You are listening to Feeding the Mouth That Bight You with Ashley Parrish and Jessica

Pfeiffer. A weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world. As always,

we are joined by psychologist and author, Dr. Ken Wilgus. Hey everyone and welcome back on today's

episode. We will be discussing teenagers and family secrets.

Actually, you know, we just had an episode about the holidays and they can bring out the best in families, you know, wonderful traditions and meaningful time together and all of that.

But they can also bring out the worst.

We are up close and personal to some of our hurt feelings and resentment, maybe some dysfunctional

relationship patterns.

And there's a lot of time together with our families to bring it all up and rehash it.

And sometimes our kids kind of get a view into what is going on.

They might start to question, hey, why isn't someone here at Christmas?

What's going on with Uncle So and So? They're aware. They're getting older. They understand that

there's something not quite right. Do you have that experience in your life too, Ashley?

Of course. I think it's easier to keep things at bay throughout the year when we

don't see family members that often. But when it comes time for holiday season, it kind of shines a light

on all of the ugly parts, you know, or the hard parts or, you know, where we struggle, our hurts

and hangups between relationships or what's going on with a certain family member.

And maybe something is current or maybe it's something past.

But I'm excited to address this because I feel like it's a big topic that we need to talk about.

And that's one of the reasons why I'm so grateful for this podcast because we talk

about the hard things, you know, in raising teenagers. And I have some things that I've always thought

about, you know, my past was real broken. My family was real broken. And so there's been things

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