Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

140: Mythbusting about fat and BMI with Dr. Lindo Bacon

July 04, 2021 16:00 - 55 minutes - 50.7 MB

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 w...

139: How to keep your child safe from guns (even if you don’t own one)

June 20, 2021 19:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MB

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 w...

138: Most of what you know about attachment is probably wrong

June 06, 2021 19:00 - 1 hour - 90.6 MB

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. I...

137: Psychological Flexibility through ACT with Dr. Diana Hill

May 23, 2021 19:00 - 57 minutes - 78.9 MB

"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 alig...

136: Mother’s Day Momifesto

May 08, 2021 08:00 - 49 minutes - 68.1 MB

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...

135: 5 reasons respectful parenting is so hard

May 02, 2021 13:00 - 26 minutes - 12.2 MB

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 resp...

SYPM 012: From fear-filled conflict to parenting as a team

April 25, 2021 13:00 - 36 minutes - 41.3 MB

"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 ...

134: Beyond Sex Education with Dr. Nadine Thornhill

April 18, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 58.8 MB

"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...

What Carys wants you to know about your children’s feelings

April 11, 2021 13:00 - 16 minutes - 22.2 MB

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 ...

133: How the Things We Learned About Sex Impact Our Children

April 04, 2021 13:00 - 54 minutes - 49.9 MB

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, abo...

132: How implicit bias affects my child (Part 2)

March 21, 2021 13:00 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MB

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...

131: Implicit Bias with Dr. Mahzarin Banaji

March 07, 2021 13:00 - 52 minutes - 59.8 MB

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 ...

130: Introduction to mindfulness and meditation with Diana Winston

February 21, 2021 13:00 - 55 minutes - 50.5 MB

"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 toute...

129: The physical reasons you yell at your kids

February 07, 2021 13:00 - 37 minutes - 34.1 MB

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 ...

SYPM 011: Untigering with Iris Chen

January 29, 2021 13:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MB

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 kn...

128: Should I Redshirt My Child?

January 24, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 75.7 MB

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 ...

Dismantling White Supremacy and Patriarchy on MLK Day

January 18, 2021 13:00 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MB

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 u...

Responding to the U.S. Capitol Siege

January 10, 2021 13:00 - 27 minutes - 37.7 MB

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 ...

127: Doing Self-Directed Education

December 17, 2020 13:00 - 57 minutes - 66.3 MB

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. ...

SYPM 010: From Anxious Overwhelm to Optimistic Calm

December 13, 2020 13:00 - 24 minutes - 27.6 MB

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 teach...

126: Problem Solving with Dr. Ross Greene

December 06, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 56.1 MB

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 Ex...

SYPM 009: How to Set Boundaries in Parenting

November 29, 2020 13:00 - 53 minutes - 48.9 MB

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' - withou...

125: Should you worry about technoference?

November 20, 2020 13:00 - 59 minutes - 68.1 MB

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 thi...

SYPM 008: Fostering Positive Sibling Relationships with Future Focused Parenting

November 09, 2020 13:00 - 34 minutes - 39.3 MB

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...

124: The Art of Holding Space

November 06, 2020 13:00 - 53 minutes - 61.6 MB

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 ...

123: Maternal Ambivalence: What it is, and what to do about it

November 01, 2020 13:00 - 53 minutes - 48.5 MB

This episode builds on our recent conversations with Dr. Moira Mikolajczak on Parental Burnout and with Dr. Susan Pollak on Self-Compassion. Today we talk with Dr. Sarah LaChance Adams, Florida Blue Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Director of the Florida Blue Center for Ethics at the University of North Florida, on the topic of maternal ambivalence. This is the idea that we love our children dearly but we can also feel very torn between our love for them, a...

122: Self-Compassion for Parents

October 18, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 74.8 MB

In this episode, Dr. Susan Pollak helps us to apply mindfulness skills to our relationships with our children so we can parent in line with our values, rather than just reacting when our children push our buttons. You'll learn: What's the point of mindfulness, and does it matter if we bring our full attention and presence to diaper changes? Why we're so hard on ourselves, even when we always try to be kind to others Some concrete tools to use when you interact with your children TODAY in ...

121: How To Support Your Perfectionist Child

October 05, 2020 13:00 - 55 minutes - 51 MB

Parents often reach out to me to ask how they can support their perfectionist children, who can't seem to cope with failure. I've been on the lookout for someone to talk with us for a while, but just as with our episode on anxiety, it took quite some searching to find an expert who doesn't take a behaviorist-based approach - meaning that if the behavior is fixed, the problem is fixed too. I was really glad to find today's guest, Dr. Paul Hewitt, who is a Professor in the Department of Psycho...

120: How to Raise a Child Who Uses Their Uniqueness to Create Happiness (RE-RELEASE)

September 20, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 63.5 MB

I've heard from listeners that what they call "The Dark Horse Episode," the interview with Dr. Todd Rose, that this is one of their favorite conversations on the podcast, and for this reason I'm doing something I've never done before: reissuing that episode. Dr. Rose and I discussed ways to personalize children's learning to help them truly discover and live their full potential - both academically and personally (and even getting rid of that distinction entirely...). Check out what list...

119: Aligning Your Parenting With Your Values

September 07, 2020 13:00 - 50 minutes - 57.9 MB

Ever have a vague sense that your interactions with your child aren't quite aligned with your values...but aren't quite sure what to do about it? Have you been to a protest and shouted "Black Lives Matter! Fight the Power!"...and then gone home and forced your child to brush their teeth? Have you chastised Grandma for 'stealing' kisses from your child because it disrespects their body autonomy...and then pinned them down for a haircut? You're not alone. We're in this weird place...

SYPM 007: Parenting Across Cultural Divides

August 23, 2020 13:00 - 19 minutes - 22.3 MB

In this episode we hear from Denise, who claims to have listened to every Your Parenting Mojo episode... Denise is a Filipina living in Madrid, and the intentional, respectful parenting style she's chosen to use is somewhat out of place in both cultures. She wanted to chat about what to do when her daughter is having some big feelings out in public, and a well-meaning senior citizen approaches and says directly to her daughter: "You shouldn't cry, because you look ugly when you cry." We ta...

118: Are You Raising Materialistic Kids?

August 11, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 68.8 MB

This episode on the topic of materialism concludes our series on the intersection of parenting and money. Here we talk with Dr. Susanna Opree of Erasmus University Rotterdam, who studies the effect of advertising and commercial media on use, materialism, and well-being. We discuss how children's understanding of materialism shifts as they age, the extent to which advertising contributes to materialism, and the specific role that parents play in passing on this value. Other episodes in this...

117: Socialization and Pandemic Pods

July 26, 2020 13:00 - 58 minutes - 67 MB

One of the questions I see asked most often in parenting forums these days is some variation on: "I’m worried about my child’s socialization now that it looks like daycares, preschools and schools have been closed for several months and will likely remain closed for several more months. Can someone please tell me if I really do need to worry about what the complete lack of socialization with other children will do to my [only] child?” So we'll take a look at that, and then we'll go on to ta...

SYPM 006: Mindful Mama

July 26, 2020 13:00 - 30 minutes - 35.4 MB

We're delving a little deeper into the topic of mindfulness with none other than the Mindful Mama, Hunter Clarke-Fields! We discuss Hunter's journey from being triggered just as often as the rest of us, to using mindfulness techniques to center herself so she can parent more effectively. She even walks me through an impromptu mini-meditation! You can buy Hunter's book, Raising good humans: A mindful guide to breaking the cycle of reactive parenting and raising kind, confident kids on Amazo...

116: Turn Work-Family Conflict Into Work-Family Balance

July 16, 2020 13:00 - 52 minutes - 60.1 MB

Work-family conflict can seem unavoidable - especially in the era of COVID when we're either working from home with children underfoot all day, or we're an essential worker who has to leave the house and can't find childcare. In this conversation with licensed psychologist Dr. Yael Schonbrun, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Brown University, and co-host of the Psychologists Off The Clock podcast, we acknowledge that we must enact policies that provide more of a safety net for families. ...

115: Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children

July 05, 2020 13:00 - 52 minutes - 59.8 MB

We're almost (but not quite!) at the end of our lengthy series on the intersection of money and parenting. Most recently, we talked with Dr. Allison Pugh to try to understand the answer to the question "Given that advertising is happening, how do parents and children respond?" In this episode we take a step back by asking "what about that advertising?" with Dr. Esther Rozendaal of Radboud University in the Netherlands whose research focuses on children's understanding of advertising message...

114: How to stop ‘Othering’ and instead ‘Build Belonging’

June 19, 2020 13:00 - 58 minutes - 66.7 MB

I had originally approached today's topic of Othering through a financial lens, as part of the series of episodes on the intersection of parenting and money (previous episodes have been on NYT Money colunist Ron Lieberman's book The Opposite of Spoiled, How to Pass on Mental Wealth to your Child, The Impact of Consumerism on Parenting, and How to Set Up A Play Room. The series will conclude in the coming weeks with episodes on advertising and materialism). I kept seeing questions in pare...

SYPM 005: Getting Confident About the Decision to Homeschool

June 07, 2020 13:00 - 45 minutes - 52.4 MB

School districts are starting to make plans to reopen - some with sneeze guards between desks; some on reduced schedules to accommodate the amount of space needed for social distancing, while some are going online-only for the Fall semester. How will your child cope with this? Did your child adapt well to online learning when schools closed? Will they find it relatively easy to see their friends but not be close to them? There are some children for whom these arrangements work well, bu...

113: No Self, No Problem

May 24, 2020 13:00 - 1 hour - 71.9 MB

If you heard the recent episode on Parental Burnout, you'll know that our identities can become really confusing when we become parents, especially for women. On one hand, society tells us that we have to work hard and do well so we can Achieve The Dream. And on the other hand, we're told that a Good Mother sacrifices everything for her child - including her career. So what is a parent to do? This episode brings together a couple of strands of my life that have been existing in parallel f...

112: How to Set up a Play Room

May 11, 2020 01:00 - 43 minutes - 49.2 MB

One of the things people email me wanting to know about most often is "what does the research say about how to set up a play room? What toys should I buy that will have the greatest benefit for my child's learning and development?" I'd actually been putting off doing this episode for a while, in part because the research base on this topic is thin on the ground - but also because the idea just made me kind of uncomfortable. I mean, we've survived for tens of thousands of years without play ro...

111: Parental Burn Out

April 27, 2020 01:00 - 1 hour - 69.2 MB

Do you often feel anxious or irritated, especially when you're around your child? Do you often feel like you might snap, perhaps even threatening violence if they don't do what you say? Are you so disconnected from them that you sometimes consider walking out and never coming back? If you have, it's possible that you're suffering from parental burnout. Listener Kelly reached out to me recently because she has been diagnosed with parental burnout and wanted to know what research is available ...

110: How to Dismantle Patriarchy Through Parenting

April 13, 2020 04:00 - 58 minutes - 67.5 MB

We began this mini-series a few weeks ago as listener Brian Stout and I co-interviewed Dr. Carol Gilligan as an introduction to the topic of patriarchy, how it is present in every aspect of raising our children, and the negative impacts it has on our children's lives - both on boys and girls. The interview with Dr. Gilligan laid the groundwork for us, and in this episode Brian and I are back for a conversation about what we learned and what implications this has for the way we will rais...

109: Education in a time between worlds

March 30, 2020 04:00 - 1 hour - 70.3 MB

It seems pretty clear that we are in a societal 'liminal space' right now, which is a threshold between what we have known until now and what we will know in the future. We are also in a liminal space related to learning and education, as schools hastily try to move learning online (despite disparities in access to online learning systems), and we have an incredible opportunity to think through what we think children's learning should look like in the future. In today's episode we hear from...

108: How to cope with the Coronavirus pandemic

March 15, 2020 13:00 - 44 minutes - 61.9 MB

In this episode we discuss how to cope with parents’ and children’s fear and anxiety related to the Coronavirus pandemic, how to keep the children busy so you can get some work done (without resorting to hours of screen time), and how to use the time that you are focused on them to develop your family relationships as well as their learning, rather than you driving each other nuts. To download a FREE sample routine to help you organize your days, and also join a FREE one-week workshop to giv...

107: The impact of consumerism on children

March 09, 2020 01:00 - 58 minutes - 67.4 MB

A few weeks ago we talked with Dr. Brad Klontz about the 'money scripts' that we pass on to our children - perhaps unintentionally - if we fail to examine these and make conscious decisions about the messages we want to convey about money to our children. Today we continue our series on the intersection of parenting and money with a conversation with Dr. Allison Pugh, whose doctoral dissertation (and subsequent book, Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture) remain semi...

106: Patriarchy is perpetuated through parenting (Part 1)

February 23, 2020 20:20 - 1 hour - 73.7 MB

"Wait, whaaaat?" (I can hear you thinking this now, as you're reading the title for this episode.) When I think of patriarchy, I usually think of a powerful guy in a suit. He's always White. He probably works in government or maybe high up in a corporation. He's part of The System, which is just The Way Things Are Done - and he's never going to listen to me. There's really not much I can do to impact this system. And patriarchy isn't good for any of us. It's not difficult to see how it repr...

105: How to pass on mental wealth to your child

February 10, 2020 01:00 - 54 minutes - 62 MB

Think about your parents. Now think about money. What kinds of ideas, images, and feelings come to mind? Do you recall any discussions about money - or were these hidden from you? Was there always enough to go around - or were you ever-conscious of its absence? What little incidents do you recall that ended up becoming defining 'money scripts' of your life? Perhaps it won't be a shock to learn that just as we learned how to raise children from our parents, we also learned how to think a...

104: How to help a child to overcome anxiety

January 27, 2020 01:00 - 52 minutes - 60.2 MB

Listeners have been asking me for an episode on supporting anxious children for a loooooong time, but I was really struggling to find anyone who didn't take a behaviorist-based approach (where behaviors are reinforced using the parent's attention (or stickers) or the withdrawal of the parent's attention or other 'privileges.'). Long-time listeners will see that these approaches don't really fit with how we usually view behavior on the show, which is an expression of a need - if you just focu...

103: How to raise a child who uses their uniqueness to create happiness

January 13, 2020 01:00 - 1 hour - 62.7 MB

Dr. Rose defines a Dark Horse as someone who uses a variety of unusual strategies like understanding their 'micromotives' and not worrying about their overall destination and to focus instead on more immediate goals to create a fulfilled life. In his book he focuses on the paths adults have followed to become Dark Horses, which is almost invariably one of either: Child is successful in school, attends an elite university, achieves financial stability, realizes they feel unfilled, and switc...

[Taking a Break]

November 11, 2019 01:00 - 7 minutes - 10.8 MB

I’m taking a hiatus from the show; in this episode I explain why and what you can do to help make sure it comes back strong in 2020! Here’s the form to complete if you’re interested in learning more about the yet-to-be-named pilot membership to support children’s interest-led learning at home: https://forms.gle/GGKgdwaLkEfNfMA27

Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

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