Like many engaged couples, Kelsey Poll and Tyler West took a walk down memory lane before their wedding to find old photos to be used in their wedding video. But when they cracked open Kelsey’s baby book, they got the shock of their lives. In the baby book was a photo of minutes-old baby Kelsey being cared for by a nurse. That in itself isn’t shocking at all…so here’s the crazy part: they both immediately recognized the nurse as Tyler West’s mother, Mary Ann! That’s right: Kelsey’s future mother-in-law was present at and even assisted with Kelsey’s birth!

Mary Ann West told Good Morning America she almost couldn’t believe it when she learned of the coincidence.

“We were shocked,” she said. “I was like, this is meant to be. What are the odds that these two kids would find each other and end up getting married and starting their own little family?”

After realizing she was at Kelsey’s birth, Mary Ann also realized that she totally remembered it, which is saying something since she was a labor and delivery nurse at HCA Healthcare’s Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful, Utah for many years.

“Her delivery was a little bit complicated so that’s one reason why I remember it from 22 years ago. She had a complication with her placenta … it was very high risk because the cord attached to the baby and then the vessels were just in the amniotic membranes in the bag of water instead of attached with the cord, so it wasn’t protected,” she said. She also said that this is the only time she encountered this particular situation with a birth in her 29-year nursing career.

Mary Ann West also remembers encouraging Kelsey’s mom Stacy Poll about having three kids. Kelsey was Stacy’s third, and Mary Ann had recently given birth to her third, Tyler.

“I had just given birth to my third a year ago and was just letting her know, ‘You got this girl. It’s fine,'” West said she counseled Stacy Poll. “‘You can do this.’ Kind of giving her tips of how to help the older siblings adjust to the new baby, and it was a great experience.”

Little did she know when she gave that advice that twenty years later their third children would meet and fall in love! The two met when Tyler came into the bank where Kelsey was working in 2021. They chatted a bit, and he came back a few days later to ask for her number. The rest, of course, is history. The two married in May 2023.

Kelsey Poll West says knowing that her mom and mother-in-law shared a special moment at her birth is very meaningful.

“She was able to help my mom during the time that she was really scared, and that means a lot, because my mom means the world to me,” she said of Mary Ann. “And just to be able to have both of my moms there with me when I was brought into the world is something that not everyone gets to say, and that’s something that I’ll be forever grateful for, that I have that connection with her and that she has that connection with my mom, too.”

I absolutely love this coincidence and the family bond the Wests share. Mary Ann West says she now calls Kelsey’s mom Stacy Poll her best friend. I have to agree, this is a love that truly seems meant to be!

I have long been an advocate of keeping kids off of social media until they’re at least 16 (and it so depends on the child!), so I was jazzed when I saw that HGTV stars Erin and Ben Napier are encouraging other parents to do the same. The “Home Town Takeover” co-stars are the parents of two girls, Helen and Mae, ages 5 and 2. And while their kids are definitely too young for social media now, the Napiers say they’re going to still be too young ten years from now.

I can’t help but agree with their perspective. As Erin says (ironically) on Instagram. “Research tells us social media is as addictive and destructive for developing brains as any drug.” The longer we keep our kiddos off of it, they better off they will be. Social media can be bad for self-esteem, and is a digital playground for bullies, not to mention predators.

To help bring some solidarity and community to parents who are making the decision to keep their kids social media-free, and to the teens affected by this decision, the Napiers have founded a non-profit called Osprey. I have to admit Erin’s explanation for why they are founding this organization totally warmed my heart and made me say “YASSSS GIRL!” out loud.  Here’s what she says:

“My friends parenting smart phone-free middle schoolers have had a brutal experience of seeing their child left out, even though research tells us social media is as addictive and destructive for developing brains as any drug. This made me think: my kindergartener doesn’t expect to drive a car before she’s old enough. She doesn’t expect to own a house of her own before she’s old enough. If we build a culture in our home and school now where she doesn’t expect access to the entire world in her pocket until she’s much older, we can set her up for success. When the time comes, a simple phone that can just call and text will be great: in the same way she’ll ride a bicycle before she drives a car. Forming a circle of families and friends who are in this together when your kids are little, linking arms and doing what it takes to give your kids the gift of a social media free adolescence is the only way we change the culture. For the TWENTY THOUSAND parents who’ve already joined the Osprey newsletter after my post last month, we have a vision and a plan to give our kids support that starts now and takes them through high school graduation. Let’s make old school the new way.”

 

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This line especially stuck with me: “If we build a culture in our home and school now where she doesn’t expect access to the entire world in her pocket until she’s much older, we can set her up for success.”

Parenting is hard, to say the least. Parenting in the digital and social media and smartphone age is nothing our own parents ever faced or can prepare us to face. The Napiers’ strategy of playing the long game and setting their kids up for success by planning and building a culture with clear expectations is so, so important. As Erin told TODAY, she hopes the Osprey community will help combat the “everybody else is doing it” pressure that both parents and kids feel about smart phones and social media.

“‘Everybody else is doing it; We didn’t want to give them social media; We didn’t want to give them a phone, but everybody else it doing it’ … What if there is a way to create communities, small communities within schools, that hopefully become big communities within schools, where families say, ‘We’re not going to (use social media)’?” she says.

The idea of creating a support network of like-minded parents is key to making this kind of commitment a success. Napier continues, “…(the families) support each other, they kind of make a pledge together when their kids are in about fifth grade, and then they see it through and support each other, share resources.”

These resources for parents can be found at the Napiers’ non-profit website, Ospreykids.com, where users can sign up for free and download a guidebook with information about your kids’ brain development and a pledge to sign to keep them social media-free.

It sounds to me like this is an organization that truly has kids’ best interests at heart, and I’m here for it! I wish Osprey and the Napiers all the best in changing lives and helping kids stay healthy for years to come.

See what else the Napiers are working on these days in this recent interview:

Duggar cousin Amy King, Jim Bob Duggar’s niece, was often featured on the family’s TLC reality show as the “normal” family member who spent time in their home but wasn’t a part of their brand of fundamentalist Christianity. As such, her birds-eye view of her cousin’s childhood was especially interesting in the Amazon documentary “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.”

King, who has never been coy about talking about her famous relatives, isn’t done opening up about them yet. Since the documentary premiered, so has a Vanity Fair article in which she openly discussed confronting cousin Josh Duggar (now incarcerated on child sex abuse material charges) about his sexual abuse of his own sisters. She says she was especially angry that she learned about the allegations through the media, like the rest of the world. She was totally blindsided.

“I was p—–,” she told Vanity Fair. “I felt like I wasn’t worth telling … that they didn’t want to protect me. They didn’t want anyone to know, (and) they wanted to keep it inside their little bubble.”

If I were King (or her mother, Jim Bob Duggar’s sister), I would also be incensed that I had not been warned about how to best protect myself or my child. Jim Bob seems to have been much more concerned with protecting his family’s image than with protecting his actual family. Gross.

King continued her story by saying that after she learned about Josh’s abuse of his sisters, she decided to personally confront him.

“He was staying in a trailer and I went in there and I said, ‘How could you do this? … And I was very bold about that,” she said.

She says he responded by saying he “knew better” than to try and abuse her (again, gross. But Kudos to King for not being an easy target?) She suggested that he inferred that this was because he targeted people he knew would not speak out about what he had done to them.

Can I say GROSS again? This glimpse into the mind of a predator is so infuriating.

Finally, King discusses her Uncle Jim Bob and Aunt Michelle’s reactions to Josh’s sexual abuse of their own children, and she doesn’t mince words. Their behavior after the fact, she says, is “evil.” King is referring to the fact that they sent Josh away to an Institute for Basic Life Principles training center instead of getting him real help, and then welcomed him back into their family, putting their other children in harm’s way once again.

The Shiny Happy People documentary also alleges that Jim Bob tried to marry Josh off as a teenager so that he would have an outlet for his sexual desires (a.k.a the poor girl he would have married) and wouldn’t molest people anymore. This, of course, is also gross, and definitely NOT the solution to getting real, actual therapy for your child who has sexually abused others.

No wonder Amy King now wants nothing to do with Jim Bob or Michelle and refuses to let them around her own three-year-old son.

“If I can’t trust you, you’re not gonna get to know my child. I’m not going to sit there at a family dinner at Thanksgiving and pretend we’re a loving family. No, I’m scared to death of my child being around them,” she told Vanity Fair. “It’s my right to protect Daxton at all costs and if that means that I cannot have a relationship with that family, then that’s fine.”

Kudos to King and her mom for speaking out about the abuse in the Duggar home and shining a light on what was truly total darkness.