We don’t just think with our brains. What?! How can that possibly be true? I struggled to understand it if myself for quite a while, until I read the fabulous English philosopher Andy Clark’s description of what happens when someone writes, which essentially involves ideas flowing down the arm and hand, through the pen and ink, across the paper, up to your eyes, and back to your brain. The ideas don’t literally flow, of course, but the process of writing alters the process of thinking - which is...
Sep 05, 2021•57 min•Ep. 143
Do you worry that your child isn't eating enough...or is eating too much? Do you wish they would eat a more balanced diet...but don't want to be the Vegetable Police? Do you find yourself in constant negotiations over your child's favorite snacks? You're not alone! Join me for a conversation with Ellyn Satter MS, MSSW, author of many books including Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense. Ms. Satter developed the approach to feeding children that's known as Division of Responsibility , ...
Aug 15, 2021•57 min
When you’re learning a new skill, information is critical. Without that, it’s very difficult to make any kind of meaningful change. But I see a parallel between learning new skills and respectful parenting: I like to say that love between parent and child is necessary but not sufficient - and that respect is the missing ingredient. With learning a new skill, knowledge is necessary - but not sufficient. And support is the missing ingredient. You might remember from our conversation with Dr. Chris...
Aug 01, 2021•52 min
How does trauma affect us? Yes, we feel it in our brains - we get scared, frustrated, and angry - often for reasons we don’t fully understand. But even if our brains have managed to cover up the trauma; to paper a veneer over it so everything seems fine, that doesn’t mean everything actually is fine - because as our guest in this episode, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says: The Body Keeps The Score. What he means is that the effects of the trauma you’ve experienced don’t just go away, and can’t just b...
Jul 25, 2021•47 min•Ep. 141
When we're having a hard time interacting with our family members, it's pretty common for our first reaction to be: "I need this person (or these people!) to change their behavior" - especially when this person (or these people!) are children. After all, we've been around for longer and we know what we're doing and we were fine before our children started misbehaving, right? My guest today, parent-of-three Chrystal, had encountered this mentality not just about her children, but also about her h...
Jul 17, 2021•54 min
This episode kicks off a series on the intersection of parenting and food. We begin today with a conversation with Dr. Lindo Bacon, where we bust a LOT of myths about the obesity epidemic that is said to be plaguing people in the United States and other countries that follow a similar diet. The messaging we get from government entities seems pretty simple: being fat is bad for you. It causes increased risk for a host of diseases as well as early death. If you're fat, you should lose weight becau...
Jul 04, 2021•55 min
Many of us haven't been in each other's homes for a while now, but pretty soon we'll be getting together inside again. And our children will be heading inside, in their friends' houses. People store guns inside. Are you certain that nobody owns a gun in any of the places your child plays? If they do own a gun, are you certain they store it safely? If not, you need to ask. That's one issue we discuss in this interview with Dr. Nina Agrawal, a board-certified pediatrician who has expertise in viol...
Jun 20, 2021•45 min
New parents often worry about attachment to their baby - will I be able to build it? My baby cries a lot - does that mean that we aren't attached? If I put my baby in daycare, will they get attached to the daycare staff rather than to me? Based on the ideas about attachment that have been circulated over the years, these are entirely valid concerns. But it turns out that not only should we not worry about these things, but the the research that these ideas were based in was highly flawed. It's o...
Jun 06, 2021•1 hr 6 min
"Psychological Flexibility" sounds amazing. Shouldn't we all want that? After all, psychological flexibility has been significantly positively associated with wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic, and negatively associated with anxiety, depression, and COVID-29-related distress and worry. (But what is it, anyway?!) Psychological Flexibility is about being fully in touch with the present moment and, based on the situation, either continuing or changing your behavior to live in better alignment w...
May 23, 2021•58 min
We've been in a liminal space for the last 15 months or so, since COVID shutdowns. (The word 'liminal' comes from the Latin root limen, meaning threshold). It’s a place where a certain part of our lives has come to an end but the next thing hasn’t yet begun, so we’re in a transitional state. We're finally starting to see the end of this liminal state but before we can fully emerge into the new world, we need to ask ourselves: what do we want that world to be like? Do we want to go back to what i...
May 08, 2021•50 min•Ep. 136
This episode grew out of a post that long-time friend of the podcast, Dr. Laura Froyen, published in a respectful parenting group that we both work in as admins. In the post she asked people to share how they felt before and after they discovered respectful parenting, and then she created a word cloud of the results. The words in the 'before' cloud were perhaps predictable - things like 'worried,' 'overwhelmed,' 'resentful,' and 'guilty.' And the most common word in the 'after respectful parenti...
May 02, 2021•28 min•Ep. 135
"You're doing it wrong! You're not asking for consent before changing the diaper!" In this Sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode we meet parent Nicole, who has core values related to being empathic, constantly learning, and upholding justice in the world. These awesome values came together in a difficult way when Nicole became a parent: she had a deep fear of not getting parenting right, so she was constantly reading and trying to find that one piece of information that would close the gap between...
Apr 25, 2021•39 min
"Do you know what happens to your body when you get older?" "Um...you get hairy in some places?" "Yeah...other things happen too. We'll get you some books." That was what I learned about sex education when I was seven - I was always grateful that I learned it from my parents (who were pretty terrified to talk about it, I think) rather than from the other kids at school. But then the topic wasn't mentioned again until I was about 18, with a vague reference to "being careful" with my first boyfrie...
Apr 18, 2021•1 hr 7 min
After dinner a few days ago, Carys randomly started telling us that if we want to understand some of the things she's feeling, we should cast our minds back to when we were children and remember how we would have felt about it at the time. The conversation continued as we explored more of her feelings when she's having difficult moments, and at some point someone (recollections differ on exactly who it was!) suggested we record a podcast episode about it. Carys was immediately on board and wante...
Apr 11, 2021•16 min
Today we build on episodes that we've done in the past on talking with children about the basics of sex (so when you listen to this episode we're assuming you've got the basics covered - things like using anatomically correct names for body parts and taking basic steps to prevent sexual abuse ). This is the first in a mini-series of episodes that digs deeper into topics related to sex. Here we talk with Charlotte Rose, co-host of the Speaking of Sex podcast by the Pleasure Mechanics, about what ...
Apr 04, 2021•55 min
Do we really know what implicit bias is, and whether we have it? This is the second episode on our two-part series on implicit bias; the first part was an interview with Dr. Mahzarin Banaji , former Dean of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and co-creator of the Implicit Association Test. But the body of research on this topic is large and quite complicated, and I couldn't possibly do it justice in one episode. There are a number of criticisms of the test which are worth examin...
Mar 21, 2021•57 min
Explicitly, nobody really believes in gender stereotypes anymore, but when we look at the world, and who's where and how much money people make, and so on, it still seems to be there. And the answer to that is yeah, because it's there. It's just not something we say. It’s more of something we do. -Dr. Mahzarin Banaji What is implicit bias? Do I have it (and do you?)? Does my (and your?) child have it? And if we do have implicit bias, what, if anything, can we do about it? Join me in a conversati...
Mar 07, 2021•52 min
"When she was younger, she wasn't that into reading and that was like a huge deal for me. I thought: "I'm such a reader. My daughter doesn't love to read." She's still not a big reader, but it's not hampering her in any way. She's blossoming in fifty other ways, but when I get caught in that story, "She's not like me. She's not..." - that's when I'm suffering. So I settle back into trusting, and think: "Oh, she's becoming who she is. Let her be that." -Diana Winston Meditation is touted as being...
Feb 21, 2021•55 min•Ep. 130
Why do we yell at our children - even when we know we shouldn't? Why isn't just knowing what to do enough to actually interact with our children in a way that aligns with our values? For many of us, the reason we struggle to actually implement the ideas we know we want to use is because we've experienced trauma in our lives. This may be the overt kind that we can objectively say was traumatic (divorce, abuse, death among close family members...), or it may simply be the additive effect of having...
Feb 07, 2021•37 min
In this episode we talk with Iris Chen about her new book, Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent. Iris admits to being a parent who engaged in "yelling, spanking, and threatening with unreasonable consequences" - but far from becoming a well-behaved, obedient child, her son fought back. The harder she punished, the more he resisted. Their home became a battleground of endless power struggles, uncontrollable tantrums, and constant frustration. But Iris didn't know wha...
Jan 29, 2021•45 min
Parents - worried about their child's lack of maturity or ability to 'fit in' in a classroom environment - often ask me whether they should hold their child back a year before entering kindergarten or first grade. In this episode I review the origins of the redshirting phenomenon (which lie in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and which statisticians say contained some seriously dodgy math), what it means for your individual child, as well as for the rest of the children in the class so you can ...
Jan 24, 2021•1 hr 6 min
In this short ad hoc episode that was originally recorded as a Facebook Live, I discuss ways that my family is working on dismantling both White supremacy and patriarchy (and having a go at capitalism while we're at it!) this Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend. The best part is that this doesn't have to be heavy work that brings with it a huge sense of guilt. It's about building community that lifts all of us up, and gets us out of the 'stay in my lane' mindset that White supremacy uses ...
Jan 18, 2021•17 min
In this ad hoc episode, I outline a response to the U.S. Capitol siege. I provide some suggestions for ways to talk with your child about the events, but also ask that you take two more steps: (1) examine your own role in these events, even if you condemn them yourself (as I do); (2) take action based on your own position and role in the world to work toward equality. You can find my resources on the intersection of parenting and race here. There's a specific blog post suggesting a script for ta...
Jan 10, 2021•27 min
When parents first hear about interest-led learning (also known as self-directed education), they may wonder: why on earth would we do that? And how would my child learn without anyone teaching them? Many parents start down this path with only an inkling of where it may end up taking them and I think this is true of our guest, Akilah Richards. Akilah grew up in a typical Jamaican family where children were not allowed to have an opinion about anything - even their own bodies and feelings. In her...
Dec 17, 2020•58 min•Ep. 127
In this Sharing Your Parenting Mojo episode we hear from listener Anne, who has been in my Parenting Membership for a year now. In our conversation we discussed the anxiety she used to feel about every aspect of parenting, including the things she wanted to teach her son to do (Spanish! Coding!) and how she interacted with both him and with her husband. She actually joined the Parenting Membership to learn how to become the perfect parent, and I'm sorry to say that I failed as her teacher/guide ...
Dec 13, 2020•24 min
Let's talk problem solving! Many of us have tried it, but it's so common to get stuck...and to think that the method doesn't work, and then return in exasperation to the methods we'd been using all along. These often involve coercion, or forcing the child to do something they don't want to do - but what's the alternative? In this episode we talk with Dr. Ross Greene, who developed the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (formerly Collaborative Problem Solving) approach in his books The Explo...
Dec 06, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 126
My guest for this episode is life coach and reparenting expert Xavier Dagba, who is here to discuss the topic of boundaries in parenting. We don't tend to learn much about having boundaries when we're young, because our culture teaches that children shouldn't really need or have them (and those of us who are using respectful parenting approaches are working against the tide here). This then translates to us not knowing how to set boundaries as adults, and feeling 'walked all over' - without full...
Nov 29, 2020•54 min
I often hear two related ideas about adults' screen usage around children. Sometimes the parent asking the question guiltily confesses to using screens around their children more than they would like, and to using screens as a momentary escape from the demands of parenting. Or the parent asking the question feels that they have found a sense of balance in their own screen usage, but worries about their partner who frequently ignores their child because they're so focused on a screen. In this epi...
Nov 20, 2020•1 hr
Sibling relationships can be SO HARD! Sometimes it might seem that we can't leave them alone for even a second before they're at each other's throats, and on top of this we see their struggles and are reminded of the struggles that we had with our own siblings so many years ago. This can cause us to overreact in the moment, even when we know it's not helping the situation. I discussed some of the reasons behind sibling squabbles a couple of years ago in a conversation with Dr. Susan McHale of Pe...
Nov 09, 2020•34 min
If you’ve been a parent for a while, or maybe even if you haven’t, you probably saw an article on Holding Space making the rounds of online communities a few years ago. In the article the author, Heather Plett, describes how she and her siblings were able to hold space for their dying mother in her final days because a palliative care nurse held space for them. The article outlined some principles of holding space, and I think it really resonated with a lot of people – possibly because so many o...
Nov 06, 2020•54 min
