Our youngest is one and a half and typically goes to sleep around 8pm and wakes up around 7am Parents who haven't experienced children who don't burn the candle at both ends may not have seen this kind of sleep compensation occur if they haven't stuck it through a short trial of child led bedtimes My kid is in the midst of a very heavy sleep regression right now. So yeah, I can concur with parenting is exhausting. We're in the midst of teething, we're learning to crawl, we're learning to talk. The idea of getting more than like five hour stretches of sleep at night is a long forgotten memory in the era of sleeping training my baby. But something tells me well regulated healthy kids, which pretty much every actual scientific understanding of child's brain development requires a bedtime routine, not just random picking when I'm going to drop, fall asleep, fall over from exhaustion out of necessity rather than encouraging healthy actual rest. So that's mom.com telling you you should just let your toddler pick their own bedtime. But it's not just moms. Fatherly.com the dad advice magazine out there says, dads, you are doing a really bad job actually in how you talk to your kids. When you call them buddy, they say you need to stop calling your kids buddy. The actual headline is F Buddy. Find a better nickname for your son. Don't use the same name on your kid that you use on strangers who offend you. What this whole article starts with despite being generally libertarian about nicknames for children, I believe that there should be some ground rules on what you call your child. I have sons, so I'm particularly interested in establishing some guidelines on that front. More specifically, I don't think anyone should call their little boy buddy because doing so either displays a disconcerting level of patronization or a questionable undercurrent of aggression. Often both. Your child is not your pet. Your child is not your friend. Do not call your kid buddy. There are so many words in the English language, so so many terms of endearment, so many permutations of the name that you give your child. Buddy. A weirdo effing word that is at once specific and vague. Is a cop out worse than a cop out? It's a bad cop out. As anyone who casts a shadow knows, buddy is not purely a term of endearment. Buddy, according to no less an august source than the Cambridge Dictionary, can be used as a form of address when talking to a man, sometimes in a friendly way but often when you are annoyed in my mind because I didn't go to Cambridge, Buddy is always a part of the phrase, hey Buddy, go F yourself. Obviously that's not what I want to tell my kid. At least not all the time. I have so many questions. Are dads really wanting to tell their kids go F yourself? Seriously? And is you saying, hey buddy, hey bud, come hang out with me? Honestly, you telling your child to go F themselves on one hand, I actually kind of do understand this one. You are your kid's parent. You're not their best friend. And I do think that's really important in establishing healthy, important parent child relationships. But seriously, calling your son Buddy is going to ruin his life. These people need to get a grip. They have desperately got to get a grip. Everything is being overthought and over analyzed and redefined by the parenting experts, the mom.com and fatherly.coms of the world to make you feel bad about like your natural human instinct as a parent, probably by people who don't have great relationships with their kids. While we're at it, actually, you should never call them a cute nickname like Buddy. Don't say anything nice to them at all. Remember how I said it was actually probably a good thing that that lady who didn't want to over praise her children still wanted to praise her kids? Yeah. CBS News ran a story 10 years ago. This is how long they have been planting the seeds to come to fruition of where we are now. So if you think kids are hyper narcissistic in our culture now and very motivated by the wrong things, these were seeds planted for a very long time by the radical individuals of the world. They say parents who overpraise their kids are breeding trouble, according to a major study. Interesting. Parents who overvalue their children, believing they are God's gift to man, tend to raise youngsters with an overblown sense of their own superiority, says a study from 10 years ago. This is how long these people have been pushing this down your throat. From the National Academy of Sciences. One guy who participated in this study from Ohio State, Brad Bushman, says it comes pretty naturally. Most parents think their children are special and deserve better treatment. But when our children receive special treatment, they become narcissistic and come to believe that they are more superior to others. And it's good to be a warm and loving parent. But it is not okay to constantly give affirmation to your child to tell them that they're doing a good job. Back to the episode in just a Second. But first, believe it or not, the holiday season is right around the corner. Next week is Thanksgiving, in case you're not keeping tabs. A week from today, and I'm already planning my menu. I'm so, so excited, but I know this time of year can be really overwhelming. The shopping lists, the travel plans, the parties, and a million other things that just start piling up way too fast. It's easy to feel like Advent especially, is just one long sprint instead of a time to slow down and prepare our hearts for the true meaning of what this season is all about. But what if this year looked a little bit different? What if instead of getting caught up in the chaos, we actually learned to find peace right in the middle of it? That is exactly what my friends at Hallow are inviting us to do this Advent season. They've launched a very powerful reflection series called Pray 25 Be Still. It's all about learning to pause, to quiet the noise of the world, even for just a few minutes a day, and to fully reconnect with God. Because, let's be honest, we scroll a whole lot more than we pray. We rush a whole lot more than we rest. And then we wonder why we are feeling anxious and disconnected. Through Hallow's Pray 25 challenge, we will all meditate together on Psalm 46, be still and know that I am God. You can join Jonathan Roumie, Chris Pratt, Sister Miriam James, Gwen Stefani, and so many others on this incredible journey to stillness and peace. You'll hear reflections from the reed of God and the ruthless elimination of hurry, two beautiful reminders that slowing down isn't lazy, it's actually holy. You'll also walk through the real story of Christmas. Not the picture perfect version that we see online, but the true one, full of uncertainty and faith and trust in God's plan. If you've been craving a lot more peace this time of year, more purpose, and actually more time to hear God's voice, this is your sign. Go to hallow.com Isabel right now, for three months, free of the number one prayer app in the world, let this Advent be about presence over pressure and faith over frenzy. I know. I'm so excited to get a blanket, settle in and be still with Hallow this adventure. So in this study, they evaluated almost 600 kids age 7 to 11. They asked these parents and children a series of questions and if parents said, my child is more special to me than other children, they got a bad grade on this study. So now, interestingly, this is escalating not just to Never say no to your kids, but also never tell them that they did a good job. So just playing both ends of the of the spectrum here. They're actually trying to convince you as a parent from the so called scientific experts of the world, the National Academy of Sciences, you guys, that if you are a parent who sees your child as more special to you than other children, that makes you a bad parent. Bad parent. So bad. Chastise you on the international stage. You are breeding horrible, self interested, narcissistic children if you personally value your children more than other people's children. For the record, actually that's a very biblical concept. Matt Walsh talks about this a lot and I so value how he analyzes this and tries to bring it into the fold of modern culture as it exists today. The concept is called ordo amoris. Michael Knowles talks about this a lot too. That your ultimate responsibility is to love God and your family and your immediate community first. That's where your loyalties initially lie. And the more you love your family, that then will spill out to how you love your community and that will spill out to how you love your country, the world subsequently, et cetera. So that is very normal. It would actually be a huge sign of imbalance and psychosis, in my opinion, like genuinely insane behavior if you didn't think that your kid was more special to you than other people's kids. Your kid was given to you. Yes. As a gift by God. Sorry, CBS News. I know we're not supposed to be saying that because they are yours to shepherd and raise and take care of. If you didn't have that sense of attachment to them, you would be abandoning your own child. But this is how far we're willing to go. I guess everything is a crisis. Everything is something to overthink. Everything is something to redefine. Everything. In the era of new age parenting, of which they've been planting the seeds for this for a very, very long time. The most insane example of this, beyond asking your baby for consent to change their diaper, which still is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen published, started happening a few years ago that there became this conversation nationally about the push to ban gendered toys. The state of California began, the first state in the country to actually enact a law about this a few years ago. I remember having to do several news interviews about all this as it was happening that in department and big box stores it was illegal. Now this is a law in California to sell gendered items to children, which includes like pink toothbrushes, Marketing to kids versus Blue toothbrushes marketed to kids. You can't have a girl's section in a toys department or a boys section in a toys department. You can't even have girl versus boy clothing sections marketed to kids. The Guardian really started pushing for this again almost nine years ago. This is how long it takes for these ideas to trickle down into the rest of culture. They started publishing official research asking, are gendered toys harming childhood development? Research, they said, has found that dividing children's toys based on gender can have lasting developmental implications. Many parents, they wrote in 2016, are tired of the pink and blue divide in the toy aisles. Just last month, the White House, that was then the Obama White House held a conference on gender stereotypes in toys and media, with many toy manufacturers and experts attending. After the feedback, Target announced in 2015 that it would get rid of signs labeling toys for boys or for girls. A UK campaign called Let Toys Be Toys seeks to get rid of retail or to get retailers rather to stop categorizing toys and books for one gender only. I mean, you guys, who cares? Honestly, who cares about any of this? There's like, this has been a conversation since forever, first of all. But do you guys remember the episode from the 90s and early 2000s of Friends where Ross's son Ben is raised by two lesbian moms and is playing with a Barbie and then Ross is trying to get him to play with GI Joe and this is like a whole thing. Did that mean that Ben wasn't a boy? No. Did that mean that Ben was trans? No. Did it mean that he was gay? No. But generally speaking, is it okay for a Barbie to be a girl's toy and a GI Joe to be a boy's toy? Yes. That's okay. There's literally nothing wrong with that. Chances are little boys are not going to want to play with baby dolls. Sometimes they do, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I think we overthink that a whole often, a whole lot more often than we realize. And girls generally are probably not going to want to play with toy soldiers. They might want to, and that's great. There are women in the military and they probably played with that stuff growing up. No big deal. But the idea that we need to gender neutralize all of the toys is inherently linked to the idea that we need to let our kids pick their own gender later on. And I have a severe problem with that, actually, as a mom, and we've started reading so far into this that we've actually started like, gaslighting ourselves into thinking if our sons are naturally drawn towards more masculine names or toys or traditionally masculine things to play with, then they are participating in the patriarchy. And if our daughters are drawn towards toys about, like, tea parties and dressing up as princesses and playing house with baby dolls, then they are so disgustingly repressed and taken back by the patriarchy that we have failed to raise important, strong feminist daughters. I recently saw a clip, and I'll pull it up here for you guys, of a mom podcast this. They're like, all they ever talk about is mom podcasting stuff. Actually upset, really upset that their sons had a tendency to name their toys boy names, that they should have been more gender inclusive to name their toys girl names. This is from the Secret Mum Club podcast on TikTok. They have almost 200,000 followers. They have a really big podcast following, to my understanding. And they just talk about mom things. Here's them complaining about what names their kids are naming their stuffed animals. This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast in Me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice, and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix. I noticed Stefan applies male pronouns to Joseph's toys all the time when they're playing. And I'm like, can we have some girls involved in the playtime role play, please? Yes, to all the animals. He'll be like, Mr. Cow says this and Mr. Pig says this. I'm like, Excuse me. How about Mrs. Chicken or Mrs. Sheep? Mrs. Rabbit. Hello. Hello.
- [43:26]
B
She has a name, you know.
- [43:27]
A
Honestly, patriarchy.
- [43:29]
B
Let's smash it.
- [43:29]
A
I don't even know what patriarchy means.
- [43:32]
B
What is patriarchy about men ruling the world.
- [43:35]
A
Oh, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Chris, I love you. Stefan. Not so much. F Men. F Men. Because men suck. Even though men still rule the world. Not that that's even remotely true. And so if my son wants to name his stuffed cow Mr. Cow, we have a severe problem, actually, because my sons are furthering the agenda of the patriarchy. And how could I, as a good mom, possibly allow my children to behave this way? Like, seriously, I've just. I. I've had enough. Just as I had no idea what I was doing the first time I had a daughter and became a mom, I also had no idea what I was doing. When I started my own business for the first time. The whole journey can be so overwhelming and confusing, but thankfully that is exactly where today's SO sponsor Shopify comes in. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide and handles 10% of all US E commerce, supporting everyone from major household names to new entrepreneurs who are just starting out. 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You can turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com Isabel go to shopify.com Isabelle again one more time. That is shopify.com Isabel so the real question is what are we even doing here? Honestly? Like what is the general objective of these parenting experts? Trying to make you feel bad for your natural parenting instincts? Trying to redefine everything we've known to be true about child rearing for thousands of years and specifically trying to make you like a target in many ways. If you're not part of this new age of parenting as they call it. I think first and foremost they're trying to infantilize parents. They're trying to make parents be made to feel incapable without a so called expert telling them exactly what instincts they are and are not allowed to have. They want you to feel too stupid to raise or educate or set appropriate boundaries for your kids. I shared this recently on a podcast where I was asked about homeschooling and I I talked about a conversation I had with my dad about a year ago. Incidentally, I think it was actually like two days before I found out I was pregnant, which is so fun. But we were he was driving me to a speaking engagement in Colorado and we started talking about homeschooling and asking why he and My mom didn't really consider homeschooling for us when we were kids. At the time, it was very, very difficult. There were a lot of roadblocks to it. You had to get tons of different exemptions for everything. And we knew two families who had homeschooled very briefly throughout elementary school and they all ended up coming back into the traditional education system. And my dad, I will never forget, told me, and this is my highly educated father. My parents are both attorneys, they're practicing attorneys. They paid their own way all through college and law school. They are very intelligent, well educated people. I will never forget my dad saying, honestly, when we asked ourselves if homeschooling was even an option when you and your sisters were little girls, we genuinely believed that we were too stupid to educate you. And I think that's the problem. Right? The system has convinced entire generation of parents, he said, to believe that they are too stupid to educate their own kids. So they feel the need to have experts tell them what to do, to have the experts, the licensed people, just do it. Instead, they have infantilized parents to still depend on a different authority figure, rather than rising to the occasion of being the authority figure themselves. To ignore your instincts, which are baked into you by God intentionally as a mom or as a dad, to believe you're a bad mom or you're a bad dad, unless you listen to the hyper 6 time PhD level expert tell you that you need to ask for your baby's permission to change their diaper. And in the process of infantilizing parents, I think what they're actually doing is they're path. Pathologizing. It's a long word, I know, pathologizing, creating a pathogen out of normal childhood behavior. So they're turning everything essentially into a diagnosis, which is a much bigger problem in conversation related to big pharma and big food and just the pathologizing of everything in society. But if your child is throwing tantrums, if they're being too clingy with you, if they're very shy, or if they're the opposite of that, if they're very hyperactive or they constantly want to ask questions and run around and be outside, if they're just a normal kid, all of these things are reframed as being some sort of psychological disorder instead of normal childhood development. Which is why we are over diagnosing problems, we are over medicating kids way too early in life. And we as infantilized parents, needing to listen to the experts, believe that there is something inherently wrong with our Children in need of medication, if they are upset about something, if they are shy around certain people, if they are way too hyperactive and constantly wanting to be outside and can't be chained to a desk for eight hours a day. And all of those things are working together with one clear objective in mind. And this has become so much more clear to me since having a child that I think warrants a much larger societal conversation about this. The so called experts want us to outsource our wisdom and our parenting experience to academics and to influencers in the end goal of making our children not our own, but the collective our children. How many times have we heard Kamala Harris say in the last few years that the children of the community are the children of the community. They are literally getting the experts to tell you, you did a bad job, something's wrong with your kid, we're gonna medicate your kid. And, and oh, by the way, in the process, we're going to remind you that if you feel a special attachment to your own child, as we just talked about in studies published like a decade ago, there's something wrong with you. Fundamentally, there's something wrong with your child and there's something wrong with you because you can't let go of this special attachment to your own kid. It's weird that you as a parent don't want the so called experts to help you raise your kids. That is wrong. That's really wrong and honestly is very sinister because we are gaslighting and brainwashing and indoctrinating entire generation of parents, entire generations, plural of parents, to like outsource our kids to other people all the time. Which is, I believe, the precursor to children literally becoming like the children of the community a la the Giver, which, if you haven't read that recently, highly recommend. I just reread it the other day and it is so, so good. One of the best books ever written. I read it for the first time in fifth grade and it just hits totally different as a parent. But who are we outsourcing our parentsly wisdom to to these, these academics and these influencers? Many, many, many parenting influencers are in their 20s and 30s and are completely childless. In fact, this might be a really spicy thing to say. A lot of the content I'm even seeing in the conservative movement about parenting and about having babies is coming from childless content creators and podcast hosts and people who are single. They're not even married. This is like not remotely in their radar. Many of these academics that are writing these studies and giving these Lectures and interviews to the mainstream media. Again, the experts have not raised children or they don't spend time with their children at all. And yet these are the people who are setting the cultural tone for actual parents navigating real world challenges. That's unsettling to me and is something that I'm really just beginning to notice, especially coming out of the immediate postpartum experience. But still, still receiving a whole lot of like parenting content constantly being shoved at me and seeing a lot more conversations around childbearing, child rearing and the role of moms and dads in the academic space and in the social media space. It is unsettling, and it should be unsettling to all of us that some of the loudest voices associated with this do not have kids. Again, I said at the beginning of the episode that I am not ever going to call myself a parenting expert. Truth is, I have literally no idea what I'm doing. Although I will say I'm quite beautifully surprised by what has come naturally to me just based on what is a beautiful part of human instinct, right? That God designed me this way. And from the very beginning I have been astounded by my ability as a mom. Even when I genuinely was bringing a baby home for the very first time in the first few days, had no idea what I was doing, like figuring it all out in real time, one second, one minute, one hour at a time. I've been really astounded. What just came naturally that I could leap out of bed in the middle of the night when I was completely exhausted. That I almost instantly started to recognize what cry. My daughter was crying. Is she hungry? Does she need a diaper change? Is she just bored? Does she need to be picked up? Does her stomach hurt? Whatever. That all has been astounding to me. But as the very clearly self described non expert in parenting, I've come to realize that the only real parenting experts are indeed parents. Right? And I think it's important for us to remember the advice that you're getting from your moms and your grandmas and your great grandmas. The generational wisdom that we have passed down through millennia of human history is so much more valuable than viral parenting TikTok accounts or random academics who work at the Harvard Universities of the world and the therapy speak that has taken over New age parenting. Parenting used to be about intergenerational wisdom. Not algorithm pushed content or peer reviewed studies or something that had been outsourced to to an ethereal realm that's not based in hands on experience with your kids. So if I could just give you any piece of advice as a new mom myself to maybe other new moms who might be struggling with this or they're confused or feeling too stupid on how to raise their own kids, the only major things that I would say are these First, Instinct. What's naturally baked into your soul as a new parent is not a dirty word. Instinct is not a dirty word. You will forever know your child so much better than a stranger with a ring light on your TikTok algorithm or some stuffy tweed blazer elbow patch wearing professor at Harvard University who has never raised kids or never spends time with their own kids or certainly has never met your kid. On that note, no one loves your child more than you do. No influencer or so called academic expert knows your family better than you do. So it is okay to admit that you have the best interests for your kids far more than the so called experts do. Just as much as I want you to remember that instinct is not a dirty word and you can figure this out on the job. It's what 8 billion people have been doing for the last millennia all across the face of the planet. I want you to stop asking for permission from the Internet, from podcasters, from the so called expert academics, these woke college professors on how to raise your own kids. That is your job as the parent. You are the expert in your own kids life. If we want to have and re revive in society strong grounded children, we need parents who feel empowered. Not anxious or confused or infantilized or too stupid or second guessing every single decision because of whatever the latest viral trend or peer reviewed study happened to be. This is a subject I know I really want to unpack a whole lot more with you guys on the show. I know we've said a couple times we might do another episode on gentle parenting, but if there's anything specific that you're seeing in the parenting world or something that you have questions about, or maybe you're not a parent yet, but you're like what the heck am I seeing about all of this? Please drop it in the comment section of the episode today. We would love to help answer your guys's questions and do a whole lot more mom content. Maybe we'll infiltrate Mom Talk when all is said and done here on the Isabel Brown Show. On that note, I've got a dirty diaper to change. More likely than not, because it's been about 45 minutes since we started recording, so assuming my nearly 7 month old daughter gives me verbal permission, of course to change her diaper. I gotta run and go do that. We'll see you guys tomorrow for another episode of the Isabel Brown Show. And please don't forget to subscribe here on the channel or wherever you're watching the show. Go find us on your favorite podcast platform and give us a five star review. We are officially in the top 50 podcasts in the Religion and Spirituality section on Spotify, which is so, so exciting. But we want to keep reaching as many people as we can with the truth. So go help us out. Give us a subscribe button and a five star review. Love you guys. See you tomorrow for a Friday episode of the show. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. 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