Episode 111: How to Help Our Kids Avoid External Validation with Mory Fontanez
/We want our children to understand and know their worth, advocate for themselves, and be confident in who they are. And that they do not need to be anything other than who they are to be appreciated, loved, and seen in our family. But the more time children spend out in the world, in school or sports or online on social media, the more they start comparing themselves to others and seeking external validation. It's just how the world is set up, and we sometimes, with the best of intentions, do it too! We give praise that isn't specific or focuses on outcomes instead of effort, we give feedback rather than directing them to reflect on themselves, and try as hard as we might, we compare and label siblings. (I do it too, even though I know better! Sometimes the doing and the knowing are two different things, right?)
As parents, it can happen to us too. Seeing photos of what seem to be perfect families and perfect lives on social media ruin our self-esteem, suck us into comparison, and lead to feelings of discontent. It's one of the reasons I've been far less active on IG these days. I hop on to make a silly reel for you (did you see my dancing in this one?? 😂 ) and then close the app so that I can focus on my true life, rather than the fantasy social media can suck me into...
But it's not easy. And as a person who was raised to thrive on external validation: praise, accomplishments, good grades, degrees, publications, awards, grants, etc; releasing the need for that feedback to prove my worth has been ongoing, deeply challenging work. I still face it, every time I read a review of the podcast or one of my programs, or get an email from one of you about how your family is changing and growing it is WORK for me to feel the JOY and DELIGHT that I get to do this as my job, all while not letting it mean anything about my WORTH as a human. It would be so easy to live for your reviews, feedback, and emails, but I know the flipside is crushing. Wondering if I'm worthless if I can't be of service...
It's not what I want for my kids, and it isn't what I want for myself! What about you? Is this something you're working on?
Well, if you at all identified with Luisa or Isabela in Encanto, this week's episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast is for you!
We will talk about external validation and how it can distract us from staying true to ourselves. To help me in this conversation, I brought in my colleague, Mory Fontanez. She will be teaching us the following:
External Validation Addiction: What it is, how does it start, and how do children learn it from us
How to raise children who can self-validate
Do follow Mory on Instagram. Her social handle is @moryfontanez.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody, this is Dr. Laura Froyen, and on this week's episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast we're going to be talking about external validation, how it can really distract us from listening to our true intuition and really staying true to ourselves and how it can really make things hard for our kids.
Now to have this conversation I'm bringing in a friend and colleague Mory Fontanez and she's going to help us understand how we can help raise our children to avoid validation addiction and hopefully we have a chance to talk about how we can work on that within ourselves too. So Mory, welcome to the show! Thanks for having this conversation with me. Will you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Mory: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I love your show and I'm excited to talk to parents about parenting. Some are very passionate about that but that is not my background. I will explain just a little bit. I am an executive purpose coach and the owner of a business consulting firm.
I basically started 822 groups which is my firm after about 20 years on the agency side helping Fortune five hundred's manage crisis and chaos and change and really try to build relationships with their employees and customers and I left that career because I was seeing a major problem in business which is that leaders were disconnected from themselves and my intuition told me over and over again that I needed to do something about that.
And so 822 group and my work is really about reconnecting leaders and actually just people back to their intuition so they can live and thrive in their purpose. And in doing that I've really become a student of all of the limiting belief systems or the things that block us from being intuitive that block us from being purposeful and from thriving and one of those things that I teach a lot in my methodology is what I call validation addiction and over the last three years that I've been teaching my clients about this.
I've also in order to walk the walk really been looking at how that plays in our lives and particularly as a parent with my children. And so lately I've started talking a lot about validation addiction in children. What does it mean? How does it start, how do they learn it from us and how, you know right now with social media being the primary way that they communicate, it expounds upon that addiction and what we can do to kind of help them navigate it and become their own source of validation.
Laura: I love that, you know, I feel like in the parenting world we um we hear the praise junkies that we don't want to raise kids that are praised junkies. I think a little bit dismissive of something that what we're really saying is that we want our kids to know who they are, we want our kids to know what deeply matters to them to be able to stand up for themselves, stand up for what they believe is right and to follow their heart without thinking that they have to do something or be a certain way in order to be loved accepted, valued and seen in our families and I think that that's what we're talking about here today, when we talk about validation addiction, we're talking about really external validation, right?
Mory: That's right. Absolutely.
Laura: So, what are some of the things that parents can unknowingly and with the best of intentions be doing that actually sets our kids up to look for and seek external validation?
Mory: Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, listen, the biggest truth is that you know, we mirror behavior for our children, right? And so they're learning not from the things we're telling them maybe a little bit, but really from watching us and you know, I have noticed as I've been looking at validation addiction, you know, what are the ways that I as a parent show that other people's opinions of meat not only matter but define my value for me, right.
Am I constantly checking my Instagram now that I'm building a brand to make sure people are liking the content, you know, am I really overly reliant on my mother or my sister's opinion of a decision that I've made, How do I interact with my fiancee in front of them in terms of being able to speak my truth and hold that truth regardless of his reaction because those are the things that we really do by living that our kids learn from.
And so the biggest thing I would say is really being mindful about how much do you look to external sources and people to tell you you're valuable to tell you you're worth it to tell you that you matter to tell you you're successful, that you're a good mom or a good dad, right? How much do you need that from others to define your sense of self and
Laura: Absolutely, yes. And not even need that feedback that you are successful. What even need other people to tell you what does success mean? It's so important for us to think about that, you know? So the way that I parent my kids, everybody who gets a chance to work with me knows that I am not here to tell you how to parent your kids.
I parent my kids in the way that's right. In a line for me, I'm here to help you figure out are you actually parenting in alignment with what's right for you? But I mean we get to decide, we get to choose what a successful parenting day looks like or a successful business day or a successful partnering day looks like for us, those are our choices. But oftentimes we are seeking outside definition.
Mory: Absolutely, and you're so right, that that's kind of the root, right? Like that's the seed we have someone else or a system or a culture, right? Like in Persian? So for Persians being a mom looks a certain way, it certainly did not look like traveling three weeks out of the month when my kids were two and four for my career. Right?
So my mom was sort of like, what are you doing and really having to understand that culturally systemically in our relationships. We are told what good looks like and that is actually the seed that plants the validation addiction because then we're constantly trying to meet someone else's definition.
And the crisis comes in when we genuinely hit a moment where we're like that I'm not happy trying to do it this way, I'm getting the validation but it just doesn't even feel good anymore. So that's I mean that could be a different topic. We can talk about that for hours, but I think you're absolutely right that it starts from trying to fit into someone else's definition of good.
Laura: Absolutely. You know, I don't know that I've talked about my professional background very much on this Podcast, but I was a professor in my dream job. You know what I thought was my dream job. In reality it was the job that a friend had told me I would never be qualified or good enough to get. And then I went out and got it.
You know, I was in it and I was realizing so in academia, all definitions of success are external. When you go up for tenure, you seek out the experts in your fields, you know, kind of a permission and approval to get promoted. Your you know how well you're doing is based on your, you know, your publication acceptance rate.
You know, it's all external. And I had this big dissonance, this big moment of realizing that I was living a life that was not what I actually believed in or wanted or was good for me. And I was completely disconnected from my purpose because it was taking years for all of my research on parenting to actually get into the hands of parents. And so I quit.
But I mean, this is I don't I know I do not want my kids to find themselves in their mid thirties at a crisis point where they don't know who they are. They've been lived trying to live up to other people's standards that they don't even believe in. I've just been handed to them unconsciously, I don't want that. So, I think our listeners agree like this is not what we want for our kids. But it was done to us. We don't want that for our kids.
Mory: Literally happened today. That I had to just to show that this is constant work as a parent, right? I am getting remarried five weeks and I had my dress fitting today. And my mom went with me and it was such a poignant moment. She's getting older. I was like, wow, this is so amazing that I get to have this memory.
And we were walking back to the car and in my head, I was thinking, God, I really can't wait to have this with my daughter. And I stopped myself. And I was like, if I have this with my daughter, if she chooses this, which, by the way, I don't know. And I had to ask myself in that moment, can you let go of this desire for her?
And it was like, resoundingly yes. So that's it's like the tiniest, teeniest little moments that we build these boxes for our kids. That was a really positive thing. I wanted to share something that I thought was lovely with my daughter, but I had to stop myself with a parent and say she might not think that's lovely.
Laura: Yeah, she might never want to get married. Yes, I think you're so right. I think it is so important for us to remember. It's fine to have hopes and dreams for our kids, but not to the extent that, like you said, it boxes them in like them in a little space that is by our definition, and we leave room for them to be themselves too.
Mory: And that creates disappointment for us that they can feel.
Laura: And they can they're so good at feeling of disappointment, aren't they?
Mory: Absolutely.
Laura: And so what are some other pieces then? So I very much appreciate the invitation, you know, when we're looking to inspire our kids to a good look at ourselves and really step into that kind of fierce, strong place of living in our values so that we can transmit them more fully to our kids. I love that.
Mory: Yeah.
Laura: But what about our interactions with our kids when we have moments and opportunities to help our kids learn to start self evaluating and finding satisfaction and in their true compass within themselves. Any thoughts on those?
Mory: Yeah, I have three big ones. The first one is in when they accomplish something that we feel proud of. One of my rules is to not say I'm proud of you. First my rule is to ask, are you proud of yourself so that it immediately creates that kind of circuitry that what matters most is how proud of yourself you are. Then I can tell you I'm really proud of you too. So that's a simple one. I do all the time right now so that they can have that internal guidance system start to grow within them.
That's asking am I proud of myself not, am I trying to make my mom proud? The first one, the second one is in problem solving with them, right? You know they're having a hard time in a class or with a friend instead of telling them what to do. I do a lot of asking them what they think is the right thing to do.
And one of the things I say to both of them is I always use this with them, what is your higher self telling you right now because it's important to me as a parent who really values intuition to build that connection with their own intuition first and foremost, I help them envision it as their higher self. We've even done things they're little where like they would draw what it looked like and then they can ask, you know what is right right now or what should I do with my friend. And so it's more of being their partner in brainstorming and being there, reminder that they can reconnect to this like unending source of wisdom within themselves to find the answer rather than mommy has the answer right now.
Honestly I am not perfect and there are moments where we are racing around or I'm stressed out or I feel like it's a you know not life or death but it could be a dangerous situation where I'm way more directive. But I am very mindful about choosing those moments very carefully. It is not heavy handed, it is not the majority of the way that I parent, it is to really be thoughtful about when I'm really being directive and when I can actually ask them to stop and think.
And then the 3rd 1 is that I teach this to executives that I coach. I always tell people nothing is ever personal ever when you're interacting with someone else because everyone is in their own hurricane always. And so they're not even thinking enough about how they're going to drag you down to be doing things related to you. It's about them, they're either triggered or they're traumatized or whatever it might be.
So in their interactions with their friends. When that stuff gets hard is to really help them to distance themselves and ask what is this person going through that has nothing to do with me so that they can understand that it's never about them. The byproduct of that, which is so lovely is that it also build empathy because then they have understanding.
But one of the things I'm also teaching them is that you can have empathy without crossing the boundary of trying to fix it for them, right? You can just experience or understand it and take yourself out of the scenario. If you take yourself out a scenario all of a sudden you can be emotionally neutral about it because it's not about you anymore. So those are the three kind of big things that I talked about.
Laura: I love that. I think that's so important. I think so many parents that I have the beautiful opportunity to work with feel lost and like they don't have an intuition that they can trust and you know, through working together, they find it again, they start listening again. But I know that's very hungry to not quiet, especially their daughters. I think in our world.
Women especially are told that we have to quiet our intuition and fit into, you know, certain places and I love this the last example of helping our kids engage in perspective taking. It's really hard for little kids who cognitively aren't quite there yet.
But as I get older, we I mean we can be inviting them to see the other side. Just this morning, my daughters were out watering our garden and one had a hose and was on the raspberry pageant was kind of just moving it across the raspberries and went too far and sprayed or sister, it was a complete accident and the sister who got sprayed was started yelling about it and then that one got really, you know, the one who did the spring felt terrible and was so upset, doesn't she's really sensitive to getting yelled at. It was this big blow up. And really at the end of the day, like what came down to it as I sat down with the older one, he was a little bit more able to do the perspective taking.
And I said, honey, you think she meant to spray you or you do you think it was an accident? And this was after validating about so uncomfortable to get sprayed? It was just surprised. Yes, I know that water is hard water, so it's itchy on your skin, you know, because she has some sensory stuff, All the validation first. And then the invitation for perspective taking and she goes, no, I suppose I didn't really need to yell at her because it was an accident. She would never spray me on purpose without my consent. And I was like, I didn't think they both apologized and it was fine. They've been playing beautifully all day.
You know, having them come to that conclusion themselves I think is so much more helpful than just telling them and I really appreciate you bringing that. I also really loved what you had to say about asking them to self evaluate. I think that that's so important. And even like those of you who are listening, even when your kids are really little, you can still do this. So when they come to you with a scribble on the paper and they've got a big grin and they say mama, look at what I drew like you. I mean of course you love it. It's beautiful.
And you can also just pause for just a second and say, oh I see you've got a big grin on your face. What do you think about your drawing and just invite them? Pretty mama and then you say so pretty. You know, and then you go in but even when they're tiny and barely verbal that you can still invite self reflection and self evaluation.
Mory: Yes. Can we talk about your raspberry patch? You know, you're my business. Yeah, amazing. I want to come to your house.
Laura: Oh my God, we're so like we have just such a beautiful backyard. It's a dream. So fortunate that
Mory: I do it like they're spraying.
Laura: Yes, it's yeah, no, it was there when we moved in. We were actually really surprised because we bought the house in the wintertime and we didn't know what was under the snow. It's Wisconsin. So it was like two ft of snow and we were like, these are brass berries. We get raspberries. It was very exciting.
Mory: That's awesome.
Laura: Okay. Well, so are there other things though? So I mean, we've talked about this with younger kids. What about it as our kids get older as they age and move into the teen years and this really gets hard. Especially like you said before with social media. I mean The vanity metrics and social media and there's so much research coming out on what this does to teen girls especially look for that validation externally or is there anything that we can do to help girls through this?
Mory: Yeah, I'm not one of those moms that doesn't allow them on iPads and tries to keep them away. But I was limited. So my daughter who's 12 Is allowed on Tiktok only. She's asked for Snapchat and all these other ones I told her no, but Tiktok really is kind of the way she expresses. She's a performer. So she's constantly kind of performing. And one of the things we talk about because she brings it up a lot is, wow. You know, 500 people viewed this video, but only two people like this. And so instead of, first of all, I think our first instinct as parents is to try to make them feel better.
You know, it's like, no, it doesn't matter. You know, instead of all that noise, I will connect like make sure I look her in the eye and ask her does that make your video any less funny creative? Was your dancing that like, you know, let's actually try and really think about how do you still feel about this video? Do you like this video? And so it's about just again breaking that narrative with her right then and there and asking her again, how do you feel about this thing that you created?
But the second thing is, you know, I think that in the friendships as they get older calling things for what they are and if she's experiencing mean girl stuff to let her know that let her know that that's coming from someone else is hurt and it's mean and it's not okay. And you know, having more kind of radically honest conversations with her about what she's experiencing rather than trying to sugarcoat it or you know, make her feel like it's an anomaly.
But just to tell her the other thing I do is I tell her a lot about my own childhood a lot about what I was like in middle school for me and how I was bullied and who believe me and what that felt like. And what I wish I knew then that I know now. So I think it still goes back to the same three things, right? But it's just at a more transparent, more adult kind of way of speaking to them, right? It's not the baby language, but it's like, what do you really think about yourself right now or this thing that you made and what do you think the other person that was so terrible about it actually thinks about themselves that allows them to be terrible towards you.
And so it's like, again, it's the prospective setting and really helping her to have permission to love the things she loves and not look for other people to tell her it's okay to love those things. And to know, I always tell her when you raise your frequency, you will find people who will meet with them and if they're not at your frequency, you don't need them to drag you down, you're trying to fly. So you got to keep finding people that meet your frequency and you'll know in your gut what that feels like.
Laura: Oh, I love that. And it also, you know, I feel like you kind of touched on it and I just want to pull that out too. Is it sounds too like you're really teaching her to be a critical consumer of social media of what do these things actually mean? And I I sometimes even take that one step further with, especially with my coaching clients who have the tweens kids teaching them about algorithms and the psychology that is used on these platforms to get people to stay on the platforms and keep creating content and walk motivated to want you to stay on it and keep making things and why they might even want you to not get likes so that you keep you know this.
Yeah exactly. And so I have those conversations around things like you know the little toys that are at the checkout counter and how stores choose to put those there. So kids will ask their parents for them and their parents are already buying things that their psychology involved in that. And so having those critical consumption conversations early at age appropriate times. But as you get older around like are we going to let the algorithm trick us like that. We let the algorithm, some people who are writing codes and who spread it psychology book really do that to us.
Mory: I watched the social dilemma.
Laura: So good. Right?
Mory: And after I saw that all of our notifications went off every single device. No notifications are allowed because they really talked about how they measure how long it's been since you interact and they'll start hanging your phone and notifying you. And so it's like such an easy gateway to get you back in. So there's definitely a huge value in your teaching people about algorithms.
Laura: Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. Um Well I love this conversation. I feel like it was so lovely and varied. I so appreciate you sharing this information with me and with all of us really. I mean, and I just want to wrap up by bringing it back to that. We really practice what we and embodying what we want our kids to experience and take on for themselves is so important. I'm, I'm so glad you started there. I really appreciate that.
Mory: Thank you and being honest with them about how we're feeling about things. You know, I made a mistake and I, this person did this and I felt bad about that, you know, I'm really honest about stuff like that with them too. So they understand that it's not all peaches and of course all the time.
Laura: They need struggle modeled for them as well, you know, in with appropriate and healthy boundaries. Of course, yeah, absolutely. They need to see us being resilient. Yeah. Work Yeah. Well Mory, thank you so much for bringing this conversation.
Mory: So fast. I can talk for hours.
Laura: Yeah.
Mory: I really loved it.
Laura: It was awesome. It was really fun. I'm really glad that we had a chance to have this conversation and I want to make sure that folks know where they can find you. I know you have a couple of articles on this topic.
Mory: I do. So yeah, so follow me on Instagram, that's where everything goes @moryfontanez. I'm constantly sharing my writing and videos and things like that @moryfontanez and then, um, for my firm, it's 8 22 groups, which is our website, 822groups.com.
Laura: Awesome. Well Mory, thank you so much for being with us. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
Mory: Thank you so much. I love being here.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this