Welcome back to another eye-opening episode of White Label American. We dive deep into the extraordinary journey of motherhood with repeat guests Verena, Preet, Mimi, and Arabella. They discuss how cultural upbringing significantly influences their approach to parenting, how they navigate societal expectations, and the challenges and joys of motherhood drawn from their diverse backgrounds. This episode is a celebration of mothers in all their resilience and strength across the world—hear inspiring stories of triumph and transcendence against societal judgments.
Don't miss out on this enlightening episode that beautifully explores the complex yet rewarding world of parenting, celebrates cultural diversity, and supports the spirit of family unity.
Become a Black Podcasters Association Member
Timestamped overview
00:00 Podcast features 3 returning guests for celebration.
09:37 Comparing life stages with peers and acquaintances.
15:32 Realized societal judgment of late parenting choice.
17:04 Aunt faced fertility struggles but eventually succeeded.
25:43 Defying family expectations, empowering self-expression, breaking silence.
29:29 Teaching empathy and kindness through listening and chatting.
37:37 Parenting advice, perfect parents, child's rights. Disconnect.
41:06 Encouraging diverse interests in child's extracurricular activities.
47:25 High school diversity leads teens to discover heritage.
52:50 Creating a supportive network of parent friends.
56:47 Appreciate, thanks, wrapping up, bond, songs, trick questions.
59:48 Combined playlist reflects both our musical tastes.
01:09:01 Husband discovers new dish, brings excitement.
01:11:10 She's independent, cooks Korean, learned American.
01:16:34 Trust your instincts, set boundaries, take care.
01:25:13 Rate, review, subscribe, and follow for support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, everyone. Rafael Harry here, and you're listening to White Label American,
a podcast where we hear stories from an immigrant or two, sometimes more.
Thank you for listening and enjoy the show.
Music.
(00:21):
Welcome to a very extra special episode of White Label American.
Last year, we did the It's the first Mother's Day episode and it was so much fun. So it's back again.
And this time we have an extra, you know, we went one extra than last year.
We did it with three moms.
(00:41):
So this time we got extra friends of the podcast.
And we have three guests who have been on an episode, at least one episode before.
So we have Verena from episode 50.
Long overdue second appearance on
the podcast we have Preet who's been on
(01:02):
episode 145 and last year's Mother's Day
episode and we have Mimi from Thanksgiving episode
last year and episode 165 and Arabella who was who's been in the studio has
brought some extra exciting guests but hasn't officially appeared on an episode
so thank you all for joining us today and each one of you we have an opportunity to introduce yourself.
(01:28):
So this is an episode to celebrate our moms and to all our listeners who are
moms out there, special shout out to you.
Everyone listening, don't forget, you have an opportunity to let us know, give us feedback.
We'd love to hear from you. And yeah, thank you for your support.
And we shall dive in. And how shall we go? We should go alphabetically or right to left?
(01:52):
It's the moms. You guys decide. I want to go first and introduce yourselves.
Me? I was going to say Arabella.
Hey, everyone. It's Mimi, Mimi Jacks. I am a mother of one.
My daughter is a grown-up. She's 30, but I'm also the host of the Improper Mimi
(02:13):
podcast, so I'm happy to be back on this show again. Welcome, welcome.
Hi, everyone. Nice to be back here. Thanks again for inviting me today, Raphael.
And yeah, it's been almost a year since I've done this. So today I actually
am nervous. Last time I wasn't.
I think when you don't do it often enough, you don't know what you're coming
(02:34):
into. But once you've done it before, you're like, okay, and you have this buildup.
Anyhow, so it's nice to be here. I'm the mother of two boys, 16 and 11.
And navigating being a mom of a teenager in the big city in New York. Yeah.
Thanks for joining us. And I'm Arabella von Arix. I'm thrilled to be here on this vibrant podcast.
(03:00):
And I have two children, 25 and 27, so they're out of the house. It's a new phase.
And that has allowed me to start an art project called Gallery Particulier in
Brooklyn, and it's at gallery.parti, P-A-R-T-I.
Hi, Verena. I've been a mom now for officially a little bit over five and a
(03:24):
half years. And it's been a trip.
I'm one of those people, if you'd asked me 10 years ago, I'd be like,
I'm not a mom. I'm not mom material. I don't know if I want children.
I don't think this is for me. And then I met him.
Then everything changed. So it wasn't that I didn't want children.
(03:44):
It was just that I didn't want children with whomever I was with at the time.
So it's been an interesting, if you count the pregnancy into it,
it's been an interesting six and a half years.
Mom material meets dad material. That's very important.
So for those who aren't aware, Verena and myself, the ones who are the parents
(04:07):
of, there's a little person hiding here.
Yeah, that's why you should be on Patreon so you can see the video.
You'll see the video of the little person I'm talking about.
So yes, we are the parents of Clara, or it'd be Miriam.
So diving into the first question, which Varian I kind of alluded to.
Did you always plan on becoming a mother?
(04:30):
And yes or no, doesn't matter. How has your cultural upbringing influenced your view on motherhood?
Whether that means having children or how you decided to parent them.
I would say I didn't necessarily think I would want children.
I was a little bit, like Verena, like a little bit ambiguous about it, ambivalent about it.
(04:53):
Like, you know, I like my work, I like my career, and, you know,
how is that going to work?
And then I met my husband and we decided to have children and it's just been
really such a wonderful experience.
Sometimes I feel if you're ambivalent, then maybe it's not such a bad way to
(05:13):
go into it because then you really reap the rewards of it that maybe you weren't expecting as much.
And I would say that I, like in America, I feel like typically parents are more
lenient with their children.
They're more strict where I grew up and that's something I adopted and that I like.
(05:39):
Yeah i didn't know if i wanted to have children i
just i knew it was culturally ingrained so growing up
in south asian background you know a rite of
passage and when you actually are considered a woman in the cultures when you
become a mother you know and it was it was sort of that milestone in life that
we were all expected to like reach at some point in our lives you know and so
(06:02):
i took my time with all of that and i also i enjoyed my life you know i was
enjoying being in my thirties in New York city.
And, and I also didn't know if, cause I'd waited if I would be able to have
kids, you know, things change in your body and you just don't know if the engines
are going to be firing when they need to, but it happened right away when we decided it was time.
And it was probably at the point in our relationship when we're on the couch
(06:24):
looking at each other, we've tried all the ice cream that there is to try Ben and Jerry's.
We've watched all the movies there are to watch, you know, on the Netflix envelopes,
the red envelopes that used to come to your door because that's what Netflix was then with the DVDs.
And we wanted something else to spice things up. And I was like,
okay, I think it's time. We're married. Let's try.
(06:45):
And right away, I was pregnant. I knew I'd be a good mom.
I didn't know if I'd like it. I always knew I'd be good at it because it's logical
and you know what it takes to be a parent.
You've seen enough people raise kids and stuff.
But I was surprised that I liked it. So it's interesting that you say that when
you go in with an open mind, you appreciate it more. I agree. Yeah.
(07:07):
Wow. And I have, I think a much maybe different path, you know,
for, for being a mom. I had my.
Survivor of abuse. And so I became pregnant and I think my family upbringing
(07:28):
really encouraged me to keep her.
And so became a mom, 18, you know, stayed home from high school for graduation.
Well, stayed home February, had her in February, went back to school,
graduated, stayed home for the the summer, then went to school in the fall for college.
So it's been a, it's been a journey as well.
(07:51):
So like I said, I've always been a single mom, but I can't imagine my life differently without her.
I think a lot of the things I've done have been for her and for,
you know, my family, for raising her.
So I, it was, you know, I enjoyed the pregnancy, you know, having that life inside side of my body.
(08:13):
But I never really thought about having kids. I was a kid myself at the time.
But yeah, with the support of my family, you know, it's been great to see her
grow and to the woman that she is now.
I think the cultural aspect is interesting because I feel like it wasn't so
much from like the broader culture
that like, you know, you're supposed to have kids when you grow up.
(08:33):
It was more that I grew up with a lot of little girls that really wanted to be moms.
And I was the odd one out. I was always like, yeah, 10 years from now.
I kept saying that like from when I was like maybe 13 or 15 because they were
all like, oh, my God, once we graduate from college, we're going to find a husband
and we're going to have kids.
Right. There's that biological clock thing going on, right? Yeah.
(08:54):
But so this was even during teenage years.
Like, it would be like, yeah, in 10 years, in 10 years. It kept being 10 years
for me for a long, long time.
It wasn't until I had to. Because, you know, that seemed sufficiently enough
far away that things could change.
But yeah, I mean, if I compare myself to a lot of the people that I grew up
with, they either ended up not having kids at all or having them a lot younger than myself. self.
(09:20):
But also, and I don't know if that played into it, my parents had us really young.
My mom's best friend had her two boys really young, and kind of we grew up together,
but we had really young moms, like where if I had been on the same schedule,
Clara would be graduating college now,
which is mind-blowing to me and where we are kind of, or where I feel like I am in my life, Right.
(09:47):
So I think I felt a little bit like, like I said, like the odd one out because
it wasn't really on the radar.
And then even after I moved to the U.S., a lot of people that I know that I
became friends with or friendly with, they now have children that are in high
school or they have children that like just went to college.
One of my friends that I'm still in touch with from when I lived in what Raph
(10:12):
calls upstate, she just had her first granddaughter.
She's just a couple years older than me. That's amazing.
And so what I think is really interesting in a kind of melting pot like New
York is you have everything. Yeah.
Even though I'm an older mom, right, in our 40s, and we still have a kid in
(10:34):
kindergarten, there are enough of us out there that I don't feel like the odd one out anymore.
But there's also a ton of young moms, right? Like, so it's not like anyone,
there's just enough moms around that nobody, everyone can find their group and
nobody's kind of like, has to feel alone in that.
Yeah, that is the beauty of being a city, a big city and diverse city like New York.
(10:58):
And it's not just diverse in terms of, you know, culture and everything,
but also there's this age diversity that we get, right?
And part of what I love about New York, we don't get aged out of things,
you know, there are certain things that if I was in Kenya, certain things I
do, I would age out of it and I wouldn't be doing that anymore because it's
just not what people my age would be doing.
Like, I like to go to club, I like to dance, things like that.
(11:20):
Someone who's almost like 50, like me, would not be doing that back in Nairobi,
you know, and would be sort of judged for it.
But also as a parent, people would give you a lot of pressure.
They're like, well, you're 30, you're trying to have a child.
You're 40, you're trying to have a child. Why?
And you're going to be an old parent. Why would you do that?
You know? And people would actually vocalize that. They feel like they can for some reason.
(11:41):
Whereas here, we're just, we're more accepting with that. And yeah,
we see gray-haired parents all over Park Slope. So it's not an unusual thing. Yeah.
Not that you have gray hair at all.
You have a long way to go before that.
Did you remind me? And Mimi, thank you for sharing what you shared, by the way.
(12:02):
But yeah, that's a great point you brought up, Preet. Like Kenya and Nigeria,
I think we were very upfront with our opinions.
And sometimes we don't realize this, the line between blonde and being me can
be a little bit, it's a very thin line.
(12:26):
I i remember there's a a friend of mine we childhood friend of mine one of my
few childhood friends who we are still good friends and when i discovered that his,
his mom's sister was one of those families who couldn't have kids and for lack
of a better term we refer to those families as barren that's how we just call
(12:51):
them we call them barren families So,
in order for his mom's sister not to be identified as a barren woman,
his mom, I think it's, I don't know how many kids his mom had.
So, they let him be, let him stay with his aunt and he was identified as his aunt's kid.
(13:11):
So, that's why we all grew up considering him as himself and his sister.
And his aunt will now have a child, I think she was probably maybe closer to
her 50s when she eventually had a child and it was a big party.
And that's like when everybody realized that, oh, she never had a child all this time.
(13:34):
So that's how far the family went to just make sure this woman doesn't get stigmatized,
doesn't get judged and everything.
I think it may have led to me having empathy for women who go through,
I say women, especially because as men, we have the liberty to be in and out
(13:57):
of it, to choose whether to have kids or not.
Well, we can be in our fifties and come back and say, okay, yeah, I want to have kids now.
Society treats us in a different way, but it's the women who get the brunt of
it. And after seeing that big party, I was probably around closer to 14,
13 or 14, when that big party happened from the church.
(14:18):
We went to the house. The whole community was there just celebrating with this woman.
And I thought about it. Like, I've seen movies. I've seen plays,
how they insult the woman.
And, you know, the family even starts making moves to get a second wife for
the man. Like, this woman is barren.
Go get a fertile woman, a young fertile woman for this.
To replace and you know i think that
(14:40):
something just clicked in me then like wow this
is it's not right to treat a woman and but
you know you don't say it out loud so you don't get costed by
your elders but i think it just
dawned on me that uh you know it's tough for people
who choose to have children late and i don't
know but i never did anything and it just disappeared from me and i
(15:03):
never took recognition of that and until you
just brought up that point about you know choosing to live certain
lifestyles that you know later on in life how you get judged and i'm like yeah
we do get judged you know coming from that society that i came from there's
a lot of you know harsh judgment like why why are you waiting until now to have
a child it's just like hey i chose like what is wrong with you nobody would
(15:27):
just say that to you without understanding,
what that person has been going through they've been trying you know so i'm
just putting that out there that yeah i uh it's a memory that just got triggered
and yeah you know you don't know what people are going through even if they
decide to wait until they're in their 40s no you know it's people's choices
but that doesn't mean you have the right to go.
(15:49):
Bash them but yeah and and in your in
your example right like it's usually the woman
that gets bashed whether that's why i emphasized on
yeah or the child the child bearing partner is the one who's like who's automatically
thought of as like oh it must be your problem when it could be either or or
both of them yeah and like my my favorite aunt who i refer to as my as when
(16:12):
i was on your podcast That's why I called my father Figo.
It was the same thing with her marriage.
That's why her husband had to get a second wife because they had gone for years, no child.
And then they were like, well, I guess nothing is coming out of us.
So, you know, we'll go get you a new wife.
And, you know, that would be
more of a time. Then it just seemed like kids were coming from the woman.
(16:35):
And after her fifth kid, then my aunt had her first child and then second child,
and the first child was a girl, so that was not a problem.
So, oh boy, now I'm like, ah, leave.
This thing can be, having a child is still a problem.
Yeah, you have to have the right child, the first right child, exactly. So, yeah.
(16:57):
Yeah, especially African and Asian culture, very similar that way, right? Mm-hmm. Yes.
The male sex is valued beyond the female sex, basically, right away from day one.
I was the first child And for
my dad People would come to the house And they'd say
Oh we're so sorry It's nice that you had a girl But it's such
(17:18):
a shame And things like that And he got so sick
of hearing it So he threw this party For my six month
birthday Or something Which is unheard of It's such an American thing We don't
do things like that there But he came forward And he said that I want the community
And everybody to know That this is my son And I welcome my son to the world
(17:38):
because he wanted to give me the same standing as, you know,
a boy or a son would have in the community.
So that was kind of really progressive in my mind of him, you know,
to do that. It was very cute of him to do that. It is progressive.
That's beautiful. I also, you know, like you hear so, oh, you know,
women of having children older and everything.
And I think there's a little bit of a misconception there because, you know,
(18:02):
Women always had children in their 40s. It's a myth that they didn't.
I mean, my great-grandmother had children when she was in her 40s.
She started early and she had a number of children. Right, they'd have like
three or four and then have like the last one in their 40s or something. Exactly.
It's not unheard of. It's not changed.
And then also to Raphael's point, I think it's also, you know,
(18:24):
there's also a lot of pressure for people to have children.
And I feel that if a woman chooses not to have a child, it should really be respected.
And it is a choice and it is a valid choice.
You can live a beautiful life without having children.
(18:45):
Yeah, I mean, and you don't know what the reasons are behind that, right?
Health, it could be all sorts of things, finances. Now some women are opting
out of being mothers because of the environment.
Environment and they're like we're not going to be we're going to be impacting
you know the whole world and impacting the world for everybody in such a negative
way if we have children so they're these hardcore climate extremists i wouldn't
(19:07):
call them extremists but you know newspapers do.
Who've all you know made a vow not to have children these ladies are not going
to have children because we don't need more people on the planet because of
you know the drain on resources,
so you never you have to respect i mean i want to share the views similar to
that and i didn't And yeah, I don't think I saw myself as an extremist.
(19:29):
And there are people who I talked to back then.
I'm like, yeah, man, why bring a kid into this world? Why bring a kid in?
I mean, even the 80s, we were talking about population explosion at that point, right?
That's when that phrase came out. And we started hearing about population explosion.
And they referred to Asia and Africa.
And they talk about how the populations were growing beyond anywhere else in
the world and things like that.
(19:50):
Yeah, my mom worked there. That sort of concept came up then.
The federal agency my mom worked for in Nigeria had a family planning program.
In the late 80s into early 90s that was
supposed to be under the military government was supposed to be about they
were worried about population explosion but at
(20:10):
the same time you know every wedding i attended as soon
as you know congratulations you have nine months you have
nine months you know they're shaking the groom's
hand and it is the point it goes to the woman you know you have nine months
starting from today nine months you know we expect we expect the baby or too
we want no pressure like on the tv they call all the adverts are like you know
(20:32):
family planning you know go talk to the professionals and family planning and
then like what you have nine months,
but i think those agencies are actually really good i think like in i want to
believe that they were initiated by women who wanted other women to have opportunity
and they were just kind of under the umbrella of like we're saving the environment
and overpopulation because then Then you can have the man sign off on it.
(20:54):
And then you really bring birth control to those who needed to have the ability
to really control their own body and have opportunity.
That's at least what I want to believe. You're not far from the truth.
Especially like the one I know my mom. Now I know, looking back,
I know that's what my mom worked for.
The idea behind it. And then, well, they employed some.
(21:18):
It was under the military government. So they employed some men who came in, and I'm using men,
I'm not saying all men are bad, but the men who came in said,
well, there's allocation that comes from the federal government,
and then there's allocation that came from UNICEF and so on.
United nation and all that and that means dollars and well
let me help you women spend this money you know you may need
(21:40):
to go cooking and all that so we'll help you
take care of this and when it's gone so yeah you as a child you started seeing
things like that pretty early and you're like oh okay so yeah because they had
the ideas were it looked like ahead of his time but it's it was actually,
(22:01):
it was stuff that, you know, they were educated women then.
So it's not like they weren't, they were around. So they knew the right things
to bring up and they, they were the catchphrases, they were the lingos, the music and all that.
And you're like, oh, everybody's paying attention to this. And then all of a
sudden, programs started to dry up, funding disappeared.
Where did funding go? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It was like, oh, well,
(22:24):
and then 20 years later, somebody would just come and say, blame the West.
Okay. Yeah. Whatever. but let's move
on to more much more interesting questions
and answers so sticking to
the cultural background what aspects of your
cultural background do you intend to pass down to
your children so now this will be tricky because when i wrote this question
(22:46):
i was only thinking of moms with the younger children but since we have moms
with adult children yeah so what cultural what aspects of your cultural background
did you pass down to your children and what traditions or beliefs do you hope
they will outgrow or reject.
(23:07):
Well, I can say I think with my daughter, I, you know, tried to do a lot of
things that my parents did with me of, you know, raising her in faith and in
the church and instilling education in her.
So those are two things that kind of stick out to me that regardless of,
you know, marriage or having kids, you were going to college, you know.
(23:29):
So we knew that education was very big for my grandmother, to my mom,
you know, to a lot of the people in my family. and just trying to instill in
her to advocate for herself.
And I can see now as she speaks and deals with others that she may work with
or other family members or even how she communicates to other grown-ups.
(23:54):
Yeah, I've met her. Yeah, so proud of her.
And those were things that you think they may not listen or they're not hearing,
But then you can see, oh, okay, there are some aspects of that independent thinking.
And then there's also times of like, oh, my gosh, the independent thinking. Like, what?
You know, just be like, hold your tongue. But we didn't teach them to hold their
(24:18):
tongue. We're teaching, you know, to communicate.
So I think those are some of the good aspects that I've passed down to her that
I wanted to, you know, within my family culture, share with her. Yeah.
Which can also at the same time display what I wanted to break with her,
(24:38):
you know, from my family and from growing up of.
And always, you know, you know, listening to adults or, you know,
oh, you're a child, be quiet, let the adult speak, you know,
there's a place and time for that.
But there's also, you know, you shouldn't have to do something if you don't
feel comfortable with it.
Or if you want, you know, you should be able to express yourself that is respectful,
(25:02):
you know, and that's part of the reason why, you know, my show is Improper Mimi.
Me it's like how can you speak and say your truth you
know and then you're going to be labeled you know oh it's improper you
know it's not the right way to say it but yeah at
the same time of teaching her to speak for herself also kind of
breaks the you know be seen and not heard kind of
(25:23):
thing you know i thought of it that way
but right i brought i
grew up in switzerland and so i brought
to the their family like some you know some traditions
from growing up like
for example we use real candles on our christmas tree and you know little things
(25:46):
like that but i think one thing i feel was of value to my children growing in
you know exposed to two cultures is just that it then
shows that everything can be a little relative, like values,
the way to reach children.
(26:07):
How you treat your children.
That varies from one culture, how you feel about yourself, what your place in society is.
There is no just one true value in that kind of thing, and I think that's something
that I think they benefited from.
Yeah. For me, it would be definitely like sitting down as a family and having
(26:32):
dinner because that's something my parents always did.
And I could tell it was important. It was important to them.
My mom would strive and make that effort to cook things we all liked.
And we all had to gather at the family table and eat dinner.
Even when we became teenagers and we had other plans, we'd make sure we'd come for dinner.
You know, that was a very important thing. and it kept us
connected and let us talk about our day and our lives
(26:54):
to each other yeah that was a good one and then
of course education was always a big one and that's something my
dad always said growing up because he never got to he didn't
even get through high school you know he just went to worked at the age of 14
so sending me you know his oldest to university was a really big deal and then
he always told me people can steal everything away from you but they can never
(27:15):
take your knowledge so that was something very important and we try not to pressure
them for their education, but it's important to get a good education.
And then respect, respect for your elders, respect for how you treat others in society.
That was very important. I grew up in a multi-generational household.
So my dad's mom lived with us and often my mom's mom, she was sort of nomadic.
(27:36):
She'd hop from house to house to have different kids and she'd come and stay
with us too, my mom's mom. So,
That was very special, and I always sort of, you know, put them above my mom and dad's needs.
Whatever they needed, anything, I'd drop whatever mom and dad would ask for
and do what my grandmas wanted first, you know, because I was taught to do that.
And I teach my boys this. Growing up in New York, unfortunately,
(27:56):
we don't have those older people around us, but we had older people on our block.
We have Jack, who's our neighbor, who actually passed away recently,
97, World War II veteran.
And he would stop us and talk about his day, and I would stand there and just
talk. And the boys would get irritable and want to go home.
And I taught them it doesn't matter.
(28:16):
Jack can talk to us for as long as he wants to talk to us. He lives on his own.
And he probably doesn't get a chance to speak to many people.
And we just stand there and listen to his stories.
And you will learn something from him one day. And so they started,
you know, understanding that and getting it. And they would,
you know, stop and chat with him, which was important.
But the things that I would like them to leave behind, and I think they will
(28:39):
because of being in New York, is classism, you know, this regard for other people
in society who are like higher up.
And that phrase comes up with, I guess, my community back home in Kenya.
My mom even says it, okay, he's very high up in the community,
you know, that phrase comes out.
It's very sort of, I guess, Indian way of thinking from the caste system.
(29:01):
If you're a doctor or a lawyer, you're higher up. If you're,
you know, a hairdresser or, you know, you're,
I don't know, washing dishes in a a restaurant you're lower down on
the rung you know and that's something that i don't think we need to
carry forward and i think my boys sort
of accept people for who they are not based on what they
do or where or how much money they have or
(29:21):
what shirts that they're wearing or what shoes really teenagers
that they're wearing yeah
i think respect and kindness are very
important to teach right but when i
think back it's more about a respect has
to be earned from both sides though like you
can't just tell a child well respect your elders like like
(29:43):
you were saying right but the elders also need to
respect the child that children have opinions and we have a great case at home
she has a lot of opinions and as hard as it is sometimes we do want to encourage
that we do want her to speak up we do want her to have opinions and and her
own boundaries it's It's just sometimes really hard when you also as a parent then have,
(30:05):
you know, you have to keep her healthy, you have to keep her safe.
You have to put a stop to certain things. Like you can't go five days without brushing your teeth.
Like even if that's your new opinion and you don't want to brush your teeth,
like that's just not going to work.
So we're walking like a very fine line, a very like concrete fine line with
a five-year-old right now where she does speak up. She tells us things and she
(30:28):
tells us things that are happening and how her opinion is about things that happen at school.
But then at the same time, she just has opinions that are just,
that are the opinion of a five-year-old that just don't work in the real world.
But so we want to give, like, we want to show her the respect as much as we
can, that we respect her and respect her opinion. But yeah, got to put a stop to certain things.
(30:51):
I always tell my daughter, oh, four was the best age.
You know, it's like you were old enough to discover and do things on your own,
but you also still needed my help.
So I could still guide you and help you learn, but then you could stand on your
own and do things by yourself.
(31:12):
And it's an age where there's still a little bit of the magic of early childhood
where not everything is rational.
Then they go to school and get educated, but I felt the same.
Like four is like such an adorable age for that because they're more manageable
than when they're two or three but they still have this enchanted view of the
(31:35):
world yeah yeah and i think the other thing for me is like the whole thing about
like be kind you don't have to be nice but be kind.
You can have a different opinion and you respectfully express this or you you
may not want to do something and you could tell the person that you don't want
to do it you don't have to be Be nice and do it anyway against your own wishes.
(31:55):
But you have to be kind to people and you have to be respectful to people and
communicate that you don't want to do certain things.
And she just knows that we're talking about her because she just turned around.
Out we we
had we felt we had to
intervene a few times in school where
we you know we have a daughter and a son where we felt that our daughter was
(32:22):
asked to be nice and we really resented that you know whereas our son was not
asked to be nice yeah and we actually went in the school and we were like,
don't ask our daughter to be nice,
you know, ask her to be kind, ask her to be respectful, but this message that
(32:42):
girls should be nice, we really resented.
Yeah, that's interesting. I have to watch out for that. Yes,
stuff that I don't, you know, it doesn't always, it's not always in here.
But, you know, sometimes that's why I'm glad I have Verena in my life.
Because sometimes I don't catch it. And then sometimes I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah.
(33:04):
And it's not like one script works for both, right? It works for all even.
Whether male or female, it's different with boys, it's different with girls.
But it's different with different personalities too, you know?
You have to know who your kid is. Like I have a son who's very,
the younger one, who's just a sweet guy.
He has a sweet heart and he'll just get pushed around and stuff.
So with him, I'm like, you have to stand up for yourself.
(33:25):
You have to be more, you know, more forceful. You have to be able to say no.
You can't be nice to everybody, you know. So I'm doing the opposite with him.
Like, and you wouldn't expect somebody to do that for a boy.
But, you know, it depends on their personality. You have to adjust that way as well.
And it depends on your own personality. I mean, I can say for myself,
I try, but I don't always manage to be that calm, you know, level-headed parent.
(33:53):
Because if you catch me in the wrong situation or if we're running late,
I hear your boundary, but you still have to put your shoes on before we go outside.
Yeah, it's difficult. You can't listen to them in every single circumstance.
In certain circumstances, you just want to function and get out the door and
get somewhere, right? And then the dog's barking or the neighbor's ringing the
doorbell or the phone's ringing and then you're trying to deal with the shoe
(34:14):
that they just keep pulling off or whatever.
It gets crazy. Those moments I used to say, you're frying my brain.
That was my phrase. Just listen to me. You're frying my brain.
And we can't be perfect either. Sometimes we get angry and wish we weren't.
But, you know, I think that.
(34:37):
There's this notion, I think there was a book called A Good Enough Parent,
and I think that's a really good notion, like to really aim and really work at it.
Parenting is work. It takes thinking. It does, and it's important to try to
be a good enough parent, but perfect is not something you can reach. It's a myth.
(35:01):
No, it's not true. Anyone selling perfect parenting, that's a scammer.
My cousin who just got married, and congratulations to him and his young missus,
they're 26, so really young.
And we've been going on for almost two years about the one appearance.
(35:26):
And I was like, you're really young.
Enjoy your life a little bit. The other day, he sent me a quote,
and I know the person the quote is from.
It's like one of these, what they call them, you know, got in the water for them.
And they have this, their perception of what a woman should be,
how a woman should behave.
And so for the person to say, children must be allowed to be children.
(35:49):
I knew he had an angle to where he was coming from. And my cousin was like,
you know, I listen to this guy a lot.
I was like okay first of all that's not where you're going to get your parenting
advice from because that's the type of person who will tell you that uh.
The the the mother can be perfect that can
be perfect i'm like yeah he's only setting you up for failure so
(36:10):
for the disconnect from that person find
you find your part and if you're using me as an example i'm not a perfect dad
and i can't point you to any perfect parents out there but yeah and i think
because of this conversation i'm having with my cousin that's how i found out
about child's rights and I wasn't even aware of New York state's bill of rights,
(36:31):
having children's rights in New York state.
That included, but it was mostly tied to the legal ramifications involved in divorce.
And I was like, okay, but through that, I did some more reading into children's
rights, which I'm like, okay, I'm proud of them.
I'm doing a good job on that side of it because, uh,
(36:56):
One thing I'd always considered before even becoming a parent,
or even when I was on the, I don't think I want to, I'm interested in having
a child, was children have a right to their own identity.
And that just, I don't even know the day I decided that was a thing that I was
going to start believing in.
(37:17):
But maybe it was from babysitting my nieces and nephews, my first Just miss, Mrs.
And nephew and seeing how they were just like, wow, this is the way they think.
And okay, just, you know, like, but you're like this person in the family at
the same time, you know, like this person in the family, so you are forming
your own identity and into your own person.
(37:38):
And maybe that's when I began to see children's rights as a theme,
but I didn't have the exact words, wording for it.
So yeah, so it's amazing how this whole journey has come to and,
Well, I think I'm a much better parent in my older age than if I had gone with
that dream I had when I was 18 and I said I was going to get married and have four children.
(38:02):
Good thing that didn't happen. Yeah, I don't know what would have happened then.
But speaking of culture and child's rights, how did you integrate rest,
play, culture, arts into your parenting approach?
I mean, I can speak to what we're trying to do, right? Like,
(38:24):
because we're still in the middle of it with her being five.
I gotta pretend I'm not there. Well, okay. Like, I can know the whole.
So...
She is a very different child from how I was at that age. I was a tomboy.
I played with skateboards and bicycles and cars.
And I had a Barbie because my friends had Barbies. So I didn't want to be, you know, left out.
(38:47):
But that was kind of the extent of my nurturing qualities at that age.
Whereas Clara is very different. She is very artistic.
Like drawing, singing, music, just expressing herself, dancing.
Dancing, she is interested in very different things.
She loves gymnastics, for example.
(39:10):
You could have not caught me doing gymnastics when I was like five,
six, seven years old, because it was just not my thing.
And never afterwards either. But so what I'm trying to do is just to expose
her to as many different things so that she can find what she likes to do.
But also not like pigeonholic so she
likes gymnastics now but if next
(39:32):
year it's dance or the year after it's taekwondo that's totally okay but i want
exposure to to as many things as possible and see where that leads her see how
like that nurtures her and so we signed her up on a whim for theater,
like for five-year-olds, five through fifth grade or something,
(39:56):
and then bought a couple of tickets for BAM when they had performances,
and really take her into environments that maybe not everyone takes their five-year-old
because there's not the interest or they're not,
they're different children, they don't want to sit still and look at something
and look at performances.
And then I would do different things, right? If she was interested very much
(40:19):
in, I don't know, soccer, watching soccer, watching basketball,
we have friends whose children are really into baseball, then I would try to
encourage that and see where that leads her.
So we're right now really in that phase of like, what do you want to do?
What are you interested in?
Where does that get you? What path do you want to go down?
(40:40):
And what maybe we come back to later when she's a little bit older or maybe
never. And I feel like that's the right way to go, especially because you're
being flexible, you know?
And their wants and their needs are going to change as they get older.
And that's what we've done, basically, is try to expose them,
like you say, to everything, give them a taste of things.
And we're lucky we live in a big city like New York, you know?
(41:02):
We have these opportunities. So I like to take them to concerts if I can,
go to play, and try and, you know, that's how I guess the art comes into their life.
My older one doesn't like drawing. I didn't. My mom was an art teacher.
I couldn't take art. And I couldn't take art with her ever.
So that never happened for me. But I'm a video editor, so my art comes out in
(41:25):
a different way. And I like to DJ, so my art comes out in a different direction, you know.
And then my younger one, he loves drawing and he loves sitting there and painting and things.
So we got him the pack of, you know, all the crayons and all the paints and
different papers and stuff that he can play around with. And he does that.
So you do. you start understanding their personality and who they are and what
they like. The older one, of course, he was our first.
(41:48):
So we were like, okay, you're doing soccer and you're going to do basketball
and you're going to do this.
All the stuff that you would do as a mom in Park Slope, you know?
And he hated team sport because he is, he's a high achiever.
And if he's not good at something, he'd rather just not do it.
He wants to be the best and win or just not touch it at all.
And you're in Brooklyn in New York. there's going
(42:09):
to be a superstar on the basketball you know court there's
going to be a superstar on the soccer field you're just not
going to be that superstar there's always going to be someone better than you
when you're when you're touching a sport so like these team
sports were not for him and we realized that and then he discovered fencing
which was really unusual and strange but we're like
okay fencing that's your thing and it came across because
(42:30):
it was one of the after-school offerings at his elementary
school so that's how we found fencing for him which was great
and then he did jujitsu for a
while but he surprised us when he started high school now
he's on the football team so he's doing such an
atypical american sport you know with the
team and he's still not very good at it but he's
also owned that about himself which i think is important
(42:53):
you know i think i was very worried about him steering away from things he's
not good at and he would shut off so much of the world to himself but he's stuck
in football he'll say i'm not that that great at it but he does it and he's
with his bros and you know he's met a lot of guys in high school so it's worked
out in that way culturally it's been hard you asked about culture and.
(43:14):
I'm not connected to the South Asian community as much here as I would be if I was back home.
But they're not interested in it. You know, like we had a wedding we were invited
to last summer in Vancouver, a proper Punjabi, big Indian wedding.
Five days I went for. I was told off because I wasn't there for seven days,
which I shouldn't have been.
(43:34):
I was about to ask. I was there only for five.
And I didn't take them because they were not interested. I knew they would be
bored to death of half this stuff, you know, and they're boys.
They didn't even like the outfit wasn't even exciting. You can get dressed up like, don't care.
You eat Indian food every day. I'm like, I only need one meal of Indian food
(43:56):
a week. It's fine, you know.
So I went on my own and I met my cousin there and I felt bad about not taking them at first.
And then when I immersed myself in it, I'm like, this is not for them.
And it's okay. You know, I can't push it on them. They know that it's there
for them, and that's a world that they can always connect to,
and that's part of who they are.
And they get little glimmers of exposure to it, but they don't have to be constantly pushed into it.
(44:21):
They might also come back to it later, later in life. Right, right.
Because I used to be a little bit like your son when I was growing up,
whereas if I don't feel like I can be really good at it, I don't know if I want to...
Like set myself up for disappointment and getting
older and then also probably having a child myself
like I now do things where
(44:43):
starting in my 30s I started doing things like just for the hell of it to see
like would my body let me do it so I tried snowboarding and surfing for the
first time in my 30s yeah right like I could have done that anytime in my 20s
but I was still in And that mindset,
like, oh, if I can't figure it out, I'm going to be a failure or whatever.
(45:05):
So maybe it's just, you know, they come back to it. They come back to their
cultural roots at some later time, maybe when they meet their significant other
or when they have children on their own.
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so for their sake, you know.
And even a lot of times in college, I've seen, you know, I went to high school
in a suburb and it was mostly, it was a mostly white suburb.
(45:27):
And we had black students from the city.
I grew up in Boston, and we would take students from Boston and,
you know, bus us out to the suburbs.
So there were a few, and there was an Air Force base nearby,
so there were other, you know, people from different cultures.
And, you know, in high school, everyone's like chill, trying to,
you know, just blend in, you know. We're all cool and the same.
(45:49):
And then you see as people go to college, they start to discover and realize.
Either with or without their parents, like, Like, oh, here's a little group that I'm a part of.
And then they start, you know, realizing, you know, some of the heritage or
the history of their culture. And then that kind of expands.
And I've seen, like, people, like, kind of explode. And I was like,
(46:11):
oh, I'm like, you know, I didn't even know, you know, that, you know,
maybe you were Haitian or, you know, some of my Indian friends.
Then they changed, you know, their names became properly pronounced instead
of, like, in high school, you know.
Yeah, yeah. So they may just, you know, find that on their own and become curious.
Yeah, yeah. It'll be interesting to see.
(46:33):
In certain aspects, I'm more German when I'm here than when I'm back home. Oh, yeah. I feel like.
And like, where I see like there's a difference in the way I approach things
or I talk about things sometimes.
Whereas like when I'm back home, it's starting to blend. Like it's starting
to go a little bit the other way now because I've been here.
I lived in Germany for 20 some years and now I've been here for 20 years.
(46:56):
So I feel like now it's like going a little bit the other way.
But at least the first 10 years, I felt more like I was noticeable to me more
German here than when I'm with all the other Germans, so to speak.
Yeah. And my family's American, you know, they, you know, we,
most of them are from Ohio or Pennsylvania.
But I've always, you know, grew up around other cultures.
(47:20):
And so even when my daughter was, you know, four, I'm giving her jerk chicken.
And, and then I'm like, she's crying.
I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that was too spicy for her, you know.
But she's always been around, you know, like my Spanish friends,
which are like family and taking her to other countries with me, you know.
So she has, I guess, been exposed to other cultures that are not just,
(47:44):
you know, Ohio or not just Boston, you know.
So it's important to me that, you know, her education in Boston,
that she was comfortable.
You know, I stayed in Boston so that she could finish her education,
you know, because I was like, oh, I want to go to, you know,
maybe Brazil or Toronto or D.C.
(48:05):
And I was like, I don't have the network there to raise a child by myself as
I do here. So I stayed in Boston, even staying in Boston for school,
because I knew I was going to Tuskegee and Alabama to study architecture.
And I'm like, I'm not going to be able to do that with a baby.
So I stayed in Boston for her whole, you know, education, really.
(48:29):
And even realizing the type of education that was best for her because I,
you know, similarly exposed her to all the sports.
She didn't really like sports, all the instruments. She didn't really stick
with instruments either.
But she loved, you know, reading and, you know, computers.
So I'm like, oh, good, she's going to be an engineer. No, she wasn't an engineer either.
(48:52):
What did she end up doing? she ended up
doing working with International Student Affairs so she's like with the registrar's
office and working with you know helping that transition and the paperwork and
everything for students to come to the States and be able to work you know here
or go to school here I think travel is a great way to.
(49:13):
Get them, you know, open their minds up a little bit and get them to connect to where they come from.
If you can travel and take them to their roots, that's a huge thing to be able to do.
Like I took my boys and we lived in Kenya for a year and I wanted them to experience
what it was like for me growing up in Africa, but what it would also be like
for them to feel like they had another place where they belonged,
(49:35):
you know, not just like off New York or off America, you're also off East Africa,
you know, in a very complex way because they're they're
mixed race they're african-american and indian but the
indian side comes from africa which is very unusual well i
think also like you know you talk about your network in boston and for us who
(49:59):
come to new york you know from another place and we don't have family here and
we're raising children Then you have to create your own family in the city.
And that's a beautiful thing. Your friends, other parents with children really
(50:20):
become a part of your family. You celebrate.
You might celebrate holidays together. And of course, support each other when
you're sick or when something happens.
And you don't have the grandparents. parents. You don't have the uncle, the aunt.
Yeah. I mean, that I think was priceless of, like you say, creating a village,
(50:43):
creating a network of other people that you can rely on and talk to.
Because when we were talking about, you know, finding other similar parents,
some of my closest parent friends were 20 years older than me, you know?
So we definitely had that gap, but our children were the same age.
So, you know, her friends kind of, you know, exposed me to other adults that
(51:06):
could also help with, you know, parenting and talking about,
oh my gosh, what are they going through?
And even, you know, a lot of afterschool, you know, activities,
I'm like, I was a workaholic, you know, and she was the one who,
you know, was like, mom, like, no, why are you always working so much?
But like, during that time when I was just like work work
(51:27):
work she had a place to go to you know
her you know she was part of her
friend's family you know like you know family dinners brother
sister you know because she was definitely an only child
and I was you know so yeah that's that's priceless definitely yeah it is it
is so ah that's uh it's you know it's another thing that you can't underestimate
(51:53):
oh So someone needs my phone unlocked.
Good thing you haven't discovered the secrets.
On camera too.
Not today. Can you turn the volume down a little bit? It's almost an hour.
I've been hearing the volume all this time.
You've been a good audience, by the way. Live audience participation.
(52:17):
It's so good. The bribe worked. That's part of a child's right.
Being bribed. Yeah.
Yeah, well, yeah, the audience, those listening or watching,
you all can write him and let me know how you'll, you know, handle or deal with
(52:38):
your, your, your kids, how you incorporate, you know, especially for the moms,
I don't want to hear from the dads until dad's day, but if you,
if you, if you supporting me on Patreon, then yeah, you can write him now,
you know, if you're not a supporter, then yeah, yeah, take your time.
Yeah. From moms. Yeah. Let me know how your mother's journey,
how you've navigated yours, how
it's, going and especially those who are living in a country or a state,
(53:03):
you know, city where you didn't grow up in, you had to, you know,
raise your child in a whole different environment without family, friends,
yeah, it's not, it's not easy, that's one thing that I appreciate.
So I envy those who have family around them.
Yeah, because it's tough sometimes, you know, like, you know,
(53:25):
I miss one of my buddies who had to move, one of my Navy friends who,
he became a good family friend, but for some reason he had to move to West Virginia,
uh, he was like our first babysitter.
He, he had older kids, so he had an older son. So, um, yeah,
he was like, yeah, if you, if you need someone to come watch your, your baby, I got you.
(53:47):
And he'll, he'll come watch Clara when she was younger.
I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, you got, you sure you good?
He's like, yeah, I got it, man. man, I've done this before, you know,
so yeah, that, it's priceless when you have friends that can do that for you
and you build your own village, you don't even realize that you're, you're doing that.
And then now we, we've met a whole bunch of fantastic people through our kid,
(54:11):
you know, never, you know, been in the neighborhood and, uh,
never thought I would become friends with a whole bunch of other parents, you know, all this time.
I probably walked past them multiple times until I had a kid.
Mm-hmm and then knowing them. So, yeah, I appreciate them for who they are.
Thanks for them being in my kid's life. So I need to start wrapping up.
(54:32):
You guys have given me a lot of awesome stuff.
But there are some fun questions I haven't asked yet.
So, first one. I need you to choose three to four songs that best describe the
bond between you and your child. Okay.
Our children. Yeah. Y'all thought it was just going to be.
(54:56):
Philosophical questions all this time. Now we got to go into the trick questions
and, you know, my trick questions come with tricks.
So here we go. I need advance written notes. No.
This is the trap questions. This is about music. I don't know if that best describes
my relationship with my kids,
but when they were small, all i would sing
(55:18):
to them you can't always
get what you want and i never
thought i would be using the rollie stones to
raise my children yeah perfect
i like that one so my youngest
he used to when he was yeah i
guess about three or so katie perry was big deal then i used
(55:40):
to jump around on the the couch and sing katie perry's roar so that
became that became a big big one it's an important one and actually i showed
it to clara the other day when we were at the butterfly garden because she was
watching these music videos i'm like do you know this one and she knew it right
away she's like oh yeah i know roar i'm like okay cool and then i think one that we sort of.
(56:02):
Always gravitate to as a family was bob marley's three
little birds don't worry about a thing I like
that one and it's a good message for everybody especially my teenager nowadays
and then there's a hip hop one Lil Uzi Vert and his I Just Wanna Rock the boys
both like that and I started to like it too I was about to ask your son approved
(56:26):
of you mentioning hip hop,
himself and uh kid perry and the
same probably not and now it's
all taylor swift it's all about taylor swift no he
can't stand her but it's all about her these days especially her new album came
out they're having these they're having these you know watch parties and then
they're having these this movie of hers movie night at the school and stuff
(56:48):
i'm like do you want to go it's like uh yeah this is the 11 year old it's like
uh-uh too cool for that all right we've I feel you. I feel you. I know.
They don't like what I play as a DJ either. Oh, wow.
That's mom. That's old music. I'm like, it's contemporary. Okay.
(57:08):
I'm the one dancing to Preet's music. Now they're going to make me feel old. He old.
Check out the shoes he's wearing. I'm like, man, I wear different colors.
My daughter's created a Spotify playlist. Well,
I mean, you can just, you know, click on something and it'll combine her some
of her favorite songs and my favorite songs and then kind of make a playlist
(57:31):
that, you know, we can both, you know, live with.
And when she was growing up, she listened to a lot of K-pop and,
you know, and I was like, oh, my gosh, these songs are in my head.
We're like, we need some old school, you know, R&B, some old school hip hop.
But one song that, you know, she was doing some Discord thing and they were
(57:53):
like, oh, what is like on your parents must have, you know, playlist.
And so she remembered Sanchez. A reggae song he had was Lonely Won't Leave Me Alone.
And I used to play that, you know, blasted, jamming in the car.
And one day like when she was little she was like mommy why won't only leave
(58:14):
him alone and I'm like oh I'm like okay it's just like a saying you know so,
yeah she definitely has some memories of songs that you know I would play and
then so when I hear her playing it now I was like oh yes good job you learned
well you know that's some good music you know,
yes yes I'm like I've done a good job.
(58:36):
But another song that
One time when she was little, a bird got in the house, and I don't like birds.
I'm terrified of birds, you know.
So I'm like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to get this bird out of the house?
So eventually I covered it with a big pot, and then I had a cookie sheet under
it, and I'm like, oh, my gosh.
But I was like singing to myself, you know, like a Sunday school song or something,
(58:58):
you know, like, oh, God has not given us a spirit of fear, you know.
So kind of just singing that song over and over. So she's like standing in the
corner of the kitchen, and she's, you know, watching me like, okay.
Okay, so mom's afraid, but I'm still going to do this, and it's okay to be afraid,
but sometimes you have to do things that you never thought you would do.
(59:18):
So I'm singing to myself, and I'm like, oh my gosh, and then I get it outside,
and then I take off the thing so the bird can go.
So that's another song that is just like, okay, you could just play that over
and over in your head, and it's okay because parents are not perfect. We're scared too.
That's right. Sometimes we just have to do the responsible grown-up thing to
(59:39):
help save everybody. That's right. Got emotional. Bird. That's true.
When my daughter was six years old, she loved Salif Keita, an African musician.
He's really beautiful.
She would just listen to him over and over and over again.
(59:59):
And I was like, I have to see if he's coming to New York because she's obsessed
with him. And he did come to the band shell.
We lived really close. And like two days, I think, before her birthday, it was incredible.
And so, you know, he has this song, Je t'aime mon amour, I love you, my love.
And I mean, yeah, I think that parenting, you get all this unconditional love.
(01:00:26):
And so, yes, that's definitely a beautiful song to illustrate that. Fantastic.
Yeah. So Clara has her own playlist that plays in the house.
Well, I listen to her music more than I listen to my own, but there's like two
songs that stick out to me that have nothing to do with her playlist that are
more from like what I associate with her.
(01:00:48):
So there was this time when she was a newborn where she would wake up in the
middle of the night and would just not go back to sleep.
For some reason, the song that stuck in my head was that Take You to Church.
So I would But, like, me standing, like, half asleep in the bedroom,
like, rocking her and, like, humming the hook to that, I, like,
(01:01:08):
still vividly remember that.
I don't know why it was that song. It was just, like, that song was just for
some reason stuck in my head. I had heard it on the radio or something.
So, like, if she ever, like, knows the words to that, it's fate.
And then there's one song that I associate with her in terms of,
like, the words and the music that I listen to. So I grew up mostly listening
(01:01:32):
to rock music. And it's a band called Hailstorm.
And the singer or the founding member is a woman. And she wrote a song, Dear Daughter.
And it's all about, like, be yourself, express yourself.
And I'm here holding you up, love you unconditionally, and help you through
when someone is mean to you, basically.
(01:01:54):
I love that. Yeah. It's good. I got one song memory to throw in there.
It's not, it technically adds to this answer, but I was one day,
every now and then I show or introduce Clara to songs that I enjoyed from my
(01:02:15):
childhood or even from my days in Nigeria or just songs that I like.
The ones that I feel, okay, I can let her know,
listen to this song right now. So there was one song that I was a kid when this
song was hot on the Nigerian airwaves.
I don't have my phone on me, so I can't get the artist's name.
He's Malawian. My friend told me he's Malawian. He, I think he was in South Africa.
(01:02:39):
And he used to play this song on federal and state TV.
It's he's singing about being a poor man. He needs some money.
And we just found that song.
It used to blow our mind. This just blows my mind crazy, like as kids.
And I don't know why I thought of that song. I was just like,
oh yeah, there are some kids who used to dance this funny dance in the video.
(01:03:03):
Let me see if I can find this song on YouTube. And I found this and I was like,
oh man, I gotta see this video.
So I showed that video and I was like, you know, maybe when you're talking to
your grandparents, you sing this song to them, right?
And then the next day we were walking from school or to school.
And guess what this kid is singing to me i need some
money money i need some money and
(01:03:26):
then she has a hand out to me i'm like yeah that's not why i showed you this
song that's that song you're supposed to use it on your grandparents not to
me you know what you know this this you know what i revoke your rights that's
yeah that's not how we do it but yeah it was it was quite hilarious how
she quickly turned the song on me. Like, I'm like, oh, man.
(01:03:46):
But, yes, it's a classic. I hope he's still alive, though.
Yeah, it was something that took me back to my childhood.
Yeah, but one of her favorite songs is still one of my favorite Nigerian rap songs.
So, yeah, I guess we're doing something right. Well, but also, like, at this age, like,
Sometimes you don't realize how explicit some of the lyrics are.
(01:04:08):
And then you listen to it with the five-year-old in the room and you go like,
oh, maybe we should skip that.
I'm still discovering songs that I'm like, those are the lyrics?
And my daughter loves karaoke, but, you know, she says I'm not very good at
it, you know, because I'm just like, oh, wait, you're reading the words, but I'm not on beat.
Or I'm like, so the words? I'm like, I don't think that's the right word.
(01:04:30):
She takes it very seriously. Yeah.
By the time Clara discovered career kick it's game over yeah she
has she found some Beyonce
introduced her to Beyonce way too early but it was
like oh yeah like oh man I'm
in trouble so yeah sometimes she's like I want I want I want that grown woman
(01:04:52):
song I'm like oh lord or even like right now Olivia Rodrigo you know my 10 year
old niece you know loves her and I'm like do you know what she's like saying and I'm like nah,
we won't we won't go into that yeah just give her one song and that's it like
mine does Jolene we do Jolene yeah from Cowboy Cutter we do yeah she has a classmate
(01:05:19):
I mean she has a classmate named
Jolene so she says yeah we sing Jolene to her every day in school aww,
alright you know what that's fun you'll have fun with it.
So final question i'll wrap up
which well technically the second to last question
and here comes that special guest in
(01:05:41):
the studio so i've not asked
about food what's one cuisine or the most memorable meal that best that you
like to let me see what's the your favorite meal that you enjoy with your children
that brings any heartwarming food-related.
(01:06:04):
Memories that you have with your kids? Well, for us, it was a dish that my husband
discovered on Dinner Spinner when he started cooking.
It doesn't cook often, but every now and then he'll find a new recipe.
Whereas I cook the usual stuff that they're all used to.
Dad will come and cook and it'll be a brand new recipe that he'll find and he'll
follow the recipe. I don't follow recipe. I just do my thing.
(01:06:26):
I'm busy functioning in the kitchen. I'm just trying to get everyone fed and
I'm not looking at new stuff.
But they're so happy when he comes in and does it because it's a brand new thing.
So he found this lamb recipe, which they love. And every now and then,
like once every six months or eight months or so, he'll make this lamb.
And it's a very special meal for us to sit down and eat. And he's like,
Daddy, when can you make the daddy lamb?
(01:06:47):
They call it the daddy lamb. Like there's still like little kids when they talk
about that food, they love it. So yeah, it's the lamb.
Food played a really important part in our family life, as you said,
like, you know, meals were super important.
But one thing that I really enjoy now is like, you know, I grew up in Switzerland.
I mean, the access to cuisine we had was like Chinese was super exotic.
(01:07:12):
Like, you know, there was one restaurant and I had Thai food for the first time
in my mid-20s. Same thing with Mexican food.
Meanwhile, my kids are like making Tom's soup, Thai soup. They buy their,
what's it called, lemongrass. They cook Indian.
And so I really love that, I think. So for them, it's like nothing special.
(01:07:38):
It's totally part of how they live now.
I can remember when my daughter, you know, as a grown-up, you do the grocery
shopping, you do this, you do that.
And then, you know, when she was, you know, in her 20s after she graduated college,
and remember realizing that she wanted, like, peanut butter and chocolate ice
(01:08:01):
cream. And I'm like, what is that?
And she's like, that's my favorite. I was like, I didn't know this.
Like, she's like, yeah, well, you know, that's, you know, what she's discovered
that she liked. And I was like, oh, my goodness.
She's, like, really thinking on her own.
She's, you know, making her own decisions by doing her own groceries and everything. But she'll do...
Again, she'll do a lot of like Korean dishes. And, you know,
(01:08:24):
it's almost like when I go to her house, I'm like, I don't have any like regular
food, you know, like American food or something.
But I do remember, you know, when she was younger and she said she loved,
you know, like fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.
So I'm like, great, we're going to teach you how to make fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.
(01:08:45):
So if you're ever off somewhere and you just want a meal that you can make and
it'll make you feel good you'll know how to make you know a good home cooked
meal so we taught her how to do that and i don't even know she's done that recently but.
We have a family cookbook she can always go to that if she you know wants a good home cooked meal,
(01:09:07):
i think my mom had a little bit of a reaction like you to your daughter's cooking
to my cooking because i grew up like my mom is used to be a very picky eater
now she's just like a normal I'm a picky eater. And she admits that too.
So I grew up eating a lot of the same things over and over and over.
And like you said, there wasn't like other cuisine like readily available for
(01:09:30):
a price point that as a teenager you can afford.
So as soon as I started traveling on my own and started living on my own,
I started trying and cooking all sorts of things and trying and eating all sorts of other foods.
And she's a good cook. Very good cook. Thank you.
If you ask Clara I'm not but that's okay so
(01:09:51):
I'm I'm the person who who like you know
one day I cook ramen and the next day we
make you know West African stew and the day
after that is like German braten with potatoes and
like but for Clara that's normal now going out and having all these different
(01:10:12):
foods at your fingertips or opening the spice cabinet and having all these these
different ingredients at your fingertips. Like she's growing up like that's.
Who doesn't have that? Who doesn't have kimchi in their fridge? Yeah.
Or miso paste or, you know, ground crayfish for seasoning.
(01:10:32):
So it's interesting. Right now we're at the stage where sometimes she loves
what I make. When I make it again the next week, it's the worst thing she's ever had.
So it's a total hit or miss.
Yep. That's true. She eats everything.
That's the good thing. At this age, yeah, I'm glad she does.
(01:10:53):
Hopefully it stays the same. It makes it easy to travel with them too then.
If they're open and they eat everything.
As far as she's ready to eat, that's the only thing.
But she'll eat anything you put before her as far as she's ready to eat.
So once again, thank you all for coming on the show. Appreciate you all for giving me your time.
Final thing to wrap up, final question. What would you like to leave mothers
(01:11:17):
out there, Be it future moms, moms with young kids, those who already have all the kids.
Yeah, any message to the moms out there?
I would say, like, really trust yourself first above anything.
You develop a relationship with your child. Your child is special.
(01:11:39):
Nobody knows your child as well as you do.
So over advice from psychologists or friends or family, parents,
teachers, all these people, people shouting advice at you in the street. Trust yourself.
I think I agree with that. And I think also have fun doing what you do.
(01:12:02):
Have fun with your kid. Enjoy them.
Have fun with them. And even when they become teenagers, boys especially do
this, but I'm sure girls as well. while, they push away, they want to be left
alone, they want to go in their room, they don't want anyone in their room,
just go and sit on the edge of their bed.
And they'll be like, why are you here? When are you going to leave?
Can you leave my room now?
(01:12:22):
And eventually it'll stop from like them trying to get you out of their room
to them actually talking to you and telling you, well, my friend's like this
and we did that and this is what's happening in school right now and this is
the next party we want to go to.
Like they'll start talking to you, you know. So definitely insert yourself into
their life and stay there.
(01:12:43):
And also remember their phases. phases that
do need you when you're a teenager and and and
put things into perspective sometimes a phase might
seem a little hard well it's going to change it's not going to
stay like that yeah and as out of touch as they think we are because they feel
as teenagers they're more connected to the world they understand what's happening
(01:13:03):
you know in contemporary you know society and the way things are have changed
and progressed and we're more out of touch you know and so they they They look
at us like we don't know what we're talking about,
but they haven't lived yet.
So they don't know where they're headed, you know, and they do need us to sort
of shine the light and guide their path.
(01:13:25):
Yeah, definitely.
And, you know, just even as a young mother, you know, I'd say to mothers out
there, whether, you know, young mother, you know, experienced mother,
you know, like similar to what you said, you know, follow your instincts.
You know, people may form their own opinions about you, but you know who you
(01:13:47):
are and your children and you do know what's best for them.
So whether it's advocating for them, teaching them how to talk to the teachers themselves,
or whether it's, you know, teaching them to, you know, tell grandma,
I really appreciate this,
but I'd prefer not to, you know, that it's okay to, you know,
(01:14:13):
set those boundaries for your children, but then also for yourself.
You know, so that you can also take some time for yourself and be happy and
rejuvenate yourself so that you can be there for your children.
So there's so many, so many things, you know, as a parent, as a disciplinarian,
(01:14:35):
as the, you know, health care provider. writer.
But yeah, there's no perfect book for this.
There's no roadmap, you know, so you kind of just go with the flow and,
you know, trust your instincts.
I feel like I'm awfully underqualified to give advice to anyone.
She's fine. Yeah, yeah. She's great. She's healthy. She's happy.
(01:14:59):
She's brilliant when you sit and talk to her. So you guys are definitely doing things right.
Yes. Trust yourself. Thank you. Yeah, maybe the test. Yeah.
Trusting yourself, but also letting the child be the child, I guess.
Because they know a lot about like at a very early age earlier than i would
have ever expected they know who they are in the moment like they may not know
(01:15:21):
who they were going to become they don't know,
necessarily you know or changes from day to day what they want and what they don't want,
but they do know themselves in the moment and also you'll always get something
wrong and it's okay as an adult to apologize to a child if you get it wrong
yes yes yes because that's that two-way path to respect.
(01:15:44):
Yeah, I also think that, like, if I look back, some regrets I have is,
like, you really sometimes have to advocate for your children in school.
Like, schools, they deal with a lot of children that just want things to be,
like, leveled and normal and things.
But sometimes you really have to go and say, you know, things have to be different
(01:16:07):
for my child or we have to find some solution.
And they tend to prefer parents to keep out of things, just to deal with things,
but sometimes you really have to go in there, and that's happened to us.
And I wish I had done it even more, because you arrive and you think,
oh, there I am, like the problem mom, right?
(01:16:29):
But no, it's not like that. Sometimes your child, there's some things happening
in school, and you really need the school to address that problem. Yeah.
I mean, I've even switched my daughter's school because it was such a rigid
learning environment and her personality, you know, was more creative.
(01:16:50):
And I was afraid that she would not respond well to education.
I'm like, oh my gosh, she's going to hate school. She's going to shut down.
She's going to feel so bad about herself.
I'm like, we need a more positive learning environment. So it was a very,
you know, one of the exam schools in Boston, very, you know,
prestigious, one of those nice big schools.
And I was like, we're going to go to this other charter school over here because
(01:17:12):
they had, they understood her more and she could blossom there.
And it was a very hard decision because, you know, you feel like you want to do the right thing.
And everyone's like, you're taking her from like the best. and
but again yeah give yourself grace
and mercy and trust yourself i had to do
(01:17:33):
that in kenya too they started at the wrong school
just because i got a job there and
i thought it would be great for my family but it was very loosey-goosey
undisciplined do whatever you want the kids would walk around with no shoes on
kind of situation international school you
know and very coveted and
very you know feeder school for this other expensive international school all
(01:17:55):
of of that stuff but it just it wasn't for us and they needed they needed
discipline they needed routine they needed to know
where to be and what to do in that classroom at that time of
the day you know and this school was not providing that and i knew they'd be
a mess so yeah yeah it's hard to change but you did the right thing listen to
yourself not everyone all right and with that being said yeah i appreciate each and every one of you,
(01:18:23):
And everyone listening, I hope you got something great from this episode like I did.
And yeah, keep the love coming in. Go check out Mimi's podcast, Improper Mimi.
And yeah, if you are a priest, let them know where to get your music at again.
SoundCloud, yeah. Safi.
Safi, check out Safi. S-A-F-I on SoundCloud. Yep. I do play her music a lot
(01:18:47):
when I'm playing soccer with the dads.
If you don't know, I organize dad soccer for Paxlo parents.
Every Friday. So if you're in Park Slope, reach out to me. You want to come kick it with us.
So yeah, it's not, no, if you're trying to make the Olympics,
don't come. We don't do that.
It's not for those type. It's for the types who are retired.
(01:19:08):
It's for the dad bods. Yeah.
The ones who want to keep their knees. Yeah. Yeah. We're trying to make,
if you want to keep your knee up to when you're at 100, you can, yeah.
If you're not trying to wear robot knees, then yeah, you can come.
So yeah, it's all about fun, Have a good time. And Arabella,
do you have anything coming up?
We do have an opening this Wednesday, and it's prints from our artists.
(01:19:32):
And there will be a raffle where the winners will be able to host a print from
our artists in their home for several months.
And that's at Galerie Particulier 281 Maple.
It's Wednesday, May 1st, 6 till 8 p.m. And it's free. Oh, awesome.
(01:19:53):
Disclaimer this episode will be out on Mother's Day week okay just putting that
out to the audience right bless you.
I was about to ask if you had anything to put out to the audience oh well you
sneezed but so good well we'll have we'll have the raffle the actual raffle
(01:20:14):
will be on June 4th and that will be a storytelling evening okay I hope to be
there if I'm in town hopefully I'll be there,
All right. And now I'll share with you all too, in case you all want to come.
All right. Mimi, did you share where people can find your podcast?
You can find me at M Proper Mimi. That's M Proper with an M.
And that's M Proper Mimi dot com. And all the social handles are M Proper Mimi.
(01:20:41):
Everywhere you go. All right. Rafael, thank you for having us and for giving
us a platform today. Hey, my pleasure. I love talking to awesome people.
And Verena has been all shy and humble. She's a HR specialist,
HR guru right there, you know?
So yeah, she, she's been all humble, but I won't say, I can't say the company
she works for, but she's the HR guru.
(01:21:02):
That's all I'm allowed to say so that I can make it home.
All right. Thank you all for listening. Keep the love coming in.
If you've got something to tell us, please do.
We love your feedback. Keep the support coming in. We need patrons.
So sign up for patron for as low as $3.
Get your friends who got $20 or 50 to spare to sign on so that yeah,
we can bring more stuff we're talking about fallout we'll be talking about uh
(01:21:25):
other shows that have come out yeah x-men and i'll be on patreon and yeah got
many more awesome stuff and that's start getting ready we'll get you guys soon
for father's day all right thank you for the privilege of your company.
Thanks for listening to white label american if you enjoyed the show will appreciate
(01:21:46):
if you rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.
If you have any questions, comments, or have someone who will be a good guest
on the show, or you want to be on the show, send us a message at whitelabelamerican at gmail.com.
(01:22:09):
And make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Music.
Hi, everyone. Rafael Harry here, and you're listening to White Label American,
a podcast where we hear stories from an immigrant or two, sometimes more.
Thank you for listening and enjoy the show.
Music.
(00:21):
Welcome to a very extra special episode of White Label American.
Last year, we did the It's the first Mother's Day episode and it was so much fun. So it's back again.
And this time we have an extra, you know, we went one extra than last year.
We did it with three moms.
(00:41):
So this time we got extra friends of the podcast.
And we have three guests who have been on an episode, at least one episode before.
So we have Verena from episode 50.
Long overdue second appearance on
the podcast we have Preet who's been on
(01:02):
episode 145 and last year's Mother's Day
episode and we have Mimi from Thanksgiving episode
last year and episode 165 and Arabella who was who's been in the studio has
brought some extra exciting guests but hasn't officially appeared on an episode
so thank you all for joining us today and each one of you we have an opportunity to introduce yourself.
(01:28):
So this is an episode to celebrate our moms and to all our listeners who are
moms out there, special shout out to you.
Everyone listening, don't forget, you have an opportunity to let us know, give us feedback.
We'd love to hear from you. And yeah, thank you for your support.
And we shall dive in. And how shall we go? We should go alphabetically or right to left?
(01:52):
It's the moms. You guys decide. I want to go first and introduce yourselves.
Me? I was going to say Arabella.
Hey, everyone. It's Mimi, Mimi Jacks. I am a mother of one.
My daughter is a grown-up. She's 30, but I'm also the host of the Improper Mimi
(02:13):
podcast, so I'm happy to be back on this show again. Welcome, welcome.
Hi, everyone. Nice to be back here. Thanks again for inviting me today, Raphael.
And yeah, it's been almost a year since I've done this. So today I actually
am nervous. Last time I wasn't.
I think when you don't do it often enough, you don't know what you're coming
(02:34):
into. But once you've done it before, you're like, okay, and you have this buildup.
Anyhow, so it's nice to be here. I'm the mother of two boys, 16 and 11.
And navigating being a mom of a teenager in the big city in New York. Yeah.
Thanks for joining us. And I'm Arabella von Arix. I'm thrilled to be here on this vibrant podcast.
(03:00):
And I have two children, 25 and 27, so they're out of the house. It's a new phase.
And that has allowed me to start an art project called Gallery Particulier in
Brooklyn, and it's at gallery.parti, P-A-R-T-I.
Hi, Verena. I've been a mom now for officially a little bit over five and a
(03:24):
half years. And it's been a trip.
I'm one of those people, if you'd asked me 10 years ago, I'd be like,
I'm not a mom. I'm not mom material. I don't know if I want children.
I don't think this is for me. And then I met him.
Then everything changed. So it wasn't that I didn't want children.
(03:44):
It was just that I didn't want children with whomever I was with at the time.
So it's been an interesting, if you count the pregnancy into it,
it's been an interesting six and a half years.
Mom material meets dad material. That's very important.
So for those who aren't aware, Verena and myself, the ones who are the parents
(04:07):
of, there's a little person hiding here.
Yeah, that's why you should be on Patreon so you can see the video.
You'll see the video of the little person I'm talking about.
So yes, we are the parents of Clara, or it'd be Miriam.
So diving into the first question, which Varian I kind of alluded to.
Did you always plan on becoming a mother?
(04:30):
And yes or no, doesn't matter. How has your cultural upbringing influenced your view on motherhood?
Whether that means having children or how you decided to parent them.
I would say I didn't necessarily think I would want children.
I was a little bit, like Verena, like a little bit ambiguous about it, ambivalent about it.
(04:53):
Like, you know, I like my work, I like my career, and, you know,
how is that going to work?
And then I met my husband and we decided to have children and it's just been
really such a wonderful experience.
Sometimes I feel if you're ambivalent, then maybe it's not such a bad way to
(05:13):
go into it because then you really reap the rewards of it that maybe you weren't expecting as much.
And I would say that I, like in America, I feel like typically parents are more
lenient with their children.
They're more strict where I grew up and that's something I adopted and that I like.
(05:39):
Yeah i didn't know if i wanted to have children i
just i knew it was culturally ingrained so growing up
in south asian background you know a rite of
passage and when you actually are considered a woman in the cultures when you
become a mother you know and it was it was sort of that milestone in life that
we were all expected to like reach at some point in our lives you know and so
(06:02):
i took my time with all of that and i also i enjoyed my life you know i was
enjoying being in my thirties in New York city.
And, and I also didn't know if, cause I'd waited if I would be able to have
kids, you know, things change in your body and you just don't know if the engines
are going to be firing when they need to, but it happened right away when we decided it was time.
And it was probably at the point in our relationship when we're on the couch
(06:24):
looking at each other, we've tried all the ice cream that there is to try Ben and Jerry's.
We've watched all the movies there are to watch, you know, on the Netflix envelopes,
the red envelopes that used to come to your door because that's what Netflix was then with the DVDs.
And we wanted something else to spice things up. And I was like,
okay, I think it's time. We're married. Let's try.
(06:45):
And right away, I was pregnant. I knew I'd be a good mom.
I didn't know if I'd like it. I always knew I'd be good at it because it's logical
and you know what it takes to be a parent.
You've seen enough people raise kids and stuff.
But I was surprised that I liked it. So it's interesting that you say that when
you go in with an open mind, you appreciate it more. I agree. Yeah.
(07:07):
Wow. And I have, I think a much maybe different path, you know,
for, for being a mom. I had my.
Survivor of abuse. And so I became pregnant and I think my family upbringing
(07:28):
really encouraged me to keep her.
And so became a mom, 18, you know, stayed home from high school for graduation.
Well, stayed home February, had her in February, went back to school,
graduated, stayed home for the the summer, then went to school in the fall for college.
So it's been a, it's been a journey as well.
(07:51):
So like I said, I've always been a single mom, but I can't imagine my life differently without her.
I think a lot of the things I've done have been for her and for,
you know, my family, for raising her.
So I, it was, you know, I enjoyed the pregnancy, you know, having that life inside side of my body.
(08:13):
But I never really thought about having kids. I was a kid myself at the time.
But yeah, with the support of my family, you know, it's been great to see her
grow and to the woman that she is now.
I think the cultural aspect is interesting because I feel like it wasn't so
much from like the broader culture
that like, you know, you're supposed to have kids when you grow up.
(08:33):
It was more that I grew up with a lot of little girls that really wanted to be moms.
And I was the odd one out. I was always like, yeah, 10 years from now.
I kept saying that like from when I was like maybe 13 or 15 because they were
all like, oh, my God, once we graduate from college, we're going to find a husband
and we're going to have kids.
Right. There's that biological clock thing going on, right? Yeah.
(08:54):
But so this was even during teenage years.
Like, it would be like, yeah, in 10 years, in 10 years. It kept being 10 years
for me for a long, long time.
It wasn't until I had to. Because, you know, that seemed sufficiently enough
far away that things could change.
But yeah, I mean, if I compare myself to a lot of the people that I grew up
with, they either ended up not having kids at all or having them a lot younger than myself. self.
(09:20):
But also, and I don't know if that played into it, my parents had us really young.
My mom's best friend had her two boys really young, and kind of we grew up together,
but we had really young moms, like where if I had been on the same schedule,
Clara would be graduating college now,
which is mind-blowing to me and where we are kind of, or where I feel like I am in my life, Right.
(09:47):
So I think I felt a little bit like, like I said, like the odd one out because
it wasn't really on the radar.
And then even after I moved to the U.S., a lot of people that I know that I
became friends with or friendly with, they now have children that are in high
school or they have children that like just went to college.
One of my friends that I'm still in touch with from when I lived in what Raph
(10:12):
calls upstate, she just had her first granddaughter.
She's just a couple years older than me. That's amazing.
And so what I think is really interesting in a kind of melting pot like New
York is you have everything. Yeah.
Even though I'm an older mom, right, in our 40s, and we still have a kid in
(10:34):
kindergarten, there are enough of us out there that I don't feel like the odd one out anymore.
But there's also a ton of young moms, right? Like, so it's not like anyone,
there's just enough moms around that nobody, everyone can find their group and
nobody's kind of like, has to feel alone in that.
Yeah, that is the beauty of being a city, a big city and diverse city like New York.
(10:58):
And it's not just diverse in terms of, you know, culture and everything,
but also there's this age diversity that we get, right?
And part of what I love about New York, we don't get aged out of things,
you know, there are certain things that if I was in Kenya, certain things I
do, I would age out of it and I wouldn't be doing that anymore because it's
just not what people my age would be doing.
Like, I like to go to club, I like to dance, things like that.
(11:20):
Someone who's almost like 50, like me, would not be doing that back in Nairobi,
you know, and would be sort of judged for it.
But also as a parent, people would give you a lot of pressure.
They're like, well, you're 30, you're trying to have a child.
You're 40, you're trying to have a child. Why?
And you're going to be an old parent. Why would you do that?
You know? And people would actually vocalize that. They feel like they can for some reason.
(11:41):
Whereas here, we're just, we're more accepting with that. And yeah,
we see gray-haired parents all over Park Slope. So it's not an unusual thing. Yeah.
Not that you have gray hair at all.
You have a long way to go before that.
Did you remind me? And Mimi, thank you for sharing what you shared, by the way.
(12:02):
But yeah, that's a great point you brought up, Preet. Like Kenya and Nigeria,
I think we were very upfront with our opinions.
And sometimes we don't realize this, the line between blonde and being me can
be a little bit, it's a very thin line.
(12:26):
I i remember there's a a friend of mine we childhood friend of mine one of my
few childhood friends who we are still good friends and when i discovered that his,
his mom's sister was one of those families who couldn't have kids and for lack
of a better term we refer to those families as barren that's how we just call
(12:51):
them we call them barren families So,
in order for his mom's sister not to be identified as a barren woman,
his mom, I think it's, I don't know how many kids his mom had.
So, they let him be, let him stay with his aunt and he was identified as his aunt's kid.
(13:11):
So, that's why we all grew up considering him as himself and his sister.
And his aunt will now have a child, I think she was probably maybe closer to
her 50s when she eventually had a child and it was a big party.
And that's like when everybody realized that, oh, she never had a child all this time.
(13:34):
So that's how far the family went to just make sure this woman doesn't get stigmatized,
doesn't get judged and everything.
I think it may have led to me having empathy for women who go through,
I say women, especially because as men, we have the liberty to be in and out
(13:57):
of it, to choose whether to have kids or not.
Well, we can be in our fifties and come back and say, okay, yeah, I want to have kids now.
Society treats us in a different way, but it's the women who get the brunt of
it. And after seeing that big party, I was probably around closer to 14,
13 or 14, when that big party happened from the church.
(14:18):
We went to the house. The whole community was there just celebrating with this woman.
And I thought about it. Like, I've seen movies. I've seen plays,
how they insult the woman.
And, you know, the family even starts making moves to get a second wife for
the man. Like, this woman is barren.
Go get a fertile woman, a young fertile woman for this.
To replace and you know i think that
(14:40):
something just clicked in me then like wow this
is it's not right to treat a woman and but
you know you don't say it out loud so you don't get costed by
your elders but i think it just
dawned on me that uh you know it's tough for people
who choose to have children late and i don't
know but i never did anything and it just disappeared from me and i
(15:03):
never took recognition of that and until you
just brought up that point about you know choosing to live certain
lifestyles that you know later on in life how you get judged and i'm like yeah
we do get judged you know coming from that society that i came from there's
a lot of you know harsh judgment like why why are you waiting until now to have
a child it's just like hey i chose like what is wrong with you nobody would
(15:27):
just say that to you without understanding,
what that person has been going through they've been trying you know so i'm
just putting that out there that yeah i uh it's a memory that just got triggered
and yeah you know you don't know what people are going through even if they
decide to wait until they're in their 40s no you know it's people's choices
but that doesn't mean you have the right to go.
(15:49):
Bash them but yeah and and in your in
your example right like it's usually the woman
that gets bashed whether that's why i emphasized on
yeah or the child the child bearing partner is the one who's like who's automatically
thought of as like oh it must be your problem when it could be either or or
both of them yeah and like my my favorite aunt who i refer to as my as when
(16:12):
i was on your podcast That's why I called my father Figo.
It was the same thing with her marriage.
That's why her husband had to get a second wife because they had gone for years, no child.
And then they were like, well, I guess nothing is coming out of us.
So, you know, we'll go get you a new wife.
And, you know, that would be
more of a time. Then it just seemed like kids were coming from the woman.
(16:35):
And after her fifth kid, then my aunt had her first child and then second child,
and the first child was a girl, so that was not a problem.
So, oh boy, now I'm like, ah, leave.
This thing can be, having a child is still a problem.
Yeah, you have to have the right child, the first right child, exactly. So, yeah.
(16:57):
Yeah, especially African and Asian culture, very similar that way, right? Mm-hmm. Yes.
The male sex is valued beyond the female sex, basically, right away from day one.
I was the first child And for
my dad People would come to the house And they'd say
Oh we're so sorry It's nice that you had a girl But it's such
(17:18):
a shame And things like that And he got so sick
of hearing it So he threw this party For my six month
birthday Or something Which is unheard of It's such an American thing We don't
do things like that there But he came forward And he said that I want the community
And everybody to know That this is my son And I welcome my son to the world
(17:38):
because he wanted to give me the same standing as, you know,
a boy or a son would have in the community.
So that was kind of really progressive in my mind of him, you know,
to do that. It was very cute of him to do that. It is progressive.
That's beautiful. I also, you know, like you hear so, oh, you know,
women of having children older and everything.
And I think there's a little bit of a misconception there because, you know,
(18:02):
Women always had children in their 40s. It's a myth that they didn't.
I mean, my great-grandmother had children when she was in her 40s.
She started early and she had a number of children. Right, they'd have like
three or four and then have like the last one in their 40s or something. Exactly.
It's not unheard of. It's not changed.
And then also to Raphael's point, I think it's also, you know,
(18:24):
there's also a lot of pressure for people to have children.
And I feel that if a woman chooses not to have a child, it should really be respected.
And it is a choice and it is a valid choice.
You can live a beautiful life without having children.
(18:45):
Yeah, I mean, and you don't know what the reasons are behind that, right?
Health, it could be all sorts of things, finances. Now some women are opting
out of being mothers because of the environment.
Environment and they're like we're not going to be we're going to be impacting
you know the whole world and impacting the world for everybody in such a negative
way if we have children so they're these hardcore climate extremists i wouldn't
(19:07):
call them extremists but you know newspapers do.
Who've all you know made a vow not to have children these ladies are not going
to have children because we don't need more people on the planet because of
you know the drain on resources,
so you never you have to respect i mean i want to share the views similar to
that and i didn't And yeah, I don't think I saw myself as an extremist.
(19:29):
And there are people who I talked to back then.
I'm like, yeah, man, why bring a kid into this world? Why bring a kid in?
I mean, even the 80s, we were talking about population explosion at that point, right?
That's when that phrase came out. And we started hearing about population explosion.
And they referred to Asia and Africa.
And they talk about how the populations were growing beyond anywhere else in
the world and things like that.
(19:50):
Yeah, my mom worked there. That sort of concept came up then.
The federal agency my mom worked for in Nigeria had a family planning program.
In the late 80s into early 90s that was
supposed to be under the military government was supposed to be about they
were worried about population explosion but at
(20:10):
the same time you know every wedding i attended as soon
as you know congratulations you have nine months you have
nine months you know they're shaking the groom's
hand and it is the point it goes to the woman you know you have nine months
starting from today nine months you know we expect we expect the baby or too
we want no pressure like on the tv they call all the adverts are like you know
(20:32):
family planning you know go talk to the professionals and family planning and
then like what you have nine months,
but i think those agencies are actually really good i think like in i want to
believe that they were initiated by women who wanted other women to have opportunity
and they were just kind of under the umbrella of like we're saving the environment
and overpopulation because then Then you can have the man sign off on it.
(20:54):
And then you really bring birth control to those who needed to have the ability
to really control their own body and have opportunity.
That's at least what I want to believe. You're not far from the truth.
Especially like the one I know my mom. Now I know, looking back,
I know that's what my mom worked for.
The idea behind it. And then, well, they employed some.
(21:18):
It was under the military government. So they employed some men who came in, and I'm using men,
I'm not saying all men are bad, but the men who came in said,
well, there's allocation that comes from the federal government,
and then there's allocation that came from UNICEF and so on.
United nation and all that and that means dollars and well
let me help you women spend this money you know you may need
(21:40):
to go cooking and all that so we'll help you
take care of this and when it's gone so yeah you as a child you started seeing
things like that pretty early and you're like oh okay so yeah because they had
the ideas were it looked like ahead of his time but it's it was actually,
(22:01):
it was stuff that, you know, they were educated women then.
So it's not like they weren't, they were around. So they knew the right things
to bring up and they, they were the catchphrases, they were the lingos, the music and all that.
And you're like, oh, everybody's paying attention to this. And then all of a
sudden, programs started to dry up, funding disappeared.
Where did funding go? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It was like, oh, well,
(22:24):
and then 20 years later, somebody would just come and say, blame the West.
Okay. Yeah. Whatever. but let's move
on to more much more interesting questions
and answers so sticking to
the cultural background what aspects of your
cultural background do you intend to pass down to
your children so now this will be tricky because when i wrote this question
(22:46):
i was only thinking of moms with the younger children but since we have moms
with adult children yeah so what cultural what aspects of your cultural background
did you pass down to your children and what traditions or beliefs do you hope
they will outgrow or reject.
(23:07):
Well, I can say I think with my daughter, I, you know, tried to do a lot of
things that my parents did with me of, you know, raising her in faith and in
the church and instilling education in her.
So those are two things that kind of stick out to me that regardless of,
you know, marriage or having kids, you were going to college, you know.
(23:29):
So we knew that education was very big for my grandmother, to my mom,
you know, to a lot of the people in my family. and just trying to instill in
her to advocate for herself.
And I can see now as she speaks and deals with others that she may work with
or other family members or even how she communicates to other grown-ups.
(23:54):
Yeah, I've met her. Yeah, so proud of her.
And those were things that you think they may not listen or they're not hearing,
But then you can see, oh, okay, there are some aspects of that independent thinking.
And then there's also times of like, oh, my gosh, the independent thinking. Like, what?
You know, just be like, hold your tongue. But we didn't teach them to hold their
(24:18):
tongue. We're teaching, you know, to communicate.
So I think those are some of the good aspects that I've passed down to her that
I wanted to, you know, within my family culture, share with her. Yeah.
Which can also at the same time display what I wanted to break with her,
(24:38):
you know, from my family and from growing up of.
And always, you know, you know, listening to adults or, you know,
oh, you're a child, be quiet, let the adult speak, you know,
there's a place and time for that.
But there's also, you know, you shouldn't have to do something if you don't
feel comfortable with it.
Or if you want, you know, you should be able to express yourself that is respectful,
(25:02):
you know, and that's part of the reason why, you know, my show is Improper Mimi.
Me it's like how can you speak and say your truth you
know and then you're going to be labeled you know oh it's improper you
know it's not the right way to say it but yeah at
the same time of teaching her to speak for herself also kind of
breaks the you know be seen and not heard kind of
(25:23):
thing you know i thought of it that way
but right i brought i
grew up in switzerland and so i brought
to the their family like some you know some traditions
from growing up like
for example we use real candles on our christmas tree and you know little things
(25:46):
like that but i think one thing i feel was of value to my children growing in
you know exposed to two cultures is just that it then
shows that everything can be a little relative, like values,
the way to reach children.
(26:07):
How you treat your children.
That varies from one culture, how you feel about yourself, what your place in society is.
There is no just one true value in that kind of thing, and I think that's something
that I think they benefited from.
Yeah. For me, it would be definitely like sitting down as a family and having
(26:32):
dinner because that's something my parents always did.
And I could tell it was important. It was important to them.
My mom would strive and make that effort to cook things we all liked.
And we all had to gather at the family table and eat dinner.
Even when we became teenagers and we had other plans, we'd make sure we'd come for dinner.
You know, that was a very important thing. and it kept us
connected and let us talk about our day and our lives
(26:54):
to each other yeah that was a good one and then
of course education was always a big one and that's something my
dad always said growing up because he never got to he didn't
even get through high school you know he just went to worked at the age of 14
so sending me you know his oldest to university was a really big deal and then
he always told me people can steal everything away from you but they can never
(27:15):
take your knowledge so that was something very important and we try not to pressure
them for their education, but it's important to get a good education.
And then respect, respect for your elders, respect for how you treat others in society.
That was very important. I grew up in a multi-generational household.
So my dad's mom lived with us and often my mom's mom, she was sort of nomadic.
(27:36):
She'd hop from house to house to have different kids and she'd come and stay
with us too, my mom's mom. So,
That was very special, and I always sort of, you know, put them above my mom and dad's needs.
Whatever they needed, anything, I'd drop whatever mom and dad would ask for
and do what my grandmas wanted first, you know, because I was taught to do that.
And I teach my boys this. Growing up in New York, unfortunately,
(27:56):
we don't have those older people around us, but we had older people on our block.
We have Jack, who's our neighbor, who actually passed away recently,
97, World War II veteran.
And he would stop us and talk about his day, and I would stand there and just
talk. And the boys would get irritable and want to go home.
And I taught them it doesn't matter.
(28:16):
Jack can talk to us for as long as he wants to talk to us. He lives on his own.
And he probably doesn't get a chance to speak to many people.
And we just stand there and listen to his stories.
And you will learn something from him one day. And so they started,
you know, understanding that and getting it. And they would,
you know, stop and chat with him, which was important.
But the things that I would like them to leave behind, and I think they will
(28:39):
because of being in New York, is classism, you know, this regard for other people
in society who are like higher up.
And that phrase comes up with, I guess, my community back home in Kenya.
My mom even says it, okay, he's very high up in the community,
you know, that phrase comes out.
It's very sort of, I guess, Indian way of thinking from the caste system.
(29:01):
If you're a doctor or a lawyer, you're higher up. If you're,
you know, a hairdresser or, you know, you're,
I don't know, washing dishes in a a restaurant you're lower down on
the rung you know and that's something that i don't think we need to
carry forward and i think my boys sort
of accept people for who they are not based on what they
do or where or how much money they have or
(29:21):
what shirts that they're wearing or what shoes really teenagers
that they're wearing yeah
i think respect and kindness are very
important to teach right but when i
think back it's more about a respect has
to be earned from both sides though like you
can't just tell a child well respect your elders like like
(29:43):
you were saying right but the elders also need to
respect the child that children have opinions and we have a great case at home
she has a lot of opinions and as hard as it is sometimes we do want to encourage
that we do want her to speak up we do want her to have opinions and and her
own boundaries it's It's just sometimes really hard when you also as a parent then have,
(30:05):
you know, you have to keep her healthy, you have to keep her safe.
You have to put a stop to certain things. Like you can't go five days without brushing your teeth.
Like even if that's your new opinion and you don't want to brush your teeth,
like that's just not going to work.
So we're walking like a very fine line, a very like concrete fine line with
a five-year-old right now where she does speak up. She tells us things and she
(30:28):
tells us things that are happening and how her opinion is about things that happen at school.
But then at the same time, she just has opinions that are just,
that are the opinion of a five-year-old that just don't work in the real world.
But so we want to give, like, we want to show her the respect as much as we
can, that we respect her and respect her opinion. But yeah, got to put a stop to certain things.
(30:51):
I always tell my daughter, oh, four was the best age.
You know, it's like you were old enough to discover and do things on your own,
but you also still needed my help.
So I could still guide you and help you learn, but then you could stand on your
own and do things by yourself.
(31:12):
And it's an age where there's still a little bit of the magic of early childhood
where not everything is rational.
Then they go to school and get educated, but I felt the same.
Like four is like such an adorable age for that because they're more manageable
than when they're two or three but they still have this enchanted view of the
(31:35):
world yeah yeah and i think the other thing for me is like the whole thing about
like be kind you don't have to be nice but be kind.
You can have a different opinion and you respectfully express this or you you
may not want to do something and you could tell the person that you don't want
to do it you don't have to be Be nice and do it anyway against your own wishes.
(31:55):
But you have to be kind to people and you have to be respectful to people and
communicate that you don't want to do certain things.
And she just knows that we're talking about her because she just turned around.
Out we we
had we felt we had to
intervene a few times in school where
we you know we have a daughter and a son where we felt that our daughter was
(32:22):
asked to be nice and we really resented that you know whereas our son was not
asked to be nice yeah and we actually went in the school and we were like,
don't ask our daughter to be nice,
you know, ask her to be kind, ask her to be respectful, but this message that
(32:42):
girls should be nice, we really resented.
Yeah, that's interesting. I have to watch out for that. Yes,
stuff that I don't, you know, it doesn't always, it's not always in here.
But, you know, sometimes that's why I'm glad I have Verena in my life.
Because sometimes I don't catch it. And then sometimes I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah.
(33:04):
And it's not like one script works for both, right? It works for all even.
Whether male or female, it's different with boys, it's different with girls.
But it's different with different personalities too, you know?
You have to know who your kid is. Like I have a son who's very,
the younger one, who's just a sweet guy.
He has a sweet heart and he'll just get pushed around and stuff.
So with him, I'm like, you have to stand up for yourself.
(33:25):
You have to be more, you know, more forceful. You have to be able to say no.
You can't be nice to everybody, you know. So I'm doing the opposite with him.
Like, and you wouldn't expect somebody to do that for a boy.
But, you know, it depends on their personality. You have to adjust that way as well.
And it depends on your own personality. I mean, I can say for myself,
I try, but I don't always manage to be that calm, you know, level-headed parent.
(33:53):
Because if you catch me in the wrong situation or if we're running late,
I hear your boundary, but you still have to put your shoes on before we go outside.
Yeah, it's difficult. You can't listen to them in every single circumstance.
In certain circumstances, you just want to function and get out the door and
get somewhere, right? And then the dog's barking or the neighbor's ringing the
doorbell or the phone's ringing and then you're trying to deal with the shoe
(34:14):
that they just keep pulling off or whatever.
It gets crazy. Those moments I used to say, you're frying my brain.
That was my phrase. Just listen to me. You're frying my brain.
And we can't be perfect either. Sometimes we get angry and wish we weren't.
But, you know, I think that.
(34:37):
There's this notion, I think there was a book called A Good Enough Parent,
and I think that's a really good notion, like to really aim and really work at it.
Parenting is work. It takes thinking. It does, and it's important to try to
be a good enough parent, but perfect is not something you can reach. It's a myth.
(35:01):
No, it's not true. Anyone selling perfect parenting, that's a scammer.
My cousin who just got married, and congratulations to him and his young missus,
they're 26, so really young.
And we've been going on for almost two years about the one appearance.
(35:26):
And I was like, you're really young.
Enjoy your life a little bit. The other day, he sent me a quote,
and I know the person the quote is from.
It's like one of these, what they call them, you know, got in the water for them.
And they have this, their perception of what a woman should be,
how a woman should behave.
And so for the person to say, children must be allowed to be children.
(35:49):
I knew he had an angle to where he was coming from. And my cousin was like,
you know, I listen to this guy a lot.
I was like okay first of all that's not where you're going to get your parenting
advice from because that's the type of person who will tell you that uh.
The the the mother can be perfect that can
be perfect i'm like yeah he's only setting you up for failure so
(36:10):
for the disconnect from that person find
you find your part and if you're using me as an example i'm not a perfect dad
and i can't point you to any perfect parents out there but yeah and i think
because of this conversation i'm having with my cousin that's how i found out
about child's rights and I wasn't even aware of New York state's bill of rights,
(36:31):
having children's rights in New York state.
That included, but it was mostly tied to the legal ramifications involved in divorce.
And I was like, okay, but through that, I did some more reading into children's
rights, which I'm like, okay, I'm proud of them.
I'm doing a good job on that side of it because, uh,
(36:56):
One thing I'd always considered before even becoming a parent,
or even when I was on the, I don't think I want to, I'm interested in having
a child, was children have a right to their own identity.
And that just, I don't even know the day I decided that was a thing that I was
going to start believing in.
(37:17):
But maybe it was from babysitting my nieces and nephews, my first Just miss, Mrs.
And nephew and seeing how they were just like, wow, this is the way they think.
And okay, just, you know, like, but you're like this person in the family at
the same time, you know, like this person in the family, so you are forming
your own identity and into your own person.
(37:38):
And maybe that's when I began to see children's rights as a theme,
but I didn't have the exact words, wording for it.
So yeah, so it's amazing how this whole journey has come to and,
Well, I think I'm a much better parent in my older age than if I had gone with
that dream I had when I was 18 and I said I was going to get married and have four children.
(38:02):
Good thing that didn't happen. Yeah, I don't know what would have happened then.
But speaking of culture and child's rights, how did you integrate rest,
play, culture, arts into your parenting approach?
I mean, I can speak to what we're trying to do, right? Like,
(38:24):
because we're still in the middle of it with her being five.
I gotta pretend I'm not there. Well, okay. Like, I can know the whole.
So...
She is a very different child from how I was at that age. I was a tomboy.
I played with skateboards and bicycles and cars.
And I had a Barbie because my friends had Barbies. So I didn't want to be, you know, left out.
(38:47):
But that was kind of the extent of my nurturing qualities at that age.
Whereas Clara is very different. She is very artistic.
Like drawing, singing, music, just expressing herself, dancing.
Dancing, she is interested in very different things.
She loves gymnastics, for example.
(39:10):
You could have not caught me doing gymnastics when I was like five,
six, seven years old, because it was just not my thing.
And never afterwards either. But so what I'm trying to do is just to expose
her to as many different things so that she can find what she likes to do.
But also not like pigeonholic so she
likes gymnastics now but if next
(39:32):
year it's dance or the year after it's taekwondo that's totally okay but i want
exposure to to as many things as possible and see where that leads her see how
like that nurtures her and so we signed her up on a whim for theater,
like for five-year-olds, five through fifth grade or something,
(39:56):
and then bought a couple of tickets for BAM when they had performances,
and really take her into environments that maybe not everyone takes their five-year-old
because there's not the interest or they're not,
they're different children, they don't want to sit still and look at something
and look at performances.
And then I would do different things, right? If she was interested very much
(40:19):
in, I don't know, soccer, watching soccer, watching basketball,
we have friends whose children are really into baseball, then I would try to
encourage that and see where that leads her.
So we're right now really in that phase of like, what do you want to do?
What are you interested in?
Where does that get you? What path do you want to go down?
(40:40):
And what maybe we come back to later when she's a little bit older or maybe
never. And I feel like that's the right way to go, especially because you're
being flexible, you know?
And their wants and their needs are going to change as they get older.
And that's what we've done, basically, is try to expose them,
like you say, to everything, give them a taste of things.
And we're lucky we live in a big city like New York, you know?
(41:02):
We have these opportunities. So I like to take them to concerts if I can,
go to play, and try and, you know, that's how I guess the art comes into their life.
My older one doesn't like drawing. I didn't. My mom was an art teacher.
I couldn't take art. And I couldn't take art with her ever.
So that never happened for me. But I'm a video editor, so my art comes out in
(41:25):
a different way. And I like to DJ, so my art comes out in a different direction, you know.
And then my younger one, he loves drawing and he loves sitting there and painting and things.
So we got him the pack of, you know, all the crayons and all the paints and
different papers and stuff that he can play around with. And he does that.
So you do. you start understanding their personality and who they are and what
they like. The older one, of course, he was our first.
(41:48):
So we were like, okay, you're doing soccer and you're going to do basketball
and you're going to do this.
All the stuff that you would do as a mom in Park Slope, you know?
And he hated team sport because he is, he's a high achiever.
And if he's not good at something, he'd rather just not do it.
He wants to be the best and win or just not touch it at all.
And you're in Brooklyn in New York. there's going
(42:09):
to be a superstar on the basketball you know court there's
going to be a superstar on the soccer field you're just not
going to be that superstar there's always going to be someone better than you
when you're when you're touching a sport so like these team
sports were not for him and we realized that and then he discovered fencing
which was really unusual and strange but we're like
okay fencing that's your thing and it came across because
(42:30):
it was one of the after-school offerings at his elementary
school so that's how we found fencing for him which was great
and then he did jujitsu for a
while but he surprised us when he started high school now
he's on the football team so he's doing such an
atypical american sport you know with the
team and he's still not very good at it but he's
also owned that about himself which i think is important
(42:53):
you know i think i was very worried about him steering away from things he's
not good at and he would shut off so much of the world to himself but he's stuck
in football he'll say i'm not that that great at it but he does it and he's
with his bros and you know he's met a lot of guys in high school so it's worked
out in that way culturally it's been hard you asked about culture and.
(43:14):
I'm not connected to the South Asian community as much here as I would be if I was back home.
But they're not interested in it. You know, like we had a wedding we were invited
to last summer in Vancouver, a proper Punjabi, big Indian wedding.
Five days I went for. I was told off because I wasn't there for seven days,
which I shouldn't have been.
(43:34):
I was about to ask. I was there only for five.
And I didn't take them because they were not interested. I knew they would be
bored to death of half this stuff, you know, and they're boys.
They didn't even like the outfit wasn't even exciting. You can get dressed up like, don't care.
You eat Indian food every day. I'm like, I only need one meal of Indian food
(43:56):
a week. It's fine, you know.
So I went on my own and I met my cousin there and I felt bad about not taking them at first.
And then when I immersed myself in it, I'm like, this is not for them.
And it's okay. You know, I can't push it on them. They know that it's there
for them, and that's a world that they can always connect to,
and that's part of who they are.
And they get little glimmers of exposure to it, but they don't have to be constantly pushed into it.
(44:21):
They might also come back to it later, later in life. Right, right.
Because I used to be a little bit like your son when I was growing up,
whereas if I don't feel like I can be really good at it, I don't know if I want to...
Like set myself up for disappointment and getting
older and then also probably having a child myself
like I now do things where
(44:43):
starting in my 30s I started doing things like just for the hell of it to see
like would my body let me do it so I tried snowboarding and surfing for the
first time in my 30s yeah right like I could have done that anytime in my 20s
but I was still in And that mindset,
like, oh, if I can't figure it out, I'm going to be a failure or whatever.
(45:05):
So maybe it's just, you know, they come back to it. They come back to their
cultural roots at some later time, maybe when they meet their significant other
or when they have children on their own.
Yeah, I hope so. I hope so for their sake, you know.
And even a lot of times in college, I've seen, you know, I went to high school
in a suburb and it was mostly, it was a mostly white suburb.
(45:27):
And we had black students from the city.
I grew up in Boston, and we would take students from Boston and,
you know, bus us out to the suburbs.
So there were a few, and there was an Air Force base nearby,
so there were other, you know, people from different cultures.
And, you know, in high school, everyone's like chill, trying to,
you know, just blend in, you know. We're all cool and the same.
(45:49):
And then you see as people go to college, they start to discover and realize.
Either with or without their parents, like, Like, oh, here's a little group that I'm a part of.
And then they start, you know, realizing, you know, some of the heritage or
the history of their culture. And then that kind of expands.
And I've seen, like, people, like, kind of explode. And I was like,
(46:11):
oh, I'm like, you know, I didn't even know, you know, that, you know,
maybe you were Haitian or, you know, some of my Indian friends.
Then they changed, you know, their names became properly pronounced instead
of, like, in high school, you know.
Yeah, yeah. So they may just, you know, find that on their own and become curious.
Yeah, yeah. It'll be interesting to see.
(46:33):
In certain aspects, I'm more German when I'm here than when I'm back home. Oh, yeah. I feel like.
And like, where I see like there's a difference in the way I approach things
or I talk about things sometimes.
Whereas like when I'm back home, it's starting to blend. Like it's starting
to go a little bit the other way now because I've been here.
I lived in Germany for 20 some years and now I've been here for 20 years.
(46:56):
So I feel like now it's like going a little bit the other way.
But at least the first 10 years, I felt more like I was noticeable to me more
German here than when I'm with all the other Germans, so to speak.
Yeah. And my family's American, you know, they, you know, we,
most of them are from Ohio or Pennsylvania.
But I've always, you know, grew up around other cultures.
(47:20):
And so even when my daughter was, you know, four, I'm giving her jerk chicken.
And, and then I'm like, she's crying.
I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that was too spicy for her, you know.
But she's always been around, you know, like my Spanish friends,
which are like family and taking her to other countries with me, you know.
So she has, I guess, been exposed to other cultures that are not just,
(47:44):
you know, Ohio or not just Boston, you know.
So it's important to me that, you know, her education in Boston,
that she was comfortable.
You know, I stayed in Boston so that she could finish her education,
you know, because I was like, oh, I want to go to, you know,
maybe Brazil or Toronto or D.C.
(48:05):
And I was like, I don't have the network there to raise a child by myself as
I do here. So I stayed in Boston, even staying in Boston for school,
because I knew I was going to Tuskegee and Alabama to study architecture.
And I'm like, I'm not going to be able to do that with a baby.
So I stayed in Boston for her whole, you know, education, really.
(48:29):
And even realizing the type of education that was best for her because I,
you know, similarly exposed her to all the sports.
She didn't really like sports, all the instruments. She didn't really stick
with instruments either.
But she loved, you know, reading and, you know, computers.
So I'm like, oh, good, she's going to be an engineer. No, she wasn't an engineer either.
(48:52):
What did she end up doing? she ended up
doing working with International Student Affairs so she's like with the registrar's
office and working with you know helping that transition and the paperwork and
everything for students to come to the States and be able to work you know here
or go to school here I think travel is a great way to.
(49:13):
Get them, you know, open their minds up a little bit and get them to connect to where they come from.
If you can travel and take them to their roots, that's a huge thing to be able to do.
Like I took my boys and we lived in Kenya for a year and I wanted them to experience
what it was like for me growing up in Africa, but what it would also be like
for them to feel like they had another place where they belonged,
(49:35):
you know, not just like off New York or off America, you're also off East Africa,
you know, in a very complex way because they're they're
mixed race they're african-american and indian but the
indian side comes from africa which is very unusual well i
think also like you know you talk about your network in boston and for us who
(49:59):
come to new york you know from another place and we don't have family here and
we're raising children Then you have to create your own family in the city.
And that's a beautiful thing. Your friends, other parents with children really
(50:20):
become a part of your family. You celebrate.
You might celebrate holidays together. And of course, support each other when
you're sick or when something happens.
And you don't have the grandparents. parents. You don't have the uncle, the aunt.
Yeah. I mean, that I think was priceless of, like you say, creating a village,
(50:43):
creating a network of other people that you can rely on and talk to.
Because when we were talking about, you know, finding other similar parents,
some of my closest parent friends were 20 years older than me, you know?
So we definitely had that gap, but our children were the same age.
So, you know, her friends kind of, you know, exposed me to other adults that
(51:06):
could also help with, you know, parenting and talking about,
oh my gosh, what are they going through?
And even, you know, a lot of afterschool, you know, activities,
I'm like, I was a workaholic, you know, and she was the one who,
you know, was like, mom, like, no, why are you always working so much?
But like, during that time when I was just like work work
(51:27):
work she had a place to go to you know
her you know she was part of her
friend's family you know like you know family dinners brother
sister you know because she was definitely an only child
and I was you know so yeah that's that's priceless definitely yeah it is it
is so ah that's uh it's you know it's another thing that you can't underestimate
(51:53):
oh So someone needs my phone unlocked.
Good thing you haven't discovered the secrets.
On camera too.
Not today. Can you turn the volume down a little bit? It's almost an hour.
I've been hearing the volume all this time.
You've been a good audience, by the way. Live audience participation.
(52:17):
It's so good. The bribe worked. That's part of a child's right.
Being bribed. Yeah.
Yeah, well, yeah, the audience, those listening or watching,
you all can write him and let me know how you'll, you know, handle or deal with
(52:38):
your, your, your kids, how you incorporate, you know, especially for the moms,
I don't want to hear from the dads until dad's day, but if you,
if you, if you supporting me on Patreon, then yeah, you can write him now,
you know, if you're not a supporter, then yeah, yeah, take your time.
Yeah. From moms. Yeah. Let me know how your mother's journey,
how you've navigated yours, how
it's, going and especially those who are living in a country or a state,
(53:03):
you know, city where you didn't grow up in, you had to, you know,
raise your child in a whole different environment without family, friends,
yeah, it's not, it's not easy, that's one thing that I appreciate.
So I envy those who have family around them.
Yeah, because it's tough sometimes, you know, like, you know,
(53:25):
I miss one of my buddies who had to move, one of my Navy friends who,
he became a good family friend, but for some reason he had to move to West Virginia,
uh, he was like our first babysitter.
He, he had older kids, so he had an older son. So, um, yeah,
he was like, yeah, if you, if you need someone to come watch your, your baby, I got you.
(53:47):
And he'll, he'll come watch Clara when she was younger.
I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, you got, you sure you good?
He's like, yeah, I got it, man. man, I've done this before, you know,
so yeah, that, it's priceless when you have friends that can do that for you
and you build your own village, you don't even realize that you're, you're doing that.
And then now we, we've met a whole bunch of fantastic people through our kid,
(54:11):
you know, never, you know, been in the neighborhood and, uh,
never thought I would become friends with a whole bunch of other parents, you know, all this time.
I probably walked past them multiple times until I had a kid.
Mm-hmm and then knowing them. So, yeah, I appreciate them for who they are.
Thanks for them being in my kid's life. So I need to start wrapping up.
(54:32):
You guys have given me a lot of awesome stuff.
But there are some fun questions I haven't asked yet.
So, first one. I need you to choose three to four songs that best describe the
bond between you and your child. Okay.
Our children. Yeah. Y'all thought it was just going to be.
(54:56):
Philosophical questions all this time. Now we got to go into the trick questions
and, you know, my trick questions come with tricks.
So here we go. I need advance written notes. No.
This is the trap questions. This is about music. I don't know if that best describes
my relationship with my kids,
but when they were small, all i would sing
(55:18):
to them you can't always
get what you want and i never
thought i would be using the rollie stones to
raise my children yeah perfect
i like that one so my youngest
he used to when he was yeah i
guess about three or so katie perry was big deal then i used
(55:40):
to jump around on the the couch and sing katie perry's roar so that
became that became a big big one it's an important one and actually i showed
it to clara the other day when we were at the butterfly garden because she was
watching these music videos i'm like do you know this one and she knew it right
away she's like oh yeah i know roar i'm like okay cool and then i think one that we sort of.
(56:02):
Always gravitate to as a family was bob marley's three
little birds don't worry about a thing I like
that one and it's a good message for everybody especially my teenager nowadays
and then there's a hip hop one Lil Uzi Vert and his I Just Wanna Rock the boys
both like that and I started to like it too I was about to ask your son approved
(56:26):
of you mentioning hip hop,
himself and uh kid perry and the
same probably not and now it's
all taylor swift it's all about taylor swift no he
can't stand her but it's all about her these days especially her new album came
out they're having these they're having these you know watch parties and then
they're having these this movie of hers movie night at the school and stuff
(56:48):
i'm like do you want to go it's like uh yeah this is the 11 year old it's like
uh-uh too cool for that all right we've I feel you. I feel you. I know.
They don't like what I play as a DJ either. Oh, wow.
That's mom. That's old music. I'm like, it's contemporary. Okay.
(57:08):
I'm the one dancing to Preet's music. Now they're going to make me feel old. He old.
Check out the shoes he's wearing. I'm like, man, I wear different colors.
My daughter's created a Spotify playlist. Well,
I mean, you can just, you know, click on something and it'll combine her some
of her favorite songs and my favorite songs and then kind of make a playlist
(57:31):
that, you know, we can both, you know, live with.
And when she was growing up, she listened to a lot of K-pop and,
you know, and I was like, oh, my gosh, these songs are in my head.
We're like, we need some old school, you know, R&B, some old school hip hop.
But one song that, you know, she was doing some Discord thing and they were
(57:53):
like, oh, what is like on your parents must have, you know, playlist.
And so she remembered Sanchez. A reggae song he had was Lonely Won't Leave Me Alone.
And I used to play that, you know, blasted, jamming in the car.
And one day like when she was little she was like mommy why won't only leave
(58:14):
him alone and I'm like oh I'm like okay it's just like a saying you know so,
yeah she definitely has some memories of songs that you know I would play and
then so when I hear her playing it now I was like oh yes good job you learned
well you know that's some good music you know,
yes yes I'm like I've done a good job.
(58:36):
But another song that
One time when she was little, a bird got in the house, and I don't like birds.
I'm terrified of birds, you know.
So I'm like, oh, my gosh, how am I going to get this bird out of the house?
So eventually I covered it with a big pot, and then I had a cookie sheet under
it, and I'm like, oh, my gosh.
But I was like singing to myself, you know, like a Sunday school song or something,
(58:58):
you know, like, oh, God has not given us a spirit of fear, you know.
So kind of just singing that song over and over. So she's like standing in the
corner of the kitchen, and she's, you know, watching me like, okay.
Okay, so mom's afraid, but I'm still going to do this, and it's okay to be afraid,
but sometimes you have to do things that you never thought you would do.
(59:18):
So I'm singing to myself, and I'm like, oh my gosh, and then I get it outside,
and then I take off the thing so the bird can go.
So that's another song that is just like, okay, you could just play that over
and over in your head, and it's okay because parents are not perfect. We're scared too.
That's right. Sometimes we just have to do the responsible grown-up thing to
(59:39):
help save everybody. That's right. Got emotional. Bird. That's true.
When my daughter was six years old, she loved Salif Keita, an African musician.
He's really beautiful.
She would just listen to him over and over and over again.
(59:59):
And I was like, I have to see if he's coming to New York because she's obsessed
with him. And he did come to the band shell.
We lived really close. And like two days, I think, before her birthday, it was incredible.
And so, you know, he has this song, Je t'aime mon amour, I love you, my love.
And I mean, yeah, I think that parenting, you get all this unconditional love.
(01:00:26):
And so, yes, that's definitely a beautiful song to illustrate that. Fantastic.
Yeah. So Clara has her own playlist that plays in the house.
Well, I listen to her music more than I listen to my own, but there's like two
songs that stick out to me that have nothing to do with her playlist that are
more from like what I associate with her.
(01:00:48):
So there was this time when she was a newborn where she would wake up in the
middle of the night and would just not go back to sleep.
For some reason, the song that stuck in my head was that Take You to Church.
So I would But, like, me standing, like, half asleep in the bedroom,
like, rocking her and, like, humming the hook to that, I, like,
(01:01:08):
still vividly remember that.
I don't know why it was that song. It was just, like, that song was just for
some reason stuck in my head. I had heard it on the radio or something.
So, like, if she ever, like, knows the words to that, it's fate.
And then there's one song that I associate with her in terms of,
like, the words and the music that I listen to. So I grew up mostly listening
(01:01:32):
to rock music. And it's a band called Hailstorm.
And the singer or the founding member is a woman. And she wrote a song, Dear Daughter.
And it's all about, like, be yourself, express yourself.
And I'm here holding you up, love you unconditionally, and help you through
when someone is mean to you, basically.
(01:01:54):
I love that. Yeah. It's good. I got one song memory to throw in there.
It's not, it technically adds to this answer, but I was one day,
every now and then I show or introduce Clara to songs that I enjoyed from my
(01:02:15):
childhood or even from my days in Nigeria or just songs that I like.
The ones that I feel, okay, I can let her know,
listen to this song right now. So there was one song that I was a kid when this
song was hot on the Nigerian airwaves.
I don't have my phone on me, so I can't get the artist's name.
He's Malawian. My friend told me he's Malawian. He, I think he was in South Africa.
(01:02:39):
And he used to play this song on federal and state TV.
It's he's singing about being a poor man. He needs some money.
And we just found that song.
It used to blow our mind. This just blows my mind crazy, like as kids.
And I don't know why I thought of that song. I was just like,
oh yeah, there are some kids who used to dance this funny dance in the video.
(01:03:03):
Let me see if I can find this song on YouTube. And I found this and I was like,
oh man, I gotta see this video.
So I showed that video and I was like, you know, maybe when you're talking to
your grandparents, you sing this song to them, right?
And then the next day we were walking from school or to school.
And guess what this kid is singing to me i need some
money money i need some money and
(01:03:26):
then she has a hand out to me i'm like yeah that's not why i showed you this
song that's that song you're supposed to use it on your grandparents not to
me you know what you know this this you know what i revoke your rights that's
yeah that's not how we do it but yeah it was it was quite hilarious how
she quickly turned the song on me. Like, I'm like, oh, man.
(01:03:46):
But, yes, it's a classic. I hope he's still alive, though.
Yeah, it was something that took me back to my childhood.
Yeah, but one of her favorite songs is still one of my favorite Nigerian rap songs.
So, yeah, I guess we're doing something right. Well, but also, like, at this age, like,
Sometimes you don't realize how explicit some of the lyrics are.
(01:04:08):
And then you listen to it with the five-year-old in the room and you go like,
oh, maybe we should skip that.
I'm still discovering songs that I'm like, those are the lyrics?
And my daughter loves karaoke, but, you know, she says I'm not very good at
it, you know, because I'm just like, oh, wait, you're reading the words, but I'm not on beat.
Or I'm like, so the words? I'm like, I don't think that's the right word.
(01:04:30):
She takes it very seriously. Yeah.
By the time Clara discovered career kick it's game over yeah she
has she found some Beyonce
introduced her to Beyonce way too early but it was
like oh yeah like oh man I'm
in trouble so yeah sometimes she's like I want I want I want that grown woman
(01:04:52):
song I'm like oh lord or even like right now Olivia Rodrigo you know my 10 year
old niece you know loves her and I'm like do you know what she's like saying and I'm like nah,
we won't we won't go into that yeah just give her one song and that's it like
mine does Jolene we do Jolene yeah from Cowboy Cutter we do yeah she has a classmate
(01:05:19):
I mean she has a classmate named
Jolene so she says yeah we sing Jolene to her every day in school aww,
alright you know what that's fun you'll have fun with it.
So final question i'll wrap up
which well technically the second to last question
and here comes that special guest in
(01:05:41):
the studio so i've not asked
about food what's one cuisine or the most memorable meal that best that you
like to let me see what's the your favorite meal that you enjoy with your children
that brings any heartwarming food-related.
(01:06:04):
Memories that you have with your kids? Well, for us, it was a dish that my husband
discovered on Dinner Spinner when he started cooking.
It doesn't cook often, but every now and then he'll find a new recipe.
Whereas I cook the usual stuff that they're all used to.
Dad will come and cook and it'll be a brand new recipe that he'll find and he'll
follow the recipe. I don't follow recipe. I just do my thing.
(01:06:26):
I'm busy functioning in the kitchen. I'm just trying to get everyone fed and
I'm not looking at new stuff.
But they're so happy when he comes in and does it because it's a brand new thing.
So he found this lamb recipe, which they love. And every now and then,
like once every six months or eight months or so, he'll make this lamb.
And it's a very special meal for us to sit down and eat. And he's like,
Daddy, when can you make the daddy lamb?
(01:06:47):
They call it the daddy lamb. Like there's still like little kids when they talk
about that food, they love it. So yeah, it's the lamb.
Food played a really important part in our family life, as you said,
like, you know, meals were super important.
But one thing that I really enjoy now is like, you know, I grew up in Switzerland.
I mean, the access to cuisine we had was like Chinese was super exotic.
(01:07:12):
Like, you know, there was one restaurant and I had Thai food for the first time
in my mid-20s. Same thing with Mexican food.
Meanwhile, my kids are like making Tom's soup, Thai soup. They buy their,
what's it called, lemongrass. They cook Indian.
And so I really love that, I think. So for them, it's like nothing special.
(01:07:38):
It's totally part of how they live now.
I can remember when my daughter, you know, as a grown-up, you do the grocery
shopping, you do this, you do that.
And then, you know, when she was, you know, in her 20s after she graduated college,
and remember realizing that she wanted, like, peanut butter and chocolate ice
(01:08:01):
cream. And I'm like, what is that?
And she's like, that's my favorite. I was like, I didn't know this.
Like, she's like, yeah, well, you know, that's, you know, what she's discovered
that she liked. And I was like, oh, my goodness.
She's, like, really thinking on her own.
She's, you know, making her own decisions by doing her own groceries and everything. But she'll do...
Again, she'll do a lot of like Korean dishes. And, you know,
(01:08:24):
it's almost like when I go to her house, I'm like, I don't have any like regular
food, you know, like American food or something.
But I do remember, you know, when she was younger and she said she loved,
you know, like fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.
So I'm like, great, we're going to teach you how to make fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.
(01:08:45):
So if you're ever off somewhere and you just want a meal that you can make and
it'll make you feel good you'll know how to make you know a good home cooked
meal so we taught her how to do that and i don't even know she's done that recently but.
We have a family cookbook she can always go to that if she you know wants a good home cooked meal,
(01:09:07):
i think my mom had a little bit of a reaction like you to your daughter's cooking
to my cooking because i grew up like my mom is used to be a very picky eater
now she's just like a normal I'm a picky eater. And she admits that too.
So I grew up eating a lot of the same things over and over and over.
And like you said, there wasn't like other cuisine like readily available for
(01:09:30):
a price point that as a teenager you can afford.
So as soon as I started traveling on my own and started living on my own,
I started trying and cooking all sorts of things and trying and eating all sorts of other foods.
And she's a good cook. Very good cook. Thank you.
If you ask Clara I'm not but that's okay so
(01:09:51):
I'm I'm the person who who like you know
one day I cook ramen and the next day we
make you know West African stew and the day
after that is like German braten with potatoes and
like but for Clara that's normal now going out and having all these different
(01:10:12):
foods at your fingertips or opening the spice cabinet and having all these these
different ingredients at your fingertips. Like she's growing up like that's.
Who doesn't have that? Who doesn't have kimchi in their fridge? Yeah.
Or miso paste or, you know, ground crayfish for seasoning.
(01:10:32):
So it's interesting. Right now we're at the stage where sometimes she loves
what I make. When I make it again the next week, it's the worst thing she's ever had.
So it's a total hit or miss.
Yep. That's true. She eats everything.
That's the good thing. At this age, yeah, I'm glad she does.
(01:10:53):
Hopefully it stays the same. It makes it easy to travel with them too then.
If they're open and they eat everything.
As far as she's ready to eat, that's the only thing.
But she'll eat anything you put before her as far as she's ready to eat.
So once again, thank you all for coming on the show. Appreciate you all for giving me your time.
Final thing to wrap up, final question. What would you like to leave mothers
(01:11:17):
out there, Be it future moms, moms with young kids, those who already have all the kids.
Yeah, any message to the moms out there?
I would say, like, really trust yourself first above anything.
You develop a relationship with your child. Your child is special.
(01:11:39):
Nobody knows your child as well as you do.
So over advice from psychologists or friends or family, parents,
teachers, all these people, people shouting advice at you in the street. Trust yourself.
I think I agree with that. And I think also have fun doing what you do.
(01:12:02):
Have fun with your kid. Enjoy them.
Have fun with them. And even when they become teenagers, boys especially do
this, but I'm sure girls as well. while, they push away, they want to be left
alone, they want to go in their room, they don't want anyone in their room,
just go and sit on the edge of their bed.
And they'll be like, why are you here? When are you going to leave?
Can you leave my room now?
(01:12:22):
And eventually it'll stop from like them trying to get you out of their room
to them actually talking to you and telling you, well, my friend's like this
and we did that and this is what's happening in school right now and this is
the next party we want to go to.
Like they'll start talking to you, you know. So definitely insert yourself into
their life and stay there.
(01:12:43):
And also remember their phases. phases that
do need you when you're a teenager and and and
put things into perspective sometimes a phase might
seem a little hard well it's going to change it's not going to
stay like that yeah and as out of touch as they think we are because they feel
as teenagers they're more connected to the world they understand what's happening
(01:13:03):
you know in contemporary you know society and the way things are have changed
and progressed and we're more out of touch you know and so they they They look
at us like we don't know what we're talking about,
but they haven't lived yet.
So they don't know where they're headed, you know, and they do need us to sort
of shine the light and guide their path.
(01:13:25):
Yeah, definitely.
And, you know, just even as a young mother, you know, I'd say to mothers out
there, whether, you know, young mother, you know, experienced mother,
you know, like similar to what you said, you know, follow your instincts.
You know, people may form their own opinions about you, but you know who you
(01:13:47):
are and your children and you do know what's best for them.
So whether it's advocating for them, teaching them how to talk to the teachers themselves,
or whether it's, you know, teaching them to, you know, tell grandma,
I really appreciate this,
but I'd prefer not to, you know, that it's okay to, you know,
(01:14:13):
set those boundaries for your children, but then also for yourself.
You know, so that you can also take some time for yourself and be happy and
rejuvenate yourself so that you can be there for your children.
So there's so many, so many things, you know, as a parent, as a disciplinarian,
(01:14:35):
as the, you know, health care provider. writer.
But yeah, there's no perfect book for this.
There's no roadmap, you know, so you kind of just go with the flow and,
you know, trust your instincts.
I feel like I'm awfully underqualified to give advice to anyone.
She's fine. Yeah, yeah. She's great. She's healthy. She's happy.
(01:14:59):
She's brilliant when you sit and talk to her. So you guys are definitely doing things right.
Yes. Trust yourself. Thank you. Yeah, maybe the test. Yeah.
Trusting yourself, but also letting the child be the child, I guess.
Because they know a lot about like at a very early age earlier than i would
have ever expected they know who they are in the moment like they may not know
(01:15:21):
who they were going to become they don't know,
necessarily you know or changes from day to day what they want and what they don't want,
but they do know themselves in the moment and also you'll always get something
wrong and it's okay as an adult to apologize to a child if you get it wrong
yes yes yes because that's that two-way path to respect.
(01:15:44):
Yeah, I also think that, like, if I look back, some regrets I have is,
like, you really sometimes have to advocate for your children in school.
Like, schools, they deal with a lot of children that just want things to be,
like, leveled and normal and things.
But sometimes you really have to go and say, you know, things have to be different
(01:16:07):
for my child or we have to find some solution.
And they tend to prefer parents to keep out of things, just to deal with things,
but sometimes you really have to go in there, and that's happened to us.
And I wish I had done it even more, because you arrive and you think,
oh, there I am, like the problem mom, right?
(01:16:29):
But no, it's not like that. Sometimes your child, there's some things happening
in school, and you really need the school to address that problem. Yeah.
I mean, I've even switched my daughter's school because it was such a rigid
learning environment and her personality, you know, was more creative.
(01:16:50):
And I was afraid that she would not respond well to education.
I'm like, oh my gosh, she's going to hate school. She's going to shut down.
She's going to feel so bad about herself.
I'm like, we need a more positive learning environment. So it was a very,
you know, one of the exam schools in Boston, very, you know,
prestigious, one of those nice big schools.
And I was like, we're going to go to this other charter school over here because
(01:17:12):
they had, they understood her more and she could blossom there.
And it was a very hard decision because, you know, you feel like you want to do the right thing.
And everyone's like, you're taking her from like the best. and
but again yeah give yourself grace
and mercy and trust yourself i had to do
(01:17:33):
that in kenya too they started at the wrong school
just because i got a job there and
i thought it would be great for my family but it was very loosey-goosey
undisciplined do whatever you want the kids would walk around with no shoes on
kind of situation international school you
know and very coveted and
very you know feeder school for this other expensive international school all
(01:17:55):
of of that stuff but it just it wasn't for us and they needed they needed
discipline they needed routine they needed to know
where to be and what to do in that classroom at that time of
the day you know and this school was not providing that and i knew they'd be
a mess so yeah yeah it's hard to change but you did the right thing listen to
yourself not everyone all right and with that being said yeah i appreciate each and every one of you,
(01:18:23):
And everyone listening, I hope you got something great from this episode like I did.
And yeah, keep the love coming in. Go check out Mimi's podcast, Improper Mimi.
And yeah, if you are a priest, let them know where to get your music at again.
SoundCloud, yeah. Safi.
Safi, check out Safi. S-A-F-I on SoundCloud. Yep. I do play her music a lot
(01:18:47):
when I'm playing soccer with the dads.
If you don't know, I organize dad soccer for Paxlo parents.
Every Friday. So if you're in Park Slope, reach out to me. You want to come kick it with us.
So yeah, it's not, no, if you're trying to make the Olympics,
don't come. We don't do that.
It's not for those type. It's for the types who are retired.
(01:19:08):
It's for the dad bods. Yeah.
The ones who want to keep their knees. Yeah. Yeah. We're trying to make,
if you want to keep your knee up to when you're at 100, you can, yeah.
If you're not trying to wear robot knees, then yeah, you can come.
So yeah, it's all about fun, Have a good time. And Arabella,
do you have anything coming up?
We do have an opening this Wednesday, and it's prints from our artists.
(01:19:32):
And there will be a raffle where the winners will be able to host a print from
our artists in their home for several months.
And that's at Galerie Particulier 281 Maple.
It's Wednesday, May 1st, 6 till 8 p.m. And it's free. Oh, awesome.
(01:19:53):
Disclaimer this episode will be out on Mother's Day week okay just putting that
out to the audience right bless you.
I was about to ask if you had anything to put out to the audience oh well you
sneezed but so good well we'll have we'll have the raffle the actual raffle
(01:20:14):
will be on June 4th and that will be a storytelling evening okay I hope to be
there if I'm in town hopefully I'll be there,
All right. And now I'll share with you all too, in case you all want to come.
All right. Mimi, did you share where people can find your podcast?
You can find me at M Proper Mimi. That's M Proper with an M.
And that's M Proper Mimi dot com. And all the social handles are M Proper Mimi.
(01:20:41):
Everywhere you go. All right. Rafael, thank you for having us and for giving
us a platform today. Hey, my pleasure. I love talking to awesome people.
And Verena has been all shy and humble. She's a HR specialist,
HR guru right there, you know?
So yeah, she, she's been all humble, but I won't say, I can't say the company
she works for, but she's the HR guru.
(01:21:02):
That's all I'm allowed to say so that I can make it home.
All right. Thank you all for listening. Keep the love coming in.
If you've got something to tell us, please do.
We love your feedback. Keep the support coming in. We need patrons.
So sign up for patron for as low as $3.
Get your friends who got $20 or 50 to spare to sign on so that yeah,
we can bring more stuff we're talking about fallout we'll be talking about uh
(01:21:25):
other shows that have come out yeah x-men and i'll be on patreon and yeah got
many more awesome stuff and that's start getting ready we'll get you guys soon
for father's day all right thank you for the privilege of your company.
Thanks for listening to white label american if you enjoyed the show will appreciate
(01:21:46):
if you rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.
If you have any questions, comments, or have someone who will be a good guest
on the show, or you want to be on the show, send us a message at whitelabelamerican at gmail.com.
(01:22:09):
And make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.