Parenting Adult Children with Emotional Wisdom: Featuring Talia Bambola

James Moffitt (00:01.262)
Hello and welcome to ABC's Parenting Adult Children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I'll be your host. Today we have a special guest. I'm going to butcher your name probably. going to say Talia Bambola.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (00:13.408)
close. Talia Bombola. Yes.

James Moffitt (00:15.864)
There you go. Talia, Talia, Talia, Talia. Very good. All right. Hey, Talia, could you introduce yourself to the listening audience, please?

Talia Bombola, LMFT (00:26.486)
Totally. So my name is Talia Bambola. I work as a licensed marriage family therapist in California. And one of the specialties in my practice is helping parents at any stage of parenting learn how to be the best parents they can be and help repair with their children of any age. And then I also work with adult children who are processing feelings around their own childhood because they may have had the parents that did the

fair minimum, but not really a lot of anything else. And it's trending now to be talking about this. So I think it's more common to be talking about it in therapy than it used to be, both for the parents coming in curious about what their relationship is like with their kids. And then with the adult children trying to process like, wait, that was childhood emotional neglect? Or my parents said this phrase and that was actually traumatizing? This is how I feel? this is why I'm triggered parenting my own kids? any of-

Any of those and the above is currently what I'm working with a lot in my practice.

James Moffitt (01:29.71)
Oh, that's awesome. had somebody on yesterday that does something very similar to you. And she was telling me about how parents come to her for adult children, you know, like 18 to 30 year age, ages. And she said that they come to her specifically for adult children and the issues that they're having with them, either on the autism spectrum or whatever.

neurodivergent areas that they're in and struggling with. And she said that when she talks to the parents, she starts talking with the parents first and helping with the parents. And the parents are like, wait, you mean I need therapy? I need some help?

Talia Bombola, LMFT (02:18.006)
Excuse me? It's not me, it's definitely in part you. Yeah.

James Moffitt (02:23.31)
Yeah. Yeah. And lo and behold, there are areas that they can improve in. can all, all parents can improve in. Right. And I'm excited that, um, the sort of thing is, is, um, uh, parenting adult children, uh, is not swept under the rug. And, and unfortunately there's not a lot of resources out there. There's a lot of resources for children, for preteens, for teenagers. Uh, but there's not a lot of resources, uh, for adult children.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (02:27.636)
Not. Yeah.

James Moffitt (02:52.968)
And, and that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast. we, we also have a parenting adult children, Facebook support group for parents. It's called tough love. And, we started out in 2015 with 10 members. And at that time we had two teenagers that were giving me a run for my money. And I was doing everything I could to stay out of prison.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (03:19.478)
good at orange, but I get tested daily. Yeah.

James Moffitt (03:21.09)
No, I didn't, I didn't want any boyfriends. So I, so I told my wife, my wife's Katie and I told her, said, Katie, let's, let's start a Facebook support group and see if there's anybody out there with the same problems. now we have 1.3 thousand members. Yeah. So it took off and, I don't get a lot of engagement out of them. and, and I'm slowly, but surely trying to, you know, I post the media clips.

And I post the episodes to the, to the, to the Facebook group and hopes that those parents can, you know, gain some insight, right. And get some help and hope and all that. So anyway, my wife's a special ed teacher. She's been doing that for about 25 years. she doesn't deal with adult children. She deals with, I don't know, K five, you know, younger kids. So she has her hands full.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (04:19.382)
It's a necessary job, so my gratitude to her.

James Moffitt (04:23.414)
Right. All right. So back to you. I'll quit chasing rabbits. let's see, I'm going to read something from your profile. You're the second paragraph says one topic I'm particularly passionate about is how parents can navigate repair when their adult children feel they miss the mark, especially in cases involving emotional, emotional immaturity, miss attunement. I thought that was interesting.

or unmet emotional needs. This is deeply personal and professional for me. I support many adult children of emotionally immature parents." Wait, emotionally immature parents? What? No. And I also understand what it's like to reflect on your own parenting choices as a parent yourself. So let's touch on that paragraph. Let's unpack that. Yeah.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (05:14.43)
unpack that nice little just easy, easy Sunday morning coffee paper. Easily handily. So the reason why this is such a necessary topic is because there are more than a few factors that lead to generational differences and the beliefs on what was the tolerable or acceptable ways of

James Moffitt (05:21.826)
Yeah, this, ought to take the next 30 minutes.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (05:43.616)
parenting and being parented. So back in the day, as it were, a lot of the societal messaging was around children being help around the house, children being seen and not heard, children didn't really have the same role or voice that they do nowadays in society, for better or worse. And sometimes I think honestly, we take it too far. And there's like too much freedom given to the child being able to make their own decisions at way too young of an age.

for a separate topic and podcast, but we can see the pendulum has swung from like, children should be seen and not heard to like, advocating, how dare you say that to them? like, okay, but there's still like places in society where we have to have like deference and respect. And how do we balance that when a generation of parents is trying to encourage their child to not feel voiceless like they did, but also struggling with watching their kid advocate and be like, wait, I never got to do that. And how am I supposed to give something I never received?

How am I supposed to parent with love and emotional maturity and tolerance and regulation when they're having a tantrum or freaking out about something in quotes? And I never got to do that. I never learned it. It's really difficult to give what we were never given. And it brings up sometimes a lot of resentment in our own self and sadness and grief. Wow, I was a kid. I was just a little kid like my kid is and I didn't get that. Like how sad I am for my inner child and maybe how angry and resentful I am.

towards my parents as much as it's true in some cases, most cases, they did the best they could with what they had at the time. Sometimes their best not good enough at all. And sometimes their best was garbage. Like it's not discounting the effort. I see that it was the best they could give, but their best was so limited. I still came out of childhood with scars. I still came out with childhood emotional neglect because in society we didn't praise or prize or even talk about emotions at all. Shove them down.

trash compact it, rub some dirt in it, I'll give you something to cry about, right? Like again, what they heard from previous generations leads to parents who do not have emotional maturity, therefore cannot be strong emotional leaders of the household. They tantrum, when the child tantrums, the child ends up being parentified or adultified in regular terms. I felt like a grownup way too young and I had to caretake for my parents' emotional needs and walk on eggshells and not upset them.

James Moffitt (07:40.504)
Sure. Sure.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (08:02.42)
and figure out what mood they were in before I could decide what mood I was in, that is dysfunctional. And that's what we're coming out of now in millennial generation parenting is not just gentle parenting. Gentle parenting gets a bad rap because people think it means permissive, no boundaries. Gentle parenting is I can be really upset or scared or concerned for your safety and not change my tone and still care for you and love you and like you all in the same vein and not lose my cool.

That's me as an adult having to regulate myself and getting down on eye level. And one of the pieces that you mentioned that you found interesting or curious in what I wrote is the misattunement word. Attunement is not a word that we often think of in regular everyday life. As a therapist, we swim in it all the time. Attunement is can I anticipate or decipher and figure out when you're having a want or a need?

Can I give that to you? Can I help you understand what your big feelings are about? Can I be there for you? Can I see that you need a hug? Can I see that you need some quality time with me today? And if I have to go to work, validate, I know mommy's sad that she has to go to work too. And when I get home, we'll do this, right? That wasn't really talked about. It is in, again, the therapeutic world, but it's not talked about in general everyday parenting. Attunement is everything.

Being attached securely to your children and being there for them when they have every single want and need, especially from zero to three, sets your kid up that if they know they can depend on you at that time, the research actually shows they end up needing you or being less dependent on you in that draining way, less because you're setting them up for success. I'll always be here for you no matter what. You fly the nest and you come back to me versus stop doing this, I don't need you, stop needing me.

This is frustrating and annoying basically being bothered by having to raise young children, have them depend on you. Spoiler alert, because it pushes on your own dependency needs that never got met. When you struggle with young children or any children of any age, what they're doing is mirroring to you what you might not have received. That's why it's so tough to attune to your child when you were misattuned to because again, there's that missing link. It's a skill that can be learned and taught, which is great. But that misattunement piece is what often contributes to this

Talia Bombola, LMFT (10:18.482)
larger topic that we're discussing, emotionally immature parents and kids who are going like, hey, that was messed up. I don't care if it was your best, you messed up in these ways and trying to not have the parent go, well, after all I've done for you, I put a roof over it, right? Listing the basic minimum so child protective services doesn't get called. Like, thank you for doing the legal minimum parents, but like, I needed a hug.

James Moffitt (10:34.808)
Sure.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (10:42.238)
or I needed you to tell me you were proud of me. Thanks for the oatmeal, but like I have trauma that I'm in therapy for because of this. Like I appreciate the clothes, but like I needed love instead, so.

James Moffitt (10:53.294)
Don't forget the school books.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (10:54.676)
Yeah, the right, the situation that all the parenting is one huge multiple layer level sacrifice and the gratitude is a long, long term goal. It's not immediate, you don't get the thank you sometimes at all every day. But when your child successfully, hopefully individuates becomes a parent has to do things for themselves is a grown up in that sense. And they realize

wow, my parents sacrificed a lot for me. The thank you does eventually come once the frontal lobe develops around 25 to 30. So for any parents listening, and if it hasn't in that age range, chances are, and you can be the leader in your family and touch in with your kids and check in and say, hey, did I miss the market? Do not ask this question unless you've gone to therapy and you're prepared to process the answer or caveat, but you can do the good work and the repair later on. It's not gonna fix the past.

James Moffitt (11:25.026)
Right. Right.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (11:45.45)
but it is going to show that you care enough to attune now. You may not have known to attune when they were young, but it doesn't mean you have to stay like that for the rest of your life and have a ruptured relationship. It may not ever look like it was if you attuned from the beginning, but it's better than nothing. I think it's at least worth a try when adult parents realize, I don't have the relationship I want with my child. I can try or the child, the adult child goes, I don't like this. I tried to get close, but if the parents not doing the work like you joked about earlier when the parents like,

wait, no, it's not for me, I'm here for little Timmy. Little Timmy didn't learn this from nowhere, right? Like he learned it from somewhere. Whenever I work with kids, I work with parents first too. I send them to the lobby and I'm like, you can go wait there. And I bring them in and I have used humor a lot. I go, so great news, it is your fault. And they're like, what? Like we're paying you to tell us this? And I'm like, the reason why I frame it that way is you have so much agency for change in this. If what you're doing parenting wise is causing this, that's a fix. It's much.

James Moffitt (12:19.907)
Right.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (12:43.996)
easier necessarily than having your child who might have ADHD or some other diagnosis. Like this is good news that a switch in your parenting and being more attuned could help your child feel more secure. And then we all have a good laugh and they're like, okay, tell me what to do instead. And I'm very strengths based. Like, this is not so great. Let's do this instead. You want this outcome? We can't do this. We have to do this. And that's where parents usually need their own therapy because they're like, well, I want my kid to be assertive. But if I talk back to my parents, I would get hit.

How do I get over that fear? So a lot of it is re-parenting the parents while they're parenting their child and parenting their own inner child at the same time.

James Moffitt (13:22.636)
Wow, that's a lot. As you were talking, I was sitting here revisiting my childhood thinking, wow, they really screwed up.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (13:26.484)
It is. It's multi-layered. Yeah.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (13:35.998)
And a lot of parents do, sometimes intentionally, and a lot do it without trying. I'm a parent, I'm not bashing parents. I'm holding accountable certain generations who, unfortunately, there was not enough data given to how to be an effective parent because the role of a child wasn't what it is now. We didn't need to care about somebody's emotional life when we were getting blown up in war or having to escape famine. We had different priorities. It was literal survival. Thankfully, not every part of the world, but most parts of the developed world have

have transcended past that being a daily fear. Again, not all parts, but for the majority of our listeners, I would imagine if you're in America, that there's a level of ease now that you have where hopefully not on a daily basis, you're worried about, my house going to be there the next day? Is my family going to be there the next day? But those worries and those fears and that PTSD lives inside of us genetically. That's where epigenetics comes in and transgenerational trauma, what didn't heal at another level.

heels at the level that it's coming out on. And that's where we often see the problem child is really the one speaking up in the family and going, this is dysfunctional. Like this has to stop. And they're the ones using their voice and everybody else where the system is predicated upon act nice, shove it down, don't feel, don't talk is looking at this person and going, what are you doing blowing up our spot? Like don't expose the family secrets. Don't tell me what I'm doing is wrong. Stay quiet so I don't have to face my discomfort is a sense.

James Moffitt (15:01.837)
Right.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (15:02.326)
where parents are hoping for, not to expose all parents, but most parents end up telling me that as we work together, like, I didn't want to face it. I don't want to face the shame or the guilt that I feel because I never was taught how to regulate my emotions. And I scream at my kids. And as much as I promised myself, I would never be like my dad. The first time that came out of my mouth, we have to go, I'm just like him. If you don't learn what to do instead, you will be doomed, in quotes, to repeat what you were raised with.

You have to come in and interrupt the pattern for it to be different moving forward.

James Moffitt (15:34.35)
Gotcha.

Hang on a second.

James Moffitt (15:40.92)
boss is sending me messages. I'm telling her I'm on a podcast episode. Leave me alone.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (15:42.796)
okay.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (15:46.55)
I'm working.

James Moffitt (15:48.28)
I'm swatting at her. Go away.

Well,

I know that from reading the multitude of messages on our Facebook support group, there are a lot of parents that are in conflict and crisis because of behaviors, actions, spoken, unspoken, trauma, kids winding up in jail, kids in addiction, just all a whole host of circumstances, right?

That the parents are facing and they don't know what to do and they're frustrated and they're angry and they're hurt and they're, you know, they just want to fix the kids. And, know, there's a lot there, a lot there to unpack. And, one of the things I did, early on in this podcast is, is I talked about marriage relationships. I was like, okay, we're gonna, we're talking about parenting. Right. So what, what, what does a family need? You know, and it.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (16:47.36)
Yep.

James Moffitt (16:53.228)
the first or second podcast episode, I talked about, Hey, let's talk about the, the parent, the, the, the marriage relationship. Let's talk about moms. Let's talk about dads. Let's talk about what a healthy relationship looks like and, and let's build that foundation from there. And so, you know, it wasn't all encompassing, but I, think I hit all the high spots, right? How do, how do kids learn empathy and love and compassion and forgiveness and all of those things?

Talia Bombola, LMFT (17:20.064)
Yes.

James Moffitt (17:23.082)
they learn it from their parents or parents hopefully are modeling those, those behaviors and those qualities within their relationship, moms and dads. Right. And if they're not, then how do, how did, how did, how did children learn? You know, we, we, as parents want to think that don't do as I don't do as I say, don't do as I do do as I say. Right. And that goes in one ear and out the other, and the kids are watching how you act and what you do.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (17:25.302)
Thank you.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (17:32.918)
Yes.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (17:43.264)
do as I, yeah, but the.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (17:50.882)
yeah, yes.

James Moffitt (17:51.714)
How do you, how do you treat, how do you treat their mother? Right? How does the mother treat the dad? Is there respect there? Is there help? You know, all these things and, and nobody's perfect and we all, we all have to learn as we go. Right. And, so, so yeah, parenting, the marriage relationship, you know, you have to build a foundation and you have to start with the, with the marriage relationship first. And I.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (17:56.576)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (18:16.756)
Yes, and whatever we want to see out of our kids has to be modeled from them and from us to others as well.

James Moffitt (18:24.694)
Right. Right. And, you know, I was, I was raised, I graduated high school in 1980 and so I was raised, you know, I was in high school from 76 to 80. So I was a child of the seventies. Basically I was born in 61 parents where my dad was a drill instructor for 26 years, retired from the army in 69. And my mother was Austrian. My sister and I were adopted. They were huge, authoritative, authoritarian.

parents, and when you said, you know, children to be seen and not heard, that's exactly the way we were raised. And, men don't cry and you do as you're told, or you get a beating, you know, if you want something to cry about, I'll give you something to cry about. So there was, yeah, there was no emotional intelligence there whatsoever. It was like, he was a drill instructor and I was the, I was the recruit.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (19:13.618)
I obey.

James Moffitt (19:23.422)
I learned very quickly to stay under his radar and hope and pray that I didn't make him angry. Right. And so when I got married and had children.

I started listening to, knew I recognized in me that, that I could not parent my children the way my mom and dad parented me. Right. Today, my parents will be in prison for some of the crap they did to us kids. Yes. They adopted us from Germany. They brought us to America and I'm very, very thankful for the things that they did provide for us. They provided medical care. They provided a roof over our head, food, new school, school clothes every year, school books, medical care, all that stuff. Right.

All the physical necessities were provided, but, my parents didn't know how to demonstrate love to their children. I never felt loved. Right. And, and after this podcast episode, maybe I'm going to need some therapy from you. No, I'm just kidding.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (20:07.435)
basics.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (20:18.934)
Most people end up reaching out, they're like, that's not my head, I'm like, sorry, this is what I do.

James Moffitt (20:24.568)
So, so I recognize the emotional garbage that I carted into most of my marriage and into, you know, the parenting realm. And so I started listening to, I wanted to say Tony Robbins. That's not right. what was his name? I just had it the other day. he was a Christian psychologist. what is his name? Yeah. Anyway, he was real good.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (20:32.128)
Totally.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (20:48.214)
it's escaping me as well.

James Moffitt (20:53.986)
And I listened to him a lot and I learned a lot about what it was, was to be a good Christian parent, right? A loving, compassionate parent. yeah, there were days that I, you know, when my kids were just off the wall and doing stupid stuff, you know, I probably reacted a couple of times more than a couple of times. Like my dad reacted to me, right? With anger lashing out and

Talia Bombola, LMFT (21:18.667)
hard.

James Moffitt (21:22.446)
I have to tell parents all the time, it's okay to say you're sorry.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (21:27.542)
Please, please, please say profusely, honestly. Like it cannot lose its meaning if you make a repair when you mess up. That's part of being a grownup adult in life. Hey, I take ownership, I messed up. If you are curious what was causing it, I didn't sleep, didn't eat, not excusing it, just trying to hear it out loud for myself. I'm sorry, what can I do if anything to make it right? And if you need more time, you let me know. And if there's nothing I can do, we can touch on that later.

James Moffitt (21:29.219)
Yes.

Yes.

James Moffitt (21:36.654)
Yep. Right.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (21:55.392)
being the first to apologize and taking ownership and having that feel good and I can't wait to repair, that's where I want a lot of parents to end up getting to if they can, even if it doesn't save or help their adult child relationship, it can change all the relationships they have in their work and their marriage and their personal life, if they're dating later on, if they're widowed, like any and all of it, being able to say, I'm sorry, what I did was not right, it was wrong, it was out of.

anger, it was out of impulse and I need to work on that and I want you to know I am is much better than like, don't tell me what to do. Like I'm the parent, you're the child, you listen to me, like go sit in a corner because you made me feel uncomfortable is essentially what the emotionally immature response is or the authoritarian you'll do as I say, what makes you the expert? Like you didn't turn out great. If you're parenting me this way, why would I listen to you? So yeah, there's a lot.

James Moffitt (22:48.066)
Well, and I was as ignorant as the day was long when I was a kid. I had no idea how.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (22:52.438)
Every child is though because they don't have so kids like the brain development is so important for parents to understand why kids make the decisions they make. Infancy lasts from ages zero to three. It's not just when they're a little baby till 12 months old, infancy neurologically lasts from zero to three. So it's very important to be attuned and attached to every possible need you can in that phase. And if you don't get that part right,

The next blessing is from nine to 25, approximately research shows it can go up to the thirties when the frontal lobe, the rational critical decision-making part of the brain is pruning, developing and coming online. When you talk to a teenager and say, what were you thinking? They're going to look at you and go, huh? They weren't. This is not talking to this, which is the emotional part of the brain where they're making decisions from the amygdala. I did it cause it felt good. I did it cause she was hot. I did it cause everybody else was doing it. They're basing their decisions off feeling.

James Moffitt (23:35.832)
Right?

Talia Bombola, LMFT (23:48.756)
So we can't go to them expecting a rational discussion because they're making an emotional slash impulsive decision. Every child, every person on the world goes through this and eventually their frontal lobe prunes and they lose what they don't need as connections and they tune into what they do need. And then they start thinking critically, rationally, logically, and they make quote unquote better or more optimized for long-term growth solutions or decisions.

but that's not something we could reasonably expect of a child or a teenager, especially if we don't understand brain development and we're not parenting. The way that I teach parents to parent, prevents the, ideally prevents the rupture long, later in life where you didn't give me what I needed emotionally is when you're parenting a child, your role is to answer every question they have and little kids ask why in the beginning, because they don't know how the world works. And they're literally genuinely curious because it's the first time they're on earth.

Right? It's your first time being a parent. It's their first time on earth. Give yourself some grace. Answer them. Then they learn when the critical mind kind of starts to develop around age eight is when we see it and they start to go, well, why? And they're not always asking to learn. They're asking to push your buttons. They're asking to test. They're asking to create their own assertions and their own assertiveness and their own autonomy, which we want to encourage. We don't want to raise a bunch of people pleasers who are more likely to get taken advantage of, become victims, not speak up for themselves.

not really get what they want in life or need in life because they're like, I'll just do as I'm told. That's not the generation I'm trying to raise. We can raise somebody who's vocal and respectful. We can raise somebody who goes, you know what, that doesn't work for me. I don't appreciate the way that you spoke to me. Even if it's a child saying it to an adult, we need to, as a society, understand it's an old generation, a former generation that would be horrified by that. I would love it if my daughter one day was able to speak up if somebody hurt her feelings and not have to be like,

Well, I wanted to be friends with them more than anything or just because they're an adult means no, just because they're an adult does not mean they get to mistreat you. like you don't, you definitely don't want to cross me because I'm going to come at it. My specialization as a therapist, like we're going to have a chat and I'm going to make you go back to your own childhood and face what, why you picked on my daughter. So there's that rationalization of when I'm parenting a child who's questioning the world to learn more of where they fit in. I want to encourage that and put respectful boundaries of

Talia Bombola, LMFT (26:06.494)
Okay, how do you think you could say that where they could hear it and not just go based off of emotion? Emotions are valid, but we can't always act on what behavior they're making us want to do. And then the questions start to change when the teen becomes older. And then they go, well, should I do this or should I do that? And our job is not to give them the answer. Our job is to help them find their own answer. What do you think? Let's weigh the pros and cons. If you do this, what else could you do? If you buy this car, what can you do here? If you go to this college, what else can't you do? Right? Letting them develop the critical.

James Moffitt (26:35.16)
Sure.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (26:35.744)
thinking and borrow from our frontal lobe. So eventually when they're adults, they don't come to us with questions. They say, hey, I did this thing. And we're proud of them. Or hey, I did this thing and I messed up and I need help. So there's this balance of how do you attune to your child at each age and what are you expecting if you want the ideal outcome to be? They're individuated, they have autonomy, their successful life, whatever that means to you and to them and allowing their definition to maybe be different from yours.

Maybe they don't wanna follow in your footsteps. Maybe they don't wanna be who you want them to be. So don't force them to be that. Allow them to show you who they are, help them and encourage them and let them be that way in society. And your job is to be that soft landing place and not be the one who's judging them and saying, well, you can't be that or after all I've done for you, this is not what I wanted. Like that's not the law school I picked for you. It's like, I don't wanna do that.

Did you ever ask me who I wanted to be? And a lot of parents go, no, I just kind of told them who they wanted because they think it's like a second chance at their own childhood. Spoiler alert, it is not. You raising kids is not a chance to reparent literally. It's a chance to give your kid what you didn't get. And if you don't have it, please go to therapy or talk to somebody or read some books. I can give a resource list like educate yourself on what's missing to give your kid what you didn't have.

James Moffitt (27:47.469)
Right.

James Moffitt (27:54.606)
Well, and I think every parent on the planet, you know, A, they don't want them to experience the pain or the heartache that we experienced, right? And we want our kids to have it better than we did, right? And the reality is that a lot of the consequences that we experienced as young adults were because we made really bad decisions, right? And we didn't listen to our parents. Like I know there were times that my parents tried to teach me things.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (28:02.026)
Totally, totally.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (28:06.336)
Totally. Yes.

James Moffitt (28:24.502)
And I thought, I'm like, you're so out of touch. You don't know what you're talking about. I remember standing at a payphone. You know what one of those is? I remember standing at a payphone in Houston, Texas. think I was 26, 27, 28 years old and I called my parents on their landline and basically a huge piece of uncle pie. And I told him, said, you know what?

Talia Bombola, LMFT (28:30.166)
Yeah.

James Moffitt (28:50.572)
I thought you guys were crazy and out of touch and had no clue about reality. And, I've learned the hard way that you're not as stupid as I thought you were. Yeah, they were. And there were a lot of things that, that I experienced the consequences of my mistakes that I could have, bypassed. Had I had a little bit of emotional maturity of my own and, and, and ran those thoughts.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (29:01.374)
some things. Yeah.

James Moffitt (29:19.278)
through my head before I made those decisions. And of course, what, what young adult, doesn't think that they've got the world by the tail, right? We're invincible. Yeah, we're invincible. We don't think about retirement. We don't think about old age. We don't think of cause we're, we're living life to the fullest. Right. And, we're, we're, we're setting the world on fire and, and, and honestly, most of the time we're setting ourselves on fire, you know,

Talia Bombola, LMFT (29:28.084)
The ego is so strong. Yes, exactly. I know.

James Moffitt (29:48.482)
But anyway, this is all good stuff. And I can see that I'm going to want you back on the podcast several times. Cause there's, there's a lot. Yeah. There's there's, there's a lot to unpack here. And I, I told you earlier that I wanted to kind of keep the podcast at episode about 30 minutes. So we have just barely scratched the surface here. Okay. but I appreciate you being on the podcast and, to my, to my,

Talia Bombola, LMFT (29:54.55)
I'll come back as much as you want. Yeah, I'll talk about anything.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (30:14.057)
Absolutely.

James Moffitt (30:16.502)
My listening audience, I want to say, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time and tell you, thank you for being on the, on the podcast. And I look forward to talking to you some more. you can listen to this podcast on the audio version on captive data, FM, Amazon music, I heart radio, Apple podcasts, the public radio. You can watch the video episode on rumble.com R U B L E.com. And, our website is parenting adult children.org.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (30:23.894)
Thank you. Yeah, we'd love to.

James Moffitt (30:45.25)
That's parentingadultchildren.org on the website. can get my contact information. You can send me voicemail, can send me email. I'm going to dare some of you to do that. I'm, I don't know if anybody's ever listened to any of this, but I, I, I'm going to double dog dare somebody to send me an email or send me a voicemail. I'm going to fall out of my chair. If I get a voicemail from somebody, I'll be like, what? It works. my God.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (31:01.459)
after this episode, yeah.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (31:08.982)
Yeah, sometimes intimidating men will help, right? I dare you to do it.

James Moffitt (31:13.07)
Yeah. I dare you to do it. I don't think you know how to do it. I don't know. You don't know how to click that button. Yeah. Uh, on the website, you get the upcoming show schedule. You can leave a review for the podcast episodes. If you're listening to this podcast podcast episode on Apple podcasts, which I think 90 % of most of my listeners come from, uh, Apple podcasts. Cause everybody's got an iPhone. Everybody's got an iPad, MacBook pro, whatever. Uh, so

Talia Bombola, LMFT (31:18.358)
Yes.

James Moffitt (31:40.396)
If you're on Apple podcasts, listening to the episode, you can right there on your phone, you can click on review and you can leave a review right there. And then I get a message of that review and I've gotten several and I appreciate those. And I would like to see more. I would like to see more engagement. new episodes are released every Friday morning at 8 AM and Talia, do you, do you have a website you would like to tell people about?

Talia Bombola, LMFT (32:04.822)
Yes, I do. So if you're interested in therapy in the state of California, my website for that is therapy with talia.com. And then if you're interested in parent coaching anywhere else other than California, my website for that is my full name. So that's taliabonvola.com. And then I'm most active on Instagram, which is also my name. So you can follow me there. I do a weekly Q &A. And I have my own

podcast where we dive into some of these topics too. So I'm, very curious to see what else you and I can get into on future episodes. Yeah. my god. Totally, totally.

James Moffitt (32:35.264)
yeah. there's the, the horizon is way out there. I can, I can see all kinds of things we can talk about and I want to, and I want to give people little snippets, little nuggets of truth that they can sink their teeth into go about their day. Right. I, I, as I told you earlier, my, most of my podcasts go 50 minutes or longer because there's so much to cover and I'm learning, on this podcast journey that, that people like little chunks of information. Right. So I'm learning to.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (32:56.992)
Totally.

James Moffitt (33:04.546)
kind of shorten it because I do a lot of rabbit chasing like I'm doing right now and I got to stop that. anyway, so anyway, my Instagram for this podcast is parentingadultchildren125. parentingadultchildren125 and I upload video magic clips from Riverside, little short one minute video snippets of each upcoming episode.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (33:11.057)
it in.

James Moffitt (33:29.902)
episodes come out at 8 AM on Friday. So on Monday, I'll upload a snippet from that podcast episode to Instagram. So people can, you know, look at those and preview it and decide whether or not they want to listen. But so anyway, uh, thank you everybody for joining and listening and we'll talk to you later.

Talia Bombola, LMFT (33:42.036)
awesome

Talia Bombola, LMFT (33:47.648)
Thank you.