01:00   Introduction: How To Direct Our Teens To Step Into Adulthood With Responsibility: What Is Our Role?

02:06   My parents were very strict.

05:02   Fast-forward to raising my own children

10:11   The Academy of Practical Homeopathy® is attracting young people as a college alternative

11:44   A new role: parents of adult children

14:28   Knowledge of homeopathy provides relevance for parents even after the children become adults

16:23   Closing advice

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Kate:

This is the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast, episode number 158, with Joette Calabrese.

Joette:

Hi, I’m Joette Calabrese, and I welcome you to our health care movement — yours, mine and the countless men and women across the globe who have retaken control of their families’ health with Practical Homeopathy®.

So, for the next few minutes, let’s link our arms as I demystify homeopathy — what was once considered an esoteric paradigm — into an understandable, reproducible, safe and effective health care solution available to all.

This is the medicine you’ve been searching for — my unique brand of homeopathy, PRACTICAL Homeopathy®.

Kate: (01:00)

Welcome to another episode of the Practical Homeopathy® Podcast with Joette. I’m Kate, and I’m here today with Joette.

Joette:

Hi, Kate.

Kate:

Hi. Today, we’re going to talk about parenting. And you’re going to share your thoughts on a topic that’s close to many parents’ hearts, and that is guiding our children into responsible adulthood and understanding our role in that journey.

Joette, you’re going to share your personal experiences today, including the advice that you give your own children — or I should say “gave,” as they graduated high school — and how your relationship with your father shaped the way you guided your teen children.

Joette, let’s begin with you sharing about your father’s influence in your life, and why do you advocate for, let’s call them, I guess, “guardrails.”

I like that image of when you go bowling, and they put down those guardrails for the people that are just brand new bowlers, and it guides that bowling ball to the pins. I like that image, and it helps you to hit the mark … or hit the pins.

So, talk about that for a bit.

Joette: (02:06)

Well, let me start by saying that when I was growing up, my parents were anything but laissez-faire parents. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that because if it works for a family, then that’s just fine.

My parents were very strict. They were not helicopter parents at all. We were outside playing all day long. Sometimes, I didn’t see them for many hours. There were a lot of kids on the street.

But once I got to puberty — high school — my parents became very strict. I was the only one that had to be in hours before their friends. My father was adamant about curfews, and my mother was adamant about what I wore. I felt hemmed in.

And ˆI can call them guardrails, but then, I was resentful. I’ll be honest, I really hated it. I hated that my parents were so strict. My parents were certainly American, but they were first-generation Sicilian American, and so a lot of the older ways they brought into their parenting.

I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone was Irish American, and it was their grandparents and great-grandparents who would come over, and so we were closer to the original European thinking, especially southern European thinking, and I resented it. In fact, I hated it.

But I have to say, I did (in the back of my mind) — as much as I felt hemmed in — I knew that the reason that I was hemmed in was because they cared so much. I knew that I was very loved. I always felt very loved by both of them.

And my brother and I talk about it, even to this day, that we never felt anything but love and care towards us, even though they were strict. Now, I look back, and I can see that they were putting in the extra effort — which was not easy for them because they were fighting against society at that time, too — to keep us in line.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that it worked — constantly worked. There were plenty of times where I was able to sneak around here and get away with this or that, but I always knew that I would be in trouble.

So, it hemmed me into a certain degree if I did anything that was really outside of those guardrails.

Now, my parents encouraged me also. And they encouraged me to go to college, and, of course, my brother, too. My parents assumed that I would become a piano teacher because we had been playing piano; my brother and I had been playing piano all our lives. My father was a professional musician, and that’s the way he saw it. They both saw that I would work at a school, perhaps for a while, or I’d take private students. That just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t even thinking about that far in advance.

So, their advice was to go to college in music and perhaps even only go two years and become a piano or a theory teacher.

Joette: (05:02)

And so that brings me to where my husband and I went with our children.

Now, we homeschooled our children up until high school. Then one of them went to a private high school, and the other two went to a Catholic high school, and we actually discouraged them from going to college.

Now, had they said anything about going into STEM, any of the sciences, then we would’ve said, “Well, of course, you go to college for that.”

But without really knowing what they wanted to do, we felt as though it was a waste of time and a waste of money. And so, our oldest son needed to go to college in order to get into his profession today. That made sense. But the other two weren’t exactly sure what they were going to be doing, and my husband and I discouraged them and encouraged them instead to consider other possibilities, such as a trade school or starting a business or joining our business.

My husband had a construction business, and he was also in the boating business … and get them involved in something like, as well. But the pressure was on. There was so much pressure in society, they felt as though they wouldn’t be up to par if they didn’t go to college.

So, what my husband and I decided to do was to tell them we just weren’t going to pay for college. So, if they wanted to go to college, then it had better be something that they really want to do, and they had to pay for it themselves.

So, this, then, put in place a couple of situations. One is that, then, they were pretty much not going to go to a very expensive college, nor were they going to go away. We raised our kids outside of Buffalo, and there are a number of — two universities and many colleges. It’s a college town. And so, they could choose something that was local. Well, that kind of kept them local, which we very much wanted to do.

And now some people might say, “Well, don’t you want your children to expand and grow out and go out into the world?”

Yes, I did want that, and I didn’t want them under our wing. I liked that they did go to college — they paid for it themselves — and they left the home. They did not stay home during those college years. They actually lived together and with, I think, another roommate at one point to keep their costs down.

But I did want them to explore the world. And that’s exactly why I didn’t want them to go to college, because I think it’s a one-track way of thinking in universities and colleges. Now, there are exceptions, but there are only barely a handful of those. And so, I felt as though if we wanted our children to be independent thinkers, they had to stay out of the arena that would be most likely to indoctrinate them with certain kinds of thinking.

And so, I think we were somewhat successful. Because they paid for their education themselves, they were more apt to make use of every class. In fact, at one point, we figured out that let’s say they were taking an English literature class, the cost of the tuition for that particular course was X amount of dollars, and then how many classes would they actually be attending during that school year? And we figured out it was about $40 per class.

So, every time they walked into the classroom on that Monday, Tuesday and Thursday — let’s say it was three days a week — they would actually be handing the professor $40. And because they paid their own tuition and they worked during the summers, it would sting if they didn’t like the course or if they weren’t getting good information out of it, or if it was one of those courses that were so problematic and they weren’t going to get any value out of it.

So that helped them become more autonomous and choosing courses that would be useful, not fluff, because I tend to believe that the reason that students end up in these fluffy courses that are questionable is because someone else is paying for it. But if they have to pay for it themselves, that’ll keep it tight.

So anyway, we had a friend also who has a school called ATI, it’s called Accelerated Training Institute, and we talked to him about that. It is a hands-on — even though it’s online — but there’s also a lot of hands-on work for trades. My children were not interested in that, but we did discuss that at one point.

And I wish that there was a place that they could have gone to learn how to go into homeopathy as a practice, as a business. Now, they were observing me doing that, but it would’ve been nice if they could have gone to a formal setting.

And so that’s where we want to go with this today, because it’s interesting that we’re finding that students are coming from high school and joining The Academy of Practical Homeopathy® — joining our Academy — as their next step.

In fact, we even had one high school student skip senior year and use this as their stepping stone … and go to The Academy and then Mastery. And I am so excited about this possibility.

Look, I do want people to join our Academy, but it is not my main focus here. A big part of my focus is to steer our children, I should say, towards our family values and not away from them. And many people find that college isn’t necessary for everyone.

Kate: (10:11)

Yes, Joette, I’ve heard many parents talking about how excited they are that there is this opportunity of The Academy of Practical Homeopathy®.

In fact, we have one student who is in our Mastermind group. (So, we have The Academy and Mastery, and then our Mastermind group.) And she was super-excited because her son applied for The Academy, and she didn’t even know that he applied. And then next thing she knows, he says that “I’ve been accepted into The Academy.” And so now, she’s so excited to talk about what they’re studying, and they’re sharing this together.

So, we’re hearing this more and more that the children of those who have gone through this are now interested in The Academy, and they’re doing it together. What a fun thing to be able to share with your family.

Joette:

Yeah, we’ve had a couple of mothers, and a mother and a son prior to that as well. He wasn’t a high school student, but we’ve had a number of high school students, even though their mothers or fathers have not gone through The Academy. It’s really exciting to see this.

But those who have family members who are studying homeopathy and are only couple years behind them, they have a constant smile on their face describing how much fun it is at the dinner table because they’re discussing homeopathy on a level that they never expected would occur in their families.

Kate:

Right, we have husbands and wives going to school. We have children — young adults, I should call them — going to The Academy, and then their parents go to The Academy. And so, all different ways it happens.

Joette:

It’s expanding, and it’s quite exciting.

Kate: (11:44)

So, Joette, move on to our role as a mother of adult children. Both you and I have adult children, and now you are also a mother-in-law. So, can you talk a little bit about that role?

Joette:

Yeah. Obviously, when we’re raising our children, we’re raising them up, and then they get to a certain age, and now they’re adults. And now, I think it’s more mentoring.

I think our role shifts. I know our role shifts, and we, as mothers and fathers, want to be poised for that position. We don’t want to hover, but we want to provide a steady presence and support should it be needed.

And then I have to admit that there are times when I have to bite my tongue, and I do. I always thought that I wouldn’t; I think I’m a pretty opinionated person. But I hold back now because I have to pick my battles, as they say, and I have to remember the age difference.

The age gap is huge because I had my children later in life, in my late thirties and early forties. And so, I have to hold back and remember that there is a ripening process that everyone must go through.

So, I’m just back there. My husband and I are just back there, holding off and waiting for a question or even a quiet little opportunity to add a story that might exemplify the point we’re trying to get across.

So, my father — and my mother, too — but my father in my business, in my practice, my mother, especially in raising our children, were mentors to me. In fact, to the very last day that my father was on this earth, and until my mother was no longer capable of helping me, they were there on a day-to-day basis — often physically, but at least on the phone. They were with me all the way.

Even my husband relied on my father, and they even partnered in business for a short period of time.

I have to say that long-distance mentoring can be done, but it’s so much easier when you’re sitting across the table and sharing a meal.

Which then brings me back to why I thought it was so valuable to have our children decide to go to schools locally, so that those formative years, 18 to 21, we were very much connected. Sunday meals, maybe in the middle of the week, we would stop by and see them. They knew we were just a 10-minute drive away because that in-person closeness deepens our trust and deepens the family dynamics. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done when there’s long distance, but I think that it is quite valuable.

Kate: (14:28)

Joette, another way that you often talk about remaining relevant in our adult children’s lives is by your knowledge of homeopathy and how they contact you when they have a question about what homeopathic medicine to use for something.

Now, I know some of your children know a lot about homeopathy, and they are well on their way to raising their children with homeopathy when the time comes, but you still have that involvement as a mentor in their health.

Joette:

Well, as we age in our society, the elderly are pushed aside. But if the elderly have something valuable to share with the family — to offer to the family — this is our opportunity to position ourselves and stay relevant to the very end.

I always imagine that my grandchildren will come to me and say, “Nonna, what should I do about this little sliver I got in my finger?”

And of course, she’s going to go to her mother first. But let’s say her mother already took care of it, and now it’s time for we need the sliver to get out of the little finger, and it’s time to start implementing homeopathic medicine.

I want to stand behind my daughter-in-laws and stand behind my sons so that they know that if the homeopathic information is needed — my mentorship is needed — I’m right there, sturdy and ready, willing and able.

And I think it’s a great way for us, as we age, my friends, to position ourselves and our families in more than the ways that we always imagined. So, we have this ineffable medicine that we can count on and that our families know they can count on us to deliver it. It’s a great position to be in.

Kate: (16:23)

Sure is.

Joette, this has been very helpful. Do you have any final thoughts to wrap it up for our listeners?

Joette:

Well, the final thoughts are really just repeating what I’ve said: that it’s important to stay connected and relevant in our young children’s, and our young adult children’s, and our older children’s lives all the way into their aging years. It’s one of our greatest treasures to be so tied to our families in such a beautiful way.

Kate:

And, Joette, I know you like to hear from your listeners. Surely, they have other thoughts on this topic and ways that they stay relevant in their children’s lives. How can they give you some comments that you’ll see?

Joette:

Yes, I’ll read those comments. I enjoy reading them. So yes, just comment at the end of the podcast, and I’ll take a look. And I love to get the conversation going because everyone comes with something new and interesting.

Kate:

Great. Thank you, Joette, for these valuable insights on parenting and staying close to our adult children and guiding them. It’s important that we do stay connected, especially in this day and age, when I think that we’re being torn apart. It’s definitely one of our greatest treasures.

Joette:

It’s my honor to share many lessons on this simple method of using homeopathy for free —without affiliates or advertising — here in my podcasts, but also my blog posts and Monday Night Lives.

But it’s critical that you learn how to use these medicines properly. These podcasts should serve as only the beginning of your training. Peruse JoettesLearningCenter.com to find fun study group opportunities and in-depth courses developed by subject.

So, with the proper training, you can join the thousands of students before you in developing the confidence and competence to protect the health of your family and loved ones with my brand of homeopathy, Practical Homeopathy®.

Kate:

You just listened to a podcast from internationally acclaimed homeopath, public speaker and author, the founder of The Academy of Practical Homeopathy®, Joette Calabrese. Joette’s podcasts are available on all your favorite podcast apps.

To learn more and find out if homeopathy is a good fit for your health strategy, visit PracticalHomeopathy.com.