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The Disney vacation. The elaborate birthday party. The perfect Christmas. The Instagram-worthy “core memory.”

What if your kids don’t remember any of it?

This week on Wrong Way Forward, Katy and Justin ask a surprisingly emotional question: What do we actually remember from childhood—and are parents trying way too hard to manufacture memories for their kids?

The conversation starts with an unforgettable clip from Oprah. An 11-year-old girl was losing her mother to cancer. Her mom had taken her on trips and deliberately tried to create special experiences before she died. But when Oprah asked the girl for her favorite memory of her mother, it wasn't Disney World.

It was eating Cheerios together at 2:00 in the morning.

That sends Katy and Justin down memory lane. Justin remembers hot Mississippi summers, burning his legs on his mother's Buick seats and singing with his family in the car. Katy remembers sleeping in sleeping bags over the air-conditioning vents with her siblings. And one of their favorite memories from an incredible trip to Asia wasn't the luxury villa or expensive restaurant—it was their friends doing a ridiculous synchronized swimming routine in the pool.

So have social media and the obsession with creating “core memories” convinced parents that childhood has to be bigger, more expensive and more perfect than it actually does?

The conversation gets much more personal as Katy talks about losing her parents without warning and what she wishes she'd had more time to experience with them. Justin shares the childhood memory of discovering his mother secretly making powdered milk because his parents couldn't afford regular milk—and what that moment means to him decades later.

Then, because this is Wrong Way Forward, things take a turn as Katy climbs onto her soapbox about what today's pop songs are teaching young women about relationships and self-respect.

But it all comes back to one simple idea:

Stop trying so hard to manufacture the perfect memory. Be present. Create a safe, loving place for the moments to happen on their own.

Because money doesn't make memories. Moments do.

New episodes of Wrong Way Forward every Thursday.

Email: wrongwayforwardpodcast@gmail.com
Text: 720-251-4450

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