 Whether you're about to become a brand new parent, or you already have a child, there can be a lot of stress and anxiety that comes around parenting styles. And that's exactly why I brought over some of my friends to discuss this topic. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health. And typically what I do here is pull different topics from the YouTube community to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. But I'm also a parent, so there's a lot of parenting topics that have to do with mental health as well. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And speaking of subscribing and ringing the notification bell, I have brought over my good friend Dan and his amazing wife Amanda to discuss some of the stresses and anxieties around parenting styles, alright? So make sure, make sure you gotta do me this one favor. If you enjoy this video, A, share it with somebody who is a parent, and B, make sure you go subscribe to their channel, they're doing some awesome things over there. And I met Dan last October at Vid Summit, and he's an awesome, awesome dude, so make sure that you go check out their channel. Or if you're not a parent, share it with somebody who is a parent, alright? But anyways, I'm gonna pass it along over to Dan and Amanda, and then I'm gonna come back and share a little bit of my experience on the topic. Hi, I'm Dan. And I'm Amanda. We're new-ish parents, year and three months into it, with a baby. But we are from the YouTube channel, ParentPassifier and ParentPassifier.com, where we help new and soon-to-be parents save time and headaches with baby product reviews and parenting tip videos. And we wanna thank Chris for having us back on the rewired soul, to come share some more helpful tips with you to help save you some anxiety, headaches, frustrations, irritability, exhaustion, all those things that come along with being parents, especially new parents, or parents with a newborn or toddler. And in today specifically, we wanna talk to you about dealing with parenting style comparisons. Whether that's in your own mind, or when people are telling you you are doing it wrong, or whatever people wanna say that make you feel like you're, you know, it's criticism and make you feel like you're doing something wrong, or doing it bad, or being a bad parent, choosing different things. So those are the things we wanna talk to you today about. Yeah, I know for me, I really struggle with that because I have that problem of people pleasing. And I have the opposite, because I just don't care. Yes, so I wish I had that personality, but I don't and... I don't know if you want that person. Okay. Well, I take a lot of things of what people say to heart. I listen to him a lot because I was tempted to just get so anxious and be like, oh, I was doing it wrong and they told me to do it this way and I'm such an idiot. Oh, gosh. And you put yourself down as if you don't know what you're doing, but you're learning still and you gotta give yourself some grace. So I had him a lot to bounce off with ideas that maybe I do need to change something, maybe I don't. So he would be like, hey, just let's figure it out together. Ultimately, it's our decision. So I had him a lot to help me just stop, focus on what the task is, and do our own style. It's okay to have your own style. And it's okay to say thank you, but not take their advice. So I had to be okay with that because I was so worried about the people pleasing thing where that provoked more anxiety for me having that people-pleaser personality stuff. And I think tip number one would be remember that every kid's different. Yes. Every kid is different, every pregnancy is different, and pretty much every parenting style is different. Everyone has some kind of difference and ultimately you mix a little bit of what each of our parents have done, unless you didn't like what your parents did, maybe you don't want to do anything that your parents did. But for us, we mix a little bit of both of our parent's styles. We mix some of the other people that we know from our church and bring in like, oh, we like what they do, what they do here, right? But ultimately every kid's different and not everything is going to work with your child. Right. I think that's an important thing to remember, an important thing to note. Before you get so overwhelmed and worried, it's like, well, hey, this is just not working with my kid. Tip number two for me would be just saying it's okay to say, hey, thank you for that advice and then not take it. For me, that's the way that I do it. The way, instead of creating confrontation and saying, no, I don't like that style at all. You're like, whatever. Instead of just going down that road, it's just being like, hey, thanks, cool. I'll definitely think about that or we'll see what to do. We'll see. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for your advice. Then literally walk on and completely forget about it. Right? We've done that. I've had to help her do it. We could say thanks instead of getting into a big fight and argument and then it's like, well, my parenting style is better and no yours is worse. It's just like, oh, cool. Thanks. That's cool to know. Actually, sometimes it's good to hear those things because maybe they'll come in use later, but right at that moment, they're not useful, but it's okay to say that and then walk away. Tip number three is ask your pediatrician. Sometimes you can get things from a pediatrician you don't want to take, but I don't want to tell you not to listen to your pediatrician, but it is good to say, hey, we got these three things. Are we doing it right or should we take this? Sometimes the thing for us, some of our best, we've come out of the pediatrician's office really confident because he said, no, you're doing a great job and that's because we put in the work to choose the right pediatrician and do the interview early, but we've come in and he's like, hey, yeah, you're doing a great job. Don't do anything different. That helps us get confidence and just be like, all right, we're good. Even though like 100 people say that we're wrong, even though these people are saying like, you should be doing it this way or you should be doing this or you shouldn't be doing that. Like, hey, he's healthy, growing and that's great. And if that's what's going on, if there were issues happening, then it's like, okay, something needs to change here. So I would always say, defer to your pediatrician. And that's actually a great excuse sometimes that people have said, well, this is what our pediatrician is saying. Our pediatrician told us this. So that's what we're doing. Even though maybe not necessarily, it's exactly what he said or it's more of a preference and he just agrees. Right? Like it's not necessarily a lie. It's just like, like, hey, yeah, we, this is what we wanted to do. And our pediatrician said, yeah, that's cool, right? It helps so that it's not like, hey, it's all me is like, no, my pediatrician said it was cool. So yeah, it's working and the baby's healthy. So definitely. Yeah. And getting that reassurance from the pediatrician was so huge for us. And it still is. It still is. Even to this day, he's, our son is 15 months. And just hearing the words from a doctor say, you're doing a great job just relieves a little bit anxiety on many different levels. So I'm happy that our doctor just makes it a point to say that to us, even if he thinks I'm very anxiety and type A personality and take notes for everything and crazy. But that's okay. Thankfully, I have the type B personality husband to also take me down a notch. But and what she, one thing that she does, if you are like that, just take, take the note apps on your phone. And because this is what she does, like, every time she has a question, she just has this little note section that just says for Dr. Salem and every single question. And then we walk in the office at this point, he's so used to it that he just goes, all right, give me your phone, like no question. It's not even like, Hey, look, it's just like, all right, give me your phone. And he just goes down the list and goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's fine. No, no, no, no. Don't worry about it. All right, good. Here you go. That's how he is. And it's really cool. Yeah. But that it helps, right? Like just here's this list doctor answers and not just go to Google. You know, but yeah, because we will give you a whole, whole bunch of others, but it's just another way to give you some confidence and help calm some of those anxious thoughts. And tip number four, ultimately, it's all really preference, like really. It's just like, what do you prefer and what are the things that you like? Like, hey, if this is the style you wanna do, like great, go for it. As long as it's not abusive. Right, right. As long as it's not abusive and that your child's healthy, like it's cool to have different parenting styles. That's what makes us all unique. You know, we all grew up different ways that make us unique. And as long as it's not abusive or unhealthy, or going down the wrong path in any way, then hey, different styles is great and welcomed. And, you know, one of the things, the way I look at it is process of elimination. Yes, definitely. Because every kid is different. Every parenting style is different. You could try different parenting styles. Yeah. And if it works with your kid, great, stick with it. Don't move on to the next thing. Just stick with that one. If it doesn't work, go to the next thing. Try this. And then if that doesn't work, try the next thing. But if that works, stick with it and don't keep trying. Like just stick with it, stick with what works. And if you like it, cool. Like that's the way I like to think about it. It helps me just simplify the process, simplify all those things. It helps clear out all the thoughts of like, am I being a bad dad? You know, or am I, you know, not following that person's advice and I should be doing that? Or that guy looks like he's doing it right. You know, sure, let me try it. If it doesn't work, or it's just not for me. Then process elimination. All right, cool. I could check that off the list, move on. Very, very simplified. Yeah. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah, it can't hurt to take some people's advice, especially like things like the cry out method with your child, letting them cry it out in the crib and closing the door, putting on the white noise. So it's a white noise to protect your ears and hopefully distract the baby, you know, whatever it is. So things like that nature, you try it out, see how it works. If it's not your cup of tea, then it's not. And you can move on and try something else to help them fall asleep independently and self-soothe. So absolutely, so it is. And take everything with a grain of salt, that's for sure. So if these were helpful for you, hey, feel free to reach out. We would love to have conversations with you in the comments below. We want to thank Chris for having us on the Rewired Soul and we look forward to seeing you in the next video. All right, thank you so much, Dan and Amanda, for coming over and sharing your experience with this. And yeah, this is huge, this is huge. Like as a parent, I can definitely relate to a few things, right? Like what Amanda was saying with like people pleasing, like raising my son, you know, one of the things that like irks me is getting like unsolicited advice about my parenting. Like if you want to tell me how to live my life, I'll take that and be like, yeah, whatever, right? When you tell me how to parent, it just like, but when you combine that with being a people pleaser, you might do things that you don't even believe in for your child, you know what I mean? So I'm glad that they touched on that point. And like the next thing I want to talk about is how Dan was talking about like, how you like take in the best advice and then you leave the rest. Like especially from new parents, like when your child's born, like, you know, check out these other things. I remember when my son was going to be born and like, you know, we were doing like the baby registry thing, we were like going out and like, should we get like a diaper warmer and all these other like little knickknacks and gadgets and stuff. And then like when we, like when he was born and we just started like doing our thing, you know, it's like, oh, you don't even like, you don't need that and stuff. Like if you do, go ahead and do you, right? But every child's going to be different. And I want to expand on that a little bit more because a lot of you, you know, can hear on my channel just from mental health as a whole. But I want to teach you this about mental health as well. Like don't take everything I say as like an absolute way to work on your mental health. Like one of the reasons I make so many videos is you could, so you could take what works for you and then leave the rest. Like I remember when I first got sober, people used to always say this, what keeps me clean might get you loaded, right? Same thing with mental health, depression, anxiety, whatever you're struggling with. Like meditation works for some people. It doesn't work for other people, right? Like exposure therapy works for some people. It doesn't work for others. CBT works for some people, but DBT works for other people. All these different things. So the best thing you could do for your mental health, like what I always say is like, I don't care what you do for your mental health, just do something. But when it comes to parenting styles as well, like my son is getting older, you know, he's 10 years old now. And like as he gets older and reaches like each new like kind of developmental stage in his life, I have to revisit this topic all over again. What I did to parent him when he was five isn't the same that I can do to parent him when he's 10, you know, and I'm constantly evaluating these things and all of that. Something that I do is I read a lot, like since I'm a nerd about mental health and neuroscience and all that, I read books about like childhood brain development, child psychology and all of those things. So I can kind of like understand what's happening on a neurological level with my son too. So I know how to talk with him, understand how his emotions are going and all that kind of stuff. But anyways, let me know down in the comments below what your best tips are for somebody who's getting overloaded with parenting advice. All right, but again, don't forget if this video wasn't for you because you're not a parent, please make sure that you share it with somebody who is a parent or is an expecting mother or father. And don't forget to go check out Dan and Amanda's channel. All right, but if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up if you're new. Make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And if you would like to subscribe to Dan and Amanda over at parent pacifier, you can click or tap right there. All right, so thanks again, Dan and Amanda and I'll see you next time.