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Labels Schmabels!
27 Plays8 months ago
Ever wonder why we love slapping labels on moms? Join me as I dive into the sea of mom labels (and barely scratch the surface) and argue why it's high time we just embrace the magic of momming without all the fancy (read: judgy) tags. Laugh with me at the ridiculousness of these labels - Let's keep it real and simply just...mom it up in our own momtabulous way!
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Transcript
Introduction and Tone Setting
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome back to Mom Tabulous. I'm Charla Mander. Oh my God, I'm so excited for today. It's just me talking to you. And if you can't see, if you're listening to the podcast and not watching this on YouTube, I am hanging out in my leggings. I am wearing my Lulu's and...
00:00:33
Speaker
I just got on a tank top and sports bra. I did shower, so there's that. But then I put on my workout clothes that I sweated in earlier this morning because I'm going for a walk later with a friend.
Judgment Among Mothers
00:00:46
Speaker
But what I'm talking about today is judgment. And I'm talking about judgment between moms. And one thing that led to this is I had a friend post something on Facebook that was like, I think I'm an ingredient mom.
00:01:03
Speaker
and my kids told me I'm an ingredient mom and then I went down this rabbit hole and I was like what's an ingredient mom and then I went down a rabbit hole and I looked at this and there are so many different types of moms out there and we're going to talk about the labels but I want to go through some I think I'm just
00:01:24
Speaker
scratching the tip of the iceberg with this, but the one that inspired this whole episode, right? I had to, I had to look up. So ingredient mom, this is all over TikTok right now. It's the latest like family trend of all these kids that are like,
00:01:42
Speaker
All we have in the house is ingredients. We don't have actual meals. There's no snacks. We just have ingredients. And the whole thing about this is when your kids go, there's nothing to eat. And you're going, there's plenty of food. You just have to make it, right? So you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We don't have uncrustables. Here's some bread. Here's some PB&J. Make it yourself, right? Or let me make it for you if they're too little. They shouldn't be holding a knife.
00:02:11
Speaker
or you want a burrito? Great, here's a tortilla, fill it. We're not getting the frozen bread. Those are ingredient moms. And maybe that's who you are. That's fine. None of this is wrong. I'm just going through, kind of for me, I'm going through the ridiculousness that are all these labels,
Mom Stereotypes and Labels
00:02:31
Speaker
right? So the opposite of the ingredient mom is the snack only mom.
00:02:38
Speaker
And apparently these are moms who have just snacks all day and there aren't any quote unquote real meals. You're just snacking all day long. So, you know, here's a bunch of fruits and here's a bunch of Cheez-Its and here's a bunch of snacks and kids just snack all day. Okay. Everything's pre-packaged and prepared meals apparently are a rarity. All right. Then there's an almond mom, which,
00:03:05
Speaker
Our moms that I would, I assumed almond mom was going to be like something healthy, but apparently it's, they give unhealthy eating advice and habits to keep kids on a strict diet, to keep their weight low. So that's like eating disorder waiting to happen. Okay. Um, they always have a healthier option for popular snacks.
00:03:26
Speaker
All right, I always have a healthier option for popular snacks. But I think what you're going to see as I'm going through this list is maybe possibly a little bit of everything applies to you. And that's kind of what I'm going to get to at the end. All right. So stereotypically with an almond mom, they're talking about like disordered eating and unhealthy habits.
00:03:47
Speaker
Here I am, fitness and health professional. I always have healthy options for other, that's okay. I'd rather my kids not eat the crap, right? So, you know, then there's the crunchy mom, which is the natural lifestyle. They limit technology. They do the cloth diapering.
00:04:02
Speaker
organic food only. Okay. I didn't cloth diaper, but we do eat organic pretty much as, as much as we can. Um, you know, they don't do a lot of the modern medicine, essential oils and crystals. I have, here are my crystals. If you can see, they're right here. They're within reach. I've got something in my bra right now.
00:04:21
Speaker
These have crystals. So I'm a little bit crunchy mom too, but I do do some modern medicines. There's a silky mom, which is the opposite of the crunchy mom. They're all modern medicine. They do everything doctors say. They don't want to hear about the oils and the aromatherapy and the acupuncture and all of that. It's all about, you know, they're about quote unquote convenience. Then there's the scrunchy mom.
00:04:48
Speaker
which is the combination of both. They're the crunchy mom and the silky mom. They try to find that balance. So they're a scrunchie mom. Okay. Oh my God. Can we just mom, right? Then we're getting into the animals. Are you ready? Here's my, here's, here's my favorite. We're going to get into all the animals. There's the dolphin mom, which is an authoritative in nature, yet flexible mom. They have rules and expectations, but also value creativity and independence. And they collaborate with their children.
00:05:19
Speaker
Then there's the jellyfish mom who have very few rules and expectations and just give in to avoid conflict and are overly permissive. Then there's the free range mom who prefer to build resiliency in their children by giving kids a lot of freedom, even at a young age. Basically free range mom, I consider to be 80s parenting. That's how I grew up. You want to play with the kid down the street, walk your butt down there and knock on the door and ask if they can play.
00:05:47
Speaker
I'll watch you from the doorstep, but I'm not walking you down there myself, right? Be home before the streetlights come on and we're good. 80s parenting. Free
Critique of Parenting Labels
00:05:56
Speaker
range mom. Now they're called free range moms. Then there is a unicorn mom. Okay, I want to be a unicorn. The unicorn mom is imperfect. They may drink. They have a sense of humor and don't care what others think.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah. Unicorn. All right. I want to be a unicorn. There is a tiger mom who is very strict and, uh, invested in their kids' success. There is a, well, we all know the helicopter mom, right? Overprotective. There is an even more overprotective mom now called the Velcro mom, which is even more protective than the helicopter mom.
00:06:39
Speaker
Oh, there's a butterfly mom. I missed that. Butterfly mom. They step back and allow their kids to practice trial and error and get it wrong and fail and get frustrated and try again and get it wrong and fail and get frustrated and try again and succeed. So that's the point of the butterfly mom. Then there's the bougie mom, which is a conscious approach to education.
00:07:01
Speaker
They will travel the world with their toddler in tow and teach them all the things, but I think that sounds amazing. Honestly, if I could travel the world and school my kids that way, I think that would be awesome. There's a gatekeeper mom who gate keeps all the friends and only lets certain people in, but they won't let most kids engage with their kid in things. There's strawberry moms, which I love. It's a group of single moms sharing experiences in support of each other.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I know I've just scratched the surface. That was like two and a half pages of handwritten notes from me because I still write things out by hand. I don't know what kind of mom that is, a pencil mom, is that what you're gonna call me, right? But that is two and a half handwritten pages of different types of moms. And I know there's more. This was like two hours down the rabbit hole of me going, oh my God. But here's the bottom line that I'm gonna say. Can we just say F the labels?
00:07:53
Speaker
Screw the labels, right? It doesn't matter. As long as you are in momming and you are involved and you care and you feed your children and you love your children and you, you know, tuck them into bed at night and they know they are loved. Do you? Do what works for you, for your sanity, for your family. We don't need to have all these labels. Here's what happens with the labels. They become judgy.
00:08:18
Speaker
They're judgy. All of this I'm reading and I'm laughing at because this is who I am. I laugh in sarcasm. That's just what I do. If you haven't learned that yet, that's how I handle most situations in my life. It's gotten me in trouble a few times. But in this case, I think I'm trying to laugh it off because what happens is not only are replacing judgment on other people. Oh, she's an almond mom. Oh, there's the group of strawberry moms. Oh,
Parenting Teens and Communication
00:08:43
Speaker
that's a unicorn mom. I want to be a unicorn, right?
00:08:47
Speaker
but it's judgment on yourself too. And all these labels put someone else down to make someone else feel good. Either you're putting the other mom down to make you feel and look better, which we all know is very mean girls and doesn't work and is not how, at least for me is not the example I want my kids to see, but also on the flip side, you're putting yourself down.
00:09:10
Speaker
and holding someone else up on a pedestal. I wish I could be more like her. I wish I could be more like that. I wish I had more attributes of this kind of mom. Well, then do it.
00:09:21
Speaker
right? Do it. I have plenty of friends that parent very differently than me. And some of them, you know, I go, I go, I really wish that I could handle, you know, certain, you know, I have a teenager now. So stressful situations, teen hormones, more like her. So I'm looking at it. And instead of going, I'm never going to be like that. And I wish I could, I'm going, okay, how would so and so handle this? She might
00:09:47
Speaker
be like, okay, right? If there's a friend that we all know, if we have teenagers and they're gonna, they got to make their own choices with friends. Some of them are friends that bring their own level of drama and whatever level, especially when you got girls and you can see as a mom, that girl might, might end up taking you down. Might be some bad news. Might not, right? I'm going to hope and pray that the values that I've instilled in my daughter are enough.
00:10:11
Speaker
for her to stand up to the peer pressure, for her to stand up if she's being bullied or taken down or something is going on, that she's got the wherewithal within herself and the self-assuredness to go, nope, good, set some boundaries and continue to communicate with me.
00:10:26
Speaker
because we have that relationship, right? But also I know as a mom that if I'm saying, no, she can't come over. No, you cannot go to that. No, you cannot hang out with her. No, you can't go to Starbucks with her after school. The more rebellion is gonna happen because that's what teens do, right? So I've learned from watching some of my mom friends who've had older kids who are like, I know it's not my favorite person, but I don't think that friendship's gonna last forever, so okay.
00:10:54
Speaker
You know, and I'd rather have them at my house where I can see and I can have a gauge. Oh, do you want some water? Hey, how's it going? Who wants some watermelon? It's a healthy swap of a snack, right? But I have more of a feelers on the situation.
00:11:11
Speaker
without controlling, without totally stepping in. And if I say, no, you can't with that person so much that they're just going to rebel and go out and probably do it anyway. So I'd rather, I'd rather have eyes. That's me.
Diverse Parenting Approaches
00:11:24
Speaker
That's me. Maybe you were like, no, and you expect the kids to, you know, listen, and that's okay too. I'm not judging anyone, right? But all the labels do is put someone down and build someone else up. You're either,
00:11:39
Speaker
putting someone on a pedestal or you're trying to put yourself on a pedestal by judging others. And that certainly is an example that I want for my daughters, for me, you know, from the example for me to see, I want them to see me supporting other moms. That's the whole point of this podcast, right? Is us supporting each other. So I don't, I don't say labels. I don't say, Oh, that mom is, you know,
00:12:00
Speaker
this kind of mom or that kind of mom or that style of parenting. I certainly don't do that. I go, okay, well, that's her choice. So and so's mom is letting her go to that party where there's no parents. That's fine, but I'm not. I don't care that so and so's mom is a, what's the free range mom or the, the, the, which one, which one is the, I'm going through my notes here, the,
00:12:28
Speaker
Which one is the super permissive, what did I say? Curling parent. Oh, did I say the curling parent? I love the curling parent. I love curling. As a sport, I'm obsessed. Every time the winner, Olympics, come on, obsessed. This is where my ADHD comes in, but I skipped these two. There's a curling mom who, you know, the person in curling, the sport, where they sweep the thing, if you can't see, I'm sweeping the floor really, really fast, and there's all been all the reels of like, with the Swiffer, right, sweeping the floor.
00:12:59
Speaker
They will sweep away all obstacles from their kids' path. Okay, come on. And then that person is also known as a snowplow mom because they will snowplow like a snowplow all the obstacles so their children never feel disappointed. All right, listen, again, if you wanna protect your kids from harm, please do, right? If you wanna protect your kids from negative situations and you don't want them to ever go through anything like that, your choice, right? Your choice.
00:13:25
Speaker
We don't have to put labels on this.
Embracing Unique Styles and Rejection of Labels
00:13:28
Speaker
Maybe, like me, you're finding, I wrote this down, I gave myself a label. Maybe you're finding, like me, you are some hybrid of a, this is what I named myself, scrunch, doll, gel, range, curl, bougie, dant, fint.
00:13:47
Speaker
Basically, I'm reading through these going, oh, yeah, I do that. And I've done that. And I've done that. I don't do everything under every single label, right? But I pull from a few of them here and there. I'm a hybrid of a whole bunch of things. So maybe you are too. And you know what? Best of all worlds. You can go out and you can do that. It's OK, right? The bottom line is this. Drop the labels.
00:14:15
Speaker
Let's stop labeling each other. Moms, stop labeling kids. Don't teach our girls to do this. We need to bring the girls together, because the bottom line is this. I fully believe without getting political, the number one thing that our world needs right now is a mother. Do you remember the movie Hook? And Little Windy, in the very end of the movie, looks at Captain Hook, right?
00:14:46
Speaker
She says to him, you need a mother very, very badly. And Captain Hook goes like, whoa. And I think our world right now needs moms. And they need moms to raise positive, productive leaders in society. We need happy kids. We need kids who know they're loved. We need kids who can be self-assured, who can stand up when they see injustice.
00:15:13
Speaker
We need kids who are not afraid of a little bit of conflict and are not afraid to say, this feels wrong, whatever that situation is, and are not afraid to go into the workforce and into the world as adults to create the change that we so desperately need right now. And that comes from their parents, not just the mom, the dad too, right? This is a podcast for moms. What our world needs right now.
00:15:43
Speaker
is a mother. So you do you. You mom. You mom the shiz out of the kids. You go do it your way. F the labels. Have the ingredients. Have the snacks. Feed the kids. Love the kids. Take care of the kids. Raise the
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00:16:02
Speaker
kids. Butterfly them off to try and fail and try and fail and succeed in the way that you've shown them is possible.
00:16:12
Speaker
because that's all we're doing as moms. We're trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and maybe getting it right every once in a while. That's all we can do. And all we can do is show them how to do it. So go off, be mom tabulous in your own way, F the labels. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
00:16:36
Speaker
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00:17:06
Speaker
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