A viral video that comically portrays a millennial daughter teaching her boomer mother about today’s parenting practices is resonating with parents and grandparents alike. The tongue-in-cheek video has been viewed more than 21 million times and counting since it was posted on Wednesday.
Comedian and writer Taylor Wolfe of @thedailytay Instagram account is the millennial mom in the video, with her mother, Sandy, playing the role of the boomer grandmother. In it, Wolfe corrects her mom again and again for saying seemingly innocuous phrases to her granddaughter — things like “Be careful,” “Stop hitting,” “I’m so proud of you,” “Hurry up” and “Watch out.”
But if you’re a millennial parent who spends time on social media, you’ve no doubt been inundated with Instagram posts and TikToks imploring you to avoid this language in favor of “gentler” alternatives , lest you damage your child.
In one scene, grandma tells the child to “be careful” while they’re playing outside. Wolfe butts in to say, “We don’t say ‘Be careful’ anymore. Instead say, ‘Whats your plan here?’” To which grandma shoots back an exasperated: “I don’t even know my plan. Do you know your plan?”
The idea for the video came about when grandma was visiting for a week to help with the kids, ages 1 and 3½, Wolfe said.
“What inspired me is knowing she was going to come out here and there would be things that we obviously disagree with. Parenting has changed a bit,” Wolfe, author of the book “Birdie & Harlow,” told HuffPost.
“But I don’t really say those things to my mom, obviously. Sometimes, internally, I think them because I’ve watched too many of those [social media] videos.”
Parents today have access to so much more information about how to raise kids than previous generations ever did. And while much of the parenting advice floating around the internet is “well-intentioned,” Wolfe said, it ends up making us fearful of saying the wrong thing or feeling guilty if we don’t stick to the script.
“Now we have too much information and we know way too many different ways we can screw them up,” Wolfe said.
Wolfe’s video presents this pressure that many millennial parents feel in a humorous way.
“The millennials I’m seeing, they’re laughing at themselves. They’re like, ‘Yeah, I do this, but I know it’s ridiculous.’ Or ‘I know it does get to be too much,’” Wolfe said of the reception to her video. “And then I think the boomers are probably feeling a bit validated by it, or they’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s too much.’”
Clinical psychologist Ashurina Ream reposted Wolfe’s video on her @psychedmommy Instagram account , telling HuffPost, “It’s funny because it’s true.”
“It just highlights the impossibility of parenthood these days with the unrealistic expectations and how we have access to so much information,” Ream said. “We are meant to be these ‘experts’ when it comes to using these scripts to communicate with our kids. And it’s silly when you see it as a satire clip — but it’s truthful.”
It just highlights the impossibility of parenthood these days with the unrealistic expectations and how we have access to so much information. Ashurina Ream, clinical psychologist
The parenting scripts you see all over social media should be taken with a grain of salt — not as gospel. Think of them more as ideas or inspiration; use what you’d like and disregard what doesn’t work for you.
“In an ideal world, you don’t say ‘Hurry up’ every morning, all morning long, right? But we are living outside of this vacuum of social media where we do have to get to work, where we do have to get our kids dressed and get out the door,” Ream said. “Gamifying everything is just not a possibility when we are under-resourced and undervalued and struggling.”
Based on her years as a psychologist, Ream stressed that telling your child to be careful or that they did a good job or that you’re proud of them is not going to damage your child. Nor has she come across any “meaningful research” that suggests that that would be the case, she said. In fact, she typically hears from therapy clients that they wish their parents had said more of these things when they were growing up.
We can all say different things and raise well-adjusted, healthy children. Ashurina Ream
“I have never once heard an adult come to me and say, ‘You know what, I am not intrinsically motivated to do things because my parents were always telling me they were proud of me or that I did a good job, and now I’m always looking for outside validation.’ I usually hear the opposite,” she said.
“I hear people talking about how they didn’t hear it enough — that they didn’t know how their parents felt because they actually didn’t verbalize it, and they weren’t sharing their feelings and they weren’t explaining things to them.”
Maybe this video is a reminder of something we all need to hear: It’s OK to parent in a way that feels right for you and your kids — even if it’s not always perfectly in line with whatever the parenting gurus are recommending.
“We can all say different things and raise well-adjusted, healthy children,” Ream said.
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