Episode 462: Featuring Ella’s Teenage Tuesday Columns

No need to whine, it's Whiny Palooza!

Have some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the Whiny Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello, happy Whining Pluza Wednesday!

No need to whine, it's Whining Pluza Wednesday! Have some wine and join us on Winey Blues on Wednesday with the Green Family.

Thanks, ciao ciao chicken.

Are we going to redo the intro now that Ella's 16?

We should probably review the intro.

Um, Ella, when did you record the intro to my podcast?

Probably when I was like 12 or younger.

I was thinking younger. Oh well, no, the podcast isn't that old.

It was 4 years.

Yeah, 3 or 4 years.

You might be right.

Okay, so I am yawning because I was at Dairy Lake all day and I got too much sun, not enough food, not enough water, but here I am. I'm home and I'm ready to go live.

Ready to go live.

So for our vlog tonight, we decided that we are going to feature our daughter Ella. Ella has started a new column called Teenage Tuesdays. It is being released every Tuesday and she's going to tell you the teenager perspective on what's going on. So she's written 3 columns, and I'm very proud of you for coming up with this idea on your own. Came up with the Teenage Tuesdays, came up with the 3 ideas.

I love the header, by the way. The graphic of Teenage Tuesdays, it sends out, is really nice.

Yeah, that is by Kristen. So thank you, Kristen. I will send her— I will send her a thank you from all of us. It is an awesome header. And hopefully I won't keep yawning. Ella, let's tell them about your 3 amazing columns. And let us start with the one that was released yesterday. You can go to whineypalooza.com and read them thoroughly because we probably won't cover everything. But the first one was—

we can—

third one, we're going in reverse order. Number 3 was released yesterday. What was it?

We Can Make It Through. It was about how we can all make it through hard times.

Aww, my honey.

And my advice was that we can make it through these— we can just make it through life by having us all do our part to help our community, our country, all of that stuff. We have to prioritize self-care because you can't pour from an empty cup. And we also can't minimize your feelings. And you have to acknowledge that all your feelings are valid.

Wow, that's pretty good life advice.

How did you learn those things?

I don't know, maybe the fabulous mother I was raised by.

Did you read her couple hundred previous blogs?

So I have to tell you, as a mother, reading your columns makes me feel like you listen to me.

I do listen to you. I learned a lot from you.

But I feel heard.

You are very heard.

And so—

So is it good therapy for you that Ella is writing?

Yeah, for sure. So not minimizing your feelings, can you tell us more about that?

Well, I think there's about 2 things that I meant by saying that.

Okay.

The first was that you can't be like, no, I shouldn't feel this way, I should feel this way, or blah blah blah blah blah.

Oops, I do that to myself.

Oh.

"Okay, so keep going, you're gonna help your dad." Alright.

So, that's really harmful for us because it makes us feel like we're guilty of something or that we're an issue when we're not. All of our feelings are based in our personal truth and we have a right to feel all of them no matter what we "should" be doing. I mean, in my mindset, I try to believe that there is no "should." you are always doing what you are meant to be doing. And the second meaning of don't minimize your feelings is don't downplay them. Don't be like, "I'm fine," when you're not fine, because that's not gonna help anybody. And you're supposed to feel and communicate all of your feelings.

Do you— go ahead, Seth.

I was gonna say, I think you should never say you're fine, because no one is ever fine. No one ever said, "I feel fine, that's the emotion I'm feeling," right? There's always something more than that. So just say that. You're just saying— I think people say "fine" to not answer the question. And I think asking if someone's okay also seems to me to be like, well, if you have to ask, you probably know that they're not okay, so let's skip the "are you okay" and just talk about how you're actually doing. But that's my own—

I say that I'm fine when I don't want to talk about it.

Why don't you just say, "I don't want to—" Like, to me, I know if you say "I'm fine," it's not good. So why don't you just tell me, "I don't want to talk about it. I'll let you know when I'm ready." Okay. That would be helpful.

Um, do you— did I already ask you if you follow your own advice with these 3 things? Um, I could be better.

I mean, nobody's perfect. We all have room for improvement.

So to the teenager who's minimizing their feelings, can you talk to them for a minute?

Well, I am one. All right, talk to yourself but to the camera. Kind of the same advice. I mean, your feelings are valid. You're not stupid. It's not just puberty. There is validity to your feelings. Do you believe that?

Yeah, I do. And how do you prioritize self-care?

Well, I didn't do as much work as I probably should have today. That counts as self-care.

Can we change the word shut up? See, you're literally feeling— you just did the thing. You just felt— you made yourself feel guilty about something. I'm not guilty.

Why? It was a good decision.

Why do you think you have to work so hard every day? Is that my fault? Well, I have to make progress.

What happens if you don't? Can we make less progress?

So I just want to throw this out there and we'll move on. I want you to think about the fact that you literally have July and August, and then you're in the throes of junior year, and junior year is the most intense high school year. Academically. So what I'm telling you is you're about to go into 5 AP classes, a lot of studying, a lot of work. Can you maybe give yourself a little rest in July and August? Less, maybe less expectations. All right. I just want you to hear me. I know. So we can make it through. Go read it. Excellent points made by Ella. And if they weren't here last week, they didn't hear about the Platinum Rule. So tell us about column number 2 that they can go read.

So the Platinum Rule is the second column I wrote. It's about how instead of using the rule "Treat everyone the way you want to be treated," you should use the rule "Treat everyone how they want to be treated," because everyone wants to be treated differently. And we should probably treat people in a way that's going to benefit them rather than a way that's going to benefit us.

Well, and what we talked about was that it comes from a good place to treat other people how we think we want to be treated, but it's kind of like the Five Love Languages, and we, we love people how we, we want to be loved, and that's not how people want to be loved. Like, I Seth doesn't want acts of service and I want acts of service. Many, many acts of service. So I'm just saying that just like we want to be loved differently, we want to be treated differently. Yeah. So can you give them a wonderful example that you used in your blog, if you remember, column?

I don't love nicknames. There are nicknames that I do like. But I don't like as a rule, I'd rather you just call me Ella.

So it's so funny that you bring up this point because everybody seems to have a nickname and growing up people would try to call me Becky and I would say no, Rebecca. Yeah, right? So all my life I've been correcting people. I will tell you that if you're in my life, you're welcome to call me pretty much anything nice except Becky. I've been called a lot of different versions of my name and I'm fine with that. But we should ask more questions.

Yeah, yeah, I'm fine with Elle. I just don't like Super Ella.

If you're presuming to treat other people the way they want to be treated, that assumes that you are finding out how they want to be treated, right?

Right. So I think you should—

and that sparks an excellent conversation, probably.

Yes, you should. That is something you should do anytime you meet someone new. And you know, I said this in a vlog, vlog, but treat others how you want to be treated is a good rule of thumb to follow maybe when you're first meeting someone, but once you actually know someone, you should adjust.

Because you learn what they, what they're looking for from you. Yeah. Like, I know people who in my life who want phone calls. They don't want text messages. They want me to actually pick up the phone and call them, and that's how they want to be treated, right?

I know people who want to talk very close and right in front of your face and loudly and don't respect the fact that some of us might want to back up and have some personal space, and they did not find out that that is how other people would like to be treated.

So I would like to learn more about close talkers. I think that's an excellent research— I've had too much of study. Yeah, I think that's an excellent psychological research study.

I'm sure we could find you a podcast guest who's an expert on close talkers.

So it's interesting to me, Seth, you know, Max loves research and my mother loves research, and as I think about it, in undergrad I loved research too. It was just like psychological research. Yes. Okay, so number 3 was we can make it through. Number 2 was the Platinum Rule. What was the number 1 column that you started with? Uh, 8 lessons from high school. Okay, so Ella has been in high school for 2 years. She's halfway through. There it comes again. Back up. Hahaha.

We need to back up. No, he's talking about the close talkers. Oh, the close talkers. He's telling the close talkers to back up. Hi, Corey!

Corey does not realize what he has done to me and Seth, and I am going to come back to the number 1 column in 2 seconds.

Yeah, Corey gets all the blame.

He gets all the blame and all the credit. He's like, you know, so we finished Sirens, which I love, TV series, loved Sirens. Then he tells us to watch The Handmaid's Tale. Well, it's 6 seasons. You're gonna hear about it all summer, everybody. We are almost done with season 2, which means we still Four Seasons. We are so deep into The Handmaid's Tale. If you're not watching it, we recommend you go watch it on Hulu. It's recommended from the amazing Corey Clark. I can't tell you how like obsessed we are. Every night we have to watch one or two episodes. After this, I'm gonna go watch my episode. So Corey, I don't know if I should thank you.

Yeah, I'm gonna say you owe me a lot of hours, my friend.

Oh my God, so we have about 50 episodes left, so that's 50 more hours of TV, plus the 20 or so hours we've already spent. But we divide it into evenings, so we tend to do one per evening. So we, we have about 50 days left of this show, would be my guess. Now Jamie, who is probably not watching because she is at the beach, um, Jamie would watch it for 5 days.

Yeah, I don't get these people who binge 7, 8, 9.

I don't have it, so we're gonna ask Jamie How she does it. She would watch it for the next 5 days nonstop because she would want to see how it ended. So, so I understand her process and how she does it.

Trust me, the fruit—

may the Lord open, Corey. So I understand Jamie's process, but I can only handle 1, maybe 2 episodes, and then I'm like exhausted.

Yeah, too on edge.

Okay, so sorry.

No, we've gone too far into the show when Rebecca starts walking around going, blessed day. And blessed be the fruit. And I'm like, oh my God, she's turning— she's talking Handmaid.

What did I— no, what did I— what did I say? Something was not good. Yeah. And I was like, praise be. Okay, back off.

Who watch the show get it.

If you know, you know. Fun fact, you can use The Handmaid's Tale on the AP Lit exam.

A fun fact, when we're done— when we're done with the show, I will read the book. And approve it for you to read. Okay, but first I would like to read it first. Okay, back to 8 Lessons from High School. Ella has done 2 years of high school, so in honor of her 8 marking periods— there are 4 marking periods in a year— so in honor of her first 8 marking periods, she has 8 lessons for us.

Lesson number 1: No one will love you if you don't love yourself. Okay, explain. You have to love yourself and exude confidence in order for other people to love you. And I guess to have the friendships you probably want, you need to put some of that energy into yourself so that you can become a more lovable person and the best version of yourself.

Because people aren't going to like you if you don't like yourself. Yeah.

Like, I gave off insecure, not good energy. At the end of middle school and probably freshman year too. That's normal. Yeah. Yep.

And I remember by junior year I felt much better. Yeah, I feel every year in high school I felt much better, comfortable in your own skin. Every year in college I felt better.

Well, I just keep accumulating evidence for why I'm worth it and a good person.

Oh, that is all true. I will happily give you an overabundant amount beyond a reasonable doubt of evidence.

And the wonderful thing is it's not just your parents who feel that way, so you can find out awesome information from other people in your life about yourself, not just from your parents.

And people who don't even know you, like today, and recognize your talent.

Oh yeah, I should probably tell your audience, right? So I got an honorable mention from the New York Times Summer Reading Contest for my video about one of their articles.

That's amazing. It's amazing. Okay. So I want to just tell you something about this and teach you something before we move on. The research shows that the most liked people are liked because they like other people.

I was told if you want to be considered interesting, be interested in other people.

So if you walk around making other people feel liked, they like you. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Okay, so number 2, make it exist first, make it good later.

Okay, before you continue, where did you learn this? Because I learned this as a fact. Where did you learn this awesome fact?

I honestly don't remember. Maybe the internet.

You know, this is really true. Yes, I do. It's like, do you just do it and then, and then you can make it better?

It's also just been my philosophy to throw crap at the wall and see what sticks.

Hopefully it's better than crap.

Okay, what the hell does that mean? And where did you come up with that?

Like, for essays, I'll just write a bunch of drafts and take the— and Frankenstein the best parts of each one into one essay, right?

How did you learn to do that? And how did you learn that you should just do something and then worry about how good it is?

Well, you can't make something good on the first try.

I mean, you know that that's brilliant.

Nothing ever starts perfect.

Wow, I think that took me a long time to figure out. So what I tell people all the time is you have to get momentum. So people get stuck in like perfectionism. Yeah. And I will say it, like a perfect example is finding a job. I will say it does not have to be the perfect job. Find a job, work. You can always get a new job. You can always get a different position within the company. You can always change your mind. You don't have to find the perfect job. You have to find a job.

Yeah, I had to start my club, not perfect the way it was going to be ran, and, and you'll figure that out.

Build the airplane, learn how to fly the airplane in the air on the way.

No, do not tell anyone. Not a good analogy. No, absolutely not. No, I hope no pilots just heard you say that.

So number 3, uh, the effort is more important than the outcome.

Okay, so I taught your father that and you gave him all the credit.

I didn't know, he taught me that.

I didn't learn it from you. Okay, so he's So he's listening to me too. Tell all the people.

Yes, we're both listening to you, although apparently you don't like all of the ways that I express how I listen to you.

You shared it with our daughter, so thank you. You're welcome. I have told you this, Al, because— yes, because— okay, I'm gonna give you this.

Lately, Ella and I have been having numerous conversations about it, which is why she quoted me and not you.

Okay, so this is an example of what I have told Ella.

Spousal plagiarism.

Okay, you can plagiarize me. So what I have told Ella, who stresses about her grades, is I am— I am like, you should already be proud of yourself because you studied for days. So you go into the test, you be proud of yourself already and know that you worked as hard as you could possibly work for this grade, and that's good enough. And just be happy with that. I put my all into this test and I'm proud of myself before I even take the test, right? Right. So that is how I have explained it to you.

I felt that way during AP World and I got a 5, so I guess you're awesome.

Okay, so when we are stressing about the outcome, we are making all of our feelings determined on the outcome and we're not giving ourselves credit and happiness from all the effort we put into it. Okay, number 4. Trust yourself.

Okay. I mean, I think this is pretty tru— I think this is pretty obvious. I think I've explained this a few times on Lonniepalooza, especially on, I think, my 16th birthday podcast. Mm-hmm. But, um, you know yourself the best. You're the only person who has lived and experienced the world as you. Trust yourself. You know what you're doing. And I learned this because my intuition is usually right, so, and I figure it's the same way for a lot of people, so.

If you could talk to your sister about this, and I'm going to tell you why, and I don't mean to be harboring on tests, but there were a lot of finals in this house. There was a lot of studying.

I had 3 English finals this year. There were—

Ella has— Ella won with the most tests this year. Not a good contest to win. So there was so much studying and so much, so much test-taking talking. Test—

talk of test-taking. There you go. Talk of test-taking.

Okay, so this is what I need you to teach your sister because she's not listening to me, okay? Oh my gosh, she keeps changing her answers and getting it and getting it wrong. So I need you to talk to your sister about doing the test, trusting her first instinct, and no more changing her freaking answers. Lily, I want you to just trust yourself on your first instinctual pick and leave it alone.

I have told her that.

Okay, well, repetition will get through to her. So if we all work together as a team, and if the three of us keep telling her Maybe she will get the message. So don't give up. Help me out, people. Seth, Ella, we're a team. We're gonna make this change this year.

I heard you.

Okay, she's gonna get perfect grade today.

She doesn't need perfect grade, she needs to trust herself. I was kidding.

Number 5. Tough crowd. Uh, number 5. Oh wait, yes, the answer is always hard work.

Uh, tell us more because you wrote about it.

Well, you get anywhere, doors open through working to open them. You have to work hard to get pretty much anywhere. It's inevitable, you might as well just do it.

So put in the work.

Yeah. There's no competition at the end of the extra mile.

Number 6, uh, the sky's the limit. Uh, you can go as far as you can imagine. Uh, the only limit is your imagination. And even if you swing and miss, you're still off the ground.

Well, and if you can dream it, you can make it happen.

Learn to swing. I love it, Ella.

That's amazing. So tell us what you would like to manifest for your future. What would you like to do?

Put it out to the universe.

Let's put it out there. Who are you gonna work for?

I'm gonna work for the New York Times, and I'm going to win a Pulitzer Prize for my work with them.

Amazing. Amen. Okay, number 7.

Uh, you can't be everywhere.

You sound like your mother. I learned most of this from you. Okay, so tell us about number 7.

Um, you can't be more than one place at once, so pick what's most important to you and just go to that. Yeah, and don't feel guilty about it because you are just one person.

Well, and I told you that I learned from our friend. Her and her daughter, yes, commit to lots of things and have shown me that you don't have to go from the beginning to the end of everything. If you have multiple commitments in one night, you say, okay, I have 3 things tonight, how am I going to make it work and go to the most of all 3 things? So, so they'll leave early, they'll come late, like you just have to make it work. Okay, so number 8.

It's okay to be ignorant as long as you don't stay ignorant.

Okay, so explain that to us.

It's impossible to know everything. You don't know what you don't know. You haven't been everywhere. You don't— you can't possibly learn everything as soon as you come out of the womb. You have to learn something from somewhere, and chances are the best way you're gonna learn something is by messing up and having someone explain it to you anyway. So don't be mad at yourself. Don't beat yourself up for being ignorant. Just learn and move on.

Corey says, my mother used to always tell me you can't dance on every set, Corey.

Oh, Corey wanted to be— Corey was everywhere. Corey had— still has a million friends, was involved in a million things. Corey was our— were you at the homecoming and the prom king, Corey? I think you were. Kory is the man. So yes, your mother was a very smart woman, and I had the pleasure of meeting her multiple times. So what does "as long as you don't stay ignorant" mean?

Uh, you have to learn. It's okay to not know something, but you have to learn it.

And then, and then act differently once you learn it.

Yeah.

Okay, so those are 8 amazing lessons from my wise child. 3 amazing columns. You're doing fantastic. Now tell everyone our idea for next column on Tuesday.

Oh, our next Teenage Tuesday column is going to be me answering your guys' questions. So please email people to email or comment in questions for Ella, right?

Okay. So you can do this lots of different ways. Prom, what about homecoming? I thought you were homecoming too. I know I'm off topic, you want me to focus? Okay, you can email me whinypluzamom@gmail.com. Whiny Palooza is spelled differently if you do not know, it's W-H-I-N-Y-P-A-L-U-Z-A. I don't know why Seth spelled it that way.

The other one was taken.

The other one was taken, so everyone spells it wrong. No, everyone spells it right. I'm going to put that out there. whineyploosamom@gmail.com. You can email us your questions for Ella about being a teenager, about having a teenager.

Your teenagers can ask. Well, I don't know about having a teenager.

You can try to help them if they have a teenager and they have a question about a teenager. You can try to help that. And if your teenager has a question, they can ask Ella. And if you have a family question, you can ask Ella because Seth and I are here and can help her. We can. And you can comment on this. You can private message me if you don't want people to see it. You can message me on Facebook. If you're friends with me on Instagram, um, message me there. Corey says nice job, Ella. Thank you. Oh, Corey, thank you. So we're excited for next week for your questions for Ella. She's gonna do her best to answer and be helpful. And the July challenge was a 3-day challenge this month. And, oh, Karen, I'm gonna screw up your name. Metzler. Karen, how do you say your last name? Karen Metzler won. So I need to tell her, I need to post it, and I need to bring her a prize. So thank you everyone who did the July challenge. And the guest on Friday is Susan— help me out at your text, let me see the spelling. I texted you, give it to me. Susan Pletkian. Susan, forgive me, Pletkian, Pletkian, maybe. I should have reminded myself how to say her name because she is a freaking amazing, one of my favorite podcasts that I have ever done.

Wow, I better go listen to it.

Uh, the manifestation queen. We called this episode Create Your Life by Design. You are going to love Susan. This was literally one of the favorite women that I have ever interviewed. She is the one who offered to do a session with me about designing my life, and I never What the heck, do it, let's go! I have to email her and ask her if I can still do it.

Of course you can, email her as soon as you're done.

So listen to Susan on Friday, you are going to love this woman as much as I did. One of my very, very favorites. I will bring her back for sure.

And, uh, Seth, what else do we want to tell them? Go to whinyblues.com, find the Linktree with all of Rebecca's amazing resources, sign up for all of them, and it will help us help more people if the algorithms see you like, comment, rate, review, share, and subscribe to her podcast and newsletter, and then they will show it to more people. So please make sure to do those things.

I think people don't know how to rate it and comment.

Okay, we said this last week, we apparently forgot to do it. Why don't we make a little tutorial video of you reviewing a podcast I'll video you on your phone doing it, and then you can post it for everybody.

Um, the Whiny Pooza Mom Group is a free supportive community on Facebook that I would love for you to join and be with us. And Seth has a new podcast. Seth, tell them your new podcast. Oh, okay.

My new podcast is called The Inner Empire. It is about the mental and emotional work and development necessary to grow a 7-figure successful business past 7 figures. So if you or someone you know owns a business or wants to grow a business, please go check out The Inner Empire. They're all short episodes, all 5 to 10 minutes. Um, it is a labor of love for me sharing everything I have learned and everything I am still working on every day. So please go check it out, and I would love a 5-star rating and a 1 to 2 sentence review on iTunes, please.

Um, can you tell everybody what you would like them to do for you, Ella?

Uh, well, you can go view Teenage Tuesdays through my mom's newsletter, right? And you— And tomorrow we are going to launch the Clear Media Project, a new nonprofit organization I am starting based off of my own passion for journalism and news literacy that will not only be sending news articles right to your inbox but also exist on Instagram, and some have been posted to my personal Facebook. Of my review of certain news articles every day.

So it is the Clear Media Project, where unbiased news thrive. It is all about the facts as opposed to biased media opinions. So I'm sure that Rebecca Greene will do a post about it tomorrow with the link where you can go check it out. It is free. I believe Ella right now is sending 3 times a week. It will keep you informed as to the issues of the day without any media bias left or right.

Can't keep up with you two. They're pretty amazing. My amazing family, I am so proud of you. Ella, Seth, I'm proud of your new podcast. Ella, I'm proud of your new endeavors. And I am completely exhausted from Darien Lake, so I am going to go collapse on the couch with my TV show. Have a wonderful week. I hope you're enjoying summer, and we will We'll be back next week.

Happy Winey Palooza Wednesday.

Happy Winey Palooza Wednesday.

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