 Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. I have a special guest here with me today. Hi! Also, if you're not subscribed already, make sure to do so and also follow me on Instagram. It would mean the world to me. But today we are going to be talking about how my gay moms raised me as a child. Someone actually asked for this video or you mentioned it. So we're here today to share that. Starting off, where do you want to start, Sherry? Well, first, I just want to say that these are all Sherry's tips and tricks. Yeah. And basically bringing up Alex. So it may work for some people, may not. She was an older mom. I was an older mom, so that probably had a lot to do with my perspective on things. So just know this is just a little fun video, just my ideas and how we did it. So don't take it too seriously. Right, right or wrong, this is what happened. I think I turned out okay. Yeah, I think you turned out great. So I'm pretty happy with that. So let's start off with bottle feeding. When we were at the orphanage, one of the things that they recommended to us that even though the girls were all a year old and probably could eat some solid foods and things, that we should put them back on the bottle if they were not taking a bottle at that point in time. They suggested that because it would help in the bonding process with the baby. So we did and they gave everybody a little bottle to take with them. So we started Alex on the bottle. Now, a lot of people when we came back to the United States, like, oh my God, that child's like a year old. That child's like 13 months. She's 16 months. She's 18 months. She's still taking a bottle. Oh my God, what's wrong? When will they take her off the bottle? We did finally when she was two. So we always wanted it to be like a smooth transition. And Alex was aware enough and smart enough at that time. She really understood what we were doing and understand consequences and things like that too. So when we went to San Francisco for our very first Shaman sisters reunion, when we came home, we said, oh my God, we've left your bottle in San Francisco. Now, I don't remember any of this. But you had already been drinking out of a sippy cup anyway. So it wasn't like, bam, no bottle. We'd been putting you on a sippy cup and you liked your sippy cups. So even though you would throw them sometimes at Valerie when she was driving. But we would sing, you know, probably many of you do not know this song. I left my heart in San Francisco. But we would sing to Alex, we left your bottle in San Francisco, which we thought was really funny, but I don't think she thought it was that great. So it really was a pretty smooth transition though. She really never cried about it. She would be looking for it like at bedtime and stuff. But we'd give her her sippy cup and she'd have orange juice or something in her sippy cup. And then she was fine. But I think that goes back to the being an older parent, because I don't know any kids that have gone to college and they're still taking their bottle. Yeah. So we had that same attitude also with potty training. So because she wasn't potty trained until I guess I was really late for everything. Two and a half, two and a half, something like that. I don't know exactly. But I know that my mom was always concerned because Alex was still wearing pull-ups and she was older than anybody else she knew that had been wearing pull-ups. So my mom did a really good job. She would try to get her to go to the bathroom all the time when she was watching her. And we kind of watched her too, but we were kind of lax about it. So we did sort of the same thing. We went on vacation. This was to be when you were three. Yeah. We went on a vacation to Florida because we usually went around your birthday and we took a limited number of pull-ups with us. So every time we would get off a ride, go to the bathroom, eat, go to the bathroom, get on a ride, go to the bathroom. So we did that all day long, just going to the bathroom and back, bathroom and back. So when we got ready to fly home, we had two pampers or two pull-ups. I'm not pampers, two pull-ups. I remember this. So we put one on her and said, listen, if you go to the bathroom in this, you are going to get your socks wet. So oh no, we only had, we didn't have any. No, I had to, I had to get aerial underwear. Right. Start the, start the story over. Alex wanted aerial underwear. Yes. So we wanted aerial underwear. So we have to stop wearing pull-ups when you wear aerial underwear. So she wore the aerial underwear. We're like, we're going to be on the plane. So if you have to get the bathroom, let us know because if you go to the bathroom and you don't have a pull-up on, then your socks are going to get wet and it's going to be really uncomfortable and it's going to be messy. So we got on the plane and sure enough, there it goes. Went to the bathroom. Of course, we had taken everything with us. So we had to whole change of clothes. So we were able to change her on the plane and said, this is it. This is the only other pair of aerial underwear you have. So you cannot go. And I think after that time, you only like once went in the office. Yeah. And once when you were in preschool, when you didn't want to come in from the snow, because you want to come in to go to the bathroom. Yeah. So only twice after that. So the reasoning with her that if you go to the bathroom, your socks will get wet, seemed to work. It really did. I remember that. I remember that. And I don't know how I remember that, but I remember having to change and you put me on the little, we were at the airport and you put me on that little changing table and you're, you told me that. Yeah. So it worked. And I think that again is part of the being an older parent because college students probably not many in pampers or pull-ups at this point in time. So as you get older, you know, like older, older, you might have to have adult size at some point in your lifetime. But right then in college, we figured that eventually it would work itself out. And it did. Okay. So Sherry's theory on children getting hurt, although we didn't really have to use this with Alex too much. I didn't cry a lot. Because she didn't really cry. So, you know, she didn't really have any tantrums. Now I cry at like everything. I cry at everything now. Back when I was a child, I didn't cry at all. There's still some people today that have never seen me cry, like my childhood friends are like, Oh, I've never seen you cry. So I think that part of that was because when you're in the kids learn to cry and it gets them attention. And when you're in the orphanage and you cry, it doesn't get you attention. Yeah. So you learn very early on that that crying doesn't really help get you any attention. So you didn't cry, you would fall down and get hurt and not really cry. My theory was always say no blood, no bones, no tears. So suck it up kids suck it up. That's it. You know, you're not really hurt. So you never really got hurt. You know, a couple of times you were learning to walk. Yeah. Because that's another thing you really never crawled either. Oh, really? Yep. You just pulled yourself up and started to walk. Yeah. There's a lot of people concerned. I was so behind. I know. I was just like, Okay, whatever. Because we knew we were doing everything we could. I mean, when you're behind like almost like a whole year. Yeah. You know, your body was physically developing. But that was it because you were in the orphanage and laying in a bed probably most of the day or sitting on a pot that they would tie you into during the day. So one of the other things that we did with Alex is that we treated her almost like a little adult. You know, it's like another little human being. Yeah. She wasn't only treated like a baby very much. We always took her to restaurants when we went to restaurants. We always took her when we went to the movies we took her. We took her to the theater. One of my favorite stories taking you to the theater was when we went to see Rent. Oh, yeah. And I've always been seeing things that aren't really age appropriate as some say, because I don't know. It's just one of those things. I remember a lot of my friends would be like, I can't watch that because it's PG-13. And I'm just like, what? Well, I mean to see Rent when I was like five years old. I know. And it's just like, I feel like people just put so much emphasis on like, I don't know, some dumb shit. Like as long as you're explaining to your child and educating them, I would rather have you see it with me and I could explain things to you than to see it with a bunch of friends, you know, when you think it's dirty or high down or whatever. Oh, I also remember when I was little, people when you would see each other kiss or see people kiss, people, my peers would be like, Ew gross. I'm like, that's just showing love and affection. Like it's not gross. Like I don't know that I remember that really bothered me. So I love the look on your face when we were at Rent that we had the music from Rent before we ever saw the play and we would play. I love that sound track. We'd play in the car all the time, play the soundtrack. And Alex knew all the words to the songs. So when we went to the theater, I think that was the first thing you saw in the theater because when they started playing the songs, she like looked at us like, what? Where did that come from? Oh my gosh, it's the same thing we hear in the car. So but you really love that. And we have a lot of, I mean, we expected you to behave the way we treated you. Right. So we would always go to like sit down dinners. And I was pretty young. Like the only time that I remember causing a scene or like fussy was because I had this huge rash on my leg. We went out to eat or something. I don't know. Oh, and there's this one time in the movies where I didn't want to watch the movie. So I just acted up to get Valerie to go out and play with me. Also, I was afraid of people my age. I was definitely afraid. They're like, go play with the kids. And I'm like, no, I'm still like that. I'm like, no, I really don't want to. Since you went to Valerie's work and you were at home and then you were at mom and dads. Yeah. You really weren't around any little kids. Yeah. You weren't really out playing in the neighborhood because you're always at somebody's house with, you know, or you were at the office. You went to work every day. I did. You went to work or you went to stay with your grandma, right? Yeah. The only people that you knew were large sized people. Yeah. So when little people came around, you were always afraid of little people. Yeah. Well, also too, like back in the day, like I couldn't really, I don't know. I wanted to make like photocopies and staple things. Yeah. I didn't want to like play with a doll. Yeah. You were a good office worker. Yeah, I was. You were a very good office worker. I would always photocopy my hand. That was super fun. You would always want to do that, but not, not play with, you're right. You never liked dolls. Nope. This is a side note. I had this really giant big playroom and this is in our old house and every time I didn't really like toys. This is really weird, but I didn't really like toys and every time we've had like a guest or my friend would come over, I'd always give them something because I'm like, I don't need it. Like get it, get rid of it, you know, kind of like how I am today with things like, okay, purge that. And so every time like one of my friends leave with something, Valerie and Sherry would both be like, stop giving away your stuff. She would always give away everything. So you're never really, you know, acted like a child. You acted the way we treated you. I know, I see a lot of parents will take kids to restaurants and the kids are misbehaving, but they're misbehaving because they want attention. Right. They're not being paying attention. So when we would go out to eat, we went out to eat as a family. And they talked to me. Like they engaged with me like how you would an adult. I guess whether I comprehended that or not, I was forced to like, listen, I don't know. Well, we would always like those, those placemats that would have like little games and stuff on it. We don't get to the crayons. It is they're just giving it to you and saying, here, play that. We would play with you. Yeah. So we do tic-tac-toe and color, you know, color by number and all that stuff. Oh, I learned how to draw a box. Valerie taught me how to draw a 3D box. Really? Yeah, that was at bone V. I still can't do that. Oh, I tried to teach you everything. I know. But they would do that sort of stuff with me and they never brought toys. I mean, iPads and phones didn't even exist back then. So I didn't have any toys. Let's just say that. Yeah, we didn't take any toys because going out to dinner is not going out to the playground. It's not the same thing. Right. And anytime we would go to a playground, we would go and play at the playground and we would play with you. We'd go down the slide and we would swing you and we didn't just send you off to play with other kids because you wouldn't play with those kids anyway. No, I wouldn't. But we'd go out. Remember going to Hideaway Hills? Yeah. We went on hikes and stuff. You remember going on hikes? Yeah, I love my walking stick. I loved that. Yeah. But, you know, we didn't like carry you around like a baby. No. You would like walk around and you know. Oh, I hated being in a stroller. Yes, you never wanted to be in this situation. You wanted to be out walking. Yep. Or having someone carry you. Of course. At the park, she always had to have someone carry you. Usually that someone would have been Valerie, but she always wanted someone to carry her around but not be in the stroller. Yeah. I think you don't like being that low. Yeah. Because you see like the back of people's knees all the time. This has been not a very good view from down there. Okay, so we're going to move on to some subjects that I really disagree with my parents on. And of course, there's always things that you're going to disagree with your parents on. And these are a couple before we get into that though. I want to say I was never grounded. Grounding really didn't exist in my life. So talk about that sharing. No, I mean, we never had to. The only couple instances of what call it a little misbehaving. Yeah, not a lot was when you were little, we were still in Columbus. And this is when I was little. It wasn't when I was a teenager. This is when you were like, you would have been like three, probably three or four. We had this nice pottery thing sitting on the coffee table and that was next to a big cement slab that was part of the hearth for our fireplace. And Alex took the lid of that pottery thing and she was like kind of banging it on that cement piece. Valerie tells the story really well. She does and Valerie said, you were like acting like you were going to throw it. And I was like, don't you drop that? Don't you drop that? And you just like did has some kind of like stare down with Valerie and Valerie kept going, don't you do it? Don't you do it? Don't you do it? And you took, you slammed it down on that concrete. And of course, being the good parent that Valerie was, what does she do? She breaks out laughing. So that didn't really teach you anything about that. There was no retribution for breaking the lid to our little pottery thing. But the other time was, all these things are with Valerie too. Yeah. You had to have it a hitting Valerie. Yeah, like I would just hit her just because- And you're like slapping her on the butt. Yeah. But it was, I don't know. It was like playful. Like I don't know. But Valerie got really irritated at her doing that. And she said, stop it. Stop it. I think I was six or seven. Well, we were in celebration. Yeah. We were in that apartment. We were in the garage apartment. So whether when our house was getting built. The first year we moved here. Yeah. So it would have been sometime between July and October 31st. So yeah, that's how long we lived there. Yeah. For some reason, Valerie just got totally fed up and she said, if you hit me again, you're going to be punished. Yeah. So, I hit her. She hit her immediately. So Valerie said, okay, come over here. So she put a little chair, a little baby chair. Like what with your like table and chairs or something. Put it in the corner and made her sit there. Yep. And Alex cried. You did cry that time. I did. But the only reason she cried, it was the only reason. It wasn't because she was being punished or she was upset that she had hit Valerie. No. She cried and said, please don't tell mama. Don't tell mama. She didn't want her grandma to know that she had been punished. Because that was the only time she was punished. Did mama find out? Probably. Because it was such a funny story. I'm sure we had to tell her that the only thing you were scared of was, please don't tell mama. Okay. So let's move on to stuff that we disagree with. Oh, now we're going to the disagreement part. The disagreement part. I typically agree with their parenting style and everything. But I don't know if this is because you're older or no offense, you're gay. So I don't know. I might be a little prejudiced here. But get into it, Sherry. Okay. So there are certain things that we would not let Alex do that other people do with their kids and you do it with your children. That's fine. And I don't think it has to do with being gay. I think it has to do with, for me, it had to do with being a feminist and not wanting you to think that the way you look, the way your body looks, how you dress defines who you are. So we did not want Alex to participate in things that were uneven. Even though we treated her kind of like an adult a lot of the time. That was only for behavior purposes. It was not for how she looked. No. So there were a couple things that we did not allow her to do. One was to- I had the worst style just so you know. Okay. That's what you wanted. Fine. We would not let her paint her fingernails when she was little. That was hard. You're a little kid. You're not like- It's just fingernail polish. It's just a color. You're not like older trying to like get a guy or something. I don't know. I never understood like little kids having their nails post. Because it's fun. We did not allow her to wear a bikini bathing suit until she got older. There was no point in putting like a three-year-old in a bikini for what purpose? Because it's cute. So she didn't wear a bikini. I don't know. When was your first bikini? I don't know. I was allowed to wear tankinis but I thought they were the most ugliest things ever. When I was 12, I got a tankini. I was a loser. There was no point in wearing a bikini and showing off your body. Disagree with that. Because you're a little child. Well, I know but it's easier to go pee, you know? You got something smaller. That is a good point. Come on. I didn't want to do your technique of just moving over the piece of fabric, okay? Okay. That is a very good point. I didn't think about that. So, whatever. Yeah. And the other thing was dyeing her hair. And as you can see that worked out so well because I'm crazy with that hair. As an adult, she will just dye that hair any way she can. Bleach it but be bleach blonde. I didn't want her to have damaged hair already. Where I would argue with this is when you get to a certain point in your life, like I'm 20. No, not 20. I'm 24. You're more than 20. No, it's so sad. Like when you get to a certain age, I'm not saying that you can't dye your hair like lime green but it's just if you want like a corporate job and like you're in an environment, you can't do that. I think if you're young and you're like a kid and you have no responsibilities and everything, you should be able to put some dye in your hair because you only get to, I don't know. This is basically society's rules. Because you're thinking there's just a short period of time. There's just a short period of time. I mean, when I have a kid maybe or whatever, like I will let them dye their hair maybe not on the root because it really can damage your hair but maybe like a dip dye or like ombre thing where it's not affecting up here but having them have like a little like pieces down here maybe like purple or something because when they get to be like 18, I'm going to be like you need to not have color in your hair because like you need to get a job. Like who's going to hire you? So when you were little there was no such thing as ombre or dip or whatever it was you just said. The deal was when you were 15. You were 15. You could do one strip of blonde by your face and you did. I did. And you had one strip of blonde and now you have lots of strips of blonde. But you can have this kind of this kind of thing and still have a job. Yeah, I know. It's just but you couldn't have had pink and purple and green hair because of dance anyway. Well, I know that. But like anyway, as you can see when I became 20, 22, whenever that time was in my life when I had the bleach blonde hair, I did that for me and I lived for myself and I went bleach out. And I'm glad you did. Yeah, me too. I'm glad I did. Making your own decisions. I helped you do it at that point. So it's not that I didn't want to have blonde hair. It was a bucket list type of thing. It was an age thing. Not the blonde hair. It was age. Plus I really liked your black hair anyway. Yeah, but if I was like, let's say if I was like going to be a lawyer, like I could not have hair like that. In my opinion, like bleach blonde hair, like I wouldn't do that. You could have that hair. I guess so, but still, I don't know. I just don't, I don't think I would take it serious. I also wanted to add in here too. I know this might not fit in with the video, but it always bothers me when people are just so happy to get rid of their kids. Like they were never the type of people to say like, we're so excited to like have my kids gone. They never, even if you did feel that way, you didn't express it in front of me, which I appreciate because I don't want to feel like unwanted. I mean, coming from an adoptee, I could see how if if parents of an adopted kid were like, yay, they're like away, then that like could contribute to like, abandonment issues, you know, like, oh yay, if you're going to have kids, if you're going to adopt kids, if you're going to foster kids, you should want it and you should enjoy their company and you should raise them to be people that you enjoy being around. Right? Yeah, we had very few babysitters. Yeah. And the times that I did have a babysitter, it was horrendous. So I didn't like them because they were, oh my gosh, I hated nap time. But now a killer had nap time. But back then I wanted to be treated like an adult. Oh, another thing too, they never had a routine. Oh, that's true. There was no nap times. There was no like, oh, snap time, kid. It was like, you hungry? All right, get something. If you're tired of our schedule. Because you're going to work. Yep. So you just had to be on our schedule. And if you would get tired, you would sleep. Yeah. So you didn't have a specific nap time during the day. But when you were in the real estate office, you would climb up on the chair, you'd go from your little desk and climb up on Valerie's chair. And while she was at the desk, you would lean on her back and fall asleep and take a nap. So when you were tired, your body will tell you you're tired. So you never had any specific bed time unless it was our bed time. You go to bed, we had dinner. But I mean, we would have dinner most of the time at the same time. But you know, if it was a little late, it wasn't like you were fussy or grouchy because you had not been fed. Right. So you were kind of on our schedule. We didn't have a schedule for you. Yeah. So I just wanted to add that in there because there's some people that are really strict about like schedules or whatever. I never had one. I also forgot to mention that I would always ask why as a child, as still an adult, I always ask why and my parents always gave me an answer. It was never because I said so or anything like that. And I'm really happy for that. They always answered my questions. That's our last topic. Okay. Well, one of the things we always wanted to make sure Alex had a lot of confidence instilled in her because recognizing that she was growing up in a world where at least in our area, where we were at that time, being Asian was very unusual and she would have two moms. So she had to build a lot of confidence in herself and be a really strong person. So we always wanted to get her involved in activities that she could where she could excel. We still have confidence issues with dance and stuff. I know, but you know you were good. Well, yeah. I mean, because I worked really hard to like get to that level and I still wasn't like, I was like a good dancer. I wouldn't say I was like that. I wouldn't say I was like meant to be a dancer, but I was pretty good. You were. Well, first we got you into the gymnastics. Oh, I was scared of the balance beam. I know, but you did a really great job. All right, thanks. She was really great. They kept promoting her and then when she got to the balance beam thing, she just wanted to quit. Yeah. Like why? She wouldn't walk on the balance beam. Even though the balance beam, she started I was like this far on the floor. And this kid told me something terrible about the cheese pit. So I was scared. Anyway, but yeah, I was, I was in a lot of activities and stuff. You were brownie and took guitar lessons and mostly did dance, but you kept your body in shape. You learned how to organize things and do a good job at school and at your activity. So hopefully you grew up with a lot of confidence. I think what actually really contributes to confident my confidence and stuff is like doing YouTube as well as dance just because I'm not afraid of like getting hate or like, I mean, rejection is really sad, but like I'm, I wouldn't say I'm used to it, but I've had it in my life, like dance auditions. Oh, you weren't picked to be in that dance. Well, like life moves on, like just look right. You learned a lot from dance. I always wanted to write a book called everything you know, need to know about life. You learn it dance. Yeah, that's true. Because you do learn a lot about life. You learn about teamwork and you learned about, you did learn about rejection and disappointment and you learned about victory. Yeah. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Yeah. And you learned, you learned about prejudice. Yeah, kind of. And you learned about what I want to say. I can't think of the word politics. That's the word. You learned about politics. Because sometimes... You might have the best dance on the stage, but you might not win. Right. Because maybe you were new to that competition. Yeah. And competitions are sometimes political. Yeah. You know, if you're new, you know, they've got other studios that give them a lot of money, they come every year. You know, maybe you had like a really good dance, but you know, the other people were good too and you know, they know they're going to continue to support them. So maybe they don't want to abandon those other studios. So it was political sometimes, not always, but sometimes it was political. So you learn about when you think you have the best dance and you don't win. I also think what makes me like really confident and stuff is just being so diverse. Like we add diversity anywhere we go. And it's just like, we're good people. So like, if you don't like that or like us, which luckily we've never really had issues. So like, thank goodness. So maybe if we had different experiences, we would not say these sorts of things. But I mean, overall, like we haven't had a lot of hate. And I think just already being so different from everyone else and not like stereotypical and stuff, it helps just when you're breaking the ice with someone new. Hey, I'm adopted out of gay moms. So probably so take it or leave it. So I think that is going to be it for this video. If you guys have any questions, leave them in the comments down below. And I think that's going to wrap it up. I was definitely not raised as your traditional kid. And I definitely don't plan on raising my kids traditionally really, except they're going to be allowed to paint their fingernails and do everything that my parents not when they come to grandma. Let me my grandma, Sherry's mom, let me paint my nails. And then yeah, this is going off on a little tangent. But if I choose to put my kids online, just in general, whatever, like, I never had a normal, a normal life. I mean, I never was like, I don't know, raised traditionally. So right, you didn't have a traditional family. Yeah. So I mean, it's fine. If you guys enjoyed this, make sure you give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel. And I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.