Two iPads One Child | Anew Mirror Blog
💔 We Didn’t Grow Up Soft
We grew up in homes where “stop crying” was the warning 💀
Where dinner was hot, but the connection was cold ❄️🍛
Where no one talked about feelings… until they exploded 🧨
So we adjusted:
- 🐜 Shrink — scanning the room to figure out how to exist
- 🤹♀️ Distract — memorizing the rules so we wouldn’t mess up
- 🍭 Numb — with sugar, TV, church, sex, weed, or work
- 🤪 Be funny — because crying was dangerous
📲 Then We Grew Up
We swore we’d “do better.” We read some books, skimmed a few trauma posts.
Started saying “I’m here for you” while texting someone else. 📱👀
Bought screen-time timers and laminated feelings charts.
✨Progress? Maybe.
But real talk? We’re still people-pleasing. Still numbing. Just upgraded to plant-based guilt and cleaner furniture 🪴🛋️
📣 So Let’s Ask It Out Loud:
- 🤷🏾♂️ Are we emotionally present — or just less shouty?
- 🦻 Are we actually listening — or just waiting to talk?
- 📈 Are we breaking the cycle — or just making it trendier?
And Our Kids?
They’re watching us “heal”… while still ducking from our moods 🌪️
They hear us quoting “gentle parenting”… while side-eyeing them into shame 🧊
They speak fluent emoji 🧃🫠 …but still starve for actual connection ❤️🩹
We don’t hit, but we disappear. We don’t yell, but we micro-sigh every 10 minutes 😮💨 We don’t shame — we “redirect”… just cold enough to leave a scar.
📱 Real Story
My granddaughter had two iPads by age 2. I asked, “Why?” They said, “One’s always charging.” 😵💫
By 11, she was still glued to it — and now punished for it.
“Get off the iPad!” “You’re grounded from the iPad!”
One night, I heard her crying. I asked what was wrong. She whispered:
“My parents are so confusing.”
🧘♂️ And Still…
We’re out here preaching “I” statements 🤓
Telling teens to focus on themselves — in homes where no one’s focused on them since 2014 🗓️
We see their Google Calendars 📆 …but not them.
We’re parenting like product managers — with snacks, tabs open, and barely-held-together resentment 🥨👨🏽💻
This Isn’t Judgment.
It’s grief. 🕯️
We meant well. But we’re tired. Our parents were tired. And our kids? They’re getting polite neglect — dressed up as “mindfulness.”
Yes ma’am. No ma’am. It’s rehearsed politeness. It’s not real presence.
Once, I thanked a student for participating in her own education. She glared at me and said, “What are you trying to say?”
I said, “Nothing hidden. I’m just thanking you for showing up… to you.”
Turns out she’d just gotten in a fight. She was in the military. And she, like so many of us, was still waiting for someone to tell her what to do.
So Now What?
How do we find our voice when we’ve been trained to obey?
Meditation helped me. Not the perfect kind. Just the sitting kind. The kind that helps me hear the voice inside me — not the fear-laced one I inherited.
But if we’re exhausted from pretending… we can’t hear anything.
We can’t follow what we’re here to create. Or leave behind.
Maybe we try this:
- 🥣 We name the pattern.
- 🦋 We stop pretending we’re healed just because we stopped yelling.
- 🌍 We laugh more — especially when we feel like crying.
- 🎯 We ask better questions — even if the answers shake us.
Because our kids deserve truth, not theatrics.
And we deserve connection, not performance.
Your kids — and your soul — are starving for it.
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